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Seems like he stepped back from the knowledge placed before him with regularity. It was always too much for him. Remember how several times he had decided that he never wanted to see that old fool again, as long as he lived? And then, sure enough, a year later he'd find himself down in Mexico one more time, looking him up or "running into him"... I sometimes wonder if the suicide thing at the end wasn't actually the ability of he and a few others to step into a lucid dream and take up residence there? Who's to say it wasn't? I was always very impressed that don Juan was able to invoke a lucid dream at will, it seems - and bring Carlos into it. Now that's talent, a mutual lucid dream. What mind control.

Who would like to help explain what a fully realised Buddha means? I mean, please illuminate with your understanding what the scope of full realization entails? Anyone? Frankly, I really cannot even begin to fathom the magnitude of that sort of imaginative, fantastical fruition. Another point to consider is the usefulness of such an examination. Its like reading up a brochure about Disneyland and telling others the wonders of the place. Just go and experience the wonder, and then maybe realize its all a dream-like creation to induce a temporarily euphoric state. But that may just explain its attraction, doesn't it? As someone once aptly proclaimed, enlightenment is nothing; delusion is everything. The sweet spot of Non-distraction, i think, lies somewhere in between.

Forcing what? Mind to mind transmission and enlightenment? You can't. Much less so in thinking you have full controls of your dreams. In dreams, our power of consciousnesses becomes weak. You can influence your dream sequence and events. You can not change the background or the contextual setting of the dream itself because they are products of your karma..... Any changes would be gradual and extremely subtle......

You know what I hate ? "Economic rationalism ' ....... if it makes money , its 'rational' It closed down old soldiers homes , dispersed their 'little communities - about all they had left - and relocated them . It shut down nurses homes and nursing homes and old people's facilities . Why ? Because they where not making enough money - 'unviable ' . How the hell did people start to think that looking after old soldiers, the sick and the elderly was SUPPOSED to be about making money ? How did that happen ? The "board' didnt like it ? The 'shareholders' voted to 'invest elsewhere' . I saw a doco about an old school , full on USA capitalist ( sorry, cant remember the details ) ... he made a CRAZY amount of money . But wanted kids and could not have them. So he and his wife adopted some . And some more ... and more . And then it spread, eventually he had all sorts of things running, orphanage, school , hospital, accommodation, scholarships , etc . A huge corp . Well, if you got enough money, you can do what you want - even nice things . He died and it continued for some time, turned into a big biz with a board and shareholders . Until a few years back . Not making enough money . So the shareholders of the corp decided to dissolve split up and sell off the man's dream . and now, I am thinking of 'Weather Underground ' - way to protest ! Dont go and hassle the office building or have a march and wave placards. get into the files of the board meeting ... somehow .... find out who actually voted for whatever shit is going on . And take your protest to them directly 'Weather Underground' style .... KABLOWIE ! Note, for those unfamiliar WU (as far as I know ) never injured or hurt anyone , nor where any of them ever caught . Some handed themselves in long afterwards . One got caught but that was more in a Black Panther operation. Now, a bit more of that .... the faceless people voting on their boards and holdings might think twice before they go along with some shitfull vote . ( like , no, lets not spend money on fixing that dam .... its only Brazil )

I don't have any ultimate answers Im afraid, my friend. Don't think its really helpful to speculate as that might create more confusion, as is the nature of ordinary discursive minds. All I can say is when we slowly disperse the layers of mental obscuration, our inner vision begins to clarify accordingly, until pure perception reaches a point of constant stability, meaning everything appears like a dream, and buddha activity takes place only in that dreamlike world of relatvity, and in reality (the ultimate of ultimates?), nothing happens at all except constant flux (of energy?) without a beginning - I don't really know, save for very tiny glimpses now and then, so please don't take these words as final or authoritative. I suppose the above is one way to explain how that Zen saying to kill the Buddha came about. One of my teachers said that life is one big uncertainty, and the more we get okay with that understanding, the better our meditation becomes. This realization helps to affirm what Buddha taught about having no position being the ideal position. He said that "Yes" and "No" keeps changing all the time, so a practitioner will do well to hang loose by avoiding fixated thinking that things are either this way or that way.

This is true. I had a discussion about that with a fellow practitioner recently. There simply isn't a lot of information out there about genuine Xian Tian Tao Yin Xiu. It is a very tiny part in the history of the art, that under which practitioners of the system have been granted authority to discuss some of it's details openly. We were even making a joke about it a week ago, because a fellow Tao Yu recommended I write a book and I laughed and asked "why bother?" It would be 995 pages of Hou Tian and 5 pages Xian Tian. Hou Tian Xiu can by mapped out linearly in an instructive format, such that once one has familiarized themselves with the instructions, they may sit and begin to practice and say "ok, first I start with A then move to B then C then D etc," but with Xian Tian Tao Yin Xiu, every individual practitioners path is completely complimentary to their condition of body, energy and spirit-mind. One Tao Yu may skip 10 steps that another must do, and some may leap-frog ahead 10 years of others, while other's may be stuck in one place for just as long. It all depends entirely on the persons talents, the persons diligence and the current state of their 3 bodies at the time of initiation. Because of this, right after initiation practitioners will be guided into different forms of meditation dependent on their current level of spiritual progress; thus your Immortal may guide you into moving meditation (seated), moving meditation (standing), postural meditation such as Zhan Zhuang (standing or seated), seated emptiness meditation to penetrate the Wuji. It may when necessary control your breath and direct your Qi in the body to perform certain tasks at the required times bearing in mind the micro and macro-cosmic timings of the heavenly bodies and the internal organs, meridians and energy fields etc. It is all very, very personal. We do have a very detailed Xiu Tao flowchart which outlines and describes all the hallmarks of our schools cultivation path from Beginner to Immortal, but this is very superficial in comparison to every practitioners personal experience. It's not that complicated. The process of transmutation is reversed. During Hou Tian Xiu, we use low vibrational resources derived from Earth, Air, Food, Drink and Hormones to build Jing. Jing is the foundation in Hou Tian Xiu. When plenty, the Jing is then refined to Qi, the Qi later to Shen and the Shen to Wuji. In Xian Tian Xiu, we use high vibrational resources derived from Heaven through our school and by absorbing the essence of the Sun, Moon and the heavenly bodies that vibrate at the Shen and Wuji level. Shen is the foundation in Hou Tian Xiu. When plenty, the Shen is then refined to Qi and the Qi to Jing. On a side note, another one of our recent Tao Yu and a close friend of mine whom I personally invited to the initiation has also recently separated his Shen from his body and was able to travel to familiar places around London. Although his spirit is still in Taiji and not in Wuji. To enter Wuji requires that the spirit undergo a lot of transformation and this is inevitably achieved through Jing Zuo; sitting and forgetting / emptiness meditation. The reason why our Tao Yu are able to achieve Yin Shen skill so quickly is because our Bai Hui is activated during initiation. Yin Shen is not something extraordinary. It is a minor spiritual skill and even non spiritualists can achieve it by modifying their consciousness through drug use or OBE practices. Building the Yang Shen / The Indestructible Immortal Spirit is a process which takes much longer, but we don't start from Jing to Qi to Shen. In our school the priority is the Spirit's transformation, so immediately after/during initiation we begin to refine Yang Shen and every practice thereafter, when we practice at home or anywhere else will advance the refinement of Yang Shen. In Hou Tian Xiu, after the Yang Shen is born, because it is still a baby, It is weak and vulnerable. If the practitioner were to die while the Yang Shen was in such a state I fear the possibility that It may be attacked by other spirits or demon and could be destroyed, dissolving all progress up until now. In our school, because every Tao Yu is enveloped in the divine golden aura received from Tai Shang Lao Jun, even if we died and our Yang Shen was still in an infant stage of development, we could continue to develop in the divine realm under the guidance of our Immortal teachers, without the fear of spiritual attacks. The golden aura protects us and so does our Fu Fa Shen. We may call on it for spiritual refinement or to aid us and help us with our daily lives. This is the very reason why less than a month for one case and 2 months later for another Tao Yu, they were able to freely and fearlessly explore the environment and even far away areas with their Yin Shen, knowing they are under protection from demonic attacks and possessions. I would otherwise be afraid to do so. I say this, because of the experiences I've had with demons attacking me during sleep paralysis. I believe there are two types of dream states: During the first the Hun retreat to the Liver and the Po to the Lungs and the imaginings of the dream state take place in the mental consciousness of the brain. The dream takes place in the body and the soul(s) remain within. The shell is full. During the second, either then Hun and Po both leave the body or the Hun OR the Po leave the body and travel away to distant realms to experience genuine interactions with other worlds and beings, not of the mind. The soul(s) leave the body. The shell is empty. If you speak to a lot of practitioners they will tell you that when they are exploring with their Yin Shen their body is in a state of paralysis. They can see themselves sitting and meditating or laying down or however they were positioned prior to separating their Yin Shen from the body. It is exactly at this very point that I've found people are likely to experience demon's of the night and It is of my strong belief that these demons take advantage of the empty shell to attempt possession. I think this is why whenever you her testimonies of sleep paralysis, they are often accompanied by the demon weighing down on your back or chest. It has only happened to me during sleep paralysis when the Yin Shen is out of the body. This explains why I always observed the events from a birds-eye view and why I could see both my body and that of the demon fully. My mother whom is also an initiated Tao Yu works in a care-home, where she just started work. The other day she met a patient whom had a very depressed and sad demeanour. She asked him "what's the matter?." The patient kept shying away and trying to avoid the topic, but my mum could sense something was the matter. She poked a little more and the patient finally admitted that they were scared they'd think they were crazy or something if he shared his concerns. She managed to get close enough and the patient finally disclosed that every night a demon would come to their bed and weigh down on them. It felt like it was both pulling and sucking them and weighting down with a very strong gravity at the same time. They could never sleep, because of the fear of the experience every night and had sleep deprivation. My mother used a mantra from our school to disperse any Yin influences in the vicinity and said she would come back to check on them tomorrow. Well she did and they patient said It was the first time since moving to the care home that they had a normal night's sleep. Demon free. Some people with developed talents, whether in this life time or a prior can easily slip out of the body during sleep to explore other places and are very often due to this victims of demonic attempts of possession. They don't seem to attack when the spirit of these spirit travellers is still in the body and I would imagine it is because the said person has a very strong spirit. You would need one to be able to slip out of the body of your own volition. I think these demon's wait exactly for that and then they try to weaken the physical body somehow or to sever the connection between the body and the adventuring spirit in order to occupy the shell. Anyhoo. Just rambling : ) If you refine your Yang Shen enough during this life time, when you die you can go to the divine realm and be a Fu Fa Shen to your grand children or great grand children or perform other duties in heaven. You would be a Shen Xian too then. An immortal spirit or a god. There are different levels of divine status and the term god does not refer to only one of these levels. There are lower gods, middle gods, higher gods and all sorts in between those. But for all intensive purposes one who practices as a human and created the Yang Shen body by merging the Hun and Po is considered a Taoist God. That could be you if you practice diligently or it could be someone else. Bear in mind however that there are those humans that refine from an earthly state into a heavenly state to become a Shen Xian, but there are also Tian Xian or heavenly immortals who have always existed as immortals or gods and did not start from a physical form, but one can get to this state of their own effort as well. Gui Xian > Ren Xian > Di Xian > Shen Xian > Tian Xian I'll speak for myself and for the Tao Yu whom are close to me and say that it's all of the above. like I said whether you are moved or not depends on where you are in your practice. To develop the consciousness and awareness required to enter the Wuji we need to practice a lot of sitting meditation. Since the initiation, I feel like I am hooked up to a constant and very strong source of energy. When we invite an immortal to practice with us during the day or night and they then begin to move your body, energy and mind the interaction and force of this energy influence increases. For example, during the day I will feel Qi moving around in different place. Sometimes it feels like a hand reaches into some part of my body and tweaks something. Imagine a hand, but no bones or muscles or tendons or anything physical, just energy. Then it reaches into your body and interacts with an organ or the Qi flow in a meridian. Sometimes it feels like that for me, and that's before I've actually invited an immortal to guide me. Yesterday after I finished practice which consisted of my regular Yi Jin Jing and 5 organ forms, I asked my Fu Fa Shen if it would please continue to refine me while I sleep in whatever way possible... Well.. Let's put it this way. I didn't sleep all night hahaha. I was being thrown around like a rag doll in the bed, in all sorts of positions and mudras. I quite literally felt like I was a fish in a frying pan and it was just flipping me around. The immortal is so strong that it can just flip me from a lying tummy position to on your back in one go. I feel like I don't even roll. It just picks me up and spins me. And when it moves my hand it does it at such a speed like I know I could never achieve with my own musculoskeletal system. I feel like the flash. In fact. My hand moves and reaches it's destination before my mind realizes it has moved. At first It was a very strange feeling, but then I realized it makes perfect sense that my brain would lag with the information since it wasn't me initiating the movement. It had to catch up a little. Yes. I know It all sounds a little strange, but the reality of authentic spiritual cultivation is such. It's filled with the supernatural and unexplained. We like to keep this stuff between Tao Yu, because when we say it to someone else, they label us crazy and put us in the loony bin. But you know how the saying goes: I awoke only to find out that everyone else was still asleep. The immortal is... super-conscious, all pervasive. To it the past, present and future are one. But what you must understand is that our OWN physical bodies do not vibrate at that level of existence. Our organs and meridians and Qi flow wax and wane in accordance with the moon and sun and forces of the earth and other influences. We tire, we exhaust ourselves and we need rest. Everyone's body can take a different amount of stress. I say stress, because during Tao Yin many of the exercises can be very exhausting. For example, my mothers Fu Fa Shen always forces her into really tough Yoga Poses, that I wouldn't want to try. When it let's her go, she is often sweating and just wants to go to sleep directly, because she is so tired. It all depends on your endurance, but like I said our bodies work on timings. Often FFS will need to wait and hand pick a certain timing in order to create a specific effect in the body. This means that It may ask you to perform a certain exercise at a specific time to help advance a healing or refinement process in your body. This is the advantage of authentic Xian Tian Tao Yin Xiu. You have an immortal there to tweak you EXACTLY when you need to be tweaked. It's the difference in cultivation between rubbing two wet stick together to make fire and using a magnifying glass with the sun. It's strange to say if it comes for you. Because it's literally beyond speed and time and distance. The moment you think of it, It's already there. Immortals have a skill which allows them to replicate themselves over and over again. This means that It can be in many places and guiding many students and performing many tasks at once. It is your personal teacher and friend. In my experience FFS will leave you when it determines that your body is too tired to sustain the task at hand. Or it will leave you when it has reached it's desired effect for that time or place. Often a lot of the "issues" which it addresses and heals during practice are complex and cannot be fixed in one go. So during one session it may fix 10%, then it may need to come back again when the timing of the organ or meridian or sun and moon is right to push it from 10% to 20%. Then maybe it will wait for 4 months without doing anything, because it needs to wait for the right alignment of criteria again, then it will advance the refinement from 20% to 50% etc. It will intelligently do what needs to be done with absolute wisdom in action in order to bring about the state and result necessary to elevate you to the next step in cultivating the Tao. Indeed it is all very interesting. I believe one would have great success when being well educated in both Hou Tian and Xian Tian cultivation methods. This will allow the practitioner to safely refine the Jing (body) while refining the Shen (spirit-mind) and thus meet in the middle Qi (energy) Thank you kindly. May you be blessed in your cultivation : )

A quick way to cut through mental b.s. is just sit in full lotus padmasana - that is also based on music harmonics. So whether music is a "theory" or philosophy? It is proven to have been the original spirit training - the Eland Bull Dance - from before human language crystallized. This is called "MusiLanguage." So the "three gunas" of India is from before vedic philosophy - and so it is also the same as Daoism as based on music theory. Basically if someone says a vowel sound - that naturally has harmonics that resonate as the Octave and Perfect Fifth and Perfect Fourth. For example Master Nan, Huai-chin explains how a loud OM sound is heard to emanate spontaneously from the heart - when the jing (kundalini) is being converted into shen. I had this experience from a very strong DMT-based plant root medicine with an MAOI seed - combined with a 4 hour nonstop full lotus meditation during which I was not able to physically move (hardly). So that is when I realized that what Ramana Maharshi teaches as the source of the I-thought is inherently also based on music harmonics as he uses the left brain as the source of the I-thought to get to open up the right side of the heart. A good book to study for these secrets is Taoist Yoga: alchemy and Immortality. But the music theory principles are universal - ALL human cultures use the octave, Perfect Fifth and Perfect Fourth and not just humans. Science is realizing these harmonics are the secret of reality - again based on this Noncommutative phase secret of nonlocal reality. So I actually have scientists now regularly reading my blog - and they then publish this same model of reality based on music theory as explaining relativistic quantum physics. So - there's a medical scientists in the Netherlands which his assistant collaborator as an engineer. I have mentioned others also. But yes there is no substitute for the actual meditation - which needs to be done with the eyes closed, based on visualizing light. The original human culture taught to visualize light at the base of the spine - and that the N/om (life force from fat hormones) turns into electromagnetic force that is sent out of the brain - with the eyes not moving - as a laser healing energy. So they already did the advanced "neidan" training - including creating the Yang Shen bilocation body, etc. But yes they had no "theory" but they did rely on what Dr. Bradford Keeney calls "shaking medicine." So the ELF schumann resonance is also the waking dream state or Theta brain wave. Dr. Keeney does not like the term trance and he has written how "ecstasy" got also misused by academia. So in other words - yes there has to be emotional energy with the music. This is why when Prince, the rock musician, died - then cities all over earth did "honor" him with the color purple. So people give great importance to music as an emotional memory imprint. So we think of time - Dr. Stuart Hameroff has an excellent science explanation of precognition - stating that when Michael Jordan is in "the zone" then Jordan truly is perceiving the future. Again this means his internal brain speed is faster than those around him - so he is able to perceive things before they do. But also - he sees external perception as slowed down. This happens naturally if someone has a "near death" experience like almost a severe accident. So as Wim Hof teaches - the strong Quick Fire reverse tummo breathing is proven scientifically to DOUBLE ADRENALINE - just the same as Bungee jumping for the first time. So that means external time is perceived to slow down because the dopamine receptors are working twice as fast. Now if something is TOO traumatic - then time freezes into the deep dreamless state as a subconsciously stored trauma (PTSD) and this literally will fry out or damage the dopamine receptors. So then PTSD victims have damaged amgydalas and so then they react to stress more easily. This even happens to Westernized babies since doctors tell the mom to have the baby "cry it out." I have corresponded with a clinical psychologist who did the studies testing the stress hormone levels in the blood of babies left to "cry it out." She says it's permanent brain damage. This even made it to a NY Times article but she told me she is very mad at the doctors as they still practice this. So for example when I was in first grade I then held my breath consciously till I passed out - and I hit my head on the way down - on the two concrete corner walls and then the concrete floor. I woke up to blood streaming out of my skull. But it took me awhile to figure out that I had already been suffering from repressed anger. There is a great book on this called Heroes by professor Michael Lesy - how ordinary people can do extraordinary acts in the spur of the moment. He analyzed the background lives to discover each of these "heroes" actually has strong repressed emotional blockages that then " burst forth." So I had discovered in two or three different Western medical books that it is technically impossible to hold your breath till you pass out since the prefrontal left brain cortex INTENTION is over-ridden by the subconscious anterior gyrus cingulate.... But when I told my book buddy friend this - he said he had discovered a memoir about the first Sherpas - to get the job they HAD to hold their breath till they passed out. So in nonwestern culture - they knew their emotional energy could overpower their intentional left brain focus. So the brain on its own is weak - this is why the deep breathing is necessary and this then activates the Yuan Qi as the hidden "yang" or fire inside the water. So we think of the I-thought as just being a repetition or a rhythm or a mantra of the left brain - but in reality there is no repetition since the foundation of reality is what science calls "time-frequency uncertainty." This means that time as period inherently has an inverse opposite of frequency that is based on natural harmonics as the "law" of Pythagoras first discovered for the foundation of the WEst. But as I have pointed out - this got covered up in its TRUE alchemical meaning. Even Plato changed the order around of the alchemical elements based on the music harmonics - I go into this in my last book called Ancient Advanced Acoustic Alchemy - it is free online. https://www.docdroid.net/LbJGgG2/ancient-advanced-acoustic-alchemy.pdf OK another way to think of this is as Louis de Broglie discovered - there's actually TWO time "lines" - so the future and past are harmonized at the present. The present is the speed of light which does not experience space nor time. That is our "spiritual ego" as shen that is then TURNED AROUND to resonate with the future. So this turning around of the light is called the "light of no light" but it's also called Silence or think of it as the future canceling out the karma of the past. So our future is secretly guiding us all the time and when we have perceptions these are normally of the past. But if we have a precognitive vision then it is MORE REAL than our senses and perceptions of our normal left brain dominant processing of time. So a precognitive vision is the reversal of the future with the past. So then de Broglie modeled this as matter being a "group wave" and then the future is the pilot wave - and the two are inextricably linked as what he called his greatest discovery - the Law of Phase Harmony (this is rarely discussed in regards to his work). So most people just discuss de Broglie as stating that all matter as momentum can be understood to actually be a wave or wavelength. So this in itself is paradoxical since momentum is normally imparted to mass as a point. So how can a wave be a point? But light inherently has what used to be called "relativistic mass" - an excellent essay on this is by Nobel physicist Gerard 't Hooft - called Why Light is Heavy. So essentially all matter is made of light but in fact even though light has no rest mass light does have mass "from the future" or spacetime mass - this is also called now "supermomentum" or it is called "noncommutative phase" as I have noted. So the physicist who predicted the Dark Energy acceleration of the Universe - in India - Sarkar? His name is slipping at the moment - anyway so he says how the mass of light is due to spacetime being noncommutative. So then frequency is to time as momentum is to wavelength. But the frequency is from the future as a superluminal pilot wave. This is the noncommutative phase that is always-already non-local reality. So at "zero" time there is always-already an infinite frequency from the future as the pilot wave. But even zero and infinity are relative to the speed of light as the "spiritual ego" that turns itself around - and so matter is always being created new from micro black hole -white holes (Gerard 't Hooft also figured this out - as an extension of his "light is heavy" model).

Woah. Where are we going with this? I always thought this place was more or less free speech - except in extremis i.e. racism, misogyny etc and particularly ad homimen attacks. Open conversation is the way to learn new ideas and opinions and to strengthen and test your own. If you want me to sign up to anarcho-communism which is basically the wet dream of over privileged middle class kids - count me out. I want genuine change to the left which gives people dignity, a decent standard of living, healthcare and otherwise lets them do what they want. I want new models of living which emerge from today not some nineteenth century failed rhetoric. I want maximum free speech on Daobums with some outside limiters to prevent descent into flame wars and so on.

Funny stuff....I actually had my kundalini energy rising experience when I was 18, after waking up from a dream. Is a shame that some sees sleep is for sleeping, not for mind and enlightenment transmission. I actually entered into a deep Samadhi once during my morning dream vision sequence. Unbelievable experience....it gave me a taste of what is to come maybe when I am about to leave this world behind.....

I would be real tempted to go to this. But sleeping has been difficult for me with the Prozac thing - plus trying to wean off the sleepers as well. Do you think this would be a hindrance to getting benefit from this retreat? although when I was doing the practices in Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche's book on Dream Yoga, I was visualizing the tigles at the forehead, throat, heart, etc. But that was before I stopped using the many sleepers. My dreams were incredible, and there was an awareness of being The Dreamer. I can only imagine how powerful this practice would be without the sleeping pills. I'm down to just one now, and it lets me sleep until 2:30 AM. Although last night, I slept till 5:30 - first time since going off the Anacin PM's to lengthen the sleep time. So there is progress. To go to that retreat, that would be, well, a dream. Rats. I just looked at the date again. I was thinking July when I first saw it. Can't do it in June.

I cannot, nor do I desire to witness whatever photons enter your eyeballs to tell you what you're perceiving. Such things may be possible with training, but don't amount to much more than parlor tricks imho. You seem thoroughly convinced by this grand hall of mirrors. I however am my biggest skeptic. Do you believe your reflections have any substance apart from yourself? There's only one vision, and that which observes is multifaceted. But I can't see what you see in that sense. Your private world is quite your own. Unique in that you've specially tailored it to suit your deepest desires. Any mail of "yours" is only forwarded to "me" as "needed". We're engaged on a journey in which we wouldn't dream of violating each other's privacy...and yet, there's no such thing as secrets.

In the same way do people read the 'science' in the newspaper, it's all so amazing, and then they think they are amazing, as if they own this 'science'. If you read about Elon Musk or travelling to Mars .... it "lifts you up" because you imagine you are something to do with it. But maybe it has nothing to do with you, and you will waste the 24hrs of today dreaming. It would be nice to say that Atlantis is the place were people don't dream and work practically in useful endeavours so that they themselves become capable people, able to do things themselves; and that any good society is only based on one thing, the health wisdom and capability of the people inside that society which they themselves possess. And so having "western medicine" or scientific theories or whatever is actually not important, unless the individuals themselves have it inside themselves. And the way things are, as services are offered to you, you become lazy, you lose competence. A society full of services, be they high tech or high medicine, is a society of people getting weaker. At least that is the natural outcome. Animals that live in people's homes lose their brain size, and their competences. But it has also been said that the nature of the earth is such that changes in the celestial objects have a tremendous effect down here, and that we are at the mercy of them. Anyway, the truth is available to all who wish it.

Hmmm ... does self-hypnotism or meditation where you enter a dream-state, experiencing visions and so forth, count as some type of lucid dream? If so, how does this experience fit in with the "dream science"?

Nice. Thanks for finding that post by Sunya. Great point about sequential operation moving from psychological to the spiritual. Sort of like energy cultivation in waking life... first remove blockages, then begin to run energy in a clear system. I'll check out Steinbrecher. I recently checked out this book on Tibetan Dream Yoga. http://www.amazon.com/Tibetan-Yogas-Dream-Sleep/dp/1559391014/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381245408&sr=1-2&keywords=dream+yoga I really like the idea of working with specific organs/chakras.

I agree and honestly these institutions should be made to bare the burden of misleading others. Not the banks not the lending institutions that exist for the sole purpose of collecting interest on loans but the ones benefiting from over pricing education in the first place making it un-affordable and then selling a dream that quite frankly does not exist. Very few who graduate ever achieve what was promised by holding some silly ass paper. Go to school to learn what you love to do and what is in demand. Pay attention to the times in which you live and work hard at it live dirt poor like I did do not believe you need a Bachelors degree in Computer Science to have a career in I.T. for example. When I started I was damned good but I had two things going for me more talented people did not. #1. Credit Score in the 800's. #2. A clean background record. These two things alone can help a young person succeed over others.

Sure - the first important point is that my confidence in TWR and the Bön methods was already very strong before I started the dream yoga practices. I think that, in and of itself, is helpful. That confidence in the teacher and the method really helps drive the practice. It's easy for Tibetan children growing up in a monastery to have very powerful confidence, trust, and devotion in the teacher and the teachings, much more challenging for secular Westerners like me. But that is an important ingredient. I think it both fuels and maintains the degree of patience and persistence required to be successful but also somehow creates a bridge between our regular, waking mind and a deeper level of awareness. It is that deeper place where we begin to bridge the waking and sleeping dreams and also begin to connect with the archetypal figures that are difficult for Westerners to embrace - the deities, protectors, and so forth. It took me many months (nine or so, I think) of practice before having any success in lucid dreaming. I'd had occasional lucid dreams since childhood but I'm referring to those arising since starting the practice. The first major breakthrough occurred while I was attending a retreat (on a different topic). I can't say what exactly did it for me but I think it was a combination of the months of practice and the environment. The environment was very special - there was a very strong vibe of love, respect, and sacredness present for me. It's hard to describe but it was palpable. I think the sleep environment is VERY important as is our frame of mind upon going to sleep. I had three powerful lucid dreams in one night. I won't go into detail but the first seemed to be testing me, the second and third gave me an opportunity to make an important change in my life that I'd been struggling with. Since then the practice has been less stable than I'd like to admit. There are periods of time when lucidity occurs regularly and other times when it is elusive. My non-lucid dreams are always much more clear and detailed as well as mostly enjoyable and somehow nourishing. There was a time when I would struggle with insomnia and periodic night terrors and nightmares, that is an extreme rarity now. My success with lucidity in dreams seems to be related to a number of variables - my mood, how consistent I'm being with my practices (especially during the day), my state of mind at bedtime, my level of exhaustion, how mindful I'm being throughout the day, my use of mind-altering substances (and by that I mean just about anything, including things like caffeine and alcohol), use of computer, TV, and other distractions. There is also a fine line between taking the practices too seriously or too lightly. Too much seriousness, too much focus on the goal, too much concern with whether or not I'll be lucid is bad for the process. Rinpoche says this is one of the biggest hurdles for many Westerners to overcome because we're so goal driven. On the other hand, treating the process or the dreams themselves with disrespect or in a careless manner is equally problematic. It is good to develop a deep respect for the teachings and for the deeper level of awareness that serves as a bridge between waking and sleeping dreams. Once we do become lucid, what we do with that precious opportunity is also very important (eg do we squander it on pure entertainment or use it to cultivate skills that will serve our spiritual practice?). In the Tibetan tradition all of this is viewed as very sacred and precious and yet not too serious, meaning there is also a playfulness that is important - much like one feels they suddenly wake up and realize, this is a dream! You're much like me in that regard. I am a scientist by training and profession and often struggle with many of the concepts that are not easily and objectively observable. For my purposes, there simply are no satisfactory explanations that could pass scientific scrutiny to remove your doubt. At least, I've never heard any and I'm not able to present one. Certainly I have worked through these questions in my own mind with my own paradigm and can make a few general comments. A thorough discussion would take way too long. Thinking about channels and chakras - we are energetic beings by anyone's definition. We are beings full of motion and activity - from our blood flow, to our neural impulses, to our gut movement, to our muscles, the life and death of our individual cells, their inner activity. Even deeper, all matter is energetic. All of that's easy to understand. Next look at the chakras and what they represent, I'll talk about the Bön perspective (of which I'm NOT an expert, just an interested novice). First I'll say that I do not look at them (or meridians and channels) as discrete, observable physical structures. I look at them more as general trends and pathways that are highly (perhaps infinitely) flexible. There is a chakra at the crown of the head - this is associated with the brain and its activity. This is where we are considered to be closest to connecting with truth. It is related to awareness. No doubt there is energy centered in the head and brain, no doubt this is somehow connected to awareness, consciousness, and so on. That's easy for me to accept. Then there is the throat chakra - it relates to our ability to form speech, not only audible speech but the internal narrator. Then the heart chakra, then the gut, then the sexual organs. Each of these 'centers of energy' correspond to an important physical organ system filled with energetic activity and also each corresponds to a complex of emotional and psychological processes that we relate to these physical systems. These relationships seem to be somewhat archetypal and cross many geographic and cultural boundaries. When we practice, whether it is cleansing channels, guiding energy, clearing chakras, we are using our awareness and our intention to connect with areas that we normally ignore. That is to say we focus on things like emotional and psychological pain or repressed feelings, we focus on dysfunctional patterns of behavior that we generally aren't aware of, that sort of thing. For example, someone asks you a question and you react to them in very predictable ways based on prior experience, rank, station, perceived threat or influence, and all of that. And there are definite connections between certain types of processes and feelings and physical organ systems that are deeply embedded in our minds and in our language (eg I've got a hard-on for something, my heart is broken, that makes me sick to my stomach,...). So somewhere deep in our mind and language we connect physical and energetic phenomena in ways that have a deep effect on us. So I see these systems of practice as using whatever tools it can to help free us from the ties the bind us - the dysfunctional patterns, the automated responses, the repressed and suppressed psycho-emotional baggage, physical pain which represents psycho-emotional trauma, and on and on... The tools are things like awareness, focus, movement of the body and breath, sound, the very things that connect us to our environment - our awareness and sensory perception. I don't think of a chakra as some magical circle in my body. To me they are complex connections between my psycho-emotional "body" (for lack of a better word), my intellectual framework, my conditioned patterns, my cultural biases, my physical body and so on... This is what we are working on when we practice. We need to make these practices deeply personal for them to really be effective. It is not about believing in magic or in the drawings of an old Chinese or Tibetan for me. It is about actually living and personally experiencing the magic, like seeing a dysfunctional pattern of behavior that's resisted change for decades suddenly loosen and dissolve. The way I came to trust in the truth behind the practices was through spending time with the practices themselves and learning to let go of the intellect's demand for an explanation. I was lucky enough to have a teacher who explained absolutely nothing. He taught you what to do (Daoist cultivation) and you did it for a few weeks or months, came back, had a little chat, and got more to work on. Little or now theoretical framework or explanation. That was great for me as no theoretical explanation would have satisfied me. What did satisfy me was seeing the changes in my body and mind after a period of practice. The more I did the work, the more benefit I saw. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is similar as a teacher. He is not one to get bogged down in theory. He knows the Western mind well. He knows how unsatisfying most of the Eastern theories and explanations are to our ears (meaning skeptics like you and me). I think he also knows how distracting and counter-productive it can be to simply "believe" in something. If you simply believe, you don't have to do any work, and you also won't see any change. He emphasizes the practice itself and the very tangible effects they have on us. The proof is in the pudding as they say. That is the source of my "faith" - I put that in quotes because to a lot of people it's a dirty word. I use it more in the sense of trust and confidence based on direct experience, even in the absence of any scientific evidence or exploration. You put a certain amount of time into the practices, you see positive results, you dig deeper for longer, you grow even more. If they do not work for you, that is OK too - everyone needs something different at different times in their lives. If the warrior seed syllable practices are calling to you, I would suggest you follow that call. It is little things like that which can literally change our lives. If they are not a good fit, let go and move on. Life's too short to hang on to things that aren't working for us.

I do not feel the need to invoke images from the past when arguing for a British withdrawal from the E.U. It is not the past that causes me concern but the future. You appear to relish the idea of a homogenized Europe and see it as a dream state. Your dream is my nightmare.

You're not contradicting what I am saying, but you seem to think you do. Let me correct a few things you say. First, you make a clear distinction between beliefs and what lies under the beliefs on a deeper level of the psyche. I don't make such a distinction. So right then and there I have one less polarizing and bifurcating line running through my psyche than do you. Second, yes, ultimately everything is indeed coherent. I know this. My entire method as I present it here is aimed at allowing people to feel it and to make use of it in day to day life. So for example, let's say I am freezing in the winter. Ultimately I am not actually freezing. Someone like you would say that. But I don't feel it. I feel like I am freezing. So it does me little good to know the ultimate truth if I can't make use of it in day to day life. You answer, stop trying to use it. Just let it be. And I am answering, "When I use things" that's just the flavor of my "let it be." In other words, when I am going about here and there, I am not going anywhere, I am already at rest from your own ultimate perspective. What I explain here can make people's lives better. What you explain can help too, but it won't help as much, because you're basically presenting the mind as two realms which should not be reconciled against each other. In the superficial realm there are contradictions and in the ultimate or deep realm, there are no contradictions, and you don't need to do any work. Just relax, everything is fine as is. Well, if accidentally break your arm, how would you like it if instead of setting your bones and sawing up your skin I told you "just relax"? Because in a sense, that's an appropriate answer, isn't it? I can just say "just relax" your pain is non-pain. In fact, when I greet you, I can just punch you. Why so? Because it's all the same at the ultimate level, isn't it? And yet out of compassion I do not do that? Why not? So obviously compassion involves something more than just telling people not to worry about anything. I choose the direction in which my beliefs develop. I choose which way I lean. If you mean, am I conscious of all my leanings? The answer is no. It's part of my practice to become more conscious in that way. I did choose them and I remember when. I choose them every time I re-affirm them with equal vigor as the moment before. If my vigor starts to drift, that's my choice in action. It's not important where they come from. I've never personally experienced this. My theory is that our intentionality has a natural balance. If we engage our intentionality too aggressively in a way that seeks to rape things out there into compliance, then we get exhausted and the backlash follows. At the same time, if I pick up a stone and move it, then I relax, the stone remains in its new position. This modest use of intent is rewarding and natural. In fact, if you don't allow an outlet to your intent at all, that is a form of control. It's a form of an inner rape, which will in and of itself explode in its own right. In other words, if you try to over-influence the externals by trying to change too many things too often, then there is a backlash. But if you try to over-influence the internals, by cutting short, disciplining, or over-relaxing your intent, then there is a backlash as well. Not at all. What I've noticed is that eventually the dreamer becomes simply satisfied. For example, you want ice ream. You start eating ice cream. Just how long can you keep eating? Not forever, right? Well, if you start fucking cute girls in your lucid dreams, how long is that going to be interesting? Again, not forever. So what I've noticed is that the level of interest varies based on satisfaction. When you're completely satisfied, you don't need to control anything at all -- but this isn't something you can fake by imploring people to stop messing around. You really have to eat that ice cream and fuck those chicks, or it won't really work. In the worst case scenario you have to reach the same satisfaction through the sublimation of desires. But it's the same shit in a different wrapper, as they say. Get beliefs coherent? That doesn't sound right. It sound like it's something you do in three weeks to 6 months. That's just not how I look at it. Examining one's own beliefs to see if they are coherent or not is not something mechanic. I don't recommend you do it 6 mins in the morning, or twice a day. It's not something that should be made routine in a kind of dead manner. It's not really an exercise. It's more like a lifestyle or an attitude. To an extent the control increased until I bumped up against my own limitations. So for example, flying was easy, and overtime I got better and better at it and I fly in more and more arbitrary ways. For example, I used to have to flap my arms to fly. I don't have to anymore. I used to feel as if I was overcoming some resistance in order to fly. There is less resistance now. In fact recently I flew feet first into the sky, without flapping my arms, just to show off how powerful I am these days. However, some things are hard. For example, when I tried to walk through a wall, I just hit my head and body and bounced off. I knew I was dreaming but there was no walking through the wall for me. So I had to stop and do a deep contemplative meditation into the nature of the wall to get myself to move through it. I did get it eventually, but it was much more difficult and much more strange than flying. Why so? It's obvious! I just believe much less into walking through walls than I do in flying. Flying doesn't screw with the internal consistency of objects, walking through walls does. Of course this has to do with my belief into the internal consistency of objects. In any case, when I explored my dream world I noticed my dream world sometimes would became more challenging in a way that was seemingly designed to disabuse me of all my preconceptions. It wasn't so much as a denial or backlash. It was like the mind was teaching me. So for example, I've had a number of spectacular failures when I did a dream test only to conclude I wasn't dreaming. Then I would wake up with the flawless memory of what happened. Then I realized there was no difference between dreams and reality. If I can have dreams that are so visceral and so perfect that they fail every single dream test, then that's a lesson from the inner guru. It's not a backlash. Why not? Because just in the next few dreams I could fly around again and do whatever I want. So what happened wasn't a kind of "fuck you". It was "check this out... what do you think of this?" That's what it was. It was like a conversation with my own inner mind! I have a great relationship with my inner mind. We are best of friends. So I am never blocked and I don't get any backlashes ever. If something can't be done it's always some kind of lesson that I need to learn, no exceptions. I've always been able to do anything I wanted shortly after the lesson was over.

Recently, i have noticed the importance of the last Thought (activities, mind state) that a person has before sleeping, in affecting the next day in terms of the energy and mind state the person wakes up with and the quality of the whole new day. For example: watching Tv, drama series or something violent before sleeping, will make the person wakes up in a bad mood or feeling tired, Also this is similar to masturbation, thinking of negative thoughts or eating unhealthy food before sleeping. A lot of teachers recommend doing meditation at night before sleeping and ending it with metta of love and compassion allowing the mind to become calm and have positive thoughts. also it is recommend to meditate in the morning to empower your day. (usually if you meditate at night you are more likely to meditate in the morning and be holding that energy during the day) Also meditating at night allow to improve lucidity in the dream, which can be used in solving life problems that arises in the dream state or realize fantaisies. also, if someone try to solve homework or maybe do their work at night before sleeping.. you are more likely to find yourself more motivated to work on them the next day. So, What do you think?

~ BUDDHA SPEAKS ~ Mahamati: World Honored One, how did the Bodhisattvas and Mahasattvas abandon the view of an absolute arising, dwelling, or dissolving? Buddha: They abandoned it in this manner. They cognized that all phenomena are like an ephemeral illusion and dream, that they are detached from the duality of self and others, and that they are therefore unborn [emptiness.] They focused on the mind's manifestations and cognized external reality as unreal. By perceiving the unreality of phenomena, they brought about the cessation of the outflowing sensory consciousness. Because they cognized the unreality of their psychosomatic aggregates and the interacting conditions of the three planes of cosmic existence as originating from their deluded mind, they saw external and internal phenomena as devoid of any inherent nature and as transcending all concepts. Having abandoned the view of an absolute arising [of phenomena,] they realized the illusory nature and thereby attained insight into the unborn Dharma [expanse of emptiness.]

Committing suicide is just another way to keep the ego. This time you sacrifice your life so that the illusions can continue. Strange, but true. In fact most people are sacrificing their life to continue a mad dream. There is only one solution.

I think the 2016 election showed symptoms of what was going on around the US... and likely not just the immediate past... but lots of folks feed up on politics/politicians/division/false promises and failed attempts at hope, etc. I think Trump was voted in as a disruption to all of this; a reset, a reboot, a re-alignment of lost issues over decades of bad decision making domestically and abroad. Anyone paying attention to life in general for the last 40 years has heard the name Trump and knows what he is generally like and about. In fact, many who now malign him used to be friendly with him. Did he change or did folks change? Seems an easy call. Folks showed themselves generally fake in the end and would likely suggest that Trumps front and center assault style in business was simply moved from real estate mongol to WH menace ? That still mis-understands the outcomes we see. People have turned their back; congress has turned its back; media has turned its back... Why ? Just because of One person ? No... because he has revealed the weakness in getting comfortable in disastrous deals; he has up-ended the train wreck of policies that got us into bad trade deals as well. He has called BS on 40 years of domestic and foreign policy that everyone was just sipping pool side drinks from... thinking that as long as I can just sit and sip, this is the 'good life'... Trump woke up the fantasy that folks in the US have slumbered through in a dream like state. Now that they are awake, instead of seeing re-building and re-fashioning, they can only see the walls come tumbling down. The walls of the imaginary comfort called political blindness of the people. This is a reboot going on. Long over due. Wait 50 years and there will be a lot said about this... how the US re-invented themselves in the modern era of global influence without losing their roots. That's my opinion.

If you really want to kill yourself, like it is your biggest dream, do it. Why shouldn't you ? If you want to kill yourself because you feel helpless otherwise, tell yourself that whatever happens, death will come to you anyway sooner or later, so why force it ? Just do whatever you want meantime. You can still kill yourself tomorrow. (Some activities that I helped me go through bad times : spending some time in nature, away from civilization, drawing, listening or making music, walking hours without goal)

About three years ago I traveled to Indonesia for my work. I had to go to the Paiton Power Station ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paiton_Power_Station ), the largest power station in Indonesia. When I was down inside of the plant standing right under the coal pulverizers I got a sense of the massive scale at which we are burning this planet up. This place was huge and it is just one of the thousands of coal burning plants in the world. I asked my hosts where the coal was coming from, since Java Island is formed by volcanoes I wondered where the coal was coming from. They said, "Borneo". If you do some research on coal mining in Borneo you'll read a tale of destruction and pollution. I grew up living in the Upper Ohio Valley of West Virginia. My father and neighbors worked in the chemical plants, coal mines, and power plants. I played in the remains of an abandoned coal mine complex as a child. I think about what the land was like before industrialization when the Native Americans were the only humans on the land. I dream about how they could drink and eat fish from the Ohio River. You can't do that now unless you want to chance getting sick. I think we have passed the tipping point. There is no going back to nature. The environment is too polluted and the world is too populated. Only by even further industrialization will humanity survive. As for other species, they will not survive. The planet is already one big city and industrial complex. Any nature that still exists is because we've allowed it to remain, but we will bulldoze it in an instant if it is profitable. We all seem complicit in this so that we can feed ourselves and our families today. We will worry about tomorrow when tomorrow comes. While climate change is on the tip of everyone's lips I think there are more immediate issues. Fresh water scarcity is happening now. Water and air pollution is happening now. The forecast is that more and more people will live in cities, but people (especially children) are already getting sick from breathing the air. This is obviously not sustainable. I think our future is looking very much like the one portrayed in the movie Soylent Green (minus processing people for food). In the movie the world was hot, environmentally devastated, and the rich were protected while the rest lived in squalor. I would really like to hear what other Dao Bums think on this topic - The Anthropocene Age.

Knowledge is not a concept. The knowledge and vision I talk about is... a realization. It is the realization and waking up to: the seeing is just seen. Nothing extra... not "seer seeing seen" or "unicorn seeing seen". It can be likened to waking up from a dream - a dream, like the dream of "I am a unicorn" and likewise the dream of "I am a self". Knowledge, in my meaning (not theoretical knowledge) of it, means clear vision of reality without distortion or delusion. It is about waking up... not intellectual enlightenment. In fact 'enlightenment' does not exist in the dictionary of Buddha. He only always said 'awakening'. And that is the right word.