Another thing you have to watch out for is we tend to see what we expect (at some level) to see. Cultural stories, religious icons, art, etc… all play a role. One reason I tend to caution against reading too many accounts of a ritual before you do the ritual yourself.
Good point there. Cultural and religious influence definitely counts.
So the question is, why are they seeing wings not why do they have wings.
That is a question worth asking too. So let me tell you how did I get to this stuff...
That day when meditating, I started falling asleep, guess that I had some sleep deprivation. Not good for meditating, but I thought that it will be excellent for trying some lucid dreaming, because I'm certain to drop asleep fast, so I will fall asleep long before I would drop out of focus. This theory proved right, I fell asleep very fast and very smoothly moved from wake state into dream of location I was imagining - shores of the lake at night. So I started exploring, walking around the lake. I think I knew it was a dream. There were strange things appearing there I remembered well and afterwards noted down for interpretation.
Another interesting thing about this dream was that after some time it stopped being that easy to stay there. Few times I moved out of dream and out of body. And there, outside of body, intuitively checking it out if it is safe, I saw that my body has wings. Once I saw I was fine, I returned into dream and continued exploring. At one time I really had to focus more on keeping the dream from fading away completely. That was interesting situation, as there I was leaving the lake and moved among some stone ruins...
Woke up feeling like spending there 10 to 20 minutes which turned out to be over one hour.
What I actively imagined was starting place of the dream. Everything following was observed... and on two, maybe three occasions preserved by my will, when I had tendency to wake up...
