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Hi all, I am at my wits end. I won't end my life, but I feel like it sometimes. I successfully cleared the concrete dust from my windows as per my previous sleeping issue- {http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/35061-nourishing-living-environment/}, and was sleeping better for a short period. But the only thing i've done since then is reintroduce some heavy curtains since its winter here atm and they are needed, as well as a couple natural mats to cover the pine flooring. I clean everything regularly - curtains, mats, flloor, sheets, etc. So the good news is I don't have those horrible sleeps like before, with heart racing and I also dream! But I still get wet dreams which I KNOW are based on this irritated feeling I get in my eyes and nose. I mean when I spend more than an hour outside my room I get a ton of mucus out. And I feel I can breathe again! I"m just sick of it. Why can't I just get a good sleep? Some great native american healer once told me that the person in my last life made great sacrifice to give me a great life. So then why is this occuring? My whole face and nose feels irritated and my nose is red from blowing. And its a catch-22, i can't move until i'm healthy. And nothing else in my life is majorly different to cause this. please help. I mean is there anyone psychic who can tell me exactly what it is the causing this issue and I will pay you? I realize it can also be mental thing but thats the thing: I try to be positive EXACTLY AS BEFORE when I get a good sleep. I'm sorry for having a whinge, This issue has been occuring for nearly 5 years now and that's 5 years of my life wasted and I won't stand for it anymore, even if it means I become homeless eventually lol. Final thing. I have always had weak immunity since a child since my mum's jing was weak from history of drugs and also I didn't eat meat til teenage years and also sleeping with a tonne of dust under my bed for about a year once since my mum was overworked and forgot to vaccuum. So I am sensitive to dust {maybe over-sensitive, but how do I change??}, and always like fresh air as much as possible though obviously that isn't possible here in winter. Best regards G

sternum-rx350 wanting to draw comparison to this voice/page number/ I just can't believe that this was a concern from her--- my artistic needs healing my body/purification 80/10/10 pipe dream natures delicacy two bees sleeping on coneflower/echinacea sleeping bees-darling writings from field mouse the heart seeking love outside itself blades of truth- most favorite recall but oh so harsh why not just stop there ivans poem warbler-best in teahouse book gitanjali my artistic drive: stop treating my business like a passion and make profit donating more $ ayp plus after cleaning the stalls how do I thank thee? shut my trap sound bite- from now on I will call you england

The trouble is that the UK has, since the 1980's been busy selling off all its public assets and also many of its valuable private assets to the likes of Saudi oil sheiks and Russian oligarchs - it has allowed its manufacturing base to decline and relies on financial services to drive the economy. Banking and Finance are globalist. The idea that somehow the UK can persist as a private little sceptre'd isle is just a dream.

Dude, that's crass. And just a side effect of the actual point. The point is health, longevity, and spiritual cultivation, so you can stay awake at transition, and have enough energy to not die the second death, and dissolve into the all, your incarnation being nothing more than a dream. But then again, aren't they all? Cheers!

This is not recognizing ripga, it's recognizing 6th consciousness - that's why Jax is only intellectual dzogchen guy which is subject to suffering, life and death. Selling people dream. Knowing have nothing to do with rigpa. The moment you see rigpa you are in dharmakaya, free of suffering, full of bliss and free from death (immortal). It's beyond any explanations. Rigpa is not empty knowing, it's 6th consciousness what he is explaining. To recognize ripga you need first empty all the skandhas, purify the mind and all kind of stuff. To recognize rigpa you need to be ripe enough thru many lifetimes. There is no shortcuts. First you need realize and experience basics like anatta, anicca, dukkha. Then when you realize that you go deeper and deeper till you touch the core. and liberation is the freedom from kilesas, realizing anything beyond that will lead to rebirth and grasping.

Section 8 - The ceremonies and the ceremonial dynamics LOL. First of all, it's not lost on me that this falls under Section 8. I know it sounds that way anyway. but I'm going to lay them out here. First, let me say that I started doing these ceremonies several years ago after reading Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health. I hadn't been doing ceremony prior to that, only running of energy through my hands for minor aches and pains, things like that. Sometimes that works out well, sometimes it doesn't - depending, I think, on the mindset of both the person doing the energy run and the person receiving. If there is too much going on mentally, or too much tension in the body, i think there are blockages. But after reading Ms. Baker Eddy's incredibly metaphysical healing book, I went over to ceremony, minus the reliance on Jesus. Actually, there wasn't much Christianity to sidestep in the book anyway, very little mention. It was mainly metaphysical dynamics, much in the manner of Helena Blavatsky, Manley Hall, or other great metaphysicians. The first couple times I tried produced no results. It hadn't occurred to me yet to do the 'pretending aspect, the Mind of a child aspect' yet. My first exposure was with a little boy named JoJo who had very late stage bone cancer. I came into the scene very late indeed, probably even too late to do anything even if I knew what I was doing. I had read about him in the local paper and started sending money monthly to his family to help with medical expenses. His mom called to introduce herself one day and thank me for the money, and we became friends from that point on. We did talk about a healing ceremony, and she asked me if I would try one, although she was ultra Christian. She was desperate. I did try, using my staff and all the accoutrements, but it was unproductive. What I did miss during that first ceremony was the fact that the son was taking on his father's excruciating back pain, which I knew nothing about. It caused his father to keep working in a lumberyard, very heavy labor, and his complaints of pain would come home with him every night. I think JoJo felt bad because he felt that he was the cause of his father's pain, in that JoJo required so much medical treatment. I say this only in retrospect. I really don't think there was any time to change any dynamic at all. The second time was with a close friend of ours with cancer, named Mo. It ravaged his entire body. I knew enough by then to realize that the cancer dynamic that was 'eating him up' was his unwillingness to forgive his wife for a decision she made about how to raise their kids years back. He put his foot down at the time, said he was going to move out if she didn't do it his way (I can't remember what the family dynamic was that they were at odds about). At any rate, he did move out, they didn't get divorced but continued to live separately, and spoke to each other very seldom. He missed his children terribly, but he was too proud to renege on his original statement about moving out. That lasted for years, and it was during those years that the cancer appeared. Again, Joe and I tried several ceremonies and Mo always felt better when we laid hands on him, but he too died from the disease. We came into the game very late on that one as well. The following ceremonies are the ones that we have had success with, two are still up in the air. I have mentioned one or two of these on other threads in the past, so please excuse me if this is redundant because you read one of them somewhere else. But I'll reiterate in more detail here. Lorena's ceremony The first success we actually had with cancer was with a woman I knew from Alcoholics Anonymous, a very Catholic believer. Her name was Lorena, and she was 82 years old. Out of the blue, she developed breast cancer at that very late age, which seemed very odd to me. I decided to talk to her to see what was going on in her life, I didn't know her all that well, only from the periodic meeting I would see her at. The first thing that occurred to me was that breast cancer was most likely a motherhood issue, particularly for it to develop so suddenly in someone of that age. Motherhood, or something like motherhood, seeing as it developed in the breast. In talking to her, sure enough, her 56 year old son and his wife had recently moved in with her because he had lost his job. they had been living with her for several months, were not being terribly kind to her, and were eating her out of house and home. She was very worried about money and how she was going to support all of them, plus the fact that he had a foul temper and she was walking on eggs around him. It wasn't a good situation at all. We gave it some thought, and having recently read Mary Baker Eddy's book, we decided to try and reverse the dynamic. Lorena was amenable to a ceremony. I asked her to provide a picture of her son and his wife. I ran a picture of Jesus off the internet, as I knew that that's where her heart was. I found a pretty little wooden box and we decided to have Lorena bury the picture of her son and his wife, with Jesus' picture on top of them in the ground. Joe dug a hole toward the back of her property under a beautiful oak tree with a shovel, as the 82 year old Lorena wouldn't be able to do that. This was the first time we drew the circle with our staffs and designated a sacred area. We had Lorena step into 'her' sacred area, and asked her to invite us in, after we circled her and reversed direction.. We had brought a CD player and were playing some Native American music, as a transport. Joe did much of the ceremony, as it just sort of channeled out of him; something about having her face to the north, to the south, to the east, to the west; he's an Apache man and I don't know if this was something already inside him or not, but it was beautiful. We all took a drag from a peace pipe we had brought, and we had Lorena hold the box, gaze at the picture of her son and his wife, and ask Jesus to take care of them. She told Jesus that she was no longer capable of taking care of them. Tears came to her eyes as she placed the box in the ground and covered it with dirt. When she straightened back up, she sort of hollered in surprise, said she felt this strange jagged energy running up her legs. This was the first (and only) time I have actually had the confirmation of kundalini energy coming up out of the ground and attending a ceremony. But it certainly was a confirmation of the effectiveness of the reversal. After the jagged energy stopped going up her legs, we concluded the ceremony - can't remember how we did, but it was something simple. We had her sit down on a nearby bench, she was sort of exhausted after that. Joe, for some reason, decided to double check the appearance of the kundalini energy, and he circled one of her feet with the strap on the peace pipe. Sure enough, the kundalini energy started up her leg again. Double confirmation. She phoned us a few days after the ceremony, said she'd been to the oncologist, and that the cancer had disappeared. As this was our first success with anything of this nature, we were dumbfounded. Our first instinct was to write it off as coincidence, but the appearance of the kundalini energy kept niggling at my brain and I knew that there was something more at work here. The Mind of the Child aspect of this was in re-enacting the burying of the pictures in the box, along with the picture of Jesus, and have a childlike faith (in her mind) that Jesus was going to take care of them, and that they would be okay without her help. This seemed to be all it took in this particular case - plus, we were lucky to have caught the cancer in an early stage. Joshua's ceremony This one defies belief even more than the above one. Joshua is a 15 year old boy that we'd never met. I was taking a belly dance class with his aunt, Chrissy, who turned into a good friend of mine. She told me about the horrible thing that had happened to her nephew. Joshua had a dirt bike and was just learning to ride it. He also had a father that was a very overbearing and macho sort of man. Joshua's dad insisted that Joshua enter a motocross race in West Virginia, although Joshua didn't feel that he was ready for anything like that. He pleaded with his dad not to make him enter, but his dad made him enter the race. During the race, Joshua crashed and burned on his bike. He landed on his head, and from that point on he was quadriplegic, unable to move anything below the neck. At the time I heard about this in September, Joshua had been languishing in a full care facility since the accident in May, nearly 5 months. He was even unable to move his bowels, and his mother would have to digitally stimulate his rectum to get the peristalsis to move the matter down. It was bad. I told Chrissy about the one ceremony that Joe and I had done for Lorena, and asked her if she wanted to try one for Joshua. She immediately said yes, although she never told anyone else, even Joshua or his parents, that we did this ceremony. They are uber-Christian and would consider something like this devilish, most likely. I told her to come over to our house on a particular day, and bring a picture of Joshua. There are two components to this. One is the physical, where we had to physically bring the electrical energy or qi down his spine and into the limbs. The other component was the dynamic of resentment that Joshua must certainly have felt for his father after his dad making him enter this race and have this happen as a result. There was also the dynamic to take into consideration how very guilty his dad must have felt about all this too. Certainly that must figure into all of it as well. We did this one in the gazebo out back, a perfect setting for ceremonies. When Chrissy came over and brought the picture, I taped the picture to the gazebo so we could look at it during the ceremony. I brought out a floor lamp from inside the house and plugged it in, which symbolized Joshua's body. The lamp had a large bulb at the top, which had its own switch, and symbolized his working brain. That light would be on throughout the duration of the ceremony. The lower aspect of the light, the arms, symbolized Joshua's arms and legs, and they would remain off until such time that Chrissy switched them on. We used Chrissy as the healer here, because I figured that she is the one with love in her heart for Joshua, and that would only magnify any healing that was going to take place, if any. First, before the ceremony, I sat down with Chrissy in the gazebo and explained how this would work; that Time and Space were an illusion and that in reality Joshua was right there with us, although miles away. That we would go back in time and turn on the electricity to his limbs. That she was to stare at the picture of Joshua and when she felt the love welling in her heart for him, to turn the lower switch on. In addition to the lamp, I had placed some rice (which conducts electricity because of the silicon) in small cotton wads, one for Chrissy, Joe, and I - and after she turned on the lower lamp, we would physically rub the electricity down from the top of the lamp to the bottom, the feet. The mind of a Child. Pretending. We started the ceremony as usual, with the music and circling the gazebo, pounding our staffs on the ground and jingling the bells. I had given Chrissy a medicine bag as well, my dad's dog tags. We reversed direction, talking to 'spirit' and asking for the reversal of the dynamic. We had Chrissy step into the sacred circle, and she invited us in. As we had planned, she stared at Joshua's picture, and when she really felt the love in her heart, she turned on the lower part of the lamp. We followed up with the rice drawing the electrical energy down. I can't remember how we closed the ceremony, but we did close it in some symbolic fashion. About 5 days later I got a call from Chrissy who told me that Joshua had started to move his arms, and in fact was just beginning to be able to feed himself. I gasped at the news, one more time thinking that certainly this had to be coincidence. No way was this actually working. I began to get concerned after a few more weeks, when there was no energy getting down into Joshua's legs. I thought that maybe we needed to do a further ceremony. I had decided on one particular day to call Chrissy the next day and have her come over again for another one. This next part is what convinces me that there really is something to this. That night, before calling Chrissy the next day, I had a dream involving Lance Armstrong. I'm not a great dreamer, so to have a dream that I can recall and with this much detail is unusual. I dreamed that Lance was standing at one end of a deep swimming pool with a doctor's bag on the floor next to his feet. At the other end of the swimming pool was a young girl in a wheelchair, on a diving board. Her mission was to roll off the end of the diving board into the pool, (in her chair) and swim across the length of the pool to Lance. (I was seated off to the side of the pool in a chair, I recall, watching this scenario). She did just that - she rolled off the end of the board and was able to swim about halfway across, just using her arms. But as she approached Lance, the chair dragged her under the water. She went down to the bottom. I recall being horrified in my dream, and I was amazed that Lance didn't do anything to help her. He just stood there for a moment, then picked up his doctor's bag and walked out of the pool area. I remember saying something to the person next to me, like 'What an A-hole!', but I immediately corrected myself in my dream and said to myself, 'No! Maybe that's just what he's supposed to do!' And sure enough, the little girl bobbed up to the top of the water finally, her wheelchair left on the bottom of the pool. When I woke up, the dream was vivid, and I didn't see the significance of Lance Armstrong for a few minutes until it hit me like a pile of bricks. He was a biker, albeit a different kind of bike. Joshua was a biker. Of course the dream pertained to Joshua, although I don't know why he came across as a little girl. I realized that what the dream was telling me, was to Do Nothing. Don't do the second ceremony. Let the rest of it work itself out. Which is exactly what happened. It turns out that the balance of the healing had to do with the dynamic between Joshua and his dad. When Joshua regained movement in his arms, his father started massaging his legs with oil every day - his legs, his feet, his back. He did this fervently for about a month, and then finally, the electricity made its way down to his legs and feet! It was the very dynamic that caused this problem in the first place that needed to complete the healing of Joshua. Joshua must certainly have let go of much of his resentment toward his father, and his father no doubt was able to alleviate much of the guilt he felt about how he had made Joshua enter the race. Joshua is now back to his old self, for about a year now. With one exception. He still has a little bit of a frozen grasp in his fingers. It's difficult for him to pick things up. What this tells me is that he is still grasping onto a little resentment toward his father for all this. How could he not, particularly at such a young age? The last time I saw Chrissy, about a month ago, I told her the significance of the grasp and the non-forgiveness aspect of it, that for full healing the best thing for Joshua to do would be to start praying for his dad. Not that this would do anything for his dad, but it would soften Joshua's heart toward his dad so his hands would unfreeze. Since Chrissy hasn't told anyone at all about the healing ceremony, due to their Christian beliefs, I don't know if she's said anything to Joshua about the prayer thing. I sort of doubt that she has. Maybe Joshua will have to figure this out on his own. If that first ceremony didn't convince me that there was something to 'bringing the metaphysical into the physical by pretending like a child', this one sure did. I have a few more to mention, probably in a couple days. We're going to Pittsburgh for a few days and I may not finish this up until I get back.

The dream like existence most likely came from the use of Nepalese temple balls which there appears to be evidence of use in Tibetan temples. Dream like happens real fast.

Divine is a word used by those still asleep when they chance upon anything they dont understand but resembles an unearthly/otherworldly manifestation. Its all just in the mind, like a dream... nothing is sacred, divine or profane in dreams, is there? How many times must we read the phrase 'dreamlike existence' before it finally registers? For example, light is light - there is no need to label it 'divine light' as if there is a type of light that is non-divine.

Some thoughts on personal identity: Its interesting to compare our dream state subjective identity with our waking state subjective identity. In our dreams at night we may have some task or goal we are trying accomplish. In the dream it feels and seems like our identity has some latitude of autonomy and free will to act. Yet we know that each thought, intention, sensation, perception and characteristic of identity, is programmed 100% by the subconscious. There is no pre-existing entity there at all. It's all creative fiction, including the characters and scenery. Let's say we see a church bell swing and then hear the dong sound in our dream. We now know the "bell" never made the sound we heard. No sound entered our ears. The mind just created the dong sound from no mechanical cause that generated the sound. All the thoughts, intentions and sense of identity are created in the same way because there is no self-entity there besides the one the mind generated. This completely fictional nature of this dream self is recognized upon awakening. The strong feeling-sense of "me-ness" as an autonomous person or entity was part of the subconscious projection. It was just subjective scenery like the church and swinging bell were objective scenery. No church, no bell, no "me" ever actually existed outside of the mind's projection. Sometimes we notice in the dream that we are "dreaming" and then we wake up. We sense our waking self suddenly appeared in the dream and realized "Oh, this is a dream!" and we then wake up. But instead consider the subconscious created a "me" self that "noticed it was dreaming" as its creative content. It's not that the "real" waking self appeared in the dream. But yet there seems to be a lingering sense of the continuity of this self when afterwards we reflect upon this dream in which the dream character realized it was dreaming. It's like my "real self" was the real one in the dream all along and somehow managed to notice its dreaming situation and woke up. What is not noticed is something really profound: the "waking real self" is also just another subconscious projection. All of its personality characteristics, sense of personal identity, thoughts and intentions are programmed into and as the "me" self-entity by the subconscious, and that there is no "real me" self there at all! The self-identity as a "me" is simply a subconscious projection created out of previous conditioning, memories and imagination. Especially confusing is the particular subconscious element or content that gives the convincing certainty of being a valid and "real" me. That "self-certainty" is just part of the subconscious content. Its a necessary ingredient to making the self illusion so enduring. The sense of "autonomy" is also a projected mental characteristic. So a "seeker" is not an autonomous identity or person that is choosing to seek, but is actually a projection of subconscious "seeking" characteristics. Likewise there is not a real "me" or self that experiences suffering, but rather the subconscious is projecting a "suffering me" character. The "me" and the suffering are one piece. This is like when in our night dream when we experience fear. It's not that there is a "me" that has a separate emotion of fear occur to it, but rather at that moment the subconscious is projecting a "fearful me" as one piece. The greatest and most important illusion is that there is an actual continuing "me" self that exists over time having various experiences occurring to "it". That "me" self is 100% subconscious fabrication with no real "me" self there at all. When we were born there was no "me" sense at all. It takes almost two years before the subconscious really gets the "me" fabrication up and running in consciousness. What's really interesting is that the subconscious can suddenly cease creating a "me" identity in consciousness. Then we have conscious awareness without a self-identity story being fabricated. This moment is described as "liberation". Its a funny kind of liberation because in this liberation no one, no self and no "me" was liberated. It just ceased to occur. Where did "I" go in such a case?"one might ask. I would suggest "To the same place a whirl pool goes when its ceases whirling... and that's not to say that the location and substance of the whirlpool; the ocean, ceased as well. In this case the "ocean" is the unestablished, unfabricated awake state of nirvana.

Section 6 - Triangulating the dynamics This is where it's really helpful for the clarity of your own inner work. There are a couple components to this. The first dynamic is to figure out what the body is trying to say to the person who needs the healing. One almost has to put ones' self into the other person's body and listen to it. We have to look at the disease carefully and figure out what it is shouting out. My brother, (who will be talked about more at the end of this) recently manifested melanoma skin cancer. I had to do a little internet research on what melanoma skin cancer was really all about. His was stage 3B, and that meant that the cancer cells had broken through his layer of skin and had made their way into his blood, in transit to his nodes and organs. It's at that point, once you really understand the disease, that the triangulation occurs. You start looking for play on words, for clues, looking at other things that he is manifesting currently in his life. It all comes together in puns and riddles sometimes. I was looking at different plays on words re: the cancer breaking through to his blood. Things like...'Breaking through something?' 'Something getting under his skin?' Looking at all those little puns. And then it came to me first thing in the morning when I woke up, it must have worked out in a dream I don't remember. 'Bad Blood'. This is the second dynamic of the triangulation. A strain in his character that is longstanding and a very deep part of him. This is what he tends to manifest in his relationship with others. Longstanding bad blood, labeling people as his 'enemies' and then never forgiving them for whatever he perceived that they did to him. Cancer is a disease that is a result of a longstanding dynamic, it doesn't develop overnight to my knowledge. I knew immediately that this was the connection. The cancer cells circulating within his vessels is definitely Bad Blood. So this is the dynamic that we (Joe and I) had to work with in ceremony. I will go into the actual ceremony later and how we attempted to reverse the imprint. Just a word about cancer, as part of the triangulation. I view a cancer as the body 'eating itself alive'. If we can find the thing in life that is a longstanding thing 'eating at them', then usually we've found the dynamic to tweak. I am sorry to say that I didn't tell my brother that we were performing this ceremony. Some would call this black magic. I call it love in this particular case, maybe I'm wrong. I know how he feels about my dabblings in this area - he feels that I am a clown, he has told me so. I no longer talk to him about these things. So those two dynamics hook up, and the trick then becomes to join the metaphysical to the physical, bring As Above, So Below into alignment. And this is where the Mind of a Child becomes important. That's when the pretend tea party happens. As I mentioned, I will describe the actual ceremony at the end of this series of posts. Section 7 - Why ceremony is important In my experience, it gives a beginning and an end to the intent for healing. it gives us a window in which to have the pretend tea party. It aligns and opens the mind of the person being healed, if they are there. If they are not there (as my brother was not there), the ceremony is used to bring Here and Now together. I do it with a picture of the person, so my brother was actually at the ceremony, only photographically. It gives us a Present into which to bring the Past and the Future. It gives the Kundalini energy a time and place to manifest, which I have seen done (although not in this particular ceremony). It gives a place to bring any deity you have affinity with to the occasion. If the person being healed is a Jesus person, or a Buddhist - do have a representation of their deity there, so the strength of their belief can be included in the ceremony - otherwise it will scare them. My brother has no belief at all in anything of this nature, so I had a statue of a boddhisatva I'm close to, Flower Glow from the Sutras, on the 'altar' (which is actually a cafe table in my gazebo out back) I like to have Native American music playing at the ceremonies. Music acts as a transport, brings a certain other-worldliness to the event. Sage the air around the ceremony first. Honor the space. I always draw a circle around the gazebo first with the tip of my ceremonial staff; the space within the space is holy, I ask Flower Glow (or Jesus, if he is represented there, depending on the person's beliefs) for permission to enter the space before I enter. This is the beginning of making an imprint on the person's mind who is being healed. I always sing a chant before entering the circle; I walk around the gazebo with my staff and rattle first in one direction; I am chanting as I do this. Then I change direction and walk around the gazebo the other way, as a representation of the fact that I am reversing a dynamic. Bringing the metaphysical into the physical. The mind of a child. The pretend tea party. I think that the content of the chant or incantation doesn't matter, it's the intent. If one even makes up a song or a chant to use in ceremony, this would work as well. It's all in the mind of the beholder. We are the Manifester, so is the person being healed.

On a personal level congratulations Karl - I know you worked hard for this - I hope, and my fingers are crossed that this works out well. I don't welcome this decision and don't think a referendum should have happened. But given that it has happened all my thoughts are for that dream of an independent, democratic and free UK to come to be.

Hi there It would surely be great to be able to switch off and not have any invasive manifestation. Indeed I have a habit of cultivating such gaps. But when my body is totally relaxed and I experience such a gap too efficiently (meaning I become aware of the gap and get attached to it), I automatically feel the vibrations and veer off into trance. Now, does this trance get me off track from here and now? To answer this one needs to define "here" and "now" and I find that hard to do in an absolute way. One also needs to define who or what the self is. Don't get me wrong, I understand you are referring to our "physical" reality which seems to be a specific location and point in time. But my reality has been very curved. Let me explain. I am convinced from what I have seen that we have a huge number of possible realities of which we could choose to be mindful. While I am sitting here writing this, the one who was dreaming a couple of hours back is continuing her dealings in the dream dimension. Yet it is me. The one who is sorting family feuds with the ancestors is sitting with them taking instructions. The one on a distant star is evaluating her progress. And so on and so forth. Now which one is the real me? Which one should stay focused on her "now"? Clearly none of them has this world as a home but they are all me. A part of me I will call my mind for lack of a better word, can travel between these selves and believes it is the here and now each time. That is why I like the word astral because it is flimsy and can mean anything you want it to mean though at the root is is about stars. To me there is no such thing as out of body experience because though the vibrations have seemed to propel me far and wide, they have also been followed by in-the-body interdimensional manifestations. (Like seeing which spirits are in my house at a given time). There have also been many times where I was aware of being in many places at once or in two places at once. Same with time. I have travelled backwards many times and many have travelled forward (ref Hank Wesselman) Coming to another part of your question. How to know if it is real. My first instinct is to ask "does it matter?" Or "why should it matter?" But more seriously, in this world we are a group, most closely my mom and my cousin, who share identical accounts related to the departed at about the same times and then there are others outside of the family that I hear from from time to time who fill in parts of information I don't have and re-confirm mine. When our ancestors want to communicate things to us they use tricks to let us remember the experience and to verify their presence. I have some that decide to only manifest the head so I just see floating heads so I see they are earnest. Others wear items of clothing that I can verify with others who see them. My uncle with his black and white pullover comes to mind, he appeared in it to my mom and my other cousin too. So if it is not real at least it is the group reality of a few of us. About the time thing. I know a zulu shaman lady that I have seen in places (about 10 years back) that time would certainly not allow for. We kept seeing each other in strange places that did not correspond to the time it takes to travel. It startled us greatly. She wanted to take me as an apprentice but I didn't want to commit to animal sacrifice. So she said we would one day transcend time again. Sure enough last year while in a trance induced by drumming I saw her beating my chest in a metaphor of my heartbeat. I recognised her immediately and realised I had long forgotten her name. I travelled back in a flash to our meeting point, came back and exclaimed her name. She broke into a beautiful surprised grin and the love we felt at that moment is something I cannot even describe. So yes, that whole experience was one big "now" to me. You may think I am delusional but really it does not matter. What matters to me is being aware of as many facets of what we call consciousness as possible because it makes me understand life and love in a way I appreciate deeply. I even once had a trance in which I was a fish and the water felt like a thick jelly I was swimming through. Before that I was a rose. I am glad I was mindful of that at the time because it is a lovely memory, one of the best I have had.

Now with that out of the way, let's get back to the booklist! As always, my views are my own with all of this. As I always say, believe nothing. Read, research, apply. Keep the useful, discard the useless, once you have a relatively good idea which is which. It is my hope that this booklist will help save major time for people, as they progress. With that said: Part 7 of The Energy Cultivator's Handbook by Infolad1 The Energy Cultivator’s Ultimate Booklist - 7b What is Enlightenment? Paperback – November 1, 2012 by William Bodri Book Description: What is spiritual enlightenment? You often hear the term "enlightenment" in deep spiritual discussions, but it is almost impossible to find anyone who can definitively say what "enlightenment," "awakening," "union," or "self-realization" actually entails. In fact, many religions differ as to their proposals for the highest state of spiritual attainment -- which is often called salvation, liberation or becoming one with God (union) -- that often do not even include enlightenment, or they may simply recognize it under a different name. Enlightenment is the direct realization of our self-nature, source essence, or true self. This awakening constitutes directly experiencing the source and essence of reality, the original dimension of equal identity where mind and matter are one because you have found the ultimate underlying, true nature of all things. Enlightenment means to directly, experientially realize that basic substance of cosmic life where matter and consciousness are the same substance, which then consequently opens up various powers and a universal visage. That transcendental source nature you discover is often called God, Ein Sof, Allah, Brahman, dharmakaya, fundamental nature, Buddha-nature, Tao, Emptiness or Self. Some of the secular designations include Pure Consciousness, pristine awareness, one mind, uncreated light, clear light or infinite universal illumination to denote the fact that It is the ultimate substratum that gives birth to the knowingness of manifest consciousness. The way to this realization is through meditation and other spiritual practices that teach you to stop clinging to states of consciousness. You must always allow consciousness to arise, but should not cling to thoughts to thus become a perfectly free, effortless, natural and spontaneous individual. As your thoughts quiet down because of this practice, your body's chakras and chi channels will open up (you will experience a kundalini awakening) and you will gradually stop identifying your body and mind as your self. In time you can attain a pristine realization of selflessness (a state absent of the ego, I-thought or sense of separate "I-amness") that constitutes enlightenment. Regardless of your religious tradition, when you diligently cultivate spiritual practice you will gradually pass through many transitional stages of progress and particular spiritual experiences. These experiences can include special degrees of one-pointed concentration (absorption) called dhyana and samadhi attainments, which prepare you for enlightenment if you cultivate far enough. Many religions, both Eastern and Western, describe these possible achievements in great detail, and many such experiences that are not enlightenment are analyzed within so that practitioners do not incorrectly assume they have actually achieved awakening when they have only experienced inferior attainments. The various achievement levels to this awakening of self-realization that are explained. This book is the first of its kind to collect not only the rare autobiographical and biographical accounts from many traditions of individuals who achieved enlightenment (because it is a non-denominational accomplishment), but also the relevant passages in each tradition's scriptures that reveal the characteristics of the original nature that everyone awakens to (such as perfect purity, changelessness, infinity, eternality, and bliss). The reader quickly comes to the conclusion that despite sectarian differences, everyone is actually awakening to the very same thing. It cannot be anything else! The pathway to enlightenment is analyzed using many different religious paths and frameworks. Many common errors of spiritual practice and misinterpretations of spiritual states are also revealed to help individuals become correctly oriented so that they can attain enlightenment as well. Comments: Each of Bodri’s books is an encyclopedia of information from various systems, and traditions. They’re worth it just for that. He says he has a 7,000 book library. I believe him! A great book so far. I’m on page 105. It a 548 book. Let me correct that. It’s actually an over 1,500 page book PRETENDING it’s a third that size, through the use of small type. VERY small type. You’ve been warned. It also desperately needs an Index, but it’s not a deal killer for getting it. He covers enlightenment in detail, from various traditions. Bodri shows through various examples the point that he always emphasizes, and rightly so: that this process is non-denominational, and that all culture’s have experience with it, to various degrees, and levels. To me this is the primary value of Bodri’s considerable catalogue of work. To chronicle the details of these various systems for a 21st Century audience. The other thing to always remember about Bodri’s work, and that will drive some folks nuts, is that he’s super repetitive. And he does it on purpose. He’s found from years of teaching, and from my own teaching experience I’d have to agree with him, that people need to read, and hear these concepts over, and over again, so that they can start to grasp both the foundational structure, and the various details of this process, or any system for that matter. But to have a book that has collected In one place multiple examples of enlightened beings from various systems, along with showing why they’re considered enlightened, and what physiological, and mental signs can verify this, is invaluable in ways that some won’t realize for years to come, as they walk this path. Recommended. How to Measure and Deepen Your Spiritual Realization ("Measuring Meditation") By William Bodri and Nan Huai-Chin 705 page e-Book $97 Purchase Link is here: http://www.meditationexpert.com/measuringmeditation.html Book Description (It’s LONG): A tour de force of various non denominational ways to measure the extent of someone's meditation progress, using case studies that analyze ordinary practitioners and advanced meditation adepts from a large variety of spiritual traditions (Zen, Taoist, Tibetan Buddhist, Christian meditation, etc.). No other book ranks the transcendental stages of the spiritual greats according to objective criteria, and evaluates whether they had achieved samadhi or enlightenment. This 700-page instruction manual goes way past comparative religion and reveals specific yoga teachings to help you surpass each spiritual attainment level prior to enlightenment. It melds the best spiritual teachings from Eastern and Western sources. If you want to know what it's like to be taught by Master Nan and how to analyze someone's stage of meditation or spiritual progress, then this is the book to buy. Imagine Listening to an Enlightened Zen, Esoteric and Taoist Master as He Reveals Secret Meditation Techniques, Advanced Stages of Spiritual Practice, Chakra-Kundalini-Tantra Esoteric Secrets, and Teaches You How to Silence Your Internal Mind A famous Zen, Tao and Esoteric school master has finally taken all those confusing Taoist teachings on cultivating your jing, chi and shen ... Buddhist teachings on breaking through the five skandhas and realms of consciousness ... the yoga teachings in Hinduism on mastering the various samadhi and dhyana you can reach in meditation ... Tibetan tantra teachings on opening your chakras and chi channels and cultivating kundalini ... Jewish Kabbalah teachings on ayin (nothingness) and the annihilation of thought ... Confucian teachings on how to perfect your behavior to attain samadhi and enlightenment ... Christian teachings on stages of selflessness and holy spiritual love ... psychic findings about heavenly realms and other metaphysical phenomena ... and all sorts of other spiritual ranking systems ... and sorted them, cross-correlated them, merged them and then applied them to provide you with a generalized map of the stages of spiritual progress that you can personally expect to experience through meditation. Why? To provide you with a clear road map through all the spiritual junk knowledge out there, and to help you with your spiritual practice by cutting off twenty to thirty years of dedicated study, frustration and dead-ends. This "course in a book," which we fondly refer to as "Measuring Meditation," creates one unified topological map explaining all sorts of unexplained metaphysical, paranormal and psychic phenomena and does something people have desired for years -- it links the various stages of genuine spiritual development or spiritual growth in all the major spiritual schools. It took me years to compile this knowledge from all sorts of traditions, both Eastern and Western, and now it is all compiled in one single place. There's absolutely nothing like this available elsewhere. Just check the testimonials from seekers who have libraries of hundreds or thousands of books, who've spent untold dollars collecting materials, going to seminars and seeking, and yet who never encountered the real dharma. All the publishers we contacted said this material was just too large to get published -- it was too jam packed with information to be printed. But I wanted to make it available to you anyway, so here it is in ebook form... In a step-by-step fashion, this course on spiritual practice teaches you how to dispense with mysticism and nonsensical New Age explanations, and apply the scientific basis of genuine spiritual teachings to your own meditation work - no matter what school you come from or presently follow. It covers practically all your spiritual efforts, all techniques, all schools and measuring systems. We're not out to convert anyone, just deepen your own practice with true cultivation content that can help guide you to the answers you've been seeking for all sorts of practices, stages and phenomena. In this manual you will finally have a single source on internal and external yoga that makes sense of the thousands of spiritual texts and metaphysical treatises sitting on dusty library shelves. No more theory, no more mysticism, no more hogwash and spiritual "mumbo jumbo" -- inside this course you'll find straight talk and straight answers. You'll find real life applications of hundreds of extremely advanced cultivation teachings and meditation techniques that embody the real heart of spiritual cultivation practice. Basically, this is the Bible for guiding a person's spiritual growth because it even has case studies of ordinary "kundalini practitioners" at the most rudimentary stages of the path. It also has case studies of advanced adepts, and enlightened sages and the gong-fu (kung-fu) they had to cultivate, or chose to cultivate before and after their enlightenment. But don't believe me about the contents and quality of this work. Instead, just read the testimonials I've posted for you. They don't lie. They're from people just like you who are searching for clear answers about esoteric matters and the spiritual trail... I guarantee that after being exposed to this information on true spiritual cultivation just once, you'll know how to meditate properly and will say good-bye to New Age fluff forever. I personally wrote it with that one purpose in mind. With this information you'll never be confused again about contradictory spiritual teachings such as "This school says this" and "That school says that." You won't run from this teacher to that one anymore, or from this school or that course to another. You won't feel like you're missing anything when you hear about all these competing schools because you'll understand the basis behind it all, and will now know how to differentiate the TRUTH from the crap. Seriously! You'll be clear about the various grading systems of the spiritual path -- whether we're talking about chakras or kundalini or tantra, clear light and chi mai and samadhi or dhyana -- and will be able to weave all these teachings together and then apply them to your own personal practice. That's the important point. This manual offers you a very personal and practical roadmap to spiritual practice. You'll be clear about all sorts of meditation methods -- such as vipassana, mantra, mindfulness meditation, pranayama, visualization, Zen, tantrism, siddha yoga, cessation and contemplation and so forth -- along with their actual effectiveness or lack thereof. From what you know and knowledge of your habits, personality and lifestyle, it'll simply be up to you to choose which method suits you best. You'll understand karma and reincarnation, and how to change your fortune and destiny as revealed by astrology, feng shui or other fate forecasting techniques. You'll understand the true way ... and not the superficial ways touted today ... for changing your character and undergoing true spiritual development. You'll also learn how to determine which Eastern and Western religions are deficient in their spiritual teachings, and why! Lots of people have been seeking this information for decades. In their heart of hearts, they know something isn't quite right about certain "religions" or specific religious teachings in particular, but until now they just didn't have the right tools or vocabulary to be able to determine what they knew was off. Now in one glance you'll be able to know for sure ... positively, absolutely ... and will have the words for it. Boy will you tick off some people if you open your mouth without thinking because they'll have nothing to say, and the truth of what you're saying will be self-evident to everybody. You'll also be able to go through case studies of famous (and ordinary) cultivation practitioners and see exactly where they stood in terms of their own progress on the spiritual trail ... something most people would like to talk about but have no yardsticks for grading the matter ... ... and you'll learn how to do this through a step-by-step, iterative process that always reflects back upon previous lessons and teachings. Milarepa, Hui-neng, Ramakrishna, Edgar Cayce, Lao Tzu, Padre Pio, Steiner, Shakyamuni Buddha, Ananda, Mahakasyapa, Han Shan, Hakuin, Xuan Zang, Gampopa, St. Francis of Assisi, Yeshe Tsogyel, Jesus, Moses, Confucius, Chuang Tzu, Yogananda, and countless other spiritual greats are discussed and analyzed in this course. All the great ones you read about. But here's the key. Other books just say they were all great. In this book you learn EXACTLY how to determine their actual STAGE of spiritual cultivation and accomplishment. So the saints of Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Indian Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Vedanta, Christianity, Christian mysticism, medieval alchemy, Islam, Judaism, Sufism, yoga and other schools are analyzed to see what stage of spiritual practice they had reached. This isn't like looking at paintings in a museum where people say "everything is art," and thus relieving you of the possibility of criticizing what you see on the walls. Some of these saints WERE greater than others in terms of their stage of spiritual attainment! There's no doubt about it, but know you'll know how to measure this stage of realization. With a multitude of overlapping spiritual rating systems in your hands -- supplied by these religions themselves -- you'll be surprised to find out who was "enlightened" and who merely had samadhi attainments or just a small realization of emptiness or selflessness. No longer will you just toss up unexplained phenomena to mysticism, for now you'll know why and how the saints of the various religions were able to say the things they said, and perform the feats they did. Everyone who signs up for our ezine gets a free download of chapter 4 from this book so that they can evaluate this material and benefit from its teachings even if they decide not to buy it, but to really appreciate the depth of this material you have to look at its full Table of Contents: Preface 1 The Challenge of Correctly Measuring and Interpreting Spiritual Progress Kung-fu Mind-Body Transformations * Prajna Transcendental Wisdom * Avoiding Self-Delusion in Spiritual Cultivation * Direct Experience is Essential 2 An Introduction to the Five Skandhas Ranking System The Selflessness of the Ego and Phenomena * The True Meaning of Religious Practice * Form Skandha * Sensation Skandha * Conception Skandha * Volition Skandha * Consciousness Skandha * Transforming, Purifying, or Exhausting the Skandhas * Cessation-Contemplation and Zen * Using the Skandhas in Cultivation * Four Cultivation Truths 3 The Taoist Time Requirements for Spiritual Kung-fu and the Consecutive Stages of Spiritual Attainment The Five Elements Schema * 8 Sensations * The Three Realms * Tao and Longevity * Jing * Chi * Shen * Why the 5 Elements Transform in the Order That They Do * The 9 Year Transformation Sequence for the Physical Components of the Body * Taoist Jing-Chi-Shen Transformations Explain the Spiritual Path * Laying the Foundation, Pregnancy, Suckling the Baby, Facing the Wall * Inedia in Christianity and Hinduism * Proper Fasting Practice Instructions * 100 Day Bigu Fasting Practice * 9 Year Bigu Fasting Practice * The 5 Requirements for Becoming Immortal * Ghost-Human-Earthly-Heavenly-Spiritual Immortals * Shakyamuni's Analysis of Immortality Techniques * I-Ching * The Many Spiritual Measurement Systems You Need to Learn 4 Twelve Enlightening Case Studies: An Analysis of the Spiritual Progress and Problems Faced by People Practicing Meditation The Kundalini Experience * The Importance of Using Tao and Longevity as a Reference * (1) HUMANITIES PROFESSOR * Fan Chi or Wind Chi * Sensations in the Legs * Meditation Reveals Latent Illnesses * (2) HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER * Fixing Problems Revealed through Meditation * Semblance Dharma * (3) ARTIST-TEACHER * Cultivation and Mental Illness * The Du-yin Shadow Consciousness * Chi at the Back of the Head * (4) PSYCHOLOGIST * Feeling Chi Sensations in the Body * (5) COMPUTER SCIENTIST * Strong Vitality and Sexual Activity on the Path * The Number of Chi Channels in the Body * The Importance of the Left Big Toe in Meditation * Spontaneous Movements * Incendium Amoris is Christian Kundalini * Pranayama * Sounds in the Head * Saint Francis of Assisi * An Explanation of Biblical Superpowers * (6) ARTIST * The Stage of Not Needing Sleep * Fullness of Jing, Chi and Shen * (7) SCIENTIST * (8) ACTRESS * Dreams of Flying * Poltergeists * (9) PSYCHOLOGIST * (10) LIBRARIAN * Excessive Damp Heat in the Body * (11) HOUSEWIFE AFTER MENOPAUSE * Cycles of Human Development * (12) PSYCHIATRIST * Seeing a Blue Diamond * Twenty-Five Doors to Meditation Reveals Many Meditation Techniques * Zen Master Hakuin Cures Himself with the So Cream Meditation * The Cardinal Spiritual Principle of Practice 5 The Five Aggregates Schema and the Various Levels of Consciousness A Discussion of the Five Aggregates * The Stories of Vasubandhu and Asanga * Form Skandha * The Four Elements and Space * The Agglomeration of Form * The Parinispanna, Paratantra and Parikalpita Natures * Perceptible Form * Imperceptible Form * The Five Sense Organs * Ching-se Sentient Matter * The Three Natures of Reality * The True Nature of Reality * Sensation Skandha * Sri Yukteswar's Yang Shen Emanation Body and Jesus' Resurrection Body * Conception Skandha * Enlightened People are Aware During Dreams * Volition Skandha * Behavior and the Spiritual Path * Emptiness of Phenomena * 10 Omnipresent Factors * 11 Virtuous Mental Events * 6 Root Afflictions * 5 Deviant Perspectives * 20 Secondary Afflictions * 4 Variable Mental Events * Shen Tsan Helps Educate His Teacher * Non-associated Motivational Forces * States of No-Mind * Boundaries of the Skandhas * Consciousness Skandha * The 8 Consciousnesses * Sleeping, Death and Leaving Samadhi * The First Six Consciousnesses * The Seventh Consciousness * 4 Ego-centered Notions * The Eighth Alaya Consciousness * Xuan Zang in The Journey to the West * Avalokiteshvara's Meditation Method of Hearing * The Dharmadhatu and Tathagatagarbha * Reviewing the Five Skandhas * Great Mirror Wisdom * Equality Wisdom * Analytical Wisdom of Discernment * All-Accomplishing Action Wisdom * Spiritual Cultivation From the Aspect of the Skandhas 6 How to Correctly Interpret a Zen Master's Progressive Attainments Vimalakirti Scolds Purnamaitrayaniputra * Han Shan Breaks Through the Form Skandha * Merit, Sexual Discipline, Emptiness * Ramakrishna and Ramana Maharshi * Guang Qin * Hui-Tzu is Found Inside a Tree Cultivating Samadhi * How To Arouse Someone From the State of Samadhi * Bodhisattva Candraprabha * Rainbow Bodies 7 The Spiritual Accomplishments of Four Famous Tibetan Adepts: Yeshe Tsogyel, Milarepa, Gampopa, and Machig Labdron LADY YESHE TSOGYEL * Eight Severe Austerity Practices * When Chi Flows Cannot Meet * Master T'ien-wang Wu Floats on a Lotus Flower * Fa-jung of Ox Head Mountain * Jesus Disperses the Crowd of Stoning * Cultivation Tests * Return to Maidenhood and the Woman's Road of Cultivation * Confucius' Sequence of Cultivation Progress * MILAREPA * Kundalini Cultivation * Heavenly, Earthly and Human Dan * Food Intake During Cultivation * Wei Po-Yang's Explanation of Cultivation * Shape Shifting Versus the Yang Shen * GAMPOPA * Zen Master Huai-jang and Ma-tsu * The Complete Enlightenment Sutra and Immediate Enlightenment * Bliss, Illumination and No-Thought * Renewing the Brain * MACHIG LABDRON * Tibetan Empowerments and Real Initiations * Foundations of Chod 8 Kundalini Yoga, the Four Stages of Intensified Practice, and the Five Overall Phases of the Spiritual Path Kundalini in Chinese Culture * The Stage of Preparatory Practices * The 4 Steps of Prayoga * Stage of Warming * Stage of the Peak * Stage of Forbearance * Stage of Highest Worldly Dharma * How to Grade Yoga Achievements with the Four Stages of Prayoga * Empowerments * Cultivating Chi Through Breathing Practices * The Big Knife Wind * Makhafa Path of Islam and Way of Margaret in Christianity * The Equation of Spiritual Progress * Sexual Desire and Sexual Cultivation * Step-by-Step Spiritual Transformation 9 Essential Cultivation Principles Which Few People are Ever Taught God, Buddha Nature, Allah and Other Equivalent Terms * The Three Buddha Bodies * Dharmakaya * Sambhogakaya * Nirmanakaya * How to Cultivate the Full Three Enlightenment Bodies * The Ceaseless Transformations of the Universe * The Characteristics of Form and Ultimate Nature * Nagarjuna's and Avalokiteshvara's Negations * Existence and Nonexistence * Ontology and Spiritual Practice * Behavior as the Ground, Means and Fruit of the Path * The Nature of Conscious Thought * Merit, Wisdom and Discipline Requirements in Spiritual Cultivation * Some Various Roads of Cultivation Practice 10 The Meditative Realms of the Nine Samadhi Absorptions The Definition of Samadhi and Dhyana * Tien-tai 's Six Steps for Cultivating Samadhi * General Characteristics of the Dhyana * First Dhyana * Factors Inhibiting Samadhi * Methods for Attaining One-pointedness * Dhyana Stages of Joy and Bliss * Retreat Practice * Discipline Required of the Path * Desire Realm Heavens and Inhabitants * Ching-an State of Pre-Samadhi * Alexandrine Gnosticism * Second Dhyana * Third Dhyana * Fourth Dhyana * How Other Spiritual Schools Describe the Four Dhyana * The 5 Eyes of Wisdom * Various States of No-mind or No-Thought * Bardo States * The Four Formless Samadhi Absorptions * Samadhi of Infinite Space * Peach Blossom Enlightenment * Samadhi of Infinite Consciousness * Samadhi of Nothingness * Samadhi of No-Thought * Samadhi of Neither Thought Nor No-Thought * Edgar Cayce, Rudolf Steiner, Meister Eckhart, Padre Pio * Hakuin and Master Dokyo * Zen master Hseuh-tou Ch'in * Samadhi of Extinction * The Arhat's Fractional Nirvana of Remaining Dependency * When an Arhat Passes Away * Other Samadhi Attainments * Drowsiness * Buddhism as a Guide to Cultivation * Iron Ox Master Tieh Nieu * Stupid Emptiness Samadhi 11 Purifying the Skandhas and the Fifty Great Spiritual Paths of Delusion Form Skandha Phenomena * Sensation Skandha Phenomena * Conception Skandha * Yang Shen Body * Eyes and Seeing * Clarity Within Dreams * Zen Misconceptions * Volition Skandha * Surveying Past Lives * The Whirling Force of Life * Consciousness Skandha * Buddha Gives Specific Warnings About the Paths of Delusion * 5 Skandha Pollutions * Complete Cultivation * Transmitting Spiritual Teachings * The Creation of Consciousness and the World * Gradually Exhausting the Skandhas 12 The Internal Principles of Cessation and Contemplation Are Embodied Within All Genuine Spiritual Practices Yogacara and Consciousness-Only * Sandhinirmocana Sutra * Mahakashyapa Teaches Ananda * Nirvana Sutra * The 4 Methods of Cessation and Contemplation * 25 Variations of Cessation, Contemplation and Dhyana Practice * Zen Master Yung-ming's Lesson on Cessation and Contemplation 13 The Road of Tantric Cultivation for Opening the Sushumna Central Channel Esoteric Practice Focuses on Things Outside of the Mind * The 7 Major Chakras * Chi Channels, Chi Flows, Habit Energies, and Superpowers * The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine * Various Schools Discuss the Chi and Chi Channels * An Introduction to Tibetan Esoteric Practices * The Tantric Tradition * Padmasambhava * The Resultant and Causal Vehicles * Stigmata * Master Tsong Khapa * The Yoga of Marks * The Yoga Without Marks * Generation and Completion Stage Yogas * The Stage of Generation * The Stage of Completion * Specialization of the Tantras * A Short Analysis of the Tantric Tradition * When Chi Enters the Central Channel * Biophysics of the Cultivation Path * The Four Blisses * The Four Empties * Ways of Accidentally Seeing the Tao * Signs that Chi is Entering the Central Channel * Useful Cultivation Practices * Sexual Cultivation * Consciousness Rides on Chi * Drops * Tibetan Bardo Yogas * Comparing Spiritual Schools and Their Stages of Cultivation * Incorruptibility and Sariras * Requesting Enlightened Beings to Help You in Your Cultivation * Matching the Esoteric and Orthodox Paths 14 The Great Learning, Confucian Cultivation, and the Way to Actualize Universal Salvation Blind Faith and Superstition * Confucian Cultivation * Tan Fu and Moses * The Chinese Exodus * The Great Learning * Ming De Bright Virtue * Qin Min Loving the People * Zhi Resting in the Highest Good * The Seven Step Confucian Process for Attaining Samadhi * Transforming the World with Personal Spiritual Cultivation * Bringing Peace to the World Through the Mastery of Self-Cultivation * Purifying Your Behavior * Modern Science Lags Behind Cultivation Science * The Path Ahead Appendix The "Warning to Cultivators" Chapter of the Surangama Sutra Glossary This is a virtual tour de force of various non-denominational ways to measure the extent of someone's meditation progress and how to apply this information to your own cultivation efforts. It even contains specific meditations for breaking through each level of spiritual attainment! If you've been looking for cultivation methods to try, but also WHY and HOW they work, this is the manual you need to get. It's not tiresome to read, but a treasure to read... Comments: Get it. Did you see the table of contents!? This tome is multiple books in one. Bodri really saves you a LOT of time researching. As always, his work is a cornucopia of data. Recommended. The Various Stages of the Spiritual Experience Course: An Integrated Understanding that Will Elevate All Religions By William Bodri An $800 Correspondence Course (Although he said on a Conference call a couple of years ago that he was no longer teaching it. This may Have changed) Course Description: After so many years of spiritual seeking, visiting teachers, buying shelves of books and attending retreats, spending wads of money and having the time tick away -- are you where you really want to be with your spiritual practice? How to meditate, the common spiritual methods used by religions, transcendental meditation techniques, kundalini, chakras, chi (qi), superpowers, body doubles and dream yoga, prayer, one-pointed concentration, Zen, Buddhism, japa, mantra, Taoism, mystical Christianity, reincarnation, tantra, spiritual enlightenment ... Now you can finally find dependable teachings on all the questions you've ever had about this or that spiritual path and training, or your money back! If you're an active spiritual seeker or student of metaphysics -- and especially if you're a professional psychologist, scientist, consciousness researcher, student of comparative religion or religious functionary (priest, rabbi, monk, or nun) -- then check out the Tao and Longevity and How to Measure and Deepen Your Spiritual Realization to see what we're talking about. If you like what you read and want more -- deep insights and professional level training into all the nitty gritty explanations of spiritual experiences and metaphysical phenomena with abundant examples, along with verification through hundreds of quoted spiritual sources and comprehensive maps linking the spiritual stages and meditation practices of the world's many spiritual traditions together, and how to climb those ranks yourself-- it's finally available in a special course that's jam-packed with more information than any PhD in comparative religion will ever put you through! And more personal service than you're ever going to get from your doctor, lawyer or accountant. With this training, you'll be light-years ahead of the common seeker. You'll even put the Dalai Lama to shame, not to mention the Billy Graham's of the world as well. The common comment I hear from every taker of this course is that now they don't have to buy any more books, but know exactly what they have to do with practice. The wanderlust is gone because all their questions are answered, and the only thing left is the job of pure cultivation. When you look at all the money and time and energy you've spent, what would that be worth to you? That alone, is priceless. Here are the actual contents for each of the eight lessons to this course: Lesson 1: The Five General Stages of the Spiritual Path, which characterize all true spiritual schools, are outlined and applied to show the relative depths of Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Tantra, Islam, and yoga regarding as far as they take you on the spiritual trail. These five Mahayana stages are the first categorical partitioning scheme by which you can analyze and actually rank the teachings and teachers of various spiritual traditions, and you'll find out that nearly 100% of individuals in the world following the formalized religions are only on the first stage of this five step path. With this one initial measuring system, you will quickly be able to rule out some of the newer "religions" and spiritual sects as not being genuine at all, and now you'll know why. Lesson 2: "Gong-fu" Transformations Within the Physical Body are introduced next, by which you can determine what stage of spiritual practice you have actually reached yourself, how long it is likely to last, and how to guide yourself through these physical and psychological changes. This lesson focuses on the mind-body changes catalogued by Taoism, and the fact that no genuine advancement in spirituality is made without an corresponding physical change in someone's chi and chi channels. If you want to understand the metaphysics of jing, chi and shen transformations, then this is it. For the first time in print, the Western cultivation scheme of purifying the body's five elements is also analyzed in order to understand why certain meditation methods are preferred in the world's spiritual schools, why the actual sequences of cultivation practice actually follow the specific order that they do, and to lay out information for the new cultivation schools destined to develop in the West. This one lesson alone is worth the entire price of these materials. Lesson 3: Breaking Through the Five Aggregates of Experience is explained in detail by which you will learn how to identify physical, mental or spiritual experiences belonging to the Form, Sensation, Conception, Volition and Consciousness skandhas. You will learn how to surmount, purify, detach from or break through these skandha experiences and prevent yourself from falling into the trap of self-deception regarding your own stage of spiritual progress. Just as the second lesson of this course showed you how to incorporate the stages of Taoism and physical transformations into the five overall stages of the path, with this lesson you will now learn how to link the cultivation system of the five skandha realms of experience with Taoism, the five stages, and five elements purification, and will be able to cross-correlate all these ranking schemes and use them together. You'll also look at the biographical materials of various saints and their mystical experiences -- from a variety of traditions --and for the first time you will immediately be able to scientifically identify their stage of spiritual progress to know whether they had yet attained the Tao (experienced enlightenment) or simply awakened to the spiritual path. Lesson 4: Ranking the Heavenly Realms and Various Classes of Sentient Beings as a means of explaining the cosmos and its inhabitants will be taught. With this comprehensive lesson taught by Buddha, you will dispense with mysticism but instead learn why the heavenly ranking schemes described by various religions are very similar, as well as the characteristics of the various heavenly inhabitants and how to be reborn as a heavenly being yourself. The different merits and samadhi attainments of these beings, as explained by Shakyamuni Buddha, explains why they are born into certain heavenly realms, and thus information on this schema provides another means by which you can gain insight into someone's rank of meditation. Find out how Mohammed's vision of heaven actually matches with Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and Christianity, and how to cultivate the stages of samadhi that enable you to view those heavens yourself. Lesson 5: The Nine Meditative Realms of Dhyana and Samadhi, which form the major ladder of all genuine spiritual practice, are explained in detail along with how you can cultivate these states for yourself. Using quotations from Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, and Islam, evidence is provided that these common practice vehicles are what the "saints" of all the religions actually cultivated for in their spiritual efforts. For instance, the "prophets" of the Bible were no different than the sages of Taoism, seers of India, or arhats of Buddhism, but simply had the powers they did because they cultivated to a certain level of achievement. Now you'll know what those levels are. As before, in a step-by-step fashion the various samadhi attainments are cross-linked with the physical changes of Taoism, the five skandhas system of Buddhism, the heavenly realms of various religions, and the five stages of the spiritual path as well as a variety of other ranking systems. Now you can cross-correlate them all. Lesson 6: Eight Different Levels of Consciousness are explained next, which is the most advanced and comprehensive lesson in the world on the various realms of consciousness, how consciousness came about, and how to cultivate all its various dimensions through spiritual practice. Current research in consciousness and mind-body phenomena are also introduced and explained in light of standard cultivation teachings (something all the scientists have been missing), and then non denominationally linked, of course, with our other ranking schemes . This was the toughest lesson to write, but it finally answers ontological questions that most of the popular religions avoid. Metaphysics, ontology, and consciousness studies are all explained with this material, as well as how to cultivate through the different realms of consciousness to reach the enlightenment of a Buddha. Lesson 7: Spiritual Progress as Measured by Esoteric Phenomena is the next lesson, which pulls away the cover on Esoteric Buddhism, tantra, Taoism, hatha yoga, chi cultivation, kundalini, chakras and other "esoteric" teachings. In this lesson you will also learn how the highest practices of the form-based schools are actually duplicated in Zen Buddhism, but Zen doesn't pay them too much heed because they are typically deficient roads of spiritual practice. Any experts of mysticism, tantra, yoga and Tibetan Buddhism will be shocked by this high level material that even aged monks aren't privy to. If you ever wanted just one good clear lesson on tantra or Tibetan Buddhism, this lesson is it and contains more worthwhile information than an entire library of translated Tibetan kung-fu manuals. If you previously thought that Tibetan Buddhism was the king of all cultivation schools, now you'll be able to see it and all the other form based schools -- such as Taoism, yoga and modern science -- for what they really are. You'll also see that physical measuring schemes are only relevant for very rudimentary stages of the spiritual path. Lesson 8: Proficiency in Skillful Means and the Exercise of Bodhisattva Compassion is the last lesson, which surveys the spiritual landscape and then lays out in detail how the ideals of Confucian, Socratic, Christian, Buddhist and other character-behavior based paths of spiritual practice can be used to rejuvenate the major religions and form a new character-merit-cultivation based spiritual path for today. This one lesson by itself was written to help rejuvenate Christianity and elevate all religions. It contains all the materials you need to develop a new Bodhisattva enlightenment path of behavior for the general public, and to link it with compassionate action in the world. Approaching the same topic of mysticism, spiritual stages, meditation methods and cultivation practice from many different angles, time and again the genuineness of the spiritual path is proved, as well as the unity of "true cultivation religion" rather than the disparity of religious dogma. This material contains topological maps of the spiritual trail and metaphysical areas that encompass the major phenomena people encounter in spiritual practice, and goes far beyond everything else available in actually linking modern scientific findings to these experiences. All the various areas of science, philosophy, catalogued experiences, theory, religion, mysticism and practice are woven together and shown to fit like a pair of hands and their gloves. Want a short example? To give you an idea of the course contents, there is a sample download at the bottom of this page which should help teach you some of the actual kung-fu sequences of spiritual cultivation that appear at the lower, rudimentary stages of the path. Remember that if you're not familiar with the terminology, it's simply because you didn't read the earlier material leading up to these pages....and it also shows you know hardly anything about the REAL stages of spiritual cultivation. Because the material in these lessons gives you the ability to organize, validate, cross-correlate and legitimize spiritual cultivation and spiritual phenomena, and link the various religions and their saints in an objective manner, students say it is something as revolutionary as Newton's physics, Thomas Aquinas' Christianity, Wei Bo-Yang's explanations and combining of the Chinese cultivation schools, and Maimonides' explanations of Judaism. This course is so wide in scope that I cannot promise you that you will immediately understand all the concepts in each of these lessons, so I'll be providing personal attention sending you questions and correcting them by email as a follow-up to see that you're comprehending the material. I will say that by the time you're done with this course, you will: Firmly believe that there is a genuine general path of spiritual cultivation progress, and you'll know how to locate it in almost any genuine religion. You'll also be able to tell which religious dogmas are legitimate and which are not simply by whether or not they violate basic cultivation principles Learn that some religions and their spiritual practices lead to higher levels on this path than others Acknowledge that the principles by which you cultivate this path are logically sound, consistent and universally applicable to all beings, and you'll learn a variety of meditation methods and spiritual cultivation techniques for cultivating this path to spiritual progress Realize that the various stages or levels of this path are also universally recognized by genuine spiritual sects, and you'll find evidence of this in their own scriptures Learn that the cultivation path will entail physical changes to the body, as well as mental and spiritual changes called "kung-fu" or "gong-fu," and you'll learn how to interpret these changes, how long they will last, what other masters did when they reached them and what you must do when they occur Understand how various psychic abilities and supernormal powers come about, and will have the means to explain a tremendous variety of hitherto unexplained mystical, metaphysical or paranormal spiritual phenomena And here’s the free download: FREE 189-page Taoism Lesson on Chi (Qi), Chakras, Kundalini Yoga and Other Topics from the STAGES Course on Gong-fu Transformations Comments: I’m not sure if the distance learning part of the course is still happening. Contact Bodri directly, if you’re interested. The download link is chapter two,”Gongfu Transformations Within The Physical Body”, And is a must read. Excellent breakdown. I’m reading the rest of the coursebook on Scribd, but I haven’t finished it. But if it’s as good as most of Bodri’s work, you may want to check it out. Check out Bodri's Meditation Expert website. Thousands of articles on it for free: http://www.meditationexpert.com/index.htm Okay, that's it for William Bodri's major works. Next post, I cover the rest of Nan Huai-Chin's works. Cheers!

Although there aren't any actual responses to my question, I can see from the spiritual heft of the people who liked my original post that it's worth continuing the conversation, and that there is interest from serious practitioners. So I'll just continue - and please - anybody - please jump in and share your own experiences and/or opinions. i'll do this in segments, sort of. A few a day. First off, I have to say that in my opinion, that anybody can be a healer. I don't think it takes special properties or attunement at all. I think it takes using a little intuition and common sense. And as I said before, I've come to the conclusion that these healings I'll be talking about are not merely coincidence. I believe they have really happened as a result of our tweaking the dynamic within the people involved. I'll include specific cases toward the end of this for purposes of illustration and explanation of the dynamics found, and dynamics tweaked. I know there are many energy workers out there that do particular things. I have a lady friend who considers herself an energy worker and a master at Reiki and such things, and I don't understand at all what she does. I've not seen results with what she does, but on the other hand, I've never really had her work on me, other than for a headache that she wasn't able to do anything about. This isn't the sort of dynamic I'm talking about. Nor am I talking about qigong per se - I imagine that there are many modalities used on our forum that are just as effective as mine, probably more so. The kind of healing Joe and I do is a ceremonial healing, but as I said in the OP, the ceremony is really only used to give the healing a beginning and an ending, and it helps to keep the healee's mind in a state of confusion - if confused, there is not the built-in resistance to believing that anything is possible. Anything is possible. Today's segment: Section I - We are the Manifester. My whole understanding of healing is just that. That there is no separate entity to which to appeal to intermediate. This is just my approach. If that is the case, then it stands to reason that we manifest that which happens to us, and those maladies that we develop. We are 'God', in essence. We are The Thinker. This sort of takes the 'fate' aspect out of it, or a 'god's will' aspect out of it. It's all in our hands. If it's in our hands, then we have ultimate control over what happens to us. As I see it, this squares with the fact that the Sage is not bothered by wild beasts or misfortune in life. That things leave him alone. To put this in a more Buddhist concept, he is not creating new karma for himself because he has transcended himself, his reactions, his emotions, in a sense. Even his dreams are no longer reacting to karmic influence incurred during the day or the night, as explained more fully within the concept of Dream Yoga. I don't know whether kundalini activity has anything to do with the things I will write about here. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I tend to think it doesn't. I think we're all 'god', and as such, can do such things. Maybe a K-active person will find it easier to triangulate the offending dynamic inside the person, but I don't really think there's any K-magic that attends every ceremony. I've seen the K-energy attend, I've seen it not attend. Both times were successful. Both Joe and I are K-active, but I'm not sure that matters. I could be wrong. Section 2 - There is a self-realization component to this A self realization component, in that the better we know ourselves, the better we know the one we're healing. if we are all One, as a god-entity, then we are all the same inside. We all have the same primal attributes prior to the conditioning. The only thing that separates us is our conditioning, the fact that we were raised through different lenses, by different parents, with different hardships, in different points in the world and in time. much of determining why somebody is manifesting a particular condition, is to ask ourselves 'how would I feel, or what would I do in similar circumstances?' This helps us triangulate the origin of the imprint that is causing the sick manifestation and see the direction of it. It also enables us to tweak or even reverse the dynamic so that a different result is obtained. What is self-realization, as I speak of it here? It is peeling the onion of personality, going In. Trying the best we can to get back to our Original Nature. Being aware of the part we play in every circumstance in our lives. Knowing what our shortcomings are, and doing what we can to change them. Being honest with ourselves. In my particular case, what started this peeling process was the steps of recovery, wherein I had to change my personality 180 degree from the negative side to the positive side in order to get and stay comfortable as a sober person. That has been a 34 year process and continues to this day. But anybody who has remained on this forum and treasures walking their path, and particularly those few who are reading this, have certainly done their own form of self-discovery, have stopped blaming everybody else for their misfortune, and are not afraid to apologize when they mess up. It is this process alone that ultimately will enable us to transcend the ego, which is necessary for two reasons in this type of healing: 1) it allows us to risk looking like a total fool. Becoming a healer involves just that. We have to be unafraid to fail. We have to develop the mindset that we are not the egoic entity succeeding or failing; rather, we are coming from a place of Oneness with the person we are seeking to make well, and we are working in concert and Oneness. We have to be unafraid of what others think; that they will think us crazy. We have to become unafraid of being mocked, or being accused of seeming egotistical because we think we can heal. We can heal. We all can. We just don't know it. 2) The other reason, is that the ability to transcend or sidestep ego enables us to See. I mean 'See' in a Seer context. If we can see clearly our own personality plusses and minuses without placing a Good or Bad label on them, then we're unafraid to see ourselves as we actually are. If we can do that, we can see another as they actually are. Again, it goes back to the fact that we are all primally the Same, the One. We all have different ego buttons, and the trick is to file the buttons down so they don't impede the vision. That's it for today. More later. Please, I invite any comments or suggestions.

No Self Reincarnation; A Deeper Inquiry Looking at reincarnation from the deepest level possible reveals that no entity or self actually transmigrates. When asleep at night, the subconscious mind projects "you", your body, your thoughts, your sense of identity, your clothes, your emotional state and your actions. It also projects the dream landscape and all the cast of characters along with what they say and do. When "you" travelled from one location to another distant location in the dream, no "you" actually travelled or moved but instead the "you" was being projected as though "traveling" or moving. The landscape didn't pre-exist to travel through nor did "you". Likewise, our world landscape, our "self", body, thoughts, identity, emotions, clothing, and actions are being projected from a deeper level or source, like energetic holograms instead of being just dreamed appearances. This also applies after the "death" of the physical body. The entity we seem to be in the after-life or bardo is also merely a projection from a deeper source. If it is possible to slow down the projection to see the individual movie frames, one would see individual bursts of cognition that contain all the details of that momentary flash of consciousness. Between the flashes of consciousness as the movie content, there exists only emptiness. Then a micro-second later the next movie frame flashes forth with no physical connection to the last movie frame. But when these movie frames speed up it seems there is an unbroken continuity of a self in a stable and pre-existing environment. Seeing this is similar to seeing the empty space between your last thought and before the next thought arises. The individual thoughts in this case are the current bursts of cognition arising from emptiness. During profound moments mental stillness, this gap can be noticed. It's a moment devoid of content. Then the next burst of consciousness arises with a sense of self and its topic. That cognition ceases and the empty gap is all that remains. Then out of that empty gap the next sense of self arises with its topic. So you see there is no self continuing during the empty gaps. Seeing this its realized that no self exists, except as the momentary sensation of one that immediately vanished to be replaced by the next version of "me". The "entity" that seems to exist in the after-life or bardo is just this momentary projection as a burst of cognition of a "me" moment. But no "me" is existing before or after the micro-burst of cognition. Because of the rapidity of the micro-bursts of cognition, it seems like a stable "self" or "me" is continuing in time. Besides this false impression of a continuing "me", there is no other continuing identity as a self. There is no personal "you" at any time. For this to be known, the mind must slow down to the point of being able to observe the individual bursts of cognition followed by an empty gap which is then followed by the next burst of cognition. The mind-movie is now being seen as individual, separate picture frames of cognition. This is like being in a dark room and to swirl a lit incense stick rapidly in a circular fashion. To someone observing it would look like one circle of light. Slow the whirling and the circle disappears and only a single point of light can be found. Likewise the sense of there being a continuous self or "me" disappears when we slow the thinking mind down. All that remains is the empty gap and that empty gap can't be defined. It's our true nature as the empty creative Source. But it's not just a blank emptiness; it always reveals its infinite potential by the arising of the next burst of cognition. Seeing this is the wisdom prajna of self emptiness. Slow down the movie frames and the illusion of a continuous self disappears. There is no self, was no self, never will be a self to become enlightened or to die or to reincarnate or to be reborn! Since the micro-burst of a "me" self has no duration in time, how can't it perform actions that result in karma? And since that self disappeared in the same micro-second, who gets the karma? So how does practice benefit this non-existent self (without any duration)that doesn't exist long enough to practice or to do anything?

Everybody talks about non gradual dzogchen and enlightenmen, but I do not see any people realizing that. It's cheap marketing. Non gradual things are only for beings who are ready for it and ripe enough to just get a click into realization. You selling people dream not even being realized and enlightenment, where are siddhis, rainbows and all that fantastic things which true genuine dzogchen practitioners had? Nowhere. Do not take me wrong, I really respesct all works, translations, spiritual things but this is just selling people dreams, obviously those people are interested more in money then in realization. That's is bootleg dzogchen. What is your and other experience who practice dzogchen? What is state of being? free of suffering life and death? Those quasi-dzogchen teaching which are over intellectualized actually make people cheat themselves. Dzogchen is pure prajna. Most of people need to face it, you need a lot of work to be done, a lot of discipline and a lot of practice with very less time.

R.T. state of mind right now concerning company and no company: when "they" don't piss me off I am happy in their company, when they piss me off I dream of seclusion an dmountain retreat when I am finally in seclusion (probably because "they" pissed me off) I wish for them to return very badly --- thats is why for now, I try to be Ok and at ease with "them" and not go into seclusion too much, first get some real - actual renunciation (which in tibetan means nge byung - would translate more as "the dawn of certainty", meaning you understand with certainty that there is really nothing in samsara that could give you the happiness we all seek) don't have too much of that precious renunciation stuff around - can't buy it in a bookshop either.... hence I am roaming around TTB and enjoy my own sophistry about what is the buddha dharma, how it looks and feels, why it is so precious etc. etc. I pray that the true renunciation is born in my being and in the being of all beings

According to the tradition, one of the marks of an enlightened being is a sheathed penis. Isn't that bizarre ? To roam the story is to become one with it because faith is the richness of love, and of us. Where there is dogma, non-local awakening cannot thrive. Awakening is calling to you via electromagnetic forces. Can you hear it? How should you navigate this non-local universe? Although you may not realize it, you are high-frequency. By maturing, we're living the stratosphere which is beaming with sub-atomic particles. This life is nothing short of a maturing vision of spiritual intuition. My point is that you may be ruled by illusion without realizing it: do not let it disrupt the healing of your mission. Without truth, one cannot self-actualize because delusion is the antithesis of understanding. Try to imagine a redefining of what could be. Eons from now, we pilgrims will believe like never before as we are aligned by the enlightened matrix... and the galaxy is approaching a tipping point. Have you found your awakeing quest? Yinja, look within and strengthen yourself: if you have never experienced this rekindling through non-local awakenings, it can be difficult to dream.

Hello everyone, I am Jared. I am a composer & sound designer living in LA. Since high school, I have always held much reverence for the concept of Tao and the various manners through which it is portrayed. I do not have many with whom I am able to discuss it and I would certainly like to continue growing in my knowledge of it. I once wrote a piece for solo piano called Tao, inspired by passages from the Tao Te Ching and writings of Chuang Tzu. You may listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/jared-chance-taylor/tao-i-dream-like-ii-soft-pliant-iii-like-white-water-rapids I am very happy to be on this site and to get to know some of you better. Best, Jared

We live in a dream and this dream is capable of producing anything. I've studied astrology for years and it's fascinating to watch the trends, it's a super useful tool. At the ultimate level, there are no planets and nothing is really going on here. But on a relative level, in this dream, there's something called astrology and it's a tool that we can use for various things. I see personal choices like that. In this dream, you have a will and that will can be used to have different effects on your life. Karma may even be part of the dream. So, we do cause our own suffering, in a relative way, and you are just part of the divine doing itself. It's useful to see things this way for the sake of non-attachment. At the same time, even with the yin method of living, you can't be too laissez-faire about it. Yes, the divine is orchestrating all this, but you're a part of the divine that has the power to choose, and if you abdicate that then you're choosing to be at the whims of the world. That may cause suffering.

Yeah, I always found that having a woman sleep with me was much better than having a wet dream.

Not to discount dream teachings, but you may also want to find an in person teacher.

the problem is this dream/astral stuff could be anything, ie delusions or created from our own subconscious, perhaps valid enough but still not the ticket. best to find a human teacher/master, then the real work can begin. if you have had issues this applies x100. the difference in progress may be clearing things and reorganizing over days/weeks instead of years or never. getting grounded is the key, not accessing higher planes. my 2cents.

Thanks for sharing. Yeah, get off the drugs if you possibly can but don't rush things and listen to your doctor. Our dreams can sometimes be helpful, other times harmful. Don't put too much credence in them. Practice is good if you know perfectly what you are doing and especially why you are doing it. (BTW The "why" should have a link to reality, not some pipe dream.) May your journey have fewer obstacles.

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......