There is another way to think of dreaming given our experience with the word OT.
Often we hear the term LUCID dreaming. It's a Western concept.
A shaman would not call it lucid (that would never do) but instead calls it journeying/visioning/dreaming/seeing. Any of those terms work. Let's call it dreaming but explain why dreaming is better than lucid dreaming.
For the Indian (Castaneda's book
art of Dreaming can be a reference here) the idea of tricking the unconscious is not a factor since shamanism is not aware of an unconscious in that way (as some YouTube videos say about how we would be able to trigger lucid dreaming via the Freudian unconscious). While many think lucid dreaming relates to the unconscious or subconscious, dreaming in the native Indian sense diverges from this. It assembles differently.
The idea is that when we are awake, we are holding on to certain perceptions, values, story arcs, lines of force and these assemble our reality (telephone wires if you will). Dreaming is a capacity in which we can assemble other lines of force that are not the usual lines we assemble. In that sense, when we dream, we are actually in a different world. It is irrelevant whether our body is in bed or whether it is gone. Either way, from the viewpoint of consciousness we have moved ourselves to a different time and space because we assembled reality differently. We are nowhere other than exactly where we are. We are not split between a sleeper and the dreamer. We are in a different assemblage.
The reality we assembled cannot be our unconscious for the shaman because the lines of force are filling the universe and not just mine but outside of me. If what we assemble IS based on the unconscious or the subconscious, for the Indian all it means is that we were timid and stayed close to the ordinary waking reality (albeit quite lucid) and really barely dreamed at all. Therefore clarity, clearness, lucidity is not the specific attribute that is of interest here. A lucid dream in the Western sense does not have to be dreaming in the Indian sense since it could obsess and continue its linkage with the same old lines of force that one is used to when we are awake.
Ok. If the above is true, we can take another leap, again referencing Don Juan in
Art of Dreaming or other Castaneda books. (While I studied all this with a shaman directly it is easier to refer to Castaneda since anyone can then go and look it up).
Here is the leap: If we assemble reality with different lines of force, then let us postulate or think an amazing thought from the shaman or animist point of view that we are actually in a different place. And possibly, actually in a different time. The lines of force we assemble or filter (like telephone wires or cables or threads or filaments) are not limited to PT. They could be in the past or future or, yes, they could be in the present. They could be in your bedroom or in Hawaii. That is, time as well as space is a variable element in dreaming in the Indian tradition laid out by Don Juan. So when you change the assembled elements, you are for all intents and purposes ELSEWHERE. In this regard, auditing is a more TEMPORAL procedure. Dreaming is a more spatial one.
As one practices one can visit certain places or times regularly and map out those places, change the places one visits and go to new places etc. The Mayan and Aztec codices in the Vatican are essentially maps or recordings of these dreaming locations and dreaming activities.
For the shaman dreaming IS what we think of as OT. There are lots of ramifications and I don't want to make this too long. Auditing would be there to fix the weird outpoint that the person was always lucid dreaming things that were very similar to waking reality. That is he was timid and staying in the present moment and in the present place and was not adventuring out into history, the future, other worlds, etc.
(So basically for the shaman, and for me too, lucid dreaming is not adequate either as a term or as a practice since it cannot leave Time Space and OPERATE at will where it wishes to operate.)
BTW, these lines of force or filaments are sort of like telephone wires or cables. As we choose and assemble them different ones run through the thetan at the assemblage point as don juan calls it. That assemblage, having been changed, gives a different knot in time, a different arrangement. Thus we are in a different place and time. We are not actually imagining it or in two places. That would be the Indian view anyway, maybe not agreeing with the Western view of Lucid dreaming. As I said, all sorts of implications and places to take this view of reality and of 'OT' but I don't want to overextend my self.
Final point: for very important reasons this is slightly the opposite (weird I know although appears similar and feels similar) of becoming OT. I will expand if anyone is interested.
In disclaimer I am currently not using any techniques, not auditing, not dreaming, nothing. Just hanging out.
Maria