So what we do here on the Thursdays is I am here to serve and protect. I show up I love it because I just I just asked answer questions right try right. And so because it's been a month, there's been a lot of questions, which is great. A lot of questions were pinged in I'm going to click through some of them. Some of them I can answer quite quickly. Some will take a little bit more time. And then we open it up to either questions that you have in the chat column or if you want to raise your hand and come on live more than welcome. Always, always, always best to raise your hand and come on live. Because then I can have some conversation with you and we can talk about things. I can usually get a sense of when people ask when they write but not always. So anyway, here's a couple relatively straightforward one someone asked from Europe. Where to go to do a month long retreat. Well, there's lots of places I'm not that well informed about the European scene. And so this question came from Europe. The only thing I can recommend in that regard
is
their symbolic community and there's been I'm not going to go into this, but there have been some challenges with that community. That's a different topic. But there are still a lot of really wonderful people involved. And I'm pretty sure that Shambala Europe, Marburg and other places Dutch and choeling do what's called dat time, which is the month long, really wonderfully contained meditation retreat. So you can check those sites to see if and factors of that turn. The 88 un month long meditation being offered that would be wonderful. United States does the same thing. So the question is not clear to me is whether you want a guided retreat or solar retreat. If you want something that's kind of guided the Shambala Dotson scene it's a good one. Bahrain in barrier berry berry in Massachusetts, the passionate people they do these sorts of things pretty regularly. You can also do them on your own at Spirit Rock. You can do them on your own and a number of places there Jay comes along and Colorado tumbling and Colorado. That kind of thing is pretty easy. Their retreat centers everywhere. And literally Dr. Google, you know there used to be snowline used to put out a periodical. There used to be a whole lot more periodicals I used to get it listed really current events along these lines. They they're no longer in publication. So I'm not up on all the very latest but if you just look around for a month long retreats, you might be surprised how much comes up. Okay. Oh, here's a couple of one interesting ones of all physical reality as a dream. Okay, so right there. Let me read it and then I'll run some characters does that mean that when a child gets raped and murdered it didn't really happen? Or having more as sim alto? I guess that means a similar to an under like a video game and the characters involved were NPCs non player characters. Yeah, well, this is a loaded question. First of all, there's no such thing is physical, physical is an illusion. The most important thing to understand is when we say like reality is a dream. What does that mean? It's your sliding into or it seems to intimate one of the colossal near enemies. There's lurking in the shadows of saying that everything's just a dream, then what questions like yours come up. That's not what what it means to say everything is a dream. Not at all. That's a nihilistic and really, really dangerous way to look. That is not at all what these teachings are saying. When you say the reality is the dream dream is codeword for manifestation of mind. And therefore that's what you need to explore that absolutely positively does matter when there's negative action being taken place murder and rate and all that kind of things. Oh, my God, if you if you slip into an absolute artistic point of view, thinking that everything's empty, AThon illusion. Doesn't matter what I do that is a colossal raging mistake. You can't deny relative reality in the laws of karma. If you think you can step outside of the bus that's coming down the street and see how that view works for you. So there are absolutely really, really bad consequences of maintaining this kind of wrong view. Does this mean that when someone gets murdered it didn't really happen? No, of course not. Not at all. It means on what level appearances are not in harmony with reality, the level of relative reality these things happen. They exist they appear you cannot deny that if you deny that that's this raging mistake of absolutism, nihilism, and that sort of thing. It has a positive positively did happen, but it doesn't happen in the way you think it happens. That's the key. is more like a similar to a video game. Yeah, yes. But not even more no than Yes. This is a really deep question and that's one of the issues with trying to throw out quick, tidy, snappy sound bites can appear dismissive when a question is this wide ranging. To really understand this you have to understand the nature of emptiness, the nature of
dream, what that really means. And things like the three nature's the dependent nature, the perfectly pure nature and imaginary nature. So when you're talking about some of these things you're alluding to, it's called para carpeta, which is the imaginary nature. But basically, in a nutshell, it absolutely positively does matter what you do. You have to pay homage to relative reality in the laws of karma and if you don't get back to me and let me know how that works, it doesn't. Same questionnaire of everything is a dream again, everything is a manifestation of mine. Does that mean suffering in the world isn't real? No, not at all. Something is absolutely real in a relative sense. Take it apart, dissect it then you can, in a certain sense, deconstruct that suffering back into pain. And then you can further deconstruct pain back into awareness. But suffering I mean, that's the first noble truth. That's what the Buddha discovered suffering. That's what he discovered, but that's still in the realm of relative reality. So that's the other thing you have to throw into the mix. You have to set a few jot relative and absolute truth. Okay, so everything is a dream. Does that mean that suffering in the world isn't real? Not at all, which makes a motivation to do something about it a lot less? No, no, no. So I think that's enough set on that. That's a somewhat unfortunate, classic, nihilistic mistake of an under misunderstanding, emptiness, the illusory nature of reality, Maya from the Hindu tradition, and dream is just wrong. Okay. So another question when affirming that you are in a dream I guess this is you meeting me? When affirming that you were in a dream and then you see a dream sign? How do you respond? I guess this is generic. If it is all a dream, particular signs should not appear. Okay, I'm not sure about that second statement, like what shines should not appear. That's not clear to me. The first part when affirming that you are in a dream, and then you see a dream sign? How do you respond? Well, what I do and this is the classic instruction. How do I respond? I do a state check. I use dream signs to conduct a state check to actually then assess Hey, is this a dream or am I in fact awake? So this is a pretty easy one to answer. When I see a I'm in a dream, I see a dream sign. I do a state check. I usually jump up. If I come back down. I'm probably awake. If I keep going I'm probably dreaming that brings about lucidity. Okay, the second part if it's all a dream particular sign should not appear. What signs should those be that shouldn't appear? That's not clear to me. Okay, here's one I haven't heard before. Have you noticed that lucid dreaming is connected to the moon cycles? I've had three very rich lucid dreams so far every two weeks. New Moon full moon and then New Moon. New Moon full moon then New Moon. Thank you. I have not heard of that connection. But it doesn't surprise me. Because there is definitely a deep intersection between what's happening in the outer world and what's happening in our reality and so I am not an astrologer. I'm more inclined towards astronomy. But I do find validity to the kind of the basic astrological principle as within so without. And so it's not at all uncommon when people were really in tune with themselves into into reality to notice fluctuations in their own phenomenal experience based on external lunar cycles on the like. In fact, in my tradition, we do a practice called the Sapna Maha Mudra every month or if you're really doing it every two weeks exactly when these cycles are happening and the reason you do that for a new moon and full moon, because according to the inner yoga as the winds, the Hindus are moving. And every two weeks based on these lunar cycles these inner processes are flipping in the college chakra Tantra and others provide the kind of infrastructure for the astrological views. They talk about the inner yogas in the inner subtle body is really kind of this inner constellation. And therefore you can read and evoke resonances between inner and outer using really, really cool stuff so that I don't really roll a ton in in the kind of astrology thing. I have a reasonably open mind about it, especially from people who are really rigorous serious Hindu Buddhist astrologers. But there's so much flaky astrology out there that I won't even go there but I have not heard of these connections to lunar cycles. But hey, if it works for you, that's great. I'm just not aware of anything in the literature that would support this overtly.
Okay, here's a longer one a. I'd like some guidance on using the various offerings in a sensible way to work. With my dream yoga practice. So I've done a few workshops with others known in the community. I've only had two dreams. I have I've had only I've had one or two dreams with mentioning both times. I woke up as soon as I realized I was doing it some of the writing scripts for me. That as far as I've, that's as far as I've gotten. It wasn't very difficult to get as far as I got. They do confess not being diligent or even consistent with the practices that are supposed to help. You're not the only one. So that's a little bit about my background, and I'm wondering what the best way to work with the programs offered would be my initial impression is that I might sign up for one of the academy courses. I guess that means that nightclub, that'd be great. Enjoying the main group? I guess that's nightclub that'd be great too. That includes books, talks, meditation, etc. I mean, that's why we created this whole thing. I Club was created for just this question. Please let me know if that's a good way to go. I think it is. or other ways. I wish there were other ways because the reason I came up with this three and a half years ago or so was because people were asking me these sorts of questions over and over. Okay, cool stuff where do I go? What do I do? And for 510 years, I said I don't know man, nobody does this. Turns on while gal maybe a little bit to some extent more than anybody in the Western world. But nobody does this with any regularity. Nobody has even remotely systematic training. And that's not to say that nikla presents rigorous complete systematic training, but it's the closest thing I've seen that does it. So if you get on the conveyor belt, listen to the webinars, listen to some of the interviews that are connected to the webinars, kind of get involved in the scene. As far as I can tell, that's maybe one of the better things you can do on the west. If there's something else let me know about it. It's the the curriculum and the support for this is still somewhat feeble, unfortunately. So that's the that's what I would recommend if it resonates with you. That's exactly why we created this platform. Is to support explorers just like you. Okay, so lots of other questions from I have to go to a different here it is. Okay, I'm doing scholarly research on Indro Oh, cool. So Nendo is a Tibetan word, which basically refers to the preliminary practices, five sets of 100,000 Roughly. It's a profound purification practice based on visualization, recitation, physical motions, and the like. I've done several sets of these things I've read in Tibet. I haven't talked to anybody personally, but I've read accounts of people who have done like 1012 different cycles of this ninja which is this is a colossal of work. If you can get through a ninja cycle in two years. That's pretty impressive. That means about six hours a day of practice. It's a lot of work in a really healthy preparatory work. Can you please point me to resources regarding its history of development in Indian Tibet? Do we have information as to its origins? Yeah, it depends on
where you go.
Jumping cultural lodo tie a great remain master. Oh, I can't remember the exact title. He writes about this. He has a retreat manual, where he writes about this and I think I'm pretty sure about I can see what total authority in the vast corpus of what's called the treasury of knowledge, which I'm pretty darn sure that's where you can find some information on this. You could also look at let me think for a second. Transforming confusion into clarity by Minjerribah che edited by Helen Tarkoff. Pretty sure that's about the preliminary practices, all the other stuff that I've read here has come from non non available in other words, restricted transcript material. I can think of a bunch from Campo cartera Rinpoche and others, you might try ktd comm or Triana Dharmachakra the number I think it's called noms o Bonzo. A bookstore or something. I can never quite remember the name. But Campo Carter because he did the three year retreat and these practices are mandatory before you go into zuv. You might be able to find something from that bookstore and actually talk to some of the curators of proprietors there they might have some more information, but jumpin cultural load or Thai, for sure, talking about this sort of thing. Other scholars if you can reach them that would probably know would be Elizabeth Callahan, Sarah Harding. others who've actually done translations and researchers research on this topic. So I mean, cool for you that you're doing this. But that's what comes to mind. These are the sorts of things that are something pops into my mind later. I do have your address. I can ping you another node, but that's what comes to mind. Okay. Okay, cool. So those are those may see what else came in. They're kind of popping up from all over the place. So that's kind of cool.
Oh, here we go. Here's some more. Okay.
I would like to know what is the main difference between yoga nidra and Dream Yoga? I'm confused. Pretty big difference. Yoga. Nidra. Even though neitra is a Sanskrit word for sleep. And it's actually more Connect. It's more Hindu practice. I've done it I've been guided through it. It's fantastic. It's beautiful. Tracy Stanley has written a beautiful book called I think radiant rest. deals with quite a bit with this. I'm pretty sure I have an interview with her by the way, an excellent site where she interviews me Richard Miller has done a ton of work on this he's a tremendous resources Irest stuff is great. Yoga Nidra is is really quite different from doing yoga it even though the word is sleep you might be think that it's connected to sleep yoga. It's not it's more connected to liminal dreaming, it's more connected to the hypnagogic dream spaces. And it's a type of fundamental relaxation practice a guided relaxation practices really quite beautiful. That one is brought to real fruition can bring about things like wake initiated lucid dream, so I'm not saying it's not connected. It's definitely connected because you're working with the mind in this kind of deconstructed space that can actually grease the skids for Dream Yoga, but it's not the same. It's more connected that he is more connected actually to liminal dreaming than it is to even lucid dreaming. So it's really easy to get confused because yoga nidra does sound like it's connected to the sleeplessness, but it's connected mostly to pre sleep. And so I think if you if you look at some of the resources that I mentioned, you will get more than what you're looking for in terms of answers. Okay. All right. Here's a fun one. Some nice words about what I do, which is great. Thank you. Any updates about the launch of preparing to die Institute? Yes, we're working furiously on this thing. You have no idea. We want to try to launch it, at least the so called sales page, before the big MATLAB program in two weeks with a start date of made six month program, tons to say about it. But because it's still somewhat in the gestation phase. I'm going to reserve too many comments until we get it all together. And ping out there's going to be a lot of information describing this thing in tremendous detail. So registration page should be up in two weeks. Launch in May and stay tuned for a lot more information on that. Okay. Thank you for asking. Okay, from Aaron. I've been trying to meditate in the lucid dream state for so long. It finally happened. High five. Very cool, not easy. I get the experience, but my goal for the next few months is to improve. Excellent. I typically practice shamatha without a sign it's Yeah, awareness, open awareness, formless awareness. That's fantastic. But was interested in trying this in a dream. That's not easy. I'll tell you why in a second. I think it was too nervous. I switched to mindfulness of breathing via the Tera Vaada method. Isn't that interesting? Because you don't have a body on the dream. So if you're talking about you switch to mindfulness of breathing in the dream, that's very interesting. Because there's no body in the dream unless you're somehow bleeding back and hybridizing into the your body in the bed, which it doesn't sound like you're doing. So that's something to actually look at as an investigation. You're actually not breathing. The dream body is actually not breathing. Because there isn't the dream body. That's all generated by the mind. That's an illusion, very powerful one. Same type of illusion by the way connected to the Bardot's that will give the illusion that you have a body in the Bartles and bi you don't. So mental body just like in a dream. But anyway, I had to meditate with eyes open, because you also don't have eyes in the dream either. Aren't you Sorry, you asked me this question.
There's basically nothing in there is empty. That's why this stuff is so awesome. It's a way to explore emptiness, but I get what you're saying. I had to meditate with eyes open. The amazing thing here and this is this is actually quite profound is you generate your breathing in the act of proceeding it you generate your dream eyes and the act of perceiving. There are no dream eyes in there. But I understand what you're saying. And I know where you're going here. I had to meditate with eyes open because when I close my eyes, the dream collapses. That's classic. That's a really classic thing and there are several reasons why collapses the principle one being when you close your eyes in the dream, one of the things that constitutes dream state and this conjoined with the science behind it is what rapid eye movement. That's what signatures that's how sleep scientists talk to Dr. Ed about this. using IE Oh, geez. They can assess when somebody is in REM sleep by the way, their eyes are flickering back and forth. You close your eyes. In the dream. Several things tend to happen for most people exactly what you said you just collapses because you're actually inviting the sensation of REM. And what a surprise that's gonna pop you out of the dream state. So this is a way by the way to kick out of a nightmare if you can remember to do it. If you're in a dream and you remember you're lucid. You want to get out of it, close your dream eyes. Very often it will kick you out. The other thing that it can do two other things that can happen. One is you just see black. The other thing that happens is really cool. And Elon Wallace writes about this is this is one way to initiate that transition from Dream Yoga to sleep yoga. This is one way to actually transition from form meditation shamatha with sign in a dream to the non referential formalist practices in the dreamless sleep. So that's a sidebar. Are there any resources from the tradition that gives specific instructions for meditating in the lucid dream? Or can you give some advice on creating a formal lucid dreaming meditation practice? Yeah, in my book, and we're going through these stages in the webinar series, which I think we did a session just to one or two weeks ago, one of the richest sessions in my opinion on stage five, of Dream Yoga. So that's another reason why I wrote that bloody book is is to give people a nine step sequence of progressively more refined difficult practices within the arena of lucid dreaming. One of which comes to fruition of what you're talking about here. Awareness of awareness. That's my stage eight, stage nine, I think more stage nine actually. And so if you haven't read my book, Dream Yoga, you could look at that if you don't want to do that. We have an ongoing series on the Webinars actually going through all nine stages, so you might want to listen to those outside of there, practically speaking, you can incubate the aspiration to do these practices during the day set a really strong intent, that when you're awake within the dream, you want to do what you're doing here meditating. As a general rule, unless you're doing a witness awareness, meditation, meditating in the dream is a difficult thing to do unless you're doing movement based meditations like literally like a walking meditation again, even though there's nobody walking. You think there is that's okay. The reason for that is when you're doing most meditations, most meditations are stationary most and once again, when you hold this is something I play with this a lot. When you hold your eyes on a dream object, very often if you hold your mind on the dream, several things can happen. But initially, it's a little bit like what happens when you close your dream eyes and try this. I mean, I experimented dozens of times with this sort of stuff discovered a ton of really interesting things. But if you hold your eyes still on an object in the dream again, even though there is no object, and even though there are no i Is that still that illusion is still there.
That stasis itself works to interrupt the rim has to kick you out. So I have found doing either witness awareness practices where you simply stand back is called Pelle lucidity, where you stand back from the dream and like Peter Sellers in the movie being there you just watch you just witness that's a little bit of cancer you formless meditation, so this is slightly aligned with awareness of awareness, but in this case, not entirely the same. Because you're working with a mind in awareness as as forming in the dream. But what I might recommend is two things one step back into a pure witnessing stance. Held lucidity, just watched the display fully lucid without doing anything. That's really a quite a powerful practice. You can do some like walking bass meditations, movement based meditation in the games I find that helps to stay in and there was some proficiency you can start to transition into some of these more, slightly more evolved things and also engaging the participatory practices that I talked about in stages two through eight and my mapping of the dream yoga practices, okay. So I'll refer you there. Okay, one more from here. And then we'll open it up to people who are alive. Fantastic. Francesca. Hi, Andrew. I have reached night club. Are you working on lucid dreaming? took a detour from young Well, I hope you come back and do a return to Carl Jung. Oh, this reminds me I forgot to say to all you guys, for those of you who are not club members, I have one of the absolute positive best interviews almost three hours yesterday with Christopher mesh. We're gonna post it up pretty soon I have a public clip. This is the guy that wrote this. And the reason I mentioned this is he refers a lot to Carl Jung in his work. He's a professor of religion scholar, who has written a number of remarkable books. The most amazing one that we left on for almost three hours is his 2020 year history. And then 20 years of analysis, so 4040 years for decades of journeying and then analysis and then writing. One of the most provocative books I've ever read LSD in the mind of the universe, or something like that. Do I have it here? Here it is. I have this is from yesterday. So there it is. Nice marketing thing for my friend. See with my little I've got this background fuzzy thing going on here. Sorry. Oh, well, yeah, it's called LSD on the mind of the universe diamonds from heaven. You have to read this blog. It'll just blow your socks off. It's extremely well written. He's a really intelligent guy. This guy is not a flake. He's a rigorous scholar academic type. And over the course of 20 years, he does 73 Really high dose acid says Sheen's as he calls them beautiful 500 micrograms that is a really heavy dose. And the book is causing quite a stir. I highly recommend it and this interview I did with him. I'm absolutely going to bring him back is one of the most provocative discussions I've ever had. So anyway, I thought about that because we we talked a little bit about young the way my mind works, strays. So come back to Carl Jung when you can't because he's so great. Soon after I discovered your stuff. I started learning and more depth about Buddhism. via your content. And then I got hooked. Not the best choice of words, but it truly feels that way. Yeah, be careful when you get hooked on anything.
But I think I get the spirit of what you're saying and that's kind of cool. I now have read books and attended in attended events that I feel I need a guide through all the Lydia just practices approaches resources is that turret can you help me out defining the plan to dive deeper into Buddhism? Yeah, okay. Yeah. So oh my goodness, so much to say here. Part of it depends on like your aspirations where you live, is it Tibetan Buddhism, Theravada, Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, pure land Buddhism. I would suspect if you're interested in that sort of thing. I refine more Tibetan Buddhism, amazing communities in the West. I have deep deep friends in all these communities. And so on, I mentioned them, I'm not necessarily saying one is better than the other. They're just different. And I also have deep connections to these teachers. So major Rinpoche from Tergar is he this guy's a superstar. His community is amazing. Tremendous online presence. And training online. I highly recommend that pull up in pitchei Milan devotee more a little bit more monastic shader type unbelievable training and he's also a superstar means you remember Jays brother suddenly Rinpoche his community Pandorica off the charts. He is amazing. And I know that I know him well. I know all these people reasonably well and I know their top so called Top. I know their students and their main teachers pretty darn well and so I recommend these without equivocation without hesitation. Others that I know a little bit more tangentially, but I also endorse some kids who Rinpoche digger control Rinpoche his organization Shri Mangala booty Pema children's a student of him, he lives in Crestone not too far from here. He's amazing. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, he's going to be interviewing me. Actually, no, I'm sorry. I think I'll be interviewing him. They asked me to endorse a new edition of the Dream Yoga book that's coming out which I happily did. He's amazing. That's what yellows a rockstar from the burn. Buddhist approach. He's amazing. He has centers that I do retreats at here in Colorado, his organization is superb. Hunter Bijay the female to goo i the name of her organization escapes me. I worked with her I've gone and taught in prison with her prison systems. She's an amazing individual and there are many others Lama wella wanderwell in the East Coast, and there's a lot we're so blessed to have some amazing teachers and opportunity. So those little ones more readily come to my mind that I think are just fantastic. You're not going to go along with these. So I might direct you there to explore the wealth of offerings that they have to say and have to offer outside of that is you might suspect this is another one of these really big questions. I mean, we could devote an entire session just to that. But just to send you to some resources where you can explore it. That's what I might recommend. Okay. Okay, let's see if there's anybody else. Yeah, here's a question from Tim. somewhat connected. I'm going to go through this one a little bit quickly. Because I've already talked quite a bit about this and other settings. And I'm pretty sure I have an article on my main website. And if I don't, I'm going to put it there, but I'll read this quickly. It's a good one. It's an important question, Tim. I'm not dismissing it, but I've ripped on this in a number of other occasions. So I've been looking at the background of some spiritual teachers of the years found that extremely high percentage of them have scandals. What a surprise. Some of them were thought of as celebrate. Yep. And most have advocated their students live pure and spiritually lives. Yep. And yet they maintain this kind of behavior. Couldn't agree more. Not good. Have you thought about this? I've thought about it a ton. And I will share what literally what I said in a send you to an article I wrote. Why do you think this is? Okay,
I'll tell you why. I think it's $64,000 question. Don't you think it makes it difficult to trust them? Absolutely. And this is why you have to be skeptical. This is why you have to kick the tires, open up the hood. ask the difficult questions. Check out the community. Does it have a is there kindness and humor and service involved? How protective are they of the main teacher? How are the so called senior students? Do they represent a quality? This is a really big topic. It's such a big topic that actually Ken Wilber and I came up like an eyeblink away from writing a book together on this topic like eight years ago. didn't quite come together. But this is a really big topic. I spend a ton of time talking about it with Ken and I've written about it I'll share the article link to it in a second. I would be interested in hearing any thoughts you have on this pretty widespread topic. Yep, it's not it's everywhere. So I wrote an article and if it's not a mind weight gain site note itself. I will post it there. I sent it to a bunch of people. Some really, really like it some go add whatever but the article is called the evolution of abuse. And it I addressed this Tim and I think pretty exhaustive detail and so because I've talked about this, I'm going to in other settings and I have this article, if it's not there, and I think it is I think I have my people posted I'm going to post it, the evolution of abuse. In it briefly my friend. The whole issue comes down to the difference between states and structures. of consciousness. And very briefly, there are two vectors of growth, vertical and horizontal enlightenment. Waking up and growing up. They're not the same. And this is where the real crapshoot starts because you can be reasonably evolved in here even on this vector. There's a difference between experience and realization you can be experienced on the waking up vector. You have an insight. And I see this all the time in the West, somebody has a big metanoia big Moksha it's not stable. It's just a state. It's not a trade. And so it hasn't even matured into realization. It's just an experience. So you go along that state level that in itself has these this one major problem. Even that state realization isn't stable. So that's one problem. The other one and this is where it really gets complicated and Wilbur is written about this with Alan calm they have a course called The Wilbur calms lattice, which is really brilliant, where they basically map out you know, axes, xy axes grid, the difference between these two vectors and basically what happens is you can have high state level experience, that even realization it's just experience and then unless you remain on silence, and unless you don't say or move, the minute you do say anything the minute you do move and act, you have no choice but to express your state level experience, let alone realization through a structural level of development. And the reason this is so such a problem in the contemplative traditions is because you cannot introspect these things. This is why you won't find them in eastern schools and that's why when you talk about this the Eastern practitioner sometimes they go out it's bullshit. We don't need this stuff. Yeah, you do. This is the archetypal blind spot. You don't look at structures, you look through them, their developmental lenses, you don't even know you were and that's where it becomes so deadly. So you have somebody that's pretty evolved on one vector, and really held back on another vector, and that's where it all starts. And again, it's such a rich topic. It's so complex, it's so elegant. It's the only thing I've ever come across that that has helped me understand this. And if I don't have that on my main site, the evolution to abuse Note to self I'll put it up there. Because I think it's super important. Okay, my friend. Okay, now that wasn't too fast. There was just so many questions. I felt I needed to hyperventilate a little bit and just charge through them. So another one just came in, but while I'm reading this it's actually great. I love these questions. It's also me being gone for a month. I Yes. But in the meantime, if there's somebody live, they can actually take a little more oxygen out of the room instead of me. Ends up so I'll start. All right. Hi, Dr. Ed. Hey, Dr. Ed, all this is the other thing I want to say since he's here. For those of you are night club members, the Dr. Ed show is the best we had. I think one of the most fruitful hour and a half conversations yesterday and and he I don't know if it was the impediments you took yesterday morning, but you were really cooking my friend. It was the Galantamine,
I think. Anyway, deep doctor, and those of you who attend our once a month, sleep sessions with him. He's a rock star. If you haven't been attending, you should because he's amazing. Anyway, thanks. Thanks for coming.
It's great. You know what, and then I'm amazed well announced that what I thought I do for next month is finished the sleep disorder. So talk about all the ones we didn't talk about yesterday. So we'd have the two of those all together all sleep disorders. Fantastic. Let's do explicated. Okay. That's next month. Okay. So I've been trying to ask you this question for forever. And it just it just, you know, there's never been an opportunity just the way it turns out. So when you're in the dream state, and you look down and you decide that you now have a body even though there is nothing there. There's nothing there is different than the nothing there that's there in waking reality pack. And I read all I read every word of Donald Hoffman's case against reality and all the you know examples of why why our perception just says there isn't anything solid. We'll independent there. Okay,
now there at that point, the reference is waking reality. You're about waking state right
now talking about waking state, right. Okay. So the difference of the dream body not being there, and the body being here, in the case against reality, says there's still something there's nothing as a body, but what the hell is there and never gets around to saying, Well, you know what that
thought is? Because he doesn't know. And that's not a criticism because it's all conjecture, I mean conch talked about this the numina phenomena thing. This is a classic thing and it's a wonderful is a great question my friend. It's a big difference between the collective dream and the internal dream. But that doesn't mean you can't use the personal dream to gain insights into the collective dream. Oh, my gosh, what a colossal question. So if you haven't read it yet, that'll Hoffman's first book, visual intelligence. has some really interesting stuff on the difference between what's his nomenclature, phenomenal, independent reality. And I think you would really appreciate it especially with your intelligence and background is really interesting stuff. about the difference between what we enact the that's the phenomenal part. That's what that's relative to, that's what we bring forth through our participation it. It's literally enacted the work of Francesco Perrella and Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch. We evoke it we enact it in the very act of perception. So that's the phenomenal part. That's all the stuff but it's not merely as you know. interlay a projection from biological processes. And that's the other thing that's really cool about visual intelligence is how quickly all this happens quite literally at the speed of sight. That's pretty fast right? At the speed of sight, you create depth, dimensionality, color, all the things that we perceive misperceived mistake to be out there. Those are constructs as you know, so enough in dreams of light my book, part three talks a fair amount about this, but the really interesting thing, the crux of the matter is, what is there and basically what he says but often says we don't know. Well, that's, that's from that perspective. And again, oh my gosh, there's so much to say here. One other place, you may look to just ping references to such a profound question. Is the three nature's teachings in the yoga Chara. The work of Carl Brunhilde soul luminous heart does he writes really elegantly about the yoga Chara This is a core teaching, because in that languaging, and I love is that the yoga Chara came about largely as a way to bridge the divide between absolute and relative truth in the Mahayana. So, so much to say here, but basically using this as a heuristic I kind of came up with a little bit like a triangle. You have in the center, what's called dependent nature of the dependent nature, para Tantra. That's what's their dependently arisen mere appearance. Then depending on what you bring, or don't bring to that, that that which is there. You either tip that using this, this egg I guess it would have to be more V instead of a TP
if you tip it the pirates contra towards your histories are conditioning all your biological perceptual predispositions that then transforms into what's called pari carpeta. The imaginary nature and that's basically where we live the entirety of our lives. If you basically leave the dependent nature completely alone, and really don't tip it at all, just see things the way they are and that's really the question that I'm still circumambulating what is it that's actually there, then that so to speak, tips or doesn't tip is left as it is into what's called parmigiana the perfect computer nature, that's what's really there. Now what that is and it depends who you ask. So using the logic of the Dalai Lama and others is interesting, but also highly controversial and debatable that the higher the school would have the more explanatory power in other words from his point of view, the voyage of Rihanna, the tantric teachings have kind of explanatory supremacy here because of their, in fact, ability to explain more. And so from that description, and this is where it gets really difficult and actually transcends This is why content and the scientists can't really articulate it because this is something that is unknowable. They're correct when they make this assumption is unknowable from a referential not pedagogical, even perceptual point of view. You can't know this, using even logic but what you can do is you can become it and in a certain way parenthetically, this is a summary of what Chris beige writes about in his book is his new type of pedagogy. I talked yesterday quite a bit to him about this, the pedagogy of Gnosticism and the to a sense where you learn through these deepest levels by actually becoming the object. And so I can tell you what that is, but it's not going to mean a lot until you really explore it, dive into it, and then most importantly, experience it. But fundamentally what is there is luminous emptiness. Interestingly enough, this is a great way to put on my lemonade stand. This is exactly what the luminous Bardo Dermatol program was determined the whole program is about this. What is it that's actually there? Nothing and everything, what they refer to as luminosity and emptiness so Oh, geez. Like is there like a lot to talk about there? Right, like two thirds of all Buddhism, right. 1/3 of Buddhism is devoted to emptiness. That's what's there. The other third, the the two thirds is devoted to Luminosity. So two thirds of the Buddhist path is designed to answer this question. Let me ping you to a reader to a writer that I'm going to try to get on. Who if you haven't read he's another one that's totally blowing my socks off. So from a Western intellectual point of view, the clearest exposition of this I've come across irrespective of all the philosophers Berkson, Kant, Schopenhauer Vidkun Stein, you name it. By far the best I've ever come across is the genius of Bernardo kastrup. You got to read this guy. I mean, this he's off the charts smart. He comes to get two PhDs in philosophy and computer science. I'm devouring everything this guy has written. He's brilliant. It's not easy. For you with your mind. Trying to wrap your mind around his book called The idea of the world. It's unbelievable. He is so effing smart. The other thing that can help you here again, just resources because this is such a great question. Is this three volume series that I've been referring, most recent one called unbound or consciousness Unbound, 700 Page ontology that actually has a riff by Bernardo in there. So this is one of the V gray questions, my friends in all of scientific, philosophical and religious thought and so I basically answered it, I'm sure without any fraying ends with complete articulation in the last 15 minutes. I don't think so. I mean, this is an enormous question i and it's a really easy one, but I recommend
that you unlike me, speeding through this, that you really bark up this tree, because to actually understand what's out there is a colossal investigation. Now you're sending your mind in the right direction, because it challenges everything. It challenges the notion that there is even anything out there. You know, what did Wheeler say the physicist student of Einstein, there is no out there out there. So the answer to this is really the way the Buddha's perceive the world. He completely decimates the notion of matter. It really just reduces everything in the elegant description of reductionism to to the phenomenal display of the mind. But then what does that really mean? I wish I could do more in such a limited time. I love this stuff. I just this is the stuff I just can't wait to read the next book on. But for the purposes of time, at least a sub couple of noodles have been thrown against the wall for you.
Yeah, that's great. Well, I'm stuck. So I'll do some reading. And I might jump on the weekend too. We'll see how that goes.
Yeah, check out Bernardo. This guy is amazing. The fact that he comes to these insights, he's not a practitioner, as far as I know. Even though he's doing some conversations with people like Rupert's Byron and others. And I'm going to do my darndest to bring this guy on. His ability through pure logic and reasoning is he's a what's called an analytic, idealist, analytic idealist philosopher. It's kind of breathtaking. It's the kind of thing where I'll read a paragraph, I'll read a sentence. It just stops my mind. That's the kind of stuff I love to read a book that stops my mind and is like, holy moly, is this profound? And then I sit there and I just chew on it. And I come back and I read it again. So he's written a lot why materialism is baloney is another really great book, the titles a little playful, but it's a very profound book. But if you've got the chops for it, it's not an easy go. But the idea of the world is bloody brilliant. And he talks about exactly this sort of thing. And then I'll say that from a contemplative perspective, the yoga Chara the teachings of the three nature's,
by the way, dreams of dreams of light stuff my mind a couple times. Oh, nice.
Yeah. Thank you for showing that coming from you. All right. Thank
thanks a lot. Andrew.
I love your question. It's such a great one. Yeah, really cool. We could talk for hours on this but you you see my limitations. Okay, my friend. Right. Let's see Ted. We'll get you a muted now. Hey, Ted longtime they'll see
oh, wait, hold on, Ted. Oh, wait, there we go.
Can you hear me now? Oh, no. We can Yeah, I thought you were dead. No, no, just just getting closer. So the first thing the first request I have is for you to take your advanced Ph. D. hat off and return to first semester freshman year and in college or maybe even high school. I've actually written this down because I've I'm trying to make it as clear as possible. So most of my formal meditation both home and then the retreat is centered on open awareness and Maha Mudra Who am I where his mind intellectually and to a certain degree experientially there is a deep understanding of not self and an inability to find mine. There are several things that arise from my many years of practicing these concepts. The first is becoming rote. I've done this so often, and I know the answer, so why bother? Yeah, yeah. The next is the reality that the intellect can't comprehend the depth and complexity of these concepts, the futility of quote using the monkey mind to understand the monkey mind. Yep, yep. The next one is continually the barrier that presents itself. So is quote, since there is no self and this no self participates, and I prefer not self to no self but participates in both wholesome and unwholesome activities, thus creating negative and positive karma. The third thought that turns one's mind to dharma. When death comes there is no karma. There is no freedom and karma takes its course. It seems that it is karma that I created. That continues after the rent expires in this physical body that continues, and therefore even though I can't find yourself, there must be one that I just haven't found and with this reminded me of a story, a mother who had two teenage sons, one was an eternal pessimist. And one was an eternal optimist, and that's the eternal optimist. The mother talked to her friend who was a child psychologist. And told him she just she said, I just want to even amount a little bit. And so the psychologists knew they lived on a small ranch and raised horses. His suggestion was this. Take two of your unused stable stalls. And one of in the one for the pessimists put a brand new monkey or brand new pony in the stall of the optimist just put a pile of horse manure, which she did. And on their birthday, she took them out to the stable and the pessimists went into his stable and said, I wanted a brown pony. I didn't want to wait. You know this, this pony is not going to be very fast. And she said, Well, that didn't work. So she went into the one of the optimist and the optimist was in there digging through the horse manure, if there's horseman over there's got to be a pony here. There's got to be a pony here. And that's where I am with this. Not self, you know, that I've looked and I've looked and I've looked, I can't find it. I know that the you know, I know that it's there and yet, it it. I know it's ego. It's holding on to this body. But so any help you can,
yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, jeez, my friend. Great to have you back and what a terrific set of questions. So yeah, a number of things come to mind. One is not finding is the best finding. Right? You will never find mind as an object but that doesn't mean you can't locate mine. This is actually somewhat connected to to Ed's question,
right? That that's
what you what you end up finding is awareness ends up finding itself. And so therefore, continue to do this examination. Within the context of again, the classic pedagogy, right hearing, contemplating meditating. You have to just keep doing it over and over again. Because it's like you're doing a lot earlier the intellectual mind because the knowing mind the Western mind. By definition, the shrink wrap mind will never know this, but they can get you close. This is where logic contemplation debate analysis, very powerful, the scientific method incredibly powerful, but it's not going to get you to the truth. So you continue to work with these tools, as they become more and more refined, more and more subtle, until eventually, you actually collapse into the truth. And so the other thing that came to mind around this is that you think you may know, you know the answer intellectually, and this is why when I did my three retreat, and in classic, really, so called proper training, people are invited to actually go in into meditation on some, some traditions before they're actually given the teachings so that then they're not stained by the potentiality of the map, training the territory See, so they actually go into retreat first. Then they bring their insights to the teacher and the teacher says close but no cigar, they refine it, they go back in, and then when they finally have the experience, then the teachings are given that a resonance with it with that experience, and that's where the things really start to click. So one place, again, in terms of references that you may want to look at here, Ted, in terms of, you know, just keep looking and you're gonna find that you haven't looked hard enough. Well, it's a little bit like you can do this in the context of the dream, right? You can do this now from the perspective of the waking state. So looking back on the weight on the dream state, very powerful investigation, or you can do it if you have enough lucidity within the context of the dream itself, looking for the dreamer. You will find that there isn't one but that doesn't mean there's nothing there. That's the key. This is where it's connected to Ed's question. That doesn't mean there's nothing there. That means there's no thing there. Emptiness, that no thing this is emptiness, but as you know, it had the call Mergent with emptiness is the luminosity, the awareness, the cognition, the knowing. So what I might recommend you ponder really another one a week. I just was involved in a little study group with him a couple of weeks ago. I interviewed him Evan Thompson read his book waking, dreaming being because the entire book, Ted is really rigorous. Philosophy science meditation scholarship. About the whole process of a hub calm I making, how how the AI is a construct, and how the AI comes together and falls apart in all these different states of consciousness, but that's why this book is so bloody brilliant. You know, he talks about Dream Yoga, sleep yoga, lucid dreaming, Bardo yoga. From a really academic, scientific, philosophical point of view. It's a tour de force. And so I might refer you to that puppy as a deep contemplation on these queries, because he approaches this also within the Hindu perspective. That is really bloody brilliant. But ensure it's just along with Ed's questions. These are the game changing questions. These are the investigations that if they're followed with real rigor, Truth will lead you to profound earthshaking revelatory insights. So I'm going to pause for a second to see if that's at all resonant with what you're asking because you asked me mentioned actually quite a bit.
Yeah. That's very helpful. And I, you know, I know that I know that it's just, you know, do it over and over in practice.
But here, here's the thing. Where do you know it? So in the interview, I just did a swami Sarver pre Ananda. Listen, if you haven't listened to that and night club, that's another I think, pretty amazing interview not because of me, but because of him. We just posted that last interview. And in that interview, Swami goes into this because we talk about from an Indic Hindu point of view exactly. They have a completely resonant pedagogical approach. And he says exactly what you're talking about. That he says, I'm on level. Yes, I get it. That's the contemplation part. I get it. But I'm not living my life that way. In other words, it hasn't been embodied. You will I get it, I understand it. I know the answer. But that's still not Gnostic pedagogy. It's still you're still not dropping down through the filtration purification, there's going to be the true Gnosis that comes from your body. And that becomes the most profound and in certain ways more subtle, in court literally incorporate to bring into form corpus body stage where yes, you got it. Now you live it. Now every the way you see word breed live, that's when you know you really got it. So you're in this is not a criticism. This is just an insight. Like many people, I wouldn't say you're stuck, but you're wrestling between hearing and contemplating. Dipping a little bit into meditating, but mostly vibrating oscillating between hearing and contemplating. Beautiful, fantastic, but to make that final drop, where you don't even no longer have to say I got it. You just know your body knows you live breathe through this perspective that only comes with meditation. Um, there's just no other way. I think you know that.
So what what I experience is more and more of that in my activities. You know, that that, that I while it the ego takes over that very quickly that dissipates. And so there's, you know, the the, you know, there's just that. The, for instance, when when a painful, destructive emotion arises, I mean, one of the things I learned a long time ago is the intensity, the frequency and the duration of the collation is less and less and less fearful. Fearful, no and but there's still that little optimistic ego in there that says, there are some that you just haven't found yet.
The buck chalk yeah, those are still what you're saying is beautiful. I mean, shows you're really doing the work. And you're starting to see the signs, it starts to manifest that way. You're less of a jerk than you were before. You're more compassionate. You're
just known as my wife.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You're less reactive. You're more responsive your rotation you're not as incendiary. You're not as likely to capitulate to anger, passion, devotion, greed, all these. That means that that metabolism from the from the hearing, contemplating meditating, ingest, digest, metabolize. That's a marker of digestion and metabolism, where you just you're starting to see those signs. And so you just keep at it until those final residues is you know, that's why there's 10 boonies. That's why they're all the stages of enlightenment. You are just on these stages. I can't tell you with complete I don't have a cycle graph. So I can't say where exactly you are. But this is why the awakening progresses along these stages. And again, along two vectors, not just the one right. If I go it's psycho spirituals, both, but you're again with that question. Well, these are fantastically deep, beautiful questions. And so read Evans book, and just keep at it. What did they What did they say the process of the path is to transform bad habits into good habits, bad karma into no karma. Until there's no habit no karma until your habit free, karmic free and until that purification is done, and this is a really powerful thing again, with the Chris pacers book on LSD, the incredible purification processes he went through to really see things the way he did. We're all on this type of path of purification. And until it's brought to fruition, then you're an aspiring Bodhisattva Bodhisattva and then a Buddha. So somewhere in there, we're in the Bodhisattva range we're not Buddha's yet and that's why we walked the path.
So just just since it's been a while, so just a little bit of help. On the becomes road. And the way I deal with it becoming road is when I say Oh, I got it and I my practice slows down my you know, contemplation meditation slows down, then my you know, my world becomes bumpy. And so therefore, I go back to it, and it becomes smoother. Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's my sign that that it shouldn't be wrote.
And you know what, let me tell you what I do to help that this is just my style. This is what works for me. And I'm actually in conversation with Father Francis Tiso from the Christian tradition and Yusuf al hoor. From the Islamic tradition to think about writing a book together to talk about the dangers of being exclusively identified with one tradition. There's don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of the power of tradition. I've drank that kool aid, but I also see the colossal near enemies and so what I do to work with that tab because I have the same thing, I'm doing my stuff and it gets stale. Then what I do is and I then I read Oh, I'm going to read Nandu Shiva Tantra. I'm going to read the Kadima tradition. I'm going to read whatever I'm going to read a different lens that talks about these wisdom truths from that perspective. It both challenges me and stretches me into freshness. And so some people would say, Oh, you're just a delatite You're just not staying with your one thing. I don't think so. No, I'm actually stretching into new domains of truth. And sometimes even like the Chris Chris beige, he talks about the insights he got from his LSD trips. This book really challenged me because I said like, wait a second here. But the more I reflected on his teachings, his wisdom and then his kindness, his humility, his beauty, I realized, man this this guy had sharing a really true story here. So I don't know if that speaks for you, but it speaks for me. So I get stale, that I wouldn't say I jump but I transition I'm going to read. I'm going to read from this tradition. I'm going to read from this tradition and every time I do that, it I just get bigger. I get less proprietary about my Buddhist thing. I still see the great genius of the tradition, but I also see some near enemies. I see some blind spots. And I go and I see I look at the Kadima tradition I look at some of Sufi mysticism. Am I Adela Tod I'm aware I try to be aware I don't think I am because I do whatever I do with real rigor. But that's one way that I bring new tributaries of knowledge into my mind stream so that in fact, I don't go rote and I don't go stale. So that's why I recommend something like Evans book. He's going to talk about this from a whole host of teachings that may be fresh to you challenging, and then you might be surprised how that invigorates. What you're actually doing,
yeah, great. Thank you. Oh, hope I didn't take up too much time. No, no, it's
just great to see you again. I always love your questions there. It's so thoughtful Nice to see you my friend.
All right. Hi, Stephanie. We'll get your muted now.
Hello, hey stuff,
Andrew. So um, okay. So I've been doing some things in daytime to practice becoming lucid, like state checks and that sort of thing. I don't see I don't see you at all. Actually. I hate it when I don't see. Oh, there you are. Yeah. So I've been doing that. And then I also because because the rare times I become lucid stability seems to be a problem. So I've also been doing some things so that to help me with that I think you've suggested to have an intention. When there's not a general pressing question or something, but just to practice some sort of, for me a very beginning stage of Dream Yoga, wearing pants through a rock or whatever, which I've done. That one of the things I've been practicing is I'm okay you know, if i is to remind myself okay, if I become lucid, I mean, I just repeat this on occasion through the day, if I become lucid in my dreams to put my hand through a rock or walk through a wall, or transform something into something else this is what I've been telling myself. Okay, so I have this dream several days ago. And you know, I'm non lucid going through the dream. And at a certain point in that dream, I'm in my bed, you know, somewhere, and, and there's like a snake I still have I still have, you know, anxiety in snakes, whatever. I'm not having lots of enlightened teacher dreams. To put it that way. Anyway, as the snake sleeping, or curled up, I guess near my bed where I'm sleeping. And then a friend and I wasn't particularly like I was just obliquely aware of that. And then a friend comes in the door girlfriend or something comes in my door. And I'm like, Oh, hey, and then like, the snake wakes up and starts to and it's a scary snake. And, and the snake but the snake wakes up and starts to like, try to bite me through through the covers of my bed. But because the covers are thick, it's not. You know, it's not. Anyway, it's trying to bite me through the covers of the bed. But my friend says, Oh my God, there's a snake there. Oh my god, you know, and I'm like, Oh, it's okay. You know, I wasn't fearful in that moment. Well, it's okay. If it can't get its teeth through the covers of the band. I said, it's okay. And I said, I can actually transform it to something else. And then just singing that made me realize I was dreaming because I don't say that typically. In my waking life. Oh, Foliot were true, right? So um, I really I become lucid, which I haven't done a while. So that was nice. I become lucid. And then I I'm like, and I say to the friend, I'm still in the dream. I say to the friend. Yeah, I can transform it into a cat or something. And um, and then what happens is in my mind, and I say, oh, you know, I'm thinking oh, but a cat also has claws and teeth and stuff. And I start to like, suddenly there's a fear like the fear because there's some kind of second guessing that it was a second guessing thing. It was. This is one place where there's a stuckness that maybe you can help me with. But um, so there was a fear becomes apparent in me at that point, because I realized, oh my God, and I can't seem to transform it. I don't know how to transform it. I don't know if give suggestions on that. I also realized, well, another thing so. So the snake is still there, and I realized I have to deal with the snake. As I'm dealing with a snake. I can't make it into a cat or some other thing I haven't thought about because it's all immediately happening. And I grabbed the snake behind the head. I say to my friend, who clearly isn't not used to dealing with snake. I said you have to grab it behind the head so it doesn't bite you. And I grab it behind its head. And I'm and I have to use my other hand too. So I'm keeping it under control and this is not I've met the snake before in my dreams are many like it. But anyway, so I've got it behind its head and I've got one hand the other hand down holding the snake so pretty big snake bigger than I can comfortably just relax and hold it behind his head. I'm like, Just stabilizing this active large snake. And I'm saying to my friend, you know, you have to grab it behind his head and you have to and then cut off its head is how you kill it. And as I'm holding the snake, and I'm now I'm in this weird sort of, I'm not completely non lucid, but I'm fearful so I'm non lucid to some degree. It's a it's a bit of a like I'm in and out or it's just
I'm gonna interrupt you a second here is the issue then one of fear. Can I ask you Where are you going?
Okay, so the issue is sorry, the issue is that the snake as I'm holding it, I recognize it as a living being it has a pulse there and I'm showing this and I and the lucid okay, I've got a multitude of questions, I guess. Okay, one is the one is a very clear question. The other is less clear. Okay. The less clear part has to do with an interest this interconnectedness of fear and non lucidity here and connected into inseparable fear and ignorance, and I could not, and I was in the question, I guess that comes up. On that side is, is it even possible to be fearful? I wrote this part down. Is it even possible to be fearful and lucid at the same time? Yes. Yes.
Yes, I'll stop right there because this is a really important point. Fear and acidity are virtually synonymous. Right? Okay. The LCD is a code word for lack of awareness or ignorance, but this occurs across a spectrum. And even Steven a bearish writes about this from a scientific point of view that it all the degree of fear is going to be correlative to the degree of lucidity. And this is what you're kind of intimating that if your lucidity is partial, there's still going to be fear because that IDI isn't completely there both in terms of control and just awareness. So as you become more and more lucid, you will discover that there's less and less fear and so for instance, in a nightmare, if you have, well, a couple things one thing is you can work to increase, stabilize, enhance lucidity. That's a lifelong journey. The other thing you can do is work with stage four Dream Yoga, which is use the snake to work with fear. So that instead of like oh, this becomes a problem use it as an opportunity to review the teachings on stage for work, work with a transformation of fear and then instead of being creeped out about the snake then you can use oh wow, this is a really creepy, slash delightful way for me to work with fear. So you have several different ways to work with this. Those are the two that come principally to mind and you will discover that what I'm saying is pretty darn true. The more lucid you get, the less fear you have.
Okay, I appreciate that. And then the the second question that came from all this that relates artistic to a question that came up in my waking life, which is I was on the fence about whether to kill it or not because of the lucid part and like a part of me. Don't do that. The question is, is about karma is about karma. And and I'm sure and is it if if I were lucid? Well, if I were really lucid, I wouldn't have to kill the snake, but where this bug where it affects my waking life as I had experienced before. A couple weeks ago, I had a fly infestation in my house and I began I didn't know it was a fly infestation. I just started finding flies and picking them up and taking putting them outside. Like I was compact I was I didn't want the flies to die. So I just pulled and put them outside at a certain point. The flies became overwhelming. And I just start picking them up to three and throwing them in the toilet. So at a certain point it's like I have compassion to a point and and, and then and then it like, runs out and I'm killing something. It's just a fly but it's a metaphor. You know, I'm killing something.
And so what's what's the question? Here's the question is the relationship a compassionate relationship to what's arising versus a more aggressive relationship or what's the question?
So the question is about is about you say that that in like, for example, in a lucid dream, there is karma because you're lucid, and when you're losing
I the reason I'm being a little bit,
Joe, I appreciate it, I need it.
The reason is I have five people waiting and I Oh, I'm
sorry you know what? What I can I can bring this question back another time. Yeah, I don't know why it's only because your question I don't mind I don't mind. No, I totally get it Yeah, okay.
i You're another time I don't want to offend you is a great question. You have not offended me. Okay, thank you do cuz I got five people waiting for me and I need John. Thank you for your understanding. I appreciate that. Thanks.
All right. Let's get you unmuted Tony. Hey, Tony.
Hey, oh, hey, Andrew. Hey, Mitch, I saw you in Charlie's loose, advanced lucid dreaming costless
sweetheart. Yeah,
I find Yeah. You know, in the session, you mentioned that as we progress, our spiritual practices we move from liminal dream into lucid dreaming into some doing yoga. And then after that, we do sleep yoga, and then do battle yoga. So my question was, how do you practice sleep yoga? What was the best technique to learn to great, great question to do better yoga?
Yes, great question. So each one of these practices Tony transcends but includes his predecessor, and so that therefore, each practice is also a little bit difficult, more difficult, right? So the farther you go up, the more difficult to do so so sleep yoga, ersel, luminosity, yoga, is kind of graduate school. It's not easy because it's so subtle. So there's several ways to progress into that. Three, actually, so one is increasing your stability of the Dream Yoga platform. So similar to the other questions, the more stability you have, with Dream Yoga, the more you can progress to stage eight and then in my mapping, stage nine, stage nine is really a full blown segue into sleep yoga. So that's one way and again, my book Dream Yoga talks a lot about this and even says, I think there's two entire chapters on sleep yoga. As a warm you'll also there's not much written on this tends on long yoga and his beautiful book, divine Yogi's of dream and sleep. He's got a really wonderful section on sleep yoga. The other thing to do that's perhaps the most applicable appropriate is that working with formless meditations, because each one of these states is correlative to a daytime state of mind or daytime practice. And so the sleep yoga arenas is connected to formlessness that's one reason we don't recognize it. That's one reason so advanced because we only identify with form we don't identify with formless awareness. So the things to do here there was an earlier question about practicing open awareness, or awareness of awareness. If that practice doesn't mean anything to you, I would look into it. That's the game changer for the sleep yoga practices. This is something you do during the day, open awareness meditation. And then if it speaks to you even deeper Maha Mudra Dogen, the real full blown formalist practices, they are the key. And that's where you'll actually find full blown formal instruction in things like the six yogas of Naropa. That's where you actually get the practice texts to show you had to do it. But that's the infrastructure thing. Somewhat in conjunction with Dream Yoga, just to backpedal briefly into that I mentioned this briefly is I use Dream Yoga as a halfway house to sleep yoga. So another book, again, things come to mind as I'm speaking another book on this Tony is not going over images, something like Dream Yoga and the practice of natural light or something like that. It's one of the rare renderings of exactly this topic. But what I was going to say is I use Dream Yoga as a halfway house as a platform into sleep yoga. And I do this a number of ways which I write about in my book, so I'm not going to be exhaustive on that. If I have references, I'll send you to those two chapters in that book, talk about the ways that work with it, but one in particular connected to the earlier one. And I recommend Ellen Wallace recommends this way again, when you're lucid dream. Close your dream eyes even though you don't have them. There. They're still the illusion that they're there. And again, one of the things will happen, you'll either go blank, you will either stop the lucid dream and wake up or you might find yourself descending into a kind of interesting space, black light and whatnot. So that's the way one of the ways I work with sleep yoga. In addition to some other stuff that I share in my book, but this is definitely part of the curriculum. It's worth aspiring towards. I wouldn't rap to mention ambition about this, because it's pretty difficult for most people because it's so subtle. It's so subtle. And so therefore working with subtle dimensions of the mind, that's that's the key. That's the game changing. So that's what I would really, really encourage if you're into it. Open awareness, Maha Mudra. And then Xhosa. Those are the practices that will get you there. Thank you. Yeah. Welcome. Nice to see you. Okay, we got four more and then unfortunately, I'm who Jesus already 327 I'm going to need to run but I can get through these four. And then we'll come back in a couple of weeks and if I miss somebody, you'll be at the top of the list. Perfect. People that have been waiting, so please.
Hi, George.
Hi. Can you hear me? Yeah, hi, buddy. Hi. Um, so I'm pretty new to this. And, and two things came into my life in the last few weeks what and one of them was internal family systems work? And, and I'm seeing the integration of the of the sweep yoga, and that work and what can't but what's come up is in I guess, in, in the combination of those, I am feeling like this intense resistance. And I understand I mean, intellectually, I understand that, you know, it's like, oh, okay, we have to give up all our addictions and all the all the pettiness. In life, and being called to doing something, you know, to, to facing reality. And, and, and in my dream, like I had a dream of, I'm not particularly into into the Tibetan tradition, but Yamatai pick it up. As as, as the embodiment of all the and I think one of the one of the things I'm really dealing with in the internal family systems in in my, in my deeper life is the intensity of, of the world, you know, what? We're all paying, right? That's it. It's so present right now. And and so it's like if you're familiar with internal family systems, right?
Yeah. I haven't done it
yet. Yeah, so I'm doing it but. So what's happening for me and I and I, and I really understand what you're saying about how important it is to do to work on the personality part. As well as just simply awareness, which is you could do both right when you do both dimensions. And so this is about how, what what's been coming up is I kind of have this this vision of what of the, of the path and it's like there's a part of it. There's a part of me, that is really kick kicking back and saying like whoa, wait a minute. And, you know, meditating,
wait a minute, in terms of like, you're not sure you want to go here, wait a minute or too much or
I do you know, like, like the, what we call the self or the the higher self have salutely Oh, this is well, this is my, I am profoundly grateful that both of these things have come into my life at the same time and that I could, and I see them as you know, like, like, I just, I just got it from what you were saying about how they're these two axes, right and so they're, and here here here I am working on both of them. I'm still feel like a babe on the path. But I mean, I've been doing this, doing things like this a long time, when I was 18 I took 1000 mics of I was obviously I don't know if you remember hopefully but was a long time ago. And saw you know, it was really like white light and I get it. And I find you've been talking about this like the going into the light in at that deepest level of sleep. And I think I understand what that's about. Not that and it's been a lifelong journey of trying to integrate that right. I mean, that's the way it is. It's like, Yeah, I know it's there. I don't feel like it's been a long time since I've done psychedelics, but, well, it's not exactly because I've done a lot of ayahuasca, but I'm not doing it currently. Now. This seems to be a path for me. That's that's calling to me. Okay, so what I'm saying is I'm not sure that there's even that this is this is like a situation rather than a simple question. That the that I'm feeling this intense, me, just intense resistance from I would say, Yeah, it's like a part, right? It's not it's not who I am. Let me
interrupt you a little bit. My friend. This is this is a really necessary part of the path. You need that resistance you need that kind of rub. That's what transforms the great pearl. That's where the pearl is created. And so the resistance is the dissonance is taking place between the various frequencies of the spectrum of your identity you're alluding to, there's part of you that wants to do this and that's the ultraviolet and and that's great. And then you have this infrared and that's kind of holding you back and then there's this internal unconscious conflict of interest and so that creates this rub just for the purposes of time and I don't mean to cut you off my friend but I've got three more questions that I need to run so that puts me in a jam. What I might recommend for you is looking at look at the work of my dear friends V ish. Shalom. Yeah, I mentioned earlier the the Kadima tradition. This is a post Kabbalistic Jewish mysticism. I love this guy in his book. It's called the Kaduna experience the primordial Torah. He has a couple really beautiful chapters about the pearl and this rub and this type he holds up the chamber of sorrows in it, I write about it in my book, The Power and the pain. So I again like I mentioned earlier if I can send people towards resources I do that because these topics are these questions are so great, they're so big. I run the risk of you know, offending people by throwing outside by sound bites, but I do the best I can on the limited time I have. So his bark is one of the best I've seen for talking exactly about what I think you're talking about, which is this rob this resistance and all that. First of all, it's totally normal. It's part of what constitutes the path. And as part of why the path is energy hot, this is real jihad, dharma combat, going to going to the Art of War working with these resistances within you. That's where the real growth takes place. It doesn't take place when you're paying your bills are paid and you're fat and happy and everything's kosher. No, no growth takes place when you're being stretched, robbed, and all that sort of thing. So for the purposes of time, I don't mean to cut you off, but I have to be realistic with my limits for today. Read Z ease book, and then read again. shameless self promotion in my book, The Power of the pain. I talk a lot about this kind of stuff. That's the pain part in the power of the pain. And so all I can say is whatever you're doing, follow that follow your fear. Follow the the struggles within limits, the middle way thing. That's where the growth is really going to take place. Okay, good. Good. Yeah. Thank you and thank you for understanding unlimited my time today. I really appreciate it. Okay, got three more and then I really do need to run so sorry. I can get through the three that have been waiting. Thank you for attending. All right. Hey, Andrew.
I just want Can you hear me okay? Yeah. Far away. So I already asked my question. I'm gonna go back and re Listen, so I can take notes and I have both of your books. So I'm gonna read, but I guess I just thought this was such a good idea to meditate in the lucid dream state. Question. Oh, cool. Yeah, it didn't work out. I mean, it didn't happen exactly as I thought it was going to. But I guess why isn't the awareness of awareness like is it not a good idea in the lucid dream, stating, no, no,
I'm not saying it's not a good idea, my friend. I'm saying it's hard. If you can do that, high five, go for it. If that's a practice that resonates with you, and you have some familiarity with in the in the waking space, because the awareness of awareness is actually I wouldn't say it's synonymous with witnessing awareness. That's not quite the same thing. But they're connected. And so if that is something where you have some facility proficiency, oh, my goodness, absolutely go for it. But as a general rule, most people find that a little bit more challenging, but some people like you might have a talent for it. So you might be one of those. I'd say absolutely do it. Not not an issue.
Okay. And I guess just the same thing for the mindfulness of breathing. I know that there's not an actual body there. And I kind of got the sense of that because many times in my lucid dreams, I am aware I can be aware of the physical body in the bed. And I noticed that the even last night I noticed the breathing pattern was not exactly right. So I knew that there was something going on when I was you know, doing the mindfulness of breathing in the lucid dream state.
I think that's why you need to talk to Dr. Ed because maybe you have incipient form of obstructive sleep apnea. Knows.
Oh, well. It was just that there was I felt like there was more breath, then, you know, from my understanding, the breath is more shallow and the more more sleeping and it just seemed like it was It depends.
I mean, if you're the diaphragm was one of the few things that's not paralyzed along, obviously, for obvious reasons along with the eyes. If you're having a full blown nightmare, your respiration can get really high. So it really is a general rule. Yes. Especially in delta sleep, for sure. But in REM sleep, you can be all over the place in REM sleep.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for speaking up. Okay, Elena, man, and then unfortunately, I need to run it again. Thanks for your understanding everybody.
Okay. Hey, Andrew, quick question. You often talk about relaxing and quieting the eyes. And if you can do that, then you can really relax the body and that stumps me I mean, I have no idea can you give some practice how to do that but not on the meditation cushion? I mean, like in you know, in my day.
Yeah. Um, yes, I do talk more about this a lot about it. Hmm. So here's I can just tell you what I do. Is, I write in speak a little bit about silence and the different the silence principle. And in addition to colloquial silence, there's cognitive silence. There's all kinds of silence and there's also sensory silence. I wouldn't say sensory depression. deprivation, that's kind of a forced curfew silence. But silencing the movement of the eyes is a very interesting things. And honestly, it's as simple on one level the instruction is is simple, but that doesn't mean it's what I do is in every instance where I can remember it, like for instance, I'm going to try to get to the gym later in the evening today. When I go over there between my reps when I'm catching my breath. I instead of like checking everybody out, or whatever I my go to now is I'll just hold my gaze in front of me whatever it is, the machine across the aisle. I hold my gaze there. And he like stare at it. I mean, without I stare, I stare at it, but with an open awareness. In other words, I'm not like laser focused. I might ping into an object and then I open but the idea is I keep my eyes still. And then when I'm talking to somebody, I'm I'm looking at them. I'm not doing it here. Because I've got all these moving, but I'm looking at them My eyes are not moving. Okay, so in whatever extent I'm just more and more aware of like, oh my God, I am so noisy. I'm so discursive. Not only with my thinking and my speech, but with my eyes. My eyes are just skidding, glancing, skating all over the place. And the result is a superficial experience. And there's some really interesting studies here you might want to look, I'm trying to think of resources. David Loy in his book non duality and Buddhism and beyond, is a really interesting chapter in that book about
have that book. You have that book look, I haven't seen that part yet. But
read those read the chapters, the sections with the experiment, experiment that Arthur Dykeman did. Okay. Super interesting things about vision. Okay. Also, there's a wonderful section there about the vision thing I can't remember, obviously, the page number right off the top of my head, but But David's got some really interesting things to say about vision. And why you may want to do this. Outside of that there's just a ton of scientific literature around that but for practical purposes, really simple simple, not easy. Is that as often as you can. Yeah, it's a form of sensory shamatha. Okay, stop and hold your gaze. And it's amazing. When you silence your eyes. How much more you're going to see.
Okay, thank you. And I just want to let you know I submitted previously, a little quote for you about the dark from
your eyes. Beautiful. Thank you. Oh, good.
Good. Yeah, I thought of you as soon as I read it. I loved it. Thank you so
much, guys, and I need to run cool. Okay, Ben fire away, but
um, a few questions. So you can now set me to the next session if this is too much, but hopefully not come. I was watching Alan Wallace's talk on a Buddhist science of mind stuff on YouTube and kind of set me down a path but anyways, he's talking about you know, read achieving shamatha and being able to dip into the subtle continuum of consciousness, quakes that with the ally of Atlanta, and it talks about accessing that deep dreamless sleep as well. And specifically, getting to a past life recall with that, right. So, one question I had is, is it a kind of one to one life to life relationship like is there my I have it's not we're settled stream of consciousness that then carries on from life to life, or is it to a question make sense?
Yes, yes, it's both it depends on how far down the rabbit hole you go. So yes, you're the unconscious mind exists along a spectrum. Like everything does there. There are many different dimensions of the unconscious mind when you start getting really, really deep into the Alia vagina, the substrate, mind and Alan's terms. That in itself, like all has various degrees of depth, and so at a certain point when you enter your vagina that which is correlative to what the that's a handy Yamaha piano approach to what turbines we're talking about a Santana or mindstream, that is yours, that's your karma. That's your stream. You drop below that and Ellen actually has this nomenclature, then you enter a deeper dimension. That's more like a stem cell consciousness. It's it's yours, but it's also not yours. And this is what interestingly enough, they're what Christopher beige talks about, and he doesn't use this languaging the species mind and then you eventually get to the mind of the cosmos. So it really depends on how far down the rabbit hole you go. In eventually you get to the point where you sub send any proprietary self stream whatsoever. That's in fact where the Buddha's reside, and then they come up into these other dimensions voluntarily. That would be rebar or the aliotta. Nana, right? Exactly. So that's the answer to that one thing I would say at the outset and this is where Alan and and these guys are both my friends. But this is where they really disagree with each other on this whole idea of science of mine. You started with that statement. Elon uses that that nomenclature. Evan Thompson shreds that and really interesting I would recommend if you haven't his book, why I am not a Buddhist. He talks about you can't say that you can't say that Buddhism is a science of mind. I like Elon used to use that liberally. And after Ellen's critique, I agree with Alan. I mean, I'm sorry, Evan. I agree with Evan. So that's a sidebar. It's not a science of mind. It's an empirical method for working with the mind but it's not science. So that's a different sidebar. But the Alia thing that's the way to really look at it, it just really depends on how far down the rabbit hole you go. Okay, once you bottom out, you are gone. You even drop below the stem cell level, then you're in universal species, mind your mind. rigpa mind. Okay. All right.
Thanks, Sandra. I do have one more quick thing, okay. Okay, maybe this is a silly question, but also in the same talk. Alan brought up okay on the Pali canon, saying, I've directed my mind's the recollection of past lives through World extraction or expansion of attraction. Alan equates that with that big bang and Big Crunch and is the implication of that, that the Buddha has memory of past lives like beyond planet Earth?
Yes, it is. And by the way, the Big Bang is that's not 100%. Again, just to throw that into the mix. Scientists are so sure about that anymore. It has some obviously, because of the expansion on the Hubble and all that kind of stuff. But paradoxically, there's there's also a question if if Bay principle altogether, but yes, the the play of the cosmos has been going on from beginningless time. And my understanding is exactly what you seem to suggest that they were the Buddha would have memories in this kind of ambition, capacity of lives that were even prior to the Big Bang, but you know, this I can't speak with any confidence experientially, this is all just from the tradition is I've come to understand it. So no personal experience on this one. My memory doesn't go back that far. I can hardly remember what I have for breakfast this morning. Right? But something like that, my friend. Hey, I love Elon, Elon Wallace. He's the guy's like freakin genius, right? So if you're connected to him, you're in such good hands, but I also like the rub. That friends like Evan Thompson bring to Alan I love that kind of discourse. I love that. I mean that that's how things grow when someone says hey, man, you can't say that. So
few of them are on YouTube debating somewhere.
They're good friends. On one level, Evan is taking some of Alan's Dream Yoga stuff. But they don't always see things eye to eye. That's great. And the fact that they're both open hearted and big minded enough to actually engage in discourse and debate I mean, that's how we grow right and this again, a nice way to close. The power of tradition is noble as elegant is beautiful. But wherever you find find light, you will find shadows, and there are some colossal near enemies to tradition tradition can ossify and so therefore that's why I love people like Evan Thompson and Alan and his work in science is people who are willing to step outside of the parameters of their traditions and ventilate cross pollinate with others, and that's the way I roll. That's why I like interval thinking, integral theory, that kind of thing, but to the best extent, that's what comes to mind from your questions. And thank you, everybody for your patience and understanding. Sorry if it was a little speedy today, but it's been over. It's been a month and so many great questions came in. So I hope I didn't just race over somebody with my answers, but I do the best I could. Come join us this week with Manland Bob Thurman, as you know, this guy's unbelievable. He's one of the great minds in the west and in my opinion and stuff and it's such an honor for me to work with him. And then Alyssa, if you can just kind of freeze the send me the chat column. I can look at it when I come back because I think some questions came in there but I'm already a little a little late for something I need to do. So anyway, we can all turn our cameras on. Do this little geeky love fest. Goodbye thing. It's always so fun to see everybody. I'll be back in the usual time and Blake you
