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Every time you realize your spiritual pretensions are all bullshit and that you are really just like everyone else, you go back to square one, and start over. Eventually you go back to square one and recognize it for the first time. Home. No need for books, nothing to read. Then beginner's mind can operate. We become three years old again. We laugh a lot, and dream of animals.

It is famous quote from a zen master. You probably wouldn't like: "Eat when hungry, sleep when tired. Fools will laugh at me, but the wise will understand." Every time you realize your spiritual pretensions are all bullshit and that you are really just like everyone else, you go back to square one, and start over. Eventually you go back to square one and recognize it for the first time. Home. No need for progress, nowhere to go. Then beginner's mind can operate. We become three years old again. We laugh a lot, and dream of animals.

Greetings! I also appreciate general discussion with as you say “qigongers”—of varied topics as well, perhaps the common theme of qi gives us a common language or perception of the world that enables greater and more effective communication. That’s cool you are being taught in your dreams. I have had a few very high-value lessons there myself, some of the most profound qigong and taoist lessons in fact. I hope to explore this further. I’ve been trained (in dream) even in the specific system I practice, which was most welcome. The Flying Phoenix is a cool qigong, never experienced anything quite like it. I was also deeply inspired by the Flying Phoenix thread, and Mr. Dunn’s discussion of the inner thigh was quite illuminating. P.s. I commented here especially hoping to connect with newer members of this forum, some of the discussion areas haven’t had posts in years or even a decade—so here’s to a new wave of discussion! Blessings and Luck, Dan

Universal Messiah Hulagu Khan. The Tibetan schools of Sakya and Kagyu waged a muted, muffled political/religious war behind the scenes, in the shadows of the political vagaries of the Mongol onslaught upon the world. The Kagyu Drikung were caught in the midst of it all for the reason that the Drikung are the same school followed by the Mongol king Hulagu Khan, in the Middle East (and Hulagu wanted to remain faithful to his Drikung creed through thick and thin, but that was not to turn out exactly as he thought.) This is the hair-raising story of the Messiah, the triumphant king Hulagu, the lord of this world. about me: I'm Geir Smith, an American-Norwegian, a scion of the famous families of Norway, (that represent a profile of Modern Norway's builders). A second cousin to Pontine Paus, I'm related to Tolstoy, Ibsen, Wedel-Jarlsberg, Cappelen (great-great-grandmother Inga Sophie Cappelen), Løvenskiold, Munch etc... great-great-grandfather was Thomas Von Westen Engelhart who was Norwegian Minister of the Interior and State Counsel in Stockholm for several years. I'm an original trailblazer and visionary who's family tradition it is to continually forsee the trend and "anticipate the pattern". I am now announcing some hair-raising news. Coming from someone else, it would be totally incredible. But as I come from a very conservative family like mine but who are also innovative builders of the modern society, what I say resonates. I have mastered the Tibetan language through five years of university and thus can speak about the Tibetan Kalachakra and it's mention of Shambhala. I'm also bringing some astounding information too: the Illinois lottery drew #666, the same day as Obama's acceptance speech in Chicago. Being a scion of the famous families of Norway, I'm a ground-breaking force of intellectual prediction, on par with another relative of mine, Thor Heyerdahl, (who re-discovered Tahiti's discovery by the sea), for my part, I project myself instead into Asia and the world." My great-aunt Else Heyerdahl Werring, was the Royal Mistress of the Robes of the Norwegian Royal Palace, and her husband Nils Werring, my great-uncle was on the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group in the 50s. .... Hulagu Khan's brother Kublai Khan came to power in China and Hulagu then came under the influence of the Tibetan school which Kublai followed which was Sakya. Conflict erupted between Sakya and Drikung inside Tibet (between the followers of Hulagu and Kublai). Today China's under the Sakya rule, and the followers of Drikung and Hulagu have been absorbed into the empire of the Middle East, where there's a mix of Christians and Muslims that have drowned out the Buddhists of the founder Hulagu''s time. Buddhism's Apocalypse prophecy is in the Kalachakra text that's being propagated worldwide by the Tibetan lamas. And in that prophecy, is the mention of a mythical hidden land called Shambhala (which is situated to the West of Tibet i.e. exactly where Hulagu Khan's Middle Eastern Empire is.). So let's roll this back and sum it up quickly: there's a Buddhist Empire left behind in Tibet by Kublai Khan extending into China, but his brother Hulagu had his own private empire extending from Pakistan/Afghanistan and the Tibetan border areas, all the way to Baghdad/middle of Turkey, Konya etc...and Hulagu's empire was Drikung Kagyu. And bingo! Hulagu's empire of "Hulagid" Ilkhanids aka "The Ilkhanate" fits the description of Shambhala and the Savior of the world known as the King of Shambhala. It's fitting that Hulagu ruled over a puzzle of faiths, including Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hulagu's own Buddhists. He was thus the savior and god-like figure for all those assembled faiths. It's noteworthy that Hulagu's empire outlasted him by far, with an offspring of successors-descendants of his family lineage that lasted for 80 long years. We're thus in presence of the messianic King of Shambhala of the Kalchakra prophecy. What's remarkable is that he's Drikung Kagyu. Drikung was totally taken over by Sakya during their war, but 200 years after Hulagu's death, a Sakya lama (Kunga Zangpo) arose, who split from Sakya because he was independent and wanted to return to a stricter path than Sakya's own path. So, he totally revamped Sakya and asserted his school of Ngor as the primary force inside Sakya by far, as he actually dwarfed Sakya by his work. Then a split occurred because part of Sakya left it to found a new school the Gelugpas, and Kunga Zangpo couldn't agree with them because they adopted a way of practicing that excluded Tantrism until the latter part of the practice when the practitioners were already too old to do meditation, which "Ngorchen" Kunga Zangpo couldn't accept. He thus retreated to his monastery at Ngor and decided to carve out a niche region for his school far from the "roar and heat" of Tibetan politics. Pondering his isolation faced with this opposition that was rising against him, he sought to find a path outside of Tibet, (because neighboring tracts beyond the borders offered Buddhist regions, as well). That's when he traveled to and developed Buddhism in an abandoned stretch of land to the West of Ngor called Ngari which happened to be a traditional land of the Drikung Kagyus who had temples surrounding the Kailash sacred mountain and extending also to Ladakh. And this stretch of land was a dependency of Hulagu Khan's Empire (meaning: Hulagu raised taxes there). So when the Kalachakra speaks about Shambhala it's a mythical faraway land hidden from the view. But suddenly it comes into sharp focus at very close quarters, because the Ngari region is inside Tibet itself, but relies upon the empire of Hulagu who's headquarters are in Iranian Azerbaijan. Suddenly this monstrously extensive, megalithic empire rises out of the past and crushes everything on it's path. By Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo's strenuous efforts, the Ngari region became completely Ngorpa, of the Sakya school, but it's noteworthy to see that it was a traditionally Drikungpa land and one belonging to the Mongol Hulagu. Now nothing happens by chance, and it's good to note that the Kalachakra itself was written by a Sakya lama called Buton Rinchen Drub , just eighty years after Hulagu's death and was certainly a hidden hommage to Hulagu's protective action towards Tibet and Buddhism versus the devastations wreaked by Islam at that time. Therefore, Kunga Zangpo's decision to take over the Hulagu-Drikung part of Tibet called Ngari came once the Kalachakra had become vastly widespread in Tibet and thus Kunga Zangpo was taking an early investment into the Hulagu Empire which the Kalachakra prophecy announces. Kunga Zangpo was thus buying himself part of the dream and prophecy of the end of the world and inserting himself into the past as the rightful heir of the Kalachakra. In such, I think that the successions of reincarnations of Kings of Shambhala, (which was a lineage certainly written by the Sakya lama Buton), are made up of the Sakya school's founder Birwapa, followed by Hulagu (a combined Drikung/Sakya), then Buton Rinchen Drub and finally Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo (among the list of Kings of Shambhala). I see them all as clearly actors in the "Shambhala Saga" and having the status of "Kings of Shambhala". It's good to have proof of things, that's incontrovertible and proof that cannot be denied. I searched for Shambhala on Google and found the land of Bilad-al-Sham, corresponding to The Levant (Israel, Lebanon and Irak/Iran). Then I searched for people called Shambhala. I found two contemporaries of Hulagu which was troubling because I thought they could be allusions to Hulagu. Because indeed, "otherwise why should such people live exactly at the same places (Hulagu's capital was Maragha in Iranian Azerbaijan) and same time as Hulagu?" That's the rhetorical question, which any sleuth like me, researching history, should obviously want to ask themselves. Those two people were respectively called "Shams-e Tabrizi" and "Shams al-Din". They're Muslim luminaries and are rivaling candidates to be the Messiah respectively of the brotherly enemies: Sunnites and Shiites. Seeing the Mongols prospered for eighty years and converted to Islam during forty of those years, it's impossible to not think that Hulagu's heritage was progressively merged into the Muslim heritage. So concretely how did they merge a Buddhist king like Hulagu into Islam via these two "Shams" figures? The answer is perfectly self-evident: The Drikung Hulagu messianic founder of the Ilkhanate dynasty was the future Messiah of the Islamic Sunnites, but also the Shiites. His successors at the helm of the Ilkhanate couldn't let anyone take the role of Messiah from them. Therefore they jealously attributed the top religious role(s) to themselves by using their founder and grandfather Hulagu as their champion and "chosen one". But secretly, Hulagu was and remained Buddhist in their tradition. And in Tibet, many regions remained Drikungpa. Hulagu could thus be named openly as the Messiah in the Drikung regions and temples of Tibet. But that would not have been plausible at all, for one good reason which was that in Tibet also, Hulagu's role as BUDDHIST Messiah was hidden because Kublai's operatives were on guard there. No Mongol such as Kublai would have been ready to grant to his brother Hulagu the role of Messiah and world Savior. That goes against the Mongol grain of one-upmanship among Genghis Khan's offspring's siblings. But over the years, the Sakya realized that they had inherited this surprising, extraordinary and wonder-filled, miraculous war treasure, which was this messianic king Hulagu and they didn't want to let go of it. Thus, the rewriting of the secretive biography of Hulagu in the Kalachakra, left open the possibility for a future resurrection and returning to rule, of that historical hair-raising figure of Hulagu Khan, the Messiah (of all faiths... even sunni muslims, shiites... and jews...and christians of course. Hulagu's quoted in his writings, saying he loved christians. Christians had brought him up. His wife and mother were extremely fervent christians and he had saved the christians in Baghdad when he razed that in the greatest massacre of the whole History of Humanity. The christians in the East had hailed him as the messianic Savior of Christianity: the Messiah). I think I've summed up all the aspects of this multi-faceted Messianic leader, who left his mark upon... and molded all the modern faiths of today, be they Islam, Christianity, Buddhism or Judaism, exactly to his behest and so as for them to come under his boot, his total, rigid and absolute control. Nobody controlled the whole world like the Mongols did, they who are the sole world government that the world has ever seen nor will ever see again in all Eternity. No one put the world under their total and blind control, other than the Mongols/both in politics, war and faith and religion. They totally controlled and submitted the world both physically and in faith, declaring themselves as sole Savior, Lord and God among men for each and every faith inside their domain. (Hulagu's domain was immense, reaching from Turkey's Konya region, to Baghdad, to Afghanistan and as far as Ngari in Western Tibet, meaning a land of a total length of approx. 4500 km, an astounding empire of unheard-of expanse, rivaled only by his Mongol brothers' empires in Russia on one hand and in China on the other.)

Hi, I am happy to join this forum and discuss some of my favorite things: ancient wisdom, alchemy, taoism and chi kung. Qi Gonger's are some of the most interesting people who I enjoy conversing with. Recently I have been doing Flying Pheonix and really enjoying it after 6 years of doing other systems, I am hooked with this one and am going to see it all the way through. I had a dream last night where I was 'gifted' a move that is sort of like a pushup and a cross between a frog stretch that I remember very specifically. After doing a few times this morning I thought to share it here. I have been reading Sifu Terry's posts and learning about the inner thigh muscles really helped things click. This move I dreamt of targets and connects to the shoulders and neck. I also had an insightful dream of doing a movement to focused on my neck and shoulders a few months ago. Later I was watching a Tao Tan Pai demo and delightfully discovered this move was similar to Circling Palms. Anyway, thanks for having me. Look forward to conversing, sharing practice insights and learning from others. Cheers. edit for grammar

The schools Lama Jampa Thaye follows are both Kagyu and Sakya....and the school Lama Glenn follows is Drikung Kagyu. That Drikung is the same school followed by the Mongol king Hulagu Khan, in the Middle East. Hulagu Khan's brother Kublai Khan came to power in China and Hulagu then came under the influence of the Tibetan school which Kublai followed which was Sakya. Conflict erupted between Sakya and Drikung inside Tibet (between the followers of Hulagu and Kublai). Today China's under the Sakya rule, and the followers of Drikung and Hulagu have been absorbed into the empire of the Middle East, where there's a mix of Christians and Muslims that have drowned out the Buddhists of the founder Hulagu''s time. Buddhism's Apocalypse prophecy is in the Kalachakra text that's being propagated worldwide by the Tibetan lamas. And in that prophecy, is the mention of a mythical hidden land called Shambhala (which is situated to the West of Tibet i.e. exactly where Hulagu Khan's Middle Eastern Empire is.). So let's roll this back and sum it up quickly: there's a Buddhist Empire left behind in Tibet by Kublai Khan extending into China, but his brother Hulagu had his own private empire extending from Pakistan/Afghanistan and the Tibetan border areas, all the way to Baghdad/middle of Turkey, Konya etc...and Hulagu's empire was Drikung Kagyu. And bingo! Hulagu's empire of "Hulagid" Ilkhanids aka "The Ilkhanate" fits the description of Shambhala and the Savior of the world known as the King of Shambhala. It's fitting that Hulagu ruled over a puzzle of faiths, including Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hulagu's own Buddhists. He was thus the savior and god-like figure for all those assembled faiths. It's noteworthy that Hulagu's empire outlasted him by far, with an offspring of successors-descendants of his family lineage that lasted for 80 long years. We're thus in presence of the messianic King of Shambhala of the Kalchakra prophecy. What's remarkable is that he's Drikung Kagyu, exactly like Lama Glenn. Drikung was totally taken over by Sakya during their war, but 200 years after Hulagu's death, a Sakya lama (Kunga Zangpo) arose who split from Sakya because he was independent and wanted to return to a stricter path than Sakya's own path. So, he totally revamped Sakya and asserted his school of Ngor as the primary force inside Sakya by far, as he actually dwarfed Sakya by his work. Then a split occurred because part of Sakya left it to found a new school the Gelugpas, and Kunga Zangpo couldn't agree with them because they adopted a way of practicing that excluded Tantrism until the latter part of the practice when the practitioners were already too old to do meditation, which "Ngorchen" Kunga Zangpo couldn't accept. He thus retreated to his monastery at Ngor and decided to carve out a niche region for his school far from the "roar and heat" of Tibetan politics. Pondering his isolation faced with this opposition that was rising against him, he sought to find a path outside of Tibet, (because neighboring tracts beyond the borders offered Buddhist regions, as well). That's when he traveled to and developed Buddhism in an abandoned stretch of land to the West of Ngor called Ngari which happened to be a traditional land of the Drikung Kagyus who had temples surrounding the Kailash sacred mountain and extending also to Ladakh. And this stretch of land was a dependency of Hulagu Khan's Empire (meaning: Hulagu raised taxes there). So when the Kalachakra speaks about Shambhala it's a mythical faraway land hidden from the view. But suddenly it comes into sharp focus at very close quarters, because the Ngari region is inside Tibet itself, but relies upon the empire of Hulagu who's headquarters are in Iranian Azerbaijan. Suddenly this monstrously extensive, megalithic empire rises out of the past and crushes everything on it's path. By Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo's strenuous efforts, the Ngari region became completely Ngorpa, of the Sakya school, but it's noteworthy to see that it was a traditionally Drikungpa land and one belonging to the Mongol Hulagu. Now nothing happens by chance, and it's good to note that the Kalachakra itself was written by a Sakya lama called Buton Rinchen Drub , just eighty years after Hulagu's death and was certainly a hidden hommage to Hulagu's protective action towards Tibet and Buddhism versus the devastations wreaked by Islam at that time. Therefore, Kunga Zangpo's decision to take over the Hulagu-Drikung part of Tibet called Ngari came once the Kalachakra had become vastly widespread in Tibet and thus Kunga Zangpo was taking an early investment into the Hulagu Empire which the Kalachakra prophecy announces. Kunga Zangpo was thus buying himself part of the dream and prophecy of the end of the world and inserting himself into the past as the rightful heir of the Kalachakra. In such, I think that the successions of reincarnations of Kings of Shambhala, (which was a lineage certainly written by the Sakya lama Buton), are made up of the Sakya school's founder Birwapa, followed by Hulagu (a combined Drikung/Sakya), then Buton Rinchen Drub and finally Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo (among the list of Kings of Shambhala). I see them all as clearly actors in the "Shambhala Saga" and having the status of "Kings of Shambhala". This was my input to Jigten Gonpo's post above. Very happy to hear from you Jigten...I'm most happy to hear what others want to add to all this. It's good to have proof of things, that's incontrovertible and proof that cannot be denied. I searched for Shambhala on Google and found the land of Bilad-al-Sham, corresponding to The Levant (Israel, Lebanon and Irak/Iran). Then I searched for people called Shambhala. I found two contemporaries of Hulagu which was troubling because I thought they could be allusions to Hulagu. Because indeed, "otherwise why should such people live exactly at the same places (Hulagu's capital was Maragha in Iranian Azerbaijan) and same time as Hulagu?" That's the rhetorical question, which any sleuth like me, researching history, should obviously want to ask themselves. Those two people were respectively called "Shams-e Tabrizi" and "Shams al-Din". They're Muslim luminaries and are rivaling candidates to be the Messiah respectively of the brotherly enemies: Sunnites and Shiites. Seeing the Mongols prospered for eighty years and converted to Islam during forty of those years, it's impossible to not think that Hulagu's heritage was progressively merged into the Muslim heritage. So concretely how did they merge a Buddhist king like Hulagu into Islam via these two "Shams" figures? The answer is perfectly self-evident: The Drikung Hulagu messianic founder of the Ilkhanate dynasty was the future Messiah of the Islamic Sunnites, but also the Shiites. His successors at the helm of the Ilkhanate couldn't let anyone take the role of Messiah from them. Therefore they jealously attributed the top religious role(s) to themselves by using their founder and grandfather Hulagu as their champion and "chosen one". But secretly, Hulagu was and remained Buddhist in their tradition. And in Tibet, many regions remained Drikungpa. Hulagu could thus be named openly as the Messiah in the Drikung regions and temples of Tibet. But that would not have been plausible at all, for one good reason which was that in Tibet also, Hulagu's role as BUDDHIST Messiah was hidden because Kublai's operatives were on guard there. No Mongol such as Kublai would have been ready to grant to his brother Hulagu the role of Messiah and world Savior. That goes against the Mongol grain of one-upmanship among Genghis Khan's offspring's siblings. But over the years, the Sakya realized that they had inherited this surprising, extraordinary and wonder-filled, miraculous war treasure, which was this messianic king Hulagu and they didn't want to let go of it. Thus, the rewriting of the secretive biography of Hulagu in the Kalachakra, left open the possibility for a future resurrection and returning to rule, of that historical hair-raising figure of Hulagu Khan, the Messiah (of all faiths... even sunni muslims, shiites... and jews...and christians of course. Hulagu's quoted in his writings saying he loved christians, Christians had brought him up. His wife and mother were extremely fervent christians and he had saved the christians in Bahgdad when he razed that in the greatest massacre of the whole History of Humanity. The christians in the East had hailed him as the messianic Savior of Christianity: the Messiah). Forward to Jampa Thaye and Glenn Mullin please, thank you so much!

the following poem and commentary from: Haleh Pourafzal. “Haféz.” IN NEITHER OCEAN Go away preacher—What’s all this commotion? It’s my heart hurting and you have no notion. My human balance God crafted from air is a point so fine it’s erased by emotion. ‘Til beloved’s lips satisfy my desire, the whole world’s advice is babble in motion. Your servant cannot travel two paths at once; the prey in your net swims in neither ocean. Though intoxication has shattered my life, the seeds of truth arise from that implosion. O heart, don’t groan from beloved’s cruelty, for now you know the sad song of devotion. Haféz, don’t weave tales, don’t entice seduction; I know all the spins and spells of your potion. In these seven verses, Haféz tells a story set in his unique worldview: a noisy preacher who has no clue, a fragile peace of mind blown away by emotion, obsession with the beloved at the expense of blocking out common sense, the inability to choose between the paths leading to the sacred and profane worlds, a new truth emerging from a shattered dream, a lesson learned from direct experience, and, finally, the biluminous teasing of the poet himself for all his “spins and spells” of levels and meanings. The shattered nature of life from the implosion of intoxication is an oft-repeated theme. This shattering is the disintegration that occurs when we embody the brightness of the divine. Because it is overwhelming compared with our limited experiences, the shattering in turn magnifies the desire for more sustained direct experiences of divine unity. That desire becomes the mystic’s lifelong quest.

thread thread thread thread A Dream Within a Dream Edgar Allan Poe - 1809-1849 Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow: You are not wrong who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand-- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep--while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream? from "thirty poems," hafiz, trans murray: LXXIV (Since reason is of no use to the lover, he must abandon himself to chance and to impulse. It lies in himself whether he shall prove to be of the chosen few who may achieve that perfect union which they seek.) KNOWING love's ocean is a shoreless sea, What help is there? - abandon life, and founder. Bring wine; don't scare us with Reason's prohibition: That magistrate has no jurisdiction here. When you give your heart to love you make the moment lucky: No need of auguries to perform good deeds. Ask your own eye whose is the murderous glance ; 0 friend, this is not Fate's crime, nor the stars'. Pure eyes discern him like the crescent moon: But not all eyes have scope to see that splendour. Seize the chance offered by the drunkard's road: Like the clue on the treasure-track, not all can fmd it. You are not moved, witnessing Hafiz' tears ? I cannot understand that heart, harder than stone.

well then...hehehe.... this is from “feeling the shoulder of the lion,” rumi, trans barks… THE GAZELLE A hunter captures a gazelle and puts it in the stable with the cows and the donkeys. The gazelle runs about wild with fear and confusion. Every night the man pours out chopped-up straw for the barn animals. They love it, but the gazelle shies quickly from side to side in the big stall, trying to get away from the smokey dust of the straw and the animals milling to eat it. Whoever has been left for a time with those who are different will know how forsaken this gazelle feels. Solomon loved the company of the hoopoe. “Unless she has a valid excuse to be absent, I will punish her for not being here with the worst punishment there is.” And what might that be? What the gazelle is going through: to be confined somewhere apart from your own kind. The soul is that way in the body, a royal falcon put in with crows. It sits here and endures what it must, like a great saint, like an Abu Baker, in the city of Sabzawar. Once the great king Khwarizm besieged Sabzawar,. They gave up easily. “Whatever you require in tribute we will give.” “Bring me a holy person, someone who lives united with God, or I will harvest your inhabitants like corn.” They brought sacks of gold. They knew that no one is Sabzawar lived in that state. “Do you think I am still a child that I should be fascinated with coins?” For three days and nights they called through the town looking for an Abu Baker. Finally, they saw a traveler lying in a ruined corner of a wall, sick and exhausted. Immediately, the recognized a True Person. “Get up! The king wants to see you. You can save our lives!” “I’m not suppose to be here. If I could walk, I would already have arrived in the city where my friends are.” They lifted him above their heads on a board like corpses are carried on and bore him to the king. Sabzawar is this world, where a True Person wastes away, apparently worthless, yet all the king wants from Sabzawar is such a one. Nothing else would do. Muhammed says, “God does not look at outward forms, but at the love within your love.” The Qalb, the inner heart, that space in which seven hundred universes are just a lost speck, we’re looking for that in the small, seedy town of Sabzawar! And sometimes, we find it. One who has that love is like a six-sided mirror through which God can look at us, here. The gifts come through such a one. His palm opens without conditions. That union cannot be said. I leave this subject with you. Wealthy people bring money. God says, “Bring devotion to one whose loving mixes with mine.” That love is what God wants. That love is a mother and father to us and is the origin of every living creature. You might say, “Lord, I have brought this heart-love.” “Qutu, an ordinary town in Turfan is full of this kind of love. Instead, bring the Qalb of the Qutb, the soul of the soul of Adam.” God waits for that. One may wander days in Sabzawar and not see such a being. The noblest native in Sabzawar might come, and God would say, “Why do you offer this rotting corpse? Bring the inner love of one who can save Sabzawar.” Just the sight of them together, a native of Sabzawar and a True Human Being, who might be traveling through, is painful. Yet sometimes they talk. A townsperson may behave kindly toward a Qalb-person, but it’s almost always hypocrisy. He nods and says yes. He acts sincere, but he’s really tricky, and looking for an advantage. If a saint accepts his hypocrisy, he’s saved, and that often happens. The holy ones love to buy damaged goods, and turn lying into truth. If someone’s trickery seems charming to you, remember he’s only your saint, not a real one. Someone who is like you will often sound prophetic. Renounce sensuality so you can sharpen your spiritual sense. Your olfactory nerve has been deadened. You cannot catch the fragrance of sweet musk or ambergris. It’s as though they no longer exist for you. All this time, our gazelle has been running back and forth in the stable! For many days this precious animal wriggles like a fish thrown up on dry ground. Like dung and rare incense closed side by side in a box. One donkey says sarcastically, “This guy is wild! He must be somebody special!” Another, “With all his ebb and flow, he must be making a pearl. Probably a cheap one." Another, “Why can’t he eat what we eat?” Another donkey gets indigestion and offers the gazelle his fodder with a formal invitation. “No thank you. I am unwell too.” The donkey is offended. “Don’t be so aloof. Are you afraid of what people will say if you’re seen eating with me?” The gazelle doesn’t answer, but he thinks, “Your food is for you. It revives your strength. But I have known a pasture by a creek where hyacinths and anemones and sweet basil grow. My food is there. Some destiny put me here, but I can’t forget the other. If my body gets old and sick, still my spirit can stay new.” The donkey seems to know what the gazelle is thinking. “Yes, anyone dan brag in strange country. Who’s to know?” The gazelle, “This musk gland identifies me, but no one here has a nose tuned to that scent. Donkeys like to smell donkey urine on the road, and that’s all.” Muhammed says, “True surrender is odd in this world. Even ‘Islamic’ relatives avoid a perfect saint.” He or she may look human, but there’s a lion nature inside. If you’re happy being a cow, stay away. Potiphar, the king of Egypt, in a dream once saw with his spiritual eyes seven well-nourished cows and seven lean cows that came and ate the fat cows. Lean cows are lions inside, like a True Person who can detach you completely from the dregs of your cow-nature and make you so pure and spacious that your foot touches Orion’s belt. How long will I keep caw-talking like a crow? Husam, why did you kill your rooster? “Because I began to hear the friend’s voice inside me.” A rooster loves lust, and lust again, and instant satisfaction of lust, that poisonous, cheap wine. If it weren’t necessary for procreation, Adam would have castrated himself in shame over his own lechery. Satan comes to God and says, “I need some powerful bait.” God gives him gold and silver and herds of beautiful horses. “Bravo!” says Satan, but his lip drops, and he screws up his lemon face. God throws in the other precious metals and the gemstones. “Oh thank you! And might there be anything else around here that I could use?” God gives the marbled meats, and the tasty sherbets, and the silk robes. “But I need something that will hold and keep holding like a rope woven of palm-fiber, so that your holy people can show their holy strengths by bursting something very powerful. I want an even more cunning lure.” God brings wine and a harp. Satan smiles a crooked half-smile. Those are not exactly what he had in mind. The suddenly, as though a dry path appeared through the Red Sea, Satan saw the beauty of women, and he began to dance. “More! More!” The hazy eyes, the fascination of a soft cheek, a cheekbone, a reddening lip, the glance that burns a man like a cumin seed on a hot fire-brick! A young woman’s light, coquettish half-walk, half-run springs to Satan’s eyes like a revelation of divine glory, and a lifting of the veil. Some comment on the text, We created man woman in the best physical and mental proportion, and then We reduced them to the lowest of the low. The garden beauty, to which the angels bowed down, after a time, was dragged by the hair by Gabriel and led out. Why? Why was paradise lost? Why does a date-palm lose its leaves in autumn? Why does every beautiful face grow in old age wrinkled like the back of a Libyan lizard? Why does a full head of hair get bald? Why is the tall, straight figure that divided the ranks like a spear now bent almost double? The bright-red anemone grows saffron. Lion strength weakens to nothing. The wrestler who could hold anyone down is led out with two people supporting him, their shoulders under his arms. These are all messages from the fall. What fault was committed? God answers, “The crime is that they put on borrowed robes and pretended they were theirs. I take the beautiful clothes back, so that you will learn the robe of appearance is oly a loan.” The sheaf-stack belongs to God. Human beings are gleaners. Rays from the sun. The earth-colored glass makes everything seem diverse, but that glass eventually shatters. Your lamp was lit from another lamp. All God wants is your gratitude for that. Lend, is the divine command. Make God a loan from your existence, and see what fortunes accumulate! Diminish a little, for your own sake, all this eating and drinking, and watch a new basin fill in front of you. Then God may say, “Death, give back what you took.” But you’ll turn away. You won’t want those things. Sufis throw away their wanting and their objects. They abandon pieces of clothing in the dance, and those articles are never returned. They are given to the singer, or divided among the dancers. They arise from a briny, annihilating ocean into pure clarity. They confront the world openly with its arrogance and its hypocrisy. They are warriors for non-existence. The planter works with the most joy whose barn is completely empty, the planter who works for that which has not appeared. Second by second I know you’re expecting some sure understanding, some spiritual perception, some peace, but I am not allowed to say more about this mystery, or else I would create a Baghdad in the wilds of the Georgia mountains, and there would be no more doubting!

@terry Maybe, you should consider to open a specific thread, for instance, World as a Dream in Sufism and Daoism. And for each subject you have something interesting you could open a thread.

aloha pak, My formal practice, such as it is, is only to just sit. Currently a half hour each morning and evening. If I even think about meditating I get a buzz and start to melt. Very gradually it has become easy and most pleasant. Otherwise I just try to do the best I can. Of course, every being does the best it can by nature, so it is easy to do and hard not to embellish and navigate and comment and etc etc. Snow white does her best while the seven dwarves make their characteristically immature and short-sighted comments, craving love and discipline and eventual maturity and authenticity. Seems newbies are restricted so while I can post I will continue in this message with what I want to talk about. My major focus is the work of ibn arabi. I'm not a sufi and have enough experience with so-called real sufis not to have any interest in organizations. I'm interested in hermeneutics, in ta'wil. I like coleman barks if not ladinsky, and think fitzgerald's version of omar khayyam superior to literal sufi versions. I see all religion philosophy science literature psychology through the lens of art and music. All truth is art, as keats says. All art is poetry. All bullshit is prose. The nexus here with taoism is in the names. God taught adam all the names. God the creator says to a thing "be" and it is. The kernel here is that existence is simply the names, the symbols we manipulate in order to kindle consciousness. In taoism, the ten thousand things are the direct result of naming, they are "the named." I cannot stress strongly enough that this is the root of all consciousness and to understand this is the end of all seeking. To begin with, a couple of quotes from william chittick, "ibn arabi, heir to the prophets": In effect, among all creatures Adam alone was taught" the meaning of the name “God” itself. He came to know and understand this name and all subsidiary names by knowing himself, made in God’s form. This sort of knowledge does not come by means of discursive thought, but directly from the nature of things. Ibn ‘Arabi refers to it as “tasting,” a standard expression for unmediated knowledge: God taught Adam all the names from his own essence through tasting, for He disclosed Himself to him through a universal self-disclosure. Hence, no name remained in the Divine Presence that did not become manifest to Adam from himself. From his own essence he came to know all the names of his Creator. (F. II 120.24) In the multileveled reality that is the human self, the traces of God’s names and attributes are relatively internalized. They extend from the corporeal to the spiritual realm, and they circle around the heart, the luminous center of the being, the spirit that God blew into Adam at his creation. In meditation, we (may or may not) have access to the ocean of consciousness unmediated by symbols, the womb of existence; reality. In a real sense this ocean is unconscious, unclouded by mediation, by explanation and reflection. The cloud of unknowing in which coping is perfect and self-consciousness is absent. Reality includes both this vast ocean of unconscious voidness/potentiality, and our tiny little shadow of a consciousness of this infinitely vast reality. It is our tiny little consciousness I want to put in perspective and examine. The nuts and bolts of consciousness are the names, the little marks we put on this vast sheet of paper. The taoist formula is "the blank that is a blank is not the true blank" and we find similar in the diamond sutra. For example, the horse that is a horse is not the true horse. An ordinary reasonable common sense person sees a horse and sees a "horse" - a variation on a theme, maybe it is brown, taller than most, sway backed. A child sees a unique animal with many interesting and special features. A horse dealer sees a whole set of parameters individualizing the horse. The horse that is simply categorized as a "horse" and is dismissed and unacknowledged as an individual sentient being by the average person is not the true horse, the authentic horse, the being looking at you and trying to say something about the world and its condition in respect of the liberation of all sentient being. Every thing has a name which is its unique essence, from which its thingness derives. It is not its "thing in itself" reality but its naming which makes it exist. Unnamed things do not exist, Even the Unnameable is beyond existence. What exists for us is purely symbolic but is taken uncritically as real, which is the problem. True reality may be "tasted" and directly perceived (as in the suttas) without the mediation of symbols. Even more interesting is that new symbols may be created and the old ones given new names. Other planes of being may be accessible. We may create, god-like, imaginal worlds "nearer to the Heart's Desire." It is henry corbin who has made luminous the work of ibn arabi and put it in the context of western spirituality, blending in heidegger and swedenborg, another nexus I would love to explore if there are any heideggerians or swedenborgians, and even if there aren't if I can be tolerated. Best introduction to this material is tom cheetham's "all the world an icon." And william chittick's volume on ibn arabi is sublime. izutsu's book opens with this: I Dream and Reality So-called ‘reality’, the sensible world which surrounds us and which we are accustomed to regard as ‘reality’, is, for Ibn ‘Arab!, but a dream. We perceive by the senses a large number of things, distinguish them one from another, put them in order by our reason, and thus end up by establishing something solid around us. We call that construct ‘reality’ and do not doubt that it is real. According to Ibn ‘Arabi, however, that kind of ‘reality’ is not reality in the true sense of the word. In other terms, such a thing is not Being (wujiid) as it really is. Living as we do in this phenomenal world, Being in its metaphysical reality is no less imperceptible to us than phenomenal things are in their phenomenal reality to a man who is asleep and dreaming of them. Quoting the famous Tradition, ‘All men are asleep (in this world); only when they die, do they wake up,’ he remarks: The world is an illusion; it has no real existence. And this is what is meant by ‘imagination’ (khayal). For you just imagine that it (i.e., the world) is an autonomous reality quite different from and independent of the absolute Reality, while in truth it is nothing of the sort1. . . . Know that you yourself are an imagination. And everything that you perceive and say to yourself, ‘this is not me’, is also an imagination. So that the whole world of existence is imagination within imagination.2 What, then, should we do, if what we have taken for ‘reality’ is but a dream, not the real form of Being, but something illusory? Should we abandon once for all this illusory world and go out of it in search of an entirely different world, a really real world? Ibn ‘Arab! does not take such a position, because, in his view, ‘dream’, ‘illusion’ or ‘imagination’ does not mean something valueless or false; it simply means ‘being a symbolic reflection of something truly real’. The so-called ‘reality’ certainly is not the true Reality, but this “must not be taken to mean that it is merely a vain and groundless thing. The so-called ‘reality’, though it is not the Reality itself, vaguely and indistinctively reflects the latter on the level of imagination. It is, in other words, a symbolic representation of the Reality. Excerpt From: Toshihiko Izutsu. “Toshihiko Izutsu Sufism And Taoism.” My interest here is not simply to deconstruct and understand the imaginal and symbolic nature of the reality we perceive, but to take hold of the machinery generating this imaginal world and tweak it, bend the rules like morpheus. Talk to angels like swedenborg, visit heaven and hell like blake. Go for magic carpet rides, rub the lamp and open the treasure house. There is no "magic" here which contradicts the laws of physics, no levitation or passing through walls, though there is much conjuring. Lastly I want to emphasize ibn arabi's comment that life is a dream from which we wake up at death. All stories about heaven and hell and life after death are metaphors. One dies to ego and wakes up to the divine presence. The day of reckoning resembles the confrontation with ego many experience through psychedelics. The elaborate egyptian death rites all actually refer to the passing over of the ego into cosmic consciousness. And so on. Hey, thanks for listening! terry

wakes me from slumber the dream of someone I miss precious few moments

I did a lot of LD in my twenties, primarily inspired by Carlos Castaneda’s books. One of the tips I found very useful - suggestion before going to sleep to “wake up” in the dreams that come. And also, when dreaming, remember to look at my palms. It worked like a charm. But it took a bit of time. Initially I’d wake up and immediately write down my dreams in a dream journal. One day, I remembered to look at my palms and that triggered the realization that I was dreaming. I became lucid. I flew high in the sky, and initially I’d forget that it was a dream and start to free fall, and then half way down, I’d remember and fly again. I met teachers, got some lessons. Worked on controlling the dream environments. Dr Stephen LaBerge’s books were very helpful. Also the Tibetan book of dream yoga was helpful as well. But one of my my most powerful dream teachings was after i had stopped trying to induce LDs. Many years later (almost 2 decades later), the lucidity came back as a result of nondual self-inquiry. There was a breakthrough after which I remained aware through dreaming and deep sleep. The clarity of this kind surpassed manifold the clarity of lucid dreams in my experience.

If you want more on Bön dream yoga, this is a good book- https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Tibetan_Yogas_of_Dream_and_Sleep.html?id=yjAtDQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&gboemv=1#v=onepage&q&f=false Here is a good series of free online teachings - https://cybersangha.net/dream-yoga-deepening-your-awareness-night-and-day-teaching-series/ And a great paid course - https://www.glidewing.com/twr/dreamyoga_home.html

@steve Thanks for your detailed answers and responses!!! I will definitely check up on Yungdrung Bön. It was a Bön visualisation that led to my own breakthrough in lucid dream, so I wouldn't mind checking out some more Bön Kudos to your dedicated practice!! It fuels my own motivation to keep going

@Shadao Thanks for sharing! Me2, on my first truly lucid dream I also went... wild Great pointers

I've had the occasional lucid dream since childhood. I then began practicing in an organized and devloted way after getting exposed to dream and sleep teachings from Yungdrung Bön. I follow the Bön teachings on dream and sleep from the Mother Tantra. I practiced dream yoga in a dedicated way for about 3 years and then sleep yoga for another 2 years after that. I haven't been practicing either recently but will go back to them periodically. It varies quite a bit depending on the circumstances I find myself in. I enjoy flying very much. I seek teachings from masters. I meditate. I experiment with traveling. I play around with mirrors. I do the exercises we are taught to develop stability and control of the dream environment. I try to resolve violent and frightening dreams into peaceful ones. I try to dissolve the dreams to access the clear light of sleep. Endless possibilities. Abstain from drugs and alcohol, marijuana in particular. Create a sacred, electronics-free sleeping environment. Wind down slowly at the day's end, eating a light dinner, and disconnecting from all electronics for at least a few hours, do some supportive and mentally cleansing practices before bed, approach sleep as a sacred and precious activity. Make your daytime practice every bit as important as the sleep-time practice itself. Approach the lucid dream as sacred - it is fine to treat lucid dreams as entertainment if that is your only objective but I feel the dream world opens more fully to a more reverential approach, much as one would do for example with something like ayahuasca. Consistency, persistence, and patience are key for me. It took me a long time to begin having regular and somewhat predictable lucid dreams, nearly 2 years of regular practice. If you can afford to do it in the setting of a prolonged retreat under the guidance of a master it will come much faster. It's challenging to develop the skills and supportive environment on your own, living in the busy, over-stimulated Western world. It is highly dependent on your emotional, physical, and psychological condition. It is very beneficial to spend time clearing obstacles from your life before engaging with dream and sleep practices.

1)So far I know not how I got to lucid dream, as those were very few times.In most cases I was able to control something/myself but wasn't aware that it was a dream, I think there was only one time where I was conscious that it was a dream. 2)None, the times it happened it just happened. 3)On the times I could control something, I would do things considered impossible in real life, like flying around(once with wings, other times without it), or use/control powers like telekinesis, force-field(of sorts) or even the elements of nature. Once, just once, I interacted with some person/being and they taught me "the secret of phasing" by literally grabbing my hand and pushing an object through it and moving it around in my hand. To this day I can still recall that sensation vividly. 4)Considering I never did a thing I guess one "tip" would be to have an intense desire over a subject or something you want to dream of, preferably for a few days.Then one day "it'll just happen". 5)It really is the world where anything is possible...go wild.

Dear Dao Bums, An update Last night, I did the visualisation before sleep, and whenever turning over during the night. Nothing happened... until the morning hours I had decided I would try to get life explanation this night, if I became lucid. This morning I dreamt I was in a bus. I knew it was a dream, I was inside my own mind, I was the creator of the dream, I was lucid. I commanded "I command my guardian angel to appear before me! I want answers!" with my hand stretched out. I stood and concentrated on it, a blue light appeared in front of me. It took a little time to fully manifest, I simply meditated on it. Then a blue and white light was in front of me. I asked about the Divine meaning behind the things which had happened to me from 2014 and up until today. (I did this because 2014-2017 was some of the worst 3 years of my life). I got an answer for something that happened in 2014, which put my heart at ease. Then I was in the process of getting an answer for something that happened in 2015, which started to put my mind at ease. But I only managed to get about 70% of the answer, then unfortunately I was woken up by noises in my house!! The explanations were not all that surprising, but it still "made things fall into place", in my heart and in my mind. I am surprised it's only such a short period in the morning hours I can become lucid. I thought the ability would build up a bit faster from day to day. Instead it has decreased a little bit the past couple of days. It's becoming shorter and shorter. Maybe it really does take a lot of energy out of you? I will experiment more and see how it goes God bless!

As usual the dreamer is asleep for all of the dream , not part of it . When he wakes up, the dream is over . Two flows of ' water ; heaven and earth ( this is in the Bible and other sources - the waters above and under heaven ) Horizontal flow from heaven to earth , vertical radiating flows outward , underground and out to the oceans , but mainly out through the Gulf . In traditional lore, that would depend on what time of year it is . In other lore one might find 'The Queen of Discs ' But really, I suggest going a lot further out , then you would find 'the source' aka ' Wallenganda ' .

So the dreamer is asleep in part of the dream? The energy anchored in Uluru is quite important - being part of horizontal and vertical energy flows. Move above Uluru for 2 widths of Australia and see what entity you find

Perhaps we are already in a dream world, in life ? The indigenous central desert cultures here have 'Rainbow Serpent Dreaming' : 'the world' and everything in it is actually a dream , dreamed up by a huge snake curled up underground , under Uluru . hence , all of this .... our 'life' is seen as a dream . When big snake wakes up, the dream will be over - everything 'finished' .

Dreams are a key to the other worlds. I wonder if we don't have more than one soul, and perhaps show up in thousands of dreams. I wonder, too, if we don't enter a dream world at death. Given how large the cosmos is, it's not without possibility that we are preserved somehow, in dream.

@mcoolio Yes, I completely feel you. I've also suffered from bad sleep all my life, so that's why I never got too much into lucid dreaming practices, which mess with your sleep (e.g. getting up multiple times during the night etc). I'll respond in 4: Sleep, Journaling, Heights, Book recommendation Sleep I fixed my sleep with: 1) Chinese Medicine (if you can't fall asleep, it's the Heart, if you can't stay asleep, i.e. wake up several times during the night, it's the Liver). So, find out what's wrong with them (lack of yin, lack of blood, too much heat are some of the things I had) and fix it. 2) Qigong and meditation over a long period of time (especially Simplified Kundalini Yoga, meditation on the third eye chakra and the root chakra) 3) Sri Vidya aksharamala japa (reciting and visualising the sanskrit letters on the petals of chakras, opening different nadis. The nadis nam and naam on each side of the obliques muscles, related to the navel chakra open the liver channel which goes up through the liver, through the heart, the neck, the brain and into the innermost corner of each eye This was the blockage that had f'ed up my sleep for so long. When I managed to open it with the nam and naam visualisation and mantra, it made a huge difference. I've written more about it here: 4) Getting up and going to sleep at the same time every day 5) Sleeping in a completely dark room, with correct temperature (a bit colder than you'd think) 6) Eating the amino acid l-tryptophane before going to bed (a precursor to the sleep hormone melatonin, melatonin by itself was never good for me, I woke up groggy, whereas with l-tryptophane I wake up feeling well-rested) 7) Eating a healthy and sufficient diet with meals eaten "on the dot" (steady rhytm each day). Not eating enough has actually damaged my sleep several times. 8) Don't eat too close to bed time (3 hours before at least) 9) Work out (physical work out, strength, cardio and stretch, western style) at least 3-4 times per week 10) Contrast baths (sauna and ice bath, back and forth 3 times) You don't have to do all the things, it's just a list of my own "greatest hits" l-tryptophane and chinese herbs are the fastest and easiest, what worked the best for me. Journaling Yes, this really seems to be key. It's what's given me and also Mandrake lucid dreams. However, it's only now that I can control the dream, I couldn't do that before. I think it's related to the power of one's energy and the openess of channels. It takes time to build up. Heights This is interesting. My own dreams, since I was a teenager, always revolve around two central themes: 1) being chased, 2) being in a war, fight, combat Maybe 60-80% of my dreams fall into the above two themes. The rest of the time, it's a mix of things currently happening in my life, my emotions, or some hints about what close friends or family members are going through, or life advice. I think heights could indeed be related to the chakras. Maybe it's a symbol for always staying in the upper chakras, watching and observing life and oneself, without never really "getting into it", and really living and really "feeling" the anger, the lust, the sorrow etc. Really feeling and being in touch with life, including all the "non-PC" sides Book The book I've recently read, which I really enjoyed, is Dr Nida Chenagtsang's "The Tibetan Art of Dream Analysis". I got it on Kindle. The way I've interpreted dreams throughout my life has been: 1) psychological (e.g. this symbolises my father, my brother, my mother etc, this symbolises my issues around inadequacy, anger etc). This is mostly my main stay and go-to way of analysing, since I was interested in psychology from my teenage years. 2) The five elements (according to the color and object, you know which of the 5 organs are imbalanced, and you fix it with qigong and herbs. This was taught to me by Master Wu. It's very easy and practical.) 3) Channels and energy (whenever I've been in profound contact with someone, my dreams change that night, simply because I have some of their energy in my system. In this approach, dreams are simply the energies in your channels manifesting themselves as visions. So, if your channels are clean and pure, your dreams are clean and pure. If they're messed up, it's simply bad energy, foreign energy or a blockage).

@Nuralshamal Thanks for sharing all your experiences, it's a nice reminder to myself that LD is also something I wish to explore. Perhaps I should try again. I did play around a little bit. I find that when dream journalling, I go pretty fast from remembering almost nothing to remembering multiple dreams each night with lots of small details and this within a few days. Doing that sometimes gives me spontaneous moments of lucidity but these break of almost as soon as I become conscious of them, very unstable. This and the fact that my sleep is pretty bad makes me think I should spend a little more time doing meditation, qigong, ... A theme which pops up sometimes in my dreams is heights. Not necessarily falling off stuff, but always something with heights, standing on something high, climbing, falling, ... So perhaps there is also some chakra connection stuff? Could you maybe share the title of the dream yoga book? Also very curious if people here have mastered the art of lucid dreaming and how it has helped them in their training.