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This is absolutely crazy thinking. First of all, there is no guarantee that if you have kids you'll be reborn as one of their descendants. That's not how reincarnation generally works. Secondly, you have a lot of hubris, and in your hubris, you imagine that being your own descendant is a plus. In fact, being your own descendant can be a negative. What if you become a descendant in someone else's family, and that family is a family of enlightened people? Wouldn't that be better? Why would you forgo that simply out of pride for your own bloodline? You worry about becoming an ant too much. That's just a superstition. When you dream, are you an ant in your dreams? No? Then you are not likely to be reborn as an ant. Unless you become obsessed with being reborn as an ant, you won't be. Rebirth is not a punishment. It's not like some God hands down rebirths based on what you deserve. It's nothing like that. Being reborn is no different than walking down the city streets. You go where you turn. If you turn left, you go to the street on your left. The fact that you end up on that street is not a punishment from outside! You went there yourself! Rebirth is like that too. Rebirth is what happens due to your own volition and it reflects your will. OK, so why do sages warn about being reborn in hell? Simple -- many people want to go to hell without knowing it. Many people have contradictory desires, and if you cling to both contradictory desires very strongly, you create hell. So it's not that it's an external punishment, it's just that some people unwittingly use their own volition to will hell upon themselves. So what you should be worried about is this unwitting-ness. You should become more and more aware of what it is you really want and why. This will prevent any kind of "hell" surprise from happening to you.

Awesome dream, I've had purple girls show up in my dreams when I was younger. Dreams are nuts.

Hey Stais, thanks for taking the time to write all that out. A couple of points: People have mentioned this a few times in a few other threads, but part of what happens when you repeatedly do stuff like this (masturbate) is neural pathways get made and reinforced, your mind starts making associations, and when it sees certain triggers or signals, certain responses get made. For instance- you watch porn, you get aroused. You watch porn, you get aroused. Your mind learns that when you watch porn you should get aroused, so the next time you watch porn, you get aroused faster. If you keep doing this for longer and longer times, when you even THINK of watching porn you will get aroused. Same thing with trying to stop. You can say you don't want to masturbate or ejaculate anymore, and be able to go two weeks without doing it, then watch porn or have a dream and ejaculate. Since you focus so much on that ejaculation and the circumstances around it, your mind puts a signal around the circumstances. So the next time you try to quit, you last a week, maybe a week and a half, then your mind sees the same triggers, the same signals, and even though you say, "no, I don't want to ejaculate", your mind and body think, "oh, well last time I thought this I ejaculated, so time to ejaculate again". Which is why you fail sooner, and sooner, and sooner, until pretty much nothing works. Also, a good quote that I like from star wars: "Your focus determines your reality". If you are so focused on the energy being lost when you ejaculate, you will lose energy, simple as that. Try not to worry about it, and when I say don't worry about it, I mean think of something positive. When you think of the negative, you are still thinking of that thing. For example: if you think "I don't want to ejaculate". What are you always thinking of? Ejaculating. So rather than saying that, think, "I want to play the guitar in my free time." Rather than thinking of ejaculating you think of the guitar. You get into the habit of playing the guitar, and your mind forgets the association of that free time and ejaculation, and replaces it with the guitar. Now, I've had the same experiences as you when it comes to "arousal without ejaculating", namely after a while things get to full and hot, and stuff winds up coming out anyway. There are methods out there to circulate the energy, but that's not really for me, in the long run it just bothers me and I wind up ejaculating anyway. So I suggest not doing that anymore, especially because some techniques can be harmful. The strange orgasm you had, I think, was something getting messed up or stuck somewhere. There is what's called a "ruined orgasm", where you pretty much get the ejaculation but don't get the full "release", which feels funny. And there's also times when you have orgasm but are trying not to and keep everything in, and that feels weird too. In my experience backing off for a week or two and doing normal orgasms/ejaculations straightens everything out. Also, the thing about porn and your body in general.... As you have already figured out your body has natural cycles where you want to be sexually aroused, and when you don't want to be. Well, the more porn you watch and the more triggers you make, the more your body becomes aroused, even if it doesn't want to be. Your body might be saying, "It's time to rest", but your mind is thinking, "I'm watching porn, that means get aroused". THAT is when problems get caused, I think, and that is when masturbation moves to something that can be harmful. If you watch porn when your body wants to be aroused, and don't watch it when you don't want to, well there's nothing wrong with that- it's just adding to an already aroused body. The problem with porn and with all the triggers you make is that it reaches a point where it is hard to really listen to when your body is wanting to be aroused and when it doesn't want to, and that's bad. If that's the case, you gotta cut the porn. You can tell it's starting to happen because of the dreams- I think you said you usually have the dreams when you watch porn, then it got to a point where you had the dreams even though you didn't watch porn, right? What happened was you watched porn, went to sleep, dreamed about sex, porn, sleep, sex. Then you stopped watching porn, but when your body went to sleep, it thought- sleep = sex, and that's when it started. You have to establish some new pathway. And going to bed thinking, "I will not ejaculate" won't help because again, all you are thinking about is "ejaculating". Think of something else!! Hope this helps. If you aren't a native English speaker I hope you understood everything okay, and if not feel free to ask me anything

Why is it such an either/or, 1 or 0, black or white choice for you? How about this approach: 1. Get a job you enjoy. It doesn't have to be a dream job, but it should at least be moderately enjoyable to you. (Or start a business that you enjoy.) 2. Pay attention! This "pay attention" bit is what spirituality is all about. Being mindful 24/7 is the source of all wisdom and spiritual power. It's the opposite of being mindless or careless. You'll always have moments for reflection. Even at work you can catch a moment to pause and to reflect or meditate. If you choose this route, your father will not even have to know that you are developing spiritually. He'll just think you are like everyone else. If you want to do nothing but meditate, you have to arrange something to make your situation stable. There are many ways to do it, but if you go this route, get ready for your father's initial unhappiness. How much is spiritual development worth to you? Is it worth pissing off your father? Buddha famously pissed his father off by becoming a homeless ascetic. My advice, since you already seem to be enrolled, is to do your best to pass your classes. Try to graduate. It doesn't matter what your GPA is. Practically no one cares about it. Just do the best you can. Try to at least pass the classes you hate. One way or another, you'll have to learn some skills. College teaches you survival skills in a sense that you can get a job with those skills and earn a living. College also gives you a credential, which while not absolutely necessary, makes life easier. So if you can at all stomach it, hang in there and graduate. Think about it this way. Even if you don't go to college, but instead go into wilderness, you cannot avoid learning survival skills. You'll have to learn how to find water, how to heal yourself, how to hunt and gather food, how to build simple dwellings, how to make a fire and so on. Or let's say you become a bum on the street. That too requires learning. You'll need to learn how the shelter system works, where to get food, where to take a shower and so on. If you think about it, none of this learning is necessarily more pleasant than what you are learning in college. No matter where you go you will be learning things. So basically you will end up with a college-like experience pretty much no matter what. See my point? Spirituality is not diametrically opposed to worldly life. It's not the same as worldliness, true, and sometimes worldly passions can interfere, but in general it's not at odds with the mundane. Even the purest spiritual life has mundane repetition to it, a routine, like getting up every morning. That's mundane too. So I would advise to try to avoid extremes if you can. Try to avoid black or white, 1 or 0 types of choices. It's not an all or nothing proposition. You don't have to polarize your thinking so much. The decision is always yours to make, no matter what you end up deciding.

Just a quick thought from me... I think "hell" in the dream world symbolizes that which you're avoiding, the unconscious parts of you, or something having to do with your power. It doesn't actually mean you are becoming evil or anything.

Yeah, but that sort of thing is not really always effective- it's like, as long as I don't run into a certain stimulus it's fine, right? But whenever I run into a certain stimulus, even after a long time, it triggers the event. Also, even if it is not the exact same thoughts, the same types of thoughts arise. So, I might not get into a 10 minute thought strain about closing the door, but I might get into one about opening the drawers. I gotta get to the root. Thanks for the advice If there's one thing I have given up on a long time ago it is trying to reach some sort of "state". Because every time I get to a "state", a "state" where I'm "done", a "state" where I "have a problem", it always changes and shifts. So rather than trying to get a new state, rather than trying to get rid of a new state, I'm trying to stop channeling "bad energy" and trying to only circulate good kinds. Yeah, the ego is a problem, and I've definitely learned a lot about how the ego can function. Not really looking to get into drugs though Someone linked to an article about some doctor using psilocybin and describing some experience he had, and it reminded me of a lucid dream I had a while ago. Scary as heck Ego's definitely the problem but I dunno if I can handle the full ego death quite yet

Halucinogens will not activate it - What has happened is that you have lost controll. You are meeting what is called "The Guardian of the Gate" which is your fears, hopes and desires in a lucid dream like halucenogenic state of mind. Good luck as you have done this to yourself. The only way out of the trip is Vitamin B Complex and Vitamin C in average doses. B Complex is the mind's vitamin. According to what you took - it may take some time to get it out of your system. If the situation gets too heavy the hippies used to titrate the halucinations with medical pot but that is very expensive and some places it is illegal without a Dr.'s prescription ...

There's no evidence that the brain evolved due to cooking foods, though you may be right about how far back the tradition went. http://www.rawpaleodiet.com/when-did-humans-begin-to-cook/ Cooking was more of a cultural thing and allowed humanity to develop socially. "Also the enzymes in food have very little to do with human digestion" I'm talking about the specific enzymes and vitamins present in vegetables that lose potency and bioavailability when cooked too much. Sure the protein, carbs, and fats don't get destroyed.. but what about the essential fatty acids (which the brain needs desperately for fuel) and antioxidants (which serve as fuel for the immune system)? I'm not a raw food expert, nor do I even follow the diet. I just think its ridiculous to call those who follow such a diet 'new-agey' when they are just eating consciously, and in good health, with their fellow non-human beings in mind. It's egotistical to have awareness of other's pain response and right to live? I'm saying animals are more evolved than plants. They feel, they perceive, much more so than plants do. Go touch a plant and see what happens; then go touch an animal. That is empirical evidence, not theory. They are more worthy of compassion than plants because of this; their subjective experience possesses consciousness of perception, consciousness of feeling, even consciousness of rudimentary thought through desire impulses. Some, if not most, animals actually dream. If you had to save a human or a dog who would you save? If you had to save a dog or a plant who would you save? C'mon man, you're digging yourself a hole. Humans surely weren't created by God 6,000 years ago with a cooking pan in their hands. I'm not sure what sort of rebuttal you can make. You're saying humans always cooked? About brain size, the current brain is actually shrinking dramatically. Not saying its connected to cooking, who knows, but its an interesting scientific find by a recent Harvard study. Too lazy to find it right now. There is a connection apparently between eating meat and evolution of the brain. That I cannot deny. There's also a connection between religious institutions and the development of civilizations and science. Should we always keep these mythological religious institutions around then? Is the effect dependent upon the cause? Like I said, there is considerable research being done about supplementation of the necessary vitamins which we get through eating meat. I know plenty of vegans, vegetarians, and those that eat raw which are all extremely smart, creative, healthy, and active. All happen to be spiritual too. They all supplement and do just okay. If you reduce who you are to 'just an animal' then of course that gives you no need to change. If you are just an animal, why not live in the woods and lick your mother's ass for breakfast? Ah, but you're not just an animal.. you're a little bit more than that.

Well its very chaotic which is why I am not at the airport:), lucky for me I am staying with friends and that's ok. From news today looks like the cloud is spreading and flights still canceled so who knows when things will get going. I like it here so it is a dream come true I suppose :lol:

Yeah that really is a great question! I find myself frequently wondering, if reincarnation does exist, if anything exists really, how I will "stay aware" in the meantime if I can't even get myself to have a lucid dream when I want!

Have you ever had a dream where you were not you? Where the situations you found yourself in were extremely generalized? Rather than, I was dreaming about being in high school again doing something with so and so. Its more like; I was a tree. And then I watched planes flying overhead. Next I was in the water, floating down into a factory. Way more symbolic and distance/generalized conceptual. Not personal reflective. Advertising? My classes are not open to the public. You have to be in the Master's program of a TCM college to take them... What do you think a book is? Its nothing more than a whole collection of experience and opinion from one particular person, the author. Unless its a non fiction, historical, or reference. Those categories do not apply to self help/spiritual arenas. Therefore the nature of your "evidence" is still opinion. The closest therapeutic modalities that deal with nexus points deal with those tissues that I mentioned earlier. Cranio sacral, myofascial release, visceral organ release and chi nei tsang are some of the common applications. Before you respond with a "screw this person" mentality, please reference some of what I mentioned. Left brain responses are common to Americans because of the education system. But the full experience of reality is more appreciated when using all parts of the brain. From the Left logistical to the right emotional, the limbic reactive and frontal cortex responsive. Even the deep reservoirs of central core stems add to the rich experience. But don't limit yourself to one half of your brain, all the time. The left side is always skeptical of everything!

Hi there. Could you explain what is a "Jungian" dream state, please?

assemblage points... good topic. From my experience, there is a small crossover between Taoism and this theory. You will discover the nature of these points as you experience the nexus effect of you spirit/conscious body. The closest physical structure in the body is the nervous system combined with the conscious projections of the mind and organs. Its a strange phenomenon, but one that is not far away from upper crystal palace meditations in Taoism. In my elective at the college, I teach practitioners to access and manipulate these nexus points in their patient's body. The main ones we deal with are the central cord nexus, the heart nexus, the solar plexus region and the root nexus. Those are easier to feel and not as drastic in effect. The strongest one is the central cord nexus. When we manipulate and move this region, people almost always have an out of body experience. They describe situations where they leave their body and enter what could be termed as a "Jungian" dream state. Sometimes they work through their own projections, and sometimes through other "dimensions". Its very much a mind experience and very close to the stage 4-7 hypnosis levels.

Dream on brother. I speak the perspective of traditional scholars of India, based on scriptural references, internal astronomical details and records within the literature, not Max Mueller's version (which too incidentally proves my point about the chronology of the Vedic literature, which includes the Samhitas, Aranyakas, Brahmanas and Upanishads (aka Vedanta)) as predating the Buddha. There are 108 known Upanishads today, of which 10 are the most important. These ten predate Buddha definitely...

So, reading this, it looks like the only thing that really matters to you in the end, is money? I don't really believe that, but that's where you took it, for your own reasons. That's apparently the yardstick you use to measure the distance people have to go to "pursue their dreams". Dreams always have to involve cold hard cash? What if my dream is to live in a socially fair society that places high standards on ethics and quality of life? What about the people who prefer to work to live and don't see any use in a life wasted living to work? But that's all tangential to what I meant above. "Patriotism", I mean, "My country - love it or leave it", flag-waving, bombs-bursting-in-air, Pledge-Of-Allegiance, hand-on-heart, teary-eyed Patriotism - is an evil but useful tool that the powerful apply to keep the masses docile and manageable. It's the enemy of free-thought and free-will. And, yes, Germany is a place that learned the hard just where it can lead. The original American Tea-Party, circa 1935:

Some spiritual traditions say that the soul leaves the body when asleep, so in that sense dreaming and astral travel are one and the same. A high level practitioner of Bardon's system said, however, that when the body sleeps the astral body (the part that "astral travels") only really displaced by a few inches. So it's not astral travel in the true sense, but it's not like nothing happens. But in a certain sense it also depends on your paradigm. For instances, B.K. Frantzis describes the subtle energy bodies as bodies that become more subtle (you have to go deeper to feel them), but also more expansive. So the qi body is within you but also extends out of you. A "dream world" that mostly consists of your thoughts and emotions would be within you, but to a certain extent be outside of you as well. Any "astral travel" would technically originate from inside you as well- but since those bodies are also significantly more expansive, you could think of it as "traveling", even though from a "meditative" viewpoint you are really just going "deeper and deeper", rather than a more "up and out" sort of direction. But that's just my take. I experiment a lot with lucid dreams, not so much with OBE's, and in fact, I actively try to avoid OBE topics, mostly because I want to do it as fresh as possible. If it really is possible to have a legitimate out of body experience, I shouldn't have to read about it BEFORE it happening to get all the experiences. I should be able to research about it AFTER it and find out about it. That's a bit of a tangent though...

Yeah I agree. My techniques is simple, lay on your back, legs straight, arms by your side, relax the mind and body and remain still. If you get the vibes reported by many OBErs just remain calm not to wake up and roll to the side and start doing whatever Though how can you know the difference between a lucid dream and an out of body experience or Astral Travel? Or are they all the same?

ld4all.com is an excellent start to lucid dreaming from a non-religious related perspective. Here and there you see it written about how various cultures had various spiritual interpretations of dreams. I do a lot of lucid dream stuff. Interesting experiences. If anything it's fun, and I suggest everyone do it.

Hey Scotty, what do you know about the Kunlun taoist dream practice? Chrisn

Kunlun has a dream yoga practice which is Taoist.

Do you know any possible associated risks/side effects/dangers of frequently dosing melatonin, but in addition to meditation . . . I'm aware that the UK banned melatonin sometime ago but it's status in the US and many other countries remains unscheduled. I have experienced intense psychedelic level dreams while dosed with melatonin, I think it is a I have gotten into many lucid/trance dream/consciousness states a (valuable?) possible spiritual cheat code providing it offers no ill effects with repetitive, yet responsible use.

On the contrary Tibetan Buddhist practices are some of the most highly developed because of their dream yoga system which from my beginners knowledge, is quite amazing. As for their yoga, I am not to aware of it past the 5 rites, but I am starting to lean out of yoga and look more towards tai chi, qi gong, or karate because of my lack of any real body awareness from yoga..(though there are a select few postures that seem fitting).

I'm curious if this is possible and if so what benefits (or pitfalls) it may bring? Is it like mixing colors in paint - ex: red + blue = purple. So mixing earth plus fire gives rise to what effect if any? What happens to elements left unused? If they're not mixed in the Dantien is it possible to mix then elsewhere for beneficial effects? I ask because a while ago I had a strange dream. A person in it said when I've learned how to do these things (mix the elements to different effect) I'll have understood Kan and Li.

I've had dreams of real locations that open up to new areas...but when I would go visit the real physical location, none of it is there. Maybe people are mistaking these dream locations for waking reality...the mind is powerful! Who knows...just another theory, which I tend to lean towards...but reality can be surprising.

Marble, what is the experience of 'I' beyond thoughts and feelings? By thoughts we have language, the ongoing conversation in the head, as well as non-language thoughts such as 'intention' and symbolic gestures experienced in the dream state. There are various types of thoughts. Feelings are always felt in the body and usually correlate to thoughts. Are you saying that the 'I' exists beyond thoughts and feelings? How could you possibly say that when all you have are thoughts and feelings in your experience? Is the 'I' not just a thought/feeling? Thank you