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A short practice years ago with 108 mala OM AH HUM BENZA GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUM I would say 108 x 2-3 the mind becomes still, once experiencing myself somewhat removed watching the space inside me spinning around? I recall asking here what that was, none seemed to know *shrugs* Also saying this mantra combined with candle gazing, after 2 nights a lucid dream Oct 02 2015 - 15 minutes fire gazing with Padmasambhava Mantra playing in background + afternoon sun-gazing. Dream:@ high-school rugby practice, later going to the locker room, I opened my locker and it was full of different pictures of foxes I turned around and a teacher/ presence appeared (not from the school) wearing a type of robe, brief discussion I recall 'you should meditate for 2 hours a day' and turned around and seemed to glide away, 2 others standing each side of the teacher... thinking/feeling maybe a fox deity, unsure. ~~~ My practice has to become more serious ha ... I start and get sidetracked I think it can lead to enlightenment, If you want enlightenment you will find it sooner or later. I think everything is desire. There are healthy and unhealthy desires, some earthly and some divine. Say I wanted to lucid dream, I read some things on it, practiced it, experienced it and started to develop it

I consider that to be sleep paralysis. How did you achieve it? Did it just come from meditation? I will definitely look into going from a lucid dream to an astral projection. Thanks.

Though there are methods that use sleep paralysis to start astral projection, Sleep paralysis if NOT required to do astral projection. Usually people start with lucid dreaming to become conscious while asleep. There are methods for transitioning from a lucid dream to astral projection. Again, no sleep paralysis required. Check out Robert Bruce (Astral Dynamics) for good instructions on how to astral project without sleep paralysis. If you really want to project while awake, check out Robert Monroe's mental projection. Note: they sell a hemi-sync device to aid the process, that is NOT required either.

Old Bones Out there walking round, looking out for food, a rootstock, a birdcall, a seed that you can crack plucking, digging, snaring, snagging, barely getting by, no food out there on dusty slopes of scree— carry some—look for some, go for a hungry dream. Deer bone, Dall sheep, bones hunger home. Out there somewhere a shrine for the old ones, the dust of the old bones, old songs and tales. What we ate—who ate what— how we all prevailed. --Gary Snyder

"To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life" The melancholy Dane... (Act III, Scene 1)

The "search/dream of a power that doesn't exist" is the attempt to alter truth, to change ultimate reality. We can change our experience, but never absolute truth. A person may think they want eternal hell to exist, so their enemies can go there. I've known of such people. Fortunately, their desire for others to spend eternity in agony won't make it so.

Consider the sage tho--he is one with the dao, in perfect harmony, never disrupting the flow. Uncaused causes clearly are disruptive. What sage would initiate them? How can one be in harmony then assert ones 'own will' above that harmony? I think 'free will' (in the hard sense) is a search/dream of a power we dont possess and that only seems (in appearances) reasonable because we cant see the whole picture of our being. If we saw that clearly we'd see how silly the notion is in the end. Also, I'm not saying metaphysical facts are necessarily the best basis for social policies either, lol. 8)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu9GG76Jlx8 one of my classmates who teaches taiji in beijing. "Michelle Gong, Followed her dream as a young girl growing up in a small rural village in China. She learned taiji as young teenager, traveling to the “temple of heaven” in Beijing to study under the taiji masters, and would later go on to win an international competition in 2009. Her dream would lead her to go on to Wudang mountain and learn the 36 form “Wudang Taiji”. Her last taiji teacher she would met in Beijing through a friend. She met Master Zhang Youngliang a noted but very private taiji master teaching in one of the many Beijing parks. She continues to be a noted student of Master Zhang, who has encouraged her to teach people and help them feel the benefits of a traditional internal Gongfu, covered with meditation, very good at physical and mental health.benefits of taiji practice. Michelle, Beijing Tour Guide, Taiji teacher can be contacted at http://www.tourguidebeijing.cn/ https://journeytoemptiness.com/2017/01/12/taiji-beijing/

This whole problem of wording would quickly be solved if only those linguists would get enlightened themselves. From the point of view of the absolute, there is nobody -- no separate self -- to object to words liked "gained", like "achieved." Our seeming misunderstanding of ultimate reality is but a dream.

Do we not die every day? Some would say every moment. We go into sleep. The body leaves the physical plane, transitioning into the world of dreams. Then goes back and forth between dream world and deep sleep. In deep sleep one does not seem to exist. Then we come back to our physical body after alternating between the dream world and deep sleep. They talk about a 4th state, where in one is aware of all the other 3 states. I have no clue what this is. Except, sometimes during the dream state, I feel I know that I am dreaming. When I die from one state and enter the other, I simply die and do not exist on that state. Then I am born into the next alternating state. Then I die on that state. This cycle seems to repeat in what is perceived as every single day to me. One day we leave this perceived body and its states and perhaps enter into another state, generally termed as THE death. This all seem like similar transitions to me. We can argue that during sleep the rest of the world sees the person sleeping, his heart is beating, he is breathing etc. These are all immaterial. To the person sleeping, during sleep, his body or the people observing do not exist. Period.

Morning Practice: 18-20x Bend the Bows (yess!) = 35 minutes. First 10 relatively quick and then each round progressively slower and slower. Followed by the 3 warmups from DVD2 = another 35 minutes. Basked in the enjoyable calm feeling with a few minutes of silent sitting Last night I had another Lucid dream. I decided to practice BTBs. First round with eyes open and without the breath sequence, because I thought that would wake me up, which it did when I tried that next :-) Congrats with your upgraded site Sifu Terry! Looks great.

I hope I can contribute the other informations that you can't get from translation texts. Shuowen Jiezi said 悟，覺也 It means Enlightenment is awareness I know in English Enlightenment and awareness is different But in ancient china We can see from Shuowen Jiezi Enlightenment is awareness So Chinese use 覺悟 enlightenment and awareness as a phrase. Nei Jin said heart open eyes bright 心開目明 is 悟 enlightenment So you can see 開悟 The word 開 means 心開 heart open In 莊子，we also can see 其寢不夢 When he sleep, he doesn't dream Sleeping without dreams is the biggest characteristic of opening heart. We can see 覺悟 enlightenment and awareness the phrase was used before Buddhism came to China. 荀子．成相：「不覺悟，不知苦。」 Xun Kuang https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xun_Kuang If we don't enlightenment and awareness, we don't know what is pain.

Update: We have 3 people participating and its going well. One early interesting hit of mutual coldness and on Wednesday people feeling they are in the same prescribed room. Nothing too incredible or fully lucid, but, it is just the beginning. And ofcourse it happened to other guys, because I have little talent for this. We're working twice a week, meeting up on live chat at a prescribe time, getting a theme and location then listening to the hypnotic audio mentioned above. The work is tricky, dreams are slippery and fade fast. Its only in the last 15 years the science has accepted that lucid dreaming is possible. Thanks in large part to Stephen LaBerge who set up one of the earliest science based dream labs in Stanford and got graduates students as test oneirauts. Yet indigenous cultures from Tibet to South America have millennia of experience in dream work. Every culture has stories. If their experiences are reproducible then perhaps what is considered legendary or 'fuzzy' psychic skills; connecting in dreams, is possible, and for some, with practice, luck, and grace a learnable skill. One that once accepted, can become wide spread, our generation's 4 minute mile. Rawn Clark, a hermetic teacher mentioned in his blog (no longer up) that he met up with other hermetic 'magicians' in the astral and would talk on the phone afterwards to compare notes. With the internet, there are groups doing this. We have our trio. I'd suggest other people interested do something similar, also in a small group. Plan a brief meetings 2 or 3 times a week to discuss theme and location (real or archetypal) and confer on the results later. Keep it short and simple; be patient, experiment, improve dream recall, and see what happens.

Many people who come to this website are searching for an awakening or trying hard to become enlightened. Stories abound about who is and isn't awake and how so-and-so went from being an ordinary person to being no self at all. We love to imagine that "enlightenment" or "awakening" is some magical event that will permanently erase all our problems and leave us forever after living in a state of bliss. We love to believe in the mythology of Perfect People. If we believe that someone else is enlightened, will we then believe that anything and everything that person says is true? Are we looking for an authority figure who can give us all the right answers…or a Magical Guru who will gaze into our eyes, zap us energetically, and leave us utterly transformed…or maybe some Divine Parent figure who will love us unconditionally? What are we really looking for? And what do we imagine will happen to us or change in us so that we can finally know with confidence and certainty that we have reached the goal, that we are now enlightened? Is enlightenment a destination or an acquisition? Is it a special state of consciousness? Is it some secret knowledge about how the universe works? What is it? It's very helpful to remember that “enlightenment” and “awakening” are both words. They are sounds, vibrations, symbols that get used in many different ways. Some say enlightenment is the absence of suffering, some say it is the absence of non-functional thinking, some say it is the end of identification with the thinking mind, some say it is the death of the ego or the dissolution of the separate self, some say it is the absence of any sense of agency or the falling away of the belief that we are the author of the thoughts and actions that arise. Some say it is the realization of Oneness, others describe it as the merging of difference and unity. Some compare enlightenment to lucid dreaming in the waking state and say that it is the abiding realization that all of consciousness is a dream-like appearance, including the entire movie of waking life and the whole spiritual search and the one who is searching. Some say enlightenment or awakening is an energetic shift, some call it a felt-sense, others say it is about seeing clearly, some describe it as an understanding or an apperception, some say it is the embodiment or actualization of the truth, others insist it is always already the case and is never not here. Some imagine enlightenment to be a state of perpetual bliss, while others say it includes and transcends every state. Some insist that awakening manifests only as “positive” or saintly behavior, while others insist you can be enlightened and still be an alcoholic, a womanizer, an embezzler, someone prone to angry outbursts, or even a child molester. Some say enlightenment happens suddenly and irrevocably at a particular time on a particular day—that it is a permanent, decisive, final shift from which there is no going back. Others describe it as a gradual unfolding, like a photograph slowly appearing in the developing tray, or like getting gradually wet while walking in a mist, or like a puddle slowly evaporating or an ice cube gradually melting until nothing is left. Some say that enlightenment comes and goes, others insist that it only happens Now, some say that nothing ever happens, some say that anything that comes will go, and that enlightenment is simply the recognition of the impersonal wholeness in which the bodymind and the world and all such happenings appear, and some insist that enlightenment is the realization that there is no one to get enlightened and no such thing as enlightenment. Some distinguish between “enlightenment,” “awakening,” “liberation,” “kensho,” “satori,” “mukti,” and host of other terms, while others use all these words more or less synonymously and interchangeably. Who has it right? Who is really enlightened and how do we know? Are there “enlightened people” whose every moment is entirely free from suffering, or from delusion, or from the sense of separation and encapsulation, or from the sense of agency and authorship, or from all egoic thoughts and behaviors? Are there “unenlightened people” whose every moment is totally consumed by these delusions and sufferings? Or is this very idea of “enlightened people” and “unenlightened people” (or of solid, discrete, persisting “people” of any kind) perhaps an example of unenlightened (or deluded) thinking? Who (or what) is it, exactly, that would be enlightened or unenlightened? We talk glibly about enlightenment without really knowing what we're even talking about. We seek it without ever stopping to really examine closely what it is we think we're seeking. Could the sense that something is lacking here and now, and the notion that there is somebody who needs to be transformed, be the very illusions that awakening wakes up from? I would not say that I am enlightened, nor would I say that I am not enlightened. I don't find any solid, persisting, independent entity here to be one way or the other. Here / Now is ever-changing, ever-present, and all-inclusive. Sometimes there are clear skies and sometimes it is cloudy and overcast. Sometimes there is the movie of waking life and sometimes there is the nothingness of deep sleep. There is no owner of these various experiences – none of them are personal – all of them come and go. Even the thought-sense-idea of being a separate individual comes and goes. Boundless unicity includes both enlightenment and delusion. Enlightenment sees unicity even in diversity; delusion imagines separation. Enlightenment is the unconditional love and awareness that welcomes delusion; delusion fights delusion and is always seeking enlightenment somewhere else. Delusion imagines that enlightenment is “out there” somewhere in the future; enlightenment recognizes that enlightenment is only here and now. Enlightenment includes both the relative and the absolute—the world of apparent multiplicity and the seamless unicity that includes it all, the symbolic map-world drawn by thought and the living reality of sensing and awaring that never holds still, the undeniable sense of being a particular person and the equally undeniable sense (once it has been noticed) of being boundless awareness. Truth isn’t one-sided. Nothing is left out. Enlightenment recognizes that polarities arise together as inseparable wholes, whereas delusion imagines that one half can and should triumph over the other half. Delusion fixates dualistically on one side of these conceptual polarities and tries to ignore, eliminate or deny the other side. Enlightenment doesn't fixate anywhere or get stuck in any view. (Dogmatic nondualism, stuck in the absolute, is a form of delusion). Thinking in terms of “permanently enlightened people” just might be the biggest and most widespread delusion. Enlightenment might be described as the falling away of this entire misconception, leaving only what is always already Here / Now. And this is not a personal achievement, for it is the recognition that no such owner or author of experience actually exists. The whole subject of enlightenment is very tricky because it signifies both a shift and no shift at all (the gateless gate). When enlightenment arrives, it is realized that it was never not here. When we think that we are not enlightened, we usually imagine that enlightenment is something big and flashy—a huge experience or a permanent state of consciousness. Clearly, many shifts in perception and many different states of consciousness are possible. The sun comes out on a cloudy day, you drink a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, you make love with someone, you stand before the ocean, you sit in silence for seven days, your child dies in a car crash, you go through menopause – endless shifts and endlessly different states and experiences. Is there something that is equally present in every different experience, like the ocean in every wave? Some might say that enlightenment is the recognition of the timeless eternity Here / Now, the stateless state, the placeless place, the boundless and seamless Totality that belongs to no one—the realization that all these shifts and ever-changing experiences are the movement of One living reality, that they have no owner, that they are all equally empty of substance, solidity, permanence, inherent reality or enduring form. And importantly, this realization isn't "something" that "somebody" attains at a certain moment in time and then "has" forever after. It is the falling away NOW (not yesterday or someday or forever after) of that very illusion of "something" and "somebody" and "forever after." Any discussion of what happens "after enlightenment" is as misconceived as talking about what happens "after Now." Here / Now (this boundlessness) is equally present in the expanded and impersonal experience of spacious openness and in the contracted experience of apparently being a separate person. There is no way to avoid boundless unicity, for it is all there is, and it is always 100% present Here / Now. It is what Here / Now is. Even the denial of it is nothing other than this same unbound emptiness (Here / Now) showing up as denial. But it often seems that there is "me" trapped in delusion, in need of liberation, and it is this "divine hypnosis" (as one teacher aptly calls it) that prompts the search for enlightenment. Enlightenment is simply the recognition that the problem and the one who seems to have it are both imaginary. And even to name this recognition or call it something ("enlightenment") immediately reifies it, and is thus inherently misleading. It suggests that enlightenment is something that can be pinned down: a permanent state of consciousness, a finish-line that somebody crosses, a personal attainment--and yet, what the word truly points to is nothing of the sort. All experiences, including any experience of awakening or enlightenment, are within the dream-like appearance that I often call the movie of waking life. Within the context of this movie, relatively speaking, we can certainly say that Ramana Maharshi was an enlightened sage and that Adolph Hitler was a deluded madman. But enlightenment sees Ramana and Hitler as two notional abstractions, two sides of a single coin, different in appearance but inseparable and completely interdependent, each empty of any inherent or objective reality. Enlightenment is not about “me” getting from one side of the imaginary coin to the other side and then staying there forever. That is delusion. Enlightenment is not some kind of personal perfection, but rather, enlightenment is the absence of the one who cares about being enlightened. Enlightenment can appear gradual or sudden only in the story, where it seems (in retrospect) that there was either a shift that unfolded slowly over time or else a sudden and decisive event with a totally different before and after. But neither of these conceptual abstractions after-the-fact really captures this to which words such as “enlightenment” or “awakening” are pointing. There is no “someone” who is evaporating or disappearing or getting clearer, no "someone" who is enlightened or not enlightened – this “someone” is always only a mirage – an optical illusion produced by thoughts, sensations, memory and imagination. No separate, persisting "someone" ever really forms to be enlightened or unenlightened or to evaporate or transform. And in that realization, the shifting experiences in the movie of waking life no longer seem personally owned, and they no longer seem to mean something "about me." The search for enlightenment falls away. There is simply life as it is, the ever-changing, ever-present living reality of Here / Now. When we're no longer seeking something else, the aliveness and depth of the present moment becomes more vivid and more obvious: the sounds of rain and traffic, the rise and fall of breathing, the smell of coffee, the gratuitous beauty of a flower, the horror and sorrow of a bombing attack, the thoughts and stories that appear and disappear, the awareness beholding it all. We realize that the thought-sense-story of separation and encapsulation is only another momentary face of emptiness. No one is actually trapped in delusion, and delusion has no real substance or inherent reality. When the mirage of being a separate somebody encapsulated in a bodymind seems real, we long for a way out. But the one who seems to be trapped is always only a mirage. The manifestation will always include both light and dark, expansion and contraction – ever-changing weather. Polarities go together. In resisting and struggling to escape from suffering and delusion, we confirm the apparent reality of both the imaginary problem and the one who seems to have this problem. The popular notion that there are “permanently enlightened people” who are totally beyond all suffering and delusion only fuels the imaginary treadmill of dissatisfaction and seeking. This ever-present, ever-changing, boundlessness is not something that “I” can possess or experience or lack. Boundlessness is the ever-present openness that includes contraction, the wholeness that includes division, the oneness that includes multiplicity, the absolute that includes the relative, the seamless totality that includes the sense of being a separate person, the enlightenment that includes delusion. Without the mud, there is no lotus. There's a well-known old Zen story about the pathless path to enlightenment, otherwise known as the pathless path from Here to Here. The story says that before I took up Zen, there were mountains and valleys. And then after I began the practice of Zen, there were no mountains and no valleys. And then with enlightenment, there are mountains and valleys. So is the first stage identical to the last? You can't say yes, and you can't say no. The first “stage” is ordinary relative consciousness – the world as we think it is, a collection of separate things, including “me” who is supposedly encapsulated “in here” in this separate bodymind, looking out an external world that is “out there.” The second “stage” of no mountains and valleys is the initial awakening – the discovery that there is no actual boundary between “in here” and “out there,” that everything is one inseparable and seamless whole, that there is no “me.” This is the realization of what is the same (or equally present) in every different experience. It is the discovery of the Absolute, the ever-present, ever-changing, formlessness or emptiness or no-thing-ness or interdependent origination of everything. But this is still not enlightenment, although it is often mistaken for enlightenment, and many people get "stuck in the absolute" for awhile along the way. But in clinging to the absolute, there is still a subtle dualism. With true enlightenment, there are mountains and valleys again. Good and evil are aspects of one inseparable whole and we can discern a difference between them. There is only the timeless, ever-present Now and there is history, evolution, and planning for the future. I am boundless awareness and I am Joan. Both sides of the coin are true. Zen masters have called this "leaping clear of the many and the One" or “the merging of difference and unity.” It is clearly seen that mountains and valleys are “not one, not two.” There is no need to grasp life with a concept, and in fact, it is realized that life is ungraspable. We can use concepts, but we don't mistake them for the reality they describe. There is no longer a need to push away the experience of being Joan or to make sure that “I” am continually identified as “impersonal awareness” and not as the character in the story. There is no separate “I” to be identified as either one, for the True “I” is everything and no-thing. There is no longer an effort to attain or maintain any particular experiential state of consciousness, and the weather is no longer given meaning or taken personally. These "stages" are only pointers, of course, to a "journey" that can't really be divided up, and that doesn't actually occur in time. These "stages" don't necessarily happen in a linear way, and usually, there is a circling or spiraling around between them. So take the story lightly. Many teachers are in love with the idea that they are enlightened, and they love to tell the story of their "enlightenment event" again and again. We hear about their walk across the park or the magical moment in their kitchen or at a bus stop when their self dropped away forever. Enlightenment is portrayed as a personal achievement, a permanent state. But any such experience is only a moment in a dream. Yes, in the dream-like movie of waking life, some characters do report sudden and dramatic transformations, and yes, some characters are undeniably clearer and freer of delusion than most, and in a conventional sense, it is functionally useful to recognize and discern such differences. If we're looking for a teacher, not everyone is equally qualified. But at a deeper level, if we look more closely, we will find that there is no one to be permanently enlightened or permanently deluded. There is no one who is a caterpillar in one moment and then a butterfly in the next. There is no caterpillar and no butterfly. There is only unbroken unicity from which no-thing stands apart. A true teacher will not be endlessly tooting their own horn and encouraging you to idolize or idealize them, but rather, they will be deflecting all your attempts to make them special and put them up on pedestals. A true teacher is not afraid to acknowledge their humanness, their fallibility, and their imperfections. A true teacher is always still a student, open to new discoveries. A true teacher pulls every rug you try to stand on out from under you -- they don't keep handing you more and more rugs. Enlightenment has no beginning and no ending. It is not a state you enter or leave. There is no finish line in waking up. It is always Now. And there is no end to this unfolding discovery and Self-realization. Even after the thought-sense of separation and individual agency has been seen through, it can (and probably will) reappear. Even after the rope is clearly seen to be a rope and not a snake, it can—in another moment—be mistaken again for a snake, and when that happens, the body responds automatically with fear, contraction and recoil. The snake is never real, but it can momentarily seem real. Does there come a time when this mistake has been so fully exposed that it can never again occur in any way, ever? For whom does this question and this concern arise? Is there someone who makes this mistake and who longs to stop being a fool? Isn’t it only from the perspective of the mirage-like "me" that it seems to matter whether or not "I" mistake a rope for a snake? We don't know what the next moment may bring. In any given moment, the mirage of separation may occur. But what can perhaps fall away is the need for this never to happen again. If boundlessness is momentarily forgotten and overlaid with a sense of “me” as a separate somebody, who cares? Who is not enlightened? Find this one! There are certainly many characters in the movie of waking life who experience or manifest more or less stormy weather – more or less anger, more or less depression or anxiety, more or less compulsive or addictive behavior, more or less upset. Such differences may have little to do with enlightenment and everything to do with genetics, neurochemistry, brain function, hormone levels, past trauma, sleep apnea and a host of yet undiscovered variables that go into the infinite conditioning of nature and nurture. Some bodyminds have stormier weather just as some cities have stormier weather. It's not personal. When I look for where this person called “Joan Tollifson” begins and ends, I find no beginning and no ending. When I try to grasp or pin down this “person,” I find only continuous change. So what exactly is this supposed entity who would be permanently enlightened or unenlightened? Sometimes teachers speak as boundless unicity, as the One Self, as the impersonal presence to which we all refer when we say "I Am," and sometimes teachers speak as apparent individuals. When Ramana was dying, he told his followers, "I am always here, where could I go?" He wasn't speaking as the apparent individual, who was obviously dying, but rather as the One Self (Here/Now) that is ever-present. Sometimes when a teacher says "I," they refer to this One Self. Other times when a teacher says "I," they refer to the person. "I" as boundless unicity have no problem with anything, but "I" as Joan have opinions and preferences about all kinds of things. Needless to say, using the word "I" in these different ways can easily create confusion and misunderstanding. A teacher, speaking as unicity, may say something like, “Enlightenment is always present” or “enlightenment is permanent,” pointing to boundlessness, the ever-present Here / Now that never comes or goes. But such statements are easily misunderstood to mean that the teacher as a person is always in some special expanded state of consciousness, or that the person is completely and permanently beyond delusion. In the dream-like movie of waking life, Joan is no longer seeking enlightenment, but there seems to be a natural interest here in clarifying confusion, seeing through delusion, and being awake. There is no longer the sense that “being aware” or “being in the Now” is some task that "I" must do. It's very clear that all experiences and states of consciousness, by their very nature, come and go. A sense of separation can still arise—feeling angry or defensive, worried or hurt. That kind of self-contraction can certainly still arise. It happens out of infinite causes and conditions. It isn't personal even when it sometimes feels like it is. A natural interest in seeing through this self-contraction also seems to arise here, and that inquiry and exploration can take various forms. All of that also happens out of infinite causes and conditions. No one is doing any of it. There is no owner, no author, no separate and persisting somebody to whom all of this is happening or not happening—not because "enlightened people" have transcended or eliminated all of that, but because all of that never existed in the first place! The separate self is never anything but a mirage. Life is one whole undivided movement. Being enlightened is not about being perfect and special and having all the answers. It is about recognizing the perfection in imperfection and abiding in the open not-knowing that is our true nature. The only reality is Here/Now, the infinite and eternal present moment. There is no end to this boundlessness, and no end to this unfolding Self-realization or awakening. Rather than trying to figure out if you are enlightened or if someone else is enlightened, rather than idealizing people or putting them up on pedestals and turning them into infallible authorities, rather than comparing yourself to others or trying to duplicate anyone else's supposed enlightenment experience, I would suggest investigating what it is you are looking for, and whether it is actually absent here and now, and exactly who or what would find it, possess it or lack it. You may find that nothing is missing, nothing is broken, nothing is needed. There is simply this, just as it is. And if you find yourself feeling a sense of discomfort, lack or unease, perhaps in that moment, you might ask yourself, is this sense of discomfort, lack or unease really a problem? Is anything really broken? And if you are about to go off in search of enlightenment or love or happiness or freedom, perhaps in that moment, the question will arise, what exactly am I seeking? And where and when do I expect to find it? From Joan Tollifson's Outpourings/The Simplicity of What Is If you appreciated this article, please drop Joan a line to let her know. Cheers.

"When your heart is in your dream no request is too extreme." ---Jiminy Cricket

I still see the polarization. "sigh" There is one party the Plutocrat party with two right wings the Republican and the Democratic wings. Trump does not belong in a straight jacket, he is not crazy. I am going to sit back and see what he does. My prediction is the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The perfect plutocrat dream.

I have been saying since the 1980's this country needs a business man as a president, to run this country like a business. A business that has the sake of it own populaces best interest at heart. I never thought the personality would be Donald Trump! Never! To me he is still in the catagory of an anomaly like the great Mike Tyson was to the boxing world. Well President Trump,does not need anything financially in this world having achieved it all. If that scoundrel Obama were 1/256th as good as you, he would not accept any payment from the American people after the disaster he is leaving behind. He does not deserve any paycheck after leaving office, protection yes, an income no! I respect the Office of the President of the United States of America not the outgoing person who has made a mockery of it at every turn and done everything in his power to set race relationships back to Pre-Martin Luther King Junior days as a vindictive racist. This outgoing President Obama has wrecked the dream of the great Martin Luther King Junior. I was not alive in a time before the Great Martin Luther King Junior, I came up in a time of White Shame where we greatly regretted the evils of the past, even though I had never known those days nor had the fellow Black Children, I grew up with, went to school with. Believe it or not I was raised singing slave songs in grade school, like , jump down turn around pick a bail of cotton, there was no choice sing it or fail. My first black predjuice teacher was in second grade her name was Mrs. Benjamin she was evil and hated white children. My first love was my third grade teacher a black woman named Mrs. Harris. From her I learned not all black women hated what they thought were White Children. I am Native American, Hindu, German, English, Irish, Russian by lineage and American by birth this time. Whose shall I hate? I chose to love Mrs. Harris daughter Denise for her spirit in her eyes. Oh she was pissed at me but she was the first girl I ever got a kiss from. Mrs. Harris said to me afterwards "young man what are your intentions towards my daughter?'' Scared the hell out of me, thought I would have to get married after kissing her to avoid upsetting Mrs Harris who I cherished so much for her loving heart and great compassion she showed an undeserving me. I would have married Denise on the spot you know. I replied Mrs. Harris I was raised to never hit a girl no matter what! So after saying mean things, Denise got mad and tried to slap me, we wound up wrestling but I did not want to hurt her, I wanted to kiss her because she was so beautiful to me, so I did. That was the end of it. She did not like my kiss and ran away. Mrs. Harris with a chuckle said young man the ones who act like they like you the least are often the ones who like you the most, just be respectful from here on out okay? You know what that means right? I replied yes mam. To me that meant do not upset the tearchers daughter. Later I learned my Family which is a historical Civil War Family actually divided over the issue of slavery my Forefathers choosing freedom for all men regardless of cast creed or religious belief. This Obama occupying the Whitehouse these past 8 years has been a hate monger and is on par with the KKK only in reverse. The horrible race riots and police killings are part of his true legacy. Trump is not a likable person, I personally detest him, but atleast we are not paying him, he unlike the outgoing elected official refuses a paycheck, says allot! Yes he will likely gain that which the wealthy cherish more than wealth, which is power, but he should be very careful. Some of the people may be fooled all of the time but very seldom are all of the people fooled all of the time. I want America to do well, not at the expense of other Nations but in conjunction with. There is no good reason for Detroit and Chicago in this day and age, we do have the ability to extinguish the madness, the want and the suffering. I am an American, I love my Country, it has given me a place to incarnate and live without undo pains and do my chosen spiritual practices. This is precious, thus the love for America. I do not like nor love anyone, nor anything that impunes my religious freedom nor that which my forefathers fought so hard to achieve. Truth, Justice & the American Way.

Well, for some specific students 100 days laying the foundation may symbolise 1000 days laying the foundation and even that might be not enough It makes sense. Ancient Yijing is about the Changes, but is it possible for relative people to understand it? In traditional daoism (= daoist alchemy) there are special practices to stop dreams. Dreams actually are fantasies, illusion, daoist patriarchs have written about it. They might be more pleasant or less pleasant but all of it is for ordinary person. Alchemy master doesn't have dreams. What daoist text have you taken this sequence from? It is correct. Here is a quote from dictionary everyone is probably aware of: "Dream 1. mental activity, usually in the form of an imagined series of events, occurring during certain phases of sleep 2. a sequence of imaginative thoughts indulged in while awake; daydream; fantasy ... 5. a vain hope 6. a person or thing that is as pleasant, or seemingly unreal, as a dream" What daoist text have you taken these statements from? Or is it your own thoughts? Practically, it is not possible. Obviously it contradicts self-cultivation. All you are talking about - "realeasing bonds of karma" and so on is a kind of mindwork and has no relation to Daoism. All living creatures have a simple karma - to die. If you can not escape from this - all these nice words about "releasing bonds of karma" remain just words... What you have noticed above clearly corresponds with the meaning of the Chinese term oftenly translated as "sudden enlightenement". See http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/43032-sudden-enlightenment-in-daoism/ Known by whom? Should this knowledge be somehow backed by evidences? Best Regards, A.A.Khokhlov

Dream Yoga and sleep yoga leads to enlightenment in bardo. You have no basics in buddhist so please either learn more with our talks and discussion or be less authoritative so it will be make discussion more wholesome. Yeah, it may sound like I mean all Bon teachings but what I mean this kind of internet retreats which are limited to basic methods.

I practiced a lot of methods from Bon yungdrung lineage, from basic to more advanced practices like rushen etc. the dream yoga and sleep yoga are very good as you can practice 24/7. Of course radical compassion teachings and stuff like this as basic of buddhist teaching are superb as always. It's not personal opinion of course - it's based as always on experience. The best if you can learn Yang-Ti practice and do it really, if you do then it's life changing for sure.

Besides Dream/Sleep yoga teachings bon methods are generally not worth much practice.

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche has started a regular schedule of brief, free internet teachings. To date they have been extracts and discussion from books he has published. They are presented on most weekdays utilizing Facebook Live through his Facebook page. Here is the schedule for the upcoming week: Healing with Form, Energy, and Light Part I - Monday Jan 9 Part II - Tuesday Jan 10 Part III - Wednesday Jan 11 All broadcasts start at 12pm EST and can be viewed after the fact through his page. Previous broadcasts remain available and include Dream/Sleep Yoga and Soul Retrieval topics.

Well, with a little good fortune there won't even be a wall. See? I can dream too.

100 days Foundation: have chi If One who know how to deal with Shen and chi We can call him have the foundation 3 years lactation: stillness, chi go inside the 玄關 If one who know how to deal with 玄關竅 We can call him now how to lactation 9 years facing the wall: starting opening the emptiness When one start the process of opening the emptiness He won't have dream. His middle Mai is open. He start the evolution process of golden Dan We can say his is in the process of 9 years facing the wall There is still one more 10 months conceive The first stage of 玄關 The first stage of light When one can see the first stage of light Look like tai jii We can say he is in 10 months conceive

I don't have dreams since I opened the emptiness many years ago. If I receive too much bad chi, I will have a lot of noise in my sleep, but still no dream. Before I opened the emptiness, I had a lot of dreams. These dreams were getting more clear when I was opening the emptiness. They were very strange, very similar to illusion, just like I was there, very real. These dreams were not long, only a short moment and disappeared very soon.