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To innermost bliss, I pay homage! Were I to explain Mahamudra, I would say - All phenomena? Your own mind! If you look outside for meaning, you'll get confused. Phenomena are like a dream, empty of true nature, And mind is merely the flux of awareness, No self nature: just energy flow. No true nature: just like the sky. All phenomena are alike, sky-like. That's Mahamudra, as we call it. It doesn't have an identity to show; For that reason, the nature of mind Is itself the very state of Mahamudra ................... What are notions of going or staying? Or, for that matter, "meditating" in solitude? If you don't get this, You free yourself only on the surface. But if you do get it, what can ever fetter you? Abide in an undistracted state. Trying to adjust body and mind won't produce meditation. Trying to apply techniques won't produce meditation either. ~ Maitripa

Maybe we'll wake up when everything rests. As for implications, we learn from our dreams. Consciously from analyzing them in our awake state, and on a deeper level we reorganize lessons for effective execution, back in "reality". So, assuming this is a dream, you'd better do something worthwhile with your time here, so as to help evolve the greater mind that contains us. I've come to believe that there is only mind, which can/must be compartmentalized within itself to function. There is no thing that exists as what we like to think of as physically being there. Instead, all is the imaginings of mind within mind, exploring itself within to expand/define its horizons. In other words, we are all part of the God mind; our actions, beliefs and feelings all adding together to enhance the overall understanding/experience. The same pattern is reflected within our own image.

Oh, those characters you met in your dreams but you have not seen them in ages??? They are your karmic manifestation being played out in your dreams. You have developed karma with them. I guess the karmic seeds are being played out mentally in your dream visions. If you have good relationship with them some years ago, more than likely they would behave nicely towards you in the dreams.

“This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world: Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream; Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream. So is all conditioned existence to be seen.” ~ The Diamond Sutra

A number of very excellent points Orion. Thanks! I dealt with a lot of Interesting experiences out of body as a child also. Flying through various dream realms. Dreams within dreams, never knowing if I was actually awake yet. Night visitors ("Old Hag", vampiric type entities, etc.). "Falling" Into my body, after travelling, my physical body bouncing up from the bed, then down. Things like that. It's been my experience that most people who get Into spiritual culture, and cultivation sciences, tend to have experiences of this sort. Then they shut down during the high school/college years (which Is what happened to me), only to re-awaken In your 20s. Children are basically In a meditative state, until they hit puberty. Super receptive, which Is why we learn so fast when we're young. Also makes us open to "Actual Reality", and It's various denizens. Again, great Insights Orion! Cheers!

Every topic you start is like a dream come true to me.

Anyone here have the feeling of direct experience with space? Mine is more visual feeling, but not easy to characterize. Perhaps space gives life for me a dream like quality.

When I feel space in my waking life, it is almost fluid like. For me to describe the feeling of space is not so easy and perhaps that is dream like; that is to say the experience of space which I can feel.

I have had limited success with 'dream yoga' as taught by Norbu, but when it happens it is as if I enter a different world that seems more alive than when I am awake. There are times when it might be the so called astral, but is perhaps clearer and less emotional than the so called astral.

Nihlism isn't about human death Ralis. Nihlism is the negation of life not the reality of death. I question what you are doing continually complaining about me instead of answering the posts. It is the forum equivalent of stalking. The question here was about life being a dream. See if you can answer that.

The only matrix/dream is the one the pseudo scientist have chosen to fall into.

Scientists have/are contemplating the idea that reality is a dream slash matrix: http://www.onbeing.org/program/uncovering-codes-reality/feature/symbols-power-adinkras-and-nature-reality/1460 --------------------------------------------- Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) have conducted John Wheeler’s delayed-choice thought experiment, which involves a moving object that is given the choice to act like a particle or a wave. Wheeler’s experiment then asks – at which point does the object decide? http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/experiment-confirms-quantum-theory-weirdness -------------------------------------------- One of the oddest predictions of quantum theory – that a system can’t change while you’re watching it – has been confirmed in an experiment by Cornell physicists. http://phys.org/news/2015-10-zeno-effect-verifiedatoms-wont.html#jCp

Let's not get hung up on Aristotlian logic which has become some kind of bette noir for you. I cannot define that which has no existence. It's pointless to begin to try. I can define only concepts in relation to existent reality. If I'm unable to define the concept I hold, then something is wrong. It's often the case that I believe I have defined a concept only to discover at a later stage that it is entirely foggy. That's one of the things I enjoy doing-discovering what I thought I had correctly integrated and then tearing it apart like a doughnut and putting it right. I can define a dream as an altered state of consciousness. There are many. We have a plethora of alternate states of consciousness, but we should know when we are actively conscious and directly perceiving reality. If we are not, then we can't be sure of anything. Whilst this is a good defence against bad situations, it isn't permanent. We still have to get up, eat, go to the toilet, find food, mend the leaking roof, build the fire. We can avoid and evade, but we cannot put off the inevitable. It will come to you no matter how deeply you hug your pillow, squeeze shut your eyes on pull that blanket over your head. Learn to love it.

@Karl, I challenge you to define exactly what phenomena are. There is no way you can given the limitations of Aristotelian logic which defines the phenomenal world as a static existence as opposed to a process/dream world.

As you are pointing out, some here get stuck on the absolute 'isness' of the phenomenal world which language can never absolutely define. Or, so called reality is a process/dream as opposed to a static black/white existence.

A dream is real for only the dreamer. Reality is real for everyone.

If I remember correctly, the 'Tibetan Book of The Dead' describes all 6 bardo states as dream like. I can't argue with that given my experience.

After having some crazy type of astral type dream I woke up in mid pelvic spasm and my dan tien hot. Once the spasms had subsided I was simply lying in my bed with my arm lying out of the side when my fingers began to make a wave motion, hmmm I thought , lets see whats going on now , so I lay observing them . The motion then went into my hand which began to make circles, after some time this went into my arm and this too from elbow upward began to make circles. Every now and again gentle pelvic rocking would happen. After a while it subsided and I lay on my other side, not long after it started on this side in the same order but this time it ended up going all the way to my shoulder blade. I assumed it was some kind of energy pattern that needed to release itself ?

I guess that's how all of us learn anything. Trying it our way - good advice, IMO. I applaud him. Nobody could've told me nuthin' back in the day. I knew a young Buddhist chick that I met in a campground when I was staying there several winters ago, in Santa Barbara, CA. She had decided to do just what Dream Bliss is talking about - sort of a 'Buckminster' sort of thing. She was gorgeous and from Russia - she had been a model and an actress there - but in order to lose all her baggage she shaved her head and decided to go into free-fall and travel the U.S. The world, in fact. The campground was a Thousand Trails campground that sells membership. The salesman there talked her into buying a membership so she could be 'safe' as she was traveling around the country. She bought a membership, and woke up the next morning with a terrible case of buyer's remorse. She knew this was totally contrary to everything she wanted to do, that it was the opposite of free-fall. So I went up to her rental cabin the next morning and she was in tears. She asked me if I could get her money back, that she had made a horrible mistake. I told her, no - I wouldn't get her money back from her, but I could teach her the art of wu-wei. I glanced down the hill and saw that the salesman, Martin, was coming out of his cabin. I told her that Martin may be headed this way, and if he was, for her to do set her intent on getting her money back, and do nothing to change the dynamic, and let Martin do all the talking. He walked into her cabin, told her he couldn't get the exact terms of their agreement, and handed the check back to her. I had to go into the other room and just laugh - it worked so perfectly. For some reason, Natasha and I didn't exchange numbers. I wish I knew what she's doing and where she's doing it today. What an exquisite creature she was. But it was one of those strange situations where I was put into her path for a very specific reason - and she was put into my path for an equally specific reason - to channel to me my Russian grandmother whom I had been looking for for years on Ancestry. An incredible couple days.

Just found Jason Stephenson's guided meditations. Some seem pretty interesting. I've turned them into mp3's and can't wait to listen to some of them. He's got some nice trippy and sleep style meditations. Like Dream Creation and Setting Intentions Before Deep Sleep.. and Open the Magic Book and Powerful Talisman titled ones. Getting into a relaxed state and taken on a visual trip can be fun.

Hi Jeff , can you explain why so certain it was a dream ? the 2 beings were when I was awake.

Dear Micheal, these contemplations serve a specific purpose, they are not the final wisdom of the buddhas and vidyadaras. Also not in how to work with and approach our embodied existence In the system I follow, you work on many levels - or yanas, without loosing sight of whats the essential point (non-dual wisdom), usually you have nine yanas to work with, and the teachings say that those nine yanas do not exist anywhere outside of your own spiritual development, you enter tantra once you are fit for tantra - before that you can only outwardly practice a certain method that looks like tantra and thats what most beings who call themselves dzogchenpas or tantrikas are doing (me not excluded) "the meditation and action follow the view" if you see the one taste of all phenomena beyond pure and impure, beyond delicious apple pie and not so delicious dog shit in short when both substances are equally tasty - then yes your meditation will be pretty powerful and your action free of probably any sort of social, paternal, or cosmic law and order... and then you really do practice the higher tantras (sounds weird, but yes vajrayana and dzogchen is out of the ordinary a little) now an accomplished tantric master, probably doesn't eat dog shit for lunch, but there is no limitations and if there is a necessity to display such crazy behaviour to wake up a disciple from their dualistic dream that sees good and bad ..... I jump around a lot the teachings of the 4 thoughts that turn the mind from samsara are more connected with renunciation and giving up distraction, or the teachings of the first three yanas - later more on distraction as I am reading the complete magical system of the G.D. and the mystical Quabalah atm, I do see similar patterns also within this tradition - even if you would like to jump you can't jump certain parts of the path - I somehow feel that the grades of initiation and working through the 9yanas are similar in approach, there is also a hierophant (the vajramaster) bestowing initiation/empowerment on certain cardinal points of the path. Ok back to the biscuits now maybe in the western esoteric tradition renunciation is not so much emphasized but in buddhism there is an emphasis on it. and somehow you work on that level for some time - or for a long time depending on your mind and karmic patterns. In the tibetan tradition big lamas with big money and an empire of monasteries and dharma centers are not unusual but if you ask the tibetans themselves - they have more faith and recpect for the simple yogis who spend their time in retreat and as wandering mendicants like patrul rinpoche would say: the cloth of the yogi is mountain mist and not brocade and many many teachings and teachers emphasize times of retreat - and for that you need renunciation, otherwise why be away from life and focus on spiritual development? there is much more interesting stuff going on. these four thoughts are in the context of making space and time for retreat - they put some fire underneath the adepts ass to get moving fast - where? move where? to enlightenment for the benefit of all life the good qualities of solitude are praised in many important sutras and shastras, and for the beginner retreat is very important to go deeper into the teachings and discover how this path is working and how ones own mind is working (or well not-working, an even more important discovery) for going deeper into these teachings one needs to be as littel distracted as possible... distraction is not in what is happening around us of course but in our minds - so a great yogi can be in the middle of the market and never loose sight of the essential point, do you remember the analogy of the different animals and how they relate to the adept? It is like in that analogy, there is a time of beeing a deer - away from the busyness of life, and there is a time for the lion, and madman there seems to be a transformation on the relative level of the mind, the mind gets more and more pure - so also phenomena become more and more pure and appear in their natural luminosity (mirroring the natural luminosity of mind). at that point phenomena are not a distraction but food for meditation, but as long as there is ceaseless habitual mental chatter and only rare glimpses of natural mindfulness - some time in retreat to focus on tantric practice might be not a bad idea after all. but here we discuss the entrance door to tantra, not so much tantra and tantric practice itself. so you know if you talk about the adeptus minor and the magus then those two beings are different and do different things - yet the magus can't just through away the knowledge that he or she unlocked in the lower grades - because they are not "lower", but foundational

Vivid dream.

What a wonderful question. First mistake: calling it a spiritual mistake. It's all one. Your physical is manifested by your spiritual. The pride you feel for your talent is the same pride I felt before I started practicing my talent. I just said fuck it, as my sweet old grannie used to say. Yes. I play keyboard like an angel. There. I said it. I'm glad. Get over your pride. It is nothing other than the other side of ego. If Spirit, or Void, or It, or Whateveryoucallit wants to manifest through you, who do you think you are to think you know better, or deny it.? Now, if you want to get WAY honest we get into the arena for charging for talents, and that's a nightmare of its own. So much of a nightmare, in fact, I do most everything for free these days. How to put a price on free creativity? I really do not know. Every time I've put a price on a painting, or a piece of Joe's dremeled furniture, it's like it rips the life out of it by the throat. I'd rather give them away. Then there is love in the transfer, although of course we put Intent into each and every piece. Second mistake: Basing anything on fear. At the very bottom, we manifest from love or fear; gotta be one or the other. Fear of Karma is based on fear. Base it on love instead; your karma has a loving side that you have not been able to see because you have been afraid of its underbelly. Raise your eyes a bit. My actual advice, (as one who always Wanted To Be A Cowboy and never did), is to maybe devote 10% of your physical and your psychic energy to your dream. Then you won't feel like it's tapping behind you on the shoulder; you'll at least feel that you're doing something about it. The tapping will stop. Let the other 90% keep doing as it's doing. Then one day maybe you'll see that you'll be able to devote maybe 30% of your time to your dream, 70 to your other life. And so on. It's just Intent. That's all. Make a promise to yourself and take the tiniest of steps every day. Each and every day. It'll happen. Strike when opportunity raises its head, which it will. Trust the universe. Be kind to everybody. Short course in wu-wei.

I agree with those who suggest asking for a second opinion. Or you could interrogate your doctor further about exactly how necessary this medication is and what the prognosis is if she does not take it. A web site I looked at said it was for life threatening situations and so I guess its a subject not to be treated lightly. Trusting your dreams /intuition is a good thing but you have to be careful - I have sometimes discovered the true meaning of a dream as different to my first thoughts - and years later. So I would always recommend to test intuition with facts.