What do isolated/enlightened people dream about?

[Everything]

Anyone know any monk or person in isolation, for a long period of time, who has been recording his/her dreams? One can only imagine how strange their dreams would get after a long period of isolation. I wonder how much it would affect their dream reality. Wether it would get more realistic or perhaps strange and weird? It seems that the western people, with our way of life, we have the strangest dreams of all, simply because there is so little structure in this multicultural of this society. It seems that people have chosen to let go of their roots and fly above the forrest, looking in confusion at all the diffrent kinds of trees that have been growing. Everyone has his own personal symbology, yet we can see the powerful relics and left overs of the ancient cultures and their symbology, of which some still succeed to find their way into our subconscious mind. Though, the power of dreams are still not drained. The symbology has just become fragmented or transformed, as to making it hard for people to even relate to one and another in a unified way or form a culture together.

 

Where I ask people who live more isolated and seem "dumb" from the outside, they can sometimes share incredibly deep dreams that deal with core issues of the conscious and subconscious mind. Their dreams can also be very rich and filled with variety of people who act in unique ways and each and every one of them reflect the dreamer in a powerful way. Some of these people have so much time on their hands that they actually automaticly become aware of whats going on in their subconscious mind simply when they are bored. Without any effort at meditation or calming their mind. Which reminds me... Muslims, Jews and Taoists relate to eachother in the fact that they are encouraged very much to meditate in some ways during their day time experience. Where Muslim does it on the ground, a jew in his mind, a Taoist in his body. We all have placed an emphasis on having a quick break from this reality to become more aware of all the subconscious events that are occuring. Where people who have let go of those ancient traditions only have the same level of subconscious awareness when their environment allows them.

 

So anyone recall having heard a dream of a person who has had that dream during a long period of isolation? Perhaps emprisoned, on a deserted island, or perhaps even born in isolation. I wonder if we can still relate to the dreams of an isolated person in any way. I believe that dreams are soul experiences that our brains can only interpret by relating all the meaningless interpreted and altered information links together in a unified way. Its like a sneak peak at the unknown, yet, what you see is totally bend around, because your mind is not capable of receiving the information in an unfiltered and unaltered way. So my last question, what do enlightened beings dream about? I assume they are lucid all the time? So a more appropriate phrasing would perhaps be, "what do enlightened people choose to dream about?"

Edited January 29, 2012 by Everything

[chi 2012]

I read about a study where a guy was supposed to record his dreams. After a while the guy got so good at doing this - that he literally spent the whole day writing down all his dreams in detail. Ken Wilber is a big fan of staying "awake" while sleeping. He thinks people aren't enlightened unless they can do this.

[Everything]

I read about a study where a guy was supposed to record his dreams. After a while the guy got so good at doing this - that he literally spent the whole day writing down all his dreams in detail. Ken Wilber is a big fan of staying "awake" while sleeping. He thinks people aren't enlightened unless they can do this.

Same here. Lucid dreaming has changed my life at a deep level, being the most effective tool for personal growth. Even though I can only recall 10 minutes of lucidity a week. I'm improving everyday in both dream recall and lucidity. I don't recall as much as that though, hehe. I guess I do recall 5 powerfull and vivid dreams a night at some times where I hover in between lucidity and non lucidity. Sometimes the vividness of a dream deceives my judgment about the nature of that reality. Allowing me to challenge my ability to deceive myself in more powerful ways and thus also challenging my ability to conquer all the powerful deceptions, like overcoming deep fears, etc. One has just put an effort at lucidity and he or she already receives all the benefits.

 

Thanks for the reference. I'll check it out for sure.

Edited January 29, 2012 by Everything

[suninmyeyes]

For me dreams are so interconnected with waking state. Very clearly.

It is all a flow of life or something. I say 'or something' becouse for example yesterday while walking home in the evening ,I had this strong feeling accompanied with the thought :

Am I alive?

No I am alivness.

Like a perfect puzzle fitting into the tapestry of life just as it is, no matter what.

Fulfilling its nonexisting purpose.

 

I suppose a big portion of a persons dreams would reflect how much person is influenced by their enviroment and if someone is awake while being awake that means influence wouldnt be so strong. Which in turn means dream would either be like a meditation or interdimensional sorting things out as per persons purpose in this life.

Edited January 29, 2012 by suninmyeyes

[Sloppy Zhang]

After a while the guy got so good at doing this - that he literally spent the whole day writing down all his dreams in detail.

 

This is why I stopped doing it. I was literally writing novel length entries for the details and plots of my nightly dreams.

 

On top of that, most of the content was inherently meaningless or recycled crap.

 

I had that realization after I spent a week in solitude. No human contact, and meditating through most of the day, while the night would be entering into lucid consciousness. I noticed that my dream content in those nights was composed of stray thoughts I had during the day.

 

If you don't have a method of dealing with the content of your consciousness (some meditation method), lucid dreaming is going to be meaningless, and you're just going to be dealing with your own projections and expectations about what you think should happen. The chances of doing anything real are going to be pretty slim. I think.

 

 

What do isolated/enlightened people dream about?

 

As far as I have read in certain Taoist lineages, nothing. Their consciousness is clean and clear, so their sleep is deep, restful, and empty. Any dreams they do have, since their consciousness is so clear, are composed of higher level energies that they are easily able to perceive.

 

None of the sub-conscious crap that clutters most everybody else.

[Ish]

[Gerard]

Lucid dreaming has changed my life at a deep level...

 

The further you advance in this path the more you realise that the physical state/life (yang) is also a dream.

 

Once you experience this:

 

"Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi."

 

You'll realise the undeniable truth of Chuang Tzu's statement.

 

Lucid dreaming is a step in between this life and normal dreaming (yin).

 

Enlightenment is the final awakening, what the Buddha called nirvana. The ultimate reality, no more dreaming.

 

[Vmarco]

Anyone know any monk or person in isolation, for a long period of time, who has been recording his/her dreams? One can only imagine how strange their dreams would get after a long period of isolation.

 

St Augustine had horrifically sensual dreams,...however, enlightened ones do not dream,...they woke from the dream, even while sleeping.

 

For those who suggest they are lucid in dreams while sleeping, why aren't they lucid while so-called awake in the illusion?

 

If someone is really lucid, are they lucid in the dreams they are having while they are so-called awake? Or do they "think" their subconscious is only active while the sleep,...as if there are no stars overhead in the daytime.

 

V

[chi 2012]

I just remembered that I read about the guy who recorded his dreams in a book called "How to believe in Nothing and Set yourself free" buy a guy named Michael Misita. http://www.scribd.com/esdfs/d/39063815-Misita-How-to-Believe-in-Nothing-and-Set-Yourself-Free This is an awesome book by the way. Here is what he wrote:

 

Almost one hundred years since the publication of Freud's classic "Interpretation of Dreams," dream work is receiving widespread recognition as a valuable technique for learning more about the self rather than being dismissed as merely phantasms of the sleeping brain. For example, there are professional dream organizations; movies with dream themes are raking in millions; bookstore shelves are filled with dream books, and magazine articles on working with dreams have become almost monthly fare.

 

During the passionate embrace of altered-state-of-consciousness work in the 1960s, one study paid a young man a full-time salary to record his dreams over the span of a year. He settled into a small mobile home and set out to record his nightly encounters. With some practice, he was recording up to one hundred pages of material a day. What became incredibly clear was that the source of his nightly excursions was the experience of awareness.

 

A particular form of dreaming, lucid dreaming, offers us a direct link to the experience of pure consciousness. The ultimate self-awareness experience in sleep is knowing you are dreaming while you are dreaming, yet this is but another bridge to even higher levels of consciousness.

 

Although dreams are the psyche's deepest imagery generating system, we can also benefit through the conscious application of imagery experienced in creative visualization. Jeanne Achterberg, president of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology, draws a line from the image to the immune system to support a neurological relationship between the image and the body's maintenance of health. Pointing to the central role of emotions in both imagery and disease, she states, "Verbal messages must undergo translation by the imagery system before they can be understood by the involuntary or autonomic nervous system and related components. "