The Astral Plane is a mirror that conforms to our own expectations, desires, and general thought patterns. This is why when an individual begins keeping track of their dreams or learning how to explore the astral plane, they must understand that it will conform to your illusions and distorted perceptions about reality & reflect them back to you. This occurs when individuals who are interested in psychedelics have a "bad trip" and, in general, can be eliminated only when one completes the symbolic process and removes all of the division between their mind and their sexual libido, which initially they are unconscious of. When an individual has no division between their conscious mind and their unconscious mind, the light of their Sun and soul reflects down into the Lunar energy in the groin, and they actually sleep in the "clear light" of awareness (rather than being thrown around in dreams), that is not really like sleep as it does not create a loss of awareness or consciousness as typical sleep under the tamo guna does, but is one of complete lucidity and control. One can do spiritual practice, speak with family or friends (living or dead), have sexual experiences, or study in an astral temple. Before we have complete self-awareness in sleep, however, we must keep a dream journal and use it to diagnose and detect divisions in the sexual will (which is why Crowley called dreams products of "dis-ease"), which always shows itself to you in your sleep in some form. A dream of pure pleasure and happiness shows that you are aligning your soul with your libido and thus beginning to taste the bliss of self-awareness-- beginning to become self-aware in your sleep. A sexual dream that occurs with a coworker, stranger, or friend that one does not have a formal connection to or agreement with stems from sexual repression and the "steam" relieves itself in the dream and the astral exchange. A nightmare, however, is produced from your own mind recognizing that there is some division in yourself relating to your soul and your sexual energy, which threatens to separate you from spiritual wholeness. This is the most important kind of dream to analyze because without doing so, we can develop mental disorders and "split personalities", the more severed our mind becomes in relation to our sexual energy and body. As Jung put it, regarding the personifications of the libido and Kundalini on the astral (as the daemon-- or anima/animus): "both figures [the anima & animus] represent functions which filter the contents of the collective unconscious through to the conscious mind. They appear or behave as such, however, only so long as the tendencies of the conscious and unconscious do not diverge too greatly. Should any tension arise, these functions, harmless till then, confront the conscious mind in personified form and behave rather like systems split off from the personality, or like part souls." That is why, as I explain in my Ketu astral projection video and will expand on in the future, the ultimate goal is to astrally merge with your daemonic form (then abiding in blissful completion), rather than being separate from it and encountering it night after night (which shows that it is still unintegrated).
MINDSET FOR ANALYZING DREAMS
The first consideration of using the dream to diagnose what is causing the nightmare is to analyze what symbolism in the dream connects to your external waking life. This is the external stimulus that triggered the dream and is the entry point to understanding the internal cause. To enter into Samadhi and to achieve self-realization, you must remove all division within yourself that causes you to think that there is any separation between your internal world and the external world. When you adopt this line of thinking, the dream becomes like a puzzle or rubix cube, that if you carefully study and piece together the external cause that stimulated the nightmare, it will then reveal the internal activity you are doing that created the discord. This then lets you obtain a clear message and prescription as to how to adjust yourself in better alignment with your will. An example from one of my clients who wanted to remain anonymous:
The dream is extremely short but even the shortest dream fragment can be analyzed and used to spiritually heal yourself if you follow the trail. The dream was: "I dreamed of a woman stealing my sexual partner from me." The key theme of the dream is "stealing", and the secondary theme relates to insecurities about her sexual partner. I asked her if anything in her waking life had the theme of "stealing", and about the nature of her relationship, and it revealed that her partner generated a lot of insecurity about herself and her own appearance due to his vain and selfish habits, & even forced her into a position of "worshipping him' in a way that caused her to feel very jealous of other women who she viewed as threatening. This lead her to feel malice towards particular women in her life, and wish ill upon them even though they had done nothing to her whatsoever. This began to generate a spiritual illness within her and she blamed external women for her own inability to recognize a toxic relationship, which generated extreme insecurity within herself, and not choosing a partner that gave her the peace of mind and respect that she needed. This lead her to "steal" things from other women to form a false identity that she believed would get her the respect and attention that she so deeply wanted from her partner, but he would never give. This caused her to be constantly drained by him so that she could never create an identity of her own, and generated jealousy of women who had one. The Astral plane showed her an image of what she was doing, "stealing", but in a way that reflected her own illness and division within her own soul and mind. She had initially placed blame on external women, but realized the cause was her own negative relationship. In this way, we can see that dreams always show us the way to solve our problems, but our problems stem only from ourselves, never from anything external.
The external event is only a stimulus and obstacle that, once we learn the internal cause and correct it, disappears from our life. When we remove internal division, our external life begins to manifest in the way that is in accordance with our soul and will, and thus we begin achieving self-realization (which means that we alone are responsible for our life and what it is). Nothing external can ever harm us, and we only hurt ourselves from what we create on an unconscious level. Self-realization, in essence, is simply when you are internally whole and integrated, free of dis-ease, no longer creating things in your life unconsciously, having a "bad trip" from undigested aspects sitting in your unconscious mind and sexual energy.
My astrological dream interpretation service: https://www.clairenakti.com/product-page/astrological-dream-interpretation