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I see what you mean. The danger is that those other things are contrary to human identity from your point of view. However, I am not a 100% human. I just like humans but I am also other things. The human body is just one aspect of my body. My real body is the endless cycle. The human body is dead, like a brick or like a shadow. It's something else that is alive. I call it mind. The mind is neither harmed nor improved by anything and it has endless energy in it, the kind of energy that doesn't follow the rules of physics, so it's not a physical energy. It's a mind energy that follows the rules of dreaming, which are different rules. Inside the dream we can enjoy a game of learning and forgetting, improving and worsening conditions and so on. If you think of my body as a wheel, then most of my body is turning. The closer you get to the center the less it is turning. And at the very center it is not turning at all. It is still. There is nothing "out there" that is scary unless you really want to be exclusively human. Being 100% exclusively human is boring and limiting. I've been a demon and a dragon before and it's not so bad at all. There is nothing to fear.

Once again you are not discussing the message, but that the messenger must be wrong because she doesn't agree with your predetermined view of things. Speaking for myself, I haven't been offended, upset, or selfish for at least a dozen years,...thus your comments are puzzling, as if you tell a non-smoker that they are a smoker. Something I wrote on another thread has relevance here,..."Although those on the Long Path's appear to love calling those on the Short Path prideful and such, you really don't have a clue, because any pride has been effortless extinguished as a consequence of entering the Short Path. Thus, your insistent character assassinations is just proof of your own Long Path level,...and attachment to the delusion of humility. "Humility is just a degree of pride" Wei Wu Wei Unfortunately, the immature who see no humility, and automatically prescribe pride, are way too caught up in duality." Your indoctrinated idea of compassion doesn't match my compassion,...and that troubles you,...and that's OK. Of course I'd love to see you liberated from your sentient beliefs,...but it is not a bodhisattvas job to liberate every sentient being by herself,...is a process of cooperation,...and a process, that for many, takes a long, long time. The good news is, not only is time one-thing, but it doesn't even exist, except as people perceives it to exist. The first Absolute Bodhichitta says, treat everything you perceive as a dream. V

Rat is a common symbol in present time for striving in the direction of some sort of economic fulffilment. How is your employment/work place? It seems to be a meaningful dream that is showing you something new.Seed is there already.Most prabably some new understanding will soon surface in waking life.

Totem "Power" Animals: It appears that this indestructible subconscious rat in your dream demonstrated extreme survivability & invincibility in the face of (your) conscious fear. Take home message: Surrender your conscious fears to your subconscious survival "gut" instinct. Because this may serve you well now or in the near future...

Interesting. This made me curious enough to dig for dream meanings of rats. This rat was huge and mostly black, but I don't think it was all black. It was not aggressive toward me but I felt like it was trying to annoy me or show me something. Plus it had all kinds of magical abilities like I've never seen before. So I interpret it as a kind of a teacher. If this rat had no extraordinary abilities, I would be more inclined to think of it as an ordinary dream rat with ordinary dream meanings. But this rat was not anything normal so normal meanings do not apply to it.

I felt annoyed and amazed at the same time. I felt like I didn't resolve my dealings with the rat to my satisfaction. But I also felt a sense of wonder. I've never encountered anything even remotely similar to this rat. Usually things in my dream behave more or less how I expect them to behave. This rat was defying all my expectations.

a quick glance through dream dictionary and I come up with the following (I know you are looking for the: what happened to intention, but let that go for a sec) rat dog : jealous untrustworthy friend fear; if it was sudden it indicates success, or else uncertainty gun, shooting; bad luck, envy shoot; person unhappy due to anothers egoism aim; sexual pleasures balcony; bad news or a friend who's not there for you throw; trying to get rid of floating: overcome your troubles air: good luck maybe you will be able to see the actual mechanism of intent if you can identify the sequences in your wake life. who or what is a friend? shrug

Hmm... so you say it's a common thing? I understand perhaps when dream characters are sturdier than we imagine them to be... but how do you explain my hand not acting 100% on my intent? I've never felt anything like that except when I was hypnotized one time. Hmm... yes I do remember one time my hands were doing things seemingly outside my volition when I was hypnotized during a stage hypnotist show. But at that time I was able to shake off the hypnosis and regain control, although it wasn't easy to shake it off. As for danger, I don't feel it. I feel it's pretty safe. I think you're saying it's a bad omen. I don't think it is a bad omen at all. I feel like that rat is an important teacher of some sort. How can important teachers be bad? Just because I personally dislike rats doesn't mean it's bad.

Somethings is wrong. Honestly I never thought Gold is heavy would ever consider that a garlic spirit was wanting to teach a lesson. The whole scenario of shooting the crap out of something and its not dying is pretty common in dreams, like lately I dreamt that I shot a "friendly", and even it was shot with a bazooka, it wouldnt stop. That was a weird dream that Im chalking down to past life issues. My feeling on your words is something needs to be really attended to urgently.

You might be right. So I should embrace the rat qualities in myself? Well, this explains why I wanted to get rid of the rat. It doesn't explain why the rat was so seemingly magical. It wouldn't fall down and it miraculously was exempt from my attempts to aim at it. Maybe I should have tried to befriend it, but I wasn't lucid in that dream. I was basically on autopilot and I couldn't really make conscious decisions. I really wanted to play more with that rat, but sadly I woke up.

OK, I decided I should share this really weird dream I had recently. I was chilling and doing my thing when suddenly a huge dog-sized rat appeared. It was ugly and I didn't like it. I was not in a panic but I had a slight fear of it. I felt it was sneaky and dirty. So at first I decided to ignore it and this rat was just hanging out and annoying me by not removing itself from my experience. Then I tried to throw it away. I would pick it up and throw it as far away as possible. Annoyingly it would come back again and sort of thumb its nose at me, kind of like a rat's version of "fuck you" in my direction. Next thing I tried to do was throw it over a balcony. As soon as I thought this way, I was on some balcony with the rat. I would throw the rat overboard and it would hover in the air instead of falling to its death down below. Now I was getting really annoyed. I'll be honest -- I'm usually the only one with magical powers in my dreams and this rat was pissing me off by not falling down. Then I decided I had to shoot it with a gun. As soon as I thought this, a gun materialized in my hand. And here's the really weird and cool thing. I tried to aim at the rat, and my hand would refuse to follow my intent! I've never seen anything like it! I mean, I know myself. I know I am aiming straight at the rat but my hand is like 5 or 10 degrees to the right. I tried to move my hand left to correct for this aberration, and my hand would just jump over to the left of the rat. So no matter what I did my hand refused to follow my intent and I couldn't take a straight aim at the rat. So this was really interesting. I could see how my intent was generally manifesting. But somehow it was being modified by my subconscious mind. I feel like that's the main message of the dream. It's trying to tell me something about how intent works, because that last experience was one of the most stupendous ones I've ever had. Also, I had quite a bit of garlic right before that dream happened and I thought it's possible this rat was some kind of garlic spirit trying to teach me something. I'm trying to understand the nature of intent right now, so this dream really puzzled me. I feel like I should be able to understand what happened there when I couldn't aim at the rat, but I don't understand it. That's disappointing.

right where it belongs See the animal in his cage that you built Are you sure what side you're on? Better not look him too closely in the eye Are you sure what side of the glass you are on? See the safety of the life you have built Everything where it belongs Feel the hollowness inside of your heart And it's all right where it belongs What if everything around you Isn't quite as it seems What if all the world you think know Is an elaborate dream? And if you look at your reflection Is that all you want it to be? What if you could look right through the cracks would you find yourself - find yourself afraid to see? What if all the world's inside of your head Just creations of your own? Your devils and your gods all the living and the dead And you're really all alone? You can live in this illusion You can choose to believe You keep looking but you can't find the woods While you're hiding in the trees

Yes but... 'experience becomes just arising moment to moment' is the experience even at anatta phase. The realization 'that things are empty and nothing is ungraspable' further sees these arising as non-arising, empty, unlocatable and ungraspable.... being like an illusion, a mirage, a dream, a magical apparition.

Not the same. But D.O. seen in real-time, non-conceptually, is Maha - everything is like the universe doing this and everything is seamlessly interconnected (everything is the total exertion of the universe), and furthermore everything reveals itself to be dream-like, ungraspable, as an experience.... not as a concept to be held on to. There are just shapes and colours and ... but there is nothing solid or inherent to them.

Perhaps even a combination of both! Recent discussions with friends about the health benefits of fasting led to the idea of deliberately depriving yourself of sleep. It is obvious that men is not evolved to continue eating troughout the day, but rather hours long hunting followed by big meals. The body is well capable of surviving without food, even though food is essential to our lifes. Fasting activates inner archetypes, simply because it is of the Tao. This is how nature made us, so it is the way of nature. Slowly science finds more and more health benefits for fasting. With healthy nutrisious foods as part of the diet ofcourse. The same can be found for exposing yourself to heat and cold. And recently I found a society deliberately depriving oneself of sleep. Was it native american indians? I forgot, but the idea certainly sounds promising. I can imagine how stressful times during the life of ancients would release the archetype of natural spiritual growth and insights, partially triggered by a lack of sleep. As I searched on this subject I noticed how depriving sleep is similar to fasting in that you do not always hunger for sleep just as fasting is not a constant sensation of hunger alone. Though it might not be an easy task, there are certainly some unique experiences involved in depriving oneself of sleep. On the other hand, the ancients served nature and nature did not always provide with food and rest. I found that with fasting, your body becomes more efficient and healthy. You require less and less food to function normally. I wonder how our body and mind goes about resting when deprived of sleep for a day or two? Not to promote insomnia, but simply out of curiosity. I have found that after three days of not sleeping due to extreme temperature change the sleep that followed had a duration of more then 14 hours. It was certainly an extreme spiritual experience for me. Alot of the dreams at the end of this long sleep were very vivid, deep, insightful, long and lucid. Isn't that the goal of a dream yoghi? And isn't alot of meditation based on experiencing such an enlightening experience that expands yours consciousness? Thats what I thought atleast. I found that thinking deep is the way to go in life. Consider how deep ones thoughts are when they are occuring within a dream. Perhaps longer vivid dreams mean that the thoughts go deeper aswell in that already deep place. So that we may fully acces that storehouse of wisdom within all of us. The truth of our own nature.

You can analyze your dreams as some sort of journalling and observation of your ego, if you can't find lucidness. Then you can practice being lucid in waking life to change your believes and realities in subtle ways during waking life. But getting lots of lucid dreams, even if they only last a few seconds, can be very useful. It allows you to get familiar with the lucidness and understand what it really means. To get lucid dreams, I recommend sleep in long periods like atleast 10 hours. The longer you sleep, the longer and more vivid your dreams become. Awakening for seconds or a minute is no problem, as long as you do not disturb the dreamingnprocess too often. The lucid dream is like a finishing touch of your sleeptime. It is so vivid and strong that it stimulates the mind to be more aware. Suddenly you recognize the illusions and change realities. I have not been able to understand why, but around after 11-12 hours of sleep I always become lucid naturally without any effort on my part. Perhaps its just how we're evolved. However, I believe a good slave would never be allowed to sleep more then 8 hours in order to remain tired and dull. This way it will never cross his/her mind that he is dreaming. This way the master can control the reality of the slave trough stuff like commercials very easily. It is prone to accept and submit into fake realities when one is tired and deprived of sleep. You need to sleep in order to wake up.

1. I can only agree to "Awareness is." based upon the presented evidence. I can agree to "contextual" to some degree, but you'd have to clarify your meaning. "Intentional" is tricky. 2. That depends on how you define meaning. 3. Yes. 4. Yes, depending on how you answer 2. 5. No, you would first have to demonstrate a equality between the type of meaning that awareness gives and existence. You would have to demonstrate that there is no existence beyond such meaning. 6. Agree, though the imaginary can affect the real, and in a dream raising your heartbeat, or an imagined plan being brought into fruition, or imagined threat causing a change of plans, or the causing the diversion of the mind from truth. In that sense it can be the source of real effects. In that sense, it can be said to be a source of real.

amusing lil rant. (i wish i had yer falling down laughing emoticon to insert here) however here on TTB i do see alot of this "faster than ever" or the fastest way to whatever mentality that is not productive in anyway. patience, perserverance, practice actually does work better imo. it is unfortunate that there are frauds that do bring shame on themself. they do not bring shame on tai chi itself. if a true master steps up and volunteers for your "scientific proof test" cool, if none do, that is cool too. looks like you have many interests and acheivements you are not looking to add the title of taiji master to your resume'? becoz i am thinking that to be such a thing truly, is to commit to it entirely and exclusitively and not as a sideline hobby. it is a great healthy hobby for sure, it feels good to do, it looks cool. i hear many who say "well i have x number of years study in this or that" how many hours does one have in it? hours each day every day. it has to become one's life. it is common that many folks want to get somewhere without having to do what it takes to get there. if you dont eat tai chi, drink it,breathe it, sleep it, dream it, ponder on it, take it to a spiritual level, why expect to become great at it? i hate cliche' but there are something to cliche' that made them a cliche' , i reckon. but however you say it > when you are ready to find your teacher , that teacher will appear or find you. that article on readiness by sifu jenny

No, it says that awareness is necessary for objects to be known. You have not shown that non-awareness cannot be a source of awareness. You have only shown that if that were true, we would not be aware of this source as a source. I have left open the possibility that it could be inferred through various means, such as there being more than one non-awareness source of awareness, which we could observe and then by analogy consider to be like our own, or through using other means, such as mirrors, to reflect back on this non-awareness source. So your "argument" is that because we cannot know if matter is behind awareness or not, let's just assume that it is. No, it isn't. We must be very clear about this. I am not making a positive statement, except that your argument does not demonstrate what you say it demonstrates. All of the stuff about the brain is to show that there is another possible outcome from the assumption that we agree to. You make other assumptions that are unsupported, and I want to call awareness to those assumptions, so they can be understood, and other options using fewer assumptions might be developed. If matter is what generates awareness, then it's not matter that you're aware of, Just as we are not directly aware of our own brains. unless the matter is self-aware. If you claim that matter is self-aware, then we need to get rid of the word "matter" and just call it mind. Matter does not need to be self-aware to generate awareness. This is an assumption. ... At no point do I venture into an unknown or take something on faith. My own awareness is self-evident to me so no faith is necessary there. My only act of faith is to assume that you are as real as I am. I have no proof of this. Other than that, I make no assumptions. You also assume that everything is in principle directly knowable, that there is no unknown or unknowable factor influencing our experience. It's not an assumption per se, it's what I refer to "this is what I am willing to consider." It's a pragmatic consideration. If something is fundamentally beyond knowing I 1) don't bother looking for it, 2) do not include it into my considerations and 3) do not base my life on it in any way and relate to it as irrelevant. This is your right. Such a choice does not make a good argument, since the whole argument depends on this choice, which has no basis other than preference. Knowing that there is something fundamentally beyond knowing, at least on the basis of verbal arguments, is quite valuable to me. It helps me to have more philosophical humility, and it inspires me to look for other means to knowledge. I am open to a better verbal argument, but what you are presenting is based on assumption and preference. I don't operate on blind faith and don't recommend it to others. Neither do I, but your assumptions have a quality of faith to them. Without this faith, then one must admit to an unknown. It actually makes no difference what the source of awareness is as long as I understand that whatever appears to awareness is not the source of it. From then on I am free. If the source of awareness is flurobompax or fetrof-complex, who cares? Simply understanding what happens within awareness is enough to lead a good life and to properly react to every possible occurrence with wisdom and fearlessness. This may be true, but it does not make a valid argument that awareness has no source outside of itself. Concrete objects are waves because no concrete object is self-apparent. Instead all concrete objects are only apparent to the extent they are supported by a larger context. In other words, concrete objects are always smaller than the whole "thing." Your argument does not show that awareness is this whole "thing" and is not a part of this whole "thing". If it is a part, then it could in turn arise from another part, and hence from an object in this whole "thing". awareness cannot perceive its source. If this is true, then based on awareness, we can make no definitive positive statements about its source. The source of awareness could not be a result of the function of awareness. In other words, the effect of awareness cannot be its cause. Concrete objects are all, without exception, fundamentally, in principle, effects of awareness. So an example of this relationship is fire and smoke. The smoke is an effect of fire. The smoke cannot thus be the cause of fire. Being an effect is a subservient, weaker position. You have once again assumed that awareness is the source, despite saying above that awareness cannot know its source. You don't really understand my usage. That analogy was to distinguish crucial from generative. I was pointing out how something can be crucial without being generative. Once you agree that something can be crucial and yet not generative, you need to prove that the brain is not merely crucial for the world-perception to be what it is, but that it is generative. The same argument applies to awareness itself. You cannot infer the brain at all. If you think you can, then go ahead and try to infer it. I'll be here laughing and watching you fail. How hard is it to infer a brain? I have seen brains in formaldehyde, pictures of brains and brain scans, videos of brains in open skulls, etc, and so I infer that brains exist. This does not mean that inference is true, but I do have some basis for making that inference. More than mere existence can be inferred about the brain. This is not a major interest of mine, so I won't go into it, but to claim that such inferences can't be made, is to be willfully ignorant. Whatever you observed in the movie would not be indicative of the true nature of the movie projector. That was the whole point of my example there. You're praying for a lucky meaningless coincidence that the movie projector will miraculously project its own function onto the screen and not just the movies plugged into it. It's not going to happen. And yet, you yourself have said that brains are observable. If we are going to make an analogy between a movie theater and our experience, and the putative projector is the brain, then we need to include them in the movie, since they are observable in our experience, even if we cannot observe our own brains except indirectly. I fail to see it. Sounds like nonsense. I can't even understand what you're talking about at all. Tracing the light? Movie theaters? I have no idea what it all means. You're losing it. Do you have anything to offer but an emotional reaction? What part is so difficult to understand? Tracing light is possible by blocking the light and seeing the direction that the shadow is cast and then extending back in line from the hand to the projector. Its not really that difficult. Right, I know you'd talk about that. This is why I differentiated crucial-to-meaning from generative. For us the brain needs to be the way it is for the world as we know it to make sense. That doesn't mean the brain actually generates awareness. If you still believe in generative ability of the brain, you pretty much have to assume that ability without any evidence. All the evidence you have is that the brain is crucial to the meaning of what it means to be a human being in this realm. There is an impossible to cross logical chasm between "crucial" and "generative." I assume nothing more than you. I am not arguing for the brain as the source of awareness. I am only showing that it is a logically valid as your description, if we start with the same assumptions. And thus we cannot claim to know either way based solely upon logic. I've had many dreams where I was shot straight into the brain, in the dream. Instead of permanently dying I simply woke up to find myself safe in bed. The physicalist explanation to this is that the "real" brain is in bed, while the dream brain is "fake". When the fake brain is shot in the dream, the real one is fine. Of course I can extend this line of thinking further. I can say this brain that's involved in typing this post is a fake brain. If you shoot me, my body will collapse from your point of view, but from my point of view, I will wake up safe in bed again. It all makes sense because during dreams we don't know our dream brains are fake. We only realize that after the fact. I do not deny this possibility. I only deny that it is logically supported by what you have presented. I ask if you have better arguments. My arguments are as air tight as any on this Earth when it comes to awareness. I'm afraid this might be true.

the dream trauma thread is interesting but i don't know any of the terminology or have ever studied any of it . i do use the terms dreams, dreamworld, and my concept of astral plane. lucid dreaming? maybe i do that sometimes but i never looked up the definition for it. i also make a clear distinction between dreams and spirit world but sometimes they intermingle. a few of my kung fu bros here and i have shared dreams many times. it still continues. i have also had this experience with others from time to time. i never thought too much about it but just thought it is a curious experience.

Not true. It tells us that all the concrete objects of awareness are disqualified from being sources of awareness. I've explained why so, so I won't repeat anything. So your "argument" is that because we cannot know if matter is behind awareness or not, let's just assume that it is. That's not much of an argument. Like I pointed out, even if we go with this assumption, we discover that matter is logically disconnected from the contents of awareness. If matter is what generates awareness, then it's not matter that you're aware of, unless the matter is self-aware. If you claim that matter is self-aware, then we need to get rid of the word "matter" and just call it mind. I don't make an argument from ignorance. I know awareness exists. I proceed from this knowledge forward, building from one known to another. I start with awareness, then I discover the nature of the concrete objects of awareness, then I conclude that such objects cannot be the source of awareness. At no point do I venture into an unknown or take something on faith. My own awareness is self-evident to me so no faith is necessary there. My only act of faith is to assume that you are as real as I am. I have no proof of this. Other than that, I make no assumptions. It's not an assumption per se, it's what I refer to "this is what I am willing to consider." It's a pragmatic consideration. If something is fundamentally beyond knowing I 1) don't bother looking for it, 2) do not include it into my considerations and 3) do not base my life on it in any way and relate to it as irrelevant. There are some things which are unknown right now, but which can in principle become known. These kinds of unknown are very important for me. The unknowns that are potential knowns are included into my consideration. Unknowns that cannot ever become known are not included. I don't operate on blind faith and don't recommend it to others. No. My argument is this: 1. I know what concrete objects are like. 2. Because of 1, I know they can't be the source of awareness. 3. Case closed. It actually makes no difference what the source of awareness is as long as I understand that whatever appears to awareness is not the source of it. From then on I am free. If the source of awareness is flurobompax or fetrof-complex, who cares? Simply understanding what happens within awareness is enough to lead a good life and to properly react to every possible occurrence with wisdom and fearlessness. I disagree. Logicians routinely discard considerations which are irrelevant and which only bring needless complications without enhancing explanatory power. An example of this is when the physics scientific community discarded the notion of ether. After a number of experiments the physicists realized there was no way they could detect ether. Since they couldn't detect it, they omitted it as a notion from the field of physics. I am basically doing the same thing when I am omitting matter. Concrete objects are waves because no concrete object is self-apparent. Instead all concrete objects are only apparent to the extent they are supported by a larger context. In other words, concrete objects are always smaller than the whole "thing." Awareness cannot perceive its own source. Awareness can only perceive objects. Objects are always related to awareness in the manner of slaves to masters, or children to parents, etc... objects are always smaller and always dependent on external-to-object context existing within awareness to be what they are. Because awareness can only perceive 1) smaller "things" than itself and 2) things awareness itself needs to be in a certain specific state to perceive, awareness cannot perceive its source. The source of awareness could not be a result of the function of awareness. In other words, the effect of awareness cannot be its cause. Concrete objects are all, without exception, fundamentally, in principle, effects of awareness. So an example of this relationship is fire and smoke. The smoke is an effect of fire. The smoke cannot thus be the cause of fire. Being an effect is a subservient, weaker position. You don't really understand my usage. That analogy was to distinguish crucial from generative. I was pointing out how something can be crucial without being generative. Once you agree that something can be crucial and yet not generative, you need to prove that the brain is not merely crucial for the world-perception to be what it is, but that it is generative. You cannot infer the brain as a source at all. If you think you can, then go ahead and try to infer it. I'll be here laughing and watching you fail. Whatever you observed in the movie would not be indicative of the true nature of the movie projector. That was the whole point of my example there. You're praying for a lucky meaningless coincidence that the movie projector will miraculously project its own function onto the screen and not just the movies plugged into it. It's not going to happen. Lets say that in this movie, there were images of many movie theaters, and every time the light was traced back, and there was another movie projector. This would not tell us for certain that the movie we were watching was the result of a movie projector, but we would have a good reason to infer that perhaps our movie is indeed the projection of a movie projector. I fail to see it. Sounds like nonsense. I can't even understand what you're talking about at all. Tracing the light? Movie theaters? I have no idea what it all means. You're losing it. This is not a good analogy in some ways, since we have no rays of light to trace back, but there are pieces of evidence that point to the brain as being the source of consciousness, such as changes to consciousness corresponding to changes in the brain. Right, I knew you'd talk about that. This is why I differentiated crucial-to-meaning from generative. For us the brain needs to be the way it is for the world as we know it to make sense. That doesn't mean the brain actually generates awareness. If you still believe in generative ability of the brain, you pretty much have to assume that ability without any evidence. All the evidence you have is that the brain is crucial to the meaning of what it means to be a human being in this realm. There is an impossible to cross logical chasm between "crucial" and "generative." I've had many dreams where I was shot straight into the brain, in the dream. Instead of permanently dying I simply woke up to find myself safe in bed. The physicalist explanation to this is that the "real" brain is in bed, while the dream brain is "fake". When the fake brain is shot in the dream, the real one is fine. Of course I can extend this line of thinking further. I can say this brain that's involved in typing this post is a fake brain. If you shoot me, my body will collapse from your point of view, but from my point of view, I will wake up safe in bed again. It all makes sense because during dreams we don't know our dream brains are fake. We only realize that after the fact. Personally, I am not really predisposed to feel that consciousness, or awareness arises solely, or even necessarily at all from the brain. If I were to say that it arises from matter, I would give it a much less localized source, and I am not all that inclined to assume matter in the first place. I am just asking for a logically valid argument that supports this predisposition of mine, and apparently, yours. I want something that not only shows that something is possible, but that shows it is far and away the most likely explanation. If it can't be shown logically, I am fine with that, but we should not pretend that we have airtight arguments when we do not. My arguments are as air tight as any on this Earth when it comes to awareness. I don't say this kind of thing often.

Yes... I thoroughly agree with what is being said there. Dependent Origination is a very subtle and profound truth... in fact it is one of the most profound and fundamental teachings of the Buddha that underpins all his other teachings - including and not limited to the four noble truths, the teachings of emptiness, and so on. The thorough realization of dependent origination is what results in liberation. Lastly, even though it is not good to be attached to anything including lineages and teachers, nevertheless, pure lineage is important as I have quoted from the Dalai Lama - and a teacher who is the embodiment of the pure lineage, and who can transmit the dharma. In a sense all teachings are expedients like a raft - for the purpose of abandoning our delusions and attachments and not for the purpose of clinging on (to the raft) - and yet without the raft, we cannot obtain the perfect awakening of Buddhahood. This is not only the case for Vajrayana... even in Zen, the 1st Ch'an Patriarch Bodhidharma says, http://www.abuddhistlibrary.com/Buddhism/C%20-%20Zen/Ancestors/The%20Zen%20Teachings%20of%20Bodhidharma/The%20Zen%20Teachings%20of%20Bodhidharma/THE%20ZEN%20TEACHINGS%20OF%20BODHIDHARMA.htm "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." A true lineage has time-tested techniques, experience, teachings, of countless yogis through thousands of years... therefore, never underestimate the importance of true lineage.

Well, usually they relate as organizing your core believes and realities in more solid ways. A nightmare would simply relate to the fear in a way that it makes the fear stronger and gives it a ground to stand upon, to grow and relate to your reality, so that it may grow in waking life aswell. Either that, or the dream completely takes away the fear. But usually the dreams are not the source of fears and triggers. It is usually a trauma formed in early childhood or some other traumatic event of which the memory is supressed. You can always identify the concept that is feared trough dreams and decide wether or not to alter its emotional effect on you. But yes, dreams do strongly relate to fears and instincts. In our dreams, we find our natural, primitive self. We witness our fear in its true form. Everything in our dreams is, in fact, us... The "fear" was put there by you. You connected the emotion to the idea during its birth, you are its mother. You run away in your dreams from this "fear" and it will always be there, because you cannot avoid that which is inside of you. You start to approach your "fear", in a lucid dream, and you can change your emotional relation to this idea, concept or thing you "fear". But it will not be easy. The moment you face your fear, all the concepts that this anxious emotion accumulated over your lifetime will start to pop in your dream and you'll have to face it all. It can be overwhelming at first, but with practice anything is possible. For example, you begin the dream approaching one spider, trying to hold it in your hands. Suddenly a whole nest of baby spiders pops up and starts frenzy on you. You remain faithful and continue your couragious act by defending yourself from the spiders with fire. Suddenly spiders crawl under your clothes and start to walk around in your mouth... Now in such a situation you either start to chew the spiders and drink some whine along with it, which would certainly deal with the fear once and for all, or you could completely panic, freak out, wake up and scream and jump out of the bed with spidy sensations all over your body.

I believe this is possible aswel. It certainly must be! In lucid dreaming, people sometimes develop positive trauma's, or faith, by doing things in their dreams they do not dare in real life. Singing in front of a crowd of people is an example of forming a positive trauma in a lucid dream. After that kind of lucid dream, you are less fearful of singing in front of crowds if you've already overcome that fear in your dreams, even if you would have forgotten such a dream. So if the "positive trauma's" are possible, surely the negative ones must be there aswell. As for regular dreams? Forgetting the event itself that formed the trauma can be even more potent, wether its positive or negative. It leaves no knowledge of the trauma. Only the impulsive instinct, the invisible scar, in your psychology. In the end, you will see that there is no single reality, but that it changes every moment. So you begin developing trauma's on the fly, you find faith in the void, you start to do impossible things and become a new person every single second. Improving, addapting... Thats lucid dreaming. All dreams are highly unstable and unpredictable. They are merely stress tests, like a sort of meter of your performance and challenges of your believes. Some crazy thing you fear deep within starts to jump out of nowhere, you decide to give a cup of coffee and talk with it, then the coffee begins to melt and you freak out! Now, you failed the test, because you were not flexible and aware enough to notice your fear of the hotness of the coffee. In my dreams I often deal with fears this way, perhaps I have more fears then usual, but love them. Without fear, courage would have no meaning.

Thanks for the replies, everyone! Interesting discussion about timelines there (thanks for the book recommendation Taomeow, I'll try to get my hands on a copy soon.) I've had a lot of dreams that were terrifying, that I would label "nightmares," but taken outside of the emotional context of the experience they seemed to lack anything worth being terrified about. I don't have nightmares much anymore...the last one I had was many months ago. I don't remember much about it, I just remember waking up screaming. I have this feeling that some of my fears and triggers are related to dream experiences. It seems like understanding the connection(s) could be useful and informative.