onebir

I don't think he's a fraud. But I'm not sure he's selective enough approving people to teach his material - in part thanks to the huge industry he's spawned. And I think the material in his books would be difficult to learn correctly on your own - at best many years work, at worst somewhat dangerous (there's some debate about "chi-packing" here somewhere).

Haven't managed to read this whole thread, so apologies if it's mentioned above, but there's a chapter in "The Head Trip" about sleeping in two shifts.

I read it a while back so don't remember the details, but thought the book as a whole was very interesting. I'm looking forward to the commoditisation of neurofeedback technology (nearly there, but with a few glitches, in Neurosky's products.)

Thank you for your exposition.... maybe the pains were just supersensibility, to touch, and listening, etc...

I've also noticed some previously mild sensations can become unpleasant during meditation (& some other experiences).

very nicely explained the time perception.. really makes sense... it happens also when I take ayahuasca.

I came across this theory on an ayahuasca forum in the writings of redgreenvines; he called it 'framing'. But I think the Buddhism includes a similar concept (which I've unfortunately forgotten the name of :s). In an extreme form, the world can appear to stop. (Or maybe it does stop? This happened to me once, and shocked me so much that I put it out of my mind and didn't mention it to anyone for a decade.)

any way... my next experience will come here some time... so i'll be afraid again....

Practicing equanimity through unpleasant circumstances may help; I think this is one reasons vipassana meditation emphasises it so much. Otherwise reactions to odd experiences & stirred up emotions can prevent progress...

maybe by continuing my ractice the experiences will start to happen more and more often... till the point that I will be more conscious of my fear... if they happen with too much of a space of time between them.. I kind of forget about the eperience of fear...

cheers..

Been trying to figure out how I fly in dreams. I think it's sometimes superman style - without extended arm - & sometimes carpetless flying carpet style

In one dream I was flitting about like the angels in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' - but giggling all the time. For the next couple of days I couldn't help giggling when ever I thought about it. I have no idea WTF that was all about, but it was actually the best fun I'd had in a long time.

(Which is in a way quite a sad thing, come to think of it... )

Slightly annoying web design but some useful info here

 

LD4all

Thanks - interesting stuff. (You're right about the web design tho - what were they thinking! EDIT:

The way LD4all looks comes directly from a lucid dream. Previous versions have also always been called forth in a lucid dream.

[quote name='White Wolf Running On Air' date='03 June 2012 - 03:30 AM'

Most folks don't seem to recognize dreaming or 'astral projection' etc as valid for spiritual development in my experience // or perhaps it is difficult to comment on such

more of a shamanic path?

for myself I believe they are quite important

showing us what we are unable to process in our waking state + we are able to experience things this reality doesn't allow easily eg: flying

I'm a bit torn about how much attention to pay to them

how awesome is flying! haha

I find the happier I am the easier it is to fly? love has wings?

It's great, but I haven't noticed a happiness link...

I suppose one would have to ask- what does one want out of such interaction? what is the aim?

Indeed, and how to direct it towards any aim, when most of the time you don't realise your dreaming...

The gangster dream is fun.

It was pretty scary. It turns out someone I knew from the forum about the treatment I'm going through died in the last few days. He was quite young and we think his death was due to the hospital doctors denying him the medication we're using. (The therapy was developed by a biology professor, not a medical doctor, & is unconventional in several respects, so it's very hard to get clinicians - who've been taught they know everything

- to follow it.)

It's helpful on the inner journey to remember that we're all Victims of Victims of Victims - so we needn't get too hung up in too much blame for very long

So true, and a very relevant to my current feelings. But easier said than done eh...

In both the gangster dream and the dream where the white dog is looking in the window, both indicate that you're waiting or watching for something to come at you. Initially you were afraid, in both cases - both with the dog and with the gangsters. Your feelings of regret at not having been friendlier to the dog (perhaps alluding here to your relationship with your father?)

Funnily enough, my Dad shaves pretty much every day, but recently one day he didn't. I was surprised to see his white stubble. So perhaps indeed, he was looking in on my darkness...

are matched by your later willingness to go to McDonalds with the gangster, overcoming your fear to some degree.

My perception was that there was nothing left to fear. They'd been gripped by a kind of paranoia, and I could feel it was over.

It sounds to me as if you have something coming up to deal with;

I think the world is about to spiral into a deeper economic and political crisis; I need to make some preparations for this. I also have to start moving on in some ways.

perhaps something to do with your fear of mental instability in some way. I don't think the appearance of that particular friend with the mental illness was an accident.

Mental instability, mainly in the form of lassitude, and anxiety, has been a great obstacle for me.

It's as though the fellow with the football is inviting you to 'play' the game - particularly with the special ball 'for indoor use'. This means that you will be playing on your inner field.

I've also realised the ball was double-wrapped in opaque and transparent layers: similar to medicine packaging (eg box and blister pack)... And many pills are oval with a short code or word written on them.

So this may (also?) be a reference to medicine. (I've seen the effects decades of anti-psychotics etc have had on that friend: as far as I can tell a modest reduction in symptoms with no long-term improvement.)

Thanks for dropping by and commenting, BTW - it's much appreciated

Sure you can consciously develop lucid dreaming ... there's techniques for this.

I'll have to look into that

You now have a personal practice thing! Bottom of long list in that section.

Thanks!

I've had spontaneous lucid dreams ... usually when something is happening energetically ...

There's another kind? :s

Do you want a personal practice forum ... I can set one up for you to record stuff like this if you want.

Maybe that'd be better - thanks!

Hehe - I knew it was boring

3/6/12 AM. I was walking around in a city (can't figure out where) and started flying. I was enjoying flying, and flew into a park (not the park near where I'm living) and flew around inside. The few people saw me were surprised and one asked me why I was able to fly. I didn't know. Then the grass in the park started to slope down. I thought I'd just fly a bit lower to be on the safe side, but ended up landing (& waking up).

I can remember some lucid dreams, where I've deliberately gone flying, but not many non-lucid ones like this...

I felt pain in several places of my body, and my breath was completely suspended, I thought that I could die at any moment so I thought to myself "ok... enough for today".. an came back to my body...

You could feel pain AND couldn't feel breathing? When I've had similar experiences, my impression has been one of losing access to feelings in my physical body which eventually get replaced by feelings from the dream body (generally sketchy, occasionally remarkably 'real')...

But it's also possible that your speed of perception increased & your breathing was insignificant over the time-frames you were perceiving in. (It seems like perception occurs in frames or chunks of ~1/20s & we assemble these in a part of the brain that can get suspended during meditation & other non-normal states.)

I would like some advice... do you think that I should "go for it" next time.. and... even though I feel pain.. I should continue my experience and "run towards death" maybe using some mantras ou MCO to energise even more my energetic body? Is this feeling of dying an illusion?

My experience (so far ) is that the feeling of dying is an illusion. But 'going for it' may not help you - it might just jolt you out of what's happening. My suggestion would be to just try to observe and stay calm.

After a relatively dream-free 40ish years, I'm suddenly getting quite a few. Risking boring the hell out of everyone, I'd like to report them & related non-events.

Dream, 25/5/12 2am GMT, recorded ~12pm (noon) GMT 25/5

I was in a large open plan room in a house. It was quite dark - the lights weren't working properly. My mood was gloomy and a little frightened - I don't know why. I went to do the washing up at a sink/workshop in the corner of the room & saw a face at the window. Somehow even though the room was dark it was illuminated by a shaft of light from the room.

 

It was a very large, white dog - not white like a polar bear, but like a husky (or perhaps an alsatian with white fur where they normally have yellow fur). I'm not a dog person and this initially scared me. But it didn't seem aggressive and walked off into the garden when I shooed it away.

 

Afterwards I had the feeling that the dog was trying to help me, and regretted shooing it away.

I remembered a certain taobum with a relevant nickname had checked my profile & felt a strange urge to contact him. I waited a few days and pm'd him. It turns out he'd had a dream of being outside a house, with a vague impression of a piano. There's a piano in my living room.

So far, so inconclusive. Then he reported a dream about a frog:

30/5/12: Last night I had a dream of a black and green poison dart frog; someone was showing me how to use the poison so that it would act to rejuvenate / heal

 

This person took the skin off the live frog. I was horrified, disgusted in such treatment. The man reassured me the frog would be ok. I watched the frog and it did quickly regenerate

This had some significance to me at the time:

31/5/12: i sit 'on a lotus' during meditation

- i squat in about as froglike a posture as possible after meditating until my feet & calves wake up

- i sometime go to sleep in supta baddha konasana, and my ex-gf once said i looked like a frog...

- i 'shed' my social skin - quit my career, & the country i'd lived in for decades

- the treatment i'm using involves 'immunopathology': a temporary (but quite sustained) worsening of some symptoms due to stimulation of the immune response. so in a sense, although it's not strictly poisonous, it can feel that way...

Perhaps I also need to 'lose my venom' to rejuvenate.

And then:

31/6/12: I'm in the middle of a (something like) a gangster feud. Literally everyone is trying to kill everyone else with knives. I find a strange black L-shaped bunker/hollow, with steps to the left and a slope ahead of me, and hunker down in the corner. I only have to watch three or four angles.

 

Periodically faces peer over the top, or at the end of the slope. I'm sharpening my knife on the dark spongy rock. They leave me alone.

 

The war quietens down & I go to a Macdonalds (-like place) with two of them for coffee(!) One reminds me of a friend of my parents who's had schizophrenia/OCD for decades. He has a gift for me, in a white carrier bag. Inside another transparent plastic bag is an American football. But it's way too big, too elongated like a cartoon version, and soft and foam-filled like a toy, and has the Penn tennis brand logo (http://www.cambridgetennisclub.org/TF_Links.htm) - but in burgundy, blue and cream.

 

(Which I discovered are the Penn State colours...)

 

He wants me to take it. I tell him I've never played American football. Anyway, it's a special one for indoor use...

My interpretation: the present situation presents great risks. But I am not a specific target and can avoid them by confining their possible angles of approach, and staying vigilant. I must spend this time preparing myself. The world will eventually become safer, but will remain basically insane. The will offer gifts to tempt me. They will be exaggerated, commercial, and tawdry - but ultimately harmless.

I had a couple more fragmentary ones this morning. The gist of one was to be nicer to my Dad, but I've forgotten the details already.

yes General Discussion prob the best place

General discussion it is. (WWROA you've seen 'em...)

I should perhaps add that the old man was Morihei Ueshiba Sensei.

 

Here is Terry's website:-

 

http://www.terrydobson.com/index.html

Risking thread hijacking, I have a vaguely similar story. I was walking on a street in China and saw two Uighur youths. Uighurs are a Muslim minority that faces a lot of discrimination from Han Chinese. I had have quite a bit of sympathy for them, but outside Xinjiang they're often involved in street crime. And true to the stereotype one of them was trying to grab a very old lady's purse from her bag.

It was actually a little comical - he was tall and she was tiny, so he had to walk stealthily behind her with his knees bent. Also inconguous: there were a lot of people around (as usual in Chinese cities) but no-one was paying any attention.

I have no known fighting ability, no-one was likely to intervene if a fight broke out, the youths were likely carrying knives. I didn't want the old lady to lose her wallet, and I didn't want the Uighurs to get arrested. I'd seen one arrested nearby and there was excessive use of force (which I hadn't tried to prevent).

I was quite conflicted and tagging along behind for a minute. Then without really knowing what I'd do next I walked up next to the pickpocketing youth and for some reason said "Hello kid, how're you doing? What're are you doing there" (你好小朋友，你怎么样？你干什么呢？) The term I used for kid 小朋友 (little friend) is only used by adults talking to little kids, and this created enough comedy that his mate cracked up. This distracted the pickpocket, and he gave up. That was lucky.

Edit: thinking back, I realise that the precise reason I did intervene was that the youths didn't carry a lower energy. I addressed them as children because they seemed playful like children. So this post was actually quite off-topic. Ah well...

I've had a few odd ones, particularly recently. Where would be a good place to post about them (if that's 'on topic' enough to be ok)?

Hello, I'm living in the mountains on Cebu Is.,Philippine & go to the West coast of America from June/Sept.

I think I read there's a Daoist temple in Cebu (EDIT: yes, there is.)

And (based entirely on documentaries I vaguely remember) seem to be a lot of other mystical (/fraudulent) practices etc going on in the Philippines. Have you personally come across anything interesting?

I was going to suggest that it might be related to your habitual focus on the upper lip; however, I have no idea why that would result in the imagery you mention.

Funny thing is, I think vipassana uses that point precisely because it's unlikely to cause weirdness. At one vipassana course I did a student mentioned to the teacher that sensations in his third eye were tending to draw his attention up to it, and she told him to bring it back down.

I never understood the notion of placing the mind in the dantian, wasn't something I could make work for me, even though I did practice judo for a number of years and did a lot of sitting in the half-lotus. What I found out was, the mind at the dantian does happen, sometimes consistently, but I can't make that the subject of my practice.

It's not the easiest spot to focus on. It helps to have pants with an elasticated waistband (won't find that in the meditation manuals ) and/ a sense of the pulse in the abdomen (which I now discover is a symptom of 'Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm'. :s Thanks google, you've made my day...)

I hope I did it correctly, I was somewhat surprized that my mind moved around quite a bit. not fast, but in slow motion the awareness would shift, from left cheek to right side of torso etc. The end result was a light sleep state, but I was glued to the bed and then woke up exactly at 6AM, feeling refreshed like I had a complete 8 hours of sleep.'

...

A more complete description of the practice under the title "waking up and falling asleep" is here.

OK - so it's following where the mind happens to be aware of the body, but not trying to focus on a particular point? That's also a vipassana going to sleep practice - which I haven't been doing. Perhaps there's a reason they recommend it!

One of the three worlds Monroe ended up in involved a higher power or deity that came by every now and then, and everyone had to lie down so that the deity could walk across their stomachs- maybe that was really dantians? Fascinating imagery.

Sounds quite funny - but perhaps it wasn't in the context of the experience?

Same night/day...

You mean 28th May?

I didn't have a nightmare for many years, but this felt like one. Whatever initiated this - probably not a good idea to try and break through barriers like that during sleep.

It can be a bit disturbing...

I shifted to the dantian meditation based on astralc's dantian observations & suggestions that I'd been concentrating too high up - in the hope of taming (or even eliminating) these phenomena...

I have had similar experiences. The imagery wasn't even that shocking, it simply came on so suddenly, and as soon as I reacted to it, it disappeared. It would come back shortly, but the cycle would repeat.

I think a significant amount of "surrender" is useful with this. I tried to relax into the imagery (a woven basket spinning like a gyroscope), yet the experience dissipates. Hypnogogia was a fascination of mine, but recently I've been focusing more on dream yoga and lucidity in waking life, and eventually in the dreams of sleep. OBE seem truly fascinating, as I'm sure one would have to go through hypnogogia yet remain conscious until their body is asleep and they can exit it.

This does sound very very similar!

I don't remember it cycling - and I'm glad it didn't because I think that could've been quite stressful!

I've been doing dantian meditation for about a week now. Last night I slept badly, and once again got jolted awake when psychedelic imagery started emerging (a kind of fractal mountain range, looked like it was generated by very out of date technology ).

It was much less shocking, I went back to sleep and was able to go through it into what I think was a lucid dream. (I say 'I think' because I don't recall actually thinking or realising it was a dream. However, I don't remember 'losing consciousness' as I was falling asleep. So I think there was some continuity of waking consciousness right into the dream, and the reason I didn't realise or think 'this is a dream' was simply that I already knew...)

In the dream, I was reading a book filled with paintings: wild, moving, abstract art. And listening to beautiful synchronised music.

I can't remember the last time I looked at an art book (years ago at least) & for the most part I find music annoying. So I guess this was my mind's workaround for the 'shock of the psychedelic hypnagogic': literally 'framing' it as something to be admired without getting scared or otherwise involved. (Now why didn't I think of that... )

The only thing I can think of being jolted awake after being on the borderline between sleep and wakefullness, is by a flash of white light. This has happened a few times. Its like a flash of lightning in a completely dark room.

Interesting. I don't think I'm at the white light stage ;-)

EDIT: thinking about why I assumed seeing a white light is 'more advanced' than seeing psychedelic imagery, I realised I was thinking about the Shulgin Scale

From Plus Two: "you still have some choice as to whether you will accept the adventure".

So I guess my reaction made it a Plus Two (minus) trip ;-)

Whenever I've had sleep paralysis its usually when I was sleeping on my back on a couch and I'd see this enormous black form with like a large wing span looming over me sucking the (fear) energy out of me...I definitely recoiled from that.. then later on I read about Carlos Castaneda's "Flyer's" and the description he gives of these interdimensional entities seems to match up with what I've experienced.

 

In my hypnogogic experiences un-desirable images are karmic traces of negative energy surfacing from the shadow of the soul, the energy vibration invoking a corresponding image unto the mind...do not entertain this image, this thought, this energy..merely observe it from the window of emptiness, and watch it dissolve back into emptiness from whence it came as myriad manifestation of the 10,000 things/desires.. energetic/subconscious aversions that are being free'd up/released being surfaced to the conscious mind..

The sleep paralysis was scary, but I felt like I 'saw it off' & there quite a few accounts of similar experiences.

Really it was the bizarre hypnogogic images I wanted to discuss here. These weren't obviously undesirable about their content (a writhing multicoloured fractal & a sea of moving cartoonish faces).

I think what shocked me about these was their psychedelic quality (bright, moving, stretching to infinity); most of my hypnogogic images are fairly hazy & dark. That just "didn't seem right".

Perhaps I just need to get used to the idea that I might occasionally get a pre-sleep acid(-free) trip...

Hi onebir, looks like you are doing fine, I wanted to illustrate the power of the dan tien to extract oneself from the dangers out there, all the best and keep doing

I've been doing vipassana for 'real-world reasons' (to help me get over a series of somewhat - but in the grand scheme of things not very - disastrous life-events & their emotional hangovers).

Unlike some of the dyed-in-the-wool vipassana people, I'm don't think vipassana is the only path to 'liberation'. But it's what I'm now used to, and offers a supportive practice environment with access to retreats and teachers at very little expense. So I'll stick with it.

That said, vipassana is a body-awareness meditiation, so I can't see how fixing awareness on the dan tien would be inconsistent with it. I've often spent the first 10 minutes or so of meditation sessions focussing on the point under my nose - particularly when concentration's been a problem.

Based on what you've said, perhaps using a dan tien focus would be a good idea. I'll give it a go for a few weeks

Thanks These entity encounters really sound like fairy stories - until you have one yourself. ;-)

Recently I've been doing quite a bit of vipassana meditation; it's not exactly a centering meditation, but it's all about staying in the body, so I guess it's similar enough. At various times I've done a fair bit of yoga & Yi Quan, but I can't correlate these 'events' with any particular practice (or intensity of practice).

If I get another 'visual incongruity', I'll try to remember your tip not fixate on visuals too much. Perhaps that way I'll get a closer look

Sounds to me like you are directing your awareness towards the crown chakra, a bit like a psychedelic trip. You say the images' bizarreness awaken you. Is it maybe that there are associations, especially fears, that cause that? Are you afraid of 'going there' or 'understanding the message of what is being shown'?

And after you are 'back', you feel fine?

 

After my ayahuasca experiences, sometimes at night in bed when I focused on third eye and/or crown chakra, I would feel that way. Then I focused on the lower dan tien and felt comfortable again.

I wasn't deliberately directing my awareness at all - both times I was just nodding off. I was jolted back awake, thought "WTF was that all about? What was THAT doing THERE?". I'd never seen things like those (in that state) before, and just wasn't expecting them. But I didn't dwell on it too much & was able to go back to sleep.

If I was directing my attention inadvertently, it was likely at the point on the upper lip just under my nose. I've spent several hundred hours focussing on that point & there's sensation there more or less continuously, so my attention may rest there out of sheer habit.

This seemed to contrast quite clearly with the other two types hypnagogic experiences I've had* - which seem to be relatively commonplace - and that was why I was wondering if the 'incongruity experience' was familiar to anyone. Fortunately all these experience have been rare and generally not unsettling.

(*The entity experience was VERY scary. I'd read about building psychic barriers

somewhere, and spent quite a while throwing one up, & couldn't sleep for a couple of hours. (Funnily enough, around the time of this experience I was woken up by a huge cockroach gnawing on - or possibly doing something unmentionable to - my finger.)

Dropping into lucid dreams I'd either just wake up inside the dream (sometimes repeatedly) or sometimes stay conscious as contact with my senses shut down. I mistook this for dying the first time it happened, so I did have a sense of not wanting to 'go there'. But my breathing and pulse were both imperceptible by the time I realised what was happening, so I thought my death was well underway, & there was nothing I could do. It was quite a relief waking up in the dream.)