The Art of Dreaming

[soulatom]

orbsycli said:

I've found that people who face their fears do not have nightmares.

Interesting...I have never met anyone who did not have nightmares. (I am not saying they are not out there). To live a life free of fear...hmmmm

Such a useful tool. The whole reptilian brain thing comes to mind and the idea that you can erase fear from the chemistry of the biology of the body. Those are survival responses imbedded deep within us.

Psychic fear comes for me with a whole lot of opportunites. Without that fear I think that I would drift into a sluggish state of awareness. Untill I reach a state of awakeness somewhat like I have heard MM talk about, I think I'll play with my fear. How we deal with that challenge, as you say in "people who face their fears don't have nightmares", is the one of the huge keys to the secrets of enlightenment.

Fear....multifaceted....requires deeper thought....

[piper]

strictlyplatonic said:

The thing about nightmares, most of mine are with me dying and the usual cause of this is some form of asphyxiation. I'm a claustrophobic so are my dreams just a manifistation of this fear?

Hi TD. I had an amazing dream one night. Terrifying but Far Out!
I appeared in the dream as this little shpae about an inch high. I was facing a panel, like in a court of law setting of all of my arch enemiessitting on the bench confronting me, I mean the personas in my life whom I most dreaded. I wanted to cut and run. I had this itty bitty sword in my hand. The figures loomed dark and menacingly above me, the room seemed to vibrate with the low hum of death and despair and FEAR......I wanted to run, I wanted to hide, at the same time I was so ashamed of being such a coward but unable to fathom doing anything else. My shame started to grow and as it grew so did my courage. I waved my little flimsy sword and as I did the figures seemed to twitch or shrink ever so slightly. I wanted to run figuring I had done enough Shame...guilt...courage...ok, I wielded my weapon again, each time I did the figures grew smaller. Then I summoned every bit of my strength and I just blew up like Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movie (great scene) and I towered above all in the room. They just dissolved into a wisp of gry smoke and kind of dissipated into the air. It was amazing I just hung there this tremendous sense of power so pure and so free. Then a funny thing happened. I realized simultaneously that I was behind the row of figures that had so terrified me and I was watching myself and this whole drama happening before me like a Shakespearean Play playing out at the Old Globe Theater. I had literally been behind the whole thing.
What a revelation and what an entertaining show.

[Trivium515]

strictlyplatonic said:

The thing about nightmares, most of mine are with me dying and the usual cause of this is some form of asphyxiation. I'm a claustrophobic so are my dreams just a manifistation of this fear?

Also, in almost every dream I've had (that I can remember) the dream centers on some sort of conflict, whether it be an argument or real physical violence, mostly the latter. Moslty its all in a medieval type of setting, this I believe due to my love for that time. Again, is this an influence from my internal self or outer influences, i.e. family and such?

What are your nightmares about usually, Quicksilver?

TD

I have faced my fears as much as I can without doing something crazy, but still the nightmares come.
They are mostly about death, not my death but just someone dead. Sounds stupid I know… I am not fond of dead things to say the least, but I know they are irrational fears, death is a natural thing, I just want to rid myself of these morbid dreams!!

Maybe it has something to do with my waking hours? Things I watch? Things I read?

[Magnet Man]

quicksilver said:

I have faced my fears as much as I can without doing something crazy, but still the nightmares come.
They are mostly about death, not my death but just someone dead. Sounds stupid I know… I am not fond of dead things to say the least, but I know they are irrational fears, death is a natural thing, I just want to rid myself of these morbid dreams!!

Maybe it has something to do with my waking hours? Things I watch? Things I read?

In all my years I have never had a single dream about death, so I am not quite sure how to guide you on this one.

There is a religious sect... Ananda Margo..I think it is ..that sends its members alone into a graveyard to sit on a grave and meditate all night long on death. If they have a human skull handy, they use that as well. The objective of course is to transcend phsyical death and see what lies beyond it.
Maybe you can try it in your next death dream and therby get beyond those nightmares and dream of flying or going to Disneyland instead.

[TarotDragon]

admin said:

There is a religious sect... Ananda Margo..I think it is ..that sends its members alone into a graveyard to sit on a grave and meditate all night long on death. If they have a human skull handy, they use that as well. The objective of course is to transcend phsyical death and see what lies beyond it.

Whoa, that's some pretty weird stuff. What religion do these people belong to?

About your dream, piper, what do you mean you were behind the whole thing?

TD

[soulatom]

strictlyplatonic said:

admin said:

There is a religious sect... Ananda Margo..I think it is ..that sends its members alone into a graveyard to sit on a grave and meditate all night long on death. If they have a human skull handy, they use that as well. The objective of course is to transcend phsyical death and see what lies beyond it.

It's not that wierd you know. I grew up accross the street from a graveyard, I mean it was a little dirt road and accross from our lawn was the "The Graveyard" As kids we had that sort of experience. We hung out in the graveyard all the time and it made me very conscious of death. It made me conscious of the difference between a body being put in the ground and the soul as a different entity. We were afraid and at the same time fascinated. I used to watch the funerals from my bedroom window which again was really wierd, but fascinating. All the black, the hearse coming down the lane the people crying. Very ritualistic. I think sitting with the dead person all night would make you come out the other side of it the next morning with a far greater grasp on the passage and mourning process. or not...... And as an added thought it would make you very aware that the soul does exist and allow you the chance to commune after it has left the body....

[Lasher]

Hi everyone... been away for awhile, glad to be back. I've actually kind of avoided this thread up until now. I don't dream. Not for the longest time. I do occasionally have something one might call dreams... but I don't know. They are so... mundane. Just tedious. Like a bad movie. Very real, yes. But in such a way that it's unreal. So lucid it's not lucid...? It doesn't feel like a dreamscape. Someone told me that maybe I should get out more, lol. That I'm stifling myself an am uninspired and that is being reflected in my subconscious. But I don't think so. I think there must be more to it, for I see beauty and inspiration all around me. Plenty of ideas and concepts coming to me... yet still my dreams remain... lack luster or non-existent. *shrug* There is a definite empty feeling when I wake up and can remember nothing... especially when my dreams used to be so very numerous and vibrant. What do you guys think?

[piper]

quote]

Whoa, that's some pretty weird stuff. What religion do these people belong to?

About your dream, piper, what do you mean you were behind the whole thing?

TD[/quote]

Sorry to take so long to get back to you TD. What I meant was that when the dream first began I was in my body which was really tiny and I was facing my foes, okay, but as the dream came to a close I had shifted position and was viewing the scene from behind my foes and was observng my reaction to my foes from behind my foes. In other words I was watching myself as myself, like an out of body experience. Yup I am just sure that about clears it up, righto? What has been your most extreme or profound dream?

[piper]

lasher said:

Hi everyone... been away for awhile, glad to be back. I've actually kind of avoided this thread up until now. I don't dream. Not for the longest time. I do occasionally have something one might call dreams... but I don't know. They are so... mundane. Just tedious. Like a bad movie. Very real, yes. But in such a way that it's unreal. So lucid it's not lucid...? It doesn't feel like a dreamscape. Someone told me that maybe I should get out more, lol. That I'm stifling myself an am uninspired and that is being reflected in my subconscious. But I don't think so. I think there must be more to it, for I see beauty and inspiration all around me. Plenty of ideas and concepts coming to me... yet still my dreams remain... lack luster or non-existent. *shrug* There is a definite empty feeling when I wake up and can remember nothing... especially when my dreams used to be so very numerous and vibrant. What do you guys think?

wow that sounds totally depressing as the dream state for me is a playground. A vacation of sorts, whether good or bad it is so full of animation and symbolism. One thing I do many a night is make a conscious request for what I would like to dream about that night before I go to sleep. sometimes if I remember someone that I haven't heard from for sometime I ask that they come and visit my dreams that night, sometimes it's a problem I have been chewing on and I just ask if there is anyone hanging around that might be able to help me out on this one, well come on down. Other times I may just have a general feeling that I would like to experience something. A wise man told me to make sure and recount my dreams in the morning, a vital exercise, and I have found that also seems to create more visual and convincing dream states. Keep us posted on how this plays out for you and what other suggestions you might encounter. I have seen on other forums some people have amazingly fantastic dreams, better than the ones I have, hmmm wonder what their secret is?

[TarotDragon]

Okay, got ya piper. i think.... ;D Ya got some pretty wierd stuff living next to a graveyard, though I do find the idea of it fascinating, all the lingering memories of those souls....

piper said:

What has been your most extreme or profound dream?

That's a difficult question to answer. There's only really two that stand out in my mind. One was like of reincarnation and the other was of dying, oddly enough.

In the first it began with me as a man and I could see myself clearly, what I looked like which was odd enough in itself because I rarely see faces clearly in my dreams. I was driving down this desert road, it looked Arizona or something, and I was leaving some one behind, like breaking up with a girlfriend or something. So I come to this steep pass, speeding along and I go around a really sharp corner and there's a gas tanker right there, I mean right there. I felt the instant terror, the stark realization that I was dead, that I didn't have a chance. Everything went black for a moment, like it does when you pass out and when I came too I was lying on the side of the road. My car was flipped over and the tanker was lying half atop it and I could hear the hiss of steam from broken radiators. Everything was so real all the sounds and the pavement under my cheek, it's like I experienced everything in the real world.
So I get up, perfectly okay, not a mark on me. I stare at the wreckage for a while wondering how I'd survived, knowing somehow that the trucker was dead without ever seeing the body. And then I walk slowly up the road, just sort of trudging on to whatever destination I was going to. I come to the top of a hill and there's a canyon by the side of the road, hundreds of feet deep and I'm looking down. Normally I'm afraid of heights, but there's nothing there now. I feel very calm because suddenly I know I can't die, I'm invincible and with this knowledge I leap from the edge of the cliff into the canyon. I don't expect to fall and I don't. My leap sends me hundred of feet forward and I land on a jut of rock that rises from the canyon floor. I don't hesitate and leap again to a similar pillar. I keep jumping along the canyon, following this pillars that are barely a foot wide at the top points and I begin laughing, reveling in the pure joy of knowing I can't die. And then something happens. I jump again, still laughing, my arms in the air and suddenly the pillar in front of me disappears and I begin falling. Then I understand something. My ego or something in believing that I could defy death is what kills me. I'm dead because I took that second chance at life and foolishly believed I'd never die. So I fall down to the canyon floor, my realization too late to save me in this lifetime and I die, everything fading to darkness before I hit the ground.
Without waking the scene returns to the canyon, this time a ledge running along the wall of the canyon, only a few feet wide, and the canyon falls down for another couple hundred feet. A man appears and I know immediately that he is the reincarnation of the man/me that had just died. This new guy is me too, but I'm watching while I'm playing out this new role. Anyway, don't know what the guy/me is doing until he comes to a place where the canyon walls are only twenty feet apart and the ledges that run along each wall are only ten feet apart. Anyway, I come upon this woman and she's got like six or seven kids with her, all like six years old. She's on the opposite side I'm on and is trying to get to my side. Its to far to jump so I tell her to stay put while I try and find something to help them across. I climb over this boulder and see this little path. I follow it for a few moments and see it leads up a hill and out of the canyon. So I turn back to go tell the woman this. As I'm heading down I notice there's a mouse watching me from a piece of lava rock along the side of the path. I think its strange because it is so very distinct and the mouse doesn't run away. But I keep going and as I'm walking I change into my waking self. I'm no longer the man, I am me. This isn't unsettling, very natural feeling in fact.
I make it back to the woman and find she has made it across the canyon with the children. I tell her of the way and motion her to follow me. But as we walk, the children seem to fade away and dissipate in number. This doesn't seem to bother the woman or myself. We come to that place where the mouse was and I notice, without stopping, that a rattlesnake is swallowing the mouse from behind. The mouse is still, but somehow I feel it is still alive. Everything is clear, the way the snake's jaw extends to encompass more of the mouse, the way the fangs glisten alongside the mouse's body. A shiver runs down my spine, but I keep walking. We come to where the path goes up the hill and as soon as I set foot upon it, the woman and the rest of the children totally fade away, like dust on a soft breeze. I don't look back, just feeling that their presence is gone and go up the hill. It ends in a vast cliff that tumbles far farther down than the canyon ever did. Desert land stretches away, flat and beautiful as far as the eye can see. But I don't see it because there's something in the sky. Floating at the level of my eyes, but a mile away, is my family. They have their arms out like they're trying to fly like a bird, but they're not moving, just... floating. I want to go to them, I know I can. I know all I have to do is just jump and I'll fly like them. But I look back, looking for the woman and for a moment, I feel her and I understand something. She was an angel and she was there with the children to lead me here, to show me the way out of the canyon. I smile and send out a silent thank you. I turn back to my floating family and take a running leap off the edge. I jump several hundred feet and then begin to fall. I feel a moment of panic and then something like an air current wafts under me and lifts me back up. I realize this is what my family has discovered and I feel such joy in discovering it also, that I'm able to be with them. I strike out like a champion swimmer, breast-stroking my way towards my mom in particular, but a warning in my heart makes me look back. There, on the cliff is my youngest, younger, and older brother standing on the ledge. I look back to my floating family and then back to my brothers. I know I cannot join the rest until they are with me. So I go back, flinging myself from the air current and back to the ledge. I pick up my youngest brother in my arms and make to run and leap from the edge because I know he's too small to make it the leap on his own. At the last minute, the older stops me, takes him from my arms, and throws him into the current where he is gathered up by the family. I make to take my jump again, but I stop because my two other brothers aren't following me. I turn to look at them and notice that they're turning to go back into the canyon. I feel fear and call to them to wait, But they start heading down and I cant understand why they wont come with me, why they want to go back down into that valley of... death. And I can't go with everyone else until they're with me and I reach out my hand to my brothers.....
And then I wake up. I'm not sure what it all means, maybe nothing, but I find it strange that some things were just so clear. Like the certainty I couldn't die and then the dying, the rebirth that turned into me. The certainty that the woman was an angel, the vividness of the mouse scenario, the way my brothers turned away from joining the family, the knowledge that the canyon was some sort of death.
I don't know. Could be nothing, just some neurotic idea that popped into my head.

Peace all,
TD

[Jupiter]

Hey TD, off topic here but are you like into tarot readings and stuff? Might be cool if you could do readings on the forum here some how??

[Lasher]

strictlyplatonic said:

That's a difficult question to answer. There's only really two that stand out in my mind. One was like of reincarnation and the other was of dying, oddly enough.

That is a pretty amazing dream TD. What a journey. Great recall too... do you write them down usually to be able to remember them so vividly?

Something MM once said kind of rang true for me, and I thought about it a lot. Sometimes I think dreams are not meant to be analyzed... That they are simply a way for one to experience situations, emotions, reactions, states of mind that you would never experience in our reality... this dimension. Like a virtual reality or a parallel life. Where else could you experience what it's like to fly or translocate. Then of course you can live through in a dream what you may have not yet dealt with in life... like the death of a loved one or the violence of an accident or falling in love, for that matter. It's like a crash course in life lessons before you've lived them.

Then sometimes, like in your dream TD, you can sense the presence of metaphor and symbolism... Like there really is deeper meaning and message then just what seems to be on the surface. Like the angel and the children... or your brothers. Or even you being a man, and being reincarnated. I don't know. A helluva experience anyway!

Piper, I'll definitely keep you posted on the dreamfront. So far still nothing. Last night though, I woke up in the middle of the night and as I was lying there, I started to think about dreams, even though I still wasn't having any. I recalled one in particular that I had some time ago. Definitely rates up there as one of my coolest dreams ever. One of my flying dreams. Not free flying... I was in a fighter jet. Over the ocean, no land in sight on any horizon. Night. Full moon. By starlight. The stars reflecting perfectly in the water... so it seemed almost as if the sky was all around me. No lights in the cockpit, and no sound. The windshield itself seemed to almost surround me. Just complete freedom of power and speed. Absolutely incredible feeling of elation and freedom and simultaneously of adrenaline and peace. Wild.

Cheers
Lasher

[TarotDragon]

Hey, Jupiter,
To answer your question, I don't know. I'm an amatuer at it right now, only done a little. Don't know how it would turn out, especially over the internet.

To Lasher:
I don't know. maybe I was just trying to experience different scenarios, but I don't think so. There was just some stuff that was just too weird. Like in the beginning, when I was jumping around. I knew as I was falling to my death that I was dying because I defied a higher power than me. Is that just a subconscious thought of mine, that I believe in a higher power and don't cross it?

And with my family floating in the air. It wasn't flying. For some reason their was a stark distinction in my mind between floating and flying. That was very strange for me, that there was the distinction. I don't know why but that was very clear.

And the whole rattlesnake eating the mouse was just weird. But me being a guy wasn't.

TD

[piper]

strictlyplatonic said:

The thing about nightmares, most of mine are with me dying and the usual cause of this is some form of asphyxiation. I'm a claustrophobic so are my dreams just a manifistation of this fear?
TD

Hey TD, you know I just reread those dreams you had.....that was intense. I would say that alot of interptretation could come out of that. I wouldn't know where to begin, but really good stuff. something you could go back and read over and over again as life progresses.
You know I am claustrophobic and in pastlife regression therapy I encountered an incident where I was walking along and a rock or cement wall crumbled on me....go figure

[MagnetMan]

There are 3 states of consciousness.
Waking
Dreaming
Deep sleep

Each has a different heart rate; brain wave; different lactation of the skin.

Deep sleep is the most interesting. What happens to consciousness? Where does it go?

Dreaming is consciousness traveling in the astral plane. Mostly we visit it's boring suburbs - but now and then the real deal. Flying is the berries. Big ego trip for me.

In one flying dream there was a small indoor arena filled with big shots, all dressed up to the tees - in tuxedos and evening gowns. I was in the wings, about to give a performance. I had no idea what I was going to do to amuse them.

Suddenly I shot out into the arena. I flew standing stiffly vertical, in military attention. I was about fifty feet above the floor, on level with the top tiers, doing a hundred miles an hour. I did one circuit and exited. The audience was stunned. It was absolutely neat, simple and precise. Over before they had time to catch their breath. Pure theater. My best show to date.

Now about that deep sleep. I have a theory.

I lived in cave once, for nine months. For the first five months I wrestled with my reasons for being there. After five months I gave up and simply lived. Nowhere to go, nothing to do. All the tension and struggle left me. I was simply happy to be where I was.

Then one night I did not fall asleep. I worried that I might be all wound up the next day. But felt fine. Next night the same sleeplessness. Again I though I would pay for it the next day. Again felt fine. Third night I stopped worrying about and just lay there in the dark, listening to the bats fly in and out,

Upshot of it is that I never fell asleep for the next three moths - not until I left the cave and went back into society. I then started to sleep about an hour a night , then three and after about five years, the full eight.

My conclusion: The tensions and demands of life exhaust our consciousness. As a resident monk in the Thai monastery where my cave was located, the local islanders gave me food every morning. In return I cleaned and looked after the monastery grounds. I had zero life tensions. No need to recharge myself. No need for sleep.

Deep sleep takes us past the astral, into the etheric plane where our souls are recharged. The etheric is an advanced plane of consciousness, guarded by an awesome sound barrier. No memories are brought back from it - possibly because once there, consciousness simply is absorbed in itself.