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There is a Lord of Death. He is from Eastern Culture. There is one way around the Lord... You must run. If you have more knowledge than you are allowed he will find you in a dream and you can not hide. Good night. -theNERD

In some cases it would mean Enlightenment as defined as the end of suffering, the end of fear, the destruction of ego. An abiding presence in intuitive awareness and what some have termed the un-grasped state. A state in which the investment in one’s personhood and egoism / habituations has ceased and Self - Divine Essence - Presence In The Moment has come forth and one is abiding in this awareness. Oneness and Unity Consciousness may preceed this state or unfold during or after Awakening. A deep and sometimes completely incapacitating shift to a non- inertia state - often coupled with nearly complete loss of personal identity / the falling away of self/ego/one’s story/identifications. Often particularly debilitating for 2 years or more in a sort of free fall with no desires or inclinations and often accompanied by intense feelings of gratitude (toward nothing in particular or everything at once). Typically having Awareness 24 hours a day even while the body sleeps if it sleeps at all. The shift may include phenomenal sustained changes in energy, a sort of constant feeling of floating about two inches above the ground while being utterly embodied and intensely visceral. Non-object Awareness, consistent frequent No Thought Awareness and the easy ability to be In no thought. No dreams, expanded inner sight, expanded Unity Consciousness and considerably more. Some residual habituations may remain but may or may not be obvious until they are. All seeking ends completely It is crystal clear that selfhood has fallen away - one’s positions and habituation have largely fallen away and virtually no holding of positions that still have some habituation. It may be that Samadhi can be had at any time - that immense energies unravel in incapacitating but not overwhelming openings from time to time or become sustained. These were just some of my experiences and are frequently cited as full Awakening experiences and abiding Awakening vs “an experience or taste of Awakening”. As as it has been noted - some consider these general qualities to be Enlightenment - I do not - though certainly some of the components are indicative of a more established abiding. Some experience fluquations in and out of abidance in Presence and loss and regaining of personhood and still sleep fully and dream - this has not been the case in the experience here.

a dream within a dream. All happens in the mind of the one who is awake

This what just came to mind 'crystalizes' as I was thinking when we were children our games were of 'play acting and imagining'. What do we do now we're older? Seems we forget to play and thus lose our ability to manifest! The idea of our imagination being a precursor to what we manifest in our life is a powerful idea and one which isn't new. Of course many motivational speakers suggest we use picture boards and mantrams to reinforce what we wish to achieve, change and evolve in our lives. There's also 'The Secret' and the law of attraction which I never really liked but it does have some merit. I wonder how much 'play acting', maybe even role playing, can still be used as a tool of manifesting as we grow older? The will and the imagination are integral parts of the mechanism for manifesting, yes? These functions of mind/consciousness must have evolved with us but have they out grown their use and are now a hindrance? Well obviously I don't think so but perhaps the function, use or goal is now simply different? So: Imagination there's a reason for it and we just need to understand what the reason now is as we begin to understand what it once was! If we dreamed ourselves into reality can't we now tailor our dream?

I definitely feel it was watching me as it was right next to my pillow and if it had eyes im pretty sure they would have been staring at me ! haha , now if it had bright red eyes that would have freaked me ! when it saw I was awake it walked (floated?) off and disapeared, I forgot to mention I had the exact same thing happen about half a year ago , didnt feel any negative vibes from both of them although im pretty sure they turned my dream into a nasty one.

Such a fun thread! I enjoy reading stuff like this. Bruce I would ask you - what do you think or feel this thing was? You said it didn’t feel negative. What else did you feel from it? Was it watching you? Did it have anything to do with the dream you were having? Share your own theories about what *this one* was, just for fun. What does your intuition say?

That's just been my experience in the past...and your dream was negative.

I have felt negative draws of energy before , , and anyone who has experienced this will know what im on about , in terms of this , my dream suddenly turned negative , luckily i can wake myself up from dreams easily , woke myself up and it was there a few inches from my pillow , but in this case , very neutral in feelings. regarding that if you are negative in emotion you attract them i dont believe this is so. again , we would have to know exactly what they are to assume that. I am sure a high level master could identify what they were but at my level far from it.

From what i have read of others experiences with this shadow person, thing, energy, it is not at all uncommon for folks to have an experience with it. I never have, so don't know. But of course I have a story that is kind of similar. (old farts always have stories if they live long enough) When I was about 3 or 4, and my brother was around 5, we shared a room with two single beds. It was night and we were in our beds talking about something. we could see well, as my parents were not in bed yet, and our bedroom door was open, and light was coming from the hallway right outside our room. We were in each of our beds, kind of propped up on our pillows talking, and all at once, all I can explain it as, was a monster hand, complete with pock marked gray skin and long claws popped up from under my bed, right next to me. Both my brother and myself saw it as the very same time and screamed our little heads off. My Pa came running into our room and turned on the lights, and the hand disappeared. to this day, both me and my brother agree on what we saw, but my parents just said that I had a bad dream........... sometimes the universe is stranger than we can know.

Last night , I woke up after having a bit of a negative dream , and standing a few inches away from my head was a jet black "thing" , thought it was my eyes from just waking up so had a good blink and its still there , then it moves away towards the bottom of my bed and disapears . Once it moved i realised it was not in any way my eyes. I know that when you wake up sometimes there is an imprint of your last dream image or just a change in waking up and this can seem real , but , in this case you can move your eyes and the image moves with them , always use this to check if what you are seeing is a left over image from a dream , if the image moves with your eyes then no worries , if it doesnt , then you have something else going on ! so , this figure was black , i mean jet black ,the room was in total darkness yet you could see this figure easily it was that black. I did not feel any serious negative vibes , as those who have experienced that kinda thing will attest , when you feel a real negative force its powerfull on the human system. so , just curious , i have had multiple experiences with beings as im sure many who get into energetics do , but , always interested in ideas/ ah , so kinda forgot the whole point of the post , just wondering , do these type of experiences have to be negative ? I mean what could these beings be ? actual shadow people ?, jinn ? skilled magicians and astral travellers cloaked ? when you acknowledge these things are real you are then left with a whole shit-storm of questions which , as in the ufo community you arent really gonna get an answer to apart from they most certainly exist.

Agreed. We are never not that . In fact nothing ever really happens...but that is just too much for most human minds to comprehend, given that we seem to exist in space and time, and appear to have a beginning and an end. The physical “you” is just an appearance within the non-physical you. In fact, the entire universe also is just an appearance, a mirage, a play of name and form, that we take so seriously. The “you” that really is, is by itself ecstasy and bliss, love and joy, unattached and ever free. There is no question of forgiving. How can there even be? For example if you fall asleep and dream that you are serial killer and responsible for the murder of hundreds of people. When you wake up and remember that dream, would you forgive yourself or just say “wow that was a terrible nightmare”? its the same with the non dual awareness. There is nothing to forgive as there is no culprit

2(5) - 3 Yin-Yang (Higher resolutions as 5 Elements) > The Dynamic Product of Yin/Yang is Yuan Therefore if I understand correctly 5 Elements are pre-Yuan and do not include the Dynamic Yin-Yang creativity 1-2 Yin-Yang is a way of writing 1. There is no Yin without Yang ever. The basic property of existing is Purusha/Prakritia or Chalice/Blade or Lingam/Base or Substance/Creativity or Basecamp/Exploration. It is 1 thing with 2 faces. 0 When Prakriti is in samadhi (absorbed/merged) with Purusha it i a singularity 0. But it is only ever part of a Being or temporary or would be oblation and fruitless. Samadhi is the making permanent of this state in part of the Being. -> To Practice First one must unite downstream by realising the 5 Elements. Practically speaking this requires a great deal of work as a human being is a chaos so purification/integration/maturation all required as well as contact with a being who contains part of the lightstream and transmits it to you, otherwise you will remain in the false corruption dream of most humans and will never step foot outside. Then after the 5 Elements one must Awaken progressively further up the stream, from 5 > 2 > 1 > 0, and embody. I have practiced the HT 5 Animals Qigong for 3 years almost daily but I cannot say if it is a good vehicle for merging with the 5 Animals, in the HT it seems not to be done correctly. HT seems to wish to create unusual downstream unions and energy generation of new exciting energies of many sorts but they seem not to be working towards the Source in my opinion. I have recently discontinued the HT 5 Animals, although perhaps a sensitive understanding of it could turn it into a real practice .... possibly. If you work 5 Animals through Emotions for instance you are actually not working through correct centre, you would be working through the Heart, rather than the Dantien so that is defacto disaster because the Bagua relates to energetic manifestation in the Dantien and is reachable through the Dantien. Heart awakening is of a different ilk. So 5 Animals practice, though you might start with emotions or animal movements, should move rapidly to pure energetic movement done from the Dantien and be more like taichi or silk reeling.

I don’t want to practice qigong, taiji, neidan, neigong or all the other related practices. All my intention is, and the reason why I am on this forum in the first place , is to learn how to increase jing throughout all the body and its organs. That is all. I’ve read (though I can’t remember the sources) that about 2 months of no sex (I assume they mean no orgasm) is enough to acquire a good amount of jing. But after just a few weeks of this, all I can think and dream about is sex and beautiful women. If I am on youtube and I accidently see a picture of a beautiful woman then I can almost feel my jing or qi pouring out of my eyes, getting a headache, and all the associated things. Getting to 2 months of no sex is so difficult! People who say that they can do it is because they waste away their jing through lots of exercise and weightlifting, so of course it is easy for them. I used to practice celibacy this way, but it doesn’t matter if all the impulses are ignored. As soon as there is a stimulus (like accidentally seeing a beautiful woman) the mind and body react regardless of the intention of the self to not pay attention to beautiful women, and even if there isn’t a stimulus, every night when one dreams there is usually a beautiful woman, or lots of beautiful women, and one wakes up covered in sweat (wasted jing) or at least poorly rested (wasted jing). I don’t follow his system, but I think he has some interesting things to say sometimes. I want to emphasize that I don’t follow any system or anyone. All I want to do is fill my body with a healthy amount of jing (when I mean healthy, I don’t mean just like the common person, I mean how the ancient Daoists would define healthy as full of vitality, every organ in the body is strong and full of jing, etc. And please don’t tell me about finding a teacher - dozens of people have already told me to fibd a teacher, so I don’t want to be told any more. Thanks for reading.

You are drifting off into empty speculation. That's a very old joke. And indeed - I cannot proof that all kind of exotic ideas like we are living in a simulation, the world is a dream, we are continually fooled by devils, etc. are not true. But the only reasonable conclusion one can draw from that is that we cannot be absolutely sure about the world or even about ourselves. The old sceptics hundreds of years before Christ already knew that. But your life goes on, and apparently you keep using your computer as if there actually exists people who appear as Bums on this forum, so in practice you don't even take your own illusion-speculation seriously yourself. And that's OK because there is no reasonable way to take those speculations serious, except that is as warnings against pretensions of absolute knowledge.

Because if you go along with the flow then you make no exercise of your free will, you are just dragged along by the river. This is the situation for most humans and creatures on the planet. No judgement of it. Free will is very rare, it means you have the ability to do something of your own, at will, you can make yourself do whatever you wish whenever you wish it. And the way to develop it is step by step by doing things that are not easy. If they were easy the would not require free will. Of course such things are of no interest to most people whose main goal is to be the biggest slob possible. Of course the human population tells themselves how wonderful they are and dream of being George Clooney at the same time, whilst wiping chocolate cake off their face lying horizontal in front of Netflix !!!!

Saying free will categorically does not exist seems like a fallacy? A regular dream state is an example of awareness that lacks free will. Awareness is present, but intent is not, and interaction with the environment is clearly driven from the outside. In a waking state intent follows the awareness, and is either driven consciously (will shapes the intent) or externally (intent chases or tries to avoid objects of perception). Conceptualized thought stream does not stem from the will. It's easy to prove - just make we just make an arm go up or down. We have control of the process. Now, if we intend to cease the conceptual thinking for a minute or two, we might not succeed.The conclusion is that the thinking mind is not quite in our control, despite the identification we might hold with "our own thoughts". There is also very practical problem with that approach -- the conceptual mind is very limited in what it knows how to do. Most of day to day operations go beyond words -- we don't use the conceptual mind to remember, to write, to visualize, to drive, to tie shoelaces, or to draw, or move around, or play musical instruments. In fact, in most cases when we go somewhere, it is inclined to go the other way, dragging the awareness away with it. So, we could say that free will is present when intent and awareness are unified, and there is no excessive lust of result. Observing that no free will exists has merit, because this is not something that people usually have a grasp of, or free will it is identified with following the conceptual mind (that one likes categorizing and compartmentalizing, so the person gets obsessed with being somehow distinct from others and feeling personally achieved and distinguished). Even without recruiting karmic principles, it's enough to keep guys running in circles for a good while. And of we reject free will, then there is of course, no need to talk about destiny, since it's now all destiny, and there are no actual decisions, and we are all just lumbering automatons. Just my mishmash of some Crowley and Buddhist stuff, nothing too new or scientific.

It depends how you look at it. We humans have to ability to imagine anything we want. Sure, if you lie in bed with your eyes closed and let go of awareness of your physical body, that ability to imagine becomes very vivid and real and lucid, if you couple it with a tremendous consistent focus. This ability to powerfully focus is often most easily achieved when one has a desire that is extremely powerful and big. That is also why often people go to caves to fast for days in order to use this as a permission slip to allow themsleves to consciously dream or get a "vision." It's like, yeah, I'm so determined! I'm gonna do it no matter what! I want this more than anything! In the same way, someone may have a strong desire for something, and they lie in bed, and they want to see their desire and they imagine it, and they feel so good in it, they can't help but focus more and more on the desire, to a point where the mind just is completely consumed by the imagination, and it keeps becoming more and more vivid, untill the physical reality begins to synchronise with their vision and they enter a inter dimensional trance state where the vision begins to crystalise, much like in a wake induced lucid dream, and they may very well find themselves in their imagined reality, looking directly at the very reality of their desire. As fully and colorful and vivid and lucid as one can possibly imagine. They can taste it and touch it. But it is still existing for the purpose of inspiring us the state of being, the feeling that that dream, or imagination or desire induces in us. The feeling that inspires us to live our life more fully. To be that freedom in this life more fully and express it here. To take that love and joy and express it here in this life. And be it here! To take all that energy and crystalize it here! Make it real here in this life. To realise it here in this physical life. Which is why we have come here. For the more. The more real. The more real. We did not come here to go back into non-physical. Sure you may not be easily capable of realising all your dreams instantly. But you can take that feeling of joy that you feel as you imagine what you want so fully that you can feel it, and you can take that guiding light of your joy to guide you and inspire you through your physical life. To go and be your dreams. To live your dreams instead of dreaming that you are alife. Our brain is like the antenna and receiver of that energy that people can call thought form. You can have thought form from humans and thought form from even higher dimensions and from Source. As you allow yourself to align with that, like focusing on it which tunes your dial to receive a certain frequency of energy thought form vibration, yeah you can then more fully translate that reality or "radio station." You can dream whatever you want, if you just allow yourself to focus on what you want. And then, as you feel that love, then you can easily see where that love is in this life and then you can live and co-create your life with that love in this life. Or joy or freedom or knowledge or whatever you wish. But it requires the willingness to focus consistently. Deliberate conscious co-creation.

Saying that everything is possible also puts a limit on the "universal infinite intelligence", because that rules out the case that in our world not everything is possible. But I have learned my lesson by now. Dream on, brother...

Don't know who the Pop brothers/sisters are. but it never hurts to sing. good for you. As far as negative entities goes, when I was very young, I use to have reoccurring nightmares of being chased by the wolf man, Dracula, and Frankenstein. Think I was 6 or 7. one night all three of them were after me, and I somehow realized it was a dream , one of the first lucid dreams i ever remembered, and climbed a stone wall, and turned around and ask, "hay, why are you guys chasing me"? They stopped in there tracks and just looked at each other and then at me, like "we don't have a clue why we are chasing you"... So I jumped off the wall, and said, 'so lets just be friends". so we all shook hands and decided to stop fucking with each other and let us all be. never had another nightmare about them. My point in this was, the old saying, "That which we resist persist" - we all have dark travelers, and while singing is a way to open the heart, we cannot stuff them away, we have to bring them to the light of day, see what we need to see. Most dark things feed off our fear, our insecurities. Laughing is also good, as long as we keep open, fearless. good luck

Great information. thanks. I only looked at Tibetan sleep and dream yoga after i started to have lucid dreams. this is because it addressed my personal experience. from what I know sleep yoga is getting awareness into the "dreamless sleep" or deep sleep. I have only had a couple of experiences where I was both in a dream state, aware i was in bed, and aware of the dreamless state. Of course i had nothing to do with this experience, and could not reproduce it. lastly, as far as Tibetan sleep or dream yoga go, it does seem to agree with my personal experience, so far.

I think this phenomenon is somewhat related to the practice of tögel and also related to sleep yoga. Tögel is a Dzogchen practice which helps us recognize that all experience arises from the mind. The practice involves resting in the nature of mind (non-dual meditative state) and using a variety of methods to allow the mind to spontaneously generate experience, be they visual, auditory, and so on. Common methods of practice include prolonged sequestration in total darkness (in our tradition it is a 7 week dark retreat), gazing at the open sky, gazing "at" the sun (not directly!).It may be a little different than resting in the afterglow of sleep as I think in that context we may experience a mixture of waking awareness and dream awareness. Have you practiced or trained in sleep yoga? In our tradition, it involves exploring the boundary between waking and sleeping awareness and cultivating the ability to consciously navigate the transition. Ultimately we can experience total awareness in deep, dreamless sleep. At very skillful levels the practitioner is said to be able to remain fully aware through the entire transition from waking to dreamless sleep.

That is ok, some people have not fully excersized their ability to dream consciously and deliberately yet. But once you do, you will dream the pleasant dreams, because you simply use your ability to distinguish between your lesser allowing of the good dream and your more allowing of it, by virtue of using your emotion's guidance in harmony with your minds ability to focus on the ever becoming of the ever greater dream that is truely your greatest dream that then always wakes up in full conscious awareness of who it is you truely are and are ment to be forever more. And the best dream of all dreams, that then reflects your true reason and purpose of being and for being, in the absolute most clear, vivid and lucid and colorful and real way that can possibly ever be for you. And then I'd say, go ahead and live your dreams. You deserve to be who it is you truely already are. And from that point of view you then also know who it is you truely already are. And from that point of view you will always know the value of what you used to call the bad dreams, because you can more fully understand them for what they truely always have been, which is allways a good dream of the more of all that you truely are in your ever greater becoming that is one and the same thing as your ever being, as all is here and now is forever. And so all the best dreams is always fully readily available for you here and now. And as you allow yourself to look at it, then you also allow yourself to easily more and more live it, effortlessly, consciously, ongoingly, in an ever state of excitement and satisfaction of every moment of your life that is your ever fulfillment of all of the best of all of your dreams, ever more.

So you really have not studied the book Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and IMmortality have you? That's o.k. Others reading my posts to you might actually study the book. haha. Dream on though!

Those are all good questions and serve well as a catalyst for discussion. Based on my direct experiences and/or readings and/or meetings with extraordinary beings, here are my takes on each of your questions. Feel free to comment, question, or provide information refuting my current positions on these subjects. 1. Having practiced meditation for years under various spiritual mentors and also having studied clinical psychology in a postgraduate program at NYU, one becomes painfully aware that there are some people who are out of touch in varying degrees to both thoughts and feelings. For such people, no explanation regarding the pure-thought-free awareness is possible. For the others, no explanation should be necessary. Since the thought-free state is virtually impossible to describe in words because words (in most cases) proceed from thoughts and feelings, I am not quite sure how to express the inexpressible in words. Edward Salim Michael, however, aptly notes that, when "one redirects his gaze inwardly to dwell in the silence of his true abode, he will at that moment begin to experience a state of pure uninvolved impersonal awareness". It is alert but uninvolved. That should suffice for now. 2. Thought-free awareness initially can be lost very easily. When one has mastered the four-step thought-observation meditations (observation, extinguishing thoughts, creating a thought and watching mental associations, and the mind-jerk to clear the mind completely), one realizes that certain tendencies/urges will trigger mental associations and, from that root, the mental tree grows which eventually can manifest as action. The key is to cut that metaphorical tree at the root as soon as the initial thought/urge arises. One by one, one eliminates the personal separatist urges and , as that progresses, the lapses out of pure thought-free awareness become less and less frequent. Initially, however, one falls out of the thought-free awareness very quickly and quite frequently. Eventually, however, the thought-free awareness becomes more and more continuous. 3. The origin of intelligence is something that I have long pondered and, even recently, have changed my position. I would welcome your comments on what I am writing next. The sage Gaudapada, who was a preceptor of Shankaracharya and who wrote a commentary on the Mandukya Upanishad, cogently argues that the unity in apparent multiplicity as well as the inherent intelligence is "the very nature of the Effulgent Being". He scoffs at speculative creative theories as mere placebos to satisfy the masses. I am leaning towards his position on that subject --- that intelligence is "the very nature of the Effulgent Being". At first, I thought that this was a great "cop out" (LOL) but, as I meditate on it more and more, I am leaning towards that conclusion and have realized that there are other sages who have similarly come to the same conclusion. I would welcome your comments on this subject as it has raised questions for me many times in the past. 4. You seem to have hinted at your position when you refer to "all experiencers seemingly have a physical body ". With your implied position, I agree completely. It is my position that the body is actually a mental projection just as dream-bodies in a dream are a mental projection. Various sages point to this but my direct experiences have supported this position, and I will mention a couple of supporting experiences here in my response to your questions. When I was in my early 20s, I had a near death experience (NDE) during which I emerged from a 3-day "Irreversible Coma" completely symptom-free. (Details of what transpired during the NDE can be discussed at another time, as it was a life-transforming experience.) My parents were told to make the funeral arrangements as there was absolutely no hope whatsoever and, even if I did miraculously come out of the coma, they predicted extensive brain and organ damage. During the NDE, it became clear to me that it was not yet time to leave the physical body behind and that it would be well to return. I was aware of my consciousness slowly returning to the physical form "below" (that which was viewed previously from above) and I sat straight up SYMPTOM-FREE to the amazement of the entire medical staff at the hospital. That convinced me that the mind can change ANYTHING related to the body and that is consistent with the mental-projection point of view. In addition, you may or may not be familiar with the following well-documented multiple-personality-disorder (dissociative disorder nowadays) during which one personality has a serious dis-ease such as diabetes whereas another personality has no trace of the dis-ease. The dis-ease comes and goes instantaneously depending on the mental state (personality) of the person. I could give other examples to support my position on this subject but this should suffice for now. 5. It has been my experience that , in thought-free awareness, one drops body consciousness. To answer your question, therefore, I don't find it "localized in any part of the body". 6. You ask if objects actually exist. I think that the best answer to this question lies in the apparently paradoxical syllogism of Shankaracharya that is often quoted. When I first read them, they made no sense to me but they now appear to me to be brilliantly eloquent. "The Universe is unreal. Brahman is real. But Brahman is the Universe". Syllogistically speaking, this translates is the real is the unreal which presents an apparent paradox. What I believe that Shankaracharya is saying is that the Universe is unreal when one views it as an independent entity. With that perspective, objects are not "real". However, when one realizes that the Universe is a projection of the underlying Reality, one sees objects in a very different light and, in that sense, they are very real. To get back to Gaudapada's position mentioned previously, all is real if one views all as the "very nature of the Effulgent Being". Now, as I mentioned before, feel free to comment, question, challenge, and/or present refuting evidence. These are very deep subjects and I welcome your input and your input might trigger a change in my position. I want to thank you again for serving as a catalyst to a very thought-provoking, illuminating dialogue. Thank you !

Timely that this thread was recently bumped. Next week I leave for a retreat with Rinpoche marking the 5th in a 5 year cycle of teachings on the Zhangzhung Nyengyud, one of the 3 Bön Dzogchen lineages. The retreat I referred to in 2013 at the beginning of this thread was my first with Rinpoche and was a precursor to the 5 year cycle that culminates next week. I'm not sure if the dream and sleep practices originated in the shamanic tradition or not but it would certainly make sense. I do know they are drawn from three primary sources - Ma Gyud (Mother Tantra), Zhangzhung Nyengyud (Oral Transmission of Zhangzhung), and Shardza Rinpoche (a very famous teacher from the early 20th century). I think you would find a lot of similarity between your Zen practice and the core practice Rinpoche teaches - Dzogchen. There are differences but the fundamental guidance is to 'leave everything just as it is.' Dzogchen literally means 'great perfection' referring to the idea that everything is fine just as it is, nothing is needed, nothing is out of place, nothing to be done but to be. While it sounds simple, the truth of it is quite elusive as you know doubt know as a Soto Zen practitioner. Nice to have you here Zen Pig. Warm regards