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Stosh, During the dream state your brain wave frequencies will be mostly in the alpha range, in fact not that far removed from waking consciousness. However, as we all know, dreams are typically rather chaotic - this is because they are not bound by the logic of the rational mind but reflect subconscious non-linear, associative processes. Certainly your awareness is moving in a psychological zone closer to the subconscious during dreams. Conscious awareness doesn't necessarily stand in contradiction to instinctive behavior; nature wisely looked to it that when we happen to touch a turned-on hotplate we withdraw our hand reflexively rather quickly! The linear functioning of the conscious mind is just too time-consuming to handle such situations. But this doesn't deprive the conscious mind from its real purpose. Without a doubt, the latter does make us a very successful species in many ways. Indeed, the expansion of awareness seems to be what all of existence is longing for. Which ties in with your final question: Could direct awareness of the subconscious ever happen? This is a tricky one! The conscious personality or ego emerges from the subconscious but needs to shut out lots of internal and external data in order to maintain its stand. A lack of "linear boundaries" is synonymous with confusion, even psychosis. Certainly the conscious mind can learn to tolerate more such data input, in a step-by-step process, most of all if it sees the meaningfulness of this information. This is the aim of many meditative practices. Ideally, the conscious and the unconscious mind, the Yang and the Yin, the Sun and the Moon will exist in a balanced state of unison at the end of a process of inner Alchemy.

Good answer! This seems to imply that both wake and dream awareness are both conscious , both the result of subconscious calculation which we are unaware of because its "non linear". Now if a person can compute a threat and physiologically react before they are conscious of it, what would be the need for awareness at all? Could direct awareness of subconscious ever happen?

It is the experience of becoming a stream enterer. Before the experience I had spent an hour in the bush, meditating from the heart. Then I spent 1/2 hour moving my sight every half second and loving every leaf, branch and beautiful scene, not giving the conceptual mind enough time to grasp.. It was pure delight. Later, about 1/2 an hour, I had to go shopping for food. When I walked into the supermarket, the whole world dissolved. The principle behind the practice is that when you first look at an image, scene or object, it takes a second or two to grasp. If you don't give the mind enough time to grasp by changing your field of perception, and add a little love (which really stops the mind), you can stay in a non conceptual state for a long time. But beware, you don't want to be driving a car or doing something dangerous when the world dissolves away. Actually, the world exists in a little bubble. Your past lives exist in little bubbles that are found around the navel. Dreams are also little bubbles and they pop when you burst them. You can actually hear them pop once you realize that you are in the dream and then quit grasping at them. Pop, pop, pop,... Tiny little pops.. Bubbles and pops.. That is the reality of it. Those are good meditations...

I had a....similar but different dream some years ago...the following year was not good....for most of the world...

Oh dear, unless this dream was about me (it could be), then, the world is in troubles. Everybody in this vision was telling me a storm is approaching. This storm turned out to be a mechanical, Godzilla size spider being camouflaged by layers of storm clouds. Is menacing.... This spider has the ability to kill all living beings as soon as they come in contact with it.

I have no experience with the Western magic version. There are daytime practices but not so much trance related, there are practices related to intention, visualizations, specific sleeping postures. Not so much trying to look at the hands sort of thing or trying to wake up - it either happens or it doesn't I think. Once you do wake up you work to get some control of that and use it to help support your cultivation and growth. One goal is to help us loosen our feeling of our daytime existence being "solid" and "real." This helps with developing the view of impermanence and emptiness. It's also very helpful with making fundamental changes in our lives and helps prepare us for the Bardo (if you're into that sort of thing)... It's a very good book, BTW/IMO. Lot's of other dream practices out there and from what I've heard some are simpler and easier. I like this because it fits well with my other practices.

Is it similar to the Western magic version of such things? (which can be summed up as write down your dreams, tell yourself when drifting off to sleep you will become lucid, practice during waking hours with trance states, try to "wake up" or look at your hands during all dreams.... all to help have lucid dreams way more often, or every night...... then get to the point where you start to do your practice consciously during the dream (instead of just the fun ones where it happens as a surprise without you trying)? I'm figuring it likely comes from a different angle and has some other neat aspects . Hmmm there's a book on it too, hmm.

Dream yoga requires a fairly serious commitment, day and night. It's fairly easy to integrate into one's life, however.

Yep, $350 for the online workshop. Fortunately I live in a place with many in person teachings, so I might just look it up. Also I'm borrowing an... er preview copy... of that dream yoga workshop to see what I think .

What are you referring to? The Dream Yoga workshop?

Dream yoga is intense! I've been working on it for about 6 months. It takes a lot of dedication but it works...

Oooohhh dream yoga

I've had this problem for years and only recently looked for information on it. Can't say that I found to much medical advice on it but perhaps I didn't search enough. Most of the stuff on the internet speaks about out of body experiences. It wouldn't be so bad but usually the experience is accomanied by a dream that I can only describe as being such horrible nightmare that my wife has to wake me up by shaking me. Sometimes it's really bad and I wake up screaming. One time she grabbed my hand and in this state I percieved it as something trying to grab me in my dream and I almost injured her. I wouldn't wish it on anybody really. There is a standing practice / meditation that I learned in yiquan that is known for causing effects on one's sleep but in essence what it does is affect the subconscious causing one to practice fa jin and the likes while one is sleeping but the sleep paralysis is completely different. If anyone has been able to rid themselves of this I'd love to hear about what you did. Thanks small John.

Hello. I briefly read about Taoism in the late 1990s, but at the time was ... younger, dumber, scattered. A recent toss through a 4-year rump-kicking machine straightened all that out - majorly. After truly 100% seeing through my previous social and religious conditioning, a string of synchronicity, and a cool dream about Bruce Lee ... I knew it was time to embrace Taoism. Am re-reading "The Tao of Pooh" by Benjamin Hoff, and now dipping into "The Lunar Tao" by Ming-Dao Deng. I've also subscribed to "The Empty Vessel." Oh does it feel good to be HOME. And I'm older/wiser now, to appreciate. I'm late 40s, married, work medical, am a writer working towards publication (hopefully within the year), reside in the desert SW, amateur astronomer. I look forward to interactions here.

Try www.kungfupandalawsuit.com and to find the Lachance videos, go to Youtube, and just search for "eat your panda, michael lachance, dream works"...and you should get to this link: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=eat+your+panda+lachance+dreamworks which displays all the testimony of this fellow made under oath.

Really? I found the dream significant, and two people are making fun? Ha ha...Elvis and Buddha! I'll do some reading around this board, and then decide if I'll continue on.

the law of attraction in human bodies can increase to such a degree that events thought impossible will occur. The worst dream ever is cutting off one's head. The best dream ever is living life without one.. let go, so you can begin to feel the divine. Feeling her, she will pull you in, it's simple...Simplify each day till there is nothing left....kunlun is your catalyst

Got home from work last night at 2 a.m. Went into full-lotus. The magnetic field was stronger than usual from so many O at a Ds all day in full-lotus. I started having O at a Ds with my roommate's girlfriend. I thought this must be from the connection we've already made. Then she moved into the bathroom adjacent to my sleeping room and she stayed there for an hour in the bathtub. We just kept having O at a Ds and I exorcised all the stress from working late. At 3 a.m. I felt awesome and when I slept I had this AMAZING dream about these ecoanarchists (myself and friends from when I used to be listed in the Earth First! Journal as a contact back in 1994) involved in blowing up a parking ramp. This dream was based solely on reading just a HEADLINE from http://gnn.tv about two weeks ago. Then I realized the power of the subconscious -- how just a headline causing a strong emotional response can be stored in the brain as such amazing image experience. When I went into full-lotus this morning I realized that this experience was much like taking salvia and that my response was something like PTSD but that I processed it effectively.

I woke up in a dream, And that dream was me.

Yes,...we like to believe that the religious hero's we were indoctrinated into were all "gnowing,"...even though the facts show otherwise. If we play pick-n-choose with theo-beliefs,...sure,...Jesus was a remarkable person,...if we look at all the facts,...Jesus' purpose to fulfill his God's law (Matt 5:17)....the laws of his clearly murderous, pro-slavery, vacillant, petty, racist, conditional God. And amazingly, a God who is so insecure, that it demands to be worshiped, obeyed and prayed to. There is much to be said about gnosis however. Gnosticism, the original form of Christianity, arose from a Greco-Egyptian philosophical fusion, as mentioned above. Gnosticism was an important part of the neo-Christian construct. Gnosis was not an outgrowth of neo-Christianity, as revisionists suggest. Today’s Christian persuasions are a product of Gnostic Christianity, not the other way around. We could say that Christianity was built on the DNA of Gnosticism. This neo-Christian fabrication from Gnosis and Krst, from gnowledge and the Anointed One, can also be substantiated through the Book of Enoch, from which over a hundred phrases were introduced into the New Testament. Enoch was written before 170 BCE, and several Aramaic copies were purportedly found among the Dead Sea fragments of the Gnostic gospels from Qumran. These Gnostics, from the time of the Julian clan of emperors, maintained that Christ was not a man in human form, as claimed in the gospels, but an individual goal of an initiate to realize a Christ Consciousness, the Logos. The Logos represents a mystical rebirth without sexual union, an awakening to a reality beyond duality, a palingenesis from the dream of perception. Duality is inherently a sexual reality, in which consciousness is fragmented. Christ Consciousness is an unfragmented consciousness, in which there is neither hope nor fear. The Jesus as defined in the gospels could not have been a Christ. Neither Paul nor his followers could grasp gnosis, that is, to gnow themselves through the heart of essence. Like many today, frozen in their conceptual experiences, Paul needed a more physical, hope-driven, fear-based path. The ignorant respond to hope and fear. Thus, from the expectations infused through the Pauline church, the concept of a personified Christ grew and entered the groupthink of the anti-Gnostic Paulines and those, like the Roman aristocrats, who wished to exploit it. Before 95 CE, when history suggests that Apollonius died and rose from the dead, there is no mention of a personified Christ or the four gospels. There is no known contemporary scriptural record of the life and times of Jesus/Yeshua. For neo-Christians, so fond of quoting Bible babble, what wasn’t said in the first century that which is curiously missing, is as interesting as the fabrications and contradictions of what was said then. For example, in the writings of Clement Romanus, the Pauline bishop of Rome circa 95 CE, there is not even a tinge of gospel references. Yet Luke 1:1–2 specifically implies that many eyewitness followers had already been writing. Adding to the intrigue, Clement, whom Tertullian and Jerome suggest was the direct successor of Peter, was also said to be a Flavian, that is, a relative of the men who were then the emperors of the Rome. Sciolistic Christians vaunt that the historian Josephus, in two remarks that have been taken out of context, verifies that Jesus/Yeshua existed. Today, however, even conservative scholars agree that those quotations from chapters 18 and 20 of the Jewish Antiquities, a history of the Jews, were later Christian interpolations. Such conclusions are consistent with Origen, an ante-Nicene father, who in the third century CE indicated that such a declaration from Josephus of a Jesus Christ did not exist in his copy of the Jewish Antiquities. Furthermore, no one else before the fourth century CE ever mentioned such an important reference from this often-cited source. Another claim by neo-Christians as to Jesus Christ’s historicity comes fromTacitus’ Annals 15.44, the comment of how Emperor Nero persecuted Christians after Rome’s fire of 64 CE was actually about Gnostic Christians, worshipers of Sarapis, not followers of Jesus or Paul. It was these Christians, the original Christians, whom the author of the second-century Gospel of Matthew called false Christians. Neo-Christians appropriated the name Christianity, as they lifted terms from most of the cultures that they absorbed. Note: That in his (circa 110 CE) letter to the Consul Servianus, Hadrian (71–138 CE), who was the governor of Syria under Trajan, called the Sarapian leaders “bishops of Christ.” Up until the beginning of the Second Century, the Egypto-Greek Sarapians, including those in Syria, called themselves Christians and bishops of Christ. There was no reason for Rome to kill the followers of Paul and the Gospels which arose from Mark.

Well, here's another passage which might help explain what Bodhidharma means by xing. "To find a Buddha all you have to do is see your nature. Your nature is the Buddha. And the Buddha is the person who’s free: free of plans, free of cares. If you don’t see your nature and run around all day looking somewhere else, you’ll never find a buddha. The truth is there’s nothing to find. But to reach such an understanding you need a teacher and you need to struggle to make yourself understand. Life and death are important. Don’t suffer them in vain. There’s no advantage in deceiving yourself. Even if you have mountains of jewels and as many servants as there are grains of sand along the Ganges, you see them when your eyes are open. But what about when your eyes are shut? You should realize then that everything you see is like a dream or illusion. If you don’t find a teacher soon, you’ll live this life in vain. It’s true, you have the buddha-nature. But the help of a teacher you’ll never know it. Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher’s help. If, though, by the conjunction of conditions, someone understands what the Buddha meant, that person doesn’t need a teacher. Such a person has a natural awareness superior to anything taught. But unless you’re so blessed, study hard, and by means of instruction you’ll understand." I can only surmise from my prior knowledge, and reading this, that "the truth is there's nothing to find" may be referring to "dependent origination/emptiness/form is emptiness, emptiness is form," and that seeing our original nature is seeing emptiness. However, I'm neither a Buddha nor a student of a Buddha, so, who knows (zen koan not intended...)?

Sorry to hear that it didnt work out with the Baby, great dream do you or did you study about Ganesh before the dream? WYG

Hi, I was reading "Meditation, Transformation and Dream Yoga" by Ven. Gyatrul Rinpoche and in it he says: It seems, according to Gyatrul Rinpoche, that you can look directly at an appearance and not grasp it. But what exactly does that mean? It "not grasping" something, realizing that it is an illusion, and therefore not giving it the usual conceptual analysis and proliferation of thoughts? Is grasping a purely knowledge based event? Is it possible to view an object or a perception without grasping at it? There seems to be some component of "not grasping" that is mind-based, namely, that you stop a part of your mind from becoming active. (the part which becomes conceptual analysis). Is Buddhism training in recognizing the part of the mind that grasps and stopping it? Or is grasping something deeper, like non-reification of objects or reality? I was reading THE ĀKĀŚAGARBHA SŪTRA, the part below: http://read.84000.co/browser/released/UT22084/066/UT22084-066-018.pdf Is grasping "ceasing to be attached"? I think it would be easy to say that grasping is all of the above instances. What I am interested in is mainly the idea that one can perceive something but not grasp it. How exactly do you do that? Is it through belief, realization, conviction, or by focusing on it through the third eye using clairvoyance? I was also reading that same text, that one must develop clairvoyance. Perhaps clairvoyance is that special way of seeing without grasping? Is it possible that a practitioner cannot practice not grasping, unless they have first developed the mudane psychic powers, as these aforequoted texts are revealing? Any perspectives on grasping out there? Thanks. TI

all i really have to go on right now are things of the past i used to enjoy, past life interests. the main interest i used to have was writing- mostly poems/lyrics with the occasional short story. i decided to quit making music and writing some of my 'darker' stories because i saw how a few felt about my art, and i didn't want it to affect people negatively. but i found that regardless of the way i choose my wording, or what colors of the human experience i incorporate, people will interpret my art however they want. it really hurt a big part of me trying to do 'right', i quit doing much at all in fear of doing 'wrong'/'bad' to me it seems that through most of our mediums of expression, we chose to convey a suffering, a struggle, a sadness, a caricature of our pain. a vein of alienation runs through the majority of our works as a collective. it seems to me that we for the most part feel the need to express these pains not so much out of fear of loneliness/separation, but out of fear that someone else feels as we do- that we aren't alone in our suffering. for the better part of the last few years i've been suffering, sprinkled with peak perception shattering experiences(non-dual/non-judgemental). i have lost interest in so much, i find it very difficult if not just impossible to give you a solid answer as to what i enjoy doing. i don't really enjoy much anymore. its sad, but i've been kind of beyond sad for a while. people like asking me for advice, my input on various artistic endeavors. i don't like much about myself. i don't think i really like myself at all anymore, it's not like i dislike myself, i'm just indifferent to myself if that makes sense. nothing really intrigues me anymore, i've accepted a lot of things as being possible within the last few years than i probably have my entire life. being alive bores me. people tell me to let go of everything i used to be, well all it does is just leave me a sad/indifferent pile with no worth or meaning. restart life at 25. 25 year old existential crisis. i don't remember pretty much any of my dreams, i just fade to blackness, awake from blackness. the only dreams i recall a bit are nightmares. one a few months ago was the world flooding, it was really vivid. i was in some city i don't know of and it was flooding, apocalyptic. a dream i had a few weeks ago aliens came into my room and were ripping stuff out of my back, it was terrifying i screamed in my sleep and scared my mom. sleep paralysis. my back/body felt better the next day though. to the universe i want to say, why am i still here? i appreciate having a chance at life and i fully realize how beautiful it is and how amazing people are and the nature they inhabit, i just don't care for it anymore. i'm not interested in much of anything anymore. waiting to die to be honest. i am not suicidal, i'm just done with it. i love life, i just don't want one anymore.

Somewhat see your point,...however, what if there is no you,...what is this other half of nothing being perceived as something? Cannot agree more....to experience no boundary. That is summary of the Heart sutra. Buddha said that the most important thing is this: Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha! Regardless of the misinformation,...the correct interpretation is this: "To go, to come, beyond going and coming, into complete going and coming, where enlightenment is welcomed" In other words, to come back into yourself simultaneously as you go out,...the full understanding of the reverse flow of contracting energy. In the West, it is quite difficult to look at someone in the eyes,...in Thailand, everyone (except the Westerners) look,...and smile. It is one of the grandest "highs,"...to exchange smiles with nearly everyone you see. My little gimmick for the past 30 some years has been to greet every situation with an Absolute Bodhicitta aphorism,...such as, "look at everything you see as a dream"....or, there is no Present in time. In regards to the latter,...all perceived objects are in time, and thus, if I am seeing an object, I am not Present.