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I think these journeys can tell us about both the conscious and unconscious. Anything occupying a substantial part of our conscious activity will spill over into the dream world and imagination. Sometimes it is obvious, other times disguised, but very much a part of, or influenced by, our daily conscious activity, whatever is alive in us in positive and negative ways. Unconscious content - suppressed, repressed, or latent - will also be expressed and I find the two are often inter-mixed thus giving rise to complex and unexpected images and stories.

I am down at the river at the swimming beach and a an alien couple is there , they have a very pale blue tone in their silver skins , silver head hair , no other hair , blue silver eyes , naked , sexually differentiated but no sexual organs . Some talk between us happened , cant remember it . Thats it , sorry . Curious I found this this morning as last night I had an 'epic' dream - down the 'tunnel' here and swoosh ! (It 'quantum jumps' from the back ridge on the property to ....... but no aliens .

His book on the psychology of encounters, whether real or perceived. His work applies independently of whether an encounter is real or not, he definitely did not bear a judgement against physical sightings with accompanied verified radar readings etc. Though in a dream where it is all psychological, his work is an even better fit for purpose.

Jung has a whole book on UFOs and what we project to them ! he does not make claims on the physicality of the phenomenon in the book, he examines the projections we do onto them, independently of whether they are real or perceived. The discussion in the book is of course very relevant for dreams with Aliens! My "dream aliens" were living nebulas in space!, very beautiful, near eternal and had a calming "aura". Comms were direct mind communication like your dream aliens - a good question to ask here is if it is common in your dreams to hear sounds, this might be a relevant factor which may extend to all communications you have while dreaming. Another question to ponder, and only you can determine that, is what did you project onto your Aliens, could be e.g. your perception of future humans, maybe some image from popular culture or maybe something entirely different, only you could tell, it was your dream. Dreams which are very vivid usually are important, so it's worth spending some time thinking about the symbolisms and what they mean for us. Interpretation of what a character symbolises is personal though there are common archetypes. Another question to think about, do you remember your bodily sensations during phases in your dream, can you recall when you had the same bodily sensations recently and in the past? This may give you clues to help you connect the "dream theater" to life events. I like this method a lot as it is not dependent on symbolic interpretation and is less error-prone. So a few angles, to look into it, what did you project onto the aliens, symbolic interpretation/archetypes, bodily sensations. That said don't spend an eternity analysing it, I used to keep a detailed dream journal for years and for some of them there could well be multiple interpretations, so not worth overthinking it. Good luck with the interpretation work !

Wondering if anyone would enjoy sharing their alien encounters during the dream state here? I had an encounter with telepathic Nordic like humanoids who called themselves the blues. What was peculiar about the encounter was they were giving certain problem solving exercises and then observing, almost like scientists would design an experiment and record the results. I was not meant to see them and they were somewhat surprised when I firstly discovered their presence watching and then was able to interact with them. Conversation was telepathic. They could hear my thoughts and I could hear theirs. My visual picture of what they looked like was an energetic interpretation through my mind. At no stage did I feel any ill intent or malice on their behalf. I actually felt that they had a genuine caring attitude towards humans. I felt that they were many times more advanced than us. I ended the dream on their ship. The interior reminded me of a hotel with no windows. I understood the intelligence gathering of human beings for them was more of a commercial agreement with whom shall remain a mystery. I tried searching for anyone else who had encounter beings that called themselves the blues but haven't found anything yet. I hope others can share their experiences no matter how weird. After all it was only a dream but an extremely vivid one at that.

It's never easy to say something about the lived experience of someone else. It could be a bit different though, When a person starts to do energy work, whether that be Daoist or yoga or something else, sometimes that energy starts really moving into your body. Those unaccustomed feelings are interpreted (by the body) as sexual arousal. The feeling of sexual arousal will then create imagery in the mind and someone that you have a little crush on sounds like a perfect person to center these unaccustomed feelings on. (and this btw could attract the guy you were thinking of, so the whole thing would be turned around) as it was in a dream you may think you have no influence on what happened, yet you might try to bend your sexual attraction to another person, preferably one who is not playing with chi or anything. Think of that other person before you fall asleep can change what happens during sleep. These sort of things can and do happen, but of course I cannot know what is happening to you. (But whatever it was, if you covertly enjoyed it it will very probably repeat itself.)

Why not keep the whole experience for what it was, including the sensation that someone was there. Just the fact that you remember the dream in detail without being a lucid dreamer means that this dream had something important to tell you, nvm that you query about it. But why go further than that, so no astral travel assumptions, no assumptions that he was really there in some form etc? without denying how you felt at the same time. Then it's all about you, and how that experience alters how you feel about to interacting with the said person, your interpretation of what your dream was signaling to you. The alternative is to try to link it to something, with some people telling you it's impossible and some that it's possible, the risk being that lack of a definite answer may be consuming. Btw I don't know what Taoism says but synchronicities while dreaming are a topic, my personal take is that they are possible, whether these can be induced by another person or not is less clear. But trying to figure if in a given instance they were induced is consuming and ultimately unanswerable, if your gut tells you to keep a distance from him, trust your gut. So in short interpret how you felt from this experience, take home the messages and ignore the rest. If this was an unsettling experience, visit nature, friends, to feel closer to your core and prevent let the experience move you from your centre of gravity. Only your gut knows how to interact with him going forward, it has way more information on this.

@Fatuous, Hi - there are some texts which describe sexual practices between a male practitioner and female (usually young) subject - but I don't have the references (you might find them if you search the board). They are definitely non-standard and dubious in nature. Indeed this very board had an issue with an ex-member doing this kind of thing. I won't go into details. But generally speaking it is not ok without consent. In the old days the status of women was so reduced that some felt themselves entitled to use female subjects for this kind of thing - and to the present day there have been many 'scandals' especially in vajrayana Buddhism where an advanced man 'uses' a female subject in this way. Even with consent it can still cause harm unless the intent of the other person is properly understood. There is also a risk that this was just a dream and you could waste a lot of time and energy on what is essentially a fantasy. Quite a few people learn lucid dreaming in order to have pseudo-sexual encounters and the like. This again is very dubious - genuine dream yogas have a different purpose entirely. For what its worth my advice is to stay away from this kind of thing and concentrate on forming real relationships but of course it is up to you.

Is there a daoist practice that combines astral travel + the esoteric sexual practices such that you can enter someone's dreams and harvest their sexual energy / jing that way? Asking for a friend! Just kidding: I have reason to believe this was done to me. I had a dream that included passionate sex which TBH is a dream type I never experience; frankly I don't think I ever have before. I also personally don't lucid dream or travel astrally (at least not intentionally). After dream sex, I immediately woke up and had the distinct feeling that this person was in my room, observing me from a specific location. I've had the feeling of someone's energy in my room a few times before but it's always been a not-alive person; this person is very much alive. It was a strong sense and I trust it. I don't want to go into details about this person but they have advanced knowledge and probably direct experience of daoist esoteric practices likely beyond most people on this forum (not to be rude at all to anyone here, I just want to try to put into context without giving too much identifying information about this person). So I'm curious, is this a thing in daoist esoterica? Astral travel, entering someone's dream, and harvesting their sexual energy that way? I'm trying to determine how to interact with this person moving forward. I guess I don't mind the idea of a night time astral visit for a dream-time fling; I do mind nonconsensual energy harvesting. Yes, he is aware of daoist practices involving nonconsensual jing harvesting and semen retention, at least in the physical reality. Trying to figure out if that's what happened here, but in dreamtime format. Oh, and I don't have a sexual relationship or even a regular friendship or a master-student relationship with this person, it's a bit different and that's all I'll say. I have a tiny crush on him (I am a person who develops tiny crushes) but I don't fantasize about him or anything, so the dream wasn't manifesting some deep desire I have. There was non-sex stuff in the dream that felt quite important, so I guess it's also possible that his astral body sensed the big dream and came to see what was going on. Thanks in advance.

' The wheel of negative karma stops RIGHT HERE ! ' Thats what I say about bringing up kids . Because if you bring up your kids right, no matter what you suffered , then they will pass good upbringing on to their kids ... and so on . I seem to have a lot to do with damaged people , or maybe that is just the stats 'out there ? Some feel helpless about the effects their abuse has had / is having on them . And then some of them have kids and mess that up due to this . I have been trying to help a young guy ( son of a female friend ) that had a bad childhood, he recently had his own son , unfortunately it is NOT a family unit and already beset with troubles . Its going to be a long journey here . I had a good talk to him about it recently , about what happened to him and the people that abused him and stifled his development , and his issues with his own infant son , that he rarely sees . I explained my above ideas to him and how kids can feel and develop well with good input . "Let's (ie us ) take the little guy on an adventure in nature one day , fishing or something, he will love it ." But its going to take time and patience .... small steps , treading on thin ice . He actually talked to his mother the other week (after some very subtle communication with me ) after several years of either ignoring her or abusing her as they passed in the street . She was overjoyed . Mum tells me one of her daughters ( who seems a bit prophetic ) had a dream about all of them , including him, sitting down to a meal together , that made mum very happy . - I'm working on it . Good onya mate ! You watch that boy grow and spread the good to others who will then do the same themselves .

Ink blooms on paper. A dream of Japan dissolves. California dreams.

Update: In my first week of practice after the retreat, out of 7 nights, I've managed to have 3 nights of lucid dreams. Overview 1. Night After The Retreat - lucid dreams one after the other (about 3-4 in a row during morning time) 2. Night After The Retreat - no lucid dreams 3. Night After The Retreat - lucid dreams one after the other (about 2-3 in a row during morning time) 4. Night After The Retreat - no lucid dreams 5. Night After The Retreat - lucid dreams one after the other (about 3-4 in a row during morning time) 6. Night After The Retreat - no lucid dreams 7. Night After The Retreat - no lucid dreams So 3 out of 7 nights something happened since the retreat, pretty good actually. Still not as good as a couple of years ago with the bön method where it was every single night like clockwork for a whole week, but let's see how it goes. My first preliminary observations and conclusions 1) all my lucid dreams from tibetan dream yoga have only occured in the morning hours, e-g. 5-8 in the morning. I usually wake up once or twice in a night to turn over (I sleep on my side). The last time I wake up to turn before actually having to get up, after that turn is usually when I get the lucid dreams. So either it's because I have actually rested quite a lot already, and the built up energy is what allows the lucid dream to happen. Or it's because of the environmental energy shifting from yin (night) to yang (day) with the sun rising, which boosts the lucidity. Or probably it's both. 2) In all lucid dreams in my life, I've never been able to change the environment. I am simply lucid in a set of surroundings, people and objects already present, and then I can move myself around and choose how to react to what's going on, but I can't change it. Only once did I have "power" over the environment back when I did the bön method. This is something I always pondered, how come I am lucid, but cannot control the dream? Because when reading about lucid dreams, control of the dream environment was one of the things most people spoke about. However, now I think it's to do with how strong one's dream body is. In my case, my dream body was the weakest of my bodies, so it's going to take some time with continous medicine buddha as well as dream yoga practice to build it stronger. Maybe I will get a further boost to my strength when I learn and start practicing tummo. 3) My sleep quality was worse, and I would wake up not fully rested when I did dream yoga earlier. This was also the case the first 3-4 days, however, now I feel it normalizing more and more from day to day. My sleep quality is returning to normal, I also fall asleep more naturally (whereas before it took me longer because I focused too hard on the visualisation while falling asleep) and lastly my level of feeling rested and recharged when I rise is also very close to normal now. This is a huge thing for me, and I feel it to be related to my dream body strength growing, as well as of course finding the balance between visualisation effort and letting go while falling asleep. "99% sleep, 1% awareness" is what Tulku Lobsang kept repeating during the retreat. I was probably more like "100% awareness, 0% sleep"! Now I'm more relaxed, that helps a lot with falling asleep. Where To Go From Here Tulku Lobsang gives several progressions for dream yoga: Level 1) Stabilise your ability to have lucid dreams (have lucid dreams every night) Level 2) Start traveling around your environment in your lucid dreams every night Level 3) Start changing yourself in the environment (shift your own form) every night Level 4) Start changing the environment (multiply objects) every night Level 5) Start doing spiritual practice in your lucid dreams every night (this creates a "special dream body") Level 6) Create a "special dream body" (now you no longer travel within your own mind during dream yoga with your ordinary dream body, now you actually travel in the real, objective universe with a "special" dream body - more similar to what's normally called astral projection) - however, how to practice at this level he didn't elaborate on So I'm clearly still at the most basic level, level 1. It's probably going to take quite a while to complete each of these levels, so I'm arming myself with patience. Just stabilising lucid dreams every night would be a huge achievement seen from my current perspective. I'm going to keep on keeping on, and we'll see if learning and practicing daily tummo from next month or so will boost my dream yoga. Lastly, an underrated day practice that supports dream yoga is a kind of mindful attitude with everything that happens during the day, by saying to yourself "this is a dream, I'm dreaming". I've heard this from several lamas. I've not really taken it seriously, but I've tried to do it a few days. I feel like it actually let's you work out your dream body in your daily life. So it's like a "cheat code" to level up your dream body much faster. Now your dream body builds itself stronger BOTH during your daily life AND during your dream life. Each time you say "it's a dream, I'm dreaming" your start experiencing from your dream body, thereby feeding it experiences, working it out, and slowly building it bigger and stronger.

I wouldn't draw too many parallels as in this way manner parallels could also be drawn with any pair of dual self-complementing concepts. What I personally have found most useful in life was the four stages of the anima and how, with time, there's a change in the anima. Sometimes we just recognise we're attracted but have no clue as to why, or our "type" changes and we're unaware why, it's all unconscious. The anima is just a component of this of course, eg for some people it's really important there's a pheromone match. Even though many elements are at play and it's not only about the anima, the anima is a very important component. This brings to the conscious something really important in life, partner selection. Becoming familiar with it, also makes the past look simple and leaves us less puzzled. Of course it can also be used in reverse, rejecting partners if we deem the animus/anima they see in us means it won't really go that well 😁 Just like "meeting" the shadow may happen in a dream, meeting the anima may also happen in a dream and the change of anima can appear in dreamwork too. Tbh this is the only sort of dreamwork progression I've found to be both interesting and useful. It doesn't mean that everytime someone fancies a new girlfriend there's a change in the anima of course, it's more of a radical change, about the "type" someone is attracted to. Similarly for women, changes in the animus signal significant changes. Also, the anima/animus is special in the sense that it is one of the archetypes that links us to the collective unconscious, which however is a different discussion altogether. Typically this work is done after work on the shadow-self and if the work is done in dreamwork, there too the anima/animus dreams typically occur after the dreams about the shadow. So in a sense it's a natural progression after integration of the shadow has progressed to some extent.

For me, it's a bit about a belief many tribal people used to share -- every photo takes away some of one's soul. An indirect confirmation that there's something to it I see in the tragic or at least controversial predicament of many (oh so many) celebrities for whom having their images on public display is part of their job description -- actors/actresses, rock stars, politicians, etc.. Many of those who had "everything" an "ordinary person" might dream of -- fame and fortune and even love of millions -- wound up dying young, screwing up their lives with all kinds of toxic excesses, getting publicly eviscerated over this or that, or becoming grotesque caricatures of their own earlier selves. Does it have something to do with their incessant picture-posing? I don't know, but I definitely feel a certain truth to that. Would you believe that I only took one selfie in my entire life so far? And even that, by accident -- I was aiming for something else and snapped a pic of my reflection in the mirror instead, in a winery. I liked the accidental composition -- it looked sort of like a painting on the wall, so I kept it.

Dear Dao Bums, Let me share an update with some insights gained from daily practice in 3 points: 1) Medicine Buddha, 2) Dream Yoga, 3) Take Homes So Far 1) Medicine Buddha Practicing the mantra cultivates your speech, and practicing the meditation cultivates your mind. Further, you don't only cultivate yourself, you actively connect with a lineage mandala field, where the medicine buddha is one particular part of the mandala related to healing. A specific dimension if you will. Once you connect to this dimension, the energies from that dimension flow into you during practice, and over time builds your own energies stronger. Like your house being plugged into the larger, local electrical grid and powerplant, allowing you to use your share of the energy. I felt the white light in my head center and in my entire body easily in the first few days. I take that to mean my mind energy is balanced and purified. Likewise, I felt the blue energy entering my heart center also spreading to almost my entire body, just a few places here and there are not reached yet. That means my body is almost completely healed and purified, however just a little more to go. However, the red light entering my throat could only fill up the left half of my body, and had a really hard time entering the right side of my body. After a few days, I start to feel the message is that my speech is not purified. After some more practice, I reflect "why is my speech not purified? I am very mindfuld of speaking truth, avoiding lies, speaking positive words to others, and I have practiced mantras since childhood". Then I understood that speech is a kind of "mantra energy", and that it's not my current actions, but karma from previous lives that determine how much practice we need to purify our body, mind and speech. And apparently my mind and body karma is okay, but there is some bad speech karma. I then suddenly remembered a vedic astrology reading I had about 2-3 years ago, where they specifically said my worst past life karma was using the science of mantras in an a-dharmic way! Suddenly it made sense; my current experience with medicine buddha's 3 lights of pure body, mind and speech, and this experience of the red light not being able to fill my whole body could actually fit quite well with past life karma! Pretty interesting! Of course continued practice will help alleviate that karma, as well as of course continuing to stay mindful of speech in daily life, and maybe find a way to use mantras to help alleviate the suffering of others, to generate a new, positive karma, that over time can help balance or even cancel out this old negative karma. 2) Dream Yoga During dream yoga practice, you visualise a red drop of essence in your throat chakra. And as you read above, I never had succes with this practice until now. It now makes sense that the negative karmic burden of a-dharmic use of mantras in previous life times was just too heavy, and much more practice and purification was needed until I could use this method. It also makes sense that our speech body could in some way also be called a "mantra body", generated by millions and millions of mantras we've said in this or previous lives. However, in my case, I've hurt others in previous lives with this energy, so of course the karma is that my speech body is not fully functional due to this burden. Hence only after purifying it and cultivating it will I be able to grow in my dream yoga practice. Lastly, I also got progressively more tired when I succeded with dream yoga practice a couple of years ago with the bön method! Because I'm running a marathon with just one leg! I'm doing physical work with a handicapped body, weighed down by negative karma from previous lives. Only by repaying that debt and then rebuilding a normal dream body (speech/mantra) can I then continue to grow by actually building it stronger and stronger by continued practice. Further, my dream yoga is much better if I do the medicine buddha practice just before lying down to sleep and do the dream practice. Makes sense, as I strengthen, purify and recharge my body, mind and speech. 3) Take Homes So Far - The force of karma is real! - Only the combination of spiritual practice and mindful daily, virtuous living can alleviate/purify this over time - The dream body seems very related to our speech/mantra body - If you don't practice medicine buddha, maybe you will have a harder time with dream yoga, as medicine buddha replenishes and purifies your body, mind and speech. If you don't have a source of replenishing and nourishing, dream yoga could just make you more tired. All the best!

Dear Dao Bums, Here's my experience with Tulku Lobsang (known for doing Tummo in -5 degrees celsius on "Story of God With Morgan Freeman" on NGC). I'll share in 4 parts: 1) Intro and Background 2) Medicine Buddha 3) Dream Yoga 4) Wrap Up - To Be Continued 1) Intro and Background I heard about Tummo when I was a child from my dad. He learnt about yoga on a hippie island camp full of naked women burning bras when he was a child, forced to go with my hippie grandmother in the 60s. He had a life changing experience as a child with yoga and mantras, while on this naked women camp. So in his late teens when small yoga and meditation workshops started in the West, he started attending. Buddhism was super famous in my country on the spiritual scene, as it still is in much of Europe with the New Age crowd I would say. While I grew up, my dad told me of naked monks in the snow-clad Himalayas drying wet sheets with their body temperature through magical yoga practices. So now the family saga continues; as an adult, I've also pursued further what my dad exposed me to as a child. This time, I saw Tulku Lobsang with Morgan Freeman. Being able to be comfortable in a t-shirt in -5 degrees on television I took as a "good enough" show of Tummo skill, that maybe I could finally pursue this magical practice myself. However, I still had some doubts. So, when I saw he was coming to my country, I decided to go check him out. If he "checked out" I would be willing to give it a go and fork over my hard earned cash to flight, hotel and the Tummo workshop (when the time comes). With the intro out of the way, let me share how it went! The first day he taught Medicine Buddha. The following 2 days it was one long workshop on Dream Yoga. 2) Medicine Buddha He gave us the mantra and we all chanted together for maybe 5-15 minutes. Then he instructed us step-by-step in the visualisation. After having stabilised the visualisation, we resumed chanting together (we were maybe 20-30 people). During his transmission, I felt a special kind of energy coming into my head center. I felt like it made it easier for me to visualise. I also felt the energy from each of the lights we visualised in all of my body, and felt pleasantly relaxed. Since this day, I've been doing a minimum of 108 reps of the mantra and then the visualisation meditation procedure he explained. Already on the second day of the practice, it's like the energy had increased in power. Now it's growing day by day with my daily practice. So far so good! He's definitely legit. 3) Dream Yoga My dad took me to a dream yoga weekend workshop when I was about 18-19 years old with a Rinpoche visiting my country. I thought the whole idea of lucid dreams and using them for spiritual practice was extremely fascinating, and even at that young age I practiced quite consistently for about 3 months (while also reading his book). However, I had no results whatsoever. Then again when I was in my mid 20s, I picked up the book again and decided to give it a go. I practiced again for about 2 months, but zero results. In my late 20s, I again read yet another book by a tibetan teacher on dream yoga. I tried it again. No results after 1 month. All of the above practices were the usual "visualise a red drop in your throat chakra, surrounded by a white lotus flower with 4 leaves". In this book there was also a tibetan letter on each leaf, and you said them one by one as a kind of mantra for a while, then proceeded to only visualise until falling asleep. However, at the end of this particular book was also a shamanistic bön practice for lucid dreaming. After 1 month of failing with the vajrayana buddhist practice, I tried the shamanic practice. After about 7-14 days, it happened! I was super excited. Then it would happen every single day like clockwork for about a week. However, with each day I felt like I got more and more tired. Like I used up energy while sleeping, instead of regaining it. I remembered a warning from a daoist qigong teacher who had (as usually) dissed buddhist practices, especially their dream practices. He said "night is for sleeping and resting, that's what nature intended". So I thought maybe my bön lucid dreaming practice was sapping my energy and discontinued it. Lo and behold, now I'm in my early 30s, and I was faced with yet another tibetan vajrayana buddhist practice of visualising a red drop in my throat. "Here we go again!" I found myself thinking, however I still had an open mind during the workshop. During the workshop I felt Tulku Lobsang transmitted different states as well as different energies. I also found him to be extremely grounded in Being, never losing connection to himself, even if some of the people were weird or asked weird questions etc. He remained in Being, very relaxed, very present and extremely grounded and Embodied. I was quite impressed! However, no succes with lucid dreaming, neither during the nights between the workshop days, nor during the workshops when we actually slept for 10-30 minutes under his guidance and blessing. I really felt he transmitted a lot of energy during these sleeping sessions on the workshop, but still no lucid dreams. However, now after the workshop, I have actually had 3-4 lucid dreams so far using the typical tibetan buddhist vajrayana practice with the red drop! Something that's never worked for me, even though I've tried it on/off since I was 19. So that also tells me that his transmission is legit! 4) Wrap Up - To Be Continued So to wrap up, Tulku Lobsang is legit! He's extremely grounded in Being, in Presence and in his body, and he really does transmit states and energies. There's no more doubt in my mind - I will glady fork over my time and cash to learn Tummo from him when the time comes

Yes there is the long form Zhunti, which is the complete. Then the short, which is the last few lines of the long starting with Om If i remember correct. You either do enough reps of the long, or get some kind of vision/dream to be able to do the short. There's also a complete ritual/sadhana one can do with the Zhunti but its best done after receiving transmission/empowerment apparently, the monk who inherited it from Master Nan at least mentioned this

Tao says: From this time forward Zhou Ziliang was remote from me in both voice and form—he appeared to me in neither vision nor dream. Such is the gulf of separation between humans and the spirits. But should I not await the proper moment to meet with him again? The means by which Ziliang achieved the Dao as well as his present rank and style in the spirit world are all layed out in his records. Here I have simply summarized some of his earthly activities as well as what I observed of him to form a preface to his own records. At the end of the preface there is a note (I’m not sure if it’s by Tao or a later copyist) which tells readers to treat Ziliang’s records like scripture, with the appropriate reverence and ritual preparation.

My personal experience with ( lucid ) dream progressions has been that the progressed from the extraordinary/sci-fi movie material to the very ordinary. In that during a long period of lucidity they started off with all the fantasy movie type of stuff ( daemons, flying ) and the progression was ..they begun to resemble real life more and more. Like each "level" in this "game" had a "puzzle" to solve ( ie let the daemons kill you instead of fighting ). Then the next "level" was a little closer to reality, etc etc to the point I dropped dreamwork because there was nothing untypical there anymore, it was like reality. I don't know if this can be generalised or if it's just how it happened to work out for for me. Just thought of sharing, as if that guy was a lucid dreamer, maybe he had a similar type of progression and this is why his dreams were resembling reality. Of course it could well be something entirely different for him. The above progression is btw entirely unrelated to therapeutic dreamwork progression, ie unrelated to meeting the shadow, the anima etc, so it's not a proxy for something that's better understood.

Well, my hometown is supposed to become quite nice when "it all goes down". Of course, currently, we can swing between extremes of +40c and -40c annually with 1-3 feet of snow per winter, so it might be worthwhile waiting until we're deep into climate change. Incidentally, we get colder than Mars at least a few nights per winter, so if that is what you fancy, might be cheaper to live out that dream here than trust your life on something elon musk built just to find out anything colder than -40c is deeply unpleasant. I remember one year we had snow so high we could ski over the fence. In that spring we had a huge flood. I'm with @silent thunder - BC Coast is the retirement plan. I'll miss the summers, but man, to not be here for the winter... 🥰

Here's a quotation from Jung's Red Book which provides some necessary nuance to this very general statement: The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth. Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not. But how can I attain the knowledge of the heart? You can attain this knowledge only by living your life to the full. You live your life fully if you also live what you have never yet lived, but have left for others to live or to think. You will say: "But I cannot live or think everything that others live or think." But you should say: "The life that I could still live, I should live, and the thoughts that I could still think, I should think." It appears as though you want to flee from yourself so as not to have to live what remains unlived until now. But you cannot flee from yourself. It is with you all the time and demands fulfillment. If you pretend to be blind and dumb to this demand, you feign being blind and deaf to yourself This way you will never reach the knowledge of the heart. The knowledge of your heart is how your heart is. From a cunning heart you will know cunning. From a good heart you will know goodness. So that your understanding becomes perfect, consider that your heart is both good and evil. You ask, "What? Should I also live evil?" The spirit of the depths demands: "The life that you could still live, you should live. Well-being decides, not your well-being, not the well-being of the others, but only well-being." Well-being is between me and others, in society. I, too, lived — which I had not done before, and which I could still do. I lived into the depths, and the depths began to speak. The depths taught me the other truth. It thus united sense and nonsense in me. I had to recognize that I am only the expression and symbol of the soul. In the sense of the spirit of the depths, I am as I am in this visible world a symbol of my soul, and I am thoroughly a serf, completely subjugated, utterly obedient. The spirit of the depths taught me to say: "I am the servant of a child." Through this dictum I learn above all the most extreme humility, as what I most need. The spirit of this time of course allowed me to believe in my reason. He let me see myself in the image of a leader with ripe thoughts. But the spirit of the depths teaches me that I am a servant, in fact the servant of a child. This dictum was repugnant to me and I hated it. But I had to recognize and accept that my soul is a child and that my God in my soul is a child.

Honesty at the conscious level is good but not sufficient. Most people at the conscious level want to be good actually, more often than not, it's their unconscious that acts differently. The difficulty is recognising and accepting what's unconscious as it's not always pretty. Eg when people first "meet" their shadow self they're like, no way this thing is part of me. The shadow is by definition the nasty part of our Psyche. If this work is done through dreamwork, they literally do meet their shadow, in a dream ofc. Without acceptance though there's no integration and integrating our shadow is linked even to our creativity. Integration doesn't mean being taken over by our shadow of course. After integrating our shadow we're also not triggered by the personality of others, which allows more effective interactions, including setting better boundaries. Which goes back to why these sort of integrations are so important. If they're not done they "rule someone from the unconscious and she or he calls it fate" even if their conscious intentions are different. Conscious intent is the start but it's not enough.

What’s fundamentally wrong with feeling? Why is having an emotion referred to negatively as clinging, or rebranded as sluggish qi? Emotion is a *legitimate tool to help us make appropriate decisions. The beauty of they system goes wrong IMO because of stored emotions and the isolation of our emotions from our logical thought processes, but this common error can be fixed, and the first step is releasing stored ie. unexpressed emotions. But how to do that? If you’re trying to force any sort of prejudice on an emotion, that you don’t want to cling, that it can just be observed, that you don’t want to become lost in emotion, that it’s not a legitimate emotion, then you’re limiting the simplicity of emotions. A feeling is felt, end of story. Stored emotions have to be felt, they were created in the language of feeling, and they have to be expressed in the language of feeling, there is no alternative. Granted it’s a rocky road, and people thrown into the deep end are being damaged, but then the method for clearing stored emotions needs to be blamed as inappropriate. I propose that a primary purpose of dreams is to clear stored emotions as a self-cleaning self-fixing system, much like our bodies self-fix a wound. I contend that we are self-fixing organisms on both the physical and psychological level, and dreams are the expression of psychological fixing. In a dream commonly there is a feeling. This is the purpose of the dream, dredging up an irritant in the psyche in order to remove it, and the way to remove it is to fully feel it within the dreams boundaries. This is also the safety mechanism of the self-fixing system, our psyche doesn’t want to destroy itself, it wants to fix itself. Going at it and expressing feelings in an unboundaried way is an unbalanced start that is more than likely to end in unboundaried and unbalanced ways, maybe this is why so many restrictions are put on emotions, they can destroy an individual who has lost contact with their own internal cleaning system. Dreams contain more than that single level of information, but decoding the other levels is harder, and feeling the feeling is enough information on the first run. * One example of the use of emotions for making good decisions that has been known for decades: Would it really be in our best interests to detach from this feeling and keep heading merrily in the direction of the snake?

Or as Arlo Guthrie sang, "if you didn't know about that one, well, then what else don't you know" (Presidential Rag). There's at least one sermon where Gautama disparages women. He claimed "stroking the sun and moon with the hand" as one of six miracles. A. K. Warder says that the first schism came about because the various orders couldn't agree on one of six points. They agreed on five out of six--for example, that Gautama's omniscience was limited to matters of the dharma, he was not omniscient about everything--that was one of the points of contention. The point they couldn't agree on was whether or not an arhant could be seduced by a succubus in his sleep. In other words, whether an enlightened man could have a wet dream. I sometimes ponder how that got worked around into how the "great path" was superior because the mahayanists were willing to suffer along with everyone else until everybody was enlightened. You know, have wet dreams, and such. And it's true, that in Gautama's teaching, only the arhants really cut off sensual desire and the other hindrances at the root. Everybody else had to keep working at it, because the hindrances would continue to grow--no spiritual Round-up. I personally owe Gautama an overwhelming debt, for his teachings about concentration and about his way of living, the mindfulness that constituted his way of living "most of the time, especially in the rainy season". I don't really find the past lives/future lives and the social and moral prescriptions, the four elements and all, that useful. The Bodhisattva vow is actually more useful to me, I'll have to give the Mahayanists credit on that. Oh, and on that transmission of the teaching to Kasayapa, the story of Gautama holding up a flower and Kasayapa wordlessly receiving the teaching. That story is cited to justify transmission outside of scripture in the Zen tradition. Well, there was a mandarava flower given to Kasayapa by a wondering ascetic, who informed Kasayapa that Gautama had died (the mandarava trees had started blooming out of season). Kasayapa proceeded to the town where Gautama lay on the funeral pyre, and I guess he must have collected Gautama's robe and bowl at that time. That story is in the paranibbana sutta--wordless transmission, indeed!

That's a lot of stuff, typically seen over years, some you'll like and keep, some you'll conclude are not worth you time but you can't do all at once. Your family and your studies are the most important thing, so you need to pick one thing, can't do everything in life at the same timem Why not start small, see if you can sustain an 20 min daily practice? Tbh in your shoes I'd look for stuff that are easy to integrate, eg with two daughters will you have time to maintain a dream journal each morning instead of making breakfast and taking them to school? Lucid dreaming lowers your quality of sleep, just wear a fitbit and measure your "deep sleep" time, when you're lucid, it will be lower and we don't need only REM sleep to wake up refreshed... Lucid dreaming may make you feel tired, especially given your busy schedule. Same applies to journeying in your sleep time. So why not do each day 20 mins of meditation on breath or 20 mins of insight meditation or 20 mins walking meditation ? As you need a community to practice with anyhow, I'd say knock some doors close to where you live. Try a Zen dojo, meditation centres, Qigong classes and whoever teacher you like more, start with that. There's no reason to try all at once, take your time.