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more subtle awareness is a good thing ; ). nice idea on this thread. i will try and get out and about soon. what are your ideas about friends that had the same dream on the same night? or when someone was awakened in the middle of the night by a voice and then the next morning they met the person who matched the voice?

A charm hung off the Chain: Alright, Taomeow, what is it that you saw, heard, smelled in that crazy dream? In that crazy dream, an alien jellyfish floated in the sky.* (*True story. I pay attention to my dreams because I don't get any mundane ones. It's either a vision, or nothing. So -- an alien jellyfish, lights, colors, the whole nine yards of realistic dream-vision, and a messenger. When I woke up, I punched in "jellyfish UFO dream" in the search engine and got some 350,000 hits. Including one that did make the news at one point -- in Russia, in the 70s... not the dream of course that made the news, the actual alien jellyfish in the sky! A whole city witnessed it... I don't know if the article is available in English, or if I'll be lucky to find it among those hits once again, but I might try...)

My link My link This looks like a really cool idea. Supposedly it's planned to be finished in 2020. It's funny I saw this, because growing up I would sometimes day dream the city of the future would look like this (except with flying cars dammit! LOL:) What do you guys think?

Thank you for that quote, I found it timely. I wouldn't trust Fr(e)aud as far as I could throw him, nor his daughter, and i sometimes i wonder about Buddhists too. When I wonder about Buddhists, something inside me is scared, scared of what would happen if I stood up and said that I very much doubt their teachings are ultimately in people's best interests. Scared like a very small child would be if she stood up to her father or mother and expressed concern about something not being right. She would be punished for it. So buddhism seems to promote the same fear of authority in me that I experienced long ago. A resonance. Buddhism would say (as far as I know about the teachings) that this fear is stemming from my ego's desire to continue to exist and should be eliminated. If I take your wording. "Something in me desires to continue to exist" well, that clears that problem up pretty nicely :-) Thanks! And if I take it on the other side, Buddhism would teach me that I should kill the thing in me that desires to continue to exist. Huh, like I said, something's wrong there. Anyhoo, besides that, buddhism is a fire practice. And what does fire do? Burns up wood. I'm a water person and I promote the good of wood Empty cup Edited to add: Blowing the Whistle, Chpt. 1: The Hidden Agenda of Mantra Meditation This is the first chapter in an evolving book, “Blowing the Whistle on Enlightenment: Confessions of a New Age Heretic,” by Bronte Baxter What I expected to see when I came back to the Fairfield scene after 20 years away from Transcendental Meditation was a group of mainstay meditators true-blue to Maharishi and a group of robust dissenters, whose minds questioned everything they learned from their guru days. Instead, I found the true-blue meditators, but not the kind of dissenters I anticipated. I encountered people who had left the TM movement but hadn’t substantially changed their belief system. This latter group had changed in the way that people change hats, or redecorate their homes, leaving unaltered the structure underneath. The dissenters had splintered into a myriad of Eastern or Eastern-related philosophies: Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie and Andrew Cohen were popular, and Neo-Advaitin gurus had rallied many behind their minimalist philosophy. “Saints” like Ammachi visit Fairfield regularly, dispensing dharshan and picking up new recruits. Across town, small groups meet in “satsangs” to discuss their growing enlightenment or to chant songs to the gods. Heated debate is common between adherents of competing gurus, and people grow vitriolic over whether Maharishi has slept with young women or not. There is a smattering of hedonists and atheists, but ex-TMers in the Fairfield circuit mostly show up with an intact Vedic worldview. That worldview is a lens through which they perceive and measure all gurus and reality itself. I find this disturbing. It’s rather like people who’ve been swindled by a con man, despising him for how they were treated while they continue to invest money in the enterprise he sold them on. Why doesn’t the skepticism extend beyond the procurer, to that which he procured for? And what did Maharishi procure for? The Vedic gods. He sold us a meaningless word that was supposed to guide our minds to transcend superficial consciousness. Later we learned those meaningless words, our mantras, were names of deities. He taught us advanced techniques with the Sanskrit word “namah” at their core: “I bow down.” Mantra meditation is a form of paying worship to those who call themselves gods. When you scrape away all the fancy and misleading explanations – like “meaningless sounds” and “impulses of creative intelligence,” what you get very simply is people with their eyes closed bowing down in their minds to an assigned Hindu deity. Of course we can explain this away using TM explanations, much like the townsfolk explained away the emperor’s nakedness using the reasoning they were fed by the tricksters who paraded him through the town. But the emperor has no clothes. Mantras worship the gods. “Namah” means “bow down.” It’s right there on the surface for anyone to see if we toss out the excuses we were handed and look at the situation with even a shred of unbiased observation. Who are these gods, that we’re so willing to explain away as “impulses of our own consciousness”? The same gods have appeared in other religions and cultures, even in societies that had no contact with each other. They go by different names, but the entities are the same. In Hinduism, you have Indra, god of thunder, ruler of the gods, married to Indrani, queen of the gods, known for her jealousy. In Greek mythology, you have Zeus, god of thunder, ruler of the gods, married to Hera, queen of the gods, known for her jealousy. One-to-one correspondence like this is common. The gods are a global phenomenon, with their imprints on every society. Historically, the gods exacted worship and sacrifice – blood sacrifice commonly, including the murder of humans. While Hinduism has a history of human sacrifice, it has been reduced today to worship of Kali, the goddess with her bloody tongue hanging out, whose body is adorned with a necklace of bleeding, decapitated human heads. Or Shiva, adorned with serpents, who dances on graves. Or Vishnu, whom Arjuna perceived in His cosmic form with pieces of devoured victims’ flesh sticking between his teeth. Gods feed on the energy of suffering, the fearful energy of the victim. In one South American sacrificial ritual, a bull has his throat slit, as slowly as possible. The reasoning given is that the gods cherish “live blood” as the blood with the greatest energy, so the animal must be kept alive while the blood drips from its body. In other words, the greater the fear and suffering of the sacrificial beast, the greater is the pleasure of the gods. The Shrimad-Bhagavatum, among other scriptures, explains the antipathy of the gods for human enlightenment. According to the Vedas and the mythology of other cultures, the gods feel threatened by the human race, afraid mankind might grow as powerful as they. The gods want humans to remain ignorant and “inferior” because if man realized his intrinsic nature as consciousness, he would no longer be subject to deva control. The devas wish us to believe, and have told us throughout scripture, that their divine hands manipulate and guide the laws of nature – creation itself. For this reason we should worship them, chant to them, send them our soma (subtle energy generated in meditation). Because our energy feeds the gods and is needed by them to stay strong and in control of this material dimension. And they wish us to believe that their control is in our best interest. Who would make the rains come or the sun shine if the gods are rightful stewards of those things and we humans didn’t support them? All creation would crumble without the blessing of the gods. That, scriptures tell us, is why we should worship, which is equivalent to paying an energy-tithe. It’s the same reasoning human warlords use against the people they dominate: pay your tax, because you need us; we will protect you. Don’t pay the tax, and we will punish you. The gods threaten to punish, even destroy mankind if he doesn’t bend before their yoke and serve them. They fulfilled that threat in the Great Flood (a story which appears in disparate cultures) and in other visitations of divine vengeance recorded in countless tales throughout cultural history. But really, who are these characters? And do they really exist? The modern mind relegates “gods” to the overactive imaginations of pre-civilized peoples, and in so doing, dismisses the concept. But actually, deities appear in highly civilized early societies, including Sumeria, Babylon, Greece and Egypt. Isn’t it ethnocentric of us to suggest that civilizations capable of constructing the pyramids or accurately charting the course of the stars for centuries into the future, should be dismissed as childlike and ignorant when they write of their experiences with other-worldly beings? Archeologist Zechariah Sitchen, in his voluminous tomes, details the countless references in ancient writings and artifacts to beings who visited this world in fiery flying ships, who taught mankind, interbred with humans, and set up a government of divine-right kingship. Visiting beings who called themselves gods. Kings were considered “sons of the gods,” connected to the deities by bloodline, hence their right to rule. In the Mahabharata, Arjuna’s mother was said to conceive her numerous sons by intercourse with several different deities. The first chapter of Genesis speaks of the Nefelim, a giant race that interbred with early humans. In Egypt, the pharaohs were literally “sons of the gods.” We find stories of gods interbreeding with humans to create a kingly line in Zulu shamanism and in South American Indian lore. Time and again, in culture after culture, the gods appear doing the same things, demanding the same things. Even Christianity springs from a pantheistic tradition: Jehovah was one god among many for the Hebrews. A self-righteous fellow fond of war and genocide, he had to compete with the other local gods for the Hebrews’allegiance. Today, having beat out the competition, revered as “God” by his followers, Jehovah garners the worship not just of Jews but Protestants and Catholics as well. How foolish and arrogant is it to laugh off the existence of a race of beings who appear in the annals of every civilization? I was amazed to see ex-TMers, who spent years feeding soma to devas through chants and mantras, whose walls are still plastered with pictures of Lakshmi, Kali and Shiva, dismiss with a toss of their head the idea that gods might exist as real persons. Who, in truth, are the gods, and what do they want from us? Do “deities” sit at the controls of the universe, managing the laws of nature? Beings with such awesome power that our lives are in their hands? Entities we must never challenge at the risk of losing all we hold dear? I suggest, if the gods are innately as powerful as they purport to be, they would not need human worship to survive. They would be self-sufficient, drawing on the Infinite within them for every need. Instead, they tell mankind to bow down and pay tithe, and threaten in the scriptures to destroy us if we don’t. What kind of power is it, that can’t exist without feeding? It sounds more like psychic enslavement to me. Convince the people whose world you contrive to control that they are powerless without you, that the rains won’t come and the sun will go dark if they don’t please you. Drink their soma, the positive energy of worship, and drink their negative energy, too, when you can incite it and siphon it off. Feed yourself on human astral energy, whatever the quality, and you and your race can control human life as long as the system remains intact. Planetary farming. If anyone starts to wake up a little, divert their efforts at spiritual independence by luring them into mantra meditation. Consider this quote by the currently popular guru, Ramana Maharshi: “Repetition aloud of His name is better than praise. Better still is its faint murmur. But the best is repetition within the mind — and that is meditation. Better than such broken thought is its steady and continuous flow like the flow of oil or of a perennial stream.” Ramana Maharshi’s statement represents mantra meditation’s goal: a state where the mind is timelessly identified with surrender to the name of one’s god – identical with the god himself. The mind itself has become self-negation at the feet of the deity. Empty of original thought and dynamic desire, the “liberated” person’s ego is dissolved: the very thing that made him or her human. All that is left is a mind-body shell, a meat-robot, that moves through life as a surrendered instrument of some greater will. I suggest the greater will is not that of the Infinite. It is the will of the god who has taken the place of one’s mind. Does this sound like possession? It surely appears to be. Think of all the gurus you’ve met with their palpable shakti. An energy so real no one who experiences it can deny it. What is that light in their eye, a light beyond this world? Whose is that power they touch you with, embrace you with? Is it the shakti of Brahman, the light of pure consciousness? Or is it the power of Kali or one of her friends? Gurus often say they are the embodiment of Shiva, Kali, or some other god. Why do we not take them at their word? I would like to suggest that mantra meditation turns humans into zombies who serve the agenda of the gods. That agenda is procurement of more humans and more human energy. This explains the common phenomenon of proselytizing by the religious, including fundamentalist Christians, TMers, and disciples of other varieties. Servants of “God” or the gods feel a driving need to bring in more recruits. The god that moves through them fills them with this zeal, as a hungry stomach fills the mind with an overwhelming need to procure dinner. There are no gods, in the sense the gods would have us think of them. No one has been designated by the Infinite to control creation and administer the laws of nature. The sun shines by itself as an entity with its own consciousness. The rain and wind don’t need a god to direct them; they move where they will in harmony with their fellow elements. All things are children of the Infinite, spirits or egos in their own unique right, expressing in physical form and also in astral dimensions. The gods are spirits/egos like everybody else. Most of the time they dwell on astral planes, which is why human senses normally don’t perceive them. According to ancient records, they have visited the earth in ages past in physical forms of their own, as entities from the stars. They are no more divine than a ghost, no more cosmic than you or I, and no more entitled or intended to run the universe than any other gang of warlords might be. Somehow they’ve gained control of this planet, and have held that control at least since the beginning of recorded human history. But that is no reason to think the Infinite wants it that way, or that life needs to continue that way. True empowerment is not the Indian concept of enlightenment. It is knowing what we are and living from there. We are spirit: individual and eternal, moving within the consciousness of That which created, sustains and pervades all life. Knowing this is not difficult. It only requires putting attention on that which is beneath the content of thought. Acting from this place of empowerment is natural: we can ordain reality from that quantum level. Everyone can do it. Everyone is equally powerful moving and creating in the depths of their own consciousness. Unfortunately, people rarely do that, though, as the mass hypnosis that governs human life convinces us that karma, fate or the will of God runs the world, that we as individuals have little direct control over what happens to us. The gods are the purveyors of this global hypnosis. It serves their agenda of control. True liberation does not mean rising above the illusion of ourselves as egos. It means rising above the illusion that as egos we are cut off from the powerhouse of creation. That as individuals we are something less than pure, eternal, powerful spirits – in our own right, very much gods. Gods with a global case of amnesia. The “enlightened” have surrendered their personhood to the deities who control their meditations. Their bliss is the euphoric stupor which their appeased deities grant them as reward. The words, the thoughts, the desires of the enlightened are not their own any longer, but those of their controlling god. The word “zombie” is appropriate because of its meaning as the walking dead. But all is not lost for such people. No one can keep the human soul enslaved against its will. An act of personal empowerment, of willfully recalling one’s ego, must surely destroy enslavement by any possessing entity. One can recall surrendered pieces of one’s being as a magnet can recall iron filings. Native American traditions speak of our ability to do just this, calling back the parts of our lost personhood. When people cease to surrender their energy and spirit to those who call themselves gods, the deceivers will lose their power over this dimension. They will shrink back to “normal size,” entities responsible for themselves like everybody else. Our world will know a freedom, creativity, harmony and joy it has never demonstrated in its history, because interdimensional manipulation will cease. The suffering on this planet, god-inspired and god-feeding, will dwindle and disappear. The need to kill to eat will no longer exist. Sickness, aging and death will have no substructure. Each wonderful created being – animal, human or astral – will thrive on the power of the Infinite source within itself, and victim/tyrant relationships, which ran the planet for eons, will fade into thin air. Living will become what surely the Infinite intended in Its original vision for the universe: a symphony of minds, not a competition; a tapestry of spirits, not a hierarchy; a garden of consciousness, not a painful struggle. When I hear “the enlightened” excuse all the atrocities of this world by saying that in their exalted perception, everything is “perfect” just as it is, I hear “fraud.” The God I perceive in the depths of my being is not a God who is content with fathers raping infants, animals being ripped apart alive, or human sorrow so great only suicide can quell it. This kind of world is not perfect, and anyone who sees it as such has something seriously wrong with them. If the gods were really beneficent and powerful, they would not operate a world that runs like this. When their mouthpieces and procurers tell us this world is just as it should be – that shows you the true nature of the gods. These beings are not our friends, though surely, if there are scoundrels in astral dimensions, there must be virtuous entities there as well. Perhaps the ones who don’t seek lordship over this planet are watching to see if humans take back control of our world or continue to surrender it, piece by piece, to the cosmic band of thugs who want to own it. Will we continue surrendering our governments, media, schools, workplaces, taxes and spirituality to those who would lead us farther away from personal freedom and self-actualization, closer to a world without responsibility, originality or joy? Such a world is the goal of the gods, because it’s more controllable. Their lackeys in the political arena (many – George Bush, for instance – are genetically linked to European royal families and the god-engendered lines of divine-right kings) call this future society the New World Order. Centralized control, humans functioning on autopilot. The death of free will, passion, desire and originality – sounds a lot like enlightenment, doesn’t it. The surrender of the individual to the collective. Control of the collective by divine-right rulers, and control of those rulers by the cosmic band of thugs themselves. The rise of the great Fourth Reich. Who were the mystical entities Hitler conversed with and took guidance from? Why was group meditation a part of Nazi protocol? Why were many TM/ New Age slogans (“established in Being, perform action,” for instance) also slogans of the Third Reich? Total control and spiritual domination. The destruction of everything that makes life worth living. Creation imploding on itself, like a snake swallowing its tail. That actually is a symbol found in mystery schools, which were controlled by the gods. It’s time to give up beads and mantras, chanting and bowing down to dirty feet. It’s time to fire the gurus, stand up and be the powerful, sublime individuals we are. It’s time to question the dogmas we swallowed whole from Vedic tradition and take a closer look at what is happening when we meditate. It’s time to reclaim our birthright, our divinity and this Earth. Only we can do it, as the conscious beings we are. As Alice in Wonderland said, turning and facing the Red Queen’s army that was hot on her heels, “Pooh! You’re nothing but a pack of old cards.” That army toppled, turning into a heap of playing cards the moment the girl broke through her bad dream. Our controllers too will topple, and dragons will turn into geckos. It’s time to give up the cosmic illusion and de-hypnotize. Bronte Baxter © Bronte Baxter 2008 from http://brontebaxter.wordpress.com/mantra-meditation-reveals-a-hidden-agenda-are-the-gods-alive-and-well-and-working-towards-the-new-world-order/

Herbert Benson says I should meditate! ;P How do I meditate? When I meditate, for example on a word, I try to visualize that word in front of me and focus on the pronouncing sound of that word. I hear it and see the letters, over and over again, untill I loose awareness over my relaxed body. Any other thoughts in my mind, I let go and focus back on my word. Another way is, let the thoughts run trough my mind, stay aware of all my senses and any input that is received. Even when the dream process begins, I allow my thoughts to enhance that without intervering, simply staying aware of the whole process my mind is going trough, even the thoughts. The first method, I don't really understand. Never found clear instructions about that one. You can do it trough all sorts of ways, like yoga, religious prayer, imagining sounds and focusing on that. Even jogging is a meditation on the repeating movement of your feet? Herbert Benson said something about a relaxation response. No idea what that is. Also, do I focus on the letters of the word, do I focus on the thought behind the word, do I focus on the sound of that word, do I focus on the smell of that word, do I focus on the taste of that word? I don't get it all. How does it feel after you have meditated right? Do you feel without much thought, do you still have acces to that creative self? Are you more aware, less distracted by stress, less distracted by the petty details of your life? Less distracted by your lofty aspirations?

It is. That's the kind of sensitivity that we need to be aware of and develop. Still, I find I don't fully 'know' my mind unless I put ink to paper. The act of writing makes me clearer on an issue. Michael Speaking of this, Robert Bruce has a program on Dream Work going on an open program going on, he has a intro to it in the bums, Introduction pages.

My solution to the problem was to use a digital voice recorder. That way, I could quickly get whatever it is down, without having to think too much about structure, presentation or handwriting. Downside, of course, is that I never get back to those old journals, but then, I never get back to my earlier written journals, either. You could record the dream immediately, and then listen back to it, say, while driving to work. That way, the dream has been 1. recorded, and 2. listened to, so it's already more in your system (and if you really want to be able to find an entry again, you can probably star it, on your computer).

I think the usefulness of a journal comes from the mindfulness and examination required to write one, more so that the "written result" i.e. the difference between just thinking "that was a cool dream I should write that down" and the act of consciously recalling/remembering, writing down, and then reflecting on the dream. As devoid said It sort of seems to make you more "involved" in the dream I tend to use journals to work through stuff, I think it helps that I enjoy typing. Sometimes I type up pages of stuff only to feel .... resolved ? and just delete the entire thing. Other times I don't feel like writing much and am happy just to contemplate. The journals rarely make any "sense" to me when I read them latter either I even have some old hand written dream journals that are just unreadable from when I use to write stuff at night by moonlight. I have bad handwriting and can't spell so eventually I got tired of trying to work out what I wrote and just started typing them

I sure believe you when you say journal-ing can take a long time, and the main reason I stopped. Each method has its benefits and drawbacks; direct ones, if they work for you, can be fairly reliable, but at the expense of being rested. For that reason I use it very sparingly. The positive thing I believe is dreams and lucid dream skills should naturally deepen as we continue whatever personal discipline or sadhana we do, not as another thing to grasp or achieve, but as something mirroring the general change of our whole self.

I have spoken to some Taoists who believe that their lives (according to Lao Tzu) are supposed to be very simple and predictable. Live within a small prescribed radius, and no harm will come to you. I don't see it that way at all. How are we to grow, if we are not willing to "expand"? If we are not willing to fall in love, get our hearts broken, chase after a dream, audition for the role, go after the job, face the fear? And it's not like these things go away, when we turn our backs on them; we just become less prepared for when they do happen. What good is all the centering in the world, if we don't ride on that practice, toward living a full and engaged life? Being a wise enlightened man in a cave interests me not at all; that's just "being right". What I find powerful and relevant is engaging with my own limitations, expanding by paying attention to where I make my life small. There's so much to the world! And it never ends! I can accept where am I now, but I cannot stop there. What better purpose for my life, then to live it fully, with sincerity, heart, and a sense of humor?

I usually try to eat nearly all organic food. I drink lots of tea and yerba mate. I use almond milk and am currently considering switching to goats cheese because I'm a capricorn. The foods i eat are cooked lightly so they still have life energy left in them. I practice yoga, and qigong, daily. As susan said it all becomes natural movement. Its more fun to move your hands in circles when you can see and feel the energy that your playing with. In the back of my mind m always doing qigong breathing. Its better to use a small amount of effort doing it right than an immense amount doing it wrong. I like to go outside and watch animals, celestial bodies, trees, and other natural processes. Connect to the gaian mind. This is when i work on my earth chakras (see susans post). I like to go to the chiropractor and get massages. I use hemp seed based massage oil on my body to give my skin lots of good energy. I use a neti pot to keep my sinuses clear. I listen to music and draw lot. Children seem to like me since my awakening so i play with them sometimes. I practice dream yoga. I pray at my alter. I try to become involved in meaningful relationships. Im currently experimenting with a freelove lifestyle. Intuition takes me everywhere. All of these things have helped me get my kundalini running smoothly. They could certainly help most people who wish to have a smoother awakening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUdG4RiO268 A cloud of eiderdown draws around me Softening the sound Sleepy time when I lie with my love by my side And she's breathing low, and the candle dies When night comes down you lock the door The book falls to the floor As darkness falls and waves roll by The seasons change, the wind is warm Now wakes the owl, now sleeps the swan Behold a dream, the dream is gone Green fields, a cold rain is falling in a golden dawn And deep beneath the ground the early morning sounds And I go down Sleepy time when I lie with my love by my side And she's breathing low And I rise like a bird, In the haze when the first rays touch the sky And the night winds die.

Well as far as dream journals go, they help you learn to recognize patterns in your dreams, the idea being that, next time you're in a dream and you recognize a pattern, you become lucid. Yeah, except in the middle of the school semester/work days, I don't really have the luxury to do direct induction techniques. I gotta sleep when I gotta sleep, that's why I took up the practice of lucid techniques that occur while already asleep. Well what usually would happen is that I'd write my dream down as the day progressed. If I had a class/work early in the morning, I wouldn't even start on the dream entry until midway, or at the end, of the day. Sometimes I'd forget then remember, sometimes I'd forget completely, and sometimes I'd remember completely. Of course, with practice, your memory improves, I've found. So the recollection isn't the problem- it's that writing in this journal became, literally, an all day occurrence, and if I was busy, I might not have even gotten halfway through by the time I had to go to sleep again! x.x I dunno. It's just gotten to be a drag. There are some benefits to it. But.... I dunno.

keeping a dream journal indeed takes up (imo wastes) a lot of time, and for lucid dreaming purposes is not really necessary if you use direct lucid dream induction methods, if the lucid dreams have high lucidity, and if you wake right after they have been extended to their limit. I imagine it is also possible to set your intention on remembering all the dreams you've had during the night in the morning while you prepare in the morning, and then once again later on in the day (which can be quite hard to do and a good exercise at that). This should not take very long at all, and no effort (it's quite natural to visualize something in memory) in comparison to writing them down, and serves to reinforce them in memory, even long term if they were particularly intense. During the early part of the day one could also be open to allowing various random thoughts to see if they trigger dream memories, and again this would happen naturally on its own and can be fun when it happens. Writing dreams down won't catch all the dreams at night anyways unless you deliberately wake up after each dream to do so, in which case you might not be getting full rest.

So for a while I've been keeping a practice journal. It's mostly a dream journal, which I've used for lucid dreaming purposes. Started a couple years ago and everyone said to use one. Kept up the habit. Added some practice musings, reflections on subjects or new points I make, insights that I find of value, quotes from TTB (honestly!) and things like that. For lucid dreaming, I suppose it's been fairly helpful. But recently it's gotten a bit of a drag to keep updated (dream entries, for example, take up to an hour and a half to write in the detail that a good entry would require, and I just don't have the time to do that, so I usually fall behind or just forget them). This happened the other day- I was highly focused, and reflecting on a particular problem/issue. It was a big mental block. I didn't know where to go. Thought intensely about it for about 20 minutes. Then suddenly this thought, an idea, a resolution, popped into my head. It took me 2-3 seconds to appraise it and decide to try and apply it then and there. Then, the last thought I had, which happened a split second later was, "if this works, I can put it in my journal." BAM. Blank mind. Totally empty. Then I was like, holy cow, this works, now I can write it in my journal..... wait, what did I do? What was I even thinking about? I honestly couldn't remember anything past a certain point. Like, I could remember my train of thoughts, the problems I was kicking around, and in general, about 18 of the last 20 minutes. But I just couldn't do it. I wracked my brain for probably 45 minutes trying to figure out what I did. A lot more physical and mental stress than I got from the first problem, before just giving up and saying "forget it". It just seems like many insights go that way for me- I do something, then move on. I've also gone back and reviewed some of my past entries. The dreams are boring, and the problems seem trite. It's like..... I don't even care. The problems aren't even applicable. Totally different person. I guess part of that is the point, to see how you've changed. But it's like, okay, I'm not the person I am now who I was.... okay, moving on. Occasionally I wonder how maybe my insights could be helpful to other people. But 1) if I can't remember what they are, what good are they to someone else? 2) my problems, and solutions, are pretty unique to my particular experiences, so any parallels people draw would be in general concepts anyway. So I'm thinking, bleh. I don't really feel like keeping this up. It just seems.... meh, like a poor construct. But when I put it down, I always pick it up again. And people complain about never keeping a dream journal. Here I am complaining about not being able to stop! Thoughts?

This is something i've thought about many times, often while high. Sometimes it freaks me out to think about it, but at times it seems so obvious. Basically that the world is describing me. I don't mean like me personally but I mean our true self. The tao. The ultimate. The everything. What some call God. The more you realize your "self" as you know it is an illusion, and try to better understand reality as it truly is, you begin to relate to the world more and more. You may not realize it, but the reason this happens is because you're becoming more and more in touch with who you really are. Understanding that you are the ultimate leads to absolute bliss. Just believe in yourself and know that this moment is perfect. And then it will be. It also explains what's been going on with my dreams. Idk if you guys believe in this stuff, but a spirit and/or my higher self has been trying to contact me through my dreams. It's been wonderful. Anyways, in one of my recent dreams a dream character that looked like my mom kept telling me how I had expanded and stuff. I had never heard of it as expanding. But that also ties in and explains why I feel one with everything, i've expanded.

My first two dreams were scrolls; I think one read from top to bottom, the other read from side to side. The most recent dream was definitely a textbook. The thing I find really odd is the absence of connecting words in the text. This may be an indication that they are not laid out in a linear fashion, the words seemed to be merely words unconnected to each other. But the words go by fast! Like speed-reading. I too have had one experience with the 'death in the eyes' thing, but I haven't connected it in any way to the scroll viewings. I went to see a lady, knocked at her door, and when she opened the door her eyes were filled to the brim with blood, and the blood was splashing down her cheeks. I looked away in shock, then looked back at her and her eyes were just fine. But she did die of a stroke the following week. I do not traditionally have this type of vision, so this is definitely unusual for me. I expect that you are K-active as well, Penny? My guess is that all this stuff ties in together in some neat cosmic package, lol.

Let's talk about the benefits first. You can live till at least 70, be treated for a multitude of diseases or problems and survive, drive anywhere, fly anywhere, be able to have this conversation. The cons, yes there are cons. Many are overworked to the point where mindless entertain is the only way to escape. It's certainly a high cost. For those who have the spark, they can go to Amazon and order books that teach them dharma which is then delivered to their door in days. Then they can go and meet with a teacher if they want. Nobody is forced into slavery. You buy into the "American dream" and then put on shackles of debt, but if you live frugally you can have your cake and eat it too. The great thing about today is that we actually have the means to choose. Nobody forces you to focus on material gain. You can go live in Ladakh or Sikkim or Nepal.

Most masters that spend lifetimes serving the masses have a tendency to take on the karmas of those masses. Those without the experience of such sensitivity and transparency might not understand this. ChNNR also teaches physical yoga and at one point was quite the master at it. His body never fully recovered from his Leukemia which was predicted by a mirror divination master from Tibet to be the end of him, and the exact date of his Leukemia was accurately predicted many years prier. But, he did retreat and practiced his Long Life Terma given to him during his lucid dream states by a passed on master and it worked. He also teaches that you'll find it hard to experience Rigpa if you can't even get into the 1st jhana in meditation, so he does recommend that people do Samatha (calm abiding meditation), of which he teaches various techniques. If you meet ChNNR in person, you realize that his inner state is far more important than his physical appearance and his inner state is tremendously powerful and intuitive. If you make the connection, as most people have a tendency to project all their own shit all over clean mirrors like Tulkus.

I've lucid dreamed my whole life. I go in phases where I do it a lot, anywhere up to like 5 times a week, or not very much, like a couple times a month. I can lucid dream whenever I want, though. I just have to have already been asleep for a few hours, then I know how to enter into a dream without losing consciousness. I can give you my technique for doing that if you'd like.(I don't really need to use the technique anymore, I can just kinda do it by just being aware, but i'll tell you the technique I used to use that gave me that ability) go to sleep for a few hours and set an alarm or something. Once you wake up, don't get off your bed but look around a couple seconds so you regain a little awareness. Then try to go back to sleep. While trying to go to sleep, though, play a part of a song over and over again in your head. Just like you're listening to it on the radio. Don't get too excited, still try to sleep, but just listen to the song while doing it. After a little bit, you should start to feel like you're rolling and flipping and moving around, maybe like someone is making you do it. That means you're doing it right, so don't worry. Keep repeating the song. Not too long after, you'll be in a dream, still repeating the song.

I lucid dream about once every 2 or 3 months. I enter the lucid state becuas I'm constantly questiong whats going on and my reality when I'm awake. Usually my minds finally stops thinking when I sleep but not always. When it doesn't I lucid dream.

It's a lucid dream that I'm aware of as I am awakening. I can prolong the state by not opening my eyes or trying to think too much. I am aware of each word and recognize it as being a viable English word, but my mind can't put the words together in a recognizable sentence. They're disjointed. But I'm definitely 'awake', as you would be in a lucid dream. then when I open my eyes, I'm awake.

I have lucid dreams almost every night, to be honest. Until a few months ago I would have them maybe twice a week (even in a regular dream I knew I was dreaming but I couldn't make myself wake up or even control the dream. I could only let it runs its course). As far as being more aware of my environment around me, my other senses are heightened as well as my reflexes, but they have been that way for some time now as well. So I'm not sure if there is a connection between the two...I'll write about that in my BOS and see if one affects the other.

Yeah, conception to birth is the most crucial time. (I don't usually analyze this period because I'm after practical applicability of the reading to real-life situations and decisions, and this part is of little pragmatic value post factum -- but I do dream of the day when a couple just planning to conceive a child would ask me about the best moment to do it. Traditional bazi readers in China were consulted in this preemptive manner for hundreds if not thousands of years -- which may be one reason why the Chinese are by far the most populous nation on earth today.) In our species, since about the last third of the 20th century, nine out of ten pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion within days of conception (too early for the woman to know, in most cases. Source of info: Encyclopedia Britannica.) This is usually characteristic of a very unwell species and doesn't happen in healthy populations. So this fact alone can illustrate how much is decided long before one can take charge of one's own life -- the life itself, vs. death, for starters. To say nothing of, e.g., little things like your gender. Birth is the next weightiest event -- the transition from one world, a water world with dual controls (self and mom, where too much intervention from extraneous controlling forces will result in self bailing out) to a dry land world with multiple controls (self, mom, dad, doctors, nurses, siblings, the government -- which decides what substances to inject into your bloodstream and how much to tell your mom about what's good for you -- she no longer knows, because her mom was also told by the government officials, and her mom before her). Infancy is the next transition -- from no neocortex to a developed one, i.e. from a "feeling baby" to a "thinking baby." Early childhood, next -- from "thinking baby" to "thinking-twice" child who learns how to feel one thing, think another, and say yet another, in an attempt to please everybody involved (self, mom, dad, the government, etc.). Every step of the way, the role of self is minimal in this process until much later -- when it is much too late. By the time you get any say in it for the first time, you are 95% complete -- of which 40% to 80% is irreversible. You are already the final product when you just start thinking of shaping yourself into something else for the first time. If you're thinking of shaping yourself into something else, that's part of what "the final product" is like: someone not satisfied with how he or she has come out. The imperative toward perfecting oneself is part of the "I'm a work in progress" mentality characteristic of this particular "final product," and can last till the end of one's life -- without having actually changed anything significant about 95% of what you were shaped into to begin with. (The sculpture is not aware of the chisel... or, rather, until the sculpture becomes aware of the chisel, it will never know what it is and how it came to be what it is -- much less change it. Now a sculpture laying its hands on the chisel... that's astrology!) But the stars and moon and sky are earlier still... and therefore they determine things way before, and way ahead, of your "personal decisions," your "genetics," or your "social environment." Of course there's this new age idea that it's all our own doing, that we "choose" our parents, "choose" our circumstances in advance, and are born into this or that set-up as an act of free will. Doesn't account for 9 out of 10 spontaneous abortions of course, but new age paradigms are seldom bothered by facts. Knowing astrology is knowing the mind of tao. The mind of tao is the kind that never forgets. What went before your birth is something it never forgot, never made irrelevant. It knows that if you plant an acorn, you are going to reap an oak tree, not a carrot. And vice versa. Astrology (Chinese, at least -- I don't know much about Western) figures out how to help the carrot grow into a healthy plant, and sometimes it involves irrigation, and at other times, drainage, and so on. It doesn't facilitate ego trips whereby carrots fancy themselves oak trees. Which may be the reason carrots who fancy themselves oak trees don't like it. Or the reason carrots who are happy being carrots all the way like it. Or the reason oak trees hoping to live to their natural lifespan of over a thousand years like the idea of trying to avoid that lightning which can strike them down while they are still very immature and very vulnerable. Let it strike four hundred years later -- but let's figure out how to grow till then so as not to attract it... ...anyway, I'm rambling... over and out.

I average about 1 Lucid Dream per month. Good work, everything. For me, whenever I catch myself day-dreaming, I will just tell myself: "Nick, you're dreaming". The trick is that I'm day-dreaming a lot of the time, and it's not always easy to remember to tell myself that I'm dreaming.