Not much deeper down the rabbithole

The last few nights my sleep has been especially deep, and I have not had a single dream I can remember. To some extent this is good news of course, but if you are working on dream recollection and trying to induce lucid dreams, it is not exactly helpful. So how do I continue this? I am planning to try and meditate myself into trance later today, and will let you know what happened there.

But it seems there are little helpers to aid the oncoming of lucid dreaming, which I have just become aware of. A low dose of psilocybin containing mushrooms is said to do the trick, but there are also legal alternatives: silene capensis, or African Dream Root, is said to be consumed in West Africa, Calea Zacatechichi is another natural substance from the Americas and African Dream Herb (entada rheedii) is spread across the Indian Ocean. What these three substances seem to have in common is that they are taken to induce lucid dreaming, but have little effect (although some seems to be present when reading the reports) in waking state.

I also mentioned holotropic breathing in my last post. There are other breathing techniques too to alter consciousness, one is Tuvan throat singing, which reminds me a bit of overtone singing, but isn't exactly it. Another would be practicing circular breathing with a didgeridoo for a period of time.

So, summing up, the possibilities abound, and it is not necessary to break the law (quite yet). Also: the road is a long one. Life is so easy, but the psyche is complex.

A first dreaming experience

I mentioned in my last post that I am interested in lucid dreaming. In the last couple of days harnessing my dream power has been my focus. Yesterday afternoon I saw a video about lucid dreams and did some reading. The essence to lucid dream from a waking state (also known as WILD, wake induced lucid dreaming) is this: relaxation, rhythmic breathing, a focus on the third eye. I haven't got round to this yet, but I did have an experience in my regular dreams last night.
As I was just slipping into a dream, for some reason I said tomyself in the dream "look at your hands", and I did. I had heard that looking at your hands in a dream is a way to turn on lucidity, and practiced it in waking state already. In my dream, I saw my hands fairly clearly for a couple of seconds and then got pulled out of it and woke up. Apart from the hands, the rest of the dream faded pretty instantly, but I was left with a feeling that I was still dreaming. Seriously got a bit scared while I went to the toilet and had to convince myself that this was definitely real.
All in all, an interesting first step. I wonder what lies further beyond...

Esoteric ways

My last post (Selbsterkenntnis) can also be put as saying that if you try to overcome the ego, the ego itself will attempt to resist. What I am sure of is this: nobody's life is linear, and there are many different ways of seeking healing to achieve unbounded happiness, which seems to be a common goal for most of us.

On my personal quest, I have come across many different ways, and I have found stuff out there which has helped me. The straightforward way of talking to a therapist I have only recently tried, and it surely yields some results, but of course it is a cumbersome road to take. Parallel to this, I have read about transactional analysis, gestalt theory and about meditational techniques to improve self-centeredness and awareness. This process has improved my life already. But I feel I am on a path now, and I want to continue. And there are so many more way out there.

I will try to go through the ways I see before me in this post. A word of caution though: always take time to critically think and ponder about what you are doing. It is easy to get lost and stray onto paths that might even screw you up more than you were already. Many esoteric practices and/or teachers have something going for them, but if pursued too entusiastically will turn against you. You are your own guide, and as your best friend you have the power to observe and choose from anything that will be helpful to you. I have even found that my critical mind has held me back from time to time, my scepticism forbidding me to even contemplate directions that I now know do have some value.

Let's start with yoga, which is becoming increasingly popular over here in Europe nowadays. I find it has both physical and spiritual benefits for anyone. It takes so many forms - ashtanga, iyengar, kundalini, bikram, tantra, ... it becomes hard to distinguish. I just read that there is a course on nidra yoga around the corner which I might try, even though it does sound a bit far out (I found Joseph Murphy being quoted in its praise. I have read his book "The Power of the Subconscious Mind", and am very sceptical about it. The message is basically that EVERYTHING that happens to you is subconsciously determined. While this is true to a large extent, one should not forget that there is an external reality acting on us as well, which cannot be ignored. If someone develops cancer, it need not be their fault. These things just happen).

When you start to go deeper down this path, you will inevitably stumble upon the chakras, wheels of energy within the body, arranged along the spine. Typically there are seven. There is the base, the navel, the solar plexus, the heart, the throat, the third eye and the crown chakra. I remain sceptical as to all the energy that is supposed to circulate here. But on the other hand, these are very important points in the body, and the supposition that there is energy there does work for me. Whether there really is any actual energy there is not that important, as long as the meditation on these points of the body has a beneficial effect on me.

One step further, but closely connected, comes the concept of the aura. A glowing sphere around the body. I will agree that people have different effects on me, and an esoteric person will tell you that this is due to the feeling their aura presents. More likely, it is due to subtle factors that are not immediately apparent, small cues in body language, charisma. The concept of the aura does not seem necessary to me. If we are talking about enery fields, what use does theorising about auras bring? This is far out anyways, and I remain sceptic.

An further shortcut element to enlightenment which I saw toted a couple of days ago is that of binaural beats. I will give these a try. You put on headphones, and each ear receives a slightly different frequency. The brain then produces a tone which corresponds to the frequency difference. The frequency of your thought patterns will eventually take on this frequency through resonance. As the frequency of the electric pulses going through the brain is different according to the activity state of the brain, meditative states are said to be inducible in this way. I am curious, but in the ten minutes I tried it yesterday I did not feel anything. Anyways, this is something that should not be able to cause too much damage.

The next element on my list is lucid dreaming. Surely, the subconscious mind communicates with us in our dreams, and understanding our dreams better or even taking action within dreams seems to me an attractive prospect. Claims of the supernatural are not far away when reading shamanic texts about this, but as itself dreaming and dream analysis seem to me another hopeful lead.

Fasting to purify body and mind might aid introspection too, and I am trying to find out more about this too and will experiment. This has been the background of many spiritual experiences in history, so it sounds extremely interesting, even though I will admit that at present I know little about it.

Finally (for now), I recently went for a holotropic breathwork session. This led to kathartic experiences for many of those that took part. For me it was an amazing experience too, just made me laugh uncontrollably for a long time. Other people get taken back to past events in their life. Might do it again. It does offer some healing potential if done properly. And I must admit at this point that since then I have started thinking about trying psychedelics to alter my consciousness, though I have a lot of respect and bit of fear in this respect, but maybe one day I might try it. What seems clear though, is that these substances should, if at all, be taken in the right context. Of course I am not advocating that anybody take psychedelic substances here. But it has been on my mind, that's all I am saying.

There are so many more practices, but I have written enough for now. I just came across Tensegrity this morning, which gave me the idea for this post. Check it out on Youtube, it seems to me to be a super-esoteric kind of Qi Gong. Am very sceptical, but then I haven't tried it, have I?

OK, enough, I just hope we all manage to progress on our paths. Ho!

Selbsterkenntnis

There is a natural tendency for self preservation in all things. Of course all things do come to an end eventually, at least in our perception. You will agree that we are all mortal and that our lives in the form that we know are finite.

Now, there are currents within our consciousness which can be viewed as having a life of their own. They may form a part of our person, maybe not an independent one, but that is irrelevant, as independence is not a prerequisite for life. I know only a few things about psychology, and I believe it depends a bit on your school what model of the person exactly you wish to adopt. But that there are various facets to every person seems clear. It can be enlightening to look at groupings and namings of such elements of the psyche, even if they might contradict. Experience shows us that changing perspectives can lead to insight, even if the perspectives in our repertoire seem to contradict.

A prominent feature of the personality which is frequently mentioned seems to be the "inner critic". Whether or not he (or maybe she in your case) is homogenously composed is beside the point here. But what if you were to start out on a path of shedding those intentions, biases and opinions and whatever other constructs we use to make sense of the world? This would endanger the inner critic. He will cringe at the thought of being ignored. He will try whatever it takes to sabotage you, since your efforts to "free yourself into being" are threatening his existence. Hence, clarity is so hard to achieve.

I am beginning a process of seeing deeper and clearer (which also leads to communicating more clearly, deeper and more honestly). And these questions are on my mind. Perhaps a bit fasting and meditation is the next step on the way.

Time is a salami

It's quite juicy at times... but of course this refers to the way you can slice a salami nice and thinly into smaller and smaller sections, until you arrive at a point in time. It is like a video on a spool, which consists of a stream of pictures, taken in quick succession.Within any one foto, time would not exist. I wonder what the smallest unit of time is that one can measure.
  

One minute later, and Google has the answer. The smallest unit of time one can measure is 10 seconds to the power of minus 43, also known as Planck time. This is due to the wave length of photons which are used to measure very short time intervals as the speed of light is a constant you can refer back to. But this does not actually mean that a shorter period of time is inconceivable. It doesn't answer the question of how we proceed from one picture of the "time film" to the other (or from one slice of salami to the next). It boils down to the question whether time is continuous or discrete. Then again, Planck time fits into a second more than millions times billions times billions times billions times billions of times. So it really is pretty short. I wonder whether it is the time one can theoretically measure, or whether anyone has the capacity to actually measure such a short unit of time. I'll just enjoy the saucisson!

The attachment discussion continued - part 3

Since the last post, I googled the word attachment and have found that there is actually such a thing as attachment theory (Wikipedia: here). Am studying it and will present my findings here soon.

More on the attachment problem (part 2)

In yesterday's post about the subject of attachment, I tried to develop the idea that it is best to strive for connection while avoiding attachment and that the best way to achieve this is by developing your mind through meditation. I feel that some further explanation is needed.

Firstly, I want to make clear that connected non-attachment should not be seen as a goal. It is an ideal. Let's assume that like everyone else, you have some combination of attachment and connectedness. Incidentally, these are only two attributes of many which can be used to describe you/your state of being at this point in time. Now it seems reasonable enough to assume that a higher degree of connectedness will be desirable, all else equal. Likewise, given a sufficient degree of connectedness, a lower attachment level will represent an improvement as well.

And so we may strive to improve ourselves to become happier people, to live as part of the great oneness that this world actually presents. I believe everything is connected already, thus when I speak of connectedness above, I should really call it awareness of connectedness.My (contestable) personal view of things is that by becoming aware and being mindful we discover the connectedness that is already there and feel it. I thus offer the hypothesis that awareness leads to the feeling of connectedness and is the more profound value.

Given that we have an awareness of these issues, we will attempt to move along the path towards happiness in the moment. But this path is a weary one, and pretty long. There is a good chance that we never reach our destination, or that we get stuck, because obstacles are in the way. So there is a danger that we deem the goal as unattainable, yet value our present life less, because we know that we are unlikely to reach nirvana. Courage to face life's challenges, humbleness and gratefulness are further attributes which we would like to attain to help us with this problem. But there are no shortcuts (actually, there are a few tricks to get further along the path, but they only go so far. Will discuss this in a future posting).

Besides the prospect of the path itself disspiriting you, a second danger is to do with wanting it too much. Wanting it too much can actually get you further away from getting it. I was thinking of this and came up with the metaphor which I have sketched in the picture. Pulling the rope which is attached to the man makes no sense. It will just wrap tighter, and constrict mobility.

The solution to this one could be to want it, but for the right reasons. Another way out would be to negate the categories of wanting and not wanting and attempt something else: let's just call it being. Maybe it boils down to the wisdom of "change what you can, accept what you cannot". In other words, feel the connection to the oneness, playing your part in system of life (change what you can) and always accept what is at this moment, because resisting reality is futile (accept what you cannot change).

Attachment stands in the way of acceptance. Attachment leads to the desire for things to be different from what they are. Increasing acceptance will help to appreciate things for what they are while liberating us from the burdens that too much attachment creates for us.

Let me recap my main points, as I would like to be understood precisely:
1. The road is rocky
2. Don't let that bring you down.
3. Appreciate what you have, accept what you cannot change.
4. Connectedness with non-attachment translates loosely to acceptance with awareness, which is a better formula, because it is more inclusive.
5. Attachment is resistance against the present.

I still have some problems with the radical message that is implied if my words above are taken to their conclusion....part three coming soon :)