Although 13 minutes long, it will feel more like five and will give you a clear picture of inner beings. Awake or asleep, which came first? The dream came first, even before you were born. It is best described as a dream, within a dream, within a dream,…, each of which is equally as “real” as and important as the next and has an aspect of you in it. I imply time here as I say this, but in fact they are all playing out at the same time. As you read on you will see that there is a “hub” that dictates which reality we experience. It isn’t the only thing that dictates it, but it’s the mechanism that allows the switch. You can find other material pertaining to the components of the law of attraction on this website.
In other articles I have told you about the perceptual system in the brain that is active while you are awake. It is also active while you sleep. If it were not the case you would never be able to remember a dream experience or the emotion you felt during it.
Perception
(Skip this part if you have read the article linked below.) Let’s have a very quick look at the perceptual system while you are awake. We have a repeating pattern of the following:
- Pre-perception, based on intent and belief.
- An experience which you perceive at the time.
- A post perception or summary perception of the experience.
This pattern repeats constantly. If you are experiencing anything at all this pattern holds true. In the brain this would appear as follows:
From the thalamus
to the cortex
to the thalamus
to the emotion and memory centers
to the thalamus
to the cortex….
and that cycle will continuously repeat.
While you can see clearly that the thalamus is central to perception, the emotional, and memory center play an important role also. In order for an experience to take a high priority in memory, the experience will have an emotional marker attached to it. The longer that this pattern is allowed to repeat with regard to one subject, the more defined, and ingrained it becomes, and the faster the experience forms. For more information on this repeating pattern please read my article on the perceptual system.
The thalamus is central to your experience
The reason I gave you this very quick review is to show you that the thalamus, emotion, and memory center, are central to perception while you are awake. Each “type” of perceptual experience ends up back in that central location in the brain. While you are asleep the same is true, but the information pathway flows in the opposite direction. The thalamus is also responsible for where you focus your attention.
For those who may be unfamiliar with the EEG, the following may be helpful.
The EEG (electroencephalograph)
The reason we know what’s happening in the brain while we are awake is the same reason that we know what’s happening in the brain while we are asleep. The EEG can tell us easily if we are asleep or awake even if the machine, and person operating it aren’t in the same room as the person that it’s hooked up to. They know a person’s conscious state by the rhythms that are displayed on the graph. Not everyone is familiar with EEG readings or the rhythms that are occurring in the brain so I will explain a little about them. When specific rhythms are mentioned, I will be speaking about the dominant rhythm at that time. When I speak of frequency it is the amount of peaks and therefore troughs over a specified amount of time.
Alpha rhythm has a frequency from 8-13Hz. it occurs at all ages but mostly in adults with eyes closed and relaxed.
Beta rhythm has a frequency greater than 13Hz. Uniform high frequency, low amplitude waves.
Theta rhythm frequency is from 3.5-7.5Hz. Seen at any age, and while awake in children.
Delta frequency is 3Hz or less. Seen in deep sleep. Is known to invade day time awake rhythms in those that are sleep deprived, better known as micro-sleep when this is the case. Dreaming is known to occur during this rhythm. Little brain activity occurs during this time.
Gamma frequency is 36Hz or greater. Is considered to be the high end of beta, and is known to couple with theta frequency.
REM (rapid eye movement) sleep is usually in the beta range while sleeping and is highly associated with dreaming.
There are two types of sleep REM fast rhythm, and NREM (or non REM) which consists of the slower frequencies.
How sleep works
You begin your sleep by becoming drowsy with a blend of alpha and theta rhythms. This is sometimes called the hypnagogic state between sleep and awake. It is also known as stage one sleep and will not be repeated. This is you, falling asleep. Some hallucinations are known to occur during this state. Stage one sleep will be replaced with REM sleep in the sleep cycle.
When you fall asleep you enter a slower theta sleep better known as stage two sleep. Dreaming is not associated with this stage.
Stage three slow wave sleep gradually decreases to stage four. Dreaming is not associated with this stage.
Stage four sleep is delta sleep and it is a deep sleep. Dreaming is associated with this stage of sleep. Sleep walking, talking and other bodily mishaps happen during this stage of sleep. There is little activity in the brain.
REM (rapid eye movement) is a high frequency, low amplitude wave and if higher amplitudes enter it is considered stage two. Dreaming is associated with this stage of sleep, and is also known as paradoxical sleep. This is a very active state in the brain.
Sleep pattern
I will show you the rhythm using the stages of sleep. There is a pattern of faster REM rhythms and slower NREM rhythms.
Sleep begins in stage one sleep and progresses to stage 2, stage 3, stage 4, stage 3, stage 2, REM, stage 2, stage 3, stage 4, stage 3, stage 2, REM…
You will note that from stage four it doesn’t start over again at REM. It must pass through stages 2 and 3 to get to either of the stages where dreaming is reported. The thalamus again is central to this activity. Is the emotional and memory center involved? Of course it is or you wouldn’t be able to tell if you were having a nightmare or a pleasant dream, and you wouldn’t be able to recall your dream at all. Your perceptual system, does not stop while you are asleep.
Equal footing?
Now I would ask you, if you experience your dream, remember it, as well as the emotion, is it given the same priority by which you experience being “awake”? You can argue that you don’t remember every dream. This is true, but there is much that you don’t recall about the “awake” experience also. In the article referred to in paragraph three, I mention that emotion is a priority marker by which we recall experiences. It is the reason that you can remember something from your childhood, but then can’t remember where you left your pen.
Just for fun
Things or experiences associated with high emotion get recall priority. You can try this out by thinking of the past, and seeing what memory comes to you first, in all likelihood it will have a high emotional marker.
Another point to be made about memory, is that you cannot recall this “awake” reality while you are dreaming, similarly, you can’t recall some dreams while you are “awake”. It is much the same as standing on a shore of a vast ocean. You can’t see the distant shore on the other side from where you stand. Lucid Dreaming is by definition, recalling this “awake” reality while you are in a “dream” state. Even having some perceived control still won’t allow you to know “where” this “awake” reality is from the dream that you are in. So then it is, that once in a while you can recall one “state” from the other. Also, as stated in the perception system, what you remember depends greatly on the priority your experience is given by emotion.
I am not saying that the type of dream you are focussed on while you are sleeping is the “same” as the awake reality as you know it. What I am saying is that “reality” appears to be an extension of some kind of shared focus (or type of dream) in which there are many focusses by many individuals. The focussed stream of consciousness, that flows from one state to another, flows to and through the thalamus accessing your what appears to be your emotion and memory centers. While you are awake information flows in one direction, while you are asleep it flows another. They type of state you are in while you are asleep dictates whether you access fragments of memories from all time, visit other probable selves, etc… There are no actual realities, there are states of perception.
In the awake perceptual system the information going through memory returns to the thalamus and is sent to the cortex and back to the thalamus. The information flows in a specific direction by means of a specific path. While asleep the effect is the same with the information going in a different direction along the same central path. You are no longer getting your sensory information from reality as you know it while you are awake. You are however getting information that is sensory in nature from another source. In other words your brain was “built” to accommodate your focussed perceptual stream, the brain didn’t create it.
Active and inactive states
Slow wave dreams, and REM dreams, are again different from each other. During REM sleep your brain is quite active but during slow wave or delta sleep there is practically no activity. Of course the brain is keeping tabs on bodily functions, but that isn’t what I am speaking of. Dreams are still reported in both of these types of sleep, and slow wave or delta sleep is a couple of peaks away from flat-lining on a graph.
Dream types and perception
Dream types vary as to how you remember them when you wake in the morning. There are also many types of dreams that some people won’t remember often or at all; lucid, and dream sharing are a couple of these types. Some people don’t recall any type of dream at all, that doesn’t mean that they don’t dream, it means they don’t recall it. Some dreams are fragmented or have imagery which is confusing to the dreamer. The point is that if you are perceiving an experience then the closed system of perception still applies. If you don’t recall your dream it is still implied. All things being equal, if the brain is always repeating the same rhythms, and the same parts of the brain are activated, if you dream sometimes, and there is perception, there must always be, because the perceptual system doesn’t stop.
With drugs during general anesthesia it is blocked, this is not a type of sleep. The drugs used ultimately affect the thalamus and memory, and it abruptly stops your perceptions. The consciousness of the body’s cells are still intact, you haven’t withdrew from reality (died), and you haven’t entered the natural state that allows sleep. The process from the thalamus, and memory are merely blocked. If you can’t remember the process or use your senses in the moment, then nothing occurred. In the article I referred to in the third paragraph, I told you that the perceptual system doesn’t stop. If it stops because external senses are blocked internal perception will take over. In other words, thought itself follows the same perceptual system. You will experience you will perceive, even if that experience is to experience nothing at all. Even those in a perceived coma still hear and have internal senses that they are using. They are perceiving something and the system still applies.
Let’s get back to our “awake” closed system of perception for just a second. In your awake system your perception is constantly in motion, scanning, focussing, feeling, mapping, expecting, etc., and never stops. Think about how things would be without the senses that you are using to do that. There would be nothing, at all, but this is “never” the case. When you dream, you remember seeing, tasting, touching, etc. but without the use of your physical senses from this awake reality. In dreams you have a dream body with their own senses. Your dream body has it’s own system of perception, and this perceptual system is integrated seamlessly with your perceptual system in this awake reality.
What does all of this have to do with the law of attraction?
It isn’t the entire story, it is only one aspect of the law of attraction that I am sharing here in this moment. As you focus while sleeping or dreaming, you become the perceptual inner being to a dream body (still your perception, still your dream body). You accomplish this by accessing the dream body directly (seeing through the eyes of the dream body). Also as an alternative, by acting as a third person to the dream body by remaining close to the body while accessing the larger picture (watching the dream from outside the dream body more like you would a movie), this is still your perception and still your dream body. This occurs seamlessly while extending from the perceptual system in this “awake” reality. What you will note in what follows is that the perception which is “you” is a stream. It allows you to experience many perceptual systems.
Infinite inner beings
While you are awake (focussed in your waking reality), other’s (still you) in “dreams” are focussed on you. Some by accessing your “awake physical” body and seeing out through your eyes, and some just follow you, focussed on the broader picture of your experience (as though they were watching a movie of your life). They also do this in a way that is integrated with their own “focussed system” of perception. So in a sense there are an infinite amount of inner and outer beings in an infinite amount of focussed systems.
In these systems, they constantly focus wellbeing, on whoever they are focussed on in that system, at that time. It is all still you in the sense that it is an extension of your perception, in all of the played out “dreams” or focussed systems. These myriad of systems and perception are entwined. The stream of consciousness that is you, dreams, and those dreams, dream. This becomes more significant when you think about dreaming in the womb before you were born. All the inner beings mentioned are still you as an extension of your perception. All the dream bodies that you enter are still yours. I don’t want you thinking that we invade each other because that isn’t how it works.
It is always “you”
In the case of the awake perceptual system, all experiences end up to and from the thalamus, the cortex has a lot to do with the system. If you are dreaming and the cortex is not active the experience is being played out where? There isn’t a where, there is a state of being, that you recall when you wake up. So, you are focussed there, then you are focussed here, then you are focussed somewhere, etc… the thing to notice is that you are always focussed somewhere, and it is always from “your” perspective. Inside a body, outside a body, in a strange environment with bits and pieces, it really doesn’t matter how the experience plays out. The bottom line is that it is “your” experience that you alone perceive.
New perception system
So the new perceptual system would look like this:
Awake– Thalamus, emotional and memory center, to cortex, back to thalamus, to the experience, back to thalamus and company, to the cortex, back to the thalamus and company…. Asleep– slow wave sleep (experience) , back to thalamus and company, REM (experience), back to thalamus, slow wave sleep (experience), back to thalamus and company, REM (experience), back to thalamus, etc. Remember that I told you the information in the memory center is backwards when you dream. You seamlessly flow from one system or arrangement to another. The experience in the external awake reality will be replaced by the experience from an alternate system. It is important to note that it did not begin in this “reality” this reality was formed from the “dream” you that focussed you here. The larger aspect of yourself is the you that encompasses all of the realities, and has all of the knowledge of all “time”. When I say time remember that it is only implied. These realities are not separate they are a world within worlds, all taking up the same time and space.
The Hub
The thalamus although a part of this focussed reality seems to have been designed as a hub, some sort of window or switch, by which other focussed realities can be accessed. What you focus on, pay attention to and feel emotion about in the “awake” state will have a great deal to do with what you attract, pick and choose in dreams. The reality that you are living now doesn’t go away after you withdraw your focus (die). It remains a part of the system and may show up as dream fragments in other focussed realities that you live, as dreams. Please remember that I told you this is just a part of the story.
Time and the here and now
I realise that I am implying time in this article, there is none of that, it is all happening to you, here and now. Your main focus in this moment is your awake reality. Your focus on any specific “reality or system” at any “time” can change; and other realities or systems can, and do appear. This depends on what the thalamus or “hub” is doing. People with psychosis such as those that suffer from an illness such as schizophrenia, are experiencing those other focussed systems or realities while they are “awake” in this primary reality. They exhibit night time delta sleep rhythms while they are awake. They are experiencing two realities at the same time, one with their physical body and one with their mind. Depending on their focus, and emotional state they will attract negative or positive experiences. When the perceptual system is changed from day time to night time under natural conditions there is a working thalamus that gates the switch. Under these unusual circumstances the gate is allowing an overlap of experiences changing the perceptual system.
This is not different from how the awake reality works. While you are awake if you are deprived of sleep something known as “micro sleep” will occur. This is when slow delta rhythms invade day time fast beta rhythms in very, very, small amounts. It is what is thought to be responsible for the hallucinations or distortions of reality when someone is over tired.
We all have primary realities that we are living, and will wake up to. Depending on emotional priority, you may be able to remember a dream situation. While you are awake, in any given instant, you will attract inner beings that are helpful, and are focussed on you and with you. Why? Because they are you, or at least an extension of you. When we die, or withdraw our focus from this reality, we withdraw to another focussed dream situation, and you will still perceive. The reason that I can tell you that is because I remember before I was born.
Important, please read
In any system, your body is as real as it’s environment. Agreeing that this is a shared dream or focus does not mean that doing unsafe things has now become safe. Use caution where ever you would have used caution prior to reading this article. This knowledge does not change the reality that you knew prior to reading it. Your beliefs, and truths will still dictate what will happen to you if you step out in front of a bus. This in fact is just the point. Don’t step out in front of a bus in any reality that you happen to find yourself in. A dream body is just as real as the dream environment.
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