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You can't take the habits of a few people and generalize them to many others. People can become addicted to everything. While some substances are truly addictive, other things become addictive because of reinforced habits and thought processes of the people going through the process. People can become addicted to alcohol, pornography, sex, eating, not eating, exercising, sleeping, adrenaline, and I'm sure someone can think of a lot more. Somewhere in that list was a few good things- eating and exercise are things that can dramatically HELP the body, but if abused, can lead to great harm. We shouldn't be looking at the target of the addiction (in all cases), rather, we should look at the lifestyle choices which turn something from a hobby or life necessity to a danger. You find what you want to find. If you think that you lose a bunch of energy after ejaculation, then I bet you're going to feel pretty damn out of it when you try to workout 15 minutes later, and swear up and down about how it's the fault of you ejaculating. If you expect to feel frazzled after playing 15 minutes of video games, I bet you'll swear up and down that all the violence and sedentariness is the cause of your scattered chi fields. This is just ridiculous. Once more I will repeat: it would be much more helpful to investigate and remedy the PROCESS by which people become addicted to ANYTHING. Otherwise we're gonna start having 12 steps for video games, eating, and risk taking. It fundamentally goes against the goal of, at least what I've seen, many types of healing methodologies (which includes the Taoist kind), and that is examine the CAUSE, not the SYMPTOMS. Video games are not the CAUSE of addiction- something else is, and some people manifest addiction to video games, and sometimes to other things. If you can't distinguish between reality and fantasy, you've got bigger issues. Video games cannot be faulted for human failures any more than knives can be blamed for murder. So maybe children shouldn't be playing violent video games. Seriously, my parents were pretty strict when it came to enforcing what me and my siblings were playing, and even when I was old enough to play the more violent video games, I wasn't allowed to even bring them in the house because of my younger siblings. Once we got to the point where we could all distinguish between reality and fantasy, then it was no big deal. Once again, it's the same type of argument that has been put forward with violent movies, controversial books, music videos, and the like, "oh, think of the children, what will the children think when they see naked women and people getting decapitated?" Oh, I dunno, why the hell are you letting children watch that stuff in the first place???? Not all of it is meant for children!!! Video games can't be blamed for bad parenting, or the emotional and mental immaturity of whoever plays it (and this can stretch on to adulthood). It's not the video games fault that you decided to play for 6 more hours instead of going to work- that's YOUR fault for making poor decisions! We can also turn on the news and see Muslims killing people. I guess we should do something about that Islam, it's really a problem for the children. Oh and let's not forget the Westboro Baptist church, those damn Christians and their fag-hating ways, what are we going to do about them? Oh, that's right, I saw another black person try to shoot somebody, I guess we should get rid of all those people, they're just a problem. But the real problem is the Mexicans. Half of 'em aren't even registered, and each time I see the news it's another Mexican. And don't even get me started about that guy in Arizona during that shooting. That boy was into something called lucid dreaming- apparently he had delusions of grandeur, and thought he could do whatever he wanted to people in real life because life was nothing more than one big dream! People who practice things like that are not safe, and we should do something about it. I hear those buddhists think that nobody even exists at all, so what's to stop them from going on a rapin' killin' spree???? Something should be done about this! [/sarcasm] You can't pick out the traits of a couple of bad apples, which can be applied to THOUSANDS of people equally, and single them out as the cause for deviant behavior. Instead, once more, you must look at the process which take traits which would otherwise be harmless, and twists them to something harmful. So just curious: how many people think rock music is harmful to "the children"? don't you just wish you could go back to the good ol' days when it was the Beatles who were poisoning our youth?

Yes, I think video games are good for the brain. But not if that's all you do. There has to be balance between playing and working. Between sitting and moving. I think if we punish ourselves mentally for doing things that are enjoyable, it just creates problems. People enjoy playing games...that's good for them, and good for everyone if they are finding ways to be happy. Truly. But at the same time, our happiness may come at the cost of bad things happening throughout the world. It's hard to smile and play when you know that your culture is spending money on useless things, and leaving starving people behind, for instance. All I can do besides taking personal responsibility, is hope and pray that there are people in charge who are making the best decisions throughout the entire world. I don't think we need a wake up call, these days. No horrible things should happen to anyone, to make them see the "errors of their ways". I think we just need a gradual change into a well functioning whole. We need to forgive ourselves and move on. The entertainment industry is too focused on making people good (their version of good). Their schemes create mind numbing false realities. Too many movies are coming out that are just completely heartless and dull. Too much fear is in the air, creating mass hysteria. Maybe they want to get the entertainment industry to the point where it's just so senseless that no one really cares about it anymore? Seems to be working. I envision people coming together and enjoying their time together, doing simple things. It doesn't matter what. No more desiring to drink until brain dead. No more laughing like lunatics. No more seeking temporary fixes for the things we desire deep within our hearts. More courage and peace. More enjoying the moment. I have no idea how to implement these solutions that I dream of...I hope that by saying it here, it will help. I hope that by slowly beginning to live my life this way, that others will somehow benefit from it and follow suit. -clueless.

I have lucid dreams everyday , They are not 100% lucid that's why i don't pay them too much attention . One time I decided to meditate in my dream and i realized something that gave me the chills , The sense of "being" in the dream is the same as the waking state . The sense of "I AM" is the same in both realms (this was my experience).... but, anyway I don't pay dreams to much attention , I look at experiencing and looking forward to a lucid dream as a weakness ,its some type of escape from life , I must make this waking dimension lucid rather than focusing on my dreams . So i no longer look into my dreams , i let them come and i let them go . By practicing meditation and non attachment i began to have lucid dreams daily. (I do not want anybody to follow my ways because I'm not a master yet )

Well, we aren't all gentlemen. Though I'm one. I hope you continue to see positive results, too. I wonder about your comment on dreams. I certainly haven't had something I'd characterize as a nightmare in years. Even when I wake up in fear, it's thrilling. But I still connect with my dreams, and I never have any awareness within them, other than experiencing that dream being. Has it made your dreams more fruitful to be somehow aware during them, as though you are watching rather than experiencing. And, I guess, I don't particularly want to let go of them. More attatching. They are rather fun.

I will give you my thoughts on what time is but I need to give a little background information first so it makes sense. Back in 2005 I think it was I tripped out pretty hard core (no drugs involved) This ended badly so please do not try to recreate my experiment. I had read a study about the brainwaves of Buddhist monks that had accumulated 50+ years and 50,000+ hours of metta meditation experience. Their brainwaves showed off the chart record breaking levels of high amplitude gamma brainwaves around 42hz. Gamma brainwave activity is only seen in brief split second bursts in normal people only then usually when they have an AHA! or Eureka moment or functionalize some new knowledge like how to work a new type of math problem. So I was like wow that is awesome, I am going to attempt to force my brainwaves into the same brainwave patterns using binarual beat brainwave entrainment at 42hz. I meditated daily for 30 minutes using the program and focused on compassion for myself and the entire universe as is described in metta and towards the end of a few weeks massive amounts of insights and new ideas and things were flowing out of me I couldn't write it all down fast enough. Towards the end of it, I reached a point where I couldn't sleep and had to stop using the entrainment program I made. It didn't help though as I already crossed over into trip out land. This was the turning point for me as an atheist with no belief in anything supernatural as other people close to me were also affected even though separated by distances of hundreds of miles. In a dream like state I called my girlfriend during this time on a cellphone and we both remember the conversation, but it never occurred in this reality. We checked the logs on both phones but neither phone showed anything. Other friends and family members were having weird dreams and crazy experiences, so I am certain this rippled out beyond just me and wasn't purely hallucinatory. I still consider the insights I gained to be invaluable but wouldn't recommend anyone else ever try it. Ok so onto my thoughts on what time is. During my experience I experienced time as the speed at which my consciousness moved through 4D space. It was as if past, present and future were apart of a solid object. Imagine that you have a cardboard box, the box that existed yesterday, exists now, and will exist tommorrow are all apart of a solid object. Past future are just points of reference. So the you when you were born, the you of now, and the you of tomorrow are all just as real, exist with the same reality as the present you, and are just as real and tangible. Your consciousness moves through this object which the past you, present you and future you are apart of. Time is the location and speed of movement of your consciousness through this object. I further experienced that moment to moment with each choice and possibility that the consciousness is navigating through a multiverse of infinite possibilities, and each of those worlds are just as real as our own, for each possibility there is a reality to account for it. It went even further with me having different bodies in different realities at the same time, and being like a many armed buddha. Trying to navigate my awareness in and out of different bodies and my awareness being stuck in different ones at the same time and not being able to coordinate in one reality and do something as simple as use the bathroom. Imagine having a leg in one world, an eye in another, and a arm in yet another, and getting different audio and video feeds from different realities. I was trying to have multiple conversations with different versions of the exact same person at the same time and it led to massive confusion. It was a very traumatic experience, beyond any LSD trip I have ever heard about. It was enough to convert me from a staunch atheist.

-I no longer have WILD lust , it is controlled , it is just like a little headache in my mind that i don't need to give in to it , It is a calm type of lust . -I don't have a big urge to be one with a woman , -i no longer get scared in my dreams , I see the frightening dream character with ease . -I feel positive and realize that all thoughts arise from me , including all the negative energies , they come and they go , I don't give in to them , i hope i continue to see positive results . What do you gentlemen think ?

God, I love this question. I think about stuff like this all the time too, LOL. I think Einstein proved time is sort of an illusion. I now think of it in terms of a deck of cards. It 'seems' like life lays out one day at a time, like cards fanned out on green felt. But if you stack the cards up, the events pile up, one upon another. I think this is how prophesies or visions happen; somehow the fanned cards have been placed back in their pile, and the visionary can see all the events piled up on top of each other, not spread out in a fan. Life is but a dream, and we are the Dreamer. Collectively, apparently. This is the concept that a shaman would use as well. When we re-imprint something from the past, (which is apparently an illusion) that's why it works in the present. There really is no past or present. It's all Now. My brain is about to explode, so I'll stop now.

Beautiful quote . Hey my motto is until were on our death bed its never too late! There is always time for a change of paths; just look at my uncle, he went to school to become an engineer, then in his mid forties he decided hey this isn't worth it so he actually went to a medical school in Mexico without knowing a single bit of spanish and came out with a medicine degree and a fluency for a new language, he passed the medical exam in America and has happily been a doctor ever since. I can't even imagine taking anatomy and learning to become a doctor in a foreign language , but he did it! So theres always time to follow your true heart. I'm right with you in being a cowboy, Yippee ! I've actually come to realize that my goal would be to live off the land on my own ranch and give qigong healings on a donation basis, some dream . Shoot for the stars

Ok, a brief attempt to answer your question: Being mindful in any practice that you are doing. The practice matters less than how you do the practice. Regulate the posture, breath, and mind. Look within, listen within, feel within. Maintain the role of observer, maintain awareness, and do not attach to any phenomena or goal. Keeping this advice in mind, practices that are conducive to mind training: Standing Post Qigong - try one posture for an hour; Vipassana meditation - simply sitting and maintaining awareness, watch physical tensions, thought forms, and emotions come and go without attachment; Spontaneous adjustment Qigong - keeping the same principles of Vipassana in mind, Sleep and dream practices - too much to get into here but one of my book suggestions below gets into this topic very well - as do Sifu Jenny's teachings; internal martial arts, practiced with the development of Yi as the focus, not the development of power or skill (though those will likely follow the development of Yi). And really any practice will do, just practice with the idea of developing your mind and exploring the nature of mind and the nature of all perceived reality. Turning every moment of your life into your practice helps tremendously. Direct oral transmission of wisdom teachings really helps - again I recommend Sifu Jenny - her talks cut through me like daggers and helped me cut through the veils of illusion quickly. If you are the reading type, I also would recommend the following four books, they aid the cognitive mind in getting out of its own way: Recommended by Sifu Jenny: "I Am That" Sri Maharaj Nisargadatta Also: "Tibetan Yogas of Sleep and Dream" Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche "Revealing the Tao Te Ching, translation and commentaries" Hu Xuezhi "Secret of the Golden Flower" Thomas Cleary translation Finally I'll copy some of a post to another thread I made recently that may benefit: "Lastly I would like to add to the discussion that these two gems connect very well in practice: Training to free the mind from judgment and the limits of cognitive thought and emotional response, while maintaining awareness, allows for the pre-natal shen to flow, relaxing tension, easing rigidity, releasing blocks, and allowing for the natural, free flow of energy to nourish body, mind, and spirit. This "mind training" for me is the heart of spontaneous qigong. And the practice of forms, particularly for me taiji, helps develop the greater Yi necessary for more effective spontaneous practice, while at the same time helping to open the channels and the physical body to ensure that spontaneous movements and expressions of energy are expressed in a free flowing, graceful, and gentle manner." The whole post can be found in its original context at the bottom of the page here: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/topic/4395-kunlun-and-spontaneous-movement-qigong/page__st__64 I hope this now not so brief attempt gets at your request for practical info. My best to you and everyone in their cultivation. -onelove

I've given up on trying to get people to actually put up, because it never really works, just more and more excuses and rhetoric. I've been working daily to try to develop something that actually works reliably, which would meet the most modest demands of any scientific study. Hundreds of trials with zener cards over the past 5 years, meticulous records kept, no significance. Meticulous journals about the events of my day, thoughts and things like that, compared with various spots of deja vu and synchronicity. Nothing significant. 7 years of daily dream journals (I was recording dreams before I actually got into spirituality, metaphysics, and trying to find out the truth behind "powers"), comparing them to later events in journals, trying to see if there were any messages, and anything else you can imagine that can be associated with dreams. For the past 5 years (since I started at the age of 16 really trying to develop myself and find out the truth about this stuff), I've kept my practices to methods that, from my perspective, I consider to be as complete as possible. These methods and techniques usually address, in some way, shape, or form, the totality of human experience- spirituality, energy work, sex, mental chatter, physical health, etc etc. Not a lot of systems out there which are all around good. Even fewer who actually promise (or even suggest) the development of powers and abilities. I've tried most of them, and most of them either didn't work, or just didn't seem right for me. Of course, seeking out advanced practitioners in those practices to get them to talk about experiences and abilities, and potential for demonstrations, didn't really turn up much besides the same old rhetoric. So I've been a busy little bee, but don't have much to show for it. There's a lot of crap out there which prevents someone from even FINDING a system which isn't a bunch of shit. It's why I'm such an advocate for masters and those of accomplished ability to actually step forward and demonstrate their skills. Because as it stands now, a legitimate teacher can put a flier in the paper, and they would be indistinguishable from a fraud putting out a flier out there. If you'd ask them to demonstrate their abilities, they'd probably tell you a whole bunch of stuff about how it's not about powers, but inner peace, blah blah blah. And guess what? The fraud would too! Except one person would have a legitimate, healthy practice, and the other, at best, would have a practice that doesn't screw you up after years of study. To date I've spent a couple of thousand dollars of personal expenses on gathering material on potentially legitimate practices, which is no small sum when you consider other things a college student has on their plate (tuition, books, rent, etc). I'd estimate about 70%-80% of that was wasted, and turned out to be stuff that was either fluff, or was provided in a better form by other material. I've spent hundreds of hours in personal practice. So it's not like I'm sitting around doing nothing.... oh, wait, to my college age peers, that's exactly what I'm doing! (here's a shout out to Non- I've got friends who think I'm gay or a super introverted virgin because some of them have never seen me even talk with a woman!) And at this point I must inform you about the line that I draw, which is between interesting subjective, personal experiences, which cannot be replicated (at least on demand.... yet), which may pique my interest, and the types of thing which can be replicated on demand in a shared subjective manner (because many people get all hung up on the word "objective", so I'm meaning stuff I can show people that they'd find to be "real"). Despite all the interesting personal stuff, nothing I can actually show for it (like no hands juggling). Also, in part because of my practice and record keeping, and in part because of my formal education, I'm well aware of all the different types of cognitive bias out there, which, if you aren't careful, can really lead you into nothing but a path of self delusion and fantasy. Which is why I am very careful about things that make me "really feel like anything is possible", because, well, as easy as it could be energy surging through my body up to higher centers, it could easily just be chemicals in my brain. And with no way that I've developed to test them in a shared-subjective (objective, for those who don't get hung up on the words) manner, I don't know for sure. So I recognize their presence, record them, and then move on. If I replicate it, yay. If I don't, eh. If I can't verify it, I can't say one way or another. So I don't say anything at all. Thanks for the consideration, freeform I'm not much of a fan of certainty either. It usually just gets in the way. But that doesn't mean you throw caution and rationality to the wind. You can have an open, yet discerning, mind. Letting go of old, non-constructive habits does not mean that your hands are empty to catch whatever sweet sounding rhetoric comes your way.

I can vouche for the spasms and maniacal laughter. Add weird "dream"(were they just dreams?) experiences. I also had "spinal orgasms" fun fun. However stuff --especially the spasms-- stayed with me even after discontinuing the practice. It's not until recently switching to SFQ that my "symptoms" from Kunlun were relinquished. With Kunlun the effects I felt were the need to scream, squirm, cry, and generally thrash about. Unfortunately I didn't feel like scaring the shit out of people and don't know anywhere that I can go and do all that and not be bothered so...eh, just wasn't right. I may actually return to though, later. For now i'ma run the small universe for a bit -Astral

Lol, prolly cause most are just rehashing poetic philosophical quotations to awe the crowd and make a buck. The practicality of true teachings are it's indicator that it IS a true teaching. While it's great to take responsibility to your actions, to say that the conflict in Tibet is little 2 year old Timmy's fault...well...(giggles) GTFO hahahahahaha. While it's true that the collective words, thoughts and deeds help to SHAPE this world, to take personal responsibility for EVERYTHING thats going on...thats just silly. That shooting star was caused by Susie-Q's dream of flying ...(giggles again). Ahhhh where would I be without this forum. I LOVE YOU ALL!!! -Astral

I have an impossible dream: May all human beings open the eyes to the Dharma. I will dedicate the rest of my life working towards this noble goal. Please, I need your help. Blessings,

Where did he dream up that he is a Tibetan Lama and now is a Mongolian Shaman?

I confess to the same silly dream,i.e., winning the lottery, builing a state-of-the-art, off-grid, earth-sheltered permaculture compound and inviting my loved ones to join me. "Music, meditation, martial arts." And the fact is, it's a popular longing for many people. Over the years I've decided that the odds of this kind of luck are not good, but it has forced me to seriously prepare for moving to an already established community that is a mere $4,000 to buy into and uniquely situated for long term survival. Three years and counting. I have to accept that the growing season - April to November - will have longer days, but the winters will offer plenty of extended cultivation time. I've wanted little else for most of my life; now we're actually going for it.

This would be way cool but my husband and teen-aged sons won't be into it! I can't hurt them by up and leaving but it'd be great for younger folks or those without family attachments. Can I come for a visit? I think it would be ideal living...maybe in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western N.C. or Tennessee? I'ts beautiful there, good climate, lots of teeny farms, a zillion hardwood forests, streams and waterfalls. In Tennessee it would be cheaper and less developed than n N.C. I think Tenn. has the cheapest land in America. Me, I'm just looking for a house out of this crammed in sub-division in the heart of Las Vegas. Something out in the desert with an acre and no immediate neighbors. Some place where I can hear the wind whistle. Maybe even a real tree and grass instead of 'desert landscaping' which means gravel! Keep the dream alive!

i have always had a rather silly dream... one that sees the purchase of a large, tropical island off the coastal regions between Malaysia and the Philippines, and set up a (self)sustainable community dedicated to spiritual cultivation and open to anyone who is flexible enough to adapt to communal living, with the added incentive of potentially becoming an awakened soul.. This will give you an idea of the location i have in mind: http://www.google.ie/images?q=sipadan+islands&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1281&bih=602 (my plan to get this off the ground would require winning the European Lottery, with a guaranteed minimum prize of 25 million euro, or roughly 33 mil USD. A few years ago some lucky lady in Ireland, from the same city where i am, won (tax free, mind you) 116 million euro in the same lottery game, with a 2 euro investment on a quick-pick ticket [meaning the computer randomly selects the numbers for the player] I reckon that if she could do it, so could i - so far i have invested quite a bit into the game, but the most i have won was 11 euro. I have not given up.... as yet. ) I did contemplate writing to her shorty after her windfall to explain my lofty yet noble intentions and to ask if she would be willing to 'support' such a compassionate ideal with a small loan of perhaps 10 million or so, but after a few days of hard thinking, decided that she would probably reject the idea of parting with some of her gains. So if any bums here were to come into a lucky win (B I G one, okay?) please, PUHLEAZE help donate towards this good cause. In the meantime, i really send my very best wishes to you, MPG, and pray that your aspirations are fulfilled. I think its a darn good thing to cherish such a grand notion. Even if you do not succeed in this life, as long as you have the motivation, one of these days, it will happen.

I had a powerful dream not that long ago where Glenn was present, just plain weird that he had hair. Really need to get back to basics. I bought the first Hoshin Earth Techniques and Chi Kung level 1 dvds and never enrolled in the program. I will put these at the top of my list. I need to stop looking for the ultimate out there and dig deeper inside myself I have way more material and tools than I could ever master. I just get off on finding new stuff. Namaste, Robert Oh... and if you ever have a chance to buy Glenn's memorial book Santiago's entry is worth the price of admission.

The number thing is simply getting a glimpse of a deeper level of consciousness, a look into the computer program as its running, if you will. Your bio-computer mind is relational, so when you look at something, theres all these relations and permutations taking place deep within, although you dont get that with your conscious mind or even what is called the unconscious mind. False awakening, lucid dreaming. The figures were likely manifestations of your dream mind, not people watching you look at numbers. Feeling of paralysis, usual stuff when you enter these deeper states. If you do lots of stillness meditations before you go to sleep, perhaps you can get to similar states again.

One night, when I was 15, I woke up and looked at my clock, it read 2:30. I fell back asleep, but woke up yet again, realizing I could only open my eyes; my whole body was unable to move. Hundreds of numbers and symbols begin to flash before me, on brownish, tan colored backdrop, non of it i could quite understand. I heard a couple voices, shifted my eyes to the right and saw two or three shadowed figures next to me. I seemed as though they didn't realize I was somewhat conscious, so i lay there still mesmerized by the numbers and symbols. I looked towards my clock and saw it was still 2:30, and finally fell back asleep. I'm not sure if it was just a dream, or if what i saw was true, but I woke up this morning thinking about it, and am very curious. If anyone here has knowledge on the subject, I would greatly appreciate it.

I hope they get Dead Island right, it looks like an excellent game, along with "I am Alive" Ever played Hard Rain? {no spoilers as I only recently got my PS3 ) There are 2 events in my life I would like to change. One isn't really that important, I would have liked to finished honors in psychology as I was accepted into the course twice. But the other is a really weird event that felt very much like a dream where I had the chance to help someone, but I'm certain I ended up destroying their faith in humanity. I hate myself for that. I even paused snd wanted to do the right thing, but thought "I will never get another opportunity and I could regret that for the rest of my life" well I chose poorly and got the lifelong regret anyhow but that's just part of me now....... (my cat just came over and cuddled me, thanks Claw ) So, as I play a lot of computer games, I've often wished for a "reset button" but life just doesn't work like that. BTW this is probably "on topic" for a TTB discussion.

Hey, peepol. Got a question in my mind and would like to get a good perspective from someone else. Have you ever heard the business advice for city people of "You should never dine alone."? That you should always break bread with someone when you really want to get to know them and bond with them. The reason is, appart from sex, dining is the only experience where you use all of your senses. You taste the food, you smell and see the food, you hear the music, see the restaurant and the person, you hear the conversation, you feel the texture of the food, knife, fork, table. It stimulates the senses, creating a more rich experience. Where awareness becomes rich, life becomes rich, you feel more in control. Why am I sharing this with you? Because some people don't have all these stimuli around them, which makes it hard to create rich experiences and become more aware. Its like this: when you lie in bed and you close your eyes, the visual stimuli will be reduced to almost nothing. Becoming aware on what you see becomes hard, becoming aware of what you feel when not moving a muscle becomes hard aswell, unless you got spiders crawling under your bed sheets. This is how we loose awareness, naturally, so that your body may become paralized without notice and go in the sleep cycles of healing the body and some dreaming along the way. The dream generating process itself, however, is a very rich experience. The senses can be very stimulated by the dream generating process. Attaining awareness in a dream is a wonderful experience. When you accidentally wake up right in the middle of a dream and don't move a muscle so that the dream begins again. This is called a wake initiated dream. You can also become aware that you are dreaming within the dream itself. This experience becomes a lucid dream aswell. This is one of the most vivid and most rich experiences to be had, because literally every sense is intensified to a 120% of the usual waking experience, since the stimuli come from the dream generating impulses within your own brain. Most people never knew this, because they don't recall dreams or lucid dreams that well... When you test it within a lucid dream and remember to answer the question of "Do my senses (taste, smell, sight, feeling) feel more intense and vivid in the dream then the waking world?" you will get the inevitable answer of "yes", to be remembered even after you wake up. So, my question: How do we make the senses more receptive to stimuli so that we may live more rich and vivid lifes?

Please don't take offence but my impression is that you live in a chinese dream. First of all you don't have a good teacher. Cause if you had a good teacher you wouldn't ask things like this on a forum. Also your teacher doesn't have anything that you want. You might want to develop powers but your teachers doesn't have them, however he has stories and you believe them and that's how you are able to continue your practice. Now the fact that you have a consistent practice is an accomplishment in itself, but you don't see it as such because you expect something different. So now you finally started asking yourself some real questions like (WTF am I doing? or WTF do I really want?) And you have 2 options: 1 you either wake up and stop wasting your time or 2 you can continue your dream or even borrow somebody else's dream from TTB - there are a lot of "dreamers" and teachers around here that are just as valuable as yours. And soon you'll find yourself talking about sensasions, 3rd eyes and heat in the belly and amazing orgasms over large distances.

Having left my body numerous times in astral travel experiences...I can tell you personally that there is life beyond our wildest imaginations on many planes of existence... brilliant, wonderful and incredibly beautiful. But me telling you that is bunk until you have have had it happen to you. Anyone can learn to leave their body and float into the astral where thoughts manifest immediately wherever we wish to do or go. I have never 'tried' to do this astral travelling thing-it has always happened to me spontaneously. Sometimes I can go a year before it happens again. And it happens when I am the most twisted up in thoughts of WTF are we here for anyway!!! Then I am given a solace, a beautiful waking dream, a clue to the multiplicity of existence and the enormity of experience. But who freakin' cares about my dreams...right? O.K. so for me, I get exactly like you... repeatedly. It's a pattern in spiritually minded people to get very connected to source, only then to fade a bit, then to doubt everything and everybody,(which I feel is very healthy but causes me extreme anxiety,) then to get angry about the whole dang thing cuz nobody seems to know and the ones that pretend to are just plain annoying know-it-alls...dang them too! I feel lost, confused and emotional. I wonder why the heck isn't the whole world wondering why Were Are Here instead of going about their mundane lives! I am angry at whoever created this game we are playing and why can't whoever this creator is come into my living room and give me some freakin' answers if their so powerful. Then I say something like this, "Whoever or whatever you are...give me the willingness to be willing to understand Something!!!" Then some synchronistic thing happens very subtly I tell you. Like the morning I screamed the willingness thing to the universe...went to work as usual and for some reason tuned into the song playing in the store by The Red Hots, "The more I learn, the less I know, the more I got to let it go..He Oh...Whoa... That rocketed me into Tao...into letting go. Why the body, why life, why animals? Who knows? I don't. I don't need to. Trying to understand makes me crazy. It is fathomless. If you ask people the meaning of life...you will get a million dfferent answers, some will be quite clever and profound but in all honesty no one really knows. If it makes me crazy...why chase it? Let it go...then I have the chance of learning something. Which to me means stop trying so hard. Allow it to happen. Just enjoy it. Be true to your inner nature. Don't get too tangled up in other people's created spiritual paths...follow what seems true to you. I personally don't care for Buddhism because I don't like the word...'Dharma' and chanting things in some foreign tongue and reading boring scriptures and thinking life is suffering. I commend the followers of Buhddism, (always had trouble spelling that word) because I feel it is a very beautiful way to live but I don't have or want that type of structure and discipline in my life. I also don't want to chase enlightenment. Been there, done that. Talk about ego problems. Sure maybe that's shallow but so what? I'd rather have fun with life. and practice wu-wei and be surprised and delighted with the beautiful things and the subtleties. I don't have to be all good and compassionate but by following the way I'm in harmony with myself, the world and others.

Robert Bruce does also suggest meditation, especially in his Astral Projection material. I never got very far with Bruce's system, because I never practiced it diligently. However, I do think his tactile imaging is a GREAT approach to energy work. I did see some results from that the few times I practiced it. As a long time member of his forums, I have read a number of testimonials from people who've had success using his methods. There's no one method that works for everyone...there's no "ultimate" technique that stands over and above every other one. Different people have different needs, and some people's needs seem to be quite adequately met by Robert Bruce's techniques. I'm not happy with his new marketing scheme either...but it may just be a case that he feels it's the only way to achieve his dream of building a physical research institute. That takes a lot of money, and he's going to need to get it somehow.