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I just had a dream where my Dad was in it, he was the center of my dream. Apparently it was his birthday in that dream and i gave one last hug. This isn't the first time ive had a dream whereas a deceased loved one appeared. I've had one of my grandma, one of my grandpa(her brother), one of my babysister and one of my mum im sure bt i can't remember the one of my mum i just have a strong feeling that i have. The dreams always occur out of the blue, way long after the funeral and i always wake up and cry. Why? What's up with those dreams?

There is this persistent and indelible sensation of beingness... An awareness. Opening and Closing Simultaneously. Constriction and Expansion in Union. I don't know at all about enlightenment or awakening... though there are times when I look up from my tea, or walk out the door when I have the unshakable experience of having just woke up from a dream state. and I can no longer shake the sense that one moment, I will 'awaken' in the 'real' world, in the same manner that I have become lucid in the dream state, a myriad of times...

Yeah the state of mind or experience is very similar to that of in the movie Butterfly Effect. It is an incredible feeling. Kinda naming it will remove its eternal state, thus when I am in such a state I go beyond the material of ideas and words and focus on my emotions instead. And it is more then a vivid or real dream. It is a dream where you control everything that happens, because you are conscious in your dream and no longer identify with the physical body within that dream, because you think "it is all not here, it is void, it is just a dream." Same with Taoist. Some people have reported that they had a similar experience when awake aswell. It feels close to an immortal experience. When I read alot about the tao, it is all so vague, but it all becomes clear when it is perceived as a context to this experience, state of mind, becoming one with Tao that just is unnamable. It is the ultimate inspiration. The ultimate being in spirit. Don't get me wrong, I only experienced this state of mind once in my life. I wrote allot of stuff during that time so that I may recall the moment, but when I reread the words... They are all completely nonsense, just trying to describe a feeling that is, well, unnamable. So vague. Perhaps you could say it is "lucid dreaming, with open eyes and active senses." Damn, gotta try to beat that description! No other way I can put it. edit: I also recall loosing the state of mind when I thought about how this feeling would probably never return, feeling desire for it to stay n it was gone for a short amount of time. Untill I became desireless again and focused on the state of mind again, allowing it. Thats freaky.

Can you give a link to that test, I want to know mine For a very long time I had dreams about giant wolf dogs attacking me It started when I had a nightmare about a crazy guy torturing me and my classmates in a weird wooden house that didn't have walls on one side Instead of being scared into waking up, I somehow time traveled to the beginning of the dream Dream was taking place at night and to avoid the house I went to a garden that was behind it In the dark I saw some eyes running towards me and when they got me, I woke up The description matched one of these nightmare dogs from folklore For the longest time since then I had nightmares about these dogs, it stopped when in one dream I saw one of these dogs chained to a house, like a guard dog I usually had some other kids who were also scared of the dog with me and they were talking about that dog there For some reason I decided to come over and pet it, kids started freaking out But I petted the dog anyway and then woke up just fine Since then dogs were kinda helpful and I didn't have that many dreams When they would show up again they would talk sometimes One time there was a super scary dog who was bark-saying something I subdued it and it turned into a person, and he said, "OK you win..." Then with the nightmarish dog voice said "BUT WAKE UP, IT'S MORNING ALREADY" Latest dog dream was about a super scary looking dog chasing some children It had some puppies with it and when it saw me, it just looked at me I wish I could draw better so I could just show how creepy and scary it was It ignored me then and went along And so after some time I solved the mystery, I think When I was a baby my family used to spend a lot of time at my grandma's place The setting for the first nightmare looked like my grandma's place but the house without a wall was different from grandma's, the garden was the same tho And at that time... my grandma had a puppy... a little black puppy that liked to chase me... I was told that I was so scared of it that I even climbed on the couch somehow The puppy lived with my grandma for a long time but he's dead now Being chased by dogs in the dreams was a learning experience... lol It kinda changed how I dealt with conflicts since I petted that dog For example, when I was in school around 6th grade we had permanent classes Like, one group of kids would go to same classes together and so we had a separate room for us and teachers would come to our room to teach Next to us was this insane group of children who some of my classmates hated On a spring break, or something I forgot, school organized a vacation thing where who wanted to go on a vacation with their classmates had to pay some money and they would send a part of the school to Poland on vacation, yay The most crazies went and from my class only one other girl went I just befriended them on vacation and there was no fighting since none of my classmates were there What sucked was, when I came back they went into an argument again and both sides wanted me to resolve it, I couldn't do anything I just became friends with these guys, and on the side of my class were mostly girls They had to think themselves who should stop throwing oranges first AND THAT'S MY NIGHTMARE DOG STORY!!! eh, it's so good to just ramble

I suggest 'cleaning up' one's dreams. If you can make changes and 'create habits' in your dream would, they will start to manifest in other parts of your life. I will go back into the dream after awakening and re-do or address what I thought was done wrong .... after a period of this it starts to happen in the dream 'automatically' ... and then into your conscious life.

It's easiest for most people to recognize the meaning of meditation when the body, speech, and mind are quiet. Otherwise, it is too subtle to notice and literally everything is a distraction. You can stand in one place or sit in any stable and comfortable position (floor, meditation cushion, chair, toilet, couch, bed, whatever)... There will be some aches and pains, it's not a gimme... It takes adjustment, tolerance, openness, and fortitude. Mind doesn't want to release control, body is not used to so much attention, inner voices are relentless... When you find the right way of resting the mind and body you will identify less with the currents and more with the underlying, stable presence.Then with practice, we can be stable with any activity. The teachings say to start practicing with supportive activity (prayer, mantra, circumambulation...), then progress to neutral activity (walking, eating), and finally challenging activity (extreme emotion, conflict...). Start easy when your ability to rest in authentic presence is like a small candle. Challenge yourself gradually and eventually your presence is like a campfire and ultimately a bonfire, fed by the challenges of life. You can even reach a point where practice continues in dream and deep sleep - eventually into death. Most important, start with an accessible and proven method and the support of a credible teacher and loving community. And remember, life is very short; we don't have too much time to fuck around.

Gold and All, When I dream, sometimes I have a body and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I'm just a disembodied witness. Sometimes I have hands, and sometimes they melt away when I look at them. There is nothing consistent in my dreams. I don't think, for example, I dream of an entire world with a functioning economy: rather, I just dream the corner I'm in. In fact, when I leave the "limits" of my dream, I don't discover more dream, I tend to wake up. The God comment was more in line with the logic of Anselm than the substance. The main criticism I have against the brain = mind is that it is unclear how insentient matter can give rise to sentience. Clearly, there is some link, and there is a link between the eye and seeing.

From a text by Shankara, translated by Ramana Maharshi. It's a complicated topic. Buddhi, as the sum total of the inner organs, in contact with the reflected Consciousness has two aspects. One is called egoity, and the other mind. This contact of the buddhi with the reflected consciousness is like the identity of a red-hot iron ball with fire. Hence the gross body passes for a conscious entity. The contact establishing identity between the ego and the reflected Consciousness, is of three kinds. 1. The identification of the ego with the reflected Consciousness is natural or innate. 2. The identification of the ego with the body is due to past karma. 3. The identification of the ego with the witness is due to ignorance. The natural or innate contact continues as long as the buddhi, but on realization of the Self it proves to be false. The third mentioned contact is broken when it is discovered by experience that there is no sort of contact of anything at all with the Self, which is Being. The second mentioned contact, that born of past karma, ceases to exist on the destruction of innate tendencies (vasanas). In the deep sleep state, when the body is inert, the ego is fully merged (in the causal ignorance). The ego is half manifest in the dream state, and its being fully manifest is the waking state. It is the mode or modification of thought (with its latent tendencies) that creates the inner world of dreams in the dream state and the outer world in the waking state. The subtle body, which is the material cause of mind and ego, experiences the three states and also birth and death.

If we can get 10 people interested, I'd ask the mods to create a subforum somewhere innocuous to get the ball rolling. I'd envision a weekly live discussion 2 or 3 times a week. A weekly group reading, a free flow of topics people are interested in and if desired a short personal threads where people can journal there own dream work projects. Going back 10 years. An old crazy wise member talked about dreamwork. He said forget technique, its all about intention. Another member here recently said, plans and learning are a neophytes trap. Hmnn 3 parts intent, one part technique, one part relaxation. To me, serious means sacrifice, few things come for free. I envision dream school starting at 4 am (or would 5 am be better?). Twenty or 30 minutes of preparation, then back to sleep and on the clock. Taking advantage of the last one or two deep Rem cycles. Experimenting, figuring out what works individually and as a whole. Cause maybe that's a bad idea. How do we combine the modern neurological discoveries and age old dream traditions to gain skillfulness? Experimentation. I'd want people who were willing to on 3 week experiments.

Hi. After a few weeks/months exploring the forum as a guest, finally signed up to request access to the Flying Phoenix thread (and other interesting PPDs, when I'm finished going through the long read). I have been practicing Spring Forest QiGong for a few months and noticed some progress. Meanwhile I'm also practicing Tibetan Yoga of Dreams and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, and found practicing in the dream state very interesting. I am very curious to learn more about Terry Dunn's method on the dedicated thread, and from there switching to Flying Phoenix or keeping up with Spring Forest. As a fairly new practitioner I might read in silence for some time, before serious questions or remarks come up to be discussed. Thank you all for the knowledge you drop here.

That would depend on which stage of enlightenment. From the perspective of Buddhism's emptiness realization (Thusness Stage 6), physical reality are not an illusion, but like an illusion. Everything we experience are not an illusion but like an illusion... why? Archaya Mahayogi Shridhar Rinpoche explains, http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2009/02/madhyamika-buddhism-vis-vis-hindu.html ...So in the Buddhist paradigm, it is not only not necessary to have an eternal ground for liberation, but in fact the belief in such a ground itself is part of the dynamics of ignorance. We move here to another to major difference within the two paradigms. In Hinduism liberation occurs when this illusory Samsara is completely relinquished and it vanishes; what remains is the eternal Brahma, which is the same as liberation. Since the thesis is that Samsara is merely an illusion, when it vanishes through knowledge, if there were no eternal Brahma remaining, it would be a disaster. So in the Hindu paradigm (or according to Buddhism all paradigms based on ignorance), an eternal unchanging, independent, really existing substratum (Skt. mahavastu) is a necessity for liberation, else one would fall into nihilism. But since the Buddhist paradigm is totally different, the question posed by Hindu scholars: “How can there be liberation if a Brahma does not remain after the illusory Samsara vanishes in Gyana?” is a non question with no relevance in the Buddhist paradigm and its Enlightenment or Nirvana. First of all, to the Buddha and Nagarjuna, Samsara is not an illusion but like an illusion. There is a quantum leap in the meaning of these two statements. Secondly, because it is only ‘like an illusion’ i.e. interdependently arisen like all illusions, it does not and cannot vanish, so Nirvana is not when Samsara vanishes like mist and the Brahma arises like the sun out of the mist but rather when seeing that the true nature of Samsara is itself Nirvana. So whereas Brahma and Samsara are two different entities, one real and the other unreal, one existing and the other non-existing, Samsara and Nirvana in Buddhism are one and not two. Nirvana is the nature of Samsara or in Nagarjuna’s words shunyata is the nature of Samsara. It is the realization of the nature of Samsara as empty which cuts at the very root of ignorance and results in knowledge not of another thing beyond Samsara but of the way Samsara itself actually exists (Skt. vastusthiti), knowledge of Tathata (as it-is-ness) the Yathabhuta (as it really is) of Samsara itself. It is this knowledge that liberates from wrong conceptual experience of Samsara to the unconditioned experience of Samsara itself. That is what is meant by the indivisibility of Samsara and Nirvana (Skt. Samsara nirvana abhinnata, Tib: Khor de yer me). The mind being Samsara in the context of DzogChen, Mahamudra and Anuttara Tantra. Samsara would be substituted by dualistic mind. The Hindu paradigm is world denying, affirming the Brahma. The Buddhist paradigm does not deny the world; it only rectifies our wrong vision (Skt. mithya drsti) of the world. It does not give a dream beyond or separate transcendence from Samsara. Because such a dream is part of the dynamics of ignorance, to present such a dream would be only to perpetuate ignorance... What does Buddhist Emptiness means? It clearly does not mean that everything is an illusion. Also, in Buddhism, emptiness is *not* nothingness. It is not some formless void that is the background/substratum of all things (that would be the I AM realization/experience, but it should not be confused with Shunyata). What is emptiness (shunyata)? Shunyata (Emptiness) means whatever appears are empty of independent or inherent existence, be it a sound, a form, or any other phenomena. This is because it is the 'interconnectedness' that give rise to the sound or experience (The person, the stick, the bell, hitting, air, ears, etc, i.e. the conditions). Whatever you see, hear, etc, do not exist 'in and of itself' but are 'interdependently originated'. Thus, whatever arises interdependently is vividly clear and luminous, but empty of any *independent* or *inherent* existence. This is not the same as nothing or nihilism - as Heart Sutra states: Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form. Nagarjuna: Whatever is dependently co-arisen, That is explained to be emptiness. That, being a dependent designation, Is itself the middle way. (Treatise, 24.18) Something that is not dependently arisen, Such a thing does not exist. Therefore a nonempty thing Does not exist. (Treatise, 24.19) __________________ A more detailed explanation on Emptiness can be found at http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2009/02/nondual-emptiness-teachings.html Then you may ask, what about the other levels of enlightenment before Stage 6, do they treat 'physical reality' as unreal? Their views/realization/experience are as such: "The world is illusory, Brahman alone is Real" - one realizes the True Self behind everything which is Thusness Stage 1 and 2, then "Brahman IS the World" - Stage 4 - experience is realized to be Non-Dual (not divided between subject and object/perceiver and perceived) and one sees the Real, the Noumenon in all Phenomena. Here's what someone from Stage 4 describes it: After the jungle, there is an intensely odd and very beau-tiful quality to the experience of life. In one sense I can only describe everything, all experience, as having a certain emptiness. This is the sense in which everything used to matter, to be vital and important, and is now seen as unreal, empty, not important, an illusion. Once it is seen that the beyond-brilliance of Sat Chit Ananda is all that is, the dream continues as a kind of shadow. Yet, at the same moment that all of what appears in the dream is experi-enced as empty, it is also seen as more deeply beautiful and perfect than ever imagined, precisely because it is not other than Sat Chit Ananda, than all that is. Everything that does not matter, that is empty illusion, is at the same time itself the beyond-brilliance, the perfect beauty. Somehow there is a balance; these two apparently opposite aspects do not cancel each other out but complement each other. This makes no 'sense,' yet it is how it is. There is one tradition within Advaita which says that maya, the manifestation of the physical universe, is over-laid or superimposed on Sat Chit Ananda. I'm no scholar of these things, and can only attempt to describe what is seen here; and the Understanding here is that there is no question of one thing superimposed on another. Maya, the manifestation, the physical universe, is precisely Sat Chit Ananda, is not other than it, does not exist on its own as something separate to be overlaid on top of something else. This is the whole point! There is no maya! The only reason it appears to have its own reality and is commonly taken to be real in itself is because of a misperceiving, a mistaken perception which sees the appearance and not What Is. This is the meaning of Huang Po's comment that "no distinction should be made between the Absolute and the sentient world." No distinction! There is only One. There is not ever in any sense two. All perception of distinction and separation, all perception of duality, and all perception of what is known as physical reality, is mind-created illu-sion. When a teacher points at the physical world and says, "All this is maya," what is being said is that what you are seeing is illusion; what all this is is All That Is, pure Being Consciousness Bliss Outpouring; it is your perception of it as a physical world that is maya, illusion. Stage 5 is 'The World is Actual' without reifying a permanent and independent Brahman. What is seen through is a permanent, independent Self apart from the momentary sensate reality... one sees the Actual AS the Process and not some substratum or container or background. Of this, Richard (AF) writes from his Stage 5 experience: [Richard]: ‘To be living as the senses is to live a clear and clean awareness – apperception – a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. *Because there is no ‘I’ as a thinker (a little person inside one’s head) or a ‘me’ as a feeler (a little person in one’s heart)* ...’. [emphasis added]. Again the reason why I provide the full version is because to be living *as* the senses (as a flesh and blood body only) is a vast cry from a remaining, and non-detached observer, having *become* the sensations (as in having identified with and/or having arrogated them). Notice that the denial and rejection of the Manifest becomes increasingly less from Stage 4 onwards. Not that Stage 1 to 3 people rejects manifest, just that they cannot see what they realize in the manifest - to them the True Self is an Unmanifest Source or a Source prior to Manifestation, and everything as an illusory projection of that Source. He was awakened (to be precise he said he was awakened, not 'enlightened' which is a western invention) to the Truth of Anatta (no-self), Emptiness, the nature of reality and consciousness, and thousands of his students while he was alive was able to achieve liberation and enlightenment through his teaching... and even today many are achieving enlightenment through Buddha's teachings, which shows that Buddhism is a very effective system and teaching. Not only did he set forth a system, countless people since Buddha's days have been attaining enlightenment through following his system of practice. Bodhisattvas and Buddhas seek not only to end one's own suffering, but the suffering of all others as well. Arhants and Pratyekabuddhas do not. Therefore in Buddhism there are different goals and classes of enlightened beings. The Theravadin school of Buddhism emphasizes attaining Arhantship, while the Mahayana and Vajrayana school of Buddhism emphasizes attaining Buddhahood. Buddhism is not a form of repression. It leads to realization, which leads to complete letting go of clinging from the world, and the complete end of suffering. Repression means suffering still arise, but then you force them out of existence. This is not the case for a liberated person in Buddhism: suffering, craving, attachments no longer arise to begin with that they could ever be repressed. The cause of suffering is removed from its root, rather than repressing its manifestation. And yes, an Arhant has overcome all mental suffering while he is alive but not physical pain - as long as you have a body you will have some level of physical discomfort. However an Arhant is no longer reborn in Samsara, so he no longer has to undergo physical discomforts as well, after death. You are mistaking the non-duality that I am talking about. The non-duality of spiritual enlightenment is the realization into no subject-object division, no perceiver-perceived division, like Thusness Stage 4, or Steven Norquist's article, in the first page of this thread. If you read Stage 4 and Steven Norquist's article carefully, you will understand what non-duality means. Relatively speaking, there is male and female - this is not the area I am concerning myself with (I am not arguing against conventional truths). Here is an article written by a highly enlightened friend 'Simpo/Longchen' about 2 years ago: The misconceptions surrounding Transcendental Non duality This article is related to a common misconception with regards to the Transcendental experience of Nonduality. Within the spiritual circle, the term Non-duality is a very misunderstood or misinterpreted term. It must be understood that the term has more than one meaning and its perceived meaning largely depends on a person's stage of spiritual awareness. More often than not, a lower stage understanding of the term is misconstrued as the Transcendental experience of Nonduality or non-dualism. This confusion is largely compounded by so-called new age spiritual materials. The most common understanding of Non duality is related to the issue of Polarity such as light and dark. In this semantic, non-duality is explained as the non-biasness towards any side of a pole. This is about the concept of there being no absolute good or evil. In another word, it is about being non-judgemental. Many spiritual materials believed that this concept of non-duality is equivalent to enlightenment. This is not entirely correct. Non-duality as a concept for no polarity is not wrong. However, it should not be mistaken for non-duality as the state of enlightenment. The term non-duality that is being used to describe Enlightenment is actually describing a state whereby there is no subject-object division. This is an experience that is difference from the concept of no absolute polarity. No subject-object division is the true nature of existence. The method of realising this insight lies in the dissolving of the 'sense of self'. This often involves the continual and correct letting go of mental grasping. OK, that all I can think of and write about this topic. I will revise and improve this article where the need arises. For your necessary ponderance. Thank you for reading. These articles are parts of a series of spiritual realisation articles .

haven't added to this in awhile. (https://www.cracked.com/blog/10-things-everyone-should-know-going-into-next-decade/) He's not always right but his questions and solutions are always thought provoking. 10 Things Everyone Should Know Going Into The Next Decade David Wong 12/19 Well that decade only got stupider as it went along. Maybe the next one will be better? Here are 10 things to keep in mind from now until 2030. If we all go in prepared, I'm confident this next batch of years will go off without a hitch. 1 The Technology That Will Utterly Dominate In 2030 Is Barely A Thing Right Now In early 2010, only the most obnoxious 20% of us had smartphones. Today, realizing that I've left the house without my phone induces the same panic as showing up at a party and suddenly realizing I've shown up at a party. What fringe nerd tech will totally control our lives 10 years from now? Cybernetic implants? Bitcoin? Don't bother trying to guess. Remember, it's not the tech itself that matters, but the horrible new uses we organically discover, as well as the way cultural norms respond and adapt. Looking at your phone in the middle of a real-life conversation used to be unthinkable. And if we stretch this idea out to 20 years, good god. In early 2000, the term "social media" didn't exist. Neither did "podcast" or "blog." Hell, only 43% of Americans had internet connections. So a time traveler from 2040 would at times sound like you trying to explain to a non-internet user in 2000 what the "Subscribe to PewDiePie" meme is or why a guy quoted it before committing a mass shooting that left 51 people dead. We're talking layers upon layers of change. Stupid, stupid change. 2 Go Right Ahead And Ignore Everyone's Predictions At this point a decade ago, headlines about Bill Cosby were all "Comedy legend delivers significant message" and "Comedian Bill Cosby leads parade." Donald Trump was preparing to shoot Season 10 of The Apprentice. "Disney buys Star Wars" would have sounded like the premise of a bad SNL sketch, and "Russians secretly interfere with U.S. election" would have sounded like the plot of a '70s Cold War potboiler starring Gene Hackman. The bestselling nonfiction book of 2010 was Why Prince Is An Immortal Being. Yeah, some stuff was easy to predict, like how China would continue its rise, mass shootings would still be a thing, or how Syria would blow up. But the biggest cultural shifts always come bursting out of the ground like in Tremors. Lots of what now exists only as rumbles and rumors (there were whispers about Bill Cosby's behavior going back decades) will seem glaringly obvious to everyone in 2030. Lots of what we assume to be true today will be referenced as crass jokes by our older, crankier selves. Related: 26 Hilariously Inaccurate Predictions About The Future 3 Trends Never Simply Continue On Their Present Course It's early 2010. "Obamacare" was just signed into law. Democrats are in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, and have a Supreme Court that will legalize gay marriage and let their new healthcare law stand. This is all after a wave of articles about the total collapse of the Republican Party, and how their only way back to relevance will be to purge the crazies and become reasonable adults. The thinking at the time was that they'd need their own Obama -- someone young, smart, optimistic, inspirational, focused on the future. After all, it's not like progress can go backward or something. Oh wait, it totally can. Yeah, the lines on the graph never keep going the same direction. The culture is a series of reactions and backlash that is impossible to project with any accuracy. Who out there guessed that young people would just ... stop having sex? Or that the biggest shows on TV would see much lower ratings than then-unknown video game streamers? Go back 10 more years, and things get confusing and darkly hilarious. The big worry in 1999 popular culture was that Clinton-era economic prosperity was robbing white male professionals of their innate need for meaning (Fight Club, American Beauty, The Matrix). "Sure, we all have good jobs, nice homes and plenty of money, but at what cost? Can't this much easy comfort be a bad thing?" No one could have known 9/11 was around the corner, of course. In the same way, you can't possibly guess the huge thing that's coming to fuck things up in a few years. Hell, even if someone came back and told us, we'd probably just be confused. (I'm imagining 2010 me trying and failing to wrap my head around "Gamergate" or "incels.") 4 The Future May Not Affect You As Much As You Think I spent the supposed economic boom of the late '90s working multiple minimum-wage jobs at once while living in an apartment with a cockroach problem. My biggest paydays, on the other hand, came a couple of years after the worldwide economy collapsed in late 2008. My career on the internet began right after the dot-com bubble burst and internet careers were declared impossible. It was only after reading endless headlines about how no one was buying books anymore that I got a book deal. That's how it works; your future and "the future" are two totally different things. No trend applies to everyone, or even most of the people, and that means every headline you read about where the world is headed might be nothing more than trivia to you. You'll fall in love while reading articles about how we're living in an age of loneliness, or lose your job in an industry everyone insists is thriving. Maybe you'll find a way to overcome your anxiety and depression a month after an asteroid has destroyed the East Coast. Who knows? In fact ... Related: 7 Insane Problems We'll Have To Deal With In The Future 5 None Of Your Current Plans Will Work Out How You Think How excited was 2010-era Nokia about owning 40% of the booming cellphone market? Or Blackberry, with their 20%? If gigantic corporations can get sucked out to sea by sudden shifting currents, so can you. But trust me, this can be a good thing. Sometimes the sharks are on the beach. The key is that it's not just that the world will thwart your plans. Sometimes it's the world showing you that your plan was horribly misguided from the start. Maybe the day-to-day of your dream career has nothing to do with what you loved about it (ask doctors how much time they spend actually healing sick people). Maybe you'll completely flip on what exactly you want out of life. Maybe ... 6 You Even Won't Be The Same Person 10 Years From Now You may think you know this on some level. You've been around old people; you know they weren't born grumbling about their lawn and eating at buffets and shambling around with a decorative cane that has a little sword hidden in it. But it's hard to look back at the child you were 10 years ago and really comprehend that you are the child to the 2030 edition of you. We kind of secretly think at all times that we've fully become the person we're going to be. But you are going to change in ways you wouldn't like if you knew about them ahead of time. There isn't much you can do to stop it. Maturing always feels less like change and more like learning about yourself, unearthing the person who was always there. You don't know how you'll react in a crisis until the crisis comes. You don't know what you'll do with power over another person until you have it. You don't know what kind of parent you'll be until you have kids. My friends, some of these answers will be startling. Related: 4 Signs Of Aging No One Warns You About 7 Some Of The Beliefs You Now Hold Dear Will Look Ridiculous This doesn't have to be a bad thing, and there's nothing sadder than someone who refuses to grow. But some of the truths you refuse to even question today will not only turn out to not be true, but will look horrifying in retrospect. You will find out some truths about your friends, parents, family, heroes, and enemies that will make you realize you never really knew them at all. You'll find that some of the causes you stood up for were corrupt, that you obsessed over minutia while ignoring what really mattered. You will do some of the things you used to harshly judge others for, and pray that the world is more lenient now than you were back then. 8 Oh, And You Will Sometimes Curse The Person You Are Now I assume some of you do this already, wishing you could go back in time and kick your own ass. Not just for what you did ("Why in the hell did you smoke that first cigarette? Did you think it would make you look cool???"), but what you failed to do -- the plans you didn't make, the crises you didn't prepare for. But it's hard to grasp that Future You will feel the exact same way. ("Why didn't you quit smoking while your lungs were still healthy enough to recover? What did you think would happen???") And having been through a few decades now, I can tell you that yeah, that never changes. The personality traits you like the most about yourself now will make Future You cringe. A whole lot of your present bravery will turn out to be youthful ignorance of consequences. You will someday groan at the thought of what 2020 you took for granted, all the chances you wasted. I mean, you will if you're lucky. Improving a thing means the past version now sucks in comparison. The worst outcome is a Future You who mourns the awesome person you once were. If you play your cards right, if you try to fix one tiny thing every day, your reward will be that Future You will scramble to erase all evidence that Current You ever existed. Related: 5 Things People Mistake For Being Grown-Up 9 It Will Go Much, Much Faster Than The Previous 10 Years I know this seems contradictory, considering this whole list is about how the entire geography of your life can and will change in just ten years. This is just the way your brain perceives time. This ten years will be a smaller portion of your life experience than the previous ten. That's why I can absolutely guarantee you that at some point, you'll have some version of this conversation: "Hey, I noticed that sweater I borrowed a little while back is still in my closet, do you want it?" "You borrowed it six years ago! What does it matter now, after a volcano has destroyed the entire American Southwest?" A decade sounds like forever. A 10-year prison sentence would sound like a lifetime. Yet problems that seem temporary now will still be hanging around then. The habits you're writing off to immaturity will still be going strong. Projects you're determined to complete soon will still be sitting there, mocking you. 10 The World Won't Have Ended (And May Not Even Be Worse) If you undid the past 10 years, you'd be reversing marriage equality in the USA (that ruling came in 2015), kicking 20 million Americans off their health insurance, throwing a few hundred million people worldwide back into extreme poverty, and trans rights would barely be in the conversation. Problems sneak up on us, but so do solutions. That's why the world is still here. It'll be the same for your own life. The thing that will wind up saving your ass seven years from now might just turn up randomly on your doorstep. The thing that caused your ass to need saving may have arrived the same way. There may be friends you haven't met yet, talents you haven't discovered yet. You may lose burdens you didn't even know you were carrying. Some things you're dreading may wind up being no big deal, and some of your deepest fears may turn out to be based on silly myths and childish misunderstandings. Who knows? But if you stick around long enough to find out, you've pretty much already won.

I'm surprised there isn't more interest in those Gaotang Dream ceramic pillows!

So.. if your group wins a 10 million dollar lottery, figure 35% goes to taxes. The rest 6.5 million goes to Sean to buy this site and create a win win situation of no more Mo Pai discussions here. A worthy dream. When that glorious day comes (& Sean gives me my 7.25% finders fee) What will you do with all the extra time you'll have? The new sense of lightness that comes with not having to answer stupid questions. What will you do?

I know. If there was, google would have delivered. The "backward finger" was offered as a version by Virtue up the thread, and he interpreted it as the thumb, a very interesting idea, but the word "dactyl" can refer to a lot more things than a finger. And the word "retro" may mean a lot more things than "backward." And the word "retrodactyl" meant something in my dream, though not on google. I'm guessing some kind of pterodactyl, but not a googlable one. Maybe a pterodactyl that could fly backward (like a dragonfly can)? Maybe it's about tracing the animal that preceded the pterodactyl, some pterosaur or other that evolved into a pterodactyl? Some of them had wings pointing backward when folded (see pic), so maybe it's about that?.. I don't have meaningless dreams. Ever. Sometimes the meaning becomes clear only much later. A retrodactyl means something. I just don't know what -- yet.

Yup, it could mean that. Interesting idea. I don't think it did in my dream though. A taoist aside: there's realms that have "form and substance," then the ones that have "substance but no form," and the ones with "form but no substance," and finally the ones with "no form and no substance" -- which are, however, part of the overall reality. So my retrodactyl is stuck somewhere in the "no substance and no form" realm. Yet it exists. I suspect it exists as an idea of an animal, and if that was determined, it would transport it into the "form but no substance" realm. And from there, maybe it would even graduate into our "form and substance" world -- as an experimental beast in some secret lab, or as a fossil yet to be dug up, who knows. But for now it has no substance and no form, like all forgotten dreams. Only a name. The retrodactyl that can be named... a fine example of tao not revealing much through just names.

I'll have to experiment with some dactyl poem now. I'll report on the findings if it proves worth reporting. But I think the dream thing was an animal.

Yes I thought about that ... could be a connection but its not something I've ever looked into seriously. "A strong Blue Lotus tea has an intense calming effect similar to taking a xanax. Consuming Blue Lotus Flower tea also promotes stronger likelihood of lucid dreams. Lucid dreaming is the ability to become conscious of the fact one is dreaming. Lucid dreaming typically also gives dreamers the ability to control some or all of their dream. People frequently combine Blue Lotus Flower Tea with a number of other drugs for a more intense high, including alcohol and kratom. Blue Lotus tea can provide wonderful pain relief."

STUCK IN NEUTRAL In the West, there are many who approach Buddhism primarily intellectually. In the East, many approach it primarily as a tradition — part of their cultural heritage. Yes, Buddhism contains immensely profound and complex intellectual information. Yes, it is an important cultural tradition in many Eastern civilisations. However, Buddhism’s true gift is that it teaches us to learn and experience the true characteristics and the nature of our mind and the world, as they are. Through meditations like those on lovingkindness, compassion, devotion, and wisdom, Buddhism trains us to improve our mind in how we think, communicate, and act with others and the external world. If our mind becomes wholesome, then our vocal and physical activities will become sources of peace and benefit for ourselves and others. This life will be happier, as will the next. Ultimately, through proper meditation, we will be liberated from the suffering of samsara. No matter how much we study the texts, we need to be mindful of our karma in order to progress. We must stay away from unvirtuous acts and thoughts. But we shouldn’t fritter away our lives by engaging only in neutral karmas. Instead, we should exert ourselves in virtuous karmas such as prayer and service. Some meditators choose to remain in the absence of awareness. In my experience, these are usually well-educated, high-status achievers. They are often so busy burning both ends of the candle in order to advance their worldly position that they even dream about earning at night. So, understandably, they feel a tremendous sense of relief when someone instructs them, “Just rest in the absence of thoughts.” At last, they can quiet down and let go of their busyness! And since the instruction to do so is given to them by someone whom they consider to be an authority on meditation, they don’t have to feel guilty about slowing down. They are told that doing this is good for their health and mental state. So for these fatigued individuals, having permission to rest without thoughts is new and exciting, something they have rarely tasted. In reality, however, this meditation experience is a neutral state. Most of these people are simply taking a break while still in the middle of mundane traffic, still in the hub of ordinary karmic and mental habitual settings — without having purified, refined, or transcended their mental and emotional afflictions. So when they come out of that break, that trance, they find themselves back at square one, with the same old mundane dilemmas and habits awaiting them. It is like waking up from a wonderful dream only to find oneself back in reality. Nevertheless, remaining in neutral thoughts and activities is better than spending one’s life in evil thoughts and deeds, which will cause grave pain. However, spending one’s life in a neutral state is a big waste of the great potential of our most precious human life. According to Buddhist teachings, the karmic result of remaining in a neutral state, the mere absence of thoughts, is rebirth in the animal, form, or formless realms. We go to the animal realm if our mental habit was ignorance and stupidity. This realm is marked by violence and fear. We take rebirth in the formless realms if our habitual thought patterns were marked by ideas like “Space is infinite,” “Consciousness is infinite,” “There is nothing,” or “There is no perception and no absence of perception.” Each of these four thought patterns leads to rebirth in a different subdivision of the formless realms, depending on which subdivision best reflects our habits. For instance, having a habit of thinking “Space is infinite” lands us in the subdivision called “infinite space.” In the formless realm, we don’t have gross bodies or forms. We don’t have gross thoughts or emotions. This is due to the past experience of remaining in the absence of thoughts and absence of awareness. Absorption in the formless realm can last for eons. Eventually, however, it ends. And when it does, we continue from where we left off — returning to our old thoughts and emotions, and experiencing the results of our other positive or negative past karmas. So taking rebirth in the formless realms is a break, a limbo, but with no merits. It is a diversion from the path of liberation, as there is no awakening of the wisdom of intrinsic awareness or discriminative wisdom. That is why Longchen Rabjam laments for those meditators who value remaining in the absence of thoughts: Alas! These animal-like meditators, By stopping the perceptions, they remain without any thought. Calling this the absolute nature, they become proud. If they gain experience in such a state, they will take rebirth in the animal realm. Even if they don’t gain much experience in it, they will take rebirth in the form or formless realms. They will have no opportunity to get liberation from samsara. As long as we make no effort to transform the mind, we cannot escape the ordinary state of grasping tightly at mental objects — dualistically, emotionally, and sensorily. A merely neutral state in which concepts are temporarily suspended won’t help us progress. As soon as we go back to having concepts again, we will return to the ordinary state of grasping we had before. It is like waking up from the escapism of deep sleep, only to find that the same mundane problems await us. ~ Tulku Thondup Rinpoche ~

at least for mortals who dare to dream of walking where physical form can't

For free you could stop 99% of all Mo Pai threads by stating your truth and going away. You create dozens, 100s, 1000s(?) of negative posts here. Are there other sites your on where you do the same thing? Go full MP bot on them? Spend hours posting over and over? Are we lucky enough to have this drama month after month? Imo its gotta be a crazed drinking game . No one could think generating so much negativity and bad press day after day could be a good thing. Unless ones a masochist. The new party line of 'We dream of forcing others to do Mo Pai', is not going to be a hit. You've repeated it, what, 6 or 7 times, not a winner or persuasive outside a cult. I'm back to repeating- if you talked about benefits and experiences of your art, like everyone else here does you wouldnt create long bot threads. No more of your crazy drinking games, having to take one shot for every page you generate. Forget the bad press you generate for your art think about your liver.

If that is the case, then you will never make progress beyond a wish and a dream.

I always have dreams at night but they can be really crazy. I know that dreams have a meaning of your life or future but I wouldn't know. Normally by the time I wake up, I never remember my dreams. It's once in a while when I do remember a dream. As crazy as it would sound but I would like to share it with you guys a piece of me because first of all, no one lives forever and if there's someone who understands what I'm going through or wants to be helpful, I would be very thankful to anyone who replays. There are mysterious/evil things going in my life. And I do kinda know why but I don't have all the answers. You know who Jenn is? She's on my friends list if you look her up in my profile. Her story is similar like mine. Ya it's sad and scary. I try to leave her a message but she hasn't logged on in years. But anyways there are demons haunting me everyday. They follow me everywhere I go. It's like demon attachment. They talk to me through any kind of noises, I've seen like a white foggy shadow flying a round and a dark shadow. I've also seen light. They like to whisper in my ear and enter in my dreams. I believe in God but there's Christians who would tell you that satan or his demons Cannot read your mind or thoughts or know what your thinking... BS! They can! And they have proven to me. A lot of times I think about something random or I say something in my head, and they reply to what I said in my head. And yeah my mouth is closed. They do threaten my life and hurt me on my chest. They want me to obey them and they say they are angels from God..... -____- anyways I'm not going to explain everything about it here I just said a part of it. Anyways since a month now every time I go to bed, I listen to this Christian guy praying at night in YouTube. He does many verity of prayers. And long prayers. So, I listen to him last night & a demon came in my dream. The way that the YouTube guy prays, well the "demon" came to my dream and used the guy prayer and twisted his words. I don't remember nothing what the demon was saying but I do remember he was saying evil wicked things & against me. But I must say at the time I was deeply asleep so I wasn't awake. So throughout the man on youtube praying as the demon was talking over him and twisting his words, as soon as the man finished his prayer and said amen, the demon who was praying evil told me and kept telling me to say Amen in my sleep. It said, say amen! Say amen! And I said No! After that I felt it flee from me . I then woke up as I immediately prayed to God. I was just thinking... me being that heavenly asleep, Thank God I didn't say amen to the devil. Plus the Bible does say, resist the Devil, and he will flee.

Technophobes have weird dreams sometimes. Since nothing can be done to stop the abuse of technology, sometimes I dream of fighting fire with fire, of inventing technology that could counteract abuse of technology. E.g., I would make this feature available for forums: a mild, friendly zap to the fingers typing fifth spam post in a row, something like a slap on the wrist. Increase voltage after the tenth. And after the fifteenth, zap those fingers so they can't type for the next three days. No moderation required, no mod logs or anything like that. Total anonymity. Whoever tried to type their fifteenth fuck you all I'm on a roll post would know who they are. No one else needs to know. Of course I would make it a maximum of three spam posts per thread too. I.e. a spammer would be also automatically required to spam evenly, so that no one particular thread is singled out to suffer more than most. I envision them playing this little game with themselves, calculating how many threads they can spam how many more times before getting zapped. Like a roulette player, they would be agonizing over their best odds. Ten spread evenly, one per thread, or nine (3X3) but messing with three particular threads good? Snuffing them out so they can't recover? Which is the best strategy? Of course I'm kidding about zapping. I'm not electronically savvy, I'm steampunk. I'd install something like whack-a-mole instead if I knew how.

Correct. Have you ever done eyelid gazing? This is a passive visualization exercise where you close your eyes and watch the darkened space behind your eyelids. At first you see what people call "phosphenes" and maybe some splotches of color. Later you may see some abstract geometric shapes. Eventually you may see some what looks like gears or machines. Then you may see faces. They may appear static. Later they might seem like they're smiling or saying something, more animated. Then you may see bodies in addition to faces. Then you may see something that resembles an open space, and a vague sense of environment. Eventually a full blown dream scene can develop from this. Now consider how these people, with seemingly independent minds and personalities emerge from the space of your own mind, when given half a chance, such as during an eyelid gazing exercise. Subjectivities represent viewpoints, and viewpoints can evolve arbitrarily. Because of the possibility for viewpoints evolving arbitrarily, it's possible to experience what I call subjective convergence and subjective divergence. Subjective convergence happens when your perspective gets closer to some other perspectives. When this happens, it feels like you're sharing an experience. The more convergent the subjectivities, the more sharing seems to happen. And the opposite is true for divergence. So one example of divergence would be you going to sleep while your friend stays in your room to watch. Your friend will then see your body laying motionlessly on the bed. While you will experience a world that is perhaps nothing like this Earth realm, and the friend in your room may no longer be present in your dream world. That's what I call subjective divergence. That's just one example of it. You can choose to involve other people into your visionary process. Depending on how you involve other people, you can grant them powers or you can rob them of powers. This will not improve or hurt anyone because everyone has the same power, and when two subjectivities dream incompatible dreams, they simply diverge each into their own worlds with their own sets of relatively compatible beings. That's the manifestation process. Yes, this can happen assuming I've involved enough other beings into my vision. If I consider other beings as truly independent observers, I can no longer dictate what their vision will be like. When I wave my hand in front of your face, you are almost forced to see it. Why? And why "almost"? Well, "almost" because you can ignore my waving around to such a profound extent, that you won't see anything at all. This is what's known as a negative hallucination in hypnosis. It's when you can't see something that is "actually" "there." So even if I am waving my hand in front of your face, in truth, I am not able to 100% force you to see anything. You still maintain sovereignty of your experience. But assuming you're an ordinary being, your sovereignty is lost in a drunken stupor, since most of your activity is a result of habituation and craving with virtually no intent left open for something creative and amazing. So as an ordinary being, you can be abused pretty easily, because people can exploit your habits and cravings against you. So if I know you crave contact with your family, I can take your family hostage and demand a ransom. That's what I mean by exploitation. If I know your cravings, I can take advantage of you. But this exploitation can be very very subtle. It doesn't have to be something stupid like a kidnapping. It can be psychological and spiritual manipulation of the most subtle kind that you'd never be able to detect as an ordinary being. And how do you think I'd know what your habituations and cravings were? Well, I'd judge them by my own! Haha.. I mean, I know your weakness by judging my own weakness, and then reasonably assuming that if our subjectivities intersect, we must share a very significant portion of weaknesses. If you were too different from me, I'd not be able to see you at all, because you'd then be in a realm different from my realm. In other words, we tend to witness beings similar to ourselves, plus or minus a few points. Of course there can be some exceptions to this. There are no hard rules. But that's the tendency as I see it.