Thursday, December 13, 2018

Lucid Dream Work

13 Dec 2018 - I took a dream class through the Seth Institute last April and have been recording and interpreting my dreams on and off since then and experimenting with various types of dream work. I have recorded up to seven or eight dreams in one nights, though when I am on a roll nowadays, I try to limit my dream recording to the one dream each night that I *think* might be the most significant (something that in reality is not possible to do because I find that the simplest of dreams can lead to profound interpretations).

However, I also find that when I travel or when I am burdened with my day-to-day waking work, that I often will not record any dreams at all because I am too tired to either remember them or to wake up to write them down. I don't worry about this, because eventually I will get a dream that knocks at my sleeping mind's door loud enough to get me to record it on the tablet that I always keep by the side of my bed.

I really enjoyed the April class and more recently I listened to a series of interviews from the DreamWork Summit, which were initially free, but now cost money to access. That peaked my interest in lucid dreaming, which was covered toward the end of the class that I took, and which has occasionally worked for me (see my 30 July 2017 post for an example). I downloaded a few Kindle book samples on lucid dreaming, and I ended up buying one of them, partly because it was only $0.99 cents.

The book is: "How to Master Lucid Dreaming: Your practical guide to unleashing the power of lucid dreaming" by Sean Kelly. The first assignment in that book is to write you goals for the next two weeks and to *share them* somehow. See here are my goals (mostly copied from the book) shared with the world here on my blog...
  1. Remember 1+ dream per night on average over the next 2 weeks
  2. Write down my dreams every morning upon waking
  3. Update this blog with my progress (below)
  4. Get 6+ hours of sleep every night for the next 2 week
  5. Post these goals, and maybe some version of my dreams on my blog
  6. Select a new Reality Check item each day and Do Reality Checks throughout the days when encountering the item or anything else that seems odd 
So there it is. I have now done my first homework assignment! - and have updated it as the days go by...

entrance to the Beer Club in Hanoi, Vietnam
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Dream Progress

I have already been recording dreams since April -- close to about 200 of them so far. So recording and interpreting my dreams is not knew. How I am doing it with the new method is new, however. The main difference is that what I record now is very short with limited interpretation. But because of that, I am writing down more of them each night.

Here are the number of dreams that I have recorded so far:
12/13 - 3 dreams
12/14 - 4 dreams - I was flying around the world with my granddaughter in the first one

Starting 12/15 I am to pick a Daily Reality Check (DRC) item, which I will do a Reality Check each time I encounter the item selected. In addition, I am to do Reality Checks whenever something strange occurs and at other random intervals that I set. So the following dreams show what my DRC is, as well.

12/15 - 3 dreams - the last one was food related and so I made "food" my DRC item - I did a terrible job at remembering this one, however
12/16 - 3 dreams - the last one was about driving, so I made driving my car my DRC item
12/17 - 2 dreams - last one was a of ball of lights, mostly white with a few colors, unrelated I made looking out a window my DRC item, and the first thing I saw out a window was Venus glowing through a skylight this morning
12/18 - 2 dreams - both were related to projects I am working on these days are work. My DRC item is opening my thermos to either add to or drink what is in it today.
12/19 - 3 dreams - all different, but also each was very clear. Repeating the DRC item from yesterday.
12/20 - 4 dreams - busy night - two with very long entries - one with a long interpretation - one very lucid. DRC item for today is my cell phone - I will do a DRC each time I open and look at my phone
12/21 - 2 dreams - neither was long - my DRC item for today is Passing through a building entrance doorway
12/22 - 5 dreams (very busy) - a couple quite long, one fairly lucid, though with a lot of distractions - will try the same DRC again, as I did not remember to do it well yesterday
12/23 - 1 dream only recalled last night - new DRC is when I pick up something to drink
12/24 - 0 dreams recalled last night, and that is OK - new DRC is each time I sit/stand at my desktop computer today
12/25 - 2 dreams, both about Christmas - new DRC is when I see a decorated Christmas tree
12/26 - 3 dreams, no new DRC
12/27 - 3 dreams, all three were dreams about dreaming - new, and permanent DRC is whenever something occurs that is strange or out of the ordinary
12/28 - 3 dreams, all related to my work place, and two of which were very detailed - continuing same DRC as the day before
12/29 - 8 dreams, varying degrees of lucidity and detail.

After 16 days I am finished with my Lucid Dream Work book assignment. This is my last update of this blog post. For $0.99 cents, the  "How to Master Lucid Dreaming" book by Sean Kelly was worthwhile. I was never able to get a good grasp of the Daily Reality Check items that I selected, and I gave up in the end. I found that the Wake Back To Sleep technique (not discussed in the Kelly book) works better for me, personally. (I should note that the reason the Kelly book is 99 cents is because, while giving quite a bit of useful information, it is also very short and is essentially an advertisement for his online lucid dreaming classes.)

Recently, like this past week, I was introduced to Jurgen Ziewe through the Buddha at the Gas Pump interview podcast (https://batgap.com/jurgen-ziewe/). Since that Batgap interview, I have listed to about a half dozen videos of Jurgen discussing his Out of Body Experience (OBE) that he has recorded for over 40 years. He has written three books based on his records. For me, at this point in time, he is the most insightful person on the topic of dreaming. The reason I had 8 dreams last night was because I was using meditation more to bring about dream recall and lucidity. This is what Jurgen does -- he sees lucid dreaming as a by product of meditation, which I can identify with, given my own long history of meditation practice. So, I strongly suggest checking out Jurgen Ziewe, if this is something you are interested in (for example, see his three part video series on OBEs: https://vimeo.com/19830435

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Every situation is God Sent



Every situation is God Sent. 
With this supreme wisdom of life any situation can be used to our advantage and regarded as a blessing of Mother Nature.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Quotes


There is no good or bad, no sacred or evil, at the level of absolute being and pure consciousness in the moment point of here and now. Good and bad only come into existence when we assign those meanings, based on our beliefs, to phenomena as they become experienced in the state of relative, corporeal reality. This teaching cuts across Buddhism, Taoism, Jane Roberts/Seth and Vedic literature. If anything, all phenomena and experiences are fundamentally good, true and sacred in their source.

And yet, it seems that this is the hardest truth to understand and communicate to those who seem to only know a corporeal/physical reality formed by mass beliefs that are reinforced through all forms of officially accepted institutions and media. Ram Dass has a photo of Donald Trump on his alter, next to a statue of Hanuman and photos of his guru, Maharajji, to demonstrate and try and teach this idea to others. While I am not willing to go that far, I do find that President Trump offers an opportunity for deep reflection on the nature of reality, even though the few people I have mentioned this to tend think I am crazy.

More difficult still, is understanding how pain, suffering and death also have origins that are beyond goodness and badness, and which can be a "blessing of Mother Nature."  Buddhist stories talk of enlightened monks who have reaches such a state of consciousness, and the other traditions listed above also seek to guide their students toward that state of being. I felt that the simple quote from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is one of the better reminders of this deep truth, which is so easy to forget.

One of my favorite quotes from Seth (Jane Roberts) that is related to this is: "Creativity often parades under the guise of disruption." This, of course, also contains the idea that every situation that we are presented with is a blessing, if we approach it with the right attitude. Maharishi says that as long we keep the goal in sight (for him the goal is enlightenment), then even when we seem to be facing obstacles or going in the opposite direction, we should understand these as temporary deviations, and we will succeed.

Another related, but longer, Seth (Jane Roberts) quote is: "There is nothing in your exterior experience that you did not originate within yourself. Interactions with others do occur, yet none occur what you do not attract or draw to you by your thoughts, feelings, attitudes or emotions. In your terms this applies both before, during and after physical life. In a most miraculous fashion you are given the gift of creating your own experiences."

This quote represents a fundamental teaching of Seth that is only a little different from Maharishi -- for Seth we are all expressions or appendages of "all that is" (what Maharishi calls "god"), and he has even said that we are "gods in training". For Seth, every situation is created by our inner self (or inner ego) which expresses the beliefs of our outer ego (or conscious self). In this way, every situation is an opportunity to understand our selves (our beliefs). In doing this, we can then change our beliefs and the situations (realities) that we encounter (or create). Our inner and outer egos, our conscious and subconscious selves, our past, present and future selves, are all, in total, our god in a state of becoming. When our outer ego (one small, but important part of this totality) realizes or experiences this, then all situations are a blessing of existence. 

Bali from Lombok, Indonesia, at sunset

Note: From what I have been told, Maharishi talked about "god" more in the early years when he originally formed the Spiritual Regeneration Movement (SRM) in the late 1950s. As he spent more time in the west, however, he talked less about god and more about "science". The quote above is the only one in the book of quotes that it comes from that has the word "god" in it.