Search the Community

So then, we will just have to be patient. I do remember a comment Sifu made a while back intimating that once we become awakened (in the sense of enlightened) we will need no-one to explain anything - or words to that effect. Obviously that is the only way to reach total understanding, avoiding all the pitfalls of incomplete conceptual ideas and misinformation/disinformation, and misunderstanding, which all too often plague us. But to me that is a nebulous concept, almost like putting the carrot in front of our noses, but there is no information about at which stage in the practice of this art such awakening or realization is expected to occur. I presume that one would need to somehow learn the entire system, not only what has been released in DVD format. In other words one would need to be in the financial situation to be able to afford one on one classes with Sifu Dunn and enter what he terms 'a formal apprenticeship'. Well, despite the FP energy having been described as being cool, I continue to experience it radiating out of my Laugong points as warm energy against my face, and also entering my body - it feels like the radiant heat of the sun. Whenever I bring my middle fingers together in any of the meditations, I can feel a magnetic attraction - that is not quite what it is, but that is the best way I can describe it. In any case, I can feel a substantial amount of resistance when I try to separate my fingers, something I also experience strongly in the final MSW meditation from Volume 2, and any similar movements in other meditations. From the prayer mudra, when I open my hands, this is when I feel the radiance I was describing most, then for example in the 3rd MSW from Volume 7, but also in many other meditations, I can feel the Qi as though I were gathering it from all around me, then drawing it into the LDT. When opening the hands from the prayer mudra outward in several of the meditations at the level of the middle Dantien I also experience a powerful sensation, and also feel my thumbs and first three fingers being drawn together. I experience a considerable amount of movement in the Dantien itself, but this started to happen before I began the FPCK, so I don't know whether it is related. Again in the Volume 7 MSW meditations, as the back of the hand is drawn toward the brow I feel the Qi very strongly in the area of the Upper Dantien and my physical eyes, and at this point I also enter much more deeply in the samahdic state, sometimes to the point that I find I have stopped moving altogether without realizing it. Another movement which seems to create a strong energetic manifestation is again in the 2nd Volume 7 MSW meditation, when the hands move into a position with palms upward, elbows drawn in - the energy radiates from my hands from my neck upward, again affecting the Upper Dantien, but also the entire head, right to the Baihui point. I think perhaps the heat is what my body needs, as there is a great deal of cold and damp in my bones. Aside from the sensations I described, there are many more subtle manifestations of energy moving through all the meridians. There is also a considerable buildup of saliva much of the time, which is why I previously asked Sifu about that, because in other types of cultivation one is supposed not to swallow one's saliva before completing the exercise, so that the now refined Qi is then returned to the LDT. But that is not the case in this form of cultivation, according to Sifu's reply. The problem is remembering these experiences without being able to write them down, because as I explained, I have to rely on my ability to translate the experience to my inner dialogue, and that stops once I enter the samadhic state - so it's a vicious cycle for me. I have probably forgotten much of what I experienced by the time I come back to normal consciousness after completing each meditation. At one point I was keeping a daily journal, but I am no longer keeping it up to date, there just isn't sufficient time. An example is that I have only described my experiences with the seated meditations, because I am focusing on practicing these whilst learning the Volume 7 meditations, so I cannot remember the sensations I experience during the standing meditations as I write. All I do remember is the samadhic state, which is common to both standing and seated meditations. I tried that back in the day, when I was a member of the Rosicrucian Fellowship. We used to have to work a great deal with Tattvic forms and colours, but aside from working with flashing colours, once we began working with exercises relying purely upon visualization techniques I was completely lost. But I did get to the stage of being able to look at two images of a Tattva geometrical form, then pick up the image created by the flashing colours and transfer it onto the second image (as a complementary colour) and hold it over the second image for a short time. But I found the exercise extremely exhausting. During my previous occult training I was also forced to often stay up all night and perform similar exercises, presumably to help me gain psychic abilities, I'm not sure. It was many years ago. That is wonderful, but sadly pretty meaningless to me, I'm afraid. All this has helped me remember a period during my training a while back when I started to experience seeing everything bathed in a golden light, but it was like seeing everything like the reverse image of a camera. It felt as though rather than perceiving something outside of myself everything was a projection of myself, and I perceived that in this golden light. That lasted quite some time, several months at least, and I remember also that prior to that I spent more than a year with the horrible sensation of having a piece of sticky paper right over my third eye. I don't know how else to describe it, except that it was an extraordinarily uncomfortable sensation which just would not go away. I also experienced a painful pressure in the same area for about the same amount of time. I think that is probably when I began to perceive the violet/blue eye in front of my forehead when my eyes were shut. But I could never actually perceive anything through it. I think one reason for that taboo is the fact that it can cause envy or lead to those unable to have similar experiences being disheartened, which could cause them to give up. The main point however is that it is very rare for any two students to have the same or even similar experiences in the practice of Qigong cultivation. It is not considered good for students to have any expectations of what they are likely to experience in their training, as the mind is quite capable of providing such experiences, but these are not real. This can be very damaging to one's development, which is why the sharing of Qigong experiences is discouraged in many schools. I agree with this. For example when I was first taught the MCO around 1988, my Sifu asked me what I was experiencing. He was looking for a very specific sign to show that one of my gates had opened, or was about to open, but he would not tell me any more than that. I remember that my mind came up with all manner of sensations which I duly reported, but none of them were what he was looking for. This in fact led me into very dangerous territory, as I became so desperate to achieve what my Sifu expected of me that I forced my own cerebro-spinal fluid around the MCO, and wound up in hospital with a condition called 'meningism' - all the symptoms of acute viral meningitis, but without any infection present. I was then given several courses of lumbar punctures to remove the pressure and have never been the same since energetically, and I still have the scars today. You might say that the intention is to inspire practitioners to work harder, but it does not necessarily have that effect. It was after all in this spirit that I shared information here regarding the time it took me to complete each of the meditations, but I think there is sufficient proof that it was not taken in the way I intended at all. I think it's rather a shame, as well as hypocritical that many others on this thread openly and frequently boast of their achievements and are applauded for doing so. Many of them should know better, and should perhaps be setting a better example to those less knowledgeable. Well, I have no such yardstick with which to compare the visual aspect of my dreams, but on the very rare occasions when I do remember them, I would certainly not describe them as vivid. But hey! - cloudy and unclear is better than nothing... All I can do is remember the most striking events in the form of descriptive dialogue. I may remember that I have had a dream, but actually remembering the dream is very rare, and the memory would only be in descriptive form, like reading LOTR. OK, I'll look out for the notification. Thank you.

Dear Jeramiah, It is only now that I have gotten to read your posting regarding the golden light thoroughly. When I read it a few days earlier, I was beset with pressures and deadlines and read your post so fast that I missed one very key sentence: "I live in the depths of the countryside. There is no artificial light." --and missing these statements caused me at first to think that your seeing a golden light was a physiological effect of the intense hour-long practice of the FP seated meditations. As stated earlier in this thread, my students and I have seen the distinctive blue light of the FP Healing Energy with eyes closed in the inner environment and with eyes opened as a very visible aura. However, your description--and I assume to be true and authentic--is of a golden light visiting and illuminating your room, and not a physiological effect of the FP Exercises. This is indicated since you described going out into the night and seeing nothing but darkness and rain, and then returning to your room where the light had by then had disappeared. What you have described is indeed extraordinary and my gestalt reasoning is that you were possibly channeling a lesson from a source of genius through your dreamstate. Especially since you've since stated that you went to sleep around midnight and the dreamwork took place for some 3 hours and exhausted you mentally. This is something that has happened to me and my classmates on a constant basis (sans the mental exhaustion) when we started practicing GM Doo Wai's internal arts (FP Qigong and other systems). (I think I wrote in earlier post that on one occasion, one particular classmate and I "switched" our normal mode or "format" of dreams with each other, which was one of the wildest, wierdest, and most fascinating phenomenon I had ever experienced in my life. Since you said you fell asleep and dreamt/worked with a Chinese man teaching you some form of Taoist Alchemy, if this was not an imagining, or a "wishful-thinking dream", but you were actually working--and working so intensely that you woke up with your head swirling, then it is quite possible that the FP Meditations may have catalyzed this channeling of knowledge/spiritual visitation. But the only way to be sure is for you to recall what you learned through the dreamstate and then to test the knowledge as to its effectiveness and potency. Until the "transmitted" knowledge is verified, one cannot say what actually was going on with you from midnight til 3am that night. But the more perfected your Qigong and Meditation, the more lucid you will be during such dreamstates. Also, doing effective lucid dreaming exercises (as detailed in the Carlos Castaneda books) will develop your ability to be conscious of all the content of your dreams in real time, enable real-time cognizant control of your dream body's behavior in a dream, and,of course, allow easy recall of your dreams after the dream ends. If, on the other hand, you had gone to sleep earlier, say at 8 or 9pm, then what you described could have been an early morning venting dream (which is the mind's normal house-keeping--i.e., disposing o stress, overload, and conflicts that the mind didn't resolve during waking hours). But this does not explain the mysterious golden light bright enough to read by, which came and then left. Assuming that your account of what you is accurate in every way, I believe that you had a visitation. All in all, because of the unique personal power that I assume you have developed over the years through healing so many thousands of people,that mysterious and fleeting golden light may have been a sign accompanying your higher edification by a spiritual entity (that seers typically call an angel or a genie). The golden light may well be the carpet upon which your genie delivering your alchemy lesson rode in on. But only you know for sure. Congratulations. In cautious awe and reverence, Sifu Terry Dunn P.S. And yes, "Monk Holding Peach" is a very unusual Qigong exercise. It is unlike anything in any of the other 3 Qigong systems I have inherited. (btw, have you gotten to the phenomenon in MHP where the body rapidly folds forward at the waist and then bouncs back up to vertical, repeatedly? My nickname for Monk Holding Peach is "The Jerusalem Meditation" because the involuntary movements of the upper body bending forward and whipping back to vertical makes one looks as if one is praying at the Wailing Wall. I've observed this in my own practice and in my students ever since 1992. Monk Holding Peach is just very, very different from any type of Qigong exercise--even from all others within the Bok Fu Pai tradition: in terms of stance, posture, configuration, and, of course, breathing rhythm. However it works, I'm glad it's working well for you.

That's awesome. Couple of decades ago, I was a week from giving birth to my daughter. My mom had died when I was 9 -- as did her mother, my grandmother -- and I was living literally in the opposing corner of the USA from my father and stepmother, and didn't know anyone else in the families, so I felt like I had nobody. But every night for nearly a week, I dreamed so intensely. It actually started with some woman I didn't know. She told me she was my ancestor (in my mother's line). And I met woman after woman, who would share with me ('perspective/understanding') about what part of her was reflected in me, and what part of her would be reflected in my daughter, soon to be born. Eventually this got close enough in line to be my great grandmother, whom I had briefly met when very young, and then my grandmother. I had lived with my grandmother a couple of times, once with my parents and once without. I loved her, but always felt that she was kind of disapproving of me, of my behavior or whatever. She was a typical grandma, always at home, knitted and crochet'd very well, lots of things for me. Due to location/travel I only remembered being around her for awhile at age 5, and then again briefly at age 8. I was shocked that grandma said that the esoteric experiences I'd had through my life, and the drive intellectually toward science, and the dichotomy of these two worlds of self and trying to find blend and balance in them, I'd gotten from her -- and that these are issues she dealt with throughout her life as well. Even in the dream I was nearly agog over that. I'd never seen the slightest indication of even local church spirituality, never mind deep metaphysics, from anybody in the family including her! Maybe especially her, since she always seemed like the practical, slightly disapproving one, in my recall. Nor had I seen any interest in science... she was the making pot roast, knitting ponchos kind of grandma, that was all I knew of her. I got some time with my mother, which was beautiful, but I remember none of. Anyway, it was clear at the time of the dreams, that this was "in my blood" -- that this was a genetic thing, but that the genetics are not just dead information, they are living geometry and the 'awareness' innate to that. Which lives in us. And in some cases of active gene expression, also through us. Much later, after all this had passed and I had a daughter, I was talking to my father on the telephone. I said, right before I gave birth, I had these great dreams about a whole line of female ancestry. In the dream, grandma was very different than I recall her. More interesting, you might say! He says something like, "Actually, your grandmother really was an interesting woman. Very intelligent. She was a psychiatric technician at the state mental hospital for 25 years. She retired when you were three or four years old." I had no idea that grandma was a psych tech for 25 years! Or that she'd ever had any job! She retired before I was old enough to remember apparently. That actually put a whole new spin on how I thought of her. Until that experience the week before having my daughter, I'd never thought much about the eastern 'ancestry' focus. And I've known so little of my family -- and I am so many nationality-sources it's ridiculous -- family and genetics just never seemed any focus to me. That changed my mind about it though. And it was good timing, because it shifted my mental state from the terror I had about giving birth -- I mostly expected to die in the experience, I was having some issues, and I thought that I had mostly come to terms with that and accepted it -- but my fear of the expected pain etc. was still a problem. But after that week of nightly visits, I felt calm. I felt like I was just one in a line of women who had been doing this since the dawn of time, and it was going to be fine. By the time I went into labor, I was at peace. :-) RC

I followed the rules and did not see the image. However, after it was pointed out, I cannot unsee it. It is sort of like those magic eye things, which are always hard for me (I have issues with depth perception.) The image arose out of the muddles colors almost like the image of a dream forming. But unlike those magic eye things, it remains. For me, this is a perfect lesson in reifying perception. At first, you are just presented with a swirl of color. Then, when you are able to "grasp" at a the pattern, the image appears and looks like an object.

Transition: A fever dream wafts a fantasy of incorporating these loosening movements I see in these musicians' neck, shoulders, and spine into practice : full and relaxed at same time*?... bums, get ready to roll: https://youtu.be/HHN9UO8A0oQ?t=5 (*Our qigong teacher's teacher (Feng top student) guided him to "bring your other interests into your practice": tango! ...in the last third of class we follow his tango cat- and cross-steps and suddenly even more mysterious and coiling upper body shapes; silly grins bloom throughout the corps, an infectious light boosts energy and each student's eyes travel thru the forest of smiles, we move together and tai chi becomes unity and individually differentiated pleasure). Moving the above perspective to breath: immaculate control of physical body motion (theremin) sculpts vocal-like expression/breath; (hands hear the note in the mind and arrive "before" the note moves air ?): Breathing from the bottom: an unwavering, steady unhurried ensemble wave's majestic advance maintains soft tension; Steve Slagle's woodwind breath weaves different shapes (based on a simple six note pattern (ba-da-dat... baa-daa-daa-a-a-a...)) dodging the expected, unhurried, always in the time, still sticking the landing: exercise for me: improvising different shapes to get to the resolutions in a structure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m03B5NNade4 two mighty fat girls (be sassy and creative over a steady pulse; (...requires true talent)): https://youtu.be/VS49B6RzVeY?t=1499 if you're still here: ...I try to very slowly move and flirt with the broad, wide, rough and lazy march tempo in this circus music: (excerpt from Hal Wilner's Amarcord with Carla Bley's ensemble) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJXz7CQ3xVk coda: teacher's tango added humor to my tai chi practice

What I meant wasn't exactly about habitual preferences, more about necessities as a vicious circle -- once you decide something is necessary and engage in it, this engagement may change you in a way that might make it necessary to keep on keeping on. People understand this kind of relationship with addictive substances better than with the rest of what we do just because we somehow wound up dependent on doing that, but actually it's a much broader category, and I suspect thinking (a particular kind of thinking in any event --see some distinctions below) may fall into that category. I used to read a lot of books on cognitive neuroscience, and what I've been able to discern (corroborated by various other sources too) is a distinct pattern of two types of thinking happening in the human brain -- yes, at some fundamental levels, only two. One of which, let's call it the functional thinking mode, is normal, and the other, let's call it the defensive thinking mode, is not. The functional mode has a distinct pathway along which a thought is formed: it originates in the body, whether from an internal stimulus or an external one interacting with the body, goes via the nerves into the spinal cord, thence the brain stem, the lower brain, the midbrain and finally the neocortex, activating everything in its path. When it reaches the neocortex, two things can happen. Either the body has already reacted, whereupon the functional thought, having informed the neocortex of the reaction that has taken place, terminates there, the excitation along its path quiets down and there's no long-term trace left. The thought hasn't changed the physiology of the organism it has visited -- rather, it adjusted it to the moment and reverted to homeostasis once the moment has passed. Or, if the body needs the brain to decide what to do before reacting, the thought, having reached the neocortex, gives it the input from all the lower regions it has passed, gets its instructions and turns around to retrace that path -- from the neocortex via midbrain (which contributes emotions) to the lower brain and the brain stem (which adjust the basic functions of aliveness like the heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, thermoregulation, etc.) and through the innervating "tree" back to the body, which now acts as instructed by that returning thought, based on the consensus reached along its path by all parties to the decision. Once the body has acted on that decision, again, all traces of the thought having been there and having caused temporary changes to the functioning of the whole disappear and the organism reverts to its default state. The situation has been resolved, everything is ready for the next change in reality itself, the reality as experienced by the body. Which will be handled in a similar manner by the next thought that will be in accordance with the new situation. That's how animals think; that's how we used to think too, and have been trying to relearn to think by all kinds of "esoteric" methods (even though we don't know that it is that natural functional-thinking mode that we're really after, rather than the non-thinking we mistakenly think we're after). The second, defensive thinking mode, which constitutes the bulk of what is going on in the neocortex of a modern human (regardless of whether the thoughts in his head are smart or stupid), is anatomically and physiologically different. This one is the target of all our practices and their bane. It's not "trying to dam a river with water" that's going on there. The river is the first, functional thinking mode. The defensive thinking unfolding in the neocortex, beginning and ending in the neocortex and leaving "grooves" of either persistent self-excitation or persistent damping-down of the signal from the lower regions, actually changes the anatomy of one's brain toward self-perpetuating activity or suppression of activity which is severed from all input of the type I described for the functional thinking mode. So it's not the river, that neocortical thinking, it's debris from countless shipwrecks floating on top of the river. Back and forth and back again, getting stuck, colliding, busy sorting it out between themselves and unaware of the river. They form loops, traps of sorts, where more garbage gets stuck and piles up. Antonio Damasio called them the as-if loops -- because their activity which begins and ends in the neocortex imitates the reality loops between the body and the brain -- imitates emotions where there's no real ones (the real ones originate in the body and get processed in the midbrain, remember?), imitates subjective health perceptions or unhealth disasters where there's no real ones (the real ones would be mediated by the lower brain and the brain stem, remember?), creates a world of unreality in the upper brain hopelessly severed from the reality of the lower brain regions and the body. THAT kind of thinking is what must stop in order to regain our humanity, but that's a pipe dream for most which even more people don't even know they ought to start dreaming. And without regaining our humanity there's no "more advanced" anything I don't think. You don't get a spiritual Ph.D. as a reward for flunking spiritual kindergarten. And that's where we're at right now if you ask a cat who has been relearning the way she thinks with a whiskers' breadth of success, no more.

Hello, Long time no post. I've recently suffered several losses in quick succession; deaths and relationships. All amidst the pandemic it's resulted in a smidgen of existential dread. I'm looking to start a conversation to inquire into spiritual practices and life after death; practices to help (OOBE, AP, LD, RV, PLR, etc.), and discussion around it. Additionally, I'm seeking a real life teacher in the UK to show the skeptical part of me that all of this isn't bullshit through shaktipat, dream visitations, etc. Hope I'm posting in the right place.

The recent direction of the discussion brought this to mind: Using language to evoke sensory experience is more useful in the teachings than are explanations confined to abstract and technical concepts. Though the real experience cannot be communicated easily in any language, images used in the teachings help when they are perceived by more than just the rational mind. These metaphors are to be experienced, as are the images in poetry. They are to mulled over, pondered, experimented with, and integrated into experience. ~ TWR Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep

When I ceased formal and rigid praxis, my practicing didn't end, it morphed into a less structured, less consciously directed mind based daily process (it's time to do x, now... followed by y and then z, etc). I noticed that all the main aspects of former rigid practice incorporate into various aspects of 'normal' daily activities. This included Stillness... Mindfulness... Five Element Organ Circuit... and Qi Gong. I seems at this point that in releasing a formal schedule of praxis, the opening that resulted enhanced sung and now intuition guides the prompting and initiation of when activities play out. The reduction in formal mind prompting to do things in an order also quiets the atmosphere and increases ability to notice some of the more subtle impulses and promptings that arise. This most notably takes place with Qi Gong as it involves responding to and surrendering to impulses to move, so is more noticeable consciously when it happens. Spontaneous promptings occur throughout the day and thankfully, for the last seven months I've had every day completely open, with no requirements (or ability) to go to work... so the conditions are supporting it nicely for now. With Mindfulness, Stillness and Organ Circuit, it's more subtle and I find I become aware of these processes now, much as I become lucid in the dream state... I notice it after the process has initiated and is ongoing. Conscious mind rarely initiates them any longer, just notices and goes along for the ride once, it's in awareness.

No will-nilliness here. I may be casual, divergent and disrespectful (among other things) but I will not be careless, irresponsible or stupid. I may have said earlier that I will also be respectful, but only to a certain, limited, non-fear based, non-religious or reverential based, extent. As I said I can not explain myself. It is really nothing more than a feeling of rightness about it, a feeling I have been chosen, although for the life of me I have no idea why. It comes from, as you have seen me mention before, when I re-entered a dream for the first time and was met by a spirit animal. I was a Christian at the time, it was my first dream re-entry, and a fox was not a part of the original dream. Suffice it to say I was caught completely off-guard. There were many inner journeys after that as well as meetings with other spiritual entities. I have had no formal training in any of this. I hope to return to the practices, and to find or be found by a proper teacher (not a workshop.) Besides, I am far too old to play with sticks and go looking for power rocks. Also I am far too poor to buy the title of shaman...

I used to lucid dream a lot. From my experience the best way to induce lucid dreaming is by doing a lot meditation, as well as intention before falling asleep ofcource. During my lucind dreaming period I did 4 hours of meditation every day. I could fly whenever I wanted, have sex with anyone I wanted, go on vacations, heal myself and other people, sit down and go into deep meditation, meet masters and spend time in satsangs, etc. This is what is called lucid dreaming - conscious control of your dreams. There is no limitations(other than what you are already limitated by). After a while I got bored by controlling my dreams like that so I started just observing while in the lucid state. Now days when I get lucid Im not controlling my dreams. I let them play out just the way they are. Only a few times will I intervene in the natural flow of my dreams. I think this is a lot more productive for my own developement. This is called pellucid dreaming. It is great fun to learn lucid dreaming, but in the end it is limiting just the way our waking consciousness is limiting. I use a dreamwork method called Dream Yoga, www.dreamyoga.com, (not tibetian dream yoga) which gives you a feel for what the dream really is ment to tell you and assist you in. It is a method that helps you see the dream from the perspective of the dream. While symbolic interpretation is seeing the dream from your waking perspective, Dream Yoga is seeing yourself from the dreams perspective. It is not easy to understand, but if you give it a try Im shure you will be just as amazed as I was when first trying this method. Go to "sample session" at www.dreamyoga.com and try for yourselves.

as the computational neuroscientist Anil Seth has put it, “We’re all hallucinating all the time, including right now. It’s just that when we agree about our hallucinations, we call that reality.” From "https://medium.com/form-and-resonance/the-deep-dream-of-motivated-reasoning-produces-monsters-a4b9148f5215" by Emily Pothast also- Tony I.Mlodinow explains how the reality we experience is not simply filtered down from sense data, but actively produced by unconscious processes that use what we expect to see ...

Think it might be his fear that is keeping him from dreaming about, or remembering his dreams about those who have left their physical body? Perhaps asking where his fears about death arise from is a good place to start. I have had dreams about people whom have passed on. In every instance that I can recall, they have been alive in the physical body I knew, their voices the same and their mannerisms were intact. That being said, I think that the pain associated with losing a loved one and fears surrounding death can keep you from dreaming about them. In my case, my mother, who passed away very unexpectedly and tragically, was someone I longed to dream of and to be visited by. It was years before I was able to dream of her, or at least remember dreams about her. This may not be the case for everyone, but only after I had let go of the grief and really let her memory move through me and be exemplified in my own life did I see her in a dream and hear her voice. Much love.

I would suggest curiosity has the potential to lead to a “lifting of the veil,” and recognition of emptiness. This side step you have taken is actually pertinent to me personally as I recently spent some time exploring my own curiosity as a form of attachment, and contemplated how it hinders the “transformation” aspect of my Dream Yoga practice.

Hmmm....I think I have encountered another celestial being few days ago, in my morning dream. It was a Chinese Indian child. He was like a Chinese children but with dark brown skin color. A pair of large almond shaped eyes. Unusually large proportional to his head. Glowing white luminous light from his third eye. Then, he appeared next to my mother and helping her cooking. He turned around and smiling at me. When I noticed his third eye was glowing, I smiled back at him as if I knew who he was. In reality, I don't. I knew he wasn't just some simple dream figure. Man, those large almond shaped eyes...hehehehe....

Lovecraft has a range of moods, from bleakly nihilistic (Call of Cthulhu) to darkly whimsical (his dream cycle). It's interesting to talk about authors who had repugnant views or (in the case, e.g. of Marquis de Sade, repugnant deeds to match) yet whose work nevertheless appeals to apparently decent people. I was reading Chinua Achebe's critique of Joseph Conrad a while back and was struck by how some of it applied to Lovecraft (I have bolded the parts I think particularly relevant): Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as "the other world," the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant beastiality. The book opens on the River Thames, tranquil, resting, peacefully "at the decline of day after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks." But the actual story will take place on the River Congo, the very antithesis of the Thames. The River Congo is quite decidedly not a River Emeritus. It has rendered no service and enjoys no old-age pension. We are told that "Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world." Is Conrad saying then that these two rivers are very different, one good, the other bad? Yes, but that is not the real point. It is not the differentness that worries Conrad but the lurking hint of kinship, of common ancestry. For the Thames too "has been one of the dark places of the earth." It conquered its darkness, of course, and is now in daylight and at peace. But if it were to visit its primordial relative, the Congo, it would run the terrible risk of hearing grotesque echoes of its own forgotten darkness, and falling victim to an avenging recrudescence of the mindless frenzy of the first beginnings. These suggestive echoes comprise Conrad's famed evocation of the African atmosphere in Heart of Darkness . In the final consideration his method amounts to no more than a steady, ponderous, fake-ritualistic repetition of two antithetical sentences, one about silence and the other about frenzy. We can inspect samples of this on pages 36 and 37 of the present edition: a) it was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention and The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. Of course there is a judicious change of adjective from time to time, so that instead of inscrutable, for example, you might have unspeakable, even plain mysterious, etc., etc. The eagle-eyed English critic F. R. Leavis drew attention long ago to Conrad's "adjectival insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery." That insistence must not be dismissed lightly, as many Conrad critics have tended to do, as a mere stylistic flaw; for it raises serious questions of artistic good faith. When a writer while pretending to record scenes, incidents and their impact is in reality engaged in inducing hypnotic stupor in his readers through a bombardment of emotive words and other forms of trickery much more has to be at stake than stylistic felicity. Generally normal readers are well armed to detect and resist such under-hand activity. But Conrad chose his subject well -- one which was guaranteed not to put him in conflict with the psychological predisposition of his readers or raise the need for him to contend with their resistance. He chose the role of purveyor of comforting myths. I think Achebe's takedown of Heart of Darkness is dead-on, yet I nevertheless continue to love the book. Likewise with Lovecraft. There is much to criticize in these authors but if we think of literature as a dialogue, with more or less agreeable interlocutors, then repugnant opinions don't need to concern us so longer as there is a response. It seems like this Lovecraft Country is one such response, much like Tayeb Salih, VS Naipaul, and Chinua Achebe himself all had their own responses to Conrad.

I read the following review of this book on Goodreads and thought it well worth sharing here. It was a bit rambling so I’ve edited a little: Most practical book on Jung I've read! Read it if you are restless sometimes or most times. We are suffering, in our cities, from a need of simple things. Nature is an incomparable guide if you know how to follow her. She is like the needle of the compass pointing to the North, which is most useful when you have a good man-made ship and when you know how to navigate. That's about the position. If you are the river, you surely come to the sea finally. But if you take it literally you soon get stuck in an impassable gorge and you complain of being misguided. The unconscious is useless without the human mind. It always seeks its collective purposes and never your individual destiny. Your destiny is the result of the collaboration between the conscious and the unconscious. But reduction to the natural condition is neither an ideal state nor a panacea. If the natural state were really the ideal, then the primitive would be leading an enviable existence. But that is by no means so for aside from all other sorrows and hardships of human life, the primitive is tormented by superstitions, fears, and compulsions to such a degree that, if he lived in our civilization, he could not be described as other than profoundly neurotic if not mad. Some of Jung's advice for remedying the loss of contact with Nature, within or without: - live in small communities - work a shorter day and week - have a plot of land to cultivate so the instincts come back to life - to make the sparest use of radio, TV, newspapers and technological gadgetry The purpose of doing these things, however, is not to repair Nature, but rather to let Nature affect us. “I chop the wood and cook the food. These simple acts make man simple; and how difficult it is to be simple!” ~ Jung All time saving devices, amongst which we must count easier means of communications and other conveniences, do not, paradoxically enough, save us time but merely cram our time so full that we have not time for anything. Hence, the breathless haste, superficial-craving for stimulation, impatience, irritability, vacillation, etc. Such a state may lead to all sorts of other things, but never to any increased culture of the mind and heart. “I detest noise and flee it whenever and wherever possible, because it not only disturbs the concentration needed for my work but forces me to make the additional psychic effort of shutting it out. You may get habituated to it as to over-indulgence in alcohol, but just as you pay for this with a cirrhosis of the liver, so in the end you pay for nervous stress with a premature depletion of your vital substance. [...] Noise protects us from painful reflection, it scatters our anxious dreams, it assures us that we are all in the same boat and creating such a racket that nobody will dare to attack us. [...] The real fear is what might come up from one's own depths - all the things that have been held at bay by noise. [...] Modern noise is an integral component of modern "civilization," which is predominantly extroverted and abhors all inwardness.” ~ C G Jung Jung's list of how civilization makes Modern Man sick (causes and symptoms): - effort to set records - urge towards conformity - desire for material possessions - we keep forgetting we are primates - atrophy of instinct, age-old forgotten wisdom stored up in us - hypermasculine, linear, causal, goal-oriented orientation toward the visible outer world - condescension toward whatever seems "irrational" - overstrained from boundless activity - the disease of knowing everything - extraverted as hell - lack of introspection - greed, restlessness, uneasiness, superficiality, nervous exhaustion - craving stimulation, impatience, irritability - usual remedies such as diets, exercise, studying inspirational literature - can't seem to find a way to live meaningful life - ridiculous clothes, meanness, vanity, mendacity, egotism - always seeking something - too much head, too much will, too much moving from place to place, and nothing rooted - objective existence and meaning - exaggerated self-esteem - inferiority complex - intellect, rationalism - loss of moral and spiritual values - despiritualization of nature through objective knowledge of matter - learned to control ourselves, disciplined, organized - for all his outward success, modern man stays the same inwardly - time-saving devices cram our time so full that we have no time for anything - loss of soul - social welfare - constant noise that protects us from painful reflection, scatters our anxious dreams and the fear of what might come up from one's own depths - thinking we are not nature - people will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls - modern education is too one-sided and only enables a young person to adapt himself outwardly to the world but gives no thought to the necessity of adapting to the self - domination of nature Jung's list of solutions to prevent disease/diminish effect: - turn back too simple things - rest - realize that things being sought are irrelevant to a happy life - listen to and analyse your dreams - live in small communities - work a shorter day and week - have a plot of land to cultivate - make spare use of radio, TV, newspaper, technological gadgets - high mountains, rivers, lakes, trees, flowers, animals - mystery, symbols, belief, age-old customs and convictions - spirit - living here and now - spiritual welfare - compensate intellectual work with philosophical interest - self-expression and seeing the fruit of your own labour to nourish psyche - ask yourself whether by any chance your unconscious might know something to help you - look deeply into the eyes of an animal - healing contact with Nature from the outside and from the inside (through experiences of the unconscious and dreams) - cooperation with nature - make contact with the archetypal functions - "Go to bed. Think on your problem. See what you dream. Perhaps the great man, the 2,000,000 year old man, will speak." But dreams are pure nature to which must be added human reflection and discernment. We now know that the dreaming function in mammals is approximately 140,000,000 years old and does have a survival function. (Reviewed by Olivier Goetgeluck)

Okay ... except when I am 'enlightened' in my deep sleep I act like a 'master ' .... travel in time , ride my old Triumph Bonneville down the street I used to walk to go to school, but now, for some reason there are deck chairs all over the road and sunbaking on them are the nurses I live with when I lived at the Nurse's home at the hospital I used to work at, and they are all wearing bikinis, I have to swerve in and out and drop the bike , it splits in half like those olfd airfix models I used to make . My mother comes out one of the houses and yells at me . Ahhh .... enlightenment ! ( PS . yes, you CAN dream in deep sleep . )

I have had similar experiences. Generally for me, though, it's due to a dam bursting while I'm asleep and things getting flushed away. For instance, I'll have a dream of melee combat and wake up with the feeling of a river surging up my spine. Usually, it'll be followed by a purge of some kind, and then another period of sleep. While I do practice MCO, and can generally feel it flowing at any time, comparing the normal flow to when it wakes me up is like comparing a stream to a large river. I assume that this is caused by a combination of a blank mind, looser muscles, and the body's natural cleaning processes (following the TCM clock). I have not looked into it in-depth, but I have confirmed that it can happen at any time of the day, as my sleep schedule is somewhat unstable.

That's good. In a lucid dream you are like 20 years to many lifetimes in the future in terms of your magical abilities, assuming you will remain resolute in all that time. So have you experimented in your dreams? You should perform many experiments. Write down your intentions if it helps you get serious. Or don't write them down if you know you can just trust yourself. For example say, "I will try to go through a wall in this dream." Then try it. Then contemplate what you find. I'll tell you what I found in my dreams, since you're not revealing yet what you have found in yours. In my dreams while I can do amazing and at times utterly mind-boggling things, I still experience limitations. For example, there was one dream where I decided to go through a wall and guess what? I couldn't do it right away. For a while I was just pressing up against the wall and going nowhere, even though I knew I was dreaming! I knew I could do it, at least theoretically, since it's all just a dream, and yet I couldn't do it. Then I realized it had to do with how I conceived of the "walls." Even in my dream I imagined the walls to be actual impediments. In other words, I was intending the walls to impede me! When I realized this, I could go through a "wall" except guess what? I re-conceptualized the "wall" as a non-impediment and I could go through it, but guess what??? guess what?? When I did that it was no longer a wall! So in a sense I actually never did go through a wall, not even in a lucid dream. Do you get what I am saying? I enacted an illusion of going through a wall while all the while I knew there was no actual wall there. Get it? So even when I succeeded, in a sense I never did go through any wall. There is a mystical saying that reflects this truth, "A mage doesn't open any locked doors." This means that to open the lock you have to re-conceptualize the lock as a non-lock. But the time you can open it, it's not a lock anymore. Do you see what's going on? This is just a hint. To really get somewhere with this, you have to put your mind to it and practice and contemplate for years and years and perhaps lifetimes. If you're serious, you'll get there. But along the way you'll have many moments where you may ask yourself if you really still want that kind of life. By the time you realize what you have to do, you may not be willing to do it. Or you may still want it. It can be either or, but there is no guarantee. Only you know what you want.

EXISTING Fog makes the world a painting obscure. Even close trees are half unseen. But a lonesome crow won't stop calling: He objects to being in this dream. Over and over, the sages tell us that this world is but a dream. When one awakes on foggy mornings, with the mists obscuring hills and valleys and the trees and village buildings appearing as diaphanous apparitions, we might even agree with them. Didn't we see this same uncertain mirage in the hills of Vermont? The hollow of the Yangtze River valley? The streets of Paris? Don't the memories blend with the dream and turn reality into phantasmagoria? The world is a dream from which there is no escaping. In this still dream, there is a crow calling. He doesn't stop. When everything else is frozen in the sepulchral dawn, the bird continues to scream. Maybe he realizes the same dream. He protests loudly. The ancients hold the outer reality to be unreal. But there is the inner reality too. Some of us do not readily accept the conditions of this existence. We have eyes to see, but we also have voice to refute the existential delusion.

This is what you wrote... "That is why it isn't about figuring out what the issue is, it is moving beyond the mind, beyond the thoughts and residing in the energy of the obstruction." All attachment. All state of suffering...are caused by 12 links of dependent origination. They never exist by themselves. They have no permanence. Not sure...you are arguing that attachment and suffering are nothing more than some obstruction of energy path. What is exactly your mind is attached to then??? What is this attachment you speak off as if attachment is nothing but some unpleasant energy being stuck somewhere in your chakras? Dreams? What do you dream? Do you dream about this attachment? If so...there's your answer.....

Hello Mokona, Dreams take place in the spirit world, so they are an open door to the spirit world... If when you are dreaming, and in the dream you know you are dreaming, you can take control of your dream... instead of being passive and reacting to the dream, do the opposite of what you are supposed to do, or ignore your dream altogether and walk away, out of your dream... this is called "lucid dreaming". This is probably the easiest and fastest way to get to the spirit world. below are 3 links that I got just now by googling "lucid dreaming...You can also follow links to other sites. if you check them out, you will see all of the many things that people do using lucid dreaming... also methods that people use to learn how to do lucid dreaming... and how to control lucid dreams. you could also use your meditation to help you develop lucid dreaming. http://www.wikihow.com/Lucid-Dream http://www.lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html http://web-us.com/lucid/luciddreamingfaq.htm Metta,

There are at least three useful ways of thinking about the ego and how it is generated. One is the static: this is the sense of the subject, of the "I," that is generated whenever you have an experience. The I is generated from and contrasted to the not-I. The I here is a mass of unconscious and unseen assumptions. Self-inquiry and surrender discern away these assumptions, leaving the I by itself, whereupon it disappears. The second view is the dynamic: this is the sense of the "I" that is generated by the motion of thought. Thought by flowing creates the hallucination of a stable perceiver OF those thoughts. If this motion is slowed down or stopped, that hallucination can be seen for what it is. Self-inquiry and surrender concentrate the mind, redirecting it away from its usual desire-and-fear focused movement, thereby slowing and even stopping it. The third view is the structural view of the ego: this is the fact that the content of our thought all refers to a self-image, and is validated by all the other thoughts referring to the same image. These form a kind of web or net of mutually reinforcing illusion. Spiritual pointers like the simple question "Who am I?" or the image of the ego as being like a dream try to gesture one away out of this web.

I sometimes wonder if the confirmation is (1) is it all real , (2) is it all not real, (3) is is both. I find the last idea most confirmed in the concept of, form=void. When you step into both sides, it is like knowing sunshine is snow is rain. But this still keeps it all on a physical level. So like a dream that doesn't stop when you wake up as my first awakening, in a sense... and you can then alter the dream. Or you alter processes in normal life that normal life might not explain. I'm up at a very unusual hour because something (or someone) is talking to me. when that happens, I sometimes can sleep but other times I just decide to listen (get out of bed). was it this thread and your posts that finally reached even me? Seems a stretch, but here I am. I am reminded of the philosophical statement that, 'there is something rather than nothing'... many philosophers have commented on this. Francis Schaeffer wrote a book with a great title: He is there and he is not silent. I have never forgot the premise. For those not inclined to the religious premise, just see it as: "There is something there, and it is not silent".