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I deliberately didn't pursue this further because I detected a bit of resistance in Manitou, but as you have brought it back up. Manitou remembers she was in the Golden tunnel and so she is identified with it. If there had been no identity, then there would have been no experience and no memory of it. I remember a film, or a dream, but during the film or dream I was not aware of myself. My awareness was on the film, or dream. Don't confuse not having an awareness of self with not having identity. Manitou did not experience death during tantric sex, she experienced life. Death has no experience. To be afraid of death is pointless as there is nothing, to be afraid of dying is natural and shouldn't be rejected, or you refuse to affirm life. Live then die. Definitely live first. Don't seek to die prior to death.

Some people are serial dreamers, can naturally return to there dreams. Its a good thing especially if you want to do dream work, ie lucidity and beyond. I've found and I think science backs me up, waking up in the middle of the dream is great for recall but bad for feeling awake. There are some smart phone apps that try to measure you sleep cycle by when you move around, and they try to wake you up when you're not in REM. Otherwise waking up 30 minutes earlier or later may have you up outside your REM state

Hi! I would appreciate some inputs on my situation with regards to sleep and dreams. No matter how long i sleep I wake up feeling the need for more sleep. My current job do keep me from having a perfect regular sleep schedule. What I notice is that I always wake up from a dream, and I can fall asleep again and continue the same dream. Sometimes i wake up during the night, go to the toilet and continue the dream where i left off. Often in my dreams I'm aware of my own body and it feels like im not sleeping or dreaming. It pretty much feels like im awake somewhere else other than my body. I would love to wake up fully rested and energized. Can't remember the last time that happened.

Maybe it is a collection of places that you have seen in real life. In dreams we usually mix up places. I have seen alot of places that resemble variious places, all mixup and mashed in together. Sometimes or usually when I remember a dream that I saw it tells a "tale" of becoming day. So I see or "emote" some of the days events in advance. One kind of precognition. Just need to translate all the symbolism from dreams. In our dreams all we see and hear is the emotions and not actual places. I have also seen myself swimming in some lakes etc. and drowned a couple of times too. I think that water symbolizes information, so you were swimming in a stream of information. Red color has its meaning as well as the mountains and buildings. One other thing I know for sure is that if one looses teeth or tooth it is an indication of stress for me atleast. Sometimes seen and felt my teeth explode in my mouth in a dream. In waking life the same or the next day had very angry feelings explosive in nature even. Also car symbolizes ones ego, and if one wrecks the car it usually means ego bruising. The bigger the car the bigger ego I think. I am not an expert, but I think that dog symbolizes some sort of a guardian, something that tells you not to pursue those "blue haired girls into the woods" or out of the woods to some trouble perhaps. Girl or woman symbolizes ones spiritual consciousness, for man that is, for woman the equivalent is obviously a man in a dream. Opposites and all. Usually that spiritual consciousness is an older and wiser person in a dream. Younger ones are likely something other, like archetypes. Anyhow, thats what I think of dreams and their symbolism.

But remember - there is a hidden 'weakness' ... in Mars. It is best dealt with as an impetus , very soon one has to hop trains and ride the energy invoked in a more stable form. In the Planetary Rites , this is symbolised by Sol's oration at the end of the Rite of Mars , when Mars voluntarily 'hands over' to the development of the energy to Br. 'Sol in Aries' ; [He turns and falls clasping SOL's feet. All prostrate themselves in adoration. SOR. SCORPIO plays her solar chant.] Papillon: Bohm. [sOL in ARIES recites] The world's great age begins anew,The golden years return,The earth doth like a snake renewHer winter weeds outworn;Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.A brighter Hellas rears its mountainsFrom waves serener far;A new Peneus rolls his fountainsAgainst the morning star.Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleepYoung Cyclads on a sunnier deep.A loftier Argo cleaves the main,Fraught with a later prize;Another Orpheus sings again,And loves, and weeps, and dies.A new Ulysses leaves once moreCalypso for his native shore.Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,If earth Death's scroll must be!Nor mix with Laian rage the joyWhich dawns upon the free;Although a subtler Sphinx renewRiddles of death Thebes never knew.Another Athens shall arise,And to remoter timeBequeath, like sunset to the skies,The splendour of its prime;And leave, if nought so bright may live,All earth can take or Heaven can give.Saturn and Love their long reposeShall burst, more bright and goodThan all who fell, than One who rose,Than many unsubdued.Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,But votive tears and symbol flowers.O cease! must hate and death return?Cease! must men kill and die?Cease! drain not to its dregs the urnOf bitter prophecy.The world is weary of the past.Oh, might it die or rest at last!

Hi Bindi, Sorry to come so late to this thread and I haven't read much of it so I apologize if I'm repeating or contradicting others. I think that people and traditions define and apply words and concepts based on their conditions and education. We can pretty much call awakening and enlightenment anything we like within a certain boundary. Also, it's important to recognize that while both words refer to a personal connection with a "state" that is unconditioned and non-conceptual, the words themselves and any associated activity are certainly conditioned and conceptual. When we speak of awakening and enlightenment we are not speaking of those states but our conditioned and conceptual ideas about them. That said, I'll offer working definitions that would apply if I were to discuss either concept. I would use the word awakening to describe an initial, personal connection with our natural state. I would use the word enlightenment to describe the complete and perfect integration of the natural state into all aspects of life. By my definitions, many people have experiences of awakening and few, if any, attain enlightenment in life. Of course, this begs the question, what do I mean by the natural state? There are so many ways to label and point to this and each tradition and individual has their own unique, preferred approach. While they are certainly not equivalent from our relative perspectives, they seem to be inspired by a common thread which has something to do with the wish or aptitude to go beyond the limits of human mentation and experience. I've met quite a few folks who have experienced awakening and the common thread among those I think are credible (eg - fit with my personal and biased idea of what that is) includes experiences of some of the following: profound and spontaneous joy, unconditional love for all things, loss of subject/object discrimination, feelings of profound connection to nature including other people, lessening of attachment to material things, revulsion to causing harm to living things, an experience that seems to transcend limits of time, space, birth, death, and personal identity, and so forth. Other, less extreme, characteristics of awakening include recognizing ignorance in things we once found important, finding ourselves progressively more open to things as they are rather than as we would like them to be, contentment and ease in our lives, a natural tendency towards kindness, and so forth. With the initial onset of awakening, these experiences can be extremely powerful and life-altering. With time the intensity tends to fade and the previous way of being tends to creep back in unless we are fortunate to find a way to stabilize and integrate the experience into our lives. For us to awaken, we must first be asleep. That state seems to be characterized by an identification with the contents of and experience of our mind and sensory experience. Transcending that identification seems to be at the core of waking up. Integrating that transcendence in a full, permanent, and perfect manner is what I would refer to as enlightenment. One of the practices I'm currently focusing on is dream yoga. The beauty of this practice is that it uses the waking/dreaming dichotomy as a template for working with deeper processes such as ignorance/awakening and life/death. The parallels are quite useful. Once we are awake, it is very easy to doze back off but I don't think we ever fall back to sleep completely. It shows us a way of seeing the world and a way of living that is more consistent with our fundamental nature. I think that this is where both the Daoist and Buddhist masters are trying to guide us (as well as the masters of all other spiritual traditions). Sorry for the long post and I hope it's somehow helpful.

Walk the circle till you become enlightened. Hours and hours to no end, you either die or return to the Tao. Like that Taoist sage (Hao Datong, the Taoist Master of Eternal Reality)who was digging one cave after another in Huashan (Flower Mountain) because once he finished digging one a Taoist came along and borrowed it until he finally attained the Way. Dig, dig, dig...battle, battle, battle until you realise this is all a dream!

Can dream sometimes be a birth in heaven? I think it can.

It looks kind of familiar - perhaps just similar to many Chinese silk paintings I've seen. I have a recurring dream where a girl with blue hair leads me through the woods, and at the end, she disappears and I get attacked by a German Shepherd.

good examples of how you can effect things from within the lucid dream state here. particularly being able to meet the darker, repressed side our ourselves with equanimity.

Has anyone seen this place? I saw it in a lucid dream, swimming in the river toward it, a red temple hidden in the mountains. A rough image I made of it.

what if you were to do cultivation work from within the dream, meditation etc? from what i've read it's possible to reach deeper into the subconscious here and dissolve blockages, let go of things, which is ultimately the aim of our cultivation anyway. you need a lot of lucidity for this though.

I have been thinking about how to utilize sleep for cultivation. I know of two methods to help make sleep easier/ improve the quality but they don't always work. I would like for this thread to be a place for people to share different methods and share their experiences. The only two methods I have been taught are as follows- Lie on right side, inhale into yintang through nose whilst seeing blue at yintang. Exhale through mouth with HA sound feeling heat leaving mouth. Do this for 9 repetitions in bed before sleep. The second is simply laying in corpse pose in bed, inhaling from pelvic floor up to chest through nose then exhaling through mouth making the Xi sound whilst having the motion move down from chest to pelvis. I have experimented with doing Anapanasati in bed while going to sleep and so far, it does not decrease length nor increase quality. It has simply deepened the amount of emptiness(no dream state) I have during sleep. I will continue to experiment. I look forward to hearing what you all do! edit- Methods that do not focus on lucid dreaming. They seem harder to find.

to put the no-mustard on the no ham and no bread sandwich you didnt leave under your pillow ? ... no hang on, that was a dream ... or did I see it on TV ? One old guy to another : "The wife said ; 'What are you going to do today?' I said 'Nothing !' She said 'You did that yesterday!' I said , 'Well ... I haven't finished yet.' "

Martin Armstrong predicts a top in the economic cycle October 1st and big changes afterwards. Already this is happening now in the EU with more than a million people trying to get in. More than one year ago I had a dream seeing fighting between natives and foreigners, so I guess the dream is coming true. October 1st will also be the end of the US budget and it has to renegotiated which will probably shut down the US government like we have seen before. Personally I have gone through a huge purging phase in September this year and my kids have been anxious, not sleeping well etc. A lot of stuff going on.

Not at all. There could be all kinds of setups, from big business to cooperatives. At the end of the day someone has to work the sea and people will have to paid to do it. The result will be more fish, more production, more opportunity for businesses and cheaper fish for us all. How can it be a polluters dream ? At present companies can just dump chemicals, rubbish, destroy ocean beds, over fishing, have oil spills. All that would be reduced by private ownership. Having deep pockets is irrelevant. Wether someone has very little, or a lot, there capital represents the amount they have decided is important to them, they don't arbitrarily invest without a good return on risk.

It ain't going to be homesteading if its $10 million per square mile. The 'security' is going to be extraordinarily expensive too. Ma and Pa won't be the main buyers, only people with big pockets will be owners. You assume the people who are causing the problem will almost magically go away if things are privatized. I don't follow that. Not only will the new boss, be the old boss, but he'll have no regulations or laws to keep them from the worst offenses. In this instance I see catastrophe. Small boaters, small fishing boats are screwed. The sea itself is filled with (invisible) no trespassing signs. Traveling the coast in a boat becomes a legalistic nightmare, maybe the skies above it too. People with very deep pockets own the coastal waters and can do with it what they want. With no laws or regulation its a polluters dream. Don't be so eager for change that you go from here to worse.

A chess game is won not by practicing end-game finishing techniques. It's won by one pawn push and simple piece trade at a time. Then when the board is less cluttered, if your early pawn game was strong, openings to mate start to present themselves. If you sit down to play chess intent on a 1st move checkmate, good luck. This is like sitting down and attempting zazen mind states without realization of the nature of mind, good luck! So much focus on end game, comparatively no intrest in clearing the board to a point at which it makes sense to even bother looking at end game practices. First live the basics (universal compassion, conclusion of fear-thought/attachment, foundation realizations etc). At this point every second of life is already so unbreakably beautiful and fantastic that looking for checkmate stops being a clinging want, and hence it becomes possible. Until the basics are the rock you live/sleep/dream/breathe, trying to move beyond them seems unlikely to yield more than delusion and frustration. If one meditates before recognizing the nature of mind, how can one know what they are perceiving isn't exclusively mind delusion tricks? If all the folks in the world today focused on chants or energy flow or scheduled ritual practice were instead to choose to spend that same effort towards living universal compassion to all living beings, we would be living in a world with a lot less suffering and a lot more realized beings then capable of begining a journey to enlightenment awareness. Unlimited Love, -Bud

Fear is life, fear is good. Life is suffering too. Suffering is good. How much life can you bare ? How much suffering is ideal for you ? A lot of fear, he said, and very little suffering. Leave me some serenity so I can enjoy what is taken. Does suffering have roots? What makes it grow? What are the roots for? In what do they ground themselves? What goes through them? My niece said: I have to suffer so I can compare with Snow White and Cinderella. My roots are self love and will to grandeur. My needs are a Prince and fights so we love eachother. I am in fear of not suffering and getting a boring life. It is enough for me to feel alive. It is not too much so I don't realise I am dying. My niece goes dancing and singing "once upon a dream". If life is a triangle and fear is the hypothenuse, then the square root of fear equals two squared stuff put together and there is something about a circle all around. I am gRoot.

In the interest of pushing this conversation in the direction of Hassein's original question, I have decided to share one of my earlier experiences, as I wrote it at the time. Some background may be helpful. At the time, I had been having OBEs once every few days. With a few exceptions, I would find myself confined to a particular location with no other intelligences around. Any attempt to leave would result in immediate return to my physical body or on one occasion, a deliberate intercession by a dark entity which took on a shadow form. I have several observations about this about this particular OBE. First, that there is no "spiritual meaning" behind it. It is simply an experience, with perhaps no other significance in that it contributed to my growing awareness of non-physical consciousness. Second, it was the first time that I tried to use my voice while out of body and I found it very difficult. Third, the ordinary cognitive faculty Ruach) does not function in the usual manner while in this state; I find it typically operates at a reduced level of activity and that is the case here. I lay awake for quite a long time, though drifting every so often into a light dream state. I wake from a light sleep feeling my legs floating above me. I grow tired of this and decide to see if I can lift my head out. I push up and my head and chest lift up. I do this a number of times, but never get free. Finally, with a big push I exit completely. I wave my arms in front of me and they become visible. I am in a small room. Everything seems a bit fuzzy, not quite real. It looks to be a messy dorm room. I walk out into the hall. I decide to ask for assistance… “if anyone is here…” but my voice cuts out. It is but a tiny whisper. I try again, “if someone is here and can hear me, please help me…” my voice is croaking. I have never tried to speak out loud before. I go in another room and look around. I could try to leave this place but decide instead to search for a phone. I find one in a third room. It’s an old rotary phone. I pick it up and hear a bell clinging inside. I look closely at it and the dial turns into a jumble of push buttons. I am not surprised that all of the numbers aren't there, but I see a “4” in the middle along with the number "1". It gives me an idea. I pick up the phone but there is no dial tone. I dial “411”. [Note: this is the old US phone number for general information] I wait… there is no ring. I think to myself that this is not leading anywhere. But I continue to wait anyway. Finally, I hear a voice. It is garbled at first but I focus my hearing and eventually the words become clear. It’s a woman’s voice. It sounds like a recording and I pick it up in the middle of a sentence: "...distributed communication. You have requested original level translocation..." Everything goes dark and I wake up.

I would say the majority of people who talk about awakening don't equate it with traditional definitions of enlightenment from ancient traditions. Yet they call it awakening because the experience of it is like waking up out of a dream. The dream is their life before awakening, which is seen as unreal or imaginary. Eckhart Tolle worked as a psychotherapist but after awakening he couldn't take it seriously because he saw all the complaints people had about their lives weren't real. So there was a definite shift of before and after for people like Tolle and many others who talk about similar experiences.

In the case of Jerry Hicks there is a certain amount of denial about the fact that he has been dead for nearly four years. On the official website http://www.abraham-hicks.com/lawofattractionsource/index.php the latest courses and cruises are kept scrupulously up to date. Yet the About Jerry and Esther section reads thus: And then we get more detail about Jerry: Perhaps the fact that he is dead is slightly off-putting to those who want to buy into the dream and buy into one of the cruiseship courses. Ultimately, they know that their target audience is a bit simple minded, and will ask 'Why didn't Jerry use the law of attraction to stay alive?' Better to try and conceal his death for as long as possible.

We are arguing about reality Bob and not the nature of possibility. You cannot produce either a deductive, or inductive argument based on our knowledge and direct experience which shows an afterlife of any sort. Scientific proof of death is something we have understood for a long time. I'm sure graveyards across the land are full of those who thought death was not the end, but those graveyards attest to error. Imagine a court case in which the accused must prove his innocence and not his guilt. The man is accused of killing his wife. It is absolutely impossible for him to prove he is innocent If all possibilities are open and all evidence is disregarded as falsity. It is a possibility that and infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters would chance on the production of the complete works of Shakespeare. This saying is not supposed to be taken as a model of possibility, but to show how ludicrous a proposition it is. There are neither infinite money's nor infinite typewriters. If you believe everything and anything is possible, you have deliberately suppressed the only tool you possess to know reality 'as it is'. It is fine to dream and to imagine, but eventually, from those fevered thoughts must come an action. If your actions are all based on the possibility of what scientists might discover, then you are living in a future world and not 'in the now', as advocated by many lifestyle guru. Act on what you know is reality to the best that you can know it and that is 'the now'. Then you know yourself as you are, neither as you were, nor as you imagine you might be. When you stand on the solid foundation of reason you will know the universe for what it is and marvel that you did not know it before. :-)

While I agree that we need to be careful superposing one another terms from different traditions, the attempt can sometimes be valuable in providing an extended picture. While there are many variations in classification schemes, different traditions nevertheless refer to the same underlying metaphysical realities after all. I had some experiences during lucid dreams when I found myself in a body of light energy which I call astral body. It feels quite fantastic every time. Now in my personal cultivation, I synthesize elements from both Western and Eastern practices. I recall one dream in which I was clearly aware of a chi reservoir in the Lower Dantien and of the chi flow as it is considered in Taiji. How much my experiences with the astral body resemble what Gurdjieff and Ouspensky describe, I can't say off the top of my head. If you could guide me to relevant texts and chapters that are available online, I will be happy to look into this further.

I have wondered who the entity is that feels all these things, and for now I perceive the entity who is dreaming, feeling, and resolving these things is my awareness/consciousness slowly ascending through the chakras to join with my Higher Self. I analyse the dream itself, but then deliberately stop any intellectual process and feel the feeling. But it's only to release what might be blocked. Say with fear, if I am caught in that level of being, and unpack the reason for fear in my life through dream analysis, and feel and release the fear that was driving me, then I consider that to be cleared, I can feel fear when appropriate, but I don't live fearfully all the time. I was shown my personal hijackers in a dream, fear, shame, negativity, desire, anger, that took control of me, and this dream showed me removing them one by one. I just believed the dream, and went about removing them over time, bit by bit. I once had a dream which explained how dreams work: There was a big screen in a movie theatre, and on the screen was thousands of unrelated random looking pixels. One of these pixels would be taken from the screen, and played in a projector on the wall beside me, distorting the video scene into caricature because it was being played in such close up. After being played the pixel went back into the big screen and resolved itself into a sensible piece of the puzzle, and it was clear to me in the dream that when enough pixels were resolved I would be able to see the ‘big picture’. This dream explained satisfactorily to me why it was important to ‘resolve’ my dreams, and also why dreams themselves looked so mad sometimes, like caricatures. I read this the other day, the author Leon Rhodes is describing the life review of Near death experiencers after going through a black tunnel: “many experiencers are treated to a remarkable show called “The Life Review.” It has been described in full color, three-dimensional, and shown as if on a wide screen. The review is extremely detailed and does not miss a thing. Some describe what looks like a slow-motion review, yet somehow their entire conscious lives are compressed into an astonishing re-enactment of everything they have ever done. Such a review would take a long time in an earthly theatre bound by time and space; yet within the few minutes of a near death experience, the leading character is shown not only all the events of his or her former life, but can also experience the emotions that were involved.” It made me wonder if dreams are a way to access ‘the life review’ while alive, bound by time and space. From Leon again: “Many experiencers report this fascinating feature of being able to see the big picture. They were shown a vast cosmic view of creation and saw a logic, an order to their lives that made sense. One experiencer said, “When I saw the complete picture, I found myself saying, ‘But of course, of course!’” She finally understood how the many pieces of her life fit together.” I very much relate to this idea of seeing the big picture.