[120] Meditating on the Winds of Mind: Exploring Lucidity, Dreams, and the Nature of Thought – with Andrew Holecek

12:03AM Jul 18, 2023

Speakers:

Andrew Holecek

Keywords:

wind

meditation

breath

lucid dream

movement

mind

book

consciousness

dream

fall

notice

yoga

breathing

sleep

work

samsara

literally

lucid

motion

center

Welcome welcome i It's been a while since I've been on the Monday night show I've been traveling pretty crazily for the last two months in my difference Geoffrey and Joe have been holding now for it which is awesome. So stop start with a few moments of shameless self promotion my favorite parts. So I get to two of my favorite events of the year coming up to draw the Mountain Center event. My deepest dive on the Bartles at that luminous part of Dharma top, which is it's actually a near principally a NEMA contribution. You won't find it in kind of US Soccer gear, Luke texts, which can be a little bit confusing, because it's, it's usually missed by people because it's so subtle. But I asked my teachers decades ago when I started rolling with the stuff that we've another and they all said, yeah, yeah, somebody might be able to connect to it. It's really cool stuff we talked about in this particular one, mostly, what is this luminosity? What is the light of the mind? How does the light of the mind go into runaway? I mean, in a certain way, what you're looking at here is too much light when you freeze appearances, that's too much light. So it's a big riff on the flip side of emptiness, the immediate expression of emptiness are basically inseparable from it is luminosity. So the luminous Bairam Dharma talk we go into this big time, my favorite of the barter programs because it is so subtle. And then the week after that, and not the week, the month after that is my annual thing with my friend Bob Thurman and men like that guy just recorded. We're gonna probably send that out to you after the end a little bit of editing to do probably Wednesday, Thursday, I had a 40 minute or so conversation with him yesterday, that we recorded on this particular program, non duality and nature mind collected in a lot of ways to the Dharma top teachings, but also quite a bit different because we're working here mostly with daytime stuff with meditation stuff. nature of reality kind of stuff, but to work with Bob on this stuff. It's a total hoot. So that's coming up. shameless self promotion. My last book just came out last last week. Super excited about this. I think this is number it's part of two books. The second one will be early in spring, or maybe a little bit later. So this is on the reverse meditations. And then someday, maybe we can start to work and play with these guys even in the context of this program. This is my first book for the for the general public. My other books have been kind of niche books and so I'm excited about this one. I feel pretty, pretty good about it. What else? I think that's it. I think that's it. Oh, Dan Harris. I had a really sweet podcast. He interviewed me which is kind of fun. Dan Harris on the 10% happier podcast is NBC ABC. NEWSCASTER who wrote actually is my favorite meditation book. I recommend it more than any as an introduction to meditation. Because it's so humorous. It's so self effacing literally called 10% happier. And it's called that because he thinks he says the best thing that meditation has done for him is maybe made his life 10% happier. Uh, so there's something quite playful around that which is, which is pretty cool. But Dan's great he's really skillful. Interviewer And I had a good time with him. Okay, Alyssa, here's the big pause. recording in progress. There we go. We don't have to keep all that other PBS stuff for people who are coming on board later. So if you're new to these Monday night gigs, I kind of doubt it. But you never know. People are popping in and out. What we do here we started this a number of years ago, we talked about meditation. And just to remind you why do we do this in relationship to lucid dreaming, Dream Yoga in the light? Well, because when you're working with dreams, what are you working with? You're working with your mind. And so number of studies, actually, one, I think it's actually being conducted now. We sent out a survey out to the to my group, we should have included you from a neuroscientist friend Benjamin Baird, where they're trying to do yet another study around this sort of thing. But meditation masters have more lucid dreams and in the mind of a complete awakened one. There is no such thing as analogous to dream all their dreams are lucid because they have a lucid relationship to the contents of their mind. And so therefore this is much more a Dream Yoga contribution than a lucid dreaming contribution. And the Dream Yoga traditions meditation is massive. You want to have more lucid dreams, you meditate. And so we're covering a vast array of different practices through the three, four or five, six of us who ever popped in and to do this presentation. And so what I want to talk about today, was inspired by a train my head I had a cool lucid dream last week where what I did and somebody suggested that that I try this, a really advanced seniors kind of student, and I ping them an email after I have this dream to say what did you get this idea, this instruction? And so I'm going to see this instruction for you to just see what happens next time you have a lucid dream. And the instruction is simply to fall backwards. So you're in a lucid dream. And if nobody here has done it, I would love to hear what your experience has been. I hadn't really tried it before. But here I was. I had a lucid dream the morning waking back to bed method. And I had enough lucidity to say okay, what do I want to do? Oh, yeah, I want to do the falling back thing. And so I've been just as if I'm sitting here now. Right? I tipped backward and I fell I fell back in my lucid dream. And actually, it was really pretty freaking cool. All the stuff that happened as I was descending, it was really kind of amazing. And it's somewhat tied into something that I had done previously for quite a while, which I just discovered by exploring which is one way to work with lucid sleep, which is full lucidity in the deep dreamless state which by the way, scientists are working with that as well. I'm involved with some of the stuff a little bit. One halfway. One way to work with lucidity and fall asleep, which has not been scientifically proven yet is you can use the lucid dream as a halfway house. And this is this is actually in the inner yogic approaches. Because when you're when you're dreaming according to the inner yoga is your venues your mind essence. droplets are called drops of consciousness are resting in your throat in your yoga principles. Right now they're mostly in the forehead up here. Head chakra when we fall asleep, they're here and when in deep dreamless sleep, deep formless meditation and death. It drops to the heart center. So when you're doing Dream Yoga, you concentrate here, when you're doing sleep Yoga, you concentrate in the heart center. And so I've tried this previously where I will be in a dream. I'll hold my breath. So like my the only way I can actually have any luck with it, I hold my breath, my dream breath, which then actually when you hold your dream breath, it can hold your physical breath. This is one way in the labs. In addition to the eye signals these days, they're just sniff signaling, which is just what it sounds the diaphragm was not frozen when you're dreaming, otherwise you would die. But every other muscle is paralyzed except for your eyes and a few other things but your your diaphragm is not obviously paralyzed. And so what you can do is you can signal either through eye motion, which is the way they proved lucid dreaming in the 70s. And now the labs are finding it I'm working with Ken Lau can Pallars lab and Northwestern University. I've been advising them on a study that they're doing there. And what you can do is you can you can send a signal by sniffing and so what what I discovered just by playing around, was okay, what happens if I hold my dream breath and then elect to just plunge through whatever ground I'm in. So this so let's say I'm dreaming right now, instead of falling back and you'll see the connection. I hold my dream breath. And then I just imagined it's like okay, I'm going elevator down to the basement. So I drop and as I drop it, it's just it's actually quite remarkable what happens all kinds of things. Sometimes my dream body falls apart like a Texas Chainsaw Massacre is pretty comical. And then I end up in this kind of interesting space. And so what I want to riff with you a little bit about today is is the power of wind. Because what what I was doing here is like hold my breath, I fall back. And there's definitely a really deep, very elegant, very intimate relationship between external respiration breathing and the inner respiration, the winds of prana long CI, whatever term you want to append to it. And so this ties in as you'll see this ties into maybe a deeper interest to me interesting riff that I just wrote about this morning. They may help us understand a little bit more about why we get so sucked into our thoughts. And then by extension, why we get so stuck into our dreams because it's the same phenomenology. And so I've been thinking about this a lot. It's like okay, why why why do we get why are we so addicted to thinking why are we so addicted to thoughts? In this regard? So I'm going to give a little riff on this and then maybe we can do some breath, taking meditations

to give you a sense of working with this. So just to situate it a little bit, this whole notion of breath wind is colossal in the inner yoga is and Dream Yoga is an inner yoga and in the college chakra Tantra, the king of all Tantra is the say in that Tantra which I studied to some extent, especially the the famous second chapter, when is considered the most powerful of all elements that literally quote unquote that which creates and destroys individual and collective worlds systems. Well hack if they can do that, it's certainly going to do some creation and destruction with the contents of my mental experience. And so even the Dark Knight, even the Dalai Lama talks about this. I read this in a book I picked up at the airport I couldn't believe it like 15 years ago, there was a book by the Dalai Lama on the Bardot's in the airport, and I'm going are you kidding me? This can't be any good. Well, it's gotta be by him. So gotta be good. I picked it up. And it turned out to be surprisingly good for an airport book. And there was one section in there that really struck me when he was talking about that was called the cessation of the inner respiration. That's the inner three stages of the dissolution process of death, literally, the negation cessation of the inner breathing process. And so what he said here, just literally pardoned upon blew me away. Where he says, When the mind pays attention to an object, it does so through the movement of wind. This is this is like what Miss like the most statement which I'm going to unpack a little bit when the mind pays attention to an object. It does so through the movement of wind. And that's in three really interesting principles that are classic in the Bardo teaching in but Barbarella teaching dream teaching and teaching, you'll see they're incredibly similar, the basically same processes taking place in three different states of consciousness. So we're working with some interstate commerce here, sharing insights from one state of consciousness to the next. And so where the wind is really, really gross, you know, kind of rough wind, wind know that cognitively as is the energy mind states associated with aggression. So really windy mind. And if you've ever noticed your mind pay attention to it when you're when you're really pissed off about something you know, really kind of agitated and all worked up. Notice how rough and choppy your respiration can be. When the mind pays attention in the kind of intermediate bandwidth of kind of velocity. We know that is grasping is passion. And when the mind pays attention and this is the most interesting and profound of all, when the mind pays attention, in the sense that it's actually just really very subtly moving away because each one of these wins. What they do is they actually move the mind away from its substance so it's sama source mind and so the way this ties into the Bardos and you'll see it's a hang with me, you'll see how this ties into medication depth and all ties together when you're going through the inner dissolution process, and the Bartos stage six is the dissolution was called white appearance, that when finally exhales, that aspect of rough consciousness dissolves in all kinds of really interesting in a subtle yogic things take place. stage seven is when the winds blow, the central channel collapsed that when that's the wind of passion, that exhales then that particular kind of movement away from mind source takes place. And then when they meet in the heart center, this very, very subtle winds of mind ceases. And so those of you who are familiar with this kind of threefold articulation this is what this is aggression, passion and ignorance. The three root poisons the three pistons, as I playfully talk about it spark plugs that are at the center of the wheel of life, the rooster, the pig and the snake. Fundamentally three primordial forms of inappropriate relationship. I don't want it I want it, I couldn't care less. And so the mind this is so so interesting, the mind is always moving away from itself. And in the very gesture of moving away from itself, this is what actually creates duality. So this is really interesting reflect on this attention is the distance between subject and object and wind is what actually creates that sense of separation. So right here, we're talking about the creation, the construction or the deconstruction of duality. So this is exactly what happened when I was doing my my falling back thing. So I fall back in the dream I hold my breath. I'm dropping down the central channel, going through these levels of dissolution to this kind of non dual state, which is sleep yoga, yoga, Nidra, deep dreamless sleep. And so now the way this applies to us check this out. I riff on this several times in different contexts. When we go to sleep at night, what do we do, right? We come home. If you're a gentleman, you, you do your necktie, right, you you basically you're, you're unwinding, you're on winning. And so I've always said what, to me, the next highest is kind of really interesting symbol of how it is that we choke off the winds, right? We're we're choking off the winds in the head chakra. And that's why we have all these wind disorders. We have ringing in the ear tinnitus, you've got watery eyes, you've got migraine headaches, you've got insomnia. You've got all these wind disorders literally called stop long, where the winds get trapped up here. And in fact, if the winds don't exhale, if they don't settle down, if you don't Unwin, that's insomnia. If you fall down, you stay up. And it's the winds that keep you up. So at night, when we fall asleep, we unwind we unwind. When we take our last breath, it's the very last thing you're going to do in this life. And if you've ever been with somebody when they take their last breath, it's a really powerful moment. The very last thing you're going to do in this life is you're going to exhale you're going to x pyre you're going to find it so in also in really, really deep meditation. If you've experienced absorption states, samadhi states or even in your regular meditation, you may notice he started a meditation session or even yoga. Your mind is windy is a lot of activity. An hour later after yoga or X amount of time and you meditation you may notice you gathered you're centered the winds have settled measures of the Jamia the jhana states the absorption states were cessation literally cessation, cessation of breathing, you're literally you're literally not breathing. You're sitting there total equipoise there's no breathing taking place. And so I'll talk to you a little bit about the correlations between breath and thought. This is again where I'm going like why do we get so sucked into movement? So hang hanging with me on all this? So on the other end, okay, you're gonna wake up tomorrow morning, what's gonna kick you out whether you know it or not, these winds are going to deflate, you're going to bring you into the heart center. Lucid or not, that's where you're going to drop. When you come up from the from deep dreamless sleep into the dream. It's the winds that move the mind essence.

Mind droplets have been used from the heart, into the throat. And when you wake up from that from the dream to waking state in the morning, the winds then take you from here to here so even our colloquialisms express this we talked about falling asleep, dropping dead right all the things about falling, falling, falling and sometimes it feels like you're falling. And then when you when you wake up, you wake up, fall down. And so these interesting colloquialisms to me are cultural iterations of this kind of process that's taking place. When you die, the final exhalation and the inner respiration you're going to drop into the Bardo. Dermatol complete our acquiescence literally, you've entered a deep meditative absorption when you die. That's really what's happening. You're ending. You're entering deep absorption states at the end of it of the death process. And then you're hanging out in the Battle of Dharma ta you it's not you there's nobody there. Your awareness is there. What's going to move you out of your heart and then not only through your throat but out of body and then into the bar to becoming an engineer. Next slide. If you believe all this stuff wind, the wind is going to kick you up and out of your body out of the bottle of diamond tie into the barrel becoming and then those winds are gonna blow you into your next life. And so this this whole idea of wind is in again, this is an inner yogic thing. This is not exactly public, over the counter information, but it is really helpful to understand what's going on from this perspective in relationship to thought, because here's where it gets really interesting for us, irrespective of these more esoteric dimensions, is that in the tantric traditions advisory on language, thought itself is literally defined as movement of mind. That's that's how they talked about thought, movement of mind, driven by these wins. And so if if we talk about mind as space space awareness, that's why there's all these instructions and meditation which we'll play with in a minute. Mix your mind with space, Flash space awareness. External space is not the same as the space of the mind, but it's also not different. And so what is wind? Wind is space in motion. Wind is mind in motion. And oh my gosh, there's so much to say here just to show you how deep this goes for those of the deeper divers listening here, just brief sidebar. What happens the wind here is this is the seventh consciousness. Seven consciousness the windy mind, pushed them on us and Sanskrit, blows across the surface of the mind as the eighth consciousness creating waves that forget they're made of water, right? That's the birth of samsara. Let me say that again. The wind of the seventh consciousness which is basically minds, inability to recognize its nature, blows across the eighth consciousness like think of that literally literally, that consciousness one is purified is called mirror like wisdom, like a mirror like surface of water. I mean, how interesting is that? Creating waves appearances in the form of thoughts internally or things externally, that fundamentally forget they're made of water. That earth of samsara the mind being blown away from its center, out into appearances, and then what do we do we get lost in them. And so how all this ties into get into motion, and then we'll, we'll do a practice of Breath of breath taking practice, and we'll talk about it and then you can tell me if this is like, Gosh, I wish Geoffrey and Joe would come back this this is just way too esoteric. You can just tell me what you think you like you groove on this stuff? Or is like what is he talking about? Right? I love this crap man. Because to me, it describes it the most refined subtle ways WTF is going on with the creation of duality. What is going on with Louise you'll see now why we get so seduced into thought. And so one more little technicality here. And then hopefully this this will land with you. Consciousness is fundamentally a motion detector. I think about this every day when I step outside to take my dog for a walk. I have motion sensor lights out there. I walk outside and the motion triggers the light. Well, consciousness is a type of motion detector. And what this means is that this is where the integral approach comes into play. Is that biologically, it a biophysical in terms of in terms of basic evolutionary principles? When something moves in our sensory, especially the visual field, and you can start to you'll start to see like why this is so important. We are biologically hardwired to be sensitized to that movement to be drawn into it. It's a biological imperative that ensures physical survival. So I was doing a little bit of research on this especially when I'm in this book on an immense world, all these different ovals as perceive, and you've probably heard some of the stuff like the way frogs and flies and other visual and sensory systems and animals work is they are specifically adapted to see things in motion in they're not particularly adapted to see things that are sitting still. And so biologically evolutionarily, movement suggests either food or threat, right? Like I'm trying to I'm trying to swat my my fly I try not to kill them. Every once in a while. Sorry, especially the mosquitoes I'm sorry, His Holiness Dalai Lama. I can't sit there and go oh, Mani Padme home blowed off my arm. If that mosquitoes carrying, you know, what do we have our West Nile disease? I'm sorry. I'm going to FedExes consciousness into the next life. I apologize. It's not very Buddhist of me. But life lives on life. I'm taking an antibiotic. I have a little a small infection. Hey, sorry, am I gonna do mantras for these bacteria that are like my doing sidebar? There is a place for destruction, right? I'm gonna kill the virus. I'm gonna kill the bacteria. I'm not a good Buddhists. I'm going to kill the mosquitoes carrying West Nile disease. I apologize sort of, but you get the idea. Hopefully. So here's the idea. We are we're we're sensitized to detect motion biologically, right? I mean, think of yourself being in the Serengeti, or some animal or whatever. If you're not if your sensory apparatus isn't designed to pick up motion, whoa, I mean, you're probably not going to be around here talking about the nature of motion, right? This is like big thing these days. You know, all this stuff has a place in the biological kind. Of scheme of evolution. Here's what happens at our level is that this consciousness motion detector thing, this type of proficiency to to detect a motion Archer and it would be interesting to see what you think that this is actually what seduces us into movement, especially ego. It's really almost as if move it or lose it, move it or lose it the mind either is in motion, or when it rests in absolute qui essence. But ego disappears, the sense of self disappears. What we know is duality disappears. And so to me, this this little windy riff that I have lends to some really interesting insights. That one reason we're so insatiably addicted to entertainment to the movie industry, I would argue that the reason the movie industry, which is a multi trillion dollar success story is in fact so successful is because it iterates reiterates insatiable lust for movement to be sucked in to the action to the scene. And so when we sit in really deep meditation and the winds roll, the mind slows down at all is have you noticed and meditation, the velocity frequency of your thoughts starts to grow. And as the winds dial that settles sense of self, another starts to settle in and when you really unwind, like what is death, it's the big unwind the big on wind, you're finally going to rest in absolute peace with no movement whatsoever. At that point, what is laid bare it is the nature of the mind, non duality. So these wins, they inflate, they move, they literally moment, to moment to moment, they generate samsara and so every single time a thought arises, thought is what in tantra movement of mind. If we recognize that movement, that's a moment of lucidity, we're not going to get sucked into it. Ego is going to starve it's no longer the you know, the food chain is going to be interrupted. When ego ego feeds on this stuff, right? That's why we're so insatiably addicted to movement. But same thing happens at night. That thought, it's a dream. Dream arises, you're not lucid to it. The mind is naturally sucked into it. Right? Consciousness is the motion detector. You get lost in non lucidity in that regard. And so when we sit in meditation, it's a form of fasting. It's a form of

respiratory fasting and if you're on the deathbed, it's, it's actually more than just fasting. It's a respiratory starvation until eventually, all respiration ceases. We end this life. With an exhalation we begin the next life with an inspiration. You think breath has a little power and a little role in all this. And so every time you give birth to a thought arises because of wind, every time a thought is released, that a minor moment of exhalation and so by understanding this for me, it's like I said, pay attention to my mind. Thought after thought after thought after thought it may not be as sticky as it was decades ago. But the play there's movement of mind, seven consciousness, also working with the respiration as we know it, churns up turn, just churns up, goes into the Alia brings up the beat just moves it brings it up thought thought thought. If we sit there and we get hooked into that thought, this addiction to motion, you know, consciousness is a motion detector. movement of thought is really that which feeds the egoic mind. Now you can start to see this lust for distraction this lust for movies of mind, I mean, greatest Cineplex, Cineplex in the world is between your two years Right? All the movements that bring us in samsara so with all that said a long winded introduction to unwinding, the power of unwinding, the small unwinding and meditation, next level of unwinding, sleep and dream and the big on wind unwind when we die. So for a few minutes before we have a little discussion go ahead and close your eyes and perhaps notice with all the wind that I've sent your way the movement of thought in your own mind

and for the next few minutes with instruction from either Jeffrey or Joe or myself I'm going to simply drop into a little silence there it is drop drop into silence. Allow us to on wind a little bit and then after a few moments of settling on winning going to make a few suggestions about working with wind

Perhaps a invitation at the end of the outbreath to place a little bit of emphasis on just that

latch the end breath all rise on its own and place your mindfulness the exhalation and ride your wind ride your breath your mind out into space. So emphasize the outbreath.

If you can briefly rest in that gap that Bardo. Between the end of the exhalation and the beginning of the in elation, rest in that gap.

Very last thing you will do in this life is x hail

this brief emphasis practice on expiry expiring we put a smile on your face when you take that final X hail the ultimate on Wind

try the next minute or so just notice what happens

pay attention to what happens to your mind without judgment when you at the top of the inhalation you briefly hold your breath

hold that for duration that's quite comfortable, not excessive release exhale

and then again at the top of the ventilation just gently but somewhat resolutely hold your breath

notice what happens to your mind during a breath taking Event

return to your normal breathing pattern and again, simply notice that there's a difference in the quality of the movement of your mind from 15 minutes ago.

Possible Diminuendo and decrescendo the velocity frequency of thought.

This is one reason why prior to going to sleep especially if you've had a somewhat difficult, stressful, windy day.

Meditation is a form of sleep hygiene

to help you settle and unwind

okay

you'd like to have a little discussion commentary. I'll check the chat column. Notice is we do engage in some dialogue Notice again, how the winds can kick up. Literally kick up, bring you up, back into your head back into conceptuality nothing inherently wrong with that unless it sweeps you away blows you away. And you just get lost and all that wind. So I'd be curious to see what your experience may or may not have been. If you're holding your breath, I'm curious what you may have noticed or anything questioning climate I Kimberly. Hi, how are you? I'm good. Nice to

see you too. Um, so just before the class I had I would wake back to bed then had a lucid dream and I had an intention. The intention came through like it fruition but it was in a very warped way with what I noticed is a lot of like just samsaric impressions filtered in there, which weren't very pleasant. So I kind of woke up out of it. And I was like, I just actually seen that we had class with you and I'm like Excellent. And so I was started writing my question down about the comic winds. And that you know, these basically when we go into that the border wherever it is, we have them to samsara compressions. And then they is that what creates the karmic wind. Like that's samsara is the karmic wind and the force is you know, the amount I suppose of aggression. Or passion or ignorance that drives that.

Yeah, you could say that they're, they're calling Mergent, right? I mean, there isn't an existing samsara. Right? samsara is just a state of mind. It's not a state in reality, just like Nirvana. Right nirvana is not a state in reality is a state of mind. And so, the winds themselves are not necessarily problematic. When the winds are transforms, that's the wisdom of all accomplishing action. That's quite literally what moves us. That's what allows us to express our wisdom, instead of our ignorance, confusion and neurosis. And so what what creates the karmic winds are when those winds like I alluded to earlier, blow us away when we get seduced into them. And we get carried away decentralize. We step out of the center of the mandala, so to speak and we get lost in the display. And so the the winds are the display of the mind. When does patient space in motion there's nothing inherently problematic with it. What becomes problematic is the capacity to get lost in it to do to them to it sucked into it, and then along the way, and that happens, but every single time we're distracted, right? That's what distraction libitum illogically means right to pull apart distract. So these fundamental wins have their one aspect of their justice is in the Bardo, this primordial distraction from the nature of reality. But then it's a bootstrap thing. It occurs every time we get distracted in modern in daily life. So does that help does that Yes.

So the point was, like, the impressions that I was experiencing, those are some

some Scotland's right. Yeah. So

how is it about purifying them and transforming them or about just rising above them into like, what you were saying the true kind of is who you

are, there's some scar tissue. There's a big one. There's so many different ways to relate to some scars. I mean, they're they're basic habit patterns. There's psychological ways to work with them. A vast part of traditional psychotherapy all the psychological tools are about working with some scars. But in the contract, or in Buddhist languaging, they can be worked with in a number of ways, depending on one skill set and one's capacity to engage those winds properly. Right? You can you can dispassionately witness them like when you're doing standard meditation practice, you develop a witness awareness, the expression of a habit pattern, or whatever arises. That's one way to work with it. You can also work to transform them kind of a more Mahayana way, the low Jiang slogans and all kinds of practices in that skill set are held there to help you work with that level. And then you have the tantric and then the post tantric practices, where you transmute them. You really ride those winds into awakening and sentimente confusion, and then the highest form of self liberation that's the post tantric line where through immediate recognition, to some Scourges, the evaporates and then with repetition of that recognition, then the energy is just exhausted literally. And then therefore purified so because some scars are so foundational at every level of the Buddhist and Hindu path. These are monster players. There are a host of skillful means to work with them depending on all kinds of things. So that's a really big one.

Okay, any good book in the tantric kind of field is

samskaras. Yeah. Ah yeah, you might want to look at Francesca free mantle's luminous emptiness understanding the Tibetan Book of the Dead that's pretty juicy because then the some scars are transformed into ornaments of mind and so any kind of tantric text the deals with with transformation, I'm trying to think of anything else that immediately pops to mind. Reggie Ray's book probably secrets of the virtual world. We'll certainly have something about this or anything. But that that tantric tantric approach those are the two books immediately come to mind. I'm sure there's a lot more but that's just what pops up right now.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Hello, unmute yourself. You're good to go. Then I'll read what's in the chat column. Yeah, yeah, fire away. You have to unmute yourself the air then then we can chat. Yeah, so let me just say one thing here while you're doing that, nose breathing is not more efficient. It's it's mandatory mouth breathing. Even biologically mouth breathing is bad news. Read James nesters book breath. He has several chapters on how massively deleterious mouth breathing is. When you're engaged in meditation, 99.9% all the breathing practices have gone through the nose so yes, it's more efficient it's it's everything about pretty their mouth bad news. Yeah, another one from rich hold, holding the breath increase my mind and increase your mind moments. Okay. All right. What about mouth breathing during sleep horrible. Linda horrible. It creates parrot it can contribute to periodontal disease viability of the gingiva it's bad news. In fact, this is you can some people actually literally tape their mouths Literally. Literally they put a little bit of surgical tape over their lip and across their chin. Some people here may already do that. mouth breathing during sleep is bad news. It's often indicative of sleep apnea or at least highly associated with it. So yeah. If you have issues like that, you want to either see your sleep doc or regular doc and work with getting out of that mouth breathing capacity because it's more damaging then you can it's really a little bit spooky. Okay, I don't mean to scare you into insomnia, but mouth breathing is not a good thing. Lots to say on that but maybe enough for now. Okay, so where did Verbena Did she just disappear? Did I answer your question there?

Well, I think the time is up, basically.

Okay, we gotta we got a few minutes. I'm not

just so unbelievable. This meditation about the last breath. Something happened to me almost two years ago, where I had the heart procedure. And the next morning, I felt very, very strange and I called the nurse and I blindside crumble into the bed and I thought, That's it, I'm gonna die. And then she pressed on my chest tube, started resuscitation. And I thought that's my last breath like go was dark for just a small moment and then I was hovering someplace. Do you want to hear more? It's

also you had so it sounds like you had a little out of body experience. Is that what you're heading with?

Today? Right. And the interesting thing was, was that I was thinking of you twice. I was hovering and then I saw things moving at the ground and I thought well do I look like them and I felt kind of and then I looked at my bed the body would be a nice so flickering lights. And I got a little bit scared and I thought well, you need to be brave. And when I thought that I got very strong. And so I was able to look down a tunnel and I saw a soft light. And I thought well, Andrew said soft lights are no good, you know, to have to have the bright light. And then I saw a tiny little flicker in the center and I thought something is not right. And then or something else you said you said if you are lost call for help. So I yelled Amitabha help and bow when like a snake in a way and then the curtain was open and I was in my room with loads of people and equipment that stuff around and then I was kind of hyper lucid for for a while and my body was so heavy it felt like stone. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, only my eyes and my head could move a little bit and people Yeah, I thought I was hyper hyper lucid for a moment and then they took me back to the operating room and you know now everything is fine. But this was so an experience and when you said you know about the last breath, it all came up. I felt that I wanted to share that.

Thank you so much for sharing that. First of all, so glad that you did come back. And we're

actually formative in many ways. Again, the formative

and informative oh my gosh, yeah. Like like life changing. And so yeah, I love these sorts of things in the fact that that's that some of these dharmic principles were were actually there. At that time is really quite beautiful because they you work with you work with these teachings they work with you. And it's like this thing that that my languaging whether you know it or not, these teachings are installing these kind of pop ups this kind of GPS that can really pop up when you need it where when you're just like well, okay, here it is, boom, pops up. And this stuff can really come in handy at they're just the right time. So it just warms my heart that you would share a story like that and we're some of this information

I felt for a long time I want to tell you because because you are there in the way. Yeah.

Yeah. Be careful what I say. No, really. All joking aside, thank you so much during that it just warms my heart since sweetest, sweetest story. Yeah, the great gift of the Dharma right it's there and our most challenging.

Say once Be careful what you wish. Yeah, yeah. And I wish to be brave. So brave. That's how I felt. I have to be careful, but I wish that was also from you.

I'm deeply touched. Thank you so much. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Amazing. Wow. Wow. Okay, so let me see if there's anything else is like how do we follow up with something like that? That's just so beautiful. Let me just see if there's anything here. Yeah. Lovely. Lovely. Oh, one last little thing here from Katie. She's such a sensitive thinker. practitioner the awareness of the winds of the breath and the way you guided us. Slow the winds of my mind. Cool. I appreciate it. The meditation had long stretches of silence. punctuated punctuating with clear simple verbal instruction nice. I have been working with the old mana Tada mantra. That's a Dream Yoga mantra. They Yeah, we talked about unveil. And have noticed that singing the mantra also works with a breath Yes. Beautiful as a generally emphasizes the exhale Yep, with short inhalations to drink in more breath right taking little sips of space. This is all had very positive winds slowing effect on my post mantra meditation practice. Thanks, Katie. That's awesome. That's great. Hey, it's nice to be back with you. I missed you on these Monday night. things. I think it's been like two months maybe. So what a delight to spend time with you. I am actually in nice chilly Tucson for the rest of the week where it's been an average of 111 degrees. Are you kidding me? Kind of leading a little bit of a retreat. Down there. So this Thursday, we were going to start the next book in the book study group thing which is going to be the preparing to die book. Remember we finished off with the Dream Yoga Book the very last chapter and Bardo perfect time to launch from that chapter into an entire book. And Bardo principles, which you'll see as immediate implications to what we do with our mind and meditation. media applications to what we do is we sleep and dream. Oh, okay, there you you are in Tucson. We had ranges now. That'd be great. Yes, I mean, I met this this little I don't know where it is. It's a little Christian mystical center. I can't remember the name of it. Somebody's hosting me. Cool. I don't know exactly where but anyway, little sidebar I get distracted. I'll be gone this Thursday because of that. But next week, we started up again Monday thing. q&a, the usual usual kind of show and tell. So to whatever extent dedication of merit means anything to you. We gather what we've accumulated here, the only way you can keep it is by giving it away to all sentient beings. We can help them in more ways than we might suspect. So great to see everybody really fun. Appreciate your time and energy. And until they're not just merely pleasant dreams, but pleasant, lucid dreams and if you want to we do this light. Turn your speakers on and put your camera on if you want to. We can all do this groups wave cyber hug, to stay connected in cyberspace. So nice to see everybody until next time. Oh, thank you. Bye Bye

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