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To Antares: I have been extremely busy this spring preparing for a full schedule of teaching workshops on both coasts and several locales in the mountain states compounded by fulfilling numerous commitments starting last November that I made to the college that I attended back in the 70's. Thus it has taken me so may days to get back to this thread since my last responses to postings and questions. Antares, I will start by saying that while you are entitled to your own belief that "a practitioner should avoid any dreaming on the advanced level of practice", your statement that it is taught or upheld universally by a singular or monolithic "Taoist Tradition" is absolute wrong, fallacious and misleading, and counterproductive in that it only sews confusion in a beginner of Qigong of any tradition--whereas an advanced practitioner would have had enough experiential truth to know that the matter is absolutely moot and thus know to take issue with you. [As far as I know according to the authentic Taoist Tradition (TT) a practitioner should avoid any dreaming on the advanced level of practice.] First of all, your statement is nonsensical and transparently erroneous because there is no such one Taoist Tradition or "the" Taoist Tradition'. What is the "authentic Taoist Tradition (TT)" that you speak of? Please name the sect, its origins and its history and where it is described in the classic or modern Taoist literature. And please disclose what lineage of living masters teaches a Qigong system that includes this avoidance of/taboo against lucid dreaming. Second, your fallacious statement--regardless of where you got it or from what written source you interpreted it from-- is immediately proven false by anyone who has read Chuang Tzu, which Taoists consider to be at least 1/3 of the Taoist Canon, or let's call it the literary reference of "Taoist Tradition", as you put it...for Taoism is not wholly represented in writings, but much much more in esoteric yogic and spiritual practices. Chuang Tzu was no beginner and he obviously advocated and celebrated dreamwork: "Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Zhuangzi. Soon I awakened, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things." ---Lin Yu Tang translation of this classic Taoist parable, which only extols dreamwork--indeed reveling in the dreamstate--as an Advanced component of Chinese Yoga (Qigong) As i said, Chuang Tzu was no beginner and his writing is a major part of the Taoist Canon. And this passage speaks directly to the ALCHEMIC " TRANSFORMATION of material things." Your second sentence of your first paragraph, stating that the "reason" supporting your (fallacious) theory is "simple" is also completely erroneous. I don't know what type of lucid dreaming you have experienced--if any--but lucid dreaming in my personal experience and in the experience of classmates in two authentic "Taoist Traditions" (Tao Tan Pai from the Tang Dynasty and Ehrmei Mountain Bok Fu Pai from the 17th century) spanning almost 40 years, lucid dreaming has never, ever caused depletion of any Jing or any form of energy. ON THE CONTRARY, LUCID DREAMING EMPOWERS ONE'S SPIRIT, MIND AND BODY. This is not only true in authentic Taoist practices, but also corroborated by many Amerindian traditions, including the one taught by the late Carlos Castaneda, and by practitioners of western hermeticism ("Alchemy") with whom I'm closely acquainted. The only form of dreaming that would deplete anyone of Jing or any amount of Qi would be a wet dream!!! The reason for that is very simple - dreaming, especially vivid lucid dreaming, depletes one's jing and pactitioner must preserve it for converting it into Shen. But for that there must be a special alchemical method. You seem to believe--apparently based on someone's article interpreting various writings by Taoists Chen Tuan, Lu Tung Pin, etc. (that you cited at https://forum.daode.ru/f1461/dream-yoga-taoist-view-33609/ )--- that the practitioner of any Taoist system must preserve his jing in order to convert it into Shen. This supporting PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY that you cite--of transformation of jing into shen, besides being infinitessimally narrow and applicable only to a some--but not all Taoist Yogic traditions--HAS ABSOLUTELY NO RELEVANCE TO THE PRACTICE OF FLYING PHOENIX QIGONG NOR TO ANY OF THE BOK FU PAI INTERNAL ARTS, NOR TO THE SPIRITUAL GROWTH AND TRANSFORMATION THAT THEY FACILITATE. I have written throughout this thread that Flying Phoenix Qigong and the rest of the Bok Fu Pai Nei Kung arts DO NOT USE NOR NEED the descriptive framework of Traditional Chinese Medicine such as meridian theory, Yin-Yang Theory or 5 Element Theory. None of that is necessary and none of those roadmaps represent "a special alchemical method." I also posted early on in this thread that when GM Doo Wai was asked by one of my classmates in the early 1990's whether we needed to observe celibacy or any form of restraint from sexual activity while learning any of the Bok Fu Pai Internal Arts--including Flying Phoenix Celestial Healing Qigong--he told us, "Nah, you can guys can go knock yourselves out (having sex)!" You obviously did not read this posting, which DIRECTLY REFUTES your over-generalization that "authentic Traditional Taoism" requires that "the practitioner must preserve Jing for converting it into Shen" . Otherwise, (I hope) you would not have posted your irrelevant over-generalization. The FP Qigong and the other Bok Fu Pai internal arts that I preserve in that vast PURELY TAOIST TRADITION--HAVE YOGIC MECHANISMS THAT DO NOT USE THE TERMS OR CONCEPTS OF "JING" OR "SHEN". You may verify this fact with Sifu Garry Hearfield in Australia or any other certified instructors of Bok Fu Pai. CHEN TUAN'S AND LU DENG BIN'S TEACHINGS APPLY ONLY TO THEIR RESPECTIVE TRADITIONS: HUASHAN ARTS AND TAO TAN PAI, RESPECTIVELY--AND NOT TO THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE OF TAOIST NEI KUNG. AND YET YOU TAKE THEM OUT OF CONTEXT AND CITE THEM HERE IN ORDER TO ASSERT YOUR CULT-LIKE BELIEF IN THEIR WORDS WITHOUT ANY EXPERIENTIAL BASIS OF UNDERSTANDING. HAVE YOU PRACTICED HUASHAN TAOIST ARTS? HAVE YOUR PRACTICED ANY ART ATTRIBUTED TO LU DENG BIN? IF YOU WANT TO RECITE GENERAL OR UNIVERSAL CELEBRATIONS OF HIGH MEDITATIVE STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS, YOU CAN REFER LAO TZU'S TAO TE CHING. LONGER THAN I HAVE PRACTICED AND TAUGHT FLYING PHOENIX QIGONG (BY 15 YEARS), I ALSO TEACH TAN TAN PAI ("TAOIST ELIXIR METHOD"), WHICH IS LU DENG BIN'S ART. HE IS THE PATRON SAINT OF TAO TAN PAI KUNG FU TRADITION. HIS TECHNICAL YOGIC TEACHINGS THAT YOU CITED IN THAT RUSSIAN BLOG HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO APPLICATION NOR RELEVANCE TO FP QIGONG PRACTICE OR ANY BOK FU PAI ART. As my Taoist colleague, author Deng Ming Dao, wrote in his 1980's biography of his great master, Huashan Taoist priest Kwan Sai Hung, "The Wandering Taoist" (which I strongly recommend that you and every Taoist practitioner read): "There are no chakras. There are no meridians. Everything is Mind." And as my favorite teacher (da-xihing) of Tao Tan Pai, Master John Davidson, wrote: It is a special teaching (transmission) beyond words. The writings of the ancients point to IT (your "special alchemical method"), but THEY ARE NOT IT. And as Alfred J. Korzybsky, the great Polish mathematician-philosopher and the founder of General Semantics put it: THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY. •And if one has the WILL POWER to read all 2,000 pages of his tome on General Semantics called "Science and Sanity," (warning: one can normally only read 5-7 pages per sitting), which is the greatest western tome that teaches Zen by purifying the mind of all tendencies towards semantic distortions, one will never confuse a map with the territory again: https://ilam3d.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/alfred-korzybksi-science-and-sanity.pdf [In the beginnig of this thread I read that Feng Tao Te invented this system while sitting in deep meditation for 9 years. He seemed to do that on the last stage of the alchemical practice (converting Shen into Emptiness). It might mean that he reached the very high level of the alchemical mastery and gained Immortality. By the way did anyone have channeling to Feng Tao Te? ] I BELIEVE YOU'VE READ THIS THREAD INCORRECTLY. IF THAT INFO ABOUT FENG DO DUK SITTING IN MEDITATION FOR 9 YRS (IN ORDER THE CHANNEL THE BOK FU PAI ARTS) IS ON THIS THREAD, I DID NOT POST IT. NONE OF MY CLASSMATES UNDER GM DOO WAI HAD POSTED IT, FOR GM DOO WAI HAD NEVER TAUGHT SUCH HISTORY ABOUT FENG DO DUK. I KNOW THE NUMBER OF YEARS THAT FFD WAS ACTIVE AT EHRMEISHAN, BUT I WILL NOT DISCLOSE IT ON A PUBLIC FORUM. THAT IS KNOWLEDGE DISCLOSED ONLY TO INITIATES OF BOK FU PAI. YOU CAN TRY TO GET IT FROM SIFU GARRY HEARFIELD OR OTHER CERTIFIED BOK FU PAI INSTRUCTORS SUCH AS THE WHITE TIGER SCHOOL IN LOS ANGELES, BUT I DOUBT VERY MUCH THAT THEY WOULD TELL YOU. BUT I WILL SAY THAT IT WAS FAR, FAR MORE THAN 9 YEARS. [He seemed to do that on the last stage of the alchemical practice (converting Shen into Emptiness).] BLIND SPECULATION ON YOUR PART. I.E., YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. AS STATED MANY TIMES OVER THE COURSE OF THIS THREAD, FLYING PHOENIX QIGONG PRACTICE AND ALL OF BOK FU PAI'S NEI KUNG PRACTICES ARE NOT DESCRIBED BY THE WRITTEN OR PHILOSOPHICAL ROADMAPS OF ANY OTHER QIGONG SYSTEMS, TAOIST OR NON-TAOIST, NOR BY THE PRINCIPLES OF T.C.M. YOU ARE USING THE WRONG ROAD-MAP HERE TRYING TO FIND DIRECTIONS TO A PLACE THAT YOU ARE NOT READY FOR, WHEN IN ACTUALITY THERE IS NO ROAD-MAP. THERE IS ONLY THE LIVING QIGONG ART AND A LINEAGE OF TEACHERS. YOUR LITERAL EXPRESSION "(converting Shen into Emptiness)" IS A TEACHING THAT I HAVE NOT HEARD OF--NOR IS IT A PROCESS OR A TEACHING THAT IS RELEVANT TO FP QIGONG OR BOK FU PAI NEI KUNG ARTS--AT ANY LEVEL. RATHER, IT SOUNDS LIKE A BASTARDIZATION OF THE LAST TEACHING IN LIU HE BA FA (6 HARMONIES/8 METHODS KUNG FU--WHICH I ALSO HAVE STUDIED SINCE 1980 UNDER THE LATE MASTER YORK WHY LOO AND ACTIVE MASTER CHAN CHING KAI), WHICH GOES: "MOVEMENT AND EMPTINESS COMBINE." ("COMBINE" = "HARMONIZE") OR, IT MIGHT BE A TRANSLATOR'S GROSS SIMPLIFICATION OF THE BUDDHA'S TEACHINGS ABOUT THE HIGHEST STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE VISSUDHIMAGGA, WHICH ARE REFERRED TO (IN TRANSLATION) AS THE FOUR "FORMLESS" JHANAS. ...BUT I DON'T THINK THAT'S WHERE IT COMES FROM. PLUS, YOUR SPECULATIONS ABOUT FENG DO DUK'S LAST STAGE OF ALCHEMICAL PRACTICE AND WHETHER OR NOT HE HAS OR HAS NOT ATTAINED IMMORTALITY IS IRRELEVANT TO ANYONE'S GROWTH OR PROGRESS IN FP QIGONG OR ANY QIGONG. Please, stop posting on this thread your blind speculations and wildly erroneous beliefs about the relationship between lucid dreaming and the cultivation of Shen. The beliefs that you've put forth as supporting "facts" or Taoist principles are not grounded in any human yogic experience. If you wish to speculate about the requirements of preserving jing in order to convert Jing into Shen" through "a special alchemical method", you can start a separate discussion thread on that topic, as Earl Grey had suggested. This subject of this thread for the past 9.25 years is the correct practice of Flying Phoenix Qigong. THIS COMMUNITY THREAD IS A RESOURCE FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN CORRECTLY PRACTICING FP QIGONG OVER THE LONG TERM OR ARE ACTIVELY PRACTICING IT TO AVAIL THEMSELVES IMMEDIATELY TO THIS ART"S PROFOUND HEALING, REJUVENATING, CONSCIOUSNESS-EXPANDING, AND SPIRITUAL BENEFITS. Sifu Terry Dunn Why know the name of a thing, when the thing itself you do not know? -- Carlos Castaneda www.taichimania.com/chikung_catalog.html

Hey guys, I've had this experience where everything around me seemed an illusion. Don't know how to explain it, its vague. It was more then a feeling, because it actually gave me control over my perceptions, thus feelings, this started of scary. It was a weird experience. Scary at first, joyful later on. The Tao views everything around us as void, which brought me to the Tao. Everything around me, all external objects, and even my body and emotions were all perceivable, but it was like an illusion. As if I was 50% in another realm. This experience was short, but it did not fade away before me. The experience did not pass by for me to understand, to know the diffrence between then and now. Somehow it dissapeared just like you loose awareness when you go to sleep or go from lucid dream to non-lucid. But my eyes were open the whole time, I was simply awake. There is no boundary between this experience of now and that experience of now. Others call this a higher state of consciousness whereby you wake up during waking state just like a lucid dreamer wakes up during a dream but is still in the dream. This usually results in an unstable position that requires alot of practice to keep stable and in control. I've trained this and managed to only have a few lucid dreams, and basicly you either risk being too consciousness of your real body lying in bed and you wake up, or you become lost in the dream and you loose awareness again and fall into a regular dream. It did feel scary when I had WILD experiences and MILD at first. For those of you who never heard of this, I know, but appearantly lucid dream is as real as cake. My awakening during waking state felt the same as a lucid dream, everything around me felt very very fake and unstable, very scary at first, because this time external objects were not a dream but real familiar objects. I could control what I perceived with open eyes... I can't really relate this to much but higher awareness or Tao, if not those, probably scientificly it would be my "EYE that perceives perception and controls what to perceive and what not to perceive" Whereby perception is your believe system. It feels like you are not your body, you are everything around you. I know its stupid to ask how to "recreate this state of mind", that seems completely nonsense to my rational mind, but if someone could tell me more about this it would help me place this experience somewhere. Don't know what to make of it other then my body tricking my mind. Nice experience tho, being in control over what you feel and not feel. kinda like fine tuning emotions, just b'cuz... I don't understand... maybe I'm just psychotic, even tho I've been educated quite alot. Thats out of the question right? Besides... I've only had this experience 1 time in my life.

Agree about "symbolic" and "actual," Trunk, though "actual" ones liberally use symbolism and "symbolic" ones refer to "actual" events of one's life... but somehow one always knows the difference. "Actual" are real events taking place in nonordinary reality, or dreamtime, or another dimension, or another level of self, or what have you. I have these from time to time, and remember them vividly for a lifetime, in minute detail. The first one of these, I wasn't yet four years old, was a massive foreshadowing of my life-to-be, and I'm still working with its material. They typically affect the future. "Symbolic" are also real events having taken place in this-here life, usually in the long-forgotten, early, ever-unconscious past. They are the most common variety, and mean there's things to process that won't leave you alone until you've processed them. Nightmares and PTSD dreams are almost invariably of this variety. Convoluted dreams are of this variety. Recurring dreams are of this variety. Dreams accompanied by strong feelings in general (without clear meanings though) are of this variety. I don't have these anymore, since little of my past (even the earliest part) is unconscious anymore. There's also the here-now "right meow" dreams that reflect what's going on in the non-dream world interfering with the dream. Example: an alarm clock in the non-dream room gets included into the sounds of the dream and interpreted as the mooing of the cow or the voice of god or whatever. Or you dream of eating a pickle and wake up to your cat licking your lips (true story ). But then there's dreams within dreams, you can go to sleep and have an "actual" dream where you might go to sleep and hey presto, have an "actual" dream from meta-dreamtime, revealing meta-nonordinary reality... Taoist classics are fond of these stories. I know many. I don't think I ever had one of these. Then there's the no-dream deep reality dreams, my favorite. They are the battery-recharging absolute dark nonexistence of True Yin full of all potentials, actualizing none. This form of dreaming is the healthiest. It is very different from merely "not remembering your dreams." This one you remember -- for what it was -- dark nonexistence. You know you've been there because you feel happy before you feel awake, that's the sequence: happiness first, consciousness later. Sages dream like that always I'm told, and that's how some of them (taoist classics again) can sleep for years, even centuries, without getting bored... I have these occasionally when I'm very, very good.

It's great that you evaluate your life this way. Not everyone -- it is known -- has had a wonderful life, and not everyone of those who did realized they did, and not everyone of those who didn't realized they didn't. Me, I'm a taoist with some shamanic gigs on the side, and it means ready for most (not all of course, I'm not a comics style invincible superhero) scenarios. I might "not be here" in the next minute, or I can not only survive the next minute but eventually find out if immortality is all it's cracked up to be. Taoists have options. Still, to spend a lifetime watching every single dream of humanity, every hope, every starry-eyed expectation turn to smart toxic dust for the vast majority of people who once had those dreams, hopes, expectations -- many working their fingers to the bone toward actually getting there -- is not something I could ignore in the overall balance of things even if my personal situation was among the luckiest. Which of course my bazi told me long ago is not a reasonable expectation, from the taoist-scientific POV. So, it is what it is is it then. I don't particularly disown my regrets, I don't treat them as favorite pets but I realize they are my very own to the same extent my luckiest no-regrets decisions and solutions are. I know that most of the time, at a turn after turn, a bifurcation after bifurcation, I had to choose my options out of a total of one... so in a sense it's all the same. Written in the stars. But I still plan to try to choose the right one if I can -- whenever there's a total of two or more to choose from. The rest is up to the tianzun.

Preface This is a basic post meant as a simple (yet also deep) guide and reminder to living with particular emphasis from the perspective of (jing) conservation. This piece does not talk about methods of jing tonification or replenishment1 which are different though inter-related issues. Rather, this provides foundational philosophy and perspectives with a few guiding lifestyle suggestions to consider in practicing conservation. I will note that many of the suggestions appear basic and they are. Yet most people fail to take care of the roots and the foundations: if you don't take care of the foundation at its roots, any accomplishment you come to at a more advanced level will be built on unstable ground and therefore eventually and likely come to some kind of fail. This includes people who experience aspects of the Void and become fearful of the existential, people who witness Tao and walk away in carelessness or disappointment, people who see some aspect of metaphysical light but cannot access them again or more profoundly, people who find bliss but become drunken, or people who have years and decades of cultivation that just one day simply get up and walk away in disillusionment, disheartened even given all their progress and effort. So, practitioners who come to resolve and completion on this path are people who care for and attend to the most basic until each succession of what is basic becomes what is fantastical to the novice. This is what makes the understanding deep, rich and profound; this is what allows it to become complete and enduring; this how existence transcends itself to become immortal. So, it is encouraged that after you read this, you take the time to assess what additional and specific changes you could make in your life to commit to improving your vitality- not only physiologically but also psychologically (which has more implication upon shen- the spiritual aspect of consciousness that resides with each yin organ (including zhi shen). Then as you regularly apply and assimilate these commitments into your life, consciously reflect upon how you can both broaden and deepen your understanding so as to refine your methods over time. Do this for the rest of your life. Every one who goes deep starts from a beginning over and over again, but what is the beginning becomes something completely anew with each successive cleansing and resolve, and what is basic in time becomes deep and profound if you are astute, diligent and sincere. As per usual and with few exceptions, I rarely post to a thread more than once. For those who continue this thread, please be mindful- post with generosity and take care that you words and ideas are posted with intention for benevolence. Share thoughtfully what you feel you know in yourself to be of value and benefit. Be as truthful as you understand while being kind. When we cultivate in ourselves strong yi (yi- spirit of the spleen organ whose virtue is intention), we can create greater shen for all beings (shen- spirit of the heart whose virtue is awareness and consciousness). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reference Notes for the following reading: Jing- is the primordial essence of existential potential and the root of vital energy. It also is one of the Three Treasues integral to the transmutation processes of internal alchemy. [Note that jing itself is not a tangible substance- though it becomes most notably the substance of semen and ovum; but as iterated above, it is an essence first and foremost before it transmutes into additional forms of (post-natal) qi.] Jing's associations are as follows, primarily because it manifests through the Water phase of the Kidneys: (thus these are direct notes about the Water element and Kidney organ as they relate to jing, but not necessarily directly about jing itself. Understanding the elemental phase from which jing arises and/or is associated is helpful to guiding health and living principles) Wu Xing Phase is: Water Housed in the Yin organ: Kidney Spiritual Axis and Stage: Heart (shao yin) Mother of: Wood Child of: Metal Seasonal phase: Winter Associated Gland: Adrenals Tissue governance: Bone Orifice opening: Ears Flavor quality: Salty Color of light: Blue Emotion: Fear Virtue: Faith Shen Spirit: Zhi Other terms Chong mai- the central channel deep within the core of the body running from perineum to crown that passes through the Triple Burners where primary subtle transmutations occur Shen- spirit, and for the purposes of this post refers to any one of five spirits that govern the yin organs of the body Principles of Conservation in Action and Non-Action The principle of conservation is a simple one, yet can be exceptionally sophisticated and deep. Pertaining to Jing, it is to prevent leakage and loss in each moment on a daily basis so that one can: -have vital essence from which to live a healthy, vibrant life -manifest the infinite potential in the ming of xing from jing (must be done in concert with Yuan Shen in wei wu wei from the Unnamable) -prolong existence so as to continue cultivation towards greater Consciousness (also known as part of the transmutation process of the The Three Treasures) [Notice that if you read these three points about why we conserve jing it is not so we can have egoic power to live forever, have more fun and attain more magical states- this isn't a celebrity contest to be novel and have a forever good time. Which isn't to say it isn't mystical and unimaginably beautiful- but it is also a sacred process and I encourage that those who have these kinds of feelings continue to work on their minds and hearts, to deepen their 'spiritual maturity'. It takes a combination of great fortitude, humility and wisdom to come to recognize this path for all that it is, let alone fulfill it through yourself. This in turn requires a depth of essence inherent to what manifests as the virtues of diligence, integrity and heartfelt courage. So every time you feel these stirrings of superiority, grandiosity, passionate zeal and desire, or conversely feel deep doubt, have reservation or fear your capacity- let it all go and just keep moving inherently, deeply, sincerely and unceasingly from the most essential place you know in yourself.] Just as jing can be conserved with awareness, diligence and care, it can also be lost through unconsciousness, wastefulness and careless expenditure, especially those that go above and beyond our most basic and foundational energy. In modern life, the propensity towards excess in living automatically leads to imbalance that can cause deficiency at a deeper physical and energetic level in the body, leading to disease manifested as aging and ultimately death. Three most basic, daily and common ways you can immediately begin working to conserve jing from the perspectives of: LIFESTYLE WELLNESS AND BALANCE: Be balanced and moderate in actions; do not over exert. For instance, do not work long hours, over-think, over exercise, stay up late, allow your emotions to be become stressed or upset. Do not consume caffeinated or high sugar drinks or foods to push your body to function beyond their basic healthful limit- this pulls energy from your reserves and taxes the adrenal system- the adrenals which are the glands of the kidneys and thus this will cause jing to be extracted. Do not indulge regularly in addictive substances- in most cases, the condition of 'getting high' draws from the jing and pushes out our reserves so that people can experience sensational phenomena through uncontrolled (and therefore not fully conscious) altered states (if you want to know bliss, god, and unceasing beauty, learn to find it from within naturally through your own heart and Consciousness. Through transcendent wisdom in meditation one comes to understand this beyond all measure and through all moments in ways that no drug, medicine or supplement can compare). Eat on time, and eat moderately so that you do not have to draw from the reserves from your body and so that the process of qi creation through the chong mai are not depleted progressively as it transmutes through each of the three burners. Drink a plentiful amount of clean fresh, vibrant water through out the day.2 Note: -as said in Taoism, "the highest good is like water" (implications which are both literal but also progressively energetically subtle, nuanced and deep) -the body is made almost entirely of water -all the jin ye (heavy and light) fluids of the body require fresh water to function -the kidney itself is the water organ in the wu xing phase To the degree that you think your life is 'too busy' or that 'you must' do certain things or that you feel your situation demands your extra energy to succeed, achieve or survive re-assess your perspective, remember that everything you do in life is a choice- even if some choices are difficult to make. Consider more deeply or profoundly what is essential- essence being not of the body or ideation of the mind, but of the yuan (original) in the universe. If you are a woman, until you learn the secrets to healthily cease menstruation (this is NOT the same as going into menopause- contrary) take care of your health so that your hormones are balanced during the moon phase and that your bleeding is fresh, bright and minimal. Menstruation and blood are in many ways for women analogous to the treasure of what jing is in men, so you must learn to conserve blood loss and smooth emotions/ hormones while purifying the menstrual blood. Menstrual blood that is dark, thick, heavy or excessive are signs of serious health issues in Chinese medicine and need to be addressed through lifestyle and dietary changes as well as with a trained practitioner. If you are perimenopausal, know there are ways- however rare but entirely possible, to restart your period. If you are late into menopause, then all the same lifestyle suggestions here apply but in particular you will be benefited by healthful methods of tonification because as noted later below, within most degrees generally and practically, it takes energy to make energy- so more tonification in this case will help with conservation, particularly if you can nourish the blood and focus on qi gong for the liver and breasts. SEXUAL INTIMACY AND HEALTH: When sexually engaging do so consciously, from a place of generosity and in mutual reciprocity where there is a foundation of clear, healthy trust and intimacy. Abstain from sexual behavior that is objectified, sexualized in action, thought and/or emotion whether it is with another person, a projection or image of another. The act of sexualization and/or objectification leads to perpetuation of leakage out the kidneys, eyes and penis- not only during masturbation or ejaculation, but upon mental and emotional provocation as well. Do not engage in random, casual or ungenerous and selfish sexual behaviors alone, with a partner or through 'fantasy' this reduces the opportunity for natural dual-circulation that can help heal and replenish the body, heart and subtle energy systems at the least and at the worse can increase the potential for deep hurt and harm to yourself and others, individually, inter-personally and collectively. To the degree that you suffer from forms of sexual addiction or unconscious habituation (ie. wanting sex out loneliness or emptiness; for vanity, control or power; viscerally unconscious base desires, etc), remove all forms of sexual stimulus from your life until you come to understand what is actually 'sexuality' free from socialized or unconscious base impulse. Instead, focus your attention on healthful life things. When you feel a strong urge or have a strong reaction to something- stop and bring great awareness to yourself. If you are in a healthy and secure relationship, make sure sharing intimacy is done in conscious presence with a mutually open heart and in generosity to each other. This alone if done with enough genuine care, will allow for a certain potential or opportunity for dual-circulation and/or at least mutual health even if neither persons entirely can recognize, sense or understand its technical processes. If you are abstaining from sexual engagement all together make sure that you are resolved. Without true resolve around the matter, conditions of stagnation and turbidity are likely to accumulate whether this is through suppression, repression, or other unconscious desire and fear. For health, flow, and to prevent negative accumulation, continue some measure of circulation until the system is fully purified; meaning in most cases that ejaculating (or some other more subtle clarified form if you are more advanced in your practice) on a rare occasion- will prevent imbalances to various layers of the system, including negative build-up and injury from excess, or conversely depression and increasing weakness in the body. Until the layers of the system are replete with shen to naturally circulate and refine the jing unaided, some measure of continued physical flow through the genital from a sacred inner place can be beneficial. The point in any case is to not simply abstain or not abstain from unconsciousness- be this a mindless procedure of discipline, fear or desire, listlessness or lust. MENTAL-EMOTIONAL and SPIRITUAL WISDOM: Find peace and faith; learn to release fear and do not engage doubt. (Note that not engaging doubt does not mean to relinquish discernment nor does it mean to have either blind faith nor harbor distrust) Fear is the emotion of the kidney that drains the organ's energy and source of jing. Doubt or the lack of faith (not meant from so much from a Western perspective but from the Taoist perspective of lacking trust in the mundane and existential mysterious) are opposing forces to the virtue of zhi- the spirit of the kidneys. People who live in perpetual fear and (particularly existential) distrust have a propensity to exert there will inappropriately (either forcing situations or giving up. As a side note, I also often observe greater levels of procrastination in those who have a constitutional predisposition to water) and cause harm to jing and more importantly, the zhi shen itself. Symptoms of these imbalances include feeling 'frozen' by fears, lacking faith about the course of things in your or other people's lives, doubting the potential of the existential, in yourself and in others; these are highly dangerous and harmful perspectives that come from a lack of clarity in the (organ) spirits. In fact, for so many the unfulfilled life, the unfilled dream, the doubt in whether this (spiritual) path is possible or true, is so integral to these emotions and perspectives. So when we look at jing from a more essential perspective of essence and spirit rather than purely as (post-natal) qi, we come to recognize that how we orient our mind, heart and spirit- and thus our perspective to existence can deeply impact our essence, and thus our actions and the outcomes of our life- including existence and non-existence, life and death. Among other practices, two of the most powerful to target the nature of the kidney and zhi is to dutifully practice 1) deep self-reflection in all moments- particularly when you experience fear or feel deep doubts and 2) to learn meditation that develops the capacity to listen into the silence of Nothing. Remember that the ears are the orifice of the kidneys and that deep self-reflection is the movement between the spiritual poles of kidney and heart. In time, once you have arrived at a certain successive mastery of these very basic life actions, go back to the foundation of the applied philosophy and move deeper. That is: Be still internally (in the spiritual and at the utmost, true stillness requires internal silence, the state of sung, and arrives through wisdom found through meditation), while in vibrant circulation (circulation which was once discrete circuits of the mundane body of qi as well as physical actions and behaviors in living; now becomes the movement of essences and treasures- including jing, and then eventually what is beyond essence and is radiant). When you can make living the same as conservation, the issue of either conditions will resolve and be no longer. Thus, refine your understanding of what it means to not-strive, be moderate, and to be free of desire and fear until your recognition is no longer mundane, until the energetic system and its spirits (the shens) do not move from unconscious impulse and until you are free of all notions that lead to such impulses- not only now in this life time and this moment, but across all planes and dimensions that are the field of time, space and dimension that become the thing you experience to be body and spirit. This is how we cleanse the 'karmic' to prepare the 'body' for the utmost forms of profundity. ------------- Footnotes and Miscellaneous Note: Note to cultivators who are middle-aged or later in life and/or those who are sincere and exceptionally serious in progressing along this path: If you are starting this process now, I suggest that in addition to the above, spend as much leisure time focusing on cleansing and/or purification as the means to actually conserve. Without a properly pure and bright system at all levels, jing can only be cultivated so far- so in order to go deep, you must make sure the system is very clear. The later one starts this process and/or the more accumulation a person has to work through (whether this is mental, emotional, physical or karmic) the more complex it is to minimize the loss of jing over time and thus hinder decline. This is because, if nothing else, as people age they have a phsyiological propensity toward less and less resources within themselves to achieve daily functions and balance, therefore all living increasingly must draw on the foundation of vital jing (rather than post-natal stomach and spleen) qi to act and survive, and eventually even down to the Sea of Marrow (these are bone and blood systems in Taoist medicine). Because the deeper process of systemic purification requires an intense energy of focus and application- particularly if it involves the density of physicality, in order to cultivate a more ascendant form and to refine and transmute more subtle energies, it actually requires a lot of energy. So it takes energy to make energy- energy which you may have less of depending on your constitution and/or level of health if you are deficient or burdened. (Note that once the system reaches are certain level of purity, the system will circulate in a more optimal manner and then this principal changes in certain deep and nuanced regards) Therefore, it is best to spend all time devoting energy to caring for your energy: spend your jing wisely! 1 True jing replenishment and tonification- that is what is deep and substantial enough to make an impact that is profound and lasting enough for transmutation, exceptional longevity or immortality; only truly begins after one has sufficient mastery of conservation in their living and adequately purified the system to the degree where shen and aspects of shen can begin to guide the process. Notice here that people who talk of subtle orbital circulation as a mental-physiological procedural process of qi have not realized True Nature (xing) and that spiritual maturity, greater depth and more profound realization is required to fulfill this process clearly and truly. 2 Regarding Water: those who have cultivated to a very advanced level will note that the start and end phases of all existential processes in the system begin and end with water, breath, and light- so water, like breath and shen, are core to cultivation. Students of mine who in early phases are dismissive when asked to take inventory of how much water they drink through out a day, trivialize a core aspect of the foundational root and thus foolishly jeopardize their potential towards more profound cultivation- not so much exactly because of this one thing, but because of the totality of their perspective in depth and breadth that leads to continually misguided perception born from unconsciously entrenched notions. There is a lot of Western conception that objectifies water into a mere mundane scientifically discrete particle and so much emptily spoken rhetoric around 'drink X ounces of water a day' that others hear the mere suggestion and automatically dismiss it as trite at some level while superficially nodding in agreement at its importance to one another at another level. Deep listening means the potential for deep recognition. Deep recognition leads eventually to profound understanding. And in time, that leads to wisdom; if you can do this in all moments, through all things, your understanding of what is existence and its manifestations will change beyond all conception. Take that to heart. And recognize that what is wise, is often simple. Be so humble so as to be sincere when being basic. Strive less to achieve all Taoist advancements yet be utterly profound in your sincerity and inherent in your diligence and you will surpass any need for stages and levels.

'Loopy' .... for a qualified paleontologist . 'Dreamtime' ? ... thats a very misunderstood term . But yes, most indigenous people the world over see dreams as significant .. as westerners did too not that long ago (relatively) ... even the terminology has changed , it is usually now ' I had a dream' ... it used to be 'I was given a dream' . I was given an interesting dream the other night ... I have no idea at all why 'I ' would 'have had' that dream . Its relative ; good times, good country ; about 2 -4 hrs a day needs to be spent on necessities , the rest is for fun, culture ( costume making, decorating, dancing, ceremony, education / story telling ) family, etc. Central desert , totally different ! I am still waiting for reality to deliver that 'liquid ecstasy ' I dreamed about drinking that night (and the woman I dreamed I was drinking it with )

"A Man's Root" Eight inches strong, it is my favourite thing; If I'm alone at night, I embrace it fully - A beautiful woman hasn't touched it for ages. Within my fundoshi there is an entire universe! "A Woman's Sex" It has the original mouth but remains wordless; It is surrounded by a magnificent mound of hair. Sentient beings can get completely lost in it But it is also the birthplace of all the Buddhas of the ten thousand worlds. On the sea of death and life, The diver's boat is frightened With "Is" and "Is not"; But if the bottom is broken through, "Is" and "Is not" disappear. night plum blossoms spreading under a branch between her thighs narcissus revolves smell it? ~ Ikkyu Sojun http://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/IkkyuSkeletons.html Skeletons by Zen Master Ikkyu Translated by Thomas F. Cleary In: The Original Face: An Anthology of Rinzai Zen, Grove Press, 1978. pp. 79-92. It is in the written word that all things can be seen together. In the beginning of mental evolution, one should concentrate on sitting meditation. Whatever is born in any land all becomes naught. One's own body is not primary: not even the original face of sky and earth and all nations and lands is primary -- all come from emptiness. Because it has no form, it is called Buddha, enlightened. Various names such as enlightened mind, mental buddha, mind of reality, buddhas, enlightened ancestors, spiritized ones -- all come from this. Unless you realize this, you're going right to hell. Also, according to the teaching of good people, we do not return after going separate ways into the lands of darkness; those who are close and those who are inconstant both revolve in the flow of the three realms -- feeling ever more weary of this, I left my native village, going nowhere in particular. Coming to an unfamiliar abandoned temple, even as I wrung out my sleeves, I realized it was already nightfall. With no way to get together even a grass pillow for a nap, as I looked around here and there, there were mossy graves at a distance from the path, near the foot of the mountain, where the fields of meditation were sparse. One especially miserable-looking skeleton came out from behind the hall and said: The autumn wind has risen in the world, in the fields and mountains where you'll go when the fall flowers beckon. What can be done for the body, as a black-dyed sleeve in the heart of a man who wastes it? [1] Everyone must sometime become naught. Becoming naught is called "returning to the fundamental." When you sit facing a wall, the thoughts which arise from conditioning are all unreal. The Buddha's fifty years of teachings are not real either. It's just to know people's minds. Wondering if there were anyone who understands this suffering, I went into the hall and spent the night there, even lonelier than usual, unable to sleep. Around dawn, as I dozed off a bit, in a dream I went out behind the hall, and saw a crowd of skeletons all acting in different ways, just like people in the world. As I watched with a sense of wonder, some skeletons came up and said: When it passes without a memory, this worthless body becomes a dream. If you divide the way of enlightenment into buddhas and kami, how can you enter the true path? [2] As long as it travels the road of life in the present for a while, the corpse in the fields seems elsewhere. [3] Anyway, as I got familiar with them and relaxed, the feeling l'd had of separation between myself and others disappeared. What's more, my skeleton companions wanted to give up the world and seek the truth; seeking separation from excess, going from shallow to deep -- in searching out the source of one's own mind, what fills the ears is the sound of wind in the pines, what blocks the eyes is left on the pillow under the moon. When are we not in a dream, when are we not skeletons, after all? Male and female forms exist only as long as these skeletons are wrapped up and put to use inside five-tone flesh; when life ends and the body bag breaks, there are no such forms -- neither are high or low distinguished. Under the flesh which you now care for and enjoy, this skeleton is wrapped up and set in motion; you should acquiesce to this idea -- in this there is no difference between high and low, old and young. Only when you awaken to the condition of the one great matter will you know the imperishable truth. If a stone is good enough for an effigy after death, hang a scrap of writing on a monument of five elements -- What is it? Oh! A frightening figure of a man! While you have the single cloudless moon how have you come to the darkness of the fleeting world? You must think it true; when the breath stops and the skin of the body comes apart, everyone turns out like this -- your body cannot live forever. A sign of how long is your time are the pines of Sumiyoshi planted before. Give up the mind that thinks there is a self; just go with the wind driving the floating cloud of the body, and come this way. You want to live indefinitely, to the same age; you would really think so -- this is the same frame of mind. Since the world is a sleepless dream, in vain do people start awake upon seeing this. It is useless to pray for a definite lifespan. You shouldn't keep anything on your mind except the One Great Matter. Since life in the human world is uncertain, it is not a matter of awakening to this just now for the first time. Since it is a way to become detached, the sorrow of the world is quite happy. Why adorn a mere temporary form? Didn't you know it had to be [temporary] like this? The original body must return to the original place; don'T seek out where you won't go. Nobody understands life; there is no dwelling place -- when you return, you must become the original earth. Although there are many paths up the base of the mountain, we see the same moon on the high peak. Since where you are going you don't establish a home there, there's not even a road to get lost on. Having no beginning or end, one's mind should not be thought of as being born, or dying. Left to do as it will, the mind doesn't even think things through -- better to have controlled it and given up the world. Rain, sleet, snow, ice -- as such they may be different, but when melted they're the same valley stream water. Although the path of the liberated mind may change, behold the same law of the cloud dweller. [4] A straight path buried under the fallen pine needles; hardly do we realize it is a house where people dwell. How hopeless, the trip to the funeral pyre -- [5] as the fallen, they must stay. [is it transitory, the trip to the burning pyre? as the fallen, they must stay.] Tired of the world, how long will you see the evening smoke of the pyre as another's sorrow? How fleeting, the faces of the people whom we saw only yesterday, as they vanish into the smoky evening. So sad, the evening smoke of the funeral pyres; only the sky is left behind by the wind, as it was before. Of what becomes ash when burnt, earth when buried, what could be left as sin? The sins committed up till the age of three all disappear together, as does eventually the self. This must be what is certain in the world. Thinking how vain are those who do not realize that even today, right now, there must be such helplessness and death, and are startled by it, if asked how their lives should be, some say that these days, unlike the past, they are leaving the temples. In olden times, those who aspired to the way would enter a monastery, but nowadays they are all leaving the monasteries. When you look at them, the monks have no knowledge, they don't like to sit and meditate; without making any efforts, they admire utensils, adorn cushions -- full of conceit, they make their reputation just by wearing the robe, but even wearing the robe of monkhood, they are surely just lay people in disguise. Even though they wear the robe and surplice, the robe becomes a rope tying them up, and the surplice becomes an iron rod thrashing them, so it seems. If we look carefully into the meaning of the cycles of birth and death, destroying life leads to hell, by greed we become hungry ghosts, by ignorance we become animals, by anger we become titans; by maintaining the five precepts [6] we are born human, and by carrying out the ten virtues [7] we are born divine. Above these state are the four holy ones [8] -- added all together, they make ten realms. Looking at this single moment of thought, [9] it has no shape, it abides nowhere for its duration, and there is nothing in it to despise and reject. It is like clouds in the vast sky, like bubbles on the water. Just because there are no thoughts arising, there is nothing to do either. Thoughts and things are one emptiness. I don't know about people's doubts. People's parents are like striking fire: the steel is the father; the flint is the mother; the spark is the child. Setting this to a wick, when the sustenance of fuel and oil is exhausted, the fire goes out. When the father and mother make love, that is like the fire coming forth; since father and mother have no beginning, eventually they fade away in the mind where the fire has gone out. Openly embracing all things through emptiness, all forms are produced. When you let go of all forms, this is called the basic ground. All forms -- of plants, trees, and land -- all come from emptiness, so as a temporary metaphor it is called the fundamental ground. When you break up a cherry tree and look, there are no flowers at all; the flowers are brought by the spring wind. Even though you soar boundlessly even beyond the clouds, just don't rely on the teachings of Gautama. If, hearing the teachings spoken by Gautama over fifty years, you want to try to put the teachings into practice, what Gautama said at the end was that from the beginning to the end he had not said a single word; instead, he raised a flower in his hand, whereat Kasyapa smiled faintly. Then Gautama said, "I have the straight- forward heart of the true teaching," and put down the flower. If you wonder what it means, Gautama said, in effect, "What I have been teaching for some fifty years is like when you're cuddling a baby pretending to be holding something in your hand; my fifty-odd years of teaching was like this call to Kasyapa." Therefore the teachings which he transmitted were like the cuddling of the baby. But this flower cannot be known by means of the body, nor is it the mind; even speaking of it, you cannot know it. You should understand this body and mind thoroughly. Even if you are called a knowledgeable person, you cannot [therefore] be called a Buddhist. As for this flower, the teaching of the one vehicle of all the buddhas of past, present, and future appearing in the world refers to this flower. From the twenty-eight patriarchs in India and six patriarchs in China up till now, there has never been anything but the fundamental ground. Because everything is beginningless, it is called great; all modes of consciousness are produced from emptiness. Even the summer, fall, and winter of the flowers of spring, the colors of the plants and trees, also are made from emptiness. Also, the so-called four gross elements are earth, water, fire, and air. People hardly know what these are. Breath is air, warmth is fire, body fluid is water; if you burn or bury this, it becomes earth. There, too, because there is no beginning, nothing remains at all. Whatever it is is nothing but the world of delusion since even "death" does not turn out to be a real vacation. Everybody, everybody, in the eyes of illusion though the body dies the spirit does not die -- this is a great mistake. In the language of the enlightened, they say that the body and the seed die as one. Even "Buddha" means emptiness. You should return to the basic ground of sky, earth, land, and everything. Giving up the eighty thousand teachings of all the scriptures, just understand this all rolled into one. You will become people of great peace and happiness. Even written down, they're just marks made in a dream; after waking up, there is no one else who asks. 4/8/1457 Ikkyu-shi Sojun, seventh generation after Xutang, in Daitoku Temple before the eastern sea. Notes to Ikkyu's Skeletons 1. The black-dyed sleeve symbolizes renunciation, as the robe of the homeless. A verse of Saint Ippen (1239-1289), a pure land sage of earlier Japan, says, "Giving up the body as well as the idea of giving up, an unthinking black-dyed sleeve in the world." Contained in homonymy and association is the sense "You should live in the world after renunciation, giving up even the idea 'I abandon.''' This is why Ikkyu still warns against wasting it. 2. Kami are nature spirits associated with Japanese earth and life consciousness; they were thought to protect, accept, and uphold Buddhist teachings. The aforementioned Saint Ippen received his major revelations through the mediumship of kami, and later taught the fundamental meaning of prayer underlying all forms of respect. Many eminent Buddhist teachers also preached the nonduality of the spirit and Buddha ways. 3. The corpse in the fields that seems elsewhere is the living body. A verse of Saint Ippen says: "Is it meaningless? While the corpse has not yet decayed, the meadow earth seemed to be elsewhere." This he spoke at the ruins of his grandfather's grave. 4. The law of the cloud dweller is impermanence; in ancient texts it is sometimes used for absolute transcendence or absolute indifference -- we might say, death, as the most personal and cutting expression of impermanence. The great Zen master Hakuin wrote that one who sees into death is safe. 5. The Japanese uses the name of a mountain where bodies were taken to be burned. The variant English reading in parentheses is to highlight the allusion to the sense of the permanence of impermanence. 6. The five precepts are not to kill on purpose; not to steal in any way, even indirectly; not to be greedy or overindulgent in the course of human life; not to drink or sell liquor; and not to lie. 7. "Ten virtues" can have several references. Commonly they refer to the preceding five moral precepts, plus not talking about people's faults, not praising yourself and degrading others, not being stingy or predatory, not being angry without shame, and not repudiating the three treasures of the enlightened ones, their teaching and their communities. In the most ancient teachings, it is said that the Buddha had monks restrain useless mundane talk, but rather discourse on the merits and virtues of ten things: effort, little desire and being content, bravery, learning and the ability to explain the teaching to others, being fearless and unawed, being impeccable in conduct, being accomplished in meditation, wisdom and knowledge, liberation, and the vision and knowledge of liberation. In the esoteric teachings, in which terms Ikkyu sometirnes wrote, there are two explanations: one is not regressing from the determination for enlightenment; not abandoning the three treasures to seek outside ways; not slandering the three treasures and the scriptures of the three vehicles; not doubting places in the very profound scriptures of the great vehicle where you don't understand them; not discouraging anyone determined on enlightenment or causing them to tend to self-enlightenment; not causing uninspired people to go into the lesser vehicles of self- enlightenment; not speaking hastily about the great vehicle in front of those following the lesser vehicles or wrong ideas; not inspiring false ideas; not saying in the presence of outsiders that you have the wonderful precepts of enlightenment; not doing anything harmful or useless to sentient beings. A second set: not abandoning the true teaching; not giving up the spirit of enlightenment; not being stingy with the teachings; not doing anything that is not beneficial to sentient beings; not slandering any of the teachings of the three vehicles; not begrudging teachings; not having false views, like nihilism; encouraging people not to give up their aspiration for enlightenment; not preaching unsuitable teachings to people without consideration of their faculties; not giving people anything that will harm them. 8. The four holy states are sainthood (arhat), self-enlightenment (pratyeka-buddha), bodhisattva, and buddhahood. 9. The ten realms are born of a single moment of thought.

if someone have had lucid dream then to open LD(lower dantien) should not be so hard. The diffrence is that when you enter LD then its not permanent or feeling that something is still missing, that you are still not close enough to reality feeling(same feeling you have in lucid dreams). So you try and try getting into that reality(LD already open), some nonordinary experiences and then one day you see the "pill", you digest it and then you need to come "out of the cell" by leaving the old way of being and entering new way first time(it feels good). You now are same like you are in lucid dreams but the power is still weak. in lucid dream our experience field is whole, it can be replicated in this waking world too, but the intensity is much weaker here. Comparing lucid dream with this reality is enough to succesful alchemy. Also kundalini is the same thing, left and right channels are left and right brain and same yin and yang and you can hold them and make them react, but its at the beginning automatic, trying to just image what its like to be whole and make it seriously really happen in live and your LD opens automatically. Leaving out the details and trying to sense the hidden, unmanifested aspect. If you compare lucid dream and real life then will understand what its meant by these words. Dream and waking life just seem different at the beginning. Trying to find whats different and then trying to eradicate the difference by entering what is correct. This is the sense of "i am" its obvious in lucid dreams but not so obvious in waking life.

A lot of people are going to comment in this thread without having any experience with the astral plane themselves. It's understandable, but not always the best thing. I have some experience with the astral plane - not much, but a little. Here's what I will say: First, make sure that your experience actually takes place in the astral plane and not a lucid dream. In my experience the difference is that my energy body tingles, vibrates and shakes almost like a washing machine just before popping into the astral plane. In the astral plane I typically find myself floating, and I can use my consciousness to guide the direction of my floating/flying. Also, when in the astral I am conscious from the get-go, and don't dream a normal dream and then become conscious half-way into it. In the astral plane I also find myself near or in my bed when I access the plane and not in some fancy dream world. Often the astral plane looks kind of dull. Now, if your experience does take place in the astral world then there are a number of ways you can deal with it. Remember: The astral plane is made up of and manipulable by mind energy - intent, will, consciousness. So if you want these fuckers to go away you can visualize a big whopper of a sword and then swing it with your mind to chop their heads off. You could also just visualize the attackers being disintegrated, melting or spontaneously combusting. I got harassed by negative entities some years ago and when I struck back they disappeared. If it's a simple negative entity/astral dweller/astral junk then you should have no problem beating the crap out of him. If it's another entity - well, I've never actually spoken to a person who got harassed by anything else than a negative entity - the only people who talk about "demons" seem to be those who promote their "how to defeat a demon-book" - but if it's another type of entity then it maybe needs more whopping, or other methods entirely. You could also just project yourself out of your house, by thinking up and projecting your energy body through the ceiling. Probably better to stay and fight though. Another trick is to daily train the famous psychic shield or energy shield, as it will create an energy perimeter that negative entities are said to be unable to penetrate. Certain crystals like black tourmaline are also said to have defensive capabilities against negative energies. You can look up Robert Bruce who has written about astral projection and psychic self-defense. Best of luck

The Tibetan Yogas of dream and sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, a lama in the Bön tradition of Tibet This book gives detailed instruction for dream yoga, including foundational practices done during the day. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006OHK2QK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o03?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Let me ask, do you guys find that releasing The Knot results in the lower dan tian opening up and suddenly deep breathing becoming easy? I cultivated this state for a few days. As has been said, the knot is like a whirlpool which attracts every possible stressor and they all form the knot. From that brief few weeks of experience, I found that it was possible to remain unknotted. But here's the catch. The knot is like a newborn baby, the slightest stressor will set it off. Isn't it funny that Lao Tzu writes in the Tao Te Ching, are you ready to become like a newborn baby? [#10] Can you coax your mind from its wandering and keep to the original oneness? Can you let your body become supple as a newborn child's? Can you cleanse your inner vision until you see nothing but the light? Can you love people and lead them without imposing your will? Can you deal with the most vital matters by letting events take their course? Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things? Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing, acting with no expectations, leading and not trying to control: this is the supreme virtue. And these precepts are what I found to be the essence of the knot. Any attachment triggers the knot. Incredible, is it not? But this acting without expectation, it may perhaps include acting without the expectation of not getting hurt! Fundamentally the knot is there to stop you getting hurt in some deep perceived fashion, whether emotionally or physically. Physically it is as if the knot is a limiter on the dynamic range of the human beingness - when it is removed you can act in loud, confident ways that are physically impossible with it engaged! There is a meditation I developed out of this. It works for dream states and waking states. In the dream state it results in taking active control of the dream - being lucid, aware, and also it results in cessation of negative dream phenomena - dark entities, fears, paralysis, so on. There is a threshold whereby once it is bypassed, the dream state becomes filled with bliss, intrinsically ecstatic, deep rest is attained. One very interesting thing is that when the knot is removed correctly, at night you may happen to feel the body squirt fluid into a certain chamber in the central part of the brain! This fluid is literally felt as a squirt, to be crude it is literally like something ejaculates inwards into the cavity. This fluid is felt to be exceedingly cool and refreshing and it feels so as to wash out the brain and a sensation of clarity and release is experienced when it finishes. I used to wait every night during this phase to feel this. Here is a potential connection - the glymphatic system; this might in fact be the very fluid in question. Anyway, back to the meditation. When awake, the primary result of the meditation is a direct action unto this knot - each breath is felt to unknot it so long as it is sustained. How is the meditation done? Very simply, you will notice that each thought elicits a directly corresponding system-wide reaction in the body. Now, *either* stress hormones are secreted OR relaxation hormones are secreted. If you are keen, you already grasp the full essence of the meditation from this description. What you wish to do is to disconnect the thought-reaction impulse. There is a neural circuit which seems to mediate this Thought<=>Tension impulse and we want to actively work on this to switch it off. Consider: nerves that fire together, wire together. Whatever we do, we strengthen the neural connections thereby rendering it easier. Bad if you do stress, great if you do happy! The knot in fact has a clear neurological origin. There are two amygdalas, the left and the right. This organ is responsible for raw hardware level impulses - fight or flight, desire, semi-reflex actions, so on. So we want the left amygdala connection to strengthen, and the right amygdala connection to either weaken or stay dormant, I am not sure which occurs with meditation here and it does not matter too much. So again, how is the meditation done? Well, you identify the two opposing flows of energy. You will find each and every thought, however subtle will trigger the circuit. Each and every time you will identify the energy flowing one direction or the other: tightening or releasing. If you have no meditation practice then identifying this will be hard. But by practicing Insight meditation (Vipassana), you peel back the layers of the Self enough to finally see this in front of you. Regardless, when you identify the two opposing flows, it is as simple as flowing your mind in the releasing direction. Again and again and again. In fact it took me thousands of changes of direction per day and it might take you the same, the mind is relentless. Flowing the mind in the releasing direction is something you learn by doing it, learnt with trial and error as you keep trying and start making fewer and fewer errors. It is an internal teaching, you are teaching your body that it's OK, that everything is fine. At its essence, this is what it is, this is the very knot itself - the idea that "everything is not quite OK so I must tense". So this is the meditation, every time a thought elicits stress-response, you release the clutch. You let it go. It is a physical process, it is a directly felt action. I guess this is where non-action originated, some genius identified this early on in history. While they had to describe it in vague terms like "do without doing", we can cut open a hypothetical brain now, and point to the bit that's the issue. How excellent! I will add, at some point during this unknot practice, Samadhi arises. You can fall asleep inside your own body. Deeply awake to the outside world, fast asleep within - this is like the reverse of Yoga Nidra. Breathing from the heels, you fall asleep into the rhythm of the breath. By the time you enter this state, breathing will no longer feel like what you know as breathing. Rather you will be actively feeling the breath/prana making purposeful rhythmic motions up and down your body, and you will physically feel the lightness of the breath orbiting the body (MCO). It is a truly stupendously amazing sensation when you enter this mode. You can harness prana in and out of your body - for the tense person, prana is like a volatile gas that quickly dissipates and disappears; for the one in deep relaxation the prana takes on a viscous, almost liquid state where it is felt to have momentum and mass. If you can enter such a state you will be able to collect prana, condense it into a ball, and do stuff with the ball; the ball will have physical mass, momentum and effect. The harmala alkaloids are very useful for developing the awareness of the knot. Found in syrian rue and b.caapi (ayahuasca), they light up the pranic pathways and present a kind of grace, a leeway in the meditation such that where efforts were tight and narrow and indeed precarious, they become relaxed and spacious, indeed efficacious. As with all things, this too must be constantly cultivated and maintained. Real life took over and I dropped out of trying this stuff. It takes a lot of effort ironically, to relax. When real life returns to fanta sea, I will hopefully start again. I know now, the body is a breath machine at its root. The true essence of the body is the breath and think how few amongst mankind have ever found the true power of the breath!

I will comment on something not very popular, but that is not why I should omit it, since the objective is to help anyone who reads this answer. 1. The AUM mantra is very helpful in sleep paralysis. Easy to remember It is very useful to vibrate the M in the dream since that vibration disintegrates the scene of the nightmare. 2. There is a Catholic prayer, the apostles' creed, which has a power of protection and expulsion of any demon or negative energy in my opinion is so powerful that I have used it successfully in ceremonial magic against evil and demonic entities. Even the banishing ritual of the Golden Dawn pentagram is not as effective. 3. Third is Psalm 91. Used by Christians, Kabbalists, and Magicks for centuries. Al G. Manning in his books on white wichtcraft recommends the use of Psalm 91 in conjunction with Psalm 23. You can use them before sleeping as it clears the space of astral beings.

Anyone still following the event? Here was what I dream few weeks earlier. I was pretty sure I was talking to Putin but he was represented as my coworker. Putin is a man of many egos. However, the situational context was about the Ukraine crisis. Basically, in this dream, I was telling him he has to do battles with someone in 50 days. In 50 days, approximately today is the 50th day. In the dream, I literally told him in 50 days he has to do battles with someone. Now, for the past months, he has been doing battles with the interim govt and the West over the Ukraine crisis. No one specific. Of course, on the 25th, a new Ukrainian president has been elected and that's the person he has to do battles with. Why they have to do battles? Why can't the new president bring peace? Why he and Putin have to do battles on the 50th day? That's because the new president has been increasing the intensity of the military operations ever since he was elected, 4 days ago. Although he promised to bring peace but the decision wasn't his to make, but by his own self appointed parliament. Mind you, when I had this vision, this knowledge was already known by me and Putin, assuming I was actually talking to him in my dream. This was happening in the dream while he and I was in China. Again, he was preparing to visit China around late May in order to sign the gas deal and to strengthen the bilateral ties between the 2 countries. I gave him 4 swords to prepare for battles. The 4 swords could be the representative of this event today: http://www.dw.de/eurasian-union-putins-answer-to-the-eu/a-17669138 Ukraine could have been the 4th state... I saw a group of Chinese officials dressed in the Qing dynasty clothing and they made some reference to the unilateral sanctions against Russia. There were other contexts too but I won't reveal them because of their sensitive matters. You can't do battles without making your move...so I heard that people in the East and South of Ukraine are seeing Chechen fighters fighting along side the separatists. That's interesting, I think. My theory is that we won't see peace in Ukraine unless the new president ousts and replaces all of the current parliament members. Most of the current parliament members belong to the Fatherland party and they aren't loyal to the new president. Also, after the coup, the power of the Ukrainian president has been greatly diminished and shifted to the parliament instead. Sadly, I see no peace in the future....

nope, just finding 6 books and putting them stacked in 3's under the head of the bed. Couldn't be simpler. I did it to relieve nose congestion and help with any acid reflux problems. Not a powerful solution, but its so easy to implement that it seems like a no brainer. Except for my wife who doesn't like the look, thus for our new bed I need to find a commercial solution, which I'm sure is out there. Pilgrim> Recently I decided to do something about all my lucid dreaming and started learning about The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep from TWR https://www.amazon.com/Tibetan-Yogas-Dream-Sleep-ebook/dp/B006OHK2QK/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=yoga+sleep+bon&qid=1552494091&s=gateway&sr=8-1 I purchased the Kindle version and the audiobook for when I am driving. They are perfect companion pieces as we already have the paperback book. me> I think I have that book. I have a bunch of books on Lucid Dreaming with limited success. When I work on it, which is for a few months every other year, it tends to make my insomnia worse. An interesting project I had here was group Lucid Dreaming using Lillian Edens guided meditation on Shared Dreaming. Again not great results, but I think the weakest link in the small group was me. There's write up thread on it in my PPD.

I'll bet the work out helped. You might want to look into what I describe below. Recently I decided to do something about all my lucid dreaming and started learning about The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep from TWR https://www.amazon.com/Tibetan-Yogas-Dream-Sleep-ebook/dp/B006OHK2QK/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=yoga+sleep+bon&qid=1552494091&s=gateway&sr=8-1 I purchased the Kindle version and the audiobook for when I am driving. They are perfect companion pieces as we already have the paperback book. Since I began learning sleep is much improved and I have learned allot about the nature of sleep and how it directly correlates to death as I always thought it did. This book is a magnificent masterpiece of instruction and actual techniques.

One more thing though the rings are beautiful it is entering the "Cosmic Womb the Black Orb" through the 5 pointed thin white star the Cosmic Orifice of the Cosmic Cervix that is important. When you enter the womb you experience what is growing there and it is being inside of a entirely different dimension and Universe and there is a God growing in there or I suppose what could be called a Buddha. In my case the God was a male figure in his mid to late 30's That Buddha is you. Your true self and when you realize this you are astounded because you realize the part of you that is in this world this earth realm typing is a fragment of your own totality returning home and you are not only non duel in this awareness but duel at the same time and both the returning fragment and the whole are of one mind so there is no duality. What is thought by one also plays in the mind of the other as a mirror. You are pleased and comfortable to be here and you are being welcomed to remain or return but if you remain the body life is over, your body will asphyxiate because this is a deep form of Samadhi where the breathing is not happening. Trying to explain this by necessity creates a paradox of words. This is not the same as Mahasamadhi where there is no heart beat. That is different and on the way back from absolute absorption one experiences Rigpa. I have been trying to describe this for years. Yesterday I heard Rigpa explained by Marcy Vaughn in TWR'S audio book of The Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep https://www.amazon.com/Tibetan-Yogas-Dream-Sleep/dp/1559391014 As she was describing Rigpa I was shocked and said Oh yes I know exactly what she is talking about. Sorry OP this has drifted a bit more....

Well, I agree with you that being bound to a religion and its rites is a frustrating thing and it also does not sit well with me. I don't follow rules simply because they are imposed on me, but I adopt the rules when... (1) The consequences are too dire for me to go against or (2) the rules make perfect logical sense or (3) I'm not going against the rules simply because of emotional patterns. For rituals, there are always some kind of symbolism behind them... But trying to figure them out doesn't sit right with me either. I find meditation the most natural... In fact before I even realized it was meditation or even knew of religion, I did it when I was a kid without anyone teaching it. All you do is explore your own mind and increase the scope of sensitivity/awareness. And when I simply watch what goes on naturally in my own mind... whether physical sensations or mental perceptions, then I go into a naturally meditative state. I find that the basis behind some of what they teach in the lucid dream techniques, such as the "new agey" wake-induced lucid dream (WILD) - adapted from Tibetan dream yoga, where you just slip yourself into a lucid dream after getting into a meditative state and maintaining lucidity as we go into a sleep cycle. It's simple, but not easy to do...

Okay , so that one's over - onwards and upwards , its all part of the big jig saw puzzle - we learn as we go along ... and hopefully, whoever is related to next gets the benefit of your experience . Sounds like he is being obscure and cant cough up exactly what he needs to ? Brilliant ! ..... you may have discovered the only safe way to approach Drew ; Sorry, what the whole point of what ? - the picture thing/ your coincidences ? Or Drew thinking he can give girls at McDonalds OAD ? The point of the second is to boost Drew's ego The first ? Jeeze ! Who knows , sometimes blind chance or a mistake can have an amazing effect , sometimes it seems like the whole thing is orchestrated . I seem to fluctuate between the two at different times , although I have to say in my most doubting moments I have been 'slapped in the face ' by certainty of this orchestration .. and even if I somehow orchestrated these events myself ( internally / psychologically ) that suggests other equally fantastic forces at work . Well, thats a whole curriculum of magical training - one way to start is to keep a dream diary . If you are interested about intense relationship dynamic with others that energise us / cause reactions ... and since you seem 'up on astrology' a bit , I would refer you to the writings of psychological astrologer Liz Greene . She has some excellent stuff on anima animus dynamics and how it interplays . Hmmmm ..... thats a BIG one . First, I will give you some hope ; going into it it is like restriction and discipline ( or issues, flows and restrictions related to those things ) but coming out of it is a new freedom . Its like learning the first lesson of initiation all over again ; in order to gain real freedom (in anything ; thought , action of body, physical practice, study, etc ) one first has to learn discipline structure and organisation . Saturn return is like beginning yoga ; we THINK our body is free, relaxed and at ease ... and it might feel better to lie in bed through the dawn - but this aspect of Saturn WILL MAKE YOU rise before dawn and do your yoga - one way or another - eventually you find your body frees up and relaxes and is more under control, etc , than before . (just an example in case I was being too obscure ) going 'down' the Kabbalistic Tree Saturn brings the ideal forces together into manifestation , but going up the Tree she releases form and things become 'liberated' - so she is said to 'dissolve' , ' The Great Sea' , the Cosmic Mother and gateway to life and death . I won't tell you about my SECOND Saturn return ( My God , how did I survive that ! ) ... I am guessing if I make it to my 3rd one , it will probably kill me ....... but the first one is no where near as intense as the latter ones . Hmmm .. I haven't really given advice as to how to handle it . I guess the best way is to try and detect the lesson at hand and act accordingly . Its tough, as often we get pushed in a direction we feel we dont want to go . But maybe that will have a good positive learning outcome , then again it could be 'learning via hammer time' . Both are valuable learning experiences . The way is to try staying on top of things - learning before the hammer time , or learning , not by your own mistakes , but by the observation of others methods that leads to mistakes . .... My friend , who I said was reckless , deliberately avoided this ; " I want to learn by my own mistakes . " Of course, we need both IMO - observation AND personal experience - , boy did she have a hard time and wail and complain about it ... but that was her choice - she ended up okay and seems happy now , although at times she seemed in the pit of despair . Hopefully lucky and beneficial then . In the case of 'demons' , in my story, its just a modern image or concept, the idea being , wrongful actions against others will impact negatively on yourself . Give yourself over to base urges and you are likely to become a manifestation of base urges ... seems simple , but often people dont seem to get that . There is a lot more in there , but that will do for 'story analysis ' . As far as 'demons' generally - I have a lot of posts here on the subject - my views on them are more the classical ones and also I ascribe to ( one of my outlooks ) ' Daimonic Reality ' . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(classical_mythology) https://dreamflesh.com/interview/animated-world-patrick-harpur/

Another thing DreamBliss, If you’re going to consider the western approach to this practice you’re going to have a ton of work and a ton of reading to do. I been on that path before so I can point you in the right direction. Here are the sources you’ll likely need. To build a firm foundation (for western standards) begin with these two books: http://www.amazon.com/Exploring-World-Dreaming-Stephen-LaBerge/dp/034537410X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446692709&sr=8-1&keywords=lucid+dreamin http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Lucid-Dreaming-Power-Supplements/dp/1430305428/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446692732&sr=8-1&keywords=advanced+lucid+dreaming Eventually you’ll need to work with supplements as with the more scientific approach your brain and body chemistry won’t always work in conjunction with your desire to have lucid dreams. There are even times where your dreams will be very fuzzy but supplementation would help to fix that as well as to prolong the dreams themselves. These substances are mostly synthetic and the ones I’ve found to work are choline bitartrate and piracetam. I used those back in college as part of my nootropics stack and they gave me lucid dreams on occasion without even intending on having them. I know another popular one is galantamine however I cannot comment on it as I’ve never used it before. There are also natural herbs that have been used by shamans in indigenous American communities in Brazil such as yerbamate. Shamans in indigenous American communities in the Dominican Republic used dimethlytryptamine (highly illegal substance) to induce out of body experiences and for explorations on the “other side”. Stephen LaBerge’s book was written a long while back and has never been updated. The up to date version of his methods are in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Are-You-Dreaming-Exploring-Comprehensive/dp/0957497709/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1446693330&sr=8-10&keywords=lucid+dreaming I’m also aware that you don’t like meditation but if you’re truly serious about this practice then you would set aside an hour of quiet time to still yourself. I know it’s difficult especially in the beginning. It’s also best to find yourself a teacher but for now here are some books that may help you: http://www.amazon.com/Real-Happiness-Meditation-28-Day-Program/dp/0761159258/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446692483&sr=8-1&keywords=sharon+meditation http://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-Yourself-Awake-Tibetan-Transformation/dp/159030957X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1446693484&sr=8-4&keywords=alan+wallace http://www.amazon.com/Attention-Revolution-Unlocking-Power-Focused/dp/0861712765/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446693484&sr=8-1&keywords=alan+wallace http://www.amazon.com/Stilling-Mind-Shamatha-Teachings-Lingpas/dp/0861716906/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1446693484&sr=8-5&keywords=alan+wallace Shamatha requires such a great deal of work. It’s not for the feint of heart. I’ve never done it but the amount of dedication truly scared me off and it’s definitely not for westerners. Insight meditation may be all you need but if it really drives you insane then try sensory awareness: http://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Vitality-Presence-Awareness-Practice/dp/1556436416/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446691360&sr=8-1&keywords=sensory+awareness If you don’t want to read then try the course below: http://snoozon.com/lucid-dreaming-online-course In the end you’ll probably have to examine all these sources and figure out what works best for you. Instead of spending all that money, accumulating all this knowledge (that won’t translate into lucid dreaming skills) and using up your will power trying an endless array of techniques that may or may not work you should just try and keep things simple. If I were to go back in time and be my own older brother and point myself in the right direction here’s what I would recommend to myself today: 1) The snoozon online course 2) Sensory awareness (the book and the retreat) That’s it! You even have a forum with the online course where you’ll be able to get all the information you need. Just be careful with what you read because if someone tells you something isn’t possible and if they’re wrong then it just becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Sensory awareness on the other hand is a somatic and meditative approach to mindfulness without the strict formality you'll find in zen. Another thing you want to be careful with is putting all your faith on LaBerge's techniques (or anyone else really) as if they're the written word of some supreme being and not having any faith in yourself. I've been there before. The sources I've provided is the best you're going to get when it comes to U.S. culture. When I think about U.S. culture I already see the overwhelming majority of people complaining about how it's too much work or they don't want to meditate. I don't mean to sound rude or as if I intend on being sarcastic but most folks would rather invent a pill or pop on a dream mask before bedtime to "effortlessly" lucid dream than to meditate and cultivate awareness throughout the day. Even setting their intentions would be too much work. I've studied the western methods enough to see how it's nothing more than a cheap watered down version of Tibetan dream yoga. Tibetan dream yoga works and is incredibly powerful but it's better suited for those who are truly devoted to that path. The way Tenzin Wangyal Rinponche presents it perhaps makes conscious dreaming achievable for most westerners who attempt it. I've got enough exposure to the Taoist methods to see how it already boils down what makes conscious dreaming work to it's core essence and on top of that they're just powerhouses of energy. They also work it down to the energetic level. The Taoist methods take work to learn but it's also the most effortless. Bruce Lee once said something along the lines of "Learn technique, apply technique, master technique, forget technique". This is where you want to get to. It's wu wei (the action of non action) at work. Again, I'm not trying to convert you but I am sharing my personal experience. I'm also not an authority (or even a monk for that matter) but a student. I still have a lot to learn and I'm grateful for being shown an authentic path that doesn't rely on the illegitimate teachings by those here in the west who had to go to Tibet to learn THEIR teachings, THEIR techniques and abide by THEIR religion and THEIR culture to swing back west and act like they know these spiritual practices better than the Tibetans themselves. These self proclaimed "experts" and "authorities" here in the west are arrogant beyond belief and it's the furthest thing from intelligence.

What is the Real World? The book A Course In Miracles begins: Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God. Sentient beings interprete that according to their various indoctrinations,...however, reading this text cover to cover, in an open-minded way, those 3 lines above can be rewritten as this: Nothing real exists in phenomena. Nothing unreal exists in Reality. There is no god. Reading ACIM was ego shattering. The day after finishing ACIM, I had the opportunity to talk with Tara Singh, the world's foremost authority on ACIM. He said, "yes, the punch line of ACIM is that there is no god, although the book uses god as a fundamental theme." He told me that less than 2% of those who have done the class realize what I did. I list ACIM as one of the 5 most significant books (including all sutras) of my life. Those knowledgeable of ACIM have responded to the following 3 questions as such (which you "No Right, No Wrong" may find interesting): 1. If a God did not create the world or the body, who did? Moreover, who are we and how did we get here? This is among the most commonly asked questions, and is certainly an understandable one. Almost all people believe that they are physical and psychological selves, living in a material universe that pre-existed their coming, and which will survive their leaving. The difficulty in understanding that this is not the case lies in the fact that we are so identified with our individual corporeal selves, that it is almost impossible to conceive of our existence on the level of the mind that is outside the world of time and space. When the thought of separation seemed to occur, A Course in Miracles explains that man seemed to fall asleep and dream a dream, the contents of which are that oneness became multiplicity, and that the non-dualistic Mind of man became fragmented and separate from its Source, split into insane segments at war with themselves. As the Course explains, these fragments projected outside the mind a series of dreams or scripts that collectively constitute the history of the physical universe. On an individual level, the serial dramas our ego personalities identify as our own personal lives are also projections of our split and fragmented minds. Thus we are all actors and actresses on the stage of life, as Shakespeare wrote, living out a dream that we experience as our individual reality, separate and apart from Who we really are as Real Self. Moreover, our minds have projected many different personalities in the collective dream of the fragmented little self, complicating the whole process. Therefore, the question "How did we get here?" must be understood from this perspective of the collective and individual dream. In other words, we are not truly here, but are dreaming that we are. As A Course in Miracles states: "[We] are already home, dreaming of exile" (text, 169; T-10.1.2: 1). And this is how the dream seemed to happen: Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which man remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting [to laugh] did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects (text, p. 544; T-27.VITI.6:2-3). These "real effects" constitute the physical world we think is our home. The following passage is perhaps the best description in the Course of the process whereby this effect came into existence, once man took seriously the tiny, mad idea that there could be a substitute for Love. As we shall now see, this resulted in the making of the physical universe which is believed to be an opposite to our true Home: The physical universe substitutes an illusion for truth; fragmentation for wholeness. It has become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still is what it was. That one error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it, and every special relationship that you have ever made is part of it. You may be surprised to hear how very different is reality from what you see. You do not realize the magnitude of that one error. It was so vast and so completely incredible that from it a world of total unreality had to emerge. What else could come of it? Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough, as you begin to look at them. But nothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity of the original error, which seemed to cast you out of Home, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force you to make further substitutions. That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to bide it, and became the screen on which it was projected and drawn between you and the truth. For truth extends inward, where the idea of loss is meaningless and only increase is conceivable. Do you really think it strange that a world in which everything is backwards and upside down arose from this projection of error? It was inevitable (text, pp. 347-48; T- 1 8.1.4:1-6.-5) But A Course in Miracles further states that the world was made as an attack on Reality (workbook, p. 403; W-pIl.3.2:1), and this was accomplished, again, by the collective split mind of man that believed in its hallucinatory dreaming that it had usurped First Cause. This is the beginning of the ego's unholy trinity that was mentioned above in question 4 on page 4. The guilt over his seeming sin of separation and usurpation demanded that man be punished. Consequently, the fearful man sought to flee from his own insane projection of a wrathful, vengeful Reality who wished to destroy him. Therefore man projected his illusory guilt and fragmented self out of the mind, thereby miscreating a physical world of time and space in which he could hide from the non-physical Reality he believed he had dethroned and destroyed. Within these multiple dreams, the one man appeared to split into billions of fragments, each of which became encased in a body of individual insane dreams, believing that this would render personal "protection" against the ego's image of a wrathful Reality's ultimate punishment. It is important to note still again that we are speaking about the collective mind of the separated man as the maker of the world. Every seemingly separated fragment is but a split-off part of that original one mind that sought to replace the One Mind of Man. Thus, the individual fragment is not responsible for the world, but it is responsible for its belief in the reality of the world. 　 2. Does A Course in Miracles really mean that a God did not create the entire physical universe? We answer this question with a resounding affirmative! Since nothing of form, matter, or substance can be of Source, then nothing of the physical universe can be real, and there is no exception to this. Workbook Lesson 43 states, in the context of perception, which is the realm of duality and separation: Perception is not an attribute of Source. Perception has no function in Source, and does not exist (workbook, p. 67; W-pI.43.1:1-2; 2:1-2). In the clarification of terms we find the following crystal clear statement about the illusory nature of the world of perception, which Source did not create: The world you see is an illusion of a world. Source did not create it, for what Source manifests must be eternal as Itself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others [e.g., the greater cosmos, as we shall see below in a passage from the text). But the time will come when all things visible will have an end (manual, p. 8 1; C-4. 1). And finally, a similar statement in the text: Source's laws do not obtain directly to a world perception rules, for such a world could not have been created by the Mind to which perception has no meaning. Yet Sources laws reflected everywhere [through the Holy Spirit]. Not that the world where this reflection is, is real at all. Only because Man believes it is, and from Man's belief He could not let Himself be separate entirely. (text, p. 487; T-25.111.2; italics ours). These passages are important, because they clarify a source of misunderstanding for many students of A Course in Miracles who maintain that Jesus is teaching that God did in fact create the world. They assert that all the Course is teaching is that he did not create our misperceptions of it. Statements which contain the phrase "the world you see," as in the above passage from the manual for teachers, do not apply simply to the world we perceive through our wrong-minded lens, but rather to the fact that we see at all. Again, the entire physical universe, the world of perception and form, is illusory and outside the Mind of Reality. Therefore, nothing that can be observed -- nothing that has form, physicality, moves, changes, deteriorates, and ultimately dies -- could be of Source. A Course in Miracles is unequivocal about this, which is why we speak of it as being a perfect non-dualistic thought system: It contains no exceptions. And so the seeming majesty of the cosmos and perceived glory of nature are all expressions of the ego's thought system of separation, as we see in this wonderful passage from the text: What seems eternal all will have an end. The stars will disappear, and night and day will be no more. All things that come and go, the tides, the seasons and the lives of men; all things that change with time and bloom and fade will not return. Where time has set an end is not where the eternal is (text, p. 572; T-29.VI.2:7- I0). To attempt to make an exception to this fact is to attempt a compromise with truth, exactly what the ego wants in order to establish its own existence. As it states in the workbook: "What is false is false, and what is true has never changed" (workbook, p.445; W-pII.10.1:1). And again in the text: How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has not occurred, and can have no effects. And that is all (text, p. 600; T-31.1.1:1-4). In conclusion, therefore, no aspect of the illusion can be accorded truth, which means that absolutely nothing in the material universe has come from Reality, or is even known by Reality. Reality is totally outside the world of dreams. 　 3. What about the beauty and goodness in the world? Following the above answer, we can see that the so-called positive aspects of our world are equally as illusory as the negative ones. They are both aspects of a dualistic perceptual universe, which but reflect the dualistic split in the mind of Man. The famous statement "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' is also applicable here, since what one deems as beauty, another may find to be aesthetically displeasing, and vice versa. Similarly, what one society judges as good, another may judge as bad and against the common good. This can be evidenced by a careful study of history, sociology, and cultural anthropology. Therefore, using the criterion for reality of eternal changelessness that is employed in the Course, we can conclude that nothing that the world deems beautiful or good is real, and so it cannot have been created by Reality. Therefore, given that both beauty and goodness are relative concepts and thus are illusory, we should follow the injunction to always ask ourselves: "What is the meaning of what I behold?" (text, p. 619; T-3I.VII.13:5). In other words, even though something beautiful is illusory, it remains neutral, like everything else in the world. Given to the ego, it serves its unholy purpose of reinforcing separation, specialness, and guilt. Given to the Holy Spirit, on the other hand, it serves the holy purpose of leading us to an experience of truth that lies beyond perception. For example, a sunset can reinforce the belief that I can find peace and well-being only while in its presence, or it can help remind me that the true beauty of Man is my Identity, and that this beauty is internal, within my mind and independent of anything outside it. 　 　 　 　 　 　 　 　

I totally do not treat life as a dream, like any kind of deliberate mind exercise, but I experience synchronicities and it fills me with sadness, loneliness and frustration when I try to share it with those involved but only reap silence. I have made a quite consistent chain of experiences of this realm being incompatible. It's like NPCs everywhere. You say a bit too much and you break their little scared-puppy brains. And so those things I see become like a torture. They contain profound implications but they accumulate within me and nothing ever comes from it that could give me any consolation, hope or other type of empowerment. This world is also supposed to have avenues to help, but they, too, seem embedded in the sick structures and thus become part of that grotesque expression of corruption, where those who actually manage to find the help they need didn't need it in the first place because they managed to wade through all that shit to 'get help'. Imagine that state of loneliness. You on one side and the entire fucking universe on the other.

To me it means the following. 1. As Human Beings we experience only a portion of what there is via limited sense organs therefore all data received is incomplete and full of illusion, delusion and error therefore there can not be any absolute knowing by reason or the senses. To further complicate this everything is filtered through the conditioning of the mind which is influenced by culture , gender, cast color and creed. We have shared similarities, commonalities but my experience of life is much different than yours. Both are equally illusory and the realm itself is only partly perceived in a very minute way. 2. The world of waking life like the world of sleeping and dreaming life are equally dream worlds. 3. We the dreamers through group karma inhabit the same realm and are governed by the laws of said realm even though both waking and dreaming are equally dreams if you walk off of a building in the waking dream realm you will not fly, you will fall and become hurt and or die transition out of the waking realm.

Here’s an interpretation I’ve previously read, written by one of my favourite theorists...... THE HAPPY FISH—OR: JOY WITHOUT JOY A short but rather well-known story in the Zhuangzi contains a discussion about the happiness of fish. While Zhuangzi and his philosopher friend and opponent Huizi are out on a leisurely stroll, a dispute arises between them: Zhuangzi and Huizi were rambling around [you] at the bridge across the Hao river. Zhuangzi said: "Out come the minnows and drift along [you], so free and easy. That's the happiness of fish!" Huizi said: "You are not a fish. Whence do you know about the happiness of fish?" Zhuangzi replied: "You are not me. Whence do you know that I don't know about the happiness of fish?" Huizi answered: "I am not you, so I surely don't know about you. You are surely not a fish, and this proves completely that you don't know about the happiness of fish." Zhuangzi said: "Let's go back to where we started. When you said 'Whence do -you know about the happiness of fish' you asked me the question already knowing that I knew. I knew it from up above the Hao.” Just like many other allegories in the Zhuangzi, this story includes several puns (which unfortunately do not receive appropriate recognition in many English translations). The crucial pun occurs in the first line of the story, and understanding it is necessary for understanding the debate that unfolds in the following sentences. Zhuangzi's and Huizi's stroll is described as "rambling around," which is you in Chinese (not the same character as you meaning "presence"!). This word is also used in the title of the first chapter of the Zhuangzi: "Going Rambling without a Destination" (xiao yao you) and is an important term for the "lifestyle" of the Daoist sage. When Zhuangzi starts talking about the fish in the river Hao, he uses the very same word for their "drifting along." Both the men's wandering and the swimming of the fish is thus described with a Daoist terminus technicus for the complete absorption in one's natural environment or in one's natural place and position. If one "rambles" free and easy, one has no friction whatsoever with one's surroundings and so is part of a seamless, easygoing process. The notion of you expresses how it feels to be part of a perfect scenario—it is the perfect Daoist "feeling," so to speak. The second pun is based upon the ambiguity of Huizi's question, which initiates the philosophical dispute: "Whence do you know about the happiness of fish?" This can be—as it was obviously intended by Huizi—a rhetorical question meaning simply, "How should it ever be possible for you to know about the happiness of fish?" Huizi seems not to be merely asking Zhuangzi how he can have such knowledge, but denying that he can have it at all. Huizi is addressing an epistemological issue: One should not claim to have knowledge to which one has no access. Zhuangzi, at first, takes Huizi's philosophical attack seriously and tries to defeat Huizi by his own means—but this attempt is not successful. His argument that Huizi cannot claim any knowledge about him—not even his claim about the fish—is defeated by Huizi's reprisal that this argument—the invalidity of knowledge claims about realms one is somehow separate from—proves Huizi, and not Zhuangzi, to be correct. It is epistemologically problematic to claim such knowledge, and thus Zhuangzi's claim to know the happiness of the fish may be some "poetic" expression of one's feelings strolling along the river, but it cannot be taken seriously as a philosophical statement. Zhuangzi, having lost the epistemological dispute, twists the whole philosophical direction of the discussion in the last sentence of the dialogue. He plays with the ambiguity of Huizi's initial question. Both in English and Chinese the question "Whence do you know about (an zhi) the happiness of fish?" can also mean "From where do you know about the happiness of fish?" It can be a question like "From where did you see that fish hiding behind the stone?" If the question is understood in this way, it is not a rhetorical question, but a real one. Literally, Huizi had indeed asked this question, and by asking this question—although not intentionally but linguistically—acknowledged that Zhuangzi knew about the happiness of fish whereas he himself did not. Thus Zhuangzi now answers Huizi's question in a literal way: "From where did you see the happiness of the fish?—"Oh, I just see it from here, from my perspective while strolling along and above the Hao river." And this has again a double meaning: It means, first of all, "I simply see the fish from here where I am" but it also means: "I see that the fish are happy, because while I am rambling here (you) and they are drifting there (you), we are actually sharing the same 'lifestyle.' We are both youing! That's how I know what they feel." This pun with the term you explains whence Zhuangzi knows about the happiness of fish. With his final sentence he answers Huizi in a Daoist way. He fails to convincingly prove his knowledge claim using Huizi's epistemology, but with the final sentence he alludes to the notion of you—and thus supports his claim in a particular Daoist manner. Guo Xiang's commentary to the fishnet allegory explains this Daoist "epistemology": Well, what things are born into and what they rejoice in—heaven and earth cannot change this position, and Yin and Yang cannot take back this livelihood. Therefore it cannot be called strange if one can know what beings born into the water are happy with from [being familiar with] what beings born on land rejoice in. With Guo Xiang's help, Zhuangzi's point is elucidated: Zhuangzi is a human being and his way to you is to ramble around carefree on the land. Fish have a different position and "livelihood," they have a different place in the scenario of Dao, they have a different nature, and accordingly, they have a different way to you—they you by drifting along in water. Each being has its own natural place in its environment, and Zhuangzi can only feel like fish in the water while on land. Both species have their respective "elements." When Zhuangzi claimed to know about the happiness of fish, he did not claim to be able to feel the exact same feeling. He was just saying: I feel perfect by rambling around, and the fish feel perfect by drifting around. Both are you—but two kinds of you, a fish-you, and a human-you. There are different kinds of "happiness," a fish-happiness, and a man-happiness, and these are not exchangeable! The fish will never be able to ramble on the land and feel perfectly happy there, and it would be a miracle for a man to drift around in the water just as happily as fish. Both kinds of happiness are entirely different and separate, but they are both equally in perfect accord with the Dao. Comparing this story with the butterfly dream allegory one might say: Just as the butterfly call be perfectly content and in its element during the time of the dream, and as Zhuang Zhou can be perfectly content and in his element while being awake, so also the fish in the water and the human being on land can be perfectly content and in their elements. They do not know exactly how the other feels, but they can know that each of them can rejoice in what they are. Because one can be self-content in a dream, one can know that one can be self-content when awake; and because a man can be self-content on land, one can know that fish can be self-content in water. The happiness of the fish is the happiness of complete absorption in one's natural environment or in one's natural place and position. This happiness is attainable for fish, humans, and butterflies. But this happiness is not just some kind of emotional "joy." The perfect happiness of the fish or man is that they lose themselves in their respective element. And if they lose themselves, they will also be able to lose their joy. The perfect Daoist happiness is joy without joy. It is not tied to any particular emotional sensation and is not felt in a specific way. The Zhuangzi also says: "Utmost happiness is without happiness." A Daoist sage does not only forget words, ideas, and him/herself, he/she also forgets any particular kind of happiness. The perfect emotional quality is a feeling one no longer feels. A Daoist sage takes on the "zero-perspective" of joy—he/she will know about the happiness of men and fish while enjoying the "utmost happiness without happiness" him/herself. (from Daoism Explained: From the Dream of the Butterfly to the Fishnet Allegory, by Hans-Georg Moeller)

Hmmm, what an interesting thread. I suspect I am one of those affected by this, to some degree. As a child I recall having vivid dreams, sometimes of places I still remember. Although when I attempt to visualize them, it is more the feel of how the looked and a very specific spatial/mechanical awareness of what they were. In some cases, I attached so strongly to one part of how I think something looked that that is all I have. I can imagine a red ball, but I have to create it with some effort. I can imagine anything visually like this, but it requires construction, if that makes sense - unless I've seen it recently, and then I can connect to the feeling of the memory of what I've seen. Perhaps this is also related to how I construct things, by reaching until I have the necessary information. I am left-handed, but still fairly close to ambidextrous. I went to college for music performance, but mostly because this is what I did in grade school - I quickly learned that while I had good technical ability, I needed work on creating the soul of the music. My art-work is also very math/pattern based. I work a lot with reasoning things out, and have a good sense of directional awareness and intuitive understanding of how machines work. Mostly, with dreams, I think I do visualize things, but it is extremely difficult to consciously recall what things look like in any detail at all, even when in that hazy state before waking up, while my barely active mind is still connected to the deeper layers. Absolutely never remember faces. If someone was familiar to me in a dream I have to work this out with intuition, how the relationship of the person felt to me. I recall reading once that we can't read writing in dreams, and I guess I don't know if this is true or not, because it's always been impossible for me to read anything in dreams. The one dream I had one night as a senior in high school that I woke up and still remember, was of a room. It had a tall ceiling, elaborate theater style curtains, and I was seeing it from a certain place within. Curious, I accepted that I had a clear memory of this room. I proceed to audition for all-state band for the first time a couple weeks later (never thought I'd actually make it, wasn't even nervous during it because of this), and proceeded to place. 5 months later I show up to the practice room - in a city I'd never been to before, the room was situated deep inside a big performing arts center, not open to the public, no windows. I take a seat and look up. Exactly same tall ceiling and thick curtains, from the same perspective. Uncanny... I had not thought much about my dream, but as soon as I looked up I remembered it as an exact match. I used to escape into novels, and I would get to a point where the novel came alive inside of me, but it was like I was feeling everything that happened from the character's perspective. Visual descriptions were felt, as in how I might feel looking over a vast mountain vista - I would feel the sharp drop of before me, sense the vast distance spreading way out into some clouds and kinda see imaginary mountain peaks off in the distance, but the image of them would be indistinct and changing to different types of mountains whenever I revisit them, as though I am cycling through pictures of mountains I've seen before rather than creating them with my shen. Now, having done energy work for some years, I've played with various different things, including the third eye. For me it has been a portal for working with energy, but I always seem to use too much effort when pulling on it. Also, for a long time I had more of a sense of yin energy than yang energy - it was only this past year that I began to feel yang energy or perhaps shen, and start to understand the principles to inviting it into deeper integration within. Along with this sensing of a new type of energy, some of my work has changed. For example, now when I do some types of qigong, my shen will crystallize and clarify somewhat, which I also associate with sitting more in stillness more regularly. When I sleep I seem to have dreams with a sharper quality to them. A couple weeks ago I accidentally had some coffee for the first time in a while, couldn't sleep, and decided drinking some beer was the antidote... I had to much and regretted it, but also had an interesting experience... something about the beer helped to crystallize the energy to a greater extent, and I became more aware of a more "visual" sense of seeing the edges of various crystalline energy shapes all around my field. I associated this with the 3rd eye / pineal gland, but also with wood/liver type of energy from the alcohol. Wood energy is something I don't have very much of, based on my BaZi chart, which seems to correspond with my life experience. Although I do have large, healthy, shiny, moist nails, and I used to have 20/20 vision, my eyesight has suffered over the years, though not bad enough to require glasses... perhaps it is a difference between having a healthy enough liver and weaker gall bladder, not sure. This describes my past somewhat well. It takes a lot to make me angry, while people with excess wood qi frequently have major issues with managing their excess energies. I've always been the patient, quiet, someone timid and sort, after my initial burst of early childhood energy - supposedly if the 3rd chakra isn't developed in those early years, the 4th opens wide without regulation - I remember burning like a sun, but then after some time I burnt out. After that I was often bullied and pushed around, wasn't able to make decisions for myself. But nice side effect of NEVER getting headaches, which presumably is related to not having those excesses of pent up qi - any of my excesses related to hun were explored in my imagination, outside of my body. I've experienced hangovers, but this seems a bit different. When in high school sometimes my mother and I would have a disagreement (she never gave in) and I could get pushed into something like anger, so I would just walk off and around the block, and then I'd be fine and was ready to move on. Wood energy is also associated with the hun, which is also associated with dreaming and vision. All in all it seems something related to the hun spirit is the issue with aphantasia. Oh and @Jeff, feel free to do whatever / share whatever. My sense is that I am able to work in these energy centers related to vision more and more, but need a lot more refining and gaining experience on how they operate rather than trying to push the energy I am used to through them. I think I need a lot more work with inviting the various shen back into the body now that I am taking back over the 3rd chakra regulation of energy and creating a home/field for the higher vibration energies again. I've started to connect this to the energy gate between the shoulder blades called "spirit gate" - when the shen is able to reside here, I am able to act and react from a more stabilized perspective without feeling the need to move out of the way of things coming to me. Shen/spirit likes stillness and all that. Once the shen is relaxed and in place here, I'm getting that it is more centered and one is less easily pushed around.

Ooops.... I am apparently still answering you! Sensation, empty of our interpretation is all there is. Phenomena appear and disappear experiencing. The flashing metal boxes we think we are measuring our reality with are mere abstractions, their measurements often bear no relation to what is sensed. Can anyone find the marvel of the first star appearing at twilight in such a device? You can't... it arises when all of the supposed achieving ceases. It actually happens to you all of the time. You are INTIMATELY familiar with it. IT is actually ALWAYS there. It is your thoughts that are adding something that isn't there to your experiencing. It really helps to have someone show you where to look in person. Where are you located? Somewhere in Europe, I would guess? Maybe I (or someone else here) could help find you someone who could show you in person. If you feel should pay for it, perhaps. I personally don't think you should need to, unless you feel motivated to support the organization, or facilities used by the teacher. What you are asking for is free and has always been your true nature. Even waking experiences are dreamlike, which is not to say they are a dream exactly. How often do you explain away your missing keys that you saw a moment ago on the table, or hearing the voice of a friend or loved one when no-one is there, never mind ghosts, time distortion, etc. Waking experience is actually the deepest level of duality, so, perhaps, the deepest dreaming. No-self = No problem. The mind works to find problems... to compare and contrast. Without it churning away, things are simply as they are. The mind and body are constructs of the self, and how you are used to imagining the world. The objects of your experience don't go anywhere, there is just the simple dropping away of constructed self in the silence of being. If you can construct a kind, but fearless sincerity you are on the right track. The willingness to surrender the idea that you must know everything frees up a lot of baggage. Would you believe that this is actually just another hardened idea? Ideas like this pre-limit how we interact with the world. I believe we ALL do. You belong here, now. Some of the people here seem to be good at seeing things as they are... or COMPASSION - being with what is. Why not work on that experience today? Help is here the moment you ask for it. Why not close your eyes for a moment, turn away from the computer and say something like, "I don't know what to do. I need and am open to help. Please help me." If you can wait and watch, if you are open to help EVEN IF it isn't how you want to be helped, it will be there. Deep bows to you... again.