When you’re in college, sometimes you take classes because they’re required even if you already know all of the information. That was why I wound up taking a class that was literally an introduction to the Windows Vista operating system. An operating system that I’d already been using and was well aware of the ins and outs of long before I took the class. I got an A in the class with no effort at all – however, not having to put out effort in a class isn’t a good thing. It means that I still have to attend the class, and be bored out of my mind. Therefore, I started finding other ways to pass the time. And when I realized that the teacher didn’t take role until the end of class, therefore I could never skip out at break and get out of the interminable boredom, I knew I would have to find some way to occupy myself.
Why am I telling this story in a blog where I’m supposed to be discussing astral and dream shifting? Well, the boredom I suffered in that Vista class inspired me to try something I’d never attempted before – astral travel while my physical body remained conscious.
An astral shift is similar to a phantom shift, except that you are specifically changing the shape of your energy half fully into your theriotype, and then using that to move around independent of your physical body. The first step is a separation. I will not go through the process of how to separate your energy half from your physical have for a sheer matter of safety. If you know how to do it already, you know the risks and the situation you are putting yourself in while doing it. If you don’t know how to do it, then one blog post will not be enough to teach you. And this series was never meant so much as a teaching series, but as an informative series.
Once you’ve achieved enough separation that shifting your astral energy isn’t going to cause your physical body to ache because of the different shape, you can quickly apply the techniques mentioned in the first post in this series to shift your astral energy self into your theriotype. And now comes the fun part – explore. You can go anywhere within the physical and astral plane. I’ve noticed several times that people in the physical world will even react to your presence even though they quite obviously can’t see you.
On the night I was talking about, I went for a run around the campus. I shot past people, jumped over a bench, sniffed at the food I could smell coming from the Cafeteria and the Denny’s across the street. I didn’t have much to do, and didn’t dare go very far from the class or my body for fear that I would be called on to answer a question or something and would have to snap back to my body at a moment’s notice. I could still kind of hear with my physical ears, and therefore I was aware of the teacher continuing to lecture while I was running around. Thankfully, though, I wasn’t needed to snap back, and after I’d run around for a while and shaken off my boredom, I made my way back to the classroom, shifted back to human form and settled myself in my body again just in time for roll call.
As you can see, being able to astral travel can be a great blessing, but again, it is not something I’m here to teach anyone to do. It’s simply another type of shift – albeit the most freeing type, in my opinion, because you are as close to physically BEING your theriotype and running around with your human mind in total control of the animal’s body and instincts.
As for dream shifting, directed dream shifting is more like lucid (or controlled) dreaming. Most therians, or even non-therians, have experienced vivid dreams in which they are someone or something else. Sometimes these dreams are in the first person POV, other times they are in third person and allow you to get a very good look at what you are. In my case, dreams like this are how I know what my dire wolf self looks like, for the most part.
Triggering a dream shift can be very simple – just think about your theriotype and a normal course of action for it as you are falling asleep. This can be enough to trigger your dream shift. Sometimes, though, should you wish this to be a true lucid dream, a bit more is necessary in order to really get yourself to register that A) you are dreaming, and B) you can control it. Unfortunately, this technique is a bit more advanced than I find myself able to explain right now. It involves giving yourself some sort of trigger that your subconscious will insert into dreams to make you realize that you’re dreaming. It can take years to create this mental image – something that will be out of place enough to jar you, no matter what you’re dreaming about. My personal visualization is a full moon within a dinner plate. I’ve had this show up in the most random places in dreams – from sitting on a rock in the middle of a field, to flying up to me as if it was some sort of flying saucer. But when I see that image, a photorealistic full moon in the middle of a china plate, it jars my brain and I realize that I must be dreaming.
My earliest experience with a lucid dream is something that I’ll never forget, though it didn’t have anything to do with shifting, and it was years before I’d perfected my lucid dream trigger. I was walking through the apartment complex where I used to live (still did live, at the time), when suddenly a ninja dropped down from the roof and threatened me with throwing stars. I was terrified, my heart was pounding – and then somewhere in the logical recesses of my mind, I remember thinking, “A ninja? What is a ninja doing in my apartment complex? This can’t be real…” And I faced the ninja, stood up as tall as a twelve year old can stand, and said, “This is MY dream, and you get out of it NOW!”
And, just like that, the ninja disappeared. But I was still dreaming. I remember laughing, looking around, and deciding that I could control anything in this dream world – and I wanted to fly. Next thing I knew, I was flying around the neighborhood. I landed on roofs, flew around the park down the street, and eventually came home. I don’t remember if I made the decision to wake up when I came home or not, but I did. And to this day, that it still one of the coolest lucid dreams that I’ve ever had. Facing down a ninja and telling it to get out of my dream. It still makes me laugh.
Dream shifts and astral shifts allow you the freedom to change and move about the world in the form of your theriotype. In my final post in this series, we will discuss the only other way this could ever happen – a way which, unfortunately, is more than impossible, and yet I don’t know a single therian who hasn’t fantasized about it at one time or another. In the final post of the series, we will examine the forever elusive P-Shift, or Physical Shift… Actually turning from human to animal like the movie werewolf – the impossible dream of most therians and anyone who’s ever wished to become a bird that they could fly away from their troubles.
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