OK - I know I am ignoring some of the things you have told me, but I am holding them in the background while I clarify what you are doing at the moment - for me and you.
At the moment I need to be clearer exactly what you do with meditation. Is the feather in the tube method the one where you breathe slowly and imagine barely moving the feather? If not exactly what are you doing, and what is the mountain meditation?
There are two things here maybe I need to explain. If you were unconscious, or if conscious were taken away, there would no longer be anybody else, or the world, or even yourself. Without consciousness nothing exists. So to put it another way everything you experience rests on consciousness and what you do with it.
Last time I said about the mirror and what is reflected in it. But when the mirror is clear of images and emotions, sometimes things come out of it - such as your dreams and the voice you hear. In the biggest sense there is nothing in there except you, so don't worry about whose voice you hear.
Also remember that when you dream you are existing in a world of virtual reality that can be anything. In that world people, animals, places seem very real - are real at their own level. What creates that virtual reality can present to you devils, angels, or God himself. Whatever it is, it is a world that can change from one moment to the next. But behind it is something else other than the images and people we experience in the dream. There is something creating those images and experiences. There are levels of you.
You have seen that in the 'psychic' world of dreams you can either experience normal dreams that are probably expressing dramatic versions of what you feel and fear deep inside, or you can experienced a symbolic presentation of something verifiable or real in the waking world. In fact what you can draw out probably an infinite manner of things. See
https://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/dimensions-of-human-experience/ The big question is what are we doing to allow or repress what appears in our dreams or waking?
If consciousness is everything, and I am not being rigid about that, only saying it to provide a way of understanding how to work, then what you experience, or what you don't experience, has something to do with what you do with consciousness, your mind and emotions. Meditation can therefore be likened to tuning a radio to get different stations. So in meditation you might be aiming to reach a certain goal, and you rearrange what you feel and what your body is doing to see if you can get a different thing happening in consciousness. But consciousness at that level is an immense ocean and hold Everthing.
Through the ages ancient peoples have tried all sorts of things such as fasting, banging drums, taking herbs, repeating words over and over, doing rituals, dancing, praying, etc, on and on. And there is a saying in the East - The finger pointing at the moon. What it means is that people sometimes forget the finger is pointing for them to look at the moon and stare at the finger. In other words we often get tangled up with banging the drum, repeating the words, saying the prayers or controlling our breath, and miss seeing what those things are producing in consciousness. What is important is how are those things rearranging what you think and feel inside to produce a different experience, psychic impressions, or an awareness of the divine?
This is why I need you to look at exactly what you are doing in meditation or dreams, so you can learn to consciously direct the process instead of thinking it is the 'finger' doing it. In the end it is you who are doing it.
I want to help you undo the knot that brings the extreme sinus pressure, and that can enable you to release and direct your power more consciously.
I am away for a while so don't worry if I take a while to answer next time. Maybe read
http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ Press on,
I guess all my intellectual stuff isn't doing the trick.
No matter. But some of it is important, like a map, as you are travelling into new lands.
So, lets get to you more directly. The pain you feel when doing the feather meditation, and the voice.
You must know from what you have experienced that what lies beyond your waking awareness of yourself is a vast and strange country. Part of that 'country' are things buried in you from the past - childhood for instance, and when you open to it some of that past will surface to be healed. That may mean you re-experience it as it discharges. So the pain may be due to that.
The voice - well in the sense that everything you experience in your dreams, while experiencing your spirit friend, or the voice, is subjective experience. Nobody else can see or hear it. Your brain, or mind, like a radio, is translating signals or impressions into what you can understand consciously. So your voice is being honest in a way - it is all you. That does not demean it in any way.
In your own time I would like you to try a couple of things to see what you experience. The first is to ask your voice what is the best way for you to allow your abilities to unfold. Doesn't matter what the hell the reply is, tell me.
Also try this and tell me what happens.
I have called this the Keyboard Condition. In other words you learn to hold your body, emotions, imagination, sexuality and memories like a keyboard that can be played on by your inner self. In this way you are holding your body free to move spontaneously; you are letting go of any control or resistances you might have in connection with your emotions; you are relinquishing your thoughts and goals, and you are leaving the stage free for your imagination – all to be able to respond to something other than your conscious will – all ready to be moved spontaneously.
Remember that when you go to sleep another will creates dreams, body movement, emotions, and all the phenomena of dreams without your conscious will needing to be active. You are creating the Keyboard Condition so this inner process, or inner self, can have the chance to expresses while you are awake. Stand for a while and let anything happen.
As ever – Tony