How to determine what is and isn't "real"

[The Cusp]

I've been reading Carlos Castanada's book "The Art of Dreaming." And he says that its your energy body that can determine whether something is real or not. According to Carlos, you need to SEE the energy of dreaming objects, and if they emit their own energy, they are real, but if they are made of phantom energy (your imagination), then it is an ordinary dream. It's a good read I would recommend it.

I was going to recommend the same thing. The technique in that book was just to point your baby finger at what you want to see with the intention of seeing it's energy.

The vast majority of things in your dreams should have no energy, and will just fall apart or shift into something else. I've yet to pull this off, but it's been one of my main lucid goals.

If you suspect there may be other people hunting you down in your dreams, I would think that they would be masters at captivating and manipulating your attention. To me the way they do this is quite distinct from normal dream characters. Pay attention not to what they do, but how they do it.
Here's a good thread on the topic of so called Dream Walker and Night Stalkers, you may find it helpful.
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/sho ... hp?t=37621

[ButterflyWoman]

Astral travel experiences, unlike dreams, unfold in a logical sequence of events, just as waking experiences do, rather than a haphazard jumble of images, people and locations.

My dreams are only rarely a haphazard jumble of images, people, and locations. They always have a narrative. They do something have the "and then the scene changed" thing, but I've had that when consciously phasing.

So unless I go astral in my sleep more than not, I think it's not a safe assumption that everyone's dreams are haphazard.

[Pneumaphor]

Different kinds of people have different kinds of dreams at different times, this has been shown in the labratory.

In Robert L Van de Castle's "Our dreaming mind" a particular study is focused on in which the number of male characters in women's dreams increased during the week prior to mensturation and decreased at the opposite end of the monthly cycle!

Here is the intro to the chapter:

"A succinct summary of the factors that influence dream content was given nearly 150 years ago by P. Jessen, a German psychologist:

The content of a dream is invariably more or less determined by the individual personality of the dreamer, by his age, sex, class, standard of education, and habitual way of living, and by the events and experiences of his whole previous life."

Here's another relevant snippet:

"Several interesting sex differences were present in our study of children's dreams. At each of the three age levels, girls' dreams were significantly longer and included more familiar characters and references to clothing. Girls had more dreams with friendly interactions and were more often the recipients of friendly interactions from others. They reported more dreams with emotions and described their dreams in greater detail, using a wider range of adjectives, particularly those referring to color. These differences were consistent across all three age levels, indicating that sex differences manifest in dreams at the earliest stages of development and remain in place into adulthood. Whether this is due to nature or nurture[...]remains an open question."

And one more, geared more toward this particular thread:

"Unpleasantness in Dreams

One does not, however, have to be in a lower socioeconomic status to have dreams in whichan environmental barrier leads to misfortune or causes frustrtion or concern on the part of the dreamer. In fact, negative or unpleasant dreams are far more common among almost all dreamers than are positive dreams. In our normative tables, Hall and I shoed that more dreams contain aggression than friendliness, failure rather than succes, and misfortune rather than good fortune."

So, don't bad dreams kind of lose a little of their power in your mind too when you find out that they're the most popular way to dream?

Edit: I refuse to accidentially derail this thread so I'll say this: Many years ago, I had a dream where I was being chased down a neverending gothic hallway by a large, very real sounding werewolf in a lucid nightmare. Right at the end of the dream, he jumped, caught me, and sunk his teeth into my left shoulderblade. I woke up with a violent start and get this, his bite was still excruciatingly painful and hurt for a few minutes, and this was skin pain! I'll never forget it.

[Alaskans]

Thats pretty scary, realistic sounds are what creep me out the most. I've had similar experiences with wounds like that.. but not caused by a charactor in dream.

At least in my case I rarely have nightmares. But I know people who listen to agressive or dark music, or are into horror movies and such, that seem to always have nightmares. When I have nightmares, it is usually because I am facing something... often, I am certain it is caused by someone trying to upset or scare me, but as I learned just recently, you can still learn things from those someones in the dream, scary as it might be.

the topic at hand.. pain in dreams..
You probably shouldnt do this, but one time I was experementing and I imagined forming my fingers into a very sharp dagger, I pushed this dagger into my stomach. I felt definite pain that didnt go away for quite some time. That was not the only time. There is a difference between physical and this kind, that is it doesnt seem to be as acute, and can have other elements to it, in my experience anyways.
If you want my opinion.. in energy work, you can feel your other, energy body, some can feel very complex things in one or more of thier energy bodies, or when they move. If one of your other bodies were injured, why wouldnt you feel it on over in your physical body?

I could also certainly beleive that immagination can create pain as well.

[The Cusp]

Finally managed to try to see energy in my dreams the other night. Of course there was nothing to be seen. Objects would dissolve into nothing or turn into mist. Larger objects would change into something smaller.

It wasn't as easy as just pointing and and intending to see energy. I had to say out loud "I want to see energy!" as well. It's not really my style to say stuff like that in dreams, but whatever works.

Hopefully I can keep it up. There may be something energetic to see eventually.