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For me dreams are so interconnected with waking state. Very clearly. It is all a flow of life or something. I say 'or something' becouse for example yesterday while walking home in the evening ,I had this strong feeling accompanied with the thought : Am I alive? No I am alivness. Like a perfect puzzle fitting into the tapestry of life just as it is, no matter what. Fulfilling its nonexisting purpose. I suppose a big portion of a persons dreams would reflect how much person is influenced by their enviroment and if someone is awake while being awake that means influence wouldnt be so strong. Which in turn means dream would either be like a meditation or interdimensional sorting things out as per persons purpose in this life.

Same here. Lucid dreaming has changed my life at a deep level, being the most effective tool for personal growth. Even though I can only recall 10 minutes of lucidity a week. I'm improving everyday in both dream recall and lucidity. I don't recall as much as that though, hehe. I guess I do recall 5 powerfull and vivid dreams a night at some times where I hover in between lucidity and non lucidity. Sometimes the vividness of a dream deceives my judgment about the nature of that reality. Allowing me to challenge my ability to deceive myself in more powerful ways and thus also challenging my ability to conquer all the powerful deceptions, like overcoming deep fears, etc. One has just put an effort at lucidity and he or she already receives all the benefits. Thanks for the reference. I'll check it out for sure.

Anyone know any monk or person in isolation, for a long period of time, who has been recording his/her dreams? One can only imagine how strange their dreams would get after a long period of isolation. I wonder how much it would affect their dream reality. Wether it would get more realistic or perhaps strange and weird? It seems that the western people, with our way of life, we have the strangest dreams of all, simply because there is so little structure in this multicultural of this society. It seems that people have chosen to let go of their roots and fly above the forrest, looking in confusion at all the diffrent kinds of trees that have been growing. Everyone has his own personal symbology, yet we can see the powerful relics and left overs of the ancient cultures and their symbology, of which some still succeed to find their way into our subconscious mind. Though, the power of dreams are still not drained. The symbology has just become fragmented or transformed, as to making it hard for people to even relate to one and another in a unified way or form a culture together. Where I ask people who live more isolated and seem "dumb" from the outside, they can sometimes share incredibly deep dreams that deal with core issues of the conscious and subconscious mind. Their dreams can also be very rich and filled with variety of people who act in unique ways and each and every one of them reflect the dreamer in a powerful way. Some of these people have so much time on their hands that they actually automaticly become aware of whats going on in their subconscious mind simply when they are bored. Without any effort at meditation or calming their mind. Which reminds me... Muslims, Jews and Taoists relate to eachother in the fact that they are encouraged very much to meditate in some ways during their day time experience. Where Muslim does it on the ground, a jew in his mind, a Taoist in his body. We all have placed an emphasis on having a quick break from this reality to become more aware of all the subconscious events that are occuring. Where people who have let go of those ancient traditions only have the same level of subconscious awareness when their environment allows them. So anyone recall having heard a dream of a person who has had that dream during a long period of isolation? Perhaps emprisoned, on a deserted island, or perhaps even born in isolation. I wonder if we can still relate to the dreams of an isolated person in any way. I believe that dreams are soul experiences that our brains can only interpret by relating all the meaningless interpreted and altered information links together in a unified way. Its like a sneak peak at the unknown, yet, what you see is totally bend around, because your mind is not capable of receiving the information in an unfiltered and unaltered way. So my last question, what do enlightened beings dream about? I assume they are lucid all the time? So a more appropriate phrasing would perhaps be, "what do enlightened people choose to dream about?"

No, then you'd be perceiving someone else's delusion, or your own memory of a certain delusion, even though knowing it as delusion, it is still perceived. This contrasts to what you said earlier about not perceiving conventions at all. To understand someone else's conventions you must have a memory or some reference to it. And in referring to it, you are perceiving it, hence perceiving conventional factors. It does not, and I will show you why below. This does not somehow indicate that the material world is illusory, or somehow that the chair does not exist. Really, this is just purely stupid. You are equating "core" to mean "reality" when they are different issues altogether. Something that obviously does not have a core, say a wind, is taken to be real by almost everyone. When you ask them, do you think the wind has a core or an essence, they will likely say no, it's just blowing wind that arises and disappears when there is movement in the air. But people are not foolish to conclude from this that the wind is an "illusion." An entirely different criteria is applied when you are measuring the degree of reality. The "chair" as a label may be something that is untrue but dependent origination cannot dismiss the reality of the phenomena of the chair itself as an illusion. Why? Because the chair is consequential, as in, you can sit on it without the chair suddenly disappearing. Also the chair has a consistent and lasting effect, as in the chair won't disappear after you rub your eyes or wake up tomorrow and come back to see it. Consequence and consistency are what we use to decide whether or not an experience is illusory or real, and labels arise afterwards for practical use. We say a dream is an illusion because it lacks these characteristics. Another error you are committing is pretty obvious. You are initially suggesting the world of "things." The world of essences. Then you disprove the world of "things" and conclude therefore that the world is actually an illusion...whoa! an extreme conclusion there don't you think? You are only offering two alternatives, one of "things" and the other as an illusion. But consider innumerable ways the world can be, besides these options. Maybe the world isn't made of "things" but is, let's say a movement or a flow. Or a vibration. Or an imagination. Or instead of things, it's really made out of tiny strings as in the string theory. Dependent origination just disproves the world of ultimate "things" and essences, but that's really it. It says experiences arise out of causes and conditions, and in the practical sense no one should really deny that. But does it offer a comprehensive insight into the intricacies of reality and life? Not really. It offers one aspect of life that can be observed. Oh, so the Buddha does perceive labels. Labels are conventions. So the Buddha perceives conventions, yes?

I'm interested in descriptive correlations and cross references to a point but one can also (more or less) get lost in them... An excerpt from Swami Krishnananda along these lines: "When a person rises above body consciousness, there is a serenity of experience. It is as if he is free from a drug effect into which he has entered and to which he has been subjected for long. Consciousness gets muddled on account of the influence of an external toxic matter due to which there is no proper thinking and understanding. As this toxic effect subsides, there arises serenity, tranquility and composure of experience. He feels as if something new has come into his life. He wakes up as if there is a new daylight before him. This is samprasada, the composure of consciousness which arises on account of the freedom of consciousness from bodily shackles. The moment this consciousness is freed from bodily attachment it rises upwards, as it were, like a flame of brilliance. It is the supreme luminosity. It is light by its own right, a light that does not require another light to illumine itself, paramjyoti. When one attains to this supreme luminosity which is one's own real nature, one is established in one's self. Then one is in one's true form. As we wake up from dream and recognise our true nature as being different from what we felt ourselves to be in dream, so does one recover one's real nature and shake off the old notions of connections with bodies, one differing from the other. One state of consciousness imagines that it is an animal, another state of consciousness imagines that it is a human being, and so on and so forth. Various states identify themselves with various forms of experience which are called the bodies. They may be animals or human beings or celestials. Whatever they are, those forms are cast off on account of Consciousness extracting itself from those shackles and it stands by itself as a liberated being. This is the Atman. The real Atman is that which is free from entanglement in any kind of form. This is the Immortal. It is the disidentification with the body that is the cause of immortality. This is what we call Brahman, the Absolute, ultimately the universal nature of this Atman. What we call Truth, about which we have been speaking up to this time, is Brahman Itself. We may call It the Atman or Brahman. It makes no difference. This is the Truth, because That alone is, That which is in all the three periods of time. That knows no distinction of the passage of time. That is perpetually what It is without distinction either in space or in time. That is the Atman, and that is what we call Brahman". Om

Be less concerned with learning sleeping qigong and more concerned with learning the entirety of a complete system, of which sleeping qigong is just a part. I know that, for example, Michael Lomax's tradition has many different aspects and qigongs to it- running qigong, tree qigong, sleeping qigong, standing, walking, etc etc. But they're all just aspects of one overarching practice. I assume it would be the same with the Dragon's Gate lineage. I for one have done a LOT of dreaming and lucid dream work over the years since I started lucid dreaming as a child. I'm just going to tell you up front that, as far as my experience goes, dreaming/lucid dreaming alone is not a very viable strategy. It will be far more effective as a supplement to some other practice. Maybe at very high levels you can switch the ratio, where it is the sleeping which informs most of the practice. But unless you have a lot of experience in a practice in waking, or if you are a phenomenally experienced/talented dreamer, you won't get much out of a sleeping practice on its own. Then again, I have no knowledge or experience of methods from either tradition. You might have more luck contacting Michael Lomax through this board (Ya Mu), unless he hasn't been around, which might be the case, since I don't follow him, or for that matter, keep up with anyone's forum activity. I'm not sure how accessible the Dragon's Gate lineage is. From what I have seen, Michael is tremendously open and accessible. You should have no problem finding out information on seminars and events, and I'm sure if you could meet him in person and demonstrate that you're committed to a full practice, he seems like the kind of guy who'd share with you what you'd like to know. But that's just my impression. Not responsible for anything that goes on between you and him

Cosmic consciousness* pose? How do you do that pose, if you don't mind me asking? To answer your question: you are here, living your life. In my opinion, you had a vision...like a dream.

I find it so odd how the people have been naming their waking hours "waking hours" and their dreams "just a dream" when dreams are so much more purpose filling! The only way to rationalize the fact that dreams can be so intensely revealing of truth, is to throw away our definition and actually call sleeping the awakening and this waking reality the dream of our having fallen asleep. When I have a lucid dream, the 5 minutes I have that lucid dream, it is so intense... So intense that I learn 5 truths about my self that I have been in the process of forgetting for 5 years long. Then, the habbit kicks in as I wake up(or should I say go to sleep?) that I forget those lessons from my lucid dream within just 1 week. Totally void of wisdom I become and filled with ignorance. Untill I can succeed at yet another 5 minutes of lucidity, either in my dream or waking hours. The effectiveness of my ego at succeeding in forgetfulness is so big, that I now call my own ego the "master of deception." If you ever find your selves facing all the layers upon layers believe systems that forms the platform for your ego to fool you around, you will witness the ego's strong desire and intent to keep you from finding out this is a dream. After a while, you just cannot ignore this force we call ego or devil. The biggest battle you will ever have to fight in your life, is the battle with your self... The devil is infact powerless, but if you are a person of slumber, you can be assured that your ego has got you under its controll. The battle is not one physical violence, neither mental violence. The battle is about facing the truth of peace with courage. Such a simple task you have to do in order to wake up, yet, no one I have come to know in the world can achieve to do it. The task of recallig that this is a dream... If you ever do find yourself doubting wether or not you are dreaming, the battle with the ego has begun, wether you're aware of it or not. The drums of war are being hit so intense, at that moment, that you cannot even hear it. Where an army of physical violence deceives you from your own power and freedom, the master of deception always keeps 10 thousand deceivers ready on hold for when the time comes that you shall doubt the reality of your current dream.

Hi flowing hands, maybe it would help for the sake of open discussion to define "shamanic" since i am not sure what you mean by it. In my mind shaman is a siberian word meaning spirit healer. Shamans had a tradition as medicine people who were skilled in plant and animal medicine, and could journey through the astral planes, and dream meaningfully and lucidly. They were like the medicine women and men of siberian culture. Lately the word has come to be appropriated by all cultures who have medicine people, and used very generally. I am assuming you mean it in this general sense, the sense of spirit medicine and an inseparable connection with nature. Is that correct? What is your understanding of "shaman"? And i would like to say that i don't think that one has to choose between it being shamanic or philosophic, although shamanism tends to be very right brained, and philosophy very left brained. We each function with both hemispheres (hopefully), and master lao surely used both of them in his writing of the dao de ching. So it seems that it is both, like people have said.

Let go of this, let go of that. Why live at all if you have to let go of your dreams. Letting go is for weak people. The easiest thing is to say "Ah big deal, it's hard I don't need this" or "Hmm, I think I just need to let go of that dream to become A or B or C, it's way too unrealistic". What's that word unrealistic even supposed to mean ? Check out the way this whole world appeared. Does that seem realistic to you ? I mean I respect you guys and everything but give me a break, letting go of all your desires makes you an empty shell and that's no happiness that's simply nothing literally. Just breathing and eating until you die.

There is no 'thing' in the 'sky'. Whatever seen and felt are just shapes and colours and forms that are utterly insubstantial - dependently originated, empty, dream-like appearances. If we were to observe a red flower that is so vivid, clear and right in front us, the “redness” only appears to “belong” to the flower, it is in actuality not so. Vision of red does not arise in all animal species (dogs cannot perceive colours) nor is the “redness” an inherent attribute of the mind. If given a “quantum eyesight” to look into the atomic structure, there is similarly no attribute “redness” anywhere found, only almost complete space/void with no perceivable shapes and forms. Whatever appearances are dependently arisen, and hence is empty of any inherent existence or fixed attributes, shapes, form, or “redness” -- merely luminous yet empty, mere appearances without inherent/objective existence. The Buddha's rejection of the four extremes of existence, non-existence, both existence and non existence, neither existence nor non existence, is at the center of the whole emptiness teaching. So there is no such thing as 'existents' or something 'non-existent' since 'non-existence' here implies an existence that came into being and then ceases or enter non-being. This has nothing to do with nihilism - it is not a s statement about the non-existence of anything but merely the non-asserting removal of the claims of existents. This has nothing to do with escapism - there is no escaping from anything. Diamond Sutra: How should this Sutra be explained for others? By not grasping at appearances and being in unmoving thusness. Why? All conditioned dharmas Are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble or a shadow, Like dew or like a lightning flash. Contemplate them thus." Heart Sutra: Therefore, O Sariputra, in emptiness there is no form nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness; No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; No forms, sounds, smells, tastes, objects to touch, or objects of mind; No sight-organ element, and so forth, until we come to: No mind-consciousness element; There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so forth, until we come to: There is no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death. There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, and no path. There is no cognition, no attainment and no non-attainment.

Exactly! Brahman, which is in the higher alaya, believes it is real, quite similiar to the sciential-minded believing that the phenomena of the human-centric dream is real. Buddha suggested that Brahman is not real, only the Tathagata is real. The Tathagata is beyond the conditional state (one supreme, universal Spirit) of Brahman. In reality, Humanism (the Many) does not exist without Brahman (the One). There can be no One, without a Many. There is no Great Self without a Great Other. Brahman, by definition, is the Highest Ego illusion. Why isn't that clear enough in my above posts? V

I think you are missing the point here. The idea of a dream or the idea of something illusory or unreal does not come about because something lacks imputed concepts. If a man is stabbed by an unknown object that he does not have a conventional term for, he does not think "ah, this is unreal, because I have no term to impute on it." It is real because it has a profound change on his body and can ultimately cause death. On the other hand, if you are stabbed by a known knife in a dream, you realize that it is a dream and unreal because you wake up from the dream unharmed by the wound. It's effects are not profound but ephemeral. The same idea is applied to cause and effect. A cause is real if it's effects are observed routinely. It is illusory if the effects are inconsistent. Just because something does or does not have a conventional label to it, it doesn't change its reality.

Yes it is possible if you take this stuff too far you can end up in a state which the Buddha called "falling into the pit of the void" which can lead to a pathological state called Depersonalization where you see the world as completely unreal and a dream, but instead of freeing you it cuts you off from your emotional life as you see everything as inconsequential. If someone says they have reached enlightenment or a realisation and they say they are no longer emotionally impacted by the world then most probably they have fallen into the pit of the void. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zIKQCwDXsA

The 'there is hitting, bleeding, and hammer' is simply a conventional observation. Ultimately, there is no 'thing' that can be observed. Concepts is our imputation on appearances. Appearances are just like dreams, illusory, nothing real. The cause is illusory, the effect is illusory, which is to say that there is no real cause and no real effect. The 'conventionally observed' transformations in a dream does not make the [conventionally imputed] cause and effect of a dream real. This is why the Buddha said "Thus, monks, the Tathagata, when seeing what is to be seen, doesn't construe an [object as] seen. He doesn't construe an unseen. He doesn't construe an [object] to-be-seen. He doesn't construe a seer. p.s. "(One says), 'All these (configurations of events and meanings) come about and disappear according to dependent origination.' But, like a burnt seed, since a nonexistent (result) does not come about from a nonexistent (cause), cause and effect do not exist. "Being obsessed with entities, one's experiencing itself [Wylie: sems, Sanskrit: citta], which discriminates each cause and effect, appears as if it were cause and condition." [32] ~ Primordial Experience Also, Namdrol: The conventionally observed efficacy of karma and its results cannot be denied. But even karma is ultimately illusory. Nāgārjuna states: "Why? This action does not arise from conditions, and does not arise without conditions, therefore, there is also no agent. If there is no agent, how can there be an result which arises from an action? If there is no result, where will a consumer be observed? Just as the Teacher's emanation is emanated through his consummate magical power, if likewise the emanation also makes an emanation, there is again a further emanation; in same the way, though that agent performs an action, it has the form an emanation. For example, it is like another emanation created by an emanation making a [third] emanation. Affliction, actions, bodies, agents, and results are like fairy castles mirages, and dreams.

Vmarco is talking about I AM, not the Alaya. To him the Alaya is still not ultimate, the I AM is. That is what I would have said in the I AM phase of insight too. However, both Alaya, and the true I AM is not yet the realization of non-dual and anatta. From Simpo_, another one of my friends and Thusness's students who been through all 7 Thusness stages - 13 Jan 12 Hi Jui, You are doing well. This something beneath 'witnessing' is what we call the 'I AM' phase. However, you have not reach the pure experience of it ... which will appear as all-pervading / borderless. Will like to stress that this 'witness' as being underneath is a FALSE impression. The witness/awareness is not underneath ... it is embed with the flow of thoughts. To understand that the witnessing is not underneath, one must progress towards the next phase which is the insight of non-duality or 'no subject-object division'... which should in turn lead to the insight of no-self. Good luck... May you enter the stream soon. ..... In a paradoxical manner, realised Buddhist practitioners do understand why and know how the idea of God (and even Soul) come about... Along their way on the realisation path, they would have come across transcendental experiences that could easily be identified as God (and even Soul)... BUT in order to move towards deeper level of realisations ... they will have to go beyond these states. Just a sharing about my personal experience of what the experience of God and Soul are. Certainly nothing definitive . God experience - This can either be 1. the I AM/Eternal witness experience with no thoughts or 2. the luminosity experience when mind deconstruct. When luminosity is experienced without the understanding/realisation of non-duality, this bright 'light' will be labelled as God. The God experience is the ultimate subject-object division experience. Soul experience - surprisingly the soul experience is more subtle to experience that the God experience. Haha. This state should be the same as Alaya consciousness. Soul experience is the subtlest experience where a mental formation is still being registered. It is experienced when the physical mind level activity is suspended. This state is a formless state that have registered all past life experiences of a Being. Because it retained all the past life experiences of a Being... it will be exalted when compared with the physical (gross) mental state. However, an important point to note is that this formless subtle state DO NOT necessarily understand its own empty and no-self nature. To me, the 'soul' state is the original point of cyclical transmigration. If the non-dual and emptiness nature is recognised at this level/state, the 'Being' will be enlightened. If this state is ignorant of its own non-dual and empty nature, it will move into dualistic action believing in the projections. Not written in Buddhist teaching is that the Soul state (in my experience) actually holds the intention of what it attempts to achieve in a particular lifetime. I have personally experienced the 'purpose' of incarnation... however as i have mentioned.. because this formless level of consciousness may not necessarily realise its non-dual and emptiness nature .. it will 'seek action' as a way to resolve what is being perceived as karmic issues.... resulting in transmigration. The dream state roughly seats between this formless 'soul' state' and physical gross mental state. For New age guys that talks about recieving guidance from the Soul, many do not actually experience this 'soul' state directly. Rather, they experience projected images and feelings. This so-call 'soul' state is extremely subtle and cannot be experienced when gross mental formations ( such as language and images) are present. Ultimately... both 'God' and 'soul' experiences are not entities/selfs and are non-dual and empty. Note: I will not respond to anyone who dispute these understandings unless they themselve have pass beyond non-dual and emptiness phases.

Deeper analysis, that is harmonizing one "thing" with an "approved thing" does not allow for alaya to be popped,...popping alaya necessitates a letting go of analysis. However, it is understandable that sentient beings pursuing deeper paths to make their perceived lives more palatable, seek harmony with their accumulated knowledge. Alaya Vijnana or the Eighth Alaya (dimension of consciousness) can be considered the point of I Am from which the "i think" and aggreregates descend into further ignorance. There appears to be many levels or viewpoints within Alaya Vijnana,...but the main thing to understand is that it flows from Still Source or Undivided Light. Everything that "flows" is split,...nothing unsplit flows. However, without a familiarity with the 'What is Light' thread in TTB, understanding the above may be non-viable. Depending on the assemblege point from which it participates with the universe, Alaya Vijnana can be viewed through a blissful dreamstate with little karma, or as a Tathagata, awake from the dream within Alaya. Some Buddhists claim that Alaya Vijnana is the dharmadhatu field through which all is projected. Nagarjuna may have said that: "The dharmadhatu is the ground, for buddhahood, nirvana, purity, and permanence." Dharmadhatu may be the "ground" for Boundless Buddhic permanence; however, the word permanent in this context can be misleading. There is no Buddha Nature in the Noumena of permanent Undivided Light (see the Mountain Doctrine),...Buddha Nature is that which stands aware upon the fulcrum of Undivided Light. It could be said that Buddha Nature is simultaneously split and unsplit,...and thus beyond the going and coming of that which identifies as only split and flowing, such as sentient beings. Buddha Nature understands that Alaya Vijnana is not "home." On the hand, many that are conscious of the Upper Alayas believe they have arrived at Source, and because of this, sustain the illusions of suffering for the Lower Alayas. Thus one can say that identification with Brahman is the source of all suffering,...although in reality, suffering never existed. To take that last paragraph further,...there was a necessity to manifest and descend into the Lower Alaya in order to show those identified with the Higher Alayas, that their blissful delusory state is the problem, not the cure. That is to say, those identified within the Higher Alaya have no impluse to pop out of Alaya,...however, from the Lower Alayas we can pop out of the delusion of the Higher Alayas. V

I've heard that there is a point on the side-ribs... a few inches below the axila, where astral vampires suck energy sometimes at night... anyone heard of it? Once I was very good.. strong energy... suddently I got like shit... it really felt as if something had gotten me... when I went to sleep, I had a dream with my father.. we was screaming at me and punching me repeatedly right on the sides of my rib cage, below axilas... it really hurt alot, it was repeated times, until I woke up with the pain... so I think it was a vampire - parasite sucking energy from me... some people even stick little stones at the point before going to sleep... sometimes I feel pain on the points during the day also.. cheers love

I'd go further and recommend that, if it's your only source of instruction, then do not practice from Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality. Instead I would recommend http://www.precisiondocs.com/~altaoism/HLIntro.htm for a more balanced approach. Personally, while I can recognize the signs during a dream and retain, I now feel that nocturnal emissions are my body's way of balancing and, for me, they are a sign that I have not balanced my practices as well as I could have. (note: Long term retention is not something I practice, I feel in general it's a practice that has more negatives than positives)

There seems to be some sort of a goal of the modern human world but no one can remember what it was. Back long ago, a peasant would do anything his lord would say and would work a whole year collecting food and getting ready for winter when he wont have anything to do but eat what was collected in spring. A knight, or someone more high up, would work for his lord going to war and personally for a few months, then do nothing and command peasants for everything else. Most high up lord would do nothing but command knights and peasants and get all the food and such. Now normal, not anymore a peasant, people work for their company for a whole year with some vacation time, while their lord CEO boss would do nothing. Everything is kinda similar and kinda different, but it doesn't matter, everyone just wants to survive and get more money and food. Everyone is just doing the same thing over and over again, and getting better at it. Everything is improving and growing, filling up the empty space with whatever. Native Americans had cities somewhere in the desert that they abandoned to live with nature. They kinda had it all figured out at that point. Then these new guys came with their own ideas and killed everybody. They kept growing all over the world after that. They had wealth and the rest of the world wanted some of that wealth so they joined the dream. Without these guys we could never have the world we have now. Maybe without this growing idea we all could have lived in nature. There seems to be something more important then nature, that's why we seem to sacrifice it. It can't be destroyed and so we use it as a stepping stone to the goal up ahead. We figured out how to mine mountains to find valuable to us minerals inside them. We build more and more and don't remember why anymore. This is exactly the story of the Tower of Babel. Everyone was building this great tower up to heaven where God is then languages were all mixed up, and it's obvious why. Imagine for centuries one people being stone masons who cut rock to be a part of this big tower and other people on the ground somewhere farmers. If a mason came down to ask for some food, farmers wont understand him because he will be talking about edible rocks or something. It's like a programmer trying to teach his grandma about computers. In the college he learned so much that he could understand the language of computer savvy people which is not understandable to an art student from the same college. Everyone was so absorbed in their own thing that is so important that they forgot about everyone else and couldn't communicate anymore and so they couldn't finish the tower. Internet is the same story, so many people from the whole world connect but don't understand each other and so they fight easily. The difference is from the Tower of Babel and and the Internet, and the whole world, is that even thought we don't understand each other and fight on-line, our towers still stand and still build higher. We could have stood on our own continents, with maybe some crazy vikings going to the moon or something, but we kept going. We were drawn together, to live to share to fight. War seems to be moving us somewhere with something we don't have yet, but will if we fight for it. We already have the world so no need to fight over it, information can solve what is left to solve. In these advance societies that we have, people fight over their own wealth. We are using that same wealth to build better technology. I have no idea what is inside this computer but it works and it's awesome! It has so many little pieces and elements from all over the world that allows it to work. It's like a big collection of wealth from all over our world. Another collection of wealth called space ships can move us to other worlds. They are not perfect yet but when they are, we will go to other worlds and collect more wealth from them. We will meet other alien to us kinds of people who will like our dream and will come with us to the other worlds. Maybe we will even meet other aliens that think the same way as us. It's a big tower we're building and sky is not a ceiling, it wont just end. Maybe we will forget again and stop for a while, but the time is not important since this is something so big that it transcends time and a century is less then a second there. One day we will take everything with our culture, ideas, music, and by just being there. Let's transcend space, we own everything where we are not. Time is not real anyway, why wait? It seems like we want more because we don't have it so there, I give it to you. With this knowledge you know that you own everything so don't feel guilty and live freely. Everything is possible so you can just forget what I wrote here. Once you've tasted what it's like to be big and own everything and be everywhere, become small again and feel what it's like to climb to the top of the tower.

Imagine how powerful walking meditation is (especially if you start with a good session of ZZ - embrace tree stance, first) that "I" entered 6th jhana (space is filled with consciousness) early this morning (just past sunrise, around 5am) in the park. I saw/perceived -walking meditation is done with eyes wide open but internally focused on every single segment of the stepping process- consciousness moving right in front of a very large tree I was facing, like a massive wave, evoking a scene that probably happened in a recent past (a mother asking their naughty children to behave). The tree picked up the essence of that energetic event, it acted like a witness and just recalled it as a dream...in fact the tree itself was dreaming!

Are you 100% sure? People get very confronted with "me" in real life. I think it happens to everyone who follows seriously the spiritual path. The only exceptions are those who are already perceived as such by the general public: monks, professional healers, gurus, etc. Good, you are on the right track. Still you need to deal with the formless jhanas if nirvana is your final goal (difficult but attainable). You also must not get attached to this state of equanimity (fourth jhana), you are close to attaining stream entry. Walking meditation and foot work are doing a great job. As Daniel Ingram wrote very wisely: It is also not uncommon to feel that what one has experienced is just so staggeringly profound that no one is likely to have ever really seen such amazing things, perhaps including one’s teachers. However, if they are the real deal and qualified to teach you, they are very likely to have their own extensive list of spectacular and profound experiences and realizations. Reality is just a dream of the Absolute and we are part of it. All the best in your practice.

Understood perfectly. I hope my response can be understood based on my prior post. You have a valid point in this regard, since many of the mantras have specific philosophical underpinnings that get undone (especially when Buddhism and Vedic traditions are concerned) due to the narrow interpretations (of the appropriator). Unlike you however, I think the effectiveness of the mantra will actually decrease (or it won't work on the level it is meant to work). In my experience, not all mantras are suited for all individuals. So, the effectiveness of one will depend on who is practicing it. For eg, despite being a brahmin initiate, I find the Narayan mahamantra more effective than the Gayatri (which is meant to be the staple of every Brahmin in the world). Does that mean that Gayatri is less effective than the Narayan mahamantra? No, it only tells me that based on my psycho-spiritual constitution, the latter is better suited for me than the former. It must also be brought to bearing that the latter was "given" to me by an unknown yogi in my dream while the former was given to me in a formal ritual in a temple. I might have been more ready for the latter than the former, so on and so forth.

For some, the opposite is true,...awareness, that is, knowledge or knowledgable of, that which arise from the 6 senses, is a barrier to understanding reality. For example, among some scientists it is commonly accepted that the senses are "liars"...thus if one's awareness is derived from knowledge attained through the senses, which nearly everyone's is, there is no real understanding or insight. As for Mind-training,...many Buddhists highly recomment the Lojong aphorisms,...such as, "treat everything you perceive as a dream" or "don't worry, there's nothing real about your confusion."

Just dont fixate on it, if you ask me. I had similar experiences about 10 years ago...and my poor wife went almost nuts because the bed would start shaking as if there was an earthquake and a light would be floating above me all the while when i was asleep. When she asked me wht happened the previous night i'd tell her i was meditating in my dream. The "things" went away. They come back every now and then. To scknowledge them is to give them power.