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I agree with mostly all of tulku's words... I find it odd how everyone disagrees with tulku. He speaks such wise words. Ofcourse he has an ego, we all do. We can only let go when our body is in a tranquil or dead state. When you replace "kill ego" with "let go ego" it may sound more realistic, because a return to ego is always possible. That is what the first scary experience of letting go teaches us. You cannot let go of ego whenever you want, because it will not feel safe during waking hours for example. In dreams its very easy, because you can't die. That is why becoming lucid is only done easy during dreaming or sleeping. Desires are lucidity killers. If one needs to train resistance against desires, just try to increase the length of your lucid dream. As soon as you desire you are carried away by this soothing feeling and you suddenly fall for the illusions, waking up to a stupid dream that could have been much more. Try to have sex in a lucid dream, it cannot be done unless you can have sex with a desireless mind. You have to train for this, it can be done. Tulku is very radical about this I think. We can have sex, but we can also learn to stay lucid, or desireless during sex. This does not mean that your dick becomes small. If it shrinks it means you are afraid of something. Simply let go, be lucid, and continue to fuck. This will keep you aware of all the fakeness even the fakeness of the great sensations of fucking. Desireless is awareness of sensations, yet not carried away by them. It means that you cannot be tricked by the devil because you're alert, like a cat. Use part of the awareness to detach, let go of the ego and observe it from a higher perspective. Yet allow your ego to carry on without you. You may even feed its desires so that it doesn't bother you as yoi float away. Trick your own mind, the Tao Te Ching is all about knowledge that leads nowhere, brcause it is a text with a purpose of tricking the mind or ego so that you cam reach higher states of consciousness. What tulku says is simply true... This world has patterns, therefor it is fake. Reality does not have patterns but people forgot that. It is hard to accept that this is an illusion, but it is. Especially whem someone else is speaking of it or you are thinking about it. Accepting this world to be fake is something you have to DO. Just try it right now, see if you can succeed. If you do not even feel a little fear, you did something wrong. Letting go of reality feels like dieing, just as initiating a lucid dream feels like dieing, because you have to accept that everything is fake. Everything in your life. Everything is relative, it depends on eachother. That is the whole proof of the illusion we live in. Accepting this increases your alertness, awareness, consciousness. The secret to me lies withing the fact that it doesn't matter how you view life, it matters how much of it you view. Firstly, because an electron that is being observed changes behaviour then when it is not observed. It becomes constant, predictable. Secondly, it doesn't matter how much you change your ego, in the end you will never get further then just the ego. You cannot solve a problem with the same level of consciousness that created it. So I completely agree with Tulku, I just disagree that letting go of ego requires fearlessness. Fearlessness is the reward for letting go of ego. The requirement is courage. I was going to create a topic about the fear of letting go ego, guess there is one right here. Thanks Tulku. I enjoy it when people use their ego to proof that it is fake. It is hilarious to see everyones ego defenses all up and running. So much fear in the air here, wheres all the courage? Sure during forum time is not a good time to accept fakeness, but you should atleast try damnit!

things i do every day - wake up and smile, anchor myself in gratitude and love - prayers of thanks and blessings to the spirit, the gods/goddesses, the ancestors, etc - remember the tzolkin calendar and pray to the day sign (to native americans the day signs were like deities) - stretching and light yoga (nothing crazy just enough to stay limber) - 5 to 15 minutes breathing white light/fullness and clear light/emptiness with the spiritual umbilical cord - 45 min to 75 min meditation starting with chakra hand seals and mantras (kuji-in) and ending with quiet sitting - today was my second day of taiji/qigong class, so now i have that to do every day too. - and reading, right now i am reading "tao and longevity" by huai-chin nan, "the tibetan yogas of dream and sleep" by tenzin wangyal rinpoche, and "the secret of light" by walter russell

Wow, thanks for sharing that. This sounds like I'm already almost at the end of the journey here? That can't be right... The second chi, I felt just right now when doing the breathing excersize. Thoughts seize to exist and I plunge into some kind of nothingness. My breath was slow and deep but the pauses of each breath were becoming too long so I wasn't sure if thats ok. Is it ok to have real long pauses? It felt something like this: I breath in and feel the breath fill my entire body. It is not that I focus on a specific part of the body but rather the body as a whole, including its shape. The affects of each breath gave sensations of which I was aware and felt. Not thought about but just experienced. Then everytime the breath stops, I have this void of thought and feeling. Breathing in I feel energy or more like fresh oxigen fill my blood stream and it feels great on my relaxed muscles. Very soothing. When my entire relaxed body feels filled I breath out again, letting go of the breath. Breathing out the sensations in my body calms down again, going into a void again. And this non-breath period got longer on each breath cycle to a point where it felt like every non breath was sleep, and the beginning of each new breath cycle was a waking up again. As if it suprised me every time that I breath, hard to explain. Am I supose to have such long periods of non-breath between each cycle? Also, isn't the scientific term for second chi simply deep sleep? Cause after such a focus on breath meditation, feel really heavy when I have to stand ip suddenly. And confused in a way, even though I was completely aware and awake in a sense. Then with the third chi, It feels like a wake initiated lucid dream. You simply have let go of all of reality to switcg from external sensations of internal sensations of the dream body. The lucid dream that is like some kind of higher dimension beyond time and space where everything we think about happens. Like we are some kind of demi gods. The stages of chi seem very similar to the stages of the scientific sleep cycle of light and deep sleep followed by rem-sleep

You should reread that everyday for 1 month and rewrite it over and over again untill you have the most abstract text. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. So we let go of this reality, as if ready for death with open arms. Then our consciousness goes to a higher/deeper place. I do not know why, but it happens. We observe the secrets in what seems to be something like a 4 dimension. A lucid dream, out of body experience, revelation, whatever. I think you should use this secret knowledge you have attained to your advantage in this manifested reality. For example, completely focus believing in good things, to make it grow like a tumor untikk you orgasm. It is difficult to handle such great power that comes with this secret knowledge.

I don't think you should change anything. Do what you are doing. Give it 5 seconds, and people will frame your experience in Buddhist and Taoist terms in order to legitimize it. Alternatively, they'll find no way to do so, and will state that your experience is illegitimate. In my experience all traditions lie at least somewhat, if not a great deal. All the descriptions they provide are inadequate or worse, downright false and deceptive. When you're at the edge of contemplation, you're on your own. Tradition cannot help you at all. Traditions are helpful for those who are just beginning. Traditions get in the way of experienced contemplators. Why? Because when you're contemplating at a deep level, you're investigating way beyond convention. You're close to the source of the dream, and the dream's contents are no longer applicable. Traditions are just dream contents. They are not wisdom. The role of tradition is to form the basis for social groups and to maintain convention. Don't forget. If you try to match your experience to this or that tradition, you'll be severely hamstrung. It's like walking around with a ball and a chain. Free yourself. The downside is that it can be hard to discuss what you're knowing and feeling, because traditions provide vocabulary and frameworks for discussion (even if it's a deceptive and inaccurate one, it feels like you're sharing something, when in fact you're not). You may need to develop your own vocabulary if you're still interested in talking, but if you do that, you risk forming a new tradition. And while it will be fun for you, if you formalize your thought it will later harm and delay other people's progress. At "high" levels experience is very abstract. You know what you're experiencing, but it's so far away from the concrete world that it's hard to verbalize. The only thing you can do is deny this or that bogus assumption you catch people engaging in.

Found this a few years ago on a compilation disk of cool videos. Until you mentioned Mick I completely forgot about a Patty Smith dream I had last night, she was so nice and salt of the earth, on the level. I saw a picture of Mick in a NYC Village record store, I thought it was Patty at first. http://www.youtube.c...h?v=fFh96ssGisM Regardless... never hesitate to live your dreams

Don't know if I was fortunate or unfortunate,...but at around 19, I began reciting the 1st Absolute Bodhichitta numerous times per day. Although it took years for shamatha to be more present than not,...those Absolute Bodhichitta proverbs are very helpful: These proverbs are: 1. Treat everything you perceive as a dream. 2. Find the consciousness you had before you were born. (Unborn Awareness) 3. Let even the remedy itself drop away naturally. 4. Stay in the primeval consciousness, the basis of everything. 5. Between meditations, treat everything as an illusion. Unfortunate? "Reality is not a safe place for you - the you that you have created. It is the only place where you would die; where there is no room for your hopes, your dreams." JdeR V

i thought hindu and buddhist did that sorta thing?! a butterfly can dream they are zerostao however i will concede somethings may be "highly unlikely"

That sounds similar to Ray Kurzweil's Singularity. As for being specific, what about a complicated math problem in a dream written on a heavy scroll? Any better? Kind of Book of Revelationy, except without the four horsemen part and all the other depressing stuff. More like Christmas. No, not like Christmas--no bows, snow or leftover wrapping paper. No Santa. Um...not high school graduation either, kind of the opposite of that. A wedding--that's it. It's like a wedding--worrying about all the ceremony and the reception and will the flowers get delivered and I don't want to flub my lines and let's hope Uncle Charlie doesn't get drunk and pick a fight and lots of dress up. Formality. No feeling of honeymoon after, not a vacation. Hard work, but fun work after, like a baby.

Like a complicated math problem. In a dream. UFO's are entering into the realm of accepted fact. http://vault.fbi.gov/hottel_guy/Guy%20Hottel%20Part%201%20of%201/view

No,...I see WuJi or Undivided Light as the Still source, but a source like a fulcrum. The fulcrum does not "cause" anything into motion,...the fulcrum of a playground seesaw doesn't cause the lever to move,...but facilitates it. Duality effects its motions through the prism, which is upon the fulcrum. The prism is not WuJi, but neccessary for the perceived split into TaiJi. IMO it is tricky to use the phrase "so dao gives rise to and contains all forms of light" The Tao of Wu is light,...although not light from our point of view. Our point of view about light is the electrodynamic field. Our point of view,....that which arises from the 5 skandhas,...cannot observe Undivided Light. To observe it, we need our Unborn Awareness. Things are not what they appear to be from a Divided Light point of view. Divided Light desires union with Undivided Light,...however, that can never occur,...because Divided Light was never separate from Undivided Light,...Divided Light is an illusion. Because we have been duped into thinking that this dream is real, we only see one-way,...we do not see the reverse flow of forward moving things as a Tathagata does. Thus we are deluded into thinking there are beginnings and ends,...we think we evolved from apes, who evolved from bugs, who evolved from carbin, etc,...but the reverse is equally correct,...that is,...we are who we are, and to be who we are, we manifested a reverse devolution, to get to the evolution, we perceive we are. Time is one thing,...only our perception fragments it. V

Actually, the mistranslation is a sciential minded revisionism,...like David Barton revising US history to suit Christians. It doesn't take much research to uncover that the the first Christian President was the 7th, Andrew Jackson. The first 6 were predominately Deists. The Greeks implied that true wisdom arose from Thymos through gnowledge, not the psyche through knowledge. Gnothe Seauton literally means Gnow Thyself,...not Know Thyself,...but revisionists have been quite successful altering things, and through the ages since Theodosius and Justinian, pretty much brainwashed humanity to be pro-grey goo, and anti-Heart. The correct definition of wisdom was also shared by Egyptians, Mayans, Naga, Buddhists, Bon, etc. In the Sun and Krst philosophies of Egypt, the heart-thymos was revered, whereas the brain-psyche was considered worthless. In the mummification process, the heart was preserved, but the cerebral gray matter was sucked out and discarded. Like Tantra, Buddhism, and the Maya, the Egyptians seem to have been aware that the head was the vessel for the lowest consciousness, but through the heart came the highest consciousness. Today’s object-ive science considers such ideas nonsense, and disregard for the brain misguided. Yet evidence clearly shows that the Egyptians had an intimate knowledge of brain functions, for example that the left cerebral hemisphere controls the right side of the body. Christians love to say that gnosis came from their Christianity,...yet all the evidence is contrary. Christianity anhilated gnosis,...through Paul, whom the Essenes called “the Spouter of Lies”, to the evasions and genocide of the Cathars. Gnosticism, the original form of today's 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. V

Exactly! You're the first person I hear this from... I once had a dream about bach, but he was an old chinese man. He said that reason why he never included tempo in his work is because it could be played in all kind of tempo's. Especially the slow tempo on a fugue fascinates me because it contradicts the very definition a "fuga". Yet the melodies still succeed tonescape the grasp of your mind, like water. Even on slow tempo. Here is a slow one When you play a fugue yourself, on piano or keyboard, it is alot easier to notice the harmony that all the individual melodies form together. You can play with the rythm and tempo that way and discover the music so deeply. Its great fun. Since I've been trying to figure out fugues, composing music becomes easier and easier. I think the fugue is all about the process of creating music. Exploring all the possibilities in a single musical theme.

Yeah. I suppose if you're a religious Taoist its part and parcel of the religion to acknowledge and celebrate the immortals. I believe there's truth to the legends, if not they make for colorful archetypes. There seems to be a couple of categories of Immortals mentioned in the texts. Just keeping your souls and consciousness intact gives you a low rung on the immortality scale. Though not necessarily a happy one. Still thats the low lying fruit. Kan & Li practices, mastery of dream practices seem to be outlets for attaining it..maybe.

well i have heard that if one can enter into a trance state one does not need sleep for a while like days but i have only heard about this second hand. For me i dont knowtice a difference with energy practices and sleep. I still sleep my 12-15 hours in a 24 hours period. yes i am being serious i have a condition called narcolepsy where i fall asleep fast and sleep alot. i look at it as the fact that in this life time i am ment to do practices like lucid dream and such. As i was typeing that a thought entered into my mind what if in a past life i did not sleep very much and this life is makeing up for it.

In the first chapter of Tao Te Ching you can read that you should remain without desires to observe the secrets of that which gave birth to heaven and earth. So if remain with desire, you will either see thought or no thought, because you then observe its manifestations. However, you must remain detached and observe without your "self" or ego. Kind of like a scientist does it. He has desires, but does not let his emotions prevent him from witnessing all the secrets beyond his superficial view of reality that caused these emotions. The way to go is, thus, curiosity. Don't take desirelessness to literally either. You should observe that each thought you have is a decision with consequences to your life and that of others. The lessons that can be drawn from each thought is, thus, infinite. With meditation, you do not only look at the thoughts, but without your desireful superficial ego in the way, you actually accept the fact that all thougjts are fake and relative, depending on each other. So you go to the source of all your thoughts; perception of perception of reality. Usually when this stage has beem reached, a wake initiated lucid dream will begin. Some people might also call it an out of body experience, because of the unfamiliarirty of such an experience for those who never had a wake initiated lucid dream. This will increase alertness. These people become aware of there surroundings, and their focus of awareness switches back to perception itself, instead of perception of the perception. This, in turn, causes the wake initiated dream to begin with the idea that one is in his own room. The dreaming world actually does begin in his own room, because of this perception. The thin line between your dreaming paralyzed body and dream body both lying in bed equally causes the side effects that are often associated with the term out of body experience. Such as the believe that one is in bed, holding on to that perception even when you loose the vision, feeling of sensation in your body, smell, sound and taste of being in your bed. The fact that you are in bed becomes emotionally attached to as you go trough this scary unfamiliar experience. When you actually manage to move your dream body, you will see this perception of yours continue to live on simply by noticing that your body is still in bed. You must then conclude that this is an "out of body experience" which is simply not the case. It is an wake initiatied dream that is not yet fully lucid. The goalof such meditation is to train yourself to become lucid to several limiting believes about your reality. When you can do that on the fly, you can change the outcome of certain moments in your life. Switch from struggle to ease, from undecisiveness towarda emmediate and effective action, from doubt and low in faith towards alignment with the unchanging, etc.

If you're talking about astral-projection and Rainbow Body, some people are familiar with it here, though not me personally. I have read about Shamans travelling to spirit worlds and even stars or star worlds, but no experiential knowledge.. Also the dream world might be considered a trans-dimensional portal, especially for Shamans and apprentices, again, of which I'm neither

Mantak Chia described why it is important to seal the 5 senses. Our senses are like antennas which receive waves of vibration,sound and light that come to us. If that wave makes sense, ourbrains will start to think. Thinking consumes more energy than anyother bodily activity. As humans we can not stop thinking, lookingand listing nor stop fantasizing. This sensory-linked brain functionin reaction to the external world is known as the monkey mind Mantak also described the importance of sealing the 5 senses in dark room retreats. All spiritual traditions have used Darkness Techniques in the pursuitof enlightenment. In Europe, the dark room often appeared in under-ground form as a network of tunnels, in Egypt as the Pyramids, in Rome as the catacombs, and by the Essenes, near the Dead Sea in Israel, as caves. In the Taoist tradition caves have been used through-out the ages for higher level practices. In the Tao, the cave, the Immortal Mountain, the Wu San, represents the Perfect Inner Alchemy Chamber. Meditating and fasting in the cave is the final journey of spiritual work. The caves are the Earth Mother and its energy lines. Like the hollow bones, caves contain the earliest information of life stored inside the Earth. Caves contain the vital essence of the Earth Power. The Tao says: ‘When you go into the dark and this becomes total, the Darkness soon turns into light.’ In the Darkness, our mind and soul begin to wander freely in the vast realms of psychic and spiritual experience. When you enter this primordial state or force you are reunited with the true self and divinity within. You literally ‘conduct’ the universal energy. You may see into the past and future, understand the true meaning of existence,and begin to understand the order of things. You return to the womb,the cocoon of our material structure and Nature’s original Darkness. Complete darkness profoundly changes the sensory sensibilities of the body/brain. We are deprived of all visual reference. Sounds begin to fall away as we lose contact with the external world and turn the senses inward. The effect of darkness is to shut down major cortical centers in the brain, depressing mental and cognitive functions in the higher brain centers. Emotional and feeling states are enhanced, especially the sense of smell and the finer senses of psychic perception. Dreams become more lucid, and the dream state manifests in our conscious awareness. Eventually, we awaken within ourselves the awareness of the Source, the spirit, the soul. We descend into the void, into the darkness of deep, inner space As you can see, even the Taoist masters advocate non-indulgence of the senses in order to reach the Void or Pure Consciousness. Nan Huai Chin, the buddhist/taoist master, has also repeatedly asked all to engage in various style of stillness meditation in order to connect with Pure Consciousness. So why anyone would say Taoism is higher than Buddhism or vice versa is beyond me.

Thanks for sharing the dream. Very interesting.

Thanks, Mal, Clarity, and Infinity for the positive feedback. Hi Craig, Yes, I have experimented with lucid dreaming over the years and have had sporadic success with it. Where it has evolved to now is that towards the end of my 8 hours of sleep, I go through a couple hours of waking up and going back to sleep before waking up for the day and in that period, I will often times re-enter dreams and interact more consciously with them. I have found that in this period, if I wake up after a vivid dream that I can re-enter it and ask questions of those in the dream and get some surprising answers. This has been very helpful when I want to know the meaning behind dream symbols or for divination. About a year ago, I had a dream during this period of my sleep cycle where I met Odin and I asked him about something that I had been wondering about concerning the similarity between his hanging on the World Tree in order to receive the mysteries (Runes) of the Universe and Jesus' hanging on the cross for the forgiveness of sins. Odin's response shocked the hell out of me, he said... "Jesus was a coward. He sacrificed himself for someone else out of fear to appease his father and to satisfy the fears of a bunch of snot-noses who don't appreciate him.. and he whined about it the whole time. What a waste! I am a warrior and I eagerly sacrificed myself to MYSELF and deemed it a privilege. I was not fettered with any obligation other than to discover the Runes for myself and then I freely shared what I learned with all with no attachment of obligation. It would not have mattered to me if anyone listened to me. I died to liberate myself. No man can liberate another. Look at Jesus. After he sacrifices himself, he then wastes that sacrifice by making people feel sorry for him and then forces them to believe in him, not in themselves, but in him and then he relieves them of their responsibility to die to themselves creating a race of frightened, spoiled children. Had he made a real sacrifice of himself and owned it like a warrior and then taught his followers to do the same, can you imagine where the world would be today? What a waste!" He was actually much harsher on Jesus than that and these are some of my words to describe the gist of his message. But he did call Jesus a coward and I still cringe at that assessment of him... I experienced his value system as very harsh and I am still struggling to see it without fear and judgement. And yet he was also fiercely generous. It is a combination that I have not experienced in anyone before or since. I was in awe of his power and yet while I felt very little and inadequate he was well.. Fiercely welcoming and accepting of me completely and with no pity... Very hard to explain. He was pure in a way I have not seen anywhere else... I doubt that his differing value system would be considered 'spiritual" today. There was definitely a strong value placed on fearlessness and warrior ethic. He was very forceful with that message to me that for him, spirituality was the path of warriors and it was expected that one should be eager to die to themselves. What I discovered about myself here was that while I had been intellectually familiar with the idea of the spiritual warrior, it was muted in comparison with Odin's warrior ethic. He had ZERO guilt or hesitation about his "warrior-ness" whereas I really struggle with mine. I could see that 2,000 years ago in Europe, things may have been alot clearer and different in terms of what spirituality meant... You would think that since it may very well have come out of my unconscious that I would be relieved by that. I wasn't. I personally see Jesus' sacrifice as extremely brave and selfless and I woudln't dare to say or think such a thing about him. But I guess Odin can get away with it I like to see Odin and Jesus as emanations of the same cosmic consciousness, so to see the Universe as having ideological schisms within it's own consciousness is rather disturbing to me. But I suppose as a self-labeled shaman, I guess it makes sense if I also view the Universe (like the human being) as an aggregate of different energies that sometimes are in seeming conflict wherein one needs to seek a dynamic balance rather than a static 'peace'. I guess it also makes sense if the each of those sacrifices were for different purposes: One for the balancing of negative karma and the other for the destruction of ego to obtain knowledge. Anyway, my point being, that to answer your question, yes, I have found that lucid dreaming can be a very powerful way to intentionally interact with the subconscious to kickstart some serious personal growth. If my experiences are any indication, then my suggestion to those wanting to experience lucid dreaming, be prepared for some intense and sometimes unnerving revelations. Anyway, just rambling again.. Good to see you Craig,.. Mike

Have you ever attempted to achieve lucidity in your dreams? Recently I am working with a Tibetan Lama and this topic is very important in his tradition. I wonder how this interaction could have unfolded if you were fully awake in your dream. It is something I hope to be able to explore some day. Thanks again for sharing this dream vision. Craig

Sounds like a very cool dream. I love symbolic dreams.

I believe the following dream is a result of practice of the HUUL breath mantra outlined in these links... "Let The Victim Keep His Distance From The Rotting Corpse..." This was something said to me in a dream by a female shaman. She was in a trashyard. She was sitting on a grass prayer matt surrounded by filth, feces, rusting cars, etc... She was caucasian, of a somewhat large build, not fat per se, but well fed and strong looking. She had the feel of a mother or other female caregiver. Someone with whom one would feel comfortable lying in her lap. She felt calm and serene and safe. She had slightly greying auburn hair but had an air of youthfulness and strength. Her eyes were warm and smiling. I recognized that she was a shaman and a master, but she projected no air of superiority. As I said, Mother or Auntie is the most accurate description of her. She was family and very approachable. I began to walk towards her. My intent was to sit in front of her as a student. As I took my first steps toward her, she calmly said to me, "Let the victim keep his distance from the rotting corpse." I knew she was referring to herself as the corpse. As in any dreamtime, I instantly had an understanding of what she meant, but as is often true with dreams, once I awoke, I had to analyze it and explain it again to my rational waking mind before it slipped in the abyss of forgetfulness that most dreams fall into. Here is what I believe she meant by that statement: The manifested physical world is an illusion that She (the mother) has created as a matrix for the Soul to experience limitation and grow. She has purposefully created this illusion to ensnare and entrap the senses. But, since it is Illusion, it also creates death and decay. If we are ensnared by the illusion we will also die. In order to become ensnared by the senses one must adopt the mindset of victim. i.e, a victim of circumstance. That is the first effect of becoming ensnared. So, what she is saying is: If you want to become enmeshed in the Illusion of the physically manifested Universe, you can, but keep your distance and don't get too attached otherwise if you look too closely at the underlying nature of Creation, you will see a rotting corpse and it may frighten you. If however, you are willing to let go of the physical, manifested Universe, then when you see creation for what it is, (a rotting corpse), then you will not be frightened but liberated. I got the impression that there was no "preferred" method. Choosing to become ensnared or choosing to become liberated were simply two different paths to the same ultimate objective. The only caution was to be aware of which choice you made if what you want is to be happy. Each path had it's own benefits and pitfalls. Back to the dream: I was impelled to keep walking toward her. I sat in front of her on the mat. Things get a little fuzzy after this but what I do remember is that She began to tear a hole in her prayer mat and then she began digging in the earth beneath her and then she dove into the earth and disappeared. The next thing I remember was that I was following her as she was "escaping" the trash heap. I felt the desire to help her escape. My last memories of that dream is following her as we were about to reach the top of the heap and make it to freedom. What I take this part to mean is that the HUUL breath mantra She gave me earlier is a mantra that allows one to escape the bondage of the Earth by going through the earth. The old saying, "The fastest way out is through." is what comes to mind for me. The HUUL mantra activates the lower chakras and connects one powerfully with Mother Earth. Since she is the Master of manifested creation (Earth), She is also supremely qualified to help one escape it's clutches. By practicing the HUUL breath and meditating on being in this manifested universe without being entrapped by it is one way to find happiness in life. By adopting the mentality of one who is not a victim but an active creator of one's life, we can experience the physical world and enjoy it to the fullest without being ensnared and victimized by it. I have not mastered this, I only relay it as it was given to me. HUUL

Ha! I knew it!!! I am only a figment of your dream. You are the center of reality. NO, no, my friend. I am the center of my own reality. My free will. Okay, my latest. I could have left my garder as it was but I decided to make some improvements in order to attract more birds and butterflies. I now have ten times as many birds coming to my garden than I had before. No increase in the butterfly population but I have heard other people say that there just aren't as many butterflies around this summer as is notmal. Anything I have thought through and taken action on is a result of my free will. Not granted, I am limited as to how far I can extend my free will. I can't decide to stop paying my taxes and get away with it. I am what is called a "self starter". I have an idea (and most of them are a product of myself, not someone else) and I work up a plan, then I take action without considering anyone's approval or disapproval. That, my friend, is free will. Form exists. It is what we Taoists call the Manifest. I know that all Buddhists don't exist. Too bad for them. Real life is such a wonderful things. Sad they are missing it all. I exist. You may not as I have never seen you in person. You may be a computer program. But even that computer program exists. Well, I consider myself to be the most fortunate person on this planet. Now watch - an unfortunate occurrance will enter my life for bragging about being so fortunate. Hehehe. But that's okay, I've seen good times, I've seen bad times. I am just glad that I existed in order to have seen all those times. Ah! Time! When we are young we want it to speed up but when we are middle-age we want it to slow down and when we are old we wonder where it all went.

We had a crash course on what love is (when I was 13) in the music class. Off course I was in group five made to sit far away as I didn't know how to sing. This was the song that decided my fate, as belonging to group five was the worst thing you did to yourself. But as it turns out it worked in my favor, I sat quietly and breathed in and out. My first meditation class. Hahah The Rose Lyrics for you: Some say love, it is a river That drowns the tender reed Some say love, it is a razor That leaves your soul to bleed Some say love, it is a hunger An endless aching need I say love, it is a flower And you, its only seed It's the heart, afraid of breaking That never learns to dance It's the dream, afraid of waking That never takes the chance It's the one who won't be taken Who cannot seem to give And the soul, afraid of dying That never learns to live When the night has been too lonely And the road has been too long And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong Just remember in the winter Far beneath the bitter snow Lies the seed That with the sun's love, in the spring Becomes the rose