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Interesting, is this a scenario you have consciously created or did the scene just happen? I'm just relating the symbols in your dream to my experience in sitting. The fruit that drops on the table--a one-pointedness of mind that can shift location and a sense of gravity that pervades the body are the fruit and the table to me. There's no eating the fruit. The striking thing to me about my experience on the cushion these days is that I am practicing some kind of scales, as it were. Gautama outlined the feeling of four states, the initial three and then the “purity by the pureness of [one’s] mind”, the fourth. I’ve described that “pureness of mind” as what remains when “doing something” ceases, and I wrote: When “doing something” has ceased, and there is “not one particle of the body” that cannot receive the placement of attention, then the placement of attention is free to shift as necessary in the movement of breath. The rest of the scales are looking for a grip where attention takes place in the body, as “one-pointedness” turns and engenders a counter-turn (without losing the freedom of movement of attention); finding ligaments that control reciprocal innervation in the lower body and along the spine through relaxation, and calming the stretch of ligaments; and discovering hands, feet, and teeth together with “one-pointedness” (“bite through here”, as Yuanwu advised; “then we can walk together hand in hand”, as Yuanwu’s teacher Wu Tsu advised). In the months since I wrote my friend, I’ve had some time to reflect. There are some things I would add, on my practice of “scales”. Gautama spoke of suffusing the body with “zest and ease” in the first concentration: “… (a person) steeps, drenches, fills, and suffuses this body with zest and ease, born of solitude, so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded by this lone-born zest and ease.” (AN III 25-28, Pali Text Society Vol. III p 18-19, see also MN III 92-93, PTS p 132-134) Words like “steeps” and “drenches” convey a sense of gravity, while the phrase “not one particle of the body that is not pervaded” speaks to the “one-pointedness” of attention, even as the body is suffused. If I can find a way to experience gravity in the placement of attention as the source of activity in my posture, and particular ligaments as the source of the reciprocity in that activity, then I have an ease. ("To Enjoy Our Life")

I have experienced this personally and agree with both your statement and the merit of the method. In reflecting on these posts, I suggest faith is what is there before knowing, be that through seeing positive changes through practice or self-realization. Once we experience or realize, it is knowing that drives us, not faith. Knowing which engenders trust. Faith is no longer necessary. It seems to me that all faith is necessarily blind. If one is not blind one would see, and know or not know, faith is unnecessary when knowing is there. I do not disregard or demonize faith. It is good to have faith in your cancer treatment or your buddy who’s got your back in the shit. Good to have faith in parents, partners, teachers, coaches, etc… Faith is only a problem when we are too identified so as to fail or refuse to see truth when it shows itself and act accordingly. The biggest danger of faith is that it can make us vulnerable, susceptible to influence and abuse. It’s OK to feel faith if it is truly there, it is simply already there, a feeling, an idea, a hope, or a dream. There is nothing wrong with any of that and it does not present a threat if we are aware and responsive. Disappointment is Ok too, if it is there. It is important, however, that it doesn’t become a fixed part of our identity. All of this comes and goes if we don’t hold on. I think this is the key or me. These three words - belief, faith, and trust are interesting for me to sit with and to investigate. What counts more than these words are the concepts with which we associate them and our relationship to that, I think. In practice, all three have a similar function in directing and motivating action, whether religious, spiritual, political, martial, material, and so on. Some words and concepts make us more or less comfortable as individuals, eg regular faith is Ok, blind faith not so much, or belief is bad but trust is good. At the end of the day, for me there is knowing and not knowing. In between the two are these shades of conceptual grey where I feel we often dance and it’s interesting to me to observe and explore. And as powerful as “knowing” is it is also always the experience of a fallible human not as different from faith as we might like to believe.

there's something to it. Emotions are like a compass - without them you are lost and without goals. Focusing on own empirical sense data and calm (instead of in depths concepts) might enlarge those to some degree, - I will watch that for a while, thanks. @manitou, thank you, yes, I hope so, yes, maybe I get stuck in the analytic part and don't get to feel or the aware part This part seems difficult, when you strive to live a 'functional' life and have to 'work' with this. It did get better lately with some approaches, again, habitual feelings might just get enlarged even though there's no reason for it. @Apech, yes, I mistook her first name for her last name, - Mr. Byrons poems however are a classic! Something you mentioned about 'overwhelmed' reminded me of a dream of my own, - - thanks. @blue eyed snake, something you mentioned, about intensified energetics in the body via 'practice' (I never practiced, it was a current) resembling a feeling of 'being in love' recently, somewhere (cannot find it right now) rings a bell and explains - some - for me, thanks. @Mark Foote, I am sorry, that there was a scam on the site, - I hadn't visited it, and I don't use google chrome. I'm glad you find a better sense of timing through meditation, however I get confused about the difference of 'the cessation of doing' and 'the cessation of breath' (which is not a thing one should get confused about) and I admire your dedication to the classical writings. @snowymountains, thanks, the link might be of help! thanks @all for the input!

After a few days I am thinking that the tree trunk is the central channel, it disappears because my consciousness doesn’t need to travel downwards again once it’s arrived here, like that path no longer even exists so there’s not even an option to descend. I recall a dream someone told me where they were driving and crashed into the trunk of a tree and died. I think his dream was showing him that his method of entering the central channel was doomed to failure, as he was ‘playing’ with energy at the time. I honestly think the fruit was “fruit of the tree of knowledge”, and only one piece because too much new knowledge would overwhelm a person. I imagine sitting at the dining table the fruit will drop onto the table at the right time, in the right amount. I’m thinking today that the dining table might be the chakra below the crown. Yes all persons were parts of myself, in the koshas model one identifies with various levels of the self over time, progressively identifying with a deeper part of the self until one arrives at the final layer, the true self. In my dream I believe I am identifying with kundalini consciousness and how that consciousness relates to the mundane mental level. Whether kundalini consciousness is the true self or the true self is deeper than that I will have to wait and see, as there is a lot to digest still at the kundalini consciousness level. I think there is an objectively true subtle energy system that operates to a greater or lesser degree in everyone. I do aim to understand that system, for now my dreams give me some information, I can only hope that when my dream gets played out in real time within myself that information about the subtle energy system, it’s setup and operation, will become more direct.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that nearly everyone who has ever written about or practiced what is being described in this thread began with other practices, and often concurrently engage in other practices, that do involve effort in a variety of ways. It does irk me a bit when people speak of releasing all effort as if it is something that is easy to do as that tends to push people away who have tried and struggled with this or makes them feel bad about themselves or the practice. This is very simple but not at all easy until one has had appropriate training and lots of practice. Simply stated, we need to exert as much effort as is necessary for us to come to the point where we can genuinely let it go and rest into what is already always present without distraction. I also like this quote from Peter Fenner, "If we didn't do what we didn't need to do, we would never know that we didn't need to do it!" One of the more important aspects of teaching this stuff is to acknowledge and respect the fact that different people need different things to support their practice. This is constantly changing for each of us over time. For some, it is essential that varying degrees of effort be engaged to stabilize the attention. Otherwise they will simply day dream or doze throughout a meditation session and make no progress at all. For others, a simple pith instruction or the sound of a bird call may be enough to put them right into that open, clear place of spontaneous presence. It is critically important to be aware of what we genuinely need in our practice and to be honest with ourselves about that. Otherwise we are far more likely to waste our time than cultivate skill and experience in meditation (especially so with non-meditation, which is a very precise practice). In my own training, and when I guide or teach, I begin by giving people something to focus on. The first step is to be able to get some control of the attention to keep it from running wild. This takes some effort and time. It is called zhiné in Tibetan (or shamatha in Sanskrit). My teacher once described the effort when we begin this practice as being like an old person with poor eyesight trying to focus on something they are having trouble seeing. Very focused, very intense, lots of effort and often frustration. Gradually, as the mind begins to settle and wander less, we can incrementally release the effort until we are able to release entirely into the unfabricated present moment and simply abide without distraction. For example, one practice I engage in is resting the attention on silence. In the beginning it takes a lot of effortful concentration to first recognize and then keep the attention focused on silence, partly because we are so used to engaging with what is filling the silence and so unfamiliar with silence itself. Little by little we are able to release that effort of listening and simply hear and feel the silence. As our practice continues to deepen over months and years we can even release the very subtle effort associated with hearing and simply be silence itself. This is tough to describe in words and may sound far-fetched but is very clear to one who practices and has this experience. Once we gain some skill and familiarity with this it becomes easy to rest and open the attention under a variety of circumstances utilizing little or no effort and being free from distraction. It's little more than a shift of attention combined with stability cultivated through practice. At this stage, the practice is no longer limited to sitting on a meditation cushion in a quiet room. We can bring it into our lives and engage this practice under the most challenging circumstances imaginable. This is what it means when dzogchenpas talk about 'bringing all experience onto the path.' Ultimately this is intended to be a continuous practice that is beautifully described in Namkhai Norbu's book, The Cycle of Day and Night.

Dreaming has always been an essential, core aspect of my experience of being a localized self in awareness. I find the revelations afforded through dream contact/experience to be endlessly useful and fascinating. Thanks for the enticing topic! My first memory in this life was a dream so intense, it induced an obe. I was three or four when it occured and it's impacted my approach to consciousness my entire life, shaping my exploration of consciousness, shamanic trance, the nature of lucidity in awareness and trance in waking life/dreaming/liminal awareness. Dreams are capable of revealing so much of our true nature in my experience and they've always been as vital, impacting and rich as waking life, and in many cases, far more so. As for encounters with aliens as I sense is implied in the original post (Greys, Pleiadians, etc) are rather rare for mea handful... but if by alien you also imply entities from alternate frequencies/dimensions/shadow beings/alternate planes/ascended masters, and being encountered including open eyed and full hypnogogic visions and waking dreams then encounters abound. I made a habit of keeping journals for dreams and though some have been lost, the act of writing them down often results in cementing them for long term recall. There are myriad encounters that were seemingly with fully autonomous and seperate awarenesses and many have transpired over the five decades of my life with recurring visits. Really enjoying the topic and although so far nothing's risen up to the foreground to share now, perhaps I'll revisit one of the hypnogogic encounters when I have some time. Cheers all for sharing... the topic is incredibly vital and fascinating to me.

I am almost certain that what is meant by "lucid" in the "middle" here is not our standard lucid dreaming concept, where someone realizes that they are dreaming and finds that they are therefore in control. A realized "being" knows that free will is a delusion. In my experience, being "lucid" in the dream in this case means that your "supreme accomplishment" is also true in sleep. What you are awake to is the same as what you are awake to in your daily life. So, all appearances in a dream are understood to be "empty" in the same way that they are during waking, therefore the dream is not taken seriously, and the flavor of the dream is almost always of a positive nature because karma and delusion no longer taint the quality of what arises.

Dear friends, Some time ago I shared the post below on another thread. I stumbled upon it again recently, and I felt it could potentially help a lot of people. That's why I'm reposting it now with some edits, as well as an "update" at the end of the original post. Here's the original post. ORIGINAL POST I will share in 4 points:1) Intro 2) My experiences with evil spirits 3) My experiences with black magic 4) My proposed explanation integrating viewpoints on evil spirits and black magic (Buddhism, Sufism, Martinus, Hinduism etc)IntroIn my opinion, this is an extremely important topic, that is extremely ignored, belittled and misunderstood by the vast majority of cultivators. Especially those with a western background. Also, even by high level masters who simply don't know about this particular area or haven't trained and studied it.My experiences with evil spiritsI have personally suffered many extreme and terrifying experiences, and no matter where I sought help, I was belittled, ridiculed, ignored or misunderstood.I have seen books flying out of shelves. I have seen bagpacks and other physical items dragged back and forth on the floor. I have experienced "wind" indoors, even though it was a closed off room with no windows. I have seen shadowy/smoke like figures physically moving around, experienced physical touch even though no physical beings are there and much more.When I sought help from a hindu monk, he advised me to start japa of my guru mantra when it happened. I did it... Didn't work.When I sought help from a high level "shamanic" qigong master (you would think spirits would be a walk in the park for a shaman), I was belittled and told "not to pay attention to this illusion I am experiencing". There's nothing illusory about physical objects being thrown around by an unseen force. It's pretty much as concrete as it gets. Almighty God bless him, and bring him to clarity and allow him to actually help people with his powers of qi.When I sought help from another qigong master specialised in healing, he told me to say a prayer and do a mudra. When it didn't work, he explained it away saying that "you're just not powerful enough to do it yet, you need to cultivate more. Be my one-on-one student for 2-3 years, meet me on on a weekly zoom meeting priced at 1.600 dollars for an hour, and then in a couple of years, you will be able to do it".This healing qigong master stated that I have a very loving and very spiritual energy, and that's why troubled spirits get attracted to me. They seek help and healing from me. That's why it worsens when I travel to new places or stay overnight at places that are not my house. The troubled spirits in that place see me and come to get help.I actually believed him, and met him 3 times, wasting thousands of dollars. It didn't work! And on top of that, the clairvoyant things he told me about me and my health were flat out wrong (he said I had weak sexual energy, ejaculated in seconds and drank a lot of alcohol which damaged my liver). I am at a very advanced level of sexual qigong and lovemaking, haven't touched alcohol in more than 10 years and make love for hours daily without ejaculating with very strong erection power.So after 3 meetings, I realized he was simply a semi-psychic (he did say correctly that I had a spine injury, although there were so many other things wrong about his psychic reading), yet pretty good healer (I could feel my back getting better when he gave healings), but most of all he was just thirsty for money. So, of course I stopped seeing him. Dear God, bring him to the straight path, let him let go of his greed for money and selfishness, and instead lead him to the straight path, that he may use his gift of healing for good.I then spoke with a highly clairvoyant sufi master, who did a check on me (for free). He related my entire life story regarding troubles with spirits (without me telling him anything), and he also stated that it's because I have a lot of "light" (noor) inside my soul. This is because of all the prayers and mantras I say each day (since I was a child). He said the spirits are troubled where they are (in "bardo" or "barzakh" as it's called in Islam), and seek my help.He said I should visualise putting up spiritual sign posts around my aura, my house, or anywhere I go that says "I am sorry, I cannot help you. I myself need help, that's why I pray to the light and get that light into me. Please don't come to me, I am in no position to help you, I myself need help, that's why I pray so much. You should yourself pray to the light, then you will get help".I tried it for some time, and it helped in my own house. However, when I went to new places, it didn't work. God bless this man, he is extremely loving, knowledgable and powerfully clairvoyant.When I sought help from another sufi (via the internet), he for free did a "spiritual check" on me. He stated that yes, I have some low level evil spirits around me. He gave me (for free!) a one week program of readings of salawaat (prayers to the prophet), and reciting "bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim" (the bismillah, "in the name of God) many hundreds of times in a day. Then blow on water and drink it.I did it for 7 days, and it worked! It was from his heart and soul he wished to help me. He did it for free.I sent him 100 dollars and said that it worked, and asked if I could keep training with him. I must have paid him only a few hundred dollars, yet I spent 6-9 months corresponding with him via email. He would give me different salawaat, dhikr (name of God), verses of the Qur'an and du'a (prayers). Whenever I did a program (e.g. 7 days, 11 days, 21 days), he would tell me how it went. He would give me feedback on the energy, without me telling him anything. He was very good, he helped me a lot, and he didn't ask much in return. However, after 6-9 months, because he wanted to remain anonymous, I felt that to be a bit weird after so long, so when I had completed a big program, I stopped corresponding with him. We haven't been in contact since.What became my go-to after training with this last sufi guy is 5 verses from the Qur'ran. Ayatul kursi (Verse about the Throne of God), and 4 verses called "the 4 qul". They are the last 4 verses of the Qur'an, and they all start with "qul" which means "say". It's Surah Nas (verse of Man), Surah Ikhlas (verse of Unity), Surah Falaq (verse of the Daybreak / rising sun) and Surah Kafiroon (verse about the Unbelievers).You recite each 11 times (11x ayatul kursi, 11x surah nas, 11x surah ikhlas, 11x surah falaq and 11x surah kafiroon). Then you blow on your right index finger, and visualise your hand coming down from the sky, and drawing a protective circle around the 4 corners of your home, and then finally around yourself, or the room that needs extra protection (e.g. bedroom, prayer room).This has been my go-to for more than 6 years. It has been the only thing that worked for me in this area. If you want to keep your house energy pure, you say 21x ayatul kursi, blow on a glass of water, and sprinkle it around your house. The combination of these two readings saved my life.God bless this man who helped me without demanding anything in return!Unlike these chinese qigong masters, just wanting money and doing nothing to help.Lately when I'm learning Sri Vidya, I feel that some of the mantras and rituals from Sri Vidya will eventually be able to give spiritual protection on an even higher level. There are 2 specific "deities" or energies generated from mantras and rituals for the navel chakra (Durga) and third eye chakra (Varahi) which specifically combat negative spiritual energies, including black magic, evil spirits, the evil eye etc.All of the above are my experiences and solutions for evil spirits so far.My experiences with black magicI have worked for the army in my country. One of my functions was as a translator and interpreter. I have been deployed several times to a UN mission in West Africa.On one of my deployments, there wasn't much work. We only worked from 6 in the morning to 2 o'clock in the afternoon. The rest of the time we we're pretty much on standby.Being stranded in a war zone, there's not much to do. So I spent all my free time reading, studying and practicing (mantras, meditation and qigong).I was in a very good spiritual state at the time due to so much practice, so I was seeing auras and energies most of the time.One time, we were training the local special forces to save hostages. The only building we could use was a big fancy hotel, yet no tourists (because of the war). So to survive, the owner of the hotel rented it out as a brothel.One day, in a break between exercises, I saw one of the prostitutes sitting on the other side of the courtyard (they just sat around and waited for the 3-4 hours that we and the local soldiers used it as a training compound). When she saw me, she started whispering something, and I saw a small cloud of black energy generating in front of her face. Then she did something with her hands, and started blowing towards me. This sent the small black cloud of energy across the courtyard towards me. It just landed in the outskirts of my aura, it didn't go in (thank God!). So nothing happened to me.When I was back in my room later that day, I meditated. Then I understood she was trying to do some black magic on me. Maybe she was trying to seduce or attract me. For a prostitute in a war zone, hooking up with a soldier deployed from Europe could be her ticket out of the warzone to a better life. Luckily, the energy wasn't powerful enough to penetrate my energy field (which was pretty charged at the time due to so much spiritual practice). And as I meditated, the cloud was just destroyed and disappeared from my field.One of the local maids cleaning my place actually put my tooth brush up in her vagina when she was cleaning the bathroom. She thought I didn't know, as I was sitting in the living room. I guess it's a primitive form of African black magic. If you ingest some of the fluids (spit, sweat or sexual fluid) of someone (especially if they say mantras while doing it), you can become more partial to liking that person (becaues you will have some of their energy inside your physical body). I bought a new tooth brush!Another woman working in the restaurant spat in my food and stirred it around to hide it. I ordered a new pasta You need to be very careful in many places of Africa, the Middle East, South America and certain parts of Asia. It's rampant with black magic and desperate people. Luckily they are usually not powerful practitioners, but you can still catch something if you're not protected and observant.My second experience is with my girlfriend. She comes from the Middle East, i.e. the vast majority of her family still lives there. When we got together, it was made public, her ethnicity in our European country as well as her family and relatives in her home country in the Middle East became aware of it. As soon as this happened, she started to fall sick.She would get wrist tendonitis, elbow tendonitis, sore knees, sore lower back, her vision would suddenly drastically reduce, she would get nauseous for no reason, got rashes, stomach ache, started to suddenly lose weight and appetite. For no reason!It just came suddenly out of the blue. She would suffer for some time and recover. Then a new problem came back. This continued for about 6 months. Before we made our relationship public, she wasn't sick even once. After we made it public, she kept continually falling ill again and again.After 6 months of this story of suffering and disease, once when I was meditating, I saw a cloud of red and black energy entering our house. It went to my girlfriend. Then it went into her wrist.That same evening, she started complaining that the wrist tendonitis was coming back.I was very surprised. I was praying and meditating, trying to understand what had happened. A few days later, I got a dream, where I saw planet Earth from above. Then I saw her country in the Middle East (Kurdistan). Then I saw clouds of red and black gathering and forming, and then they travelled to Europe to our country.When I woke up, I understood that God had heard my prayer, and given me this dream to let me know that someone in her home country was cursing her.That started an 8 month period of fighting this magic.First I consulted this qigong healer about it (the psychic one, who told me correctly about my spinal injury, but wrongly about alcohol, sex etc). He to my great surprise said that someone was putting black magic on my girlfriend, and that she should practice his "small universe" meditation to transform the energy.I was surprised he went straight to Black Magic as an explanation, even though I didn't tell him about my dreams and visions. We tried what he suggested, but it didn't work.Then I went to a hindu tantric, who has mastery over spirits, done sadhana (spiritual practice) in graveyards, and done many tamasic tantric rituals to control these spirits (e.g. animal sacrifice, bathing in blood, smearing yourself with your own filth and urine etc). When I spoke with him, he asked me to send a photo of my girlfriend.After 2-3 days, he called me and said that there is black magic on her. We should just worship and pray to God like normal, remain vegetarian, avoid alcohol, and when he visits our country, he will put a kavach (shield/armor) on her. From that day we spoke, everything stopped. So he did something remotely. After a few nights, I had a dream where I saw this swami doing something. A beam of energy went to the Middle East, where I saw someone had buried a charm inscribed with mantras and signs under the plot of one of my girlfriend's family's buildings. The beam from the swami went in and neutralized the black/red energy.I would again highlight that he did all this for free. It seems again that this phenomenon that spirituality costs money and is a business is mostly related to chinese qigong traditions. Sufis and hindus have helped me completely free of charge, just from their heart.It was about 2-3 weeks where it was completely gone, but then it returned.I tried many different sufi methods, prayers, Qur'an, tasbih (prayer beads). It was always the same. It would make it go away, but after a certain period of time, it would return.Later, after I had done a specific reading of a passage from the Qur'an about Moses fighting the black magicians of Farao, the black magic completely stopped. It took me a month, and you have to recite late at night. Then I finally had a dream where I saw this black magician in Kurdistan. Every new moon, or on specific astrological days, he goes to a kind of basement or cellar underground. Here he conducts terrible black magic rituals, involving animals, kidnapped orphans and other terrible things. That's why it's all black and red energy, because it's dirty and bloody what he does. It's someone from my girlfriend's family who's jealous of the part of the family that's gone to Europe.Then I saw him get hit with my one month program of Qur'an, and he lost all of his powers. All the energy drained from him, he became thin, weak and pale.After this it was about 6 months where we were completely free from this black magic. I thanked God and actually thought it was over. I felt kind of bad that it seemed my Moses-reading had damaged him, but I didn't mean to hurt him, I just wanted to protect my beloved girlfriend. It hadn't really hurt him, just taken away the energy he had built up and the evil spirits he was working with.After 6 months, he decided to start to try again, and start from the bottom to build up his energy (he was the most powerful black practitioner I've ever seen). But this time the things he sent were really weak. We just read some Qur'an and du'a, and it stopped.Finally, after starting Sri Vidya one and a half years ago, and we did a 41 day Varahi tarpana. Now we've been clear of black magic for about 1 year. I feel like we have built our spiritual protection so strong now, that we're mostly safe.My proposed explanation integrating viewpoints on evil spirits and black magic (Buddhism, Sufism, Martinus, Hinduism etc)I've highlighted a bunch of my experiences above. Now I'll try to make sense of it and provide an explanation.I'll use an idea of different dimensions of reality to try and explain why people misunderstand each other when it comes to black magic and evil spirits.For simplicity I'll just use the following terms:1) Physical (shared physical world, objective reality, different beings interact with each other in an objectively verifiable sense).2) Energetic (shared energetic world, objective albeit non-detectable reality for untrained people, objectively verifiable by people with their energetic senses open)3) Mind (inner, individual world, unique to you, subjective reality, there's no one else here but you)4) "Astral" (objective and shared reality with different beings interacting with each other through energy and mind)Buddhism:A big problem is that many Buddhists will brush these kinds of things off and say "it's all just mind". Someone even told me "spiritual beings viewed with ignorance, are demons", "spiritual beings viewed with wisdom, are devas". That sounds great philosophically, but it's a completely useless viewpoint when shit gets serious. Books are flying around your room, or your girlfriend is falling sick. It's not something mental, it's concrete and physical. You need to do something.Just like an intruder in your home trying to steal your stuff "it's just mind, it's just illusion". Yes, fine illusion when he slaps you in your face and rapes your family. You need to take practical action and protect yourself and your family.So all this "it's all mind" is great for a meditator going inwards, but it's not useful if you have a concrete, practical problem. Just like feeling hungry "it's just an illusion in your mind", no, you need to eat something.I feel like the misunderstanding is because the buddhist meditator is talking about "mind", whereas the person talking about problems with black magic and evil spirits is talking about the astral, energetic and physical dimensions.It's true that you can meet "darkness" in your own subjective mind, but this is not the same as the objective, shared reality in the astral, energetic and physical dimensions.Some people who are also generally confused and vague in their life experience will not have the ability to discriminate between "mind" (their own fears) and "astral" (a real, verifiable, shared and objective reality). These are the people that buddhists in general target when they say "it's all in your own mind", because they think it's just imagination. For these meditators getting lost in their own subjective minds, it's a great piece of advice. However, for people truly experiencing objective problems in the astral, energetic or physical domains, it's ridiculing, belittling and just not helpful advice.SufismSufism states that there are unseen beings living in an astral, objective dimension. They also differentiate between the subjective mind or ego called "nafs" and the astral world called "malakut" or world of light (angels are called malai'ka, or powerful beings of light).HinduismAlso differentiates between your own subjective mind, and the astral world.MartinusAlso differentiates between inner subjective world (mind, you and your own mind), and inner objective world (spiritual world, your soul and the soul of others).ConclusionI am sure buddhism also discriminates somehow between inner subjective and inner objective world, I just don't know the correct terms. Maybe someone can help me out?The reason that these qigong masters failed to help and just tried to extract money from me, is simply because even though they're master healers, the just haven't trained in and studied the astral world. They know about the physical, energetic and mind, they just don't know about black magic and evil spirits in the astral.The sufis who helped me, they knew about energy and astral, so they could easily see what was happening and what I should do. They had trained in this and understood it.Similarly, the tantric swami had knowledge and power to help us quickly. The black magician was just very powerful, so he could break the spell from the swami and start his black magic again after a couple of weeks by repowering his buried charm through rituals.Mostly when people belittle or ridicule black magic and evil spirits, it's just because they themselves didn't have karma in this area, so they don't know about it. That's why they brush it off as unimportant and not necessary, because it wasn't important to them in their cultivation. However, if you have karma in this area, there's no escaping it. You need to read, study and understand about it, then you need to train in it (mantra, meditation, ritual etc). Then you will master it and be able to go beyond it and continue your cultivation undisturbed.All traditions have sections of their teachings dealing with this, it's just not all masters who've studied this section of their tradition. Because they didn't need it, they state that no one else needs it (wrong assumption and bias to think everyone is like you and need the same as you did. Wrong. We're all different and unique, we need different things).God bless you all! UPDATE SINCE THE ABOVE ORIGINAL POST On top of our spiritual cultivation, we've employed some very basic truths in our everyday lives, which is usually taught at the basic level in most traditional spiritual teachings, albeit largely ignored or misunderstood by western people (myself included, that's why I'm emphasising it now): 1) "Conceal your blessings" (this is as to not invoke a feeling of lack in others, which could trigger jealousy, envy, evil eye or black magic - practically it just means not to talk about your succes in love, money or spiritual journey publicly (e.g. insta & fb) and even to your loved ones, close friends and family members. We just share it with each other, me and my girlfriend, celebrate our sucess and give thanks to Almighty God) 2) "Certainty" (Yaqeen in arabic) consisting of 3 points 1) everything is from God, 2) it's for my highest good, 3) it has a message for me, about something I need to change. For me the message was simply to accept that "evil" is indeed a part of God's creation, and evil spirits and black magic is real. I always shunned it off and looked down upon it as mere superstition. Nope, it's real! So take it seriously and take mindful precautions, it's simply a test from God. Don't lose your certainty, your faith, have full trust in God and do your daily spiritual work 3) The best spirituality you will find is free or very low cost - all the people and healers I splurged money on failed to deliver and actually help us. The people who had true love, compassion and heart were the most powerful, they helped us completely for free or at very low cost. All these commercial gurus are simply fitna, illusion, they're a Golden Calf or temptation from the straight path. Truth is hiding in plain sight, simple, yet most profoundly powerful. Be a good human being, trust God, have heart and mercy for your fellow human beings and the animals, and you'll be showered with a tsunami of power and protection directly from the Lord Most High. 4) The importance of "local" spirits - each place you go to have a Kshetra Palaka (Local Protector) or TuDi (Earth King/God) who are the Spirit Kings of that place. Further, there are also local spirits living in that location. If you do cultivation there without permission/friendship with the local Spirit King, you can start to get into spiritual trouble. This is a big part of traditional Hindu sadhana as well as Daoist cultivation. After each hindu ritual you give Bali Dhana (spirit charity offering) to the local spirits and the Kshetra Palaka, or in the case of Daoist magic or cultivation you say the An Tu Di Shen Zhou (Pacify Earth Spirit Mantra). It's even one of the Daoist Ba Da Zhou (8 Great Mantras) to be said daily. So be aware if you travel to new locations - make sure to include the local Kshetra Palaka or TuDi to be in harmony with the spirits of that place. 5) The importance of spiritual lineage (sampradaya). When you're part of a true, authentic spiritual lineage, you will also have much more spiritual protection and power. If you call upon your guru or master with the appropriate mantra and mudra, it's the combined energy of thousands and thousands of years of people doing spiritual practice coming to help you spiritually. A complete game changer!

Thanks ! I will have a look . I read a book years back , whose title or author I can remember , it was very good and tracked the changes in human early technology through to modern and correlated them with changing over time in religious , philosophical , metaphorical imagery used in those times , very interesting . Two nights back I had a revelation into 'what it really is ' ... WOW ! But it was my own 'really is' - something I saw , not a jellyfish . But I was determined to find out 'what it was' . The weirdness was also due to the timing and other things occurring at that time . It was not in the dream world though wide awake , so if Stimpy will forgive me : It was at the end of a three day 'Cultural Revival festival' I had helped organise on our riverside festival site , to bring forward the local indigenous culture . It was a very significant event ( whose significance was lost on most people - but not the indigenous - they where blown away - an elder took me aside and ' You know this is the only time and the first time anyone has invited us back to our land, asked us to stay on it for a while and teach them our culture and ways .. ever" . - there is a recent history here regarding massacres of the indigenous ) and the energy was pumped up , as it is in every festival we have had here , but this had some interesting indigenous energy input ( eg 300 people being shown how to do the 'Rainbow Serpent Dance ' and then doing it in unison with a huge 300 person 'snake' winding its way across the field ... and other similar things) . ANYWAY ... At the end I am sitting in a shade structure talking to a group of elderly Aboriginal men .... for some time . I got up to stretch , took a step out from under the structure and looked up and saw something that I somehow knew, from its trajectory and flight was on a re-entry path (or an 'entry path' ? ) ie. dropping down while angled nose up , that looked like a huge metal eagle or bird of pray (from my pov) - I never seen anything like that before . I called out for others to come and look quickly but they missed it . Some of the old Aboriginal men asked me to describe it , its direction, etc . They seem mystified and a bit spooked .I searched for that bloody thing for ages ! Scanned sites UFO forums etc . People offered lots of things but nothing fitted . Then after 15 years or so, the other night I saw it on tv s 'Impossible Engineering ' Its a friggin re-enty pod 'air boat ' thing ... supposedly an idea from the 60s that was never used ???? , But I saw it years back , way after the 60s , it gets lift from fuselage and not wigs It detaches into two bits It may have been the 'underpart' with the stabiliser fins attached - there are a few different modified versions of it . But what the hell is doing coming in for a landing around here ? I calculated roughly from its path where it might be heading ... we do have an air base there somewhere , so I looked up ... yep, that would be it . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAAF_Base_Williamtown#Units

Mind can and will find - in my opinion- many frames of reference and will use all your known and unconscious inferences, draw from all (cultural) backgrounds, to make sense of something a bit like it was already mentioned in the thread about another dream interpretation recently. So every bum you ask will bring their own subjective „baggage“ and background into the interpretation. For me it’s too many unconnected scenes in your dream to see a consistent story. However: Were the scenes connected in your opinion and by what? Moreover what’s important is what you found interesting: the pieces of fruit of the man and yours and the then lacking trunk of the tree. What could the fruit be a symbol of? You were surprised that there was only one, maybe one is enough already? (Enough of what is your interpretation.) You were expecting more then one. Were all persons involved parts of yourself to conjoin? Or were they „really“ different persons albeit in a different perception mode? You speak of a different kind of consciousness, all partaking, if I understand correctly. You also took reference of the tree to a human body. The lacking trunk (symbolizing personal energetic source) might refer to a different (more) ‚impersonal‘ source of energy and mind matter, unrooted in a subject, so to speak. To your question:am I mapping my experience onto a Christian format, or is this the reality of the subtle energy system. To me, the allegory works just as well with the daoist concepts, if you abstract it to some degree. (What’s the fruit in that modell.. a yes…) So I‘d tend to favor your latter option, but as so far as you experience your subtle energy system and that of others in your view. Cannot speak for any objectivity.

What a profound dream! I follow a progression like this in my sitting, for awhile now. I drive, I'm at a tree with a trunk, there's a man and woman in the active and receptive aspects of my effort, there's a taste of action by virtue of the placement of attention rather than volition, then there's no trunk but just a recognition of something that I have already partaken of. Forgive me if you've already read this, from a post of mine last fall: Although attention can be directed to the movement of breath, necessity in the movement of breath can also direct attention, as I wrote previously: There can… come a moment when the movement of breath necessitates the placement of attention at a certain location in the body, or at a series of locations, with the ability to remain awake as the location of attention shifts retained through the exercise of presence. There’s a frailty in the structure of the lower spine, and the movement of breath can place the point of awareness in such a fashion as to engage a mechanism of support for the spine, often in stages. ... Foyan (12th-century Chinese Zen teacher) spoke of “looking for a donkey riding on the donkey”. The degree of “self-surrender” required to allow necessity to place attention, and the presence of mind required to “lay hold” as the placement of attention shifts, make the conscious experience of “riding the donkey” elusive. (Shunryu) Suzuki provided an analogy: If you are going to fall, you know, from, for instance, from the tree to the ground, the moment you, you know, leave the branch you lose your function of the body. But if you don’t, you know, there is a pretty long time before you reach to the ground. And there may be some branch, you know. So you can catch the branch or you can do something. But because you lose function of your body, you know [laughs], before you reach to the ground, you may lose your conscious[ness]. (“To Actually Practice Selflessness”, August Sesshin Lecture Wednesday, August 6, 1969, San Francisco; “fell” corrected to “fall”; transcript from shunryusuzuki.com) Suzuki offered the analogy in response to the travails of his students, who were experiencing pain in their legs sitting cross-legged on the floor. In his analogy, he suggested the possibility of an escape from pain through a presence of mind with the function of the body. The difficulty is that most people will lose consciousness before they cede activity to the location of attention–they lose the presence of mind with the placement of attention, because they can’t believe that action in the body is possible without “doing something”: ... When a presence of mind is retained as the placement of attention shifts, then the natural tendency toward the free placement of attention can draw out thought initial and sustained, and bring on the stages of concentration: … there is no need to depend on teaching. But the most important thing is to practice and realize our true nature… [laughs]. This is, you know, Zen. (Shunryu Suzuki, Tassajara 68-07-24 transcript from shunryusuzuki.com) (Shunryu Suzuki on Shikantaza and the Theravadin Stages)

Sure, inter-dimensional dream time was just my way of naming something that was more than a dream, something that takes place on an energetic level with beings who are non physical, these days I just call it dreamtime, its my belief ( and a lot of other people, including masters and teachers) that a lot of beings we encounter in dreamtime are real entity's with their own consciousness. These days I tend to think more along the lines of the beings are already here just on different wave lengths, different layers of density, in the past I would have classed this as inter- dimensional but I dont think a lot of it is , they exist on earth just like us, but they are outside of a humans range of limited senses. Look at constables work in the 50s of the giant amoeba that he would capture on infra red film, fast forward to modern day times and there is a guy in southern england who is doing amazing work following constables guidelines , he has a book out and is on you tube doing very in depth talks , hes captured some mad stuff over his house but its not visible to the human eye , its in infra red and ultra violet which a lot of investigators don't tend to work with. Jacques vallee wrote a book called passport to magnolia talking about this modernization of how folk tales have transformed into the modern ufo culture, that the strange experiences we have change in line with our own evolution and you can find videos on you tube looking at the similarities between the fae and alien abductions. You will also see a lot of ufo and paranormal investigators are now calling this the "phenomena" rather than pigeon holing it as a ghost , an alien, etc. They are starting to realize that its all linked.

Mine had nothing angelic or demonic about them. Nor anything from modern alien folklore or research or mass culture. (Sheesh, I'm always the odd one out.) However, later I found out that jellyfish UFOs were a thing. At the time I had that dream I had no idea. Went to explore the vast web and voila... jellyfish UFOs. But none as clear, detailed, colorful, alive, real and up close as mine. Also, I don't normally dream (or as they put it, don't remember my dreams), let alone in vivid detail and as sequentially as the way time flows in our normal waking life. I believe there's this multiverse thing to consider... at least cutting edge physics does. The quaint belief in our reality being "the only real one" and anything from outside it just a figment of our imagination, subconscious, etc., seems to be scientifically obsolete. In the heyday of "scientific materialism" (a Marxist invention) they didn't have enough physics to refute it. Now it looks like they do... but who wants to rock the boat.

Uhhh....I don't know about 'aliens...' but I do dream a lot about weird monsters. But I haven't had one recent enough to be able to describe vividly. I remember having one nightmare about really tall faceless humanoid things...that their skin looked like it had been burned by fire, sloughing off...it was creepy. Their faces were just, nothing but peeling skin. There was one where there was a weird small fox-like thing, but when I picked it up, it had billions of eyes, and I was startled and dropped it. I don't think that one was bad, it just scared me. There was one where there were more dog-like things...They were gray with weird buggy eyes, long snouts, and they didn't really look canine-like, they kind of reminded me of opossums or some kind of rodent...The teeth were wrong. In that one, they weren't hostile, until I picked something up to look at it, then they turned on me. I felt like I did something that I wasn't supposed to, haha. Those, big faceless things, are the only humanoid thing that I can recall dreaming about.

I have a lot of vivid dreams and a lot of dreams where I encounter beings of various sorts, some are so real and intense that I want to associate more meaning to them than they deserve, others are so emotional its like a long lost lover or a deceased family member coming to see me, so much so that I will wake up with tears pouring down my face. I do believe we have inter-dimensional dream time and the more energetically advanced we become the more frequent these happen. I firmly believe the beings we encounter during these encounters are real. One of the most intense dream time encounters I had was a very sexual and very intense experience , I even woke up a couple of times during it and could still feel the beings around me in a circle, this experience was full of the most amazing colours and landscapes with music that was so beautiful and absolutely otherworldly. In the last song the beings sang, some of the lyrics really stuck in my head so when it was all over I immediately went on the computer and typed it in only to find something that blew my mind and proved for me that it had being A real encounter. The most full on alien being I have experienced in dreamtime wasn't too long ago actually and it was so foreign to my mind, so alien that it freaked me right out, this being just felt so immense in power and its voice was that low it was in the frequency range of sub bass, it actually spoke sub bass , that just blew my mind.

It was an early summer night in the dream, just like in real life, and a number of police cars were speeding up and down the street with lights and sirens, in a somewhat haphazard manner, so I went out to find out what kind of emergency they were having this time. And over the street, hanging quite low and very close to the house, I saw a jellyfish UFO "parked" in the sky, huge, with many lights all over its tentacles, which were moving as though it was staying in one place the way you would stay in one place in the water, by adjusting your movements ever so slightly. I could tell right away it was a vehicle that was alive -- there was no mechanical anything about it. It was very beautiful. For some reason, I said as though I got my answer from some prior knowledge, "oh... and there's the UFO." I then found it amusing thinking of the cops in their cars trying to figure out what to do about it, something "needs to be done," but what?.. I shrugged and went inside the house. And from inside the house, three aliens who were already there by now, in my house, walked briskly toward me. They looked like ordinary people -- a black woman and two white men. The woman extended her hand, smiled broadly and said, "There you are! And we were looking for you in Guangzhou!" Later, in my waking life, I found out, to my surprise, that I did spend about 2 hours in Guangzhou at one point, at the airport -- a layover which would be so short as to rush from point A to point B. I knew the layover would be in Guangdong, but it didn't occur to me that it would take place in a specific city, which I never saw. And the aliens were looking for me there three years or so after the fact. Weird. Then I thought some more about it and realized that their counterpart of our GPS, given the vastness of spacetime, must have homed in on something "close enough" but not exactly, just like ours sometimes do. It must have noted my approximate location at some "point in spacetime" -- "slightly off," but corrections were made with the same ease with which you drive around the block to find the correct spot instead of the "close enough" one.

My experience is the opposite. I dream about people, then wake up and the world is full of aliens. : ) Turns out, my alien family and friends are pretty cool though.

In Tibetan nomenclature - no dreams, while retaining awareness: sleep yoga - lucid dreams : dream yoga. They consider sleep yoga as a next step to dream yoga in terms of progression, maybe the Yeshe Lama quote reflects that. I wouldn't be too bothered with the hierarchy in the nomenclature, both are just states, as is a sleep without lucidity is just a state. Sleep is not an RPG game. E.g. sleep without lucidity, which is deemed the most "inferior" in this nomenclature is actually the most restoring for the body, wear a fitbit and you'll be able to quantify the difference if you want to. An interesting point is that dreamless sleep has been studied very little probably because either very few people enter it or perhaps they do enter it but retain very little retrospective memory of it. Anther point is that you don't need any of dream yoga or sleep yoga to enter these states, i.e. in my personal experience, I just enter those states spontaneously (lucidity or awareness without dreams) during months when I meditate a lot ( not referring to the specific meditations of dream yoga/sleep yoga ).

So, I had a dream about this topic which I’d like to share. “I” was driving along, and there was a bit of water on the road so I started to fishtail from left to right repeatedly, always just managing to stay in control. I was then sitting in a University lecture hall and I noticed on the stage where the lecturer was that there was a tree. In the next scene I was barging through a couple to get somewhere, and then I was under the tree and taking a piece of fruit and eating it. The fruit looked like a baby squash and had the texture of dates and tasted a bit like a fig, and it had a small bunch of spinach leaves growing downwards from its underside. I felt a bit ashamed that I had barged through the couple so I offered a piece of fruit to the man and he accepted it and ate it. Then the trunk of the tree disappeared and only the branches and leaves and fruit remained, suspended in the air. I sat at a dining table under the suspended crown of the tree thinking I would like to get more fruit, but that it would be too uncouth to stand up on the table, so I just sat there waiting and the dream ended. I do think this dream refers to kundalini by the action of my driving, the constant fishtailing which is the same motion as a snake, and the fact that I was driving the car suggests to me that “i” was in the role of kundalini consciousness. The couple that I barged through to me were the subtle energy channels on the side of the central channel where they cross, and my offering the fruit to the man because I was a bit ashamed (immense overtones of the Adam Eve story here) in my interpretation was offering the fruit of the tree of knowledge to the masculine subtle energy channel which I equate with the mental plane - this image is where I get the idea that the mundane mental level is brought along on the ‘spiritual’ journey. I found it interesting that I only had one piece of fruit and the man only had one also, I also found it interesting that the trunk disappeared and that I was left waiting at the dining table underneath “the crown” for more. A fundamental question must be am I mapping my experience onto a Christian format, or is this the reality of the subtle energy system. I strongly think the latter myself. Bums thoughts welcome.

YESHE LAMA / 1)9 From the Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse of the Great Perfection, A Practice Manual for the Stages of the Path of the Original Protector ...the extent of accomplishment recognized in the dream state is as follows. Ic states in the Secret Sound Tantra :* For the supreme, [dreams] will cease; for the middling, [dreams] will be lucid; and for the inferior, [dreams] will be trans- formed. Thus, for all of those with keen faculties and enthusiasm, the connec- tion with karma and habits will be severed. [171] An indication that bud- dhahood will occur in that very lifetime is when dreams are purified in the dharmakaya and sleep arises as clear light. For the middling, dreams become lucid and, through familiarity with dream transformation, bud- dhahood will occur in the bardo. For the inferior, the continuum of nega- tive habits in the dream state is severed and, by experiencing only positive dreams, rebirth will be taken in the realm of the natural nirmanakaya. Its interesting in the book Yeshe Lama, it states above those who have supreme accomplishment, will not dream. Those in the middle, their dreams will be lucid and those of the inferior, their dreams will be transformed into only positive dreams. In relation to my original post, I can separate my dreams into different categories. Ordinary dreams that are easily forgettable that can be either bad or good dreams or neither bad nor good, and supercharged extremely vibrant dreams that are not easily forgettable that can also be either bad or good or neither bad nor good. Myself personally, I have the supercharged extremely vibrant dreams only once every few years, and the rest are ordinary. When I do have a supercharged dream I make sure to examine it and normally it can provide me with some type of insight or enjoyment. The dream in my original post was my latest supercharged dreams. Many months have past since the original dream and I can still recount and remember aspects and faces from the dream. I have always wondered if these supercharged dreams were helped along by another helping being that somehow shared their energy with me to allow me to experience these vibrant dream experiences. Almost like they raise me up to a higher level. Since I have started my meditation practice years ago it is rare for me to have an ordinary dream that is bad, although they do still happen. I am thankful in this aspect but I am not yet a lucid dreamer. Thank you for everyone's replies, study about dreams and the unconscious fascinates me. I have enjoyed reading all the comments.

That's indeed the case, most are junk actually. The ones with solid messages are connected to our unconscious. It's usually how lucidity appears, you realise something is off from reality and then maintain awareness in the dream state.

Unless I'm woken up in the middle of them, I tend not to remember my dreams. I've worked on dream recall and lucidity with limited success. I'm not a natural whereas my sensei would serial dream- going back to the same dream world each night in a semi-lucid state. I think there's good dreams with solid messages and junk dreams that are more scramble of the unconscious. One time I attained lucidity because I was talking to an old friend, then realized he'd passed away, thus so I must be dreaming.

As OP made no claims of an alien divination, what makes you wonder? Without remembering dreams and a dream journal how can you know the tendency though ?

Do people here think they are actually encountering aliens while asleep? Or just having dreams about alien-like beings? My dreams tend to be about realistic situations. I had a dream recently that I was offered a job, although none of the people I spoke to in the dream was anyone I recognized. I do not remember dreams too often. And I only remember a few small snippets of dreams when I wake up.

Yes, I also have to say something to cap the experience and let me partner know that it is nothing to worry about and that she can go back to sleep. I'd love to hear about your experiences, feel free to PM me. I have only met 2 other people who have extensive dream/visions with this kind of reality. I can share a bit about them too.