Good morning we always like I always like to scan through, see all these wonderful people that you walk through these events and so nice to have you I'm back from my to Mexico retreats, which are about the most enjoyable ones I've ever done. The place is just so fun. It's really beautiful. So yeah, if you get a chance I think we're going to do next year again because it was such a hit. So stay tuned for rescheduling of that. If you're new to what we do here, which is probably a little bit unlikely. This is our I think our fourth session have a line by line running it was called Auto commentary, which is me on the audio of me flapping my lips. That's the commentary. I'm talking about what I've learned since writing this book and just whatever may come to mind. Bobby go for about an hour. And then the opportunity for some discussion q&a. Personally about anything if it's related to this material, that's great, if not anything related to sleep and dream and meditation will be awesome. So a couple fun things. I had just the greatest two hour interview this morning with Swami Sabri and it was every bit as good as I thought it was going to be this guy is a total jewel such a rockstar so that will be posted pretty soon. What can I say I'm when you're here you realize why this guy is just sort of sought after these days. He's really quite special. And a couple other really. Excuse me. A couple other really cool things coming up. I'm a little hesitant to say Oh, this is definitely scheduled. Because sometimes what happens is people tell me they're going to do it and maybe decide to take a vacation or something. But I've got a couple other really cool guests on the horizon. Things are pretty slow, which is great. I've got two events with Menlo one coming up next weekend which is their Christmas celebration thing. It's quite rich. I think Sharon Salzberg is on that one Krishna Das bobbin Are you engaged in just a conversation? I can't wait to connect with him again. He's he's really a remarkable individual. And then at the end of January, the bigger death and dying thing that I'm doing with a bunch of other really big samples. So I think Allison put those up into the chat. No doubt what's happening on my end. I'm also entering my deep kind of writing research phase. So this is the time where you're a little bit quieter in terms of presentations and teachings and etc. Right. I'm working on my book, I get two of them coming out. Or at least I hope so. So last time we left off in episode number three, Sally had just left Joe. Joe's heart was shattered. What Sally and Joe are going to do. Just kidding. So page 20. The absolute level we're talking about a map for the practices of them of the night, which is really important. It's a, I think, a foundational view of where we're going in this journey. And why the importance of right view is so critical. So here we go. The absolute view the importance of a complete view of the unconscious mind. You remember I think last time I can't remember because it's been three weeks ago at this point. There are at least five minimum articulated in the West five dimensions of the unconscious mind. So this is a term it's one of these multi valent umbrella terms. But it's actually there's a lot of granularity and nuance with this thing called the unconscious mind. And so even though I don't go to all the kind of Western levels, the five levels I think what we're talking about here is actually so of some importance. The importance of a completely deeply unconscious mind becomes evident when we go beyond the relative level and arrive at the absolute ground of unconsciousness. This by the way, this view of not the western view for sure. Excuse me. Just one item came back from a bike ride. There's a remarkable view, which is shared by many spiritual traditions is a deal maker. When it comes to dreamless sleep yoga is vital not only for the nighttime meditations but for any spiritual practice. If the relative unconscious mind were the only destination of the nighttime yoga is that would be a deal breaker for many because of the all the unwanted elements stuck into that level of mind. This is also why I should review this this statement about Thurman throughout when we're doing a program together. I thought it was just brilliant. When he said it's not safe to die as long as you as long as you still have an unconscious mind
the reason for that of course is because that is what's revealed just just like in a dream, you know like a J controller your nighttime dream. What does your habit stored in your unconscious mind? So the dream at the end of time slash death it's exactly what makes that sometimes a less than ideal situation. Because exactly the same phenomenology takes place. contents of the unconscious mind are released and revealed and that can be some more problematic depending on what you have in your unconscious mind. Right. So it's an amazing statement it is not safe to die as long as you still have an unconscious mind so the relative level who wants to end up in a bed of spiders and snakes right relative and what's the absolute view eliminates a final spiritual destination day or night. It allows us to see through the dark relative levels it's take ultimate refuge in the light that shines with them. And so my friend Chris Wallace, right I love is what he says. There is no darkness within. There's only light unseen. That's really great. That's why by the way sleep yoga the deepest of the doctrinal meditations is called luminosity yoga. According to this more complete view, or what you can prove for yourself the practices in this book, the deepest level of your unconscious mind who you really are at the ground of your being is perfectly pure and really good. down there below what seems to be the deepest, darkest and scariest aspect of your being is a totally awakened state the light of enlightenment. So Buddhism calls Buddha nature, the awakened nature and it has also been termed Basic Goodness. I will discuss the using a Tibetan Buddhist term with the clear light mind. And so this is in the second of the two books I'm writing. I have two chapters devoted to all the world's traditions, the non dual wisdom traditions that proclaim this view from from everyone from from Sufism from the Jewish mystical tradition, obviously Hinduism, Buddhism, and even esoteric Christianity that at the foundation is not this original sin. The devaluation is totally divine, perfect, pure spectrum of our being. And understanding that is really important as we go through this nocturnal journey. This absolute level of the unconscious mind is radiant, loving, beneficent and wise. The spider says and snakes at the relative level are replaced with sages and saints. Almost to get inspired to be creative. When accessed and made conscious, this is the level of mind from which the Buddha's operate. This is the mention of mine they never leave. This is where your own awakened nature also resides and is waiting for you to dis cover it. The Dream Yoga you can yoke unite to this Buddha within wake up to who you really are to who you really are. Even though you may not know about this level, yet, just having a view is enormously helpful changes everything. Instead of having something to fear in the darkness of the night you now have something to look forward to. Exactly same proclamation applies towards the end of life. Because you have the same kind of view. Then you can literally look at death as a once in a lifetime opportunity. Excuse me, excuse me to gain access to the super luminous dimension because that's what's revealed. Well, all this other stuff is stripped away. That's the dimension of your being this actually reveal. Instead of having something to fear the doctors, the nine you now have something to look forward to. You're going to drop into the Divinity of Your being into an essence that never dies never changes and as we're awake, you're also unconscious mind may have some surprises for you. But if you know that's not who you really are the pillow that Haze is luminous purity. You can replace anxiety with dissipation. This of course is where spiritual traditions depart from the psychological traditions. They don't go this deep and they definitely don't proclaim this kind of perfect purity. Maybe transpersonal psychology maybe this journey will therefore show you how to become fearless in the dark. Once again, this is not just the darkness of the night, but the darkness of the unknown aspects of your own nine where we get darkness is that kind of code word for the unknown fragrance which is symbolized by the night kind of a nocturnal principle altogether. What happens when you travel consciously through the night with the practices outlined in this book is a condensation of what happens during the entire spiritual path? For sure. So this beautiful view not only informs the meditations of the night, but every practice and also like I said, part of yoga 100%
When you fall asleep every night you're actually falling awake. You just don't know it. My task is to help you know it. To transform this divine view into your direct experience. Relative defense Oh yeah. The relative level of your unconscious minds that protective shield Its job is to protect ignorance. Fake News designed to protect real news for it is very embodiment of ignorance. This level is what keeps you in the dark and therefore asleep in both the physical and spiritual sense. To be asleep in the spiritual sense means to be unaware of your unawareness, right. It's a perfect blind spot when you don't even know that you have the relative level of your unconscious mind doesn't want you to wake up to the truth. Or do you see the blind spots of this outer layer of conscious consciousness? Because this underworld is filled with unpleasantries and this is important. Remember, this is the refuse heap after all right? double entendre intended what you refuse and conscious experience out of sight is not out of mind. Out of sight into the unconscious mind it actually generates most of the intermediate bandwidth of the unconscious mind that's what it is comprised us. And so this is why when you when you go through the process of what Jung called individuation, bringing all the processes of the unconscious into consciousness. You go even deeper than that. Then the unconscious mind itself is just completely eradicated transformed into complete awareness. Yeah, it's a refuge at the landfill of rejected. It's very effective in keeping you away from the truth that lies below absolute reality that underlies all relative appearance. This is really important because again, using the kind of spectrum of our identity thing you've heard me say this many times. Part of you really wants to know the true part of you is interested in reality, part of you is interested in waking up the evolutionary aspect, right? But then largely in this massive refugee, the unconscious mind is this evolutionary baggage, the tail that keeps wagging the dog. And this is really important because you may have this very noble conscious intent to achieve something. This doesn't just apply to things like meditation and electro meditations. This applies even relative like New Year's resolutions. You may have every conscious intent to do something but your unconscious mind may not want to go along in the Buddhist view of the mind here, this is absolutely the case. Because I will level these deeper aspects don't allow for any of the kind of spectrum of these lower bandwidths In other words, there's no place for personal identity there. So part of you the evolutionary part sees all this as a kind of death threat. Really, and therefore understanding that can help you understand some of the resistance, some of the unconscious resistance that comes up around this stuff. The relative unconscious mind is the birthplace and bed of the ego and it will do everything in his power to keep you from going deeper. But ego ignorance really is bliss tries to keep you from the truth because the penetrate the bet of ego is to see through his facade and for the ego that's equivalent to death. Ego feels as if it will evaporate because through the thicket of the relative unconscious mind, so it kicks and screams to keep you away. From the deeper truth of the absolute underlying self. Ego is just protecting itself but in so doing it ensures your suffering. As we'll see when we discuss the clear light mind the ego does die. Like I say here doesn't really die. It's actually just seen through. Your ego just doesn't exist. He was just an arrested form of development. That's all of us his term, or the way Pema Jonah talks about it's just a funny way of looking at things. There's no such thing as an ego. It's just a funny way of looking at things. As we'll see, when we discuss the clear light mind the ego does dissolve when we drop from the relative to the absolute levels of the unconscious mind. Thus from egos perspective, the defensive strategies are justified. And I see this all the time when people as a meditation instructor when people come to me with just as litany of resistances and challenges and problems, the vast majority of which are these kind of hiccups from the relative unconscious mind popping up, trying to deter you from the truth. And therefore understanding this view in my estimation is really important. Knowing about the clear light mind within is fantastic news right? from a spiritual perspective but unwanted from the egos perspective. Since we mostly operate from egos point of view, without a bigger picture of where we're going when we drop into the absolute nature of our mind, fears protection in the form of resistance can arise when we the ego think about exploring the darkness of the night, wants to go there, right?
And this is where ego goes. That's wrong. You're right about this. This is where ego goes to recharge its samsara batteries into the ignorance of sleep. And so it puts up this conscious or unconscious Do Not Disturb sign, right. You can rouse me from my slumber during the day, that don't mess with my sleep. And therefore, once again, can be very helpful when you come up against some of these hurdles. Most people don't want to go there. They just they don't want to be bothered with things like Dream Yoga, they'd rather sleep or as my teacher polybrene which is so so bluntly. Most people just prefer to be stupid. Sad but true like the principal means of protection or overt fear and covert apathy or laziness. Like he talks about his active laziness, right? I don't have enough time for this. My life is so busy. There's no way I can do this. It's a form of laziness. Fear is a lifeblood of the ego. This is something cool we talked about this in in the next grade trees where we're talking about emptiness and reification things. That's very interesting. I throw this out to see if this is not true for you. It's very interesting. The two most solidifying emotions right think about the emotions that are most solid in your life. For me, it's fear and anger. I mean, when I'm startled by something in the dark Whoa, I can track like crazy. I feel super solid, super real. In a sense, we need that fear biologically by the way. There's nothing inherently wrong with that biological aspect. Same thing with anger. When I get really pissed off about something now I feel really solid. So this is very helpful for a number of reasons. One is if you work with really difficult situations like hospice care or dealing with the dying something is really challenging when things are falling apart. Sometimes people are gonna have to have this directed towards me caregiver will unload on you, and anger. And if you don't understand what that anger is coming from, it's really kind of challenging to deal with but if you realize that people are capitulating to this most reifying emotion when things are falling apart, you understand therefore where it's coming from and not think globally think politically think of the way fear can be campaigned and marketed makes people feel really solid. So this is the a little contemplation for you isn't a true see if this is true for you. The fear fear reifies the future and anger reifies the past see if that's true for you. Fear reifies the future anger we have eyes the past. I find that pretty insightful to see through the Pickney defenses of the relative unconscious mind means saying to our fear of the dark, like going on a quest for the holy grail of learning that is at the bottom of the deep dark well. We look down the well and see all sorts of slithering creatures on the surface of the water. Without a map assuring you that the Grail is below the grime. I like I like to use alliterative processes, you know, repeating letters that have a little pain to it. That the Grail is below the grinding. There's no way you're going to dive into that. Well, that hell of a well. Fear is it a logically connected to fair. Fa R E fear is the fear or toll that must be paid in order to grow. If we really want to wake up we need to follow our fear. I mean Pema children has made a career out of this need to follow our fear into into the deepest aspects of our being. That is where the brightest minds by right and why why is this because fear. Fear is the minion of ignorance. We're basically trying to transform ignorance. But ignorance is so subtle, so nuanced. It's really difficult to work with directly. We don't really ever say things like I'm having a an ignorance attack, right in terms of emotional upheaval. Well, that's because we're always under the attack of ignorance and therefore we're working with fears and many of ignorance can actually help you transcend ignorance itself. So this is why this is a big deal. That's why many spiritual traditions or warrior traditions, folly of fear. And Joseph Campbell uttered his famous Maxim ball your bliss, you're speaking of partial truth, it is important to follow your bliss. And it can take courage but if that's all you do, you'll just get blissed out. New Age admonition comfort plan
from a spiritual perspective, in my estimation, it is more valid to say follow your fear. Similarly, if that's all you do, you'll just get freaked out the Buddhist concept of majolica Wuma middle-way Not too tight, not too loose is the ideal guide. Don't become an extremist and lose your way by getting either snared in bliss are scared away by fear. My friend ALAN WALLACE often talks about the path is pinging between extremes, laxity and excitation, fear and bliss and really think of your life we're constantly even the eight worldly dharmas. Right the eight the eight duets that we live our lives dancing between right? Pleasure and pain, loss and gain, fame and shame. In the like we're always dancing between these two or these sets of extremes. In our journey into nighttime darkness follow your fear takes on initiative additional significance fear is the minion of ignorance. This is fun. I mean, I haven't read this book since I wrote it. So it's fun to see what I riff on before I get to what I wrote out. So here we go. We get to hear it a second time. Fear is the minion of ignorance, where you find ignorance you will find fear, right? This is important because ignorance itself is so subtle. It's virtually invisible. Another massive blind spot, something we're asleep to. Oh yeah, no do this riff right in my spiritual community. We talked about closure, Sanskrit word it's almost onomatopoeia cliche attacks, emotional upheaval. With a Sanskrit word play should means emotional upheaval is basically when someone loses it right. It's easy to identify cliche, attacks of passion, aggression, jealousy or pride. These are four of the five principal colors of the palette of all emotions are basically colored out of this primary palette. But I've never been able to say I'm having an ignorance attack. This is because it's so ubiquitous. It's so constant. This is an irony because if I see the world is solid, lasting and independent what I went after in the second book in the series, dreams of life was all about shredding that. I'm under attack. So that means right now, if you look up and you see this world is different from you, you see things as solid you see things as independent. You're under attack. I'm under attack right now I just don't see it. This blindness is particularly damaging because every other visible cliche and therefore all our suffering arises from this one. The stealth bomber of ignorance. Rule with a nice crack myself up sometimes. So you can use your fear which is a much more visible which is much more visible to work with your ignorance for sure. When you feel fear, you're getting down to it, you're approaching some level of ignorance. And this is why this is so important. I didn't refine it in this book because it was a little bit too deep, too scary. But I think I did on the dream satellite book is astounding statement from Trump or MPJ on a rare teaching of the Bardot's where he talks about the very first an effective expression, the very first primordial emotion, of samsara, expressive of ignorance, fear. And so therefore, it's the very first arising as you arise into the world of samsara then therefore, it's the very one the very last thing you're going to experience when you return to reality. Mahamudra nirvana or whatever you want to call it. And so this is super important. Because then you can see that this fear is actually a really good sign. It actually means you're starting to get someplace. When you feel your fear and you're getting down to it, you're approaching some level of deep ignorance and therefore the opportunity to transcend it. If you're serious about waking up in this life and don't know where to go or what to do, go to the places that scare you. One of them was books peddled by that but be intelligent about it. Don't go into physically dangerous places or slip into mere thrill seeking. Use your fear of the dark to lead you to the light, not into mere entertainment. Yeah, this next part, this is so true. I have used this maxim to guide much of my life really. It's the reason I went to a three year retreat nearly 20 years ago. I didn't I didn't share the story in this book, but this is this was this was really a scary thing for me.
The idea of looking at my mind without distraction for so long, like was really, really freaky for me and so I am not kidding. The night before I left. I watched Saving Private Ryan. I'm not kidding. As a way I hadn't seen it before as a way to inspire me to go into battle so to speak, greater jihad, which is why I was headed I was going into greater jihad, not lesser jihad, the holy war with greater jihad, going to battle with my own demons. And so I watched a I remember very clearly the night before I left. I watch Saving Private Ryan and I was actually very inspired by what happened in D Day in Normandy at all just the amazing courage of these people. And so, I often have to say often but I take refuge in this notion that in order to really really grow in this life, really the time you have left you really want to grow all your fear. Nothing scared me more than having to face my mind so directly for so on. So true. Turned out to be the most transformative three years of my life, but it was also a bloody blast furnace. I mean, it was not easy. My first book power and pain was a result of the totally fun time I had the first part of the retreat anyway. It's the reason I started doing dark retreats. Nothing scared me more than going into a pitch black camera for weeks on end. With the face my mind so intensely. These retreats continued to be among the most rewarding experiences my life is the reason I've studied and practice death so extensively. My first guest is my second book, preparing to die was inspired by the study and practice and this is why I continue to teach on this stuff. Regularly right. Every year I do these these week Lombardo things. The next one is actually with Bob Thurman to three day gig starting February March, I think, are the Dharma top nothing scares me more than the darkness of death. I watched if you haven't seen it yet, it's quite beautiful. The documentary that Martin Martin Scorsese Scorsese did on George Harrison. Have you seen that yet? It's a two part thing four hours in total. He was this is a really special thing. And towards the end of the second two hour episode, he talks about how his life was just really fundamentally a preparation for death. I was blown away. I mean, really just so touched. Nothing to me more than the darkness of death. The study has been practice has removed my fear of death and of course, this theme continues each night as I explore the darkness of sleep. Because I trust my map so completely and I know there is no darkness within just light on scene. I have absolutely no fear of this inner terrain. So this is remember that that beautiful. I do these kinds of Contra quotes. One is the western view. of death and Dylan Thomas write the famous poem. Rage rage against the dying of a life No, do not go gentle into that good night. One should burn and re that close by a close of day rage rage against the dying of the light, right? Well, I often counter that with we're gonna have to go further. Than Galipeau when he said so beautifully. That is not extinguishing delight is merely turning up the lamp because Dawn has come. Amazing. Amazing. But not only comes for those who wake up early enough to see it right. Oddly enough, I have always found enduring bliss within my fear. And my fear has always led me to real bliss, not the transient enjoyment that often results from following my bliss alone. And strangely enough, follow my bliss, bliss often leads to fear, the fear of losing my bliss, you get the point. Following your bliss can result in fear following your fear can result in this. This applies to our fear of the dark. If you're afraid of the darkness, the unknown dimensions of your own mind as it manifests in the night a lot. of people are right I mean they're they don't want anything to do with the stuff they're freaked out about where they might find nightmares and everything is waiting for them in the darkness of the night. They have no interest in exploring this stuff, and therefore they run their life. symptomatically is very sophisticated avoidance strategies to avoid this this foundational matrix relative matrix of fear. There's really so much explanatory power behind proclaiming this this fundamental relative matrix
if you're a fan of the darkness of your own mind it manifests overnight a map that shows you that bliss the absolute unconscious mind is what awaits you beyond the fear of the relative unconscious mind can make all the difference and inspire you to take the plunge. This is why so many spiritual traditions are worried traditions. And Tibetan warriors power are those who are brave. This also was all again the Islamic greater jihad, real horror quality we're spiritual warriors are those who are brave enough to explore the deep inner space of their own mind. It's dark in there. It does take courage. But it's only fearful if we don't know who we truly are. And if we remain ignorant to the fact that fear only exists that the relative levels of our unconscious mind I don't want to overstate this relative level and therefore paradox at the key people away from exploring the mind as they sleep and dream. Many people are already excited about traveling unconsciously and some that are in it for them I say Welcome aboard. For others and good flashlight. This map of the unconscious mind will become clearer and the journey more comfortable when we discussed the levels of mind further chapters nine and 10 I think that's when I get into the yogacharya thing. Seven is consciousnesses. And the more we can see where we're going, the more inspired will become well much more to say about transforming fear, ignorance, darkness and sleep. Into fearlessness, wisdom, light, and awakening. In some fear the primordial emotion of samsara is the active and effective expression of ignorance. Ignorance is usually too subtle to see it's like the inside of your eyelids. So close to you can't even see it. Fear is something we can all relate to. Excuse me, this ignorance is basically unfamiliarity, but knowing who we really are, Socrates, why would he say? Know thyself, this whole notion is just Rama Maharshi right, the great Advaita Vedanta guy answering the question, Who am I? That was basically the entirety of his path. By becoming familiar with that's remember the Tibetan word for meditation Gong Geochem to become familiar with. We transform ignorance of bliss or darkness into light and replace fear with fearlessness. That's our journey. Cool. The power of the map again, this is right view. First the Eightfold Noble factors first and most important to the eight. Another possible concern with Dream Yoga is the subtle nature of the journey. Some people may feel they just can't do it. I mean, I've taught dream seminars for years and in my experience, almost everybody with patients can have lucid dreams and therefore practice Dream Yoga. I mean, when I did my three year retreat, I did it at this place called so patrolling Dharma place of patients, dharma place of forbearance. Sleep Yoga is a different matter that's like graduate school, which is why we only discuss it briefly at the end of this book. But for those who are interested, keep in mind that is he developed stability in Dream Yoga, sleep yoga becomes increasingly accessible. Even if you can't accomplish the following practices just knowing about sleep, lucid dreaming, Dream Yoga, sleep Yoga will change the way you relate to sleep and more importantly, this material will change the way you relate to life. So that's really so important. You know, this whole Dream Yoga. People often say Oh, this is just like this esoteric thing. It's not really central. In fact, when I was talking to Swamiji, today, we were talking about Dukkha Punisher, which is the core teaching, really the central kind of shot and how one of the great teachings in the short but really powerful to punish that is really just the stuff working through the states of consciousness. But even in in Advaita Vedanta and most of Hinduism, they don't really have a Dream Yoga. This is really a I wouldn't say is absolutely unique because Sufism has a little bit of it, and that wasn't as a little but this is one of the great gifts of the of the Tibetan Buddhist approach. These natural meditations are one of their Forte's.
Even if you can't accomplish the following practices, just knowing about blah blah blah will change the way you relate to sleep. It will change the way you relate to life. It's a bi directional process. What you do with a nocturnal mind can absolutely positively come back and have massive implications and applications in your daytime experience, until you wake up to the utter equivalency of both states. And so this is again why the view is so helpful. You understand like, Well, why should I bother with this stuff? Well, it's because there's just so many extraordinary benefits and one of them is making going directly into the cartoon, the unconscious mind is hybrid state where the unconscious mind can meet the conscious mind directly. That's extraordinarily rare. And therefore the ability to have relatively rapid progress is absolutely an order there. I mean, there the literature is replete with stories of people going to sleep, like a near death experiencing experience having one hyper lucid dream, one really profound doctrinal experience. It can change the course of your life. So you never know. Be careful might happen tonight. Santa Claus might come into your dreams. Give you a very special, very special gift. I'm seeing again, see I'm working with your unconscious mind. So be careful. Lots of subliminal stuff happening here. Even if it's left at the level of the map alone, this view of reality is powerful enough to change the way you live. I really think that's true. It's a treasure map that can alter the course of your life. Lucid Dreaming dream and sleep yoga have a common outcome. Increasing awareness. That's what it's all about. A lucid dream is a dream where you're aware that you're dreaming lucid sleep is when you're aware that you're sleeping well this book focuses on the nighttime practices. It's actually about bringing light to any aspect of life.
Like a supernova, exploding deep in the universe of your own heart. The light will eventually arrive at the surface of the light and transform it. Anything that heightens awareness is beneficial. Well the ultimate goal is to develop constant awareness and achieve the waking Buddha. Even if the view only expand your awareness to a fraction of that totality will help for sure. Doing these practices for over 30 years heightened awareness has been the greatest benefit. I see more life isn't so burdensome. A world has become softer, more playful and childlike and more de reified, more illusory. I still take things seriously. But I don't take them literally anymore. That's that's part of the Enlightenment release of the burden of reification. It's just a little bit lighter. Double play attended. As we will see, awareness is one way to talk about lucidity and expanded sense the beginning, middle and end of the path or what Buddhism refers to as Crown path and fruition all about nurturing awareness slash lucidity, which is what we'll do using the medium our dreams and again, what is Dream code language? This is kind of the this Twilight code language subliminal language. Dream is just manifestation of mind. That means really, when you wake up, Truly, this is a dream. No different no different from the nocturnal dream in the mind of a Buddha is an overview of our journey and its practical implications, but a psychotherapist Bruce Tift says, I just had Bruce over for dinner a couple of weeks ago. I'm trying to get he's one of these people I've been trying to get for an interview. You know, he's a good friend. He's hard to pin down. I'm leaning on him. This is from his book already free. The whole journey is and always was about becoming present with waking up to reality. And something was differentiate the ground your starting place being asleep from the fruition awakening. When we began the ground when we began the ground or day to day reality, what we're going to refer to throughout this book is appearance is experienced as if it were the whole story. We believe it to be completely real like it's a dream. Not only that, but we embellish it a running commentary in our mind, content that keeps us from noticing the context in which our experiences arising. During the path phase we gradually shift our perception so that we no longer focus solely on the content of our experience our thoughts, feelings, sensations and ideas. Instead, we begin to recognize a wake up to the context in which these experiences arise. A context that can never be captured and understood conceptually. We call this context awareness. We still experience the content around the dream. But we are simultaneously aware that it's not the whole story does not completely represent reality. In other words, we become lucid to it. So you might say that the ground is our present moment experience without awareness, if we wish and has that same experience with awareness that's why the ground and the fruition are basically the same. And that's what makes this tradition and other non non dual traditions non theistic. You're not really trying to get anywhere. You're simply trying to wake down into what's already right in front of you
the path creates
the conditions for the shift of perception waking up to arise. This whole approach is not about improving the content of our experience. Instead, it's about creating a shift in how we relate to the experiences we are having at any moment. Freedom arises from profound dis identification with any content is pretty good, Bruce. And there's so many things here. I mean, Nisargadatta Maharaj, right, the great Advaita Vedanta guy who wrote this amazing book, I am that what does he say in relation to those lessons? It is disinterestedness that liberates just kind of witnessing awareness. That's actually the highlight of Advaita Vedanta. And one of my criticisms of it parenthetical, is this, this kind of differentiating that can lead to dissociating, which is why I actually find myself a little bit more in line with non dual Shiva. Tantra, which is not just about witnessing, which can kind of just keep you separating, separating, distancing, distancing, dissociating potentially, but about attaining that witnessing and then stepping back and this is the difference between what the Hindus called Turia and Turia Tita will return to these themes throughout the book and gradually unfold a summary quotation, which by insertions shows us how we can wake up to our life by waking up to our dreams, that's the whole point. And there many times when I'm unable to drink or lucid dreams are too lazy to even try it. That's totally okay. The view behind these practices still affects everything I do. This will become clearer when we discuss the data and practice and premium industry form. Later. We'll also return to a deeper exploration the map and chapter nine, when we discussed the levels of mind after the next chapter on sleep cycles and how to use them, we'll proceed directly with how to start having lucid dreams. So after this kind of somewhat deeper, I wouldn't say theoretical, only theoretical perhaps because we may not have experienced it. Then there's a little bit more returned to Earth with some practical stuff. So I'm going to launch into this for a little bit and then we can chat about all this Changsu Yeah, the great Taoist Master by and by comes the Great Awakening and then we shall find out that life itself was a great dream. All the while fools think that they are a witch, busily and brightly assuming that they understand things. Yeah, right. Oh, let's understand the sleep cycles. So a little bit of science. We take it for granted but it's a literally a lifesaver. This is why I brought Dr. Ed he was so generously invited to or actually offered to keep coming once a month, once a month to keep educating us teaching us about the importance of sleep. The lifesaver. Without sleep, you would die. There's a rare genetic disorder called Fatal Familial Insomnia that usually occurs in middle age. last about a year it always ends up dead there's no cure. Much more common is sleep. apnea. I used to work with this in my clinical practice. This is a colossal issue. Most people don't only have it and it has massive negative health effects. Sleep Apnea afflicts more than 22 million Americans. With this condition, a person stops breathing up to 30 times an hour or more. I've seen people that ahi scores that are more like 5050 times an hour. They're literally stopping there. They stopped breathing. And if you watch them in sleep labs, the videos can be dramatic. I mean, they sit there the breath. I saw this, I saw this on a plane one day. I was sitting next to a guy with classic classic indicators. He was a little obese. And he's sitting next to me and the guys I mean snoring like crazy. And every when he fell into deep sleep like every 30 seconds, you could tell he completely stopped breathing. And then he jumped up and be all we got fall back asleep. And he did this over and over and over. And finally I actually stuffed a note in his pocket. I said, Dude, I hope you understand that you get sleep apnea and this can kill you. So is he actually kind of tag me follow me down. Airway ramp and st one widened. So I told him I said you know everything, you have every indication of acute sleep apnea and you're going to deal with this or it is going to definitely shorten your life. It's amazing how common his conditions they never enter deep delta sleep and that's that's bad news. Those suffering from sleep apnea have a higher risk.
Significantly higher risk for heart disease, stroke, dementia, Alzheimer's just a ton. I mean, the data keeps coming out about how bad sleep apnea really is. Up to 75 million Americans have sleep disorders. They're actually now over 100 Sleep disorders. And over 25% of Americans take a prescription medication to help them sleep. That's pretty sobering. Because most of these things are bad news. Things like Ambien, who baby would not recommend them. In 2010, Americans spent $30 billion on the sleep assistance industry. 62% of adults in the United States report sleep problems several nights a week at least 1/3 of working Americans are over 40 million people don't get enough sleep. So I'm Matthew Walker's book was not published when I wrote this thing. It's the best popular book out there yet. He's a neuroscientist at UC Berkeley. And I just devoured this book when it came out like three years ago. It's a really solid read. He also actually has three chapters related to dreaming to lucid dreaming very interesting. Even if you're not suffer from sleep apnea, sleep problems contributed diabetes, obesity, anxiety, depression, immune suppression, substance abuse, strokes, heart disease, accidents, mood disorders and death. I mean, the basic idea is, the shorter you sleep, the shorter you live and a lot of these people like Reagan and Thatcher and others, and who, I mean they didn't brag so much about it, but people who claim to just sleep on three, four hours a night, there are certain people that actually that is the kind of rhythm for people who had to brag about that sort of thing. The incidence of dementia, Alzheimer's, look what happened to both of them very directly correlated to these sleep sleep issues. scientist William Demet, who I think recently just died maybe he wasn't getting enough sleep. Sorry, no joke. You raised that. Sleep is one of the most important prop predictors of how long you will live as important as whether you smoke, exercise or have high blood pressure or cholesterol. Dream Yoga may or may not help with sleep disorders. It's not meant to be a medical treatment. But it can help people relate to their disorders in a new way and provide ways to take advantage of them if you suffer from insomnia. This one I use a lot when I was doing clinical practice. I work with my patients. A lot of us you can use your sleeplessness to practice lucid dream induction techniques. You can take obstacles and turn them into opportunities to sleep well you must literally do nothing. Or many of us that's not easy. But doing nothing and doing it well is one of the ads is one aspect of meditation. So the preparatory meditations for Dream Yoga that we'll introduce can help with things like insomnia. It's a nice twofer. Meditation can help you wake up in the spiritual sense by helping you fall asleep in the biological sense. Why do we sleep I hope this is of some interest to you. I actually think there's a reason I put it in here and even now when I reread it, I see the importance of putting this in here. It has even more applicable applicability that read more and more and more about the damaging issues of lack of sleep. Why do we sleep no one knows exactly why we sleep retrained despite many theories, we may sleep to digest learning to integrate memories from memory consolidation, taking short term memory and making it long term that's pretty well established by this point. We may sleep to boost our immune system yes and therefore prevent disease. Our research has shown that sleep contributes to brain plasticity on neurogenesis, which is the formation of new neurons. Evidence also suggests the sleep cleans the brain, flushing out toxins and Eastern medical theories sleep balances the elements which become disturbed through during the day in this view there are five main elements in the world Bridgewater five minute space. Likewise, there are five elements within us. With insomniacs, there's often too much wind which tends to kick us out of our body into our head. When we go to sleep, we unwind or on wind right? This is why doing breath purification price practices pranayama type practices meditation before you go to sleep, can in fact definitely help you on the wind when we drop back into our body a personal Earth and ground ourselves when do we really get out of balance we don't just get tired and get sick sickness that forces us to sleep and to balance the elements. When I'm stressed out in windy I invariably get a cold and have to sleep.
In Buddhism wind is considered the most powerful element I mean, this is why Trump curvature used it in the whole Shambala
path where
practice was called Long toe or a windhorse central central to the Shambala tradition. The ever collar chakra Tantra, the king of the Tantra. Is asserts that wind creates and destroys individual and collective world systems. If they can do that it can surely keep us up at night. In the Buddhist view, sleep is a product of ignorance. I've asked so many teachers this question and also why you know, why is it really true? That the Buddha's don't sleep? And every single teacher I said without his patience is absolutely this is not just from Buddhism, but also other traditions. The awakened ones don't sleep now this doesn't mean they stay up all night playing video games. It means they drop into this fourth state that state is ground tree a state where their mind maintains a tacit type of awareness and there's some really interesting studies now being done on this. One of the guests I hope to interview in a couple of weeks. This is one of the things we're going to be talking about a guy who you know, the left sleep arts can do this so I'm excited about talking to this guy. In the Buddhist view of sleep is a property of ignorance. Indeed, sleep is another code word for ignorance. But as long as the awakened ones are the ones who know literally do not sleep. Their body may go into sleep mode, but their minds never black out. The historical Buddha Shakyamuni for example, allegedly wanted to shoot a heaven and a special dream body to teach his mother as his body slept and he taught her the avatar. So when the traditions assert that Buddhists don't sleep, it doesn't mean they stay up all night doing physical activity. It means that ignorance has been completely removed, and they remain forever awake of lucid to all states of consciousness, waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep. This is classic. This is the classic teaching of the maduka Parishad. This is a classic Hindu proclamation especially in the Advaita Vedanta school. So I talked a fair amount about this Swamiji this morning. Mark is a progress on the spiritual path are tricky but one marker may be less sleep. We have to be careful however, because some people simply need less sleep which may have nothing to do with spiritual realization. But the literature is replete with stories of advanced meditators needing just an hour or two each night. This may be due to less grasping during the day during the day and less internal conflict. This is all conjecture. The normal conceptual mind is constantly grasping at everything which is akin to lifting weights all day this is what we'll see later. This is what the seventh consciousness does. Constant unconscious dimension. Always referencing always grasping. It's exhausting. Think about how tired your bicep would get if it were constantly doing curls as the mind relaxes, it's vice vice like grip on thoughts and things which happens with meditation that doesn't get so tired. When we sleep, we finally get to relax and rest. But if we're relaxed and rested all the time, which is the mind of a Buddha, there's no need to relax the mind at night. Okay, let me just read one more section and then we'll get into the types of sleep and stages of sleep. Hope this isn't too technical or nerdy for you all but I think it's important. So why do we dream even more baffling, and even the Dalai Lama says to the best of his understanding in the Buddhist tradition, there's no overt teaching on why one dreams. As for why we dream many researchers believe that dreaming helps connect various levels of memory, integrating more recent events with long term memories dreaming may also help us sort through what is most relevant to our well being. And in one study suggests that we dream to ease painful memories. There's more data that I read since then, it tends to sustain substantiate this one other studies submitted sleeping and dreaming stimulate lateral thinking, which is an indirect and creative approach to problem solving. This is actually definitely true because when you're sleeping, the linear approach to things is suspended in your you're able to make connections to other parts of the brain that are not generally speaking to each other during the day. So I absolutely positively positively notice this is why there's just so much data doober Read from Harvard wrote his book, The Committee of sleep, but all the great artists musicians scientists, you name it. We've had tremendous insights coming from the medium of the dream. It's because when the prefrontal cortex and other executive functions are relaxed, the ability of the different parts of the brain to communicate that are normally not talking during the day becomes available to one
REM sleep is associated with the activation of brain areas dealing with emotions, which implies that dreams may be a form of emotional metabolism. Dreams may help us digest important events. Yeah, this is actually true. So like it wouldn't be I should say it's been further substantiated one thing that I that I've learned since then, it was very interesting to me. That if you if you suffer from kind of some trauma, traumatic experience, what what some of the data is now saying that if you can somehow avoid going to sleep for a while as long as possible, which is usually when something really traumatic happens, you kind of want to go to sleep to just get away from it. But some of the data that I've been reading is that if you can delay your sleep after the onset of some trauma, you can actually delay possible PTSD symptoms because you're not allowing for this kind of transfer of data into long term storage. In Rev deprivation studies where dreams are cut from life, people are quickly thrown out of physiological and emotional balance, one can infer that from an evolutionary point of view. Dreams are essential for health and well being even if we don't know why. Yeah, then there's this thing about the Dalai Lama, perhaps is purely sociological on my favorite terms, or pertaining to deliverance. In other words, maybe we dream as a way to actually use the dream to wake up to this maybe. Yeah, so perhaps we dream and wake up from my dreams to show us how we can deliver ourselves from samsara. Who knows? But anyway, I think I'll stop there and if anybody has a question, or comments, now's the time to hang up whenever you want. We can talk about anything you want. Almost the night before Christmas, not quite, but we can even talk about Christmas stories. Cool, okay.
Well, people aren't going to check the call the chat columns is Oh, yeah, cool. Yeah. Something to say Hi there.
So I keep a dream journal. And I'm noticing that there's a lot of ignorance in my dream journal. But it's rather like I'm recording the doing of what happens in my dream. Like, Mary came here. And she was jogging and you know, it's it's similar to my waking life. So as I go into, say, retreat life, where I drop below the doing and other aspects of reality start to show themselves. So that happens in my dreams, and actually, at first I think I have that part. But then just even going to the bathroom and coming back. I don't have that part anymore. So I think that's the important part. It's not who's in the dream or where we're going. It's the so how do I nourish that? When
you say to be more specific when you say that what's the what are you actually referring to?
I want to like I can get this little picture of what's why I'm doing something, I'm underneath it. But then by the time I try to write it down, I've kind of lost that. And when I'm when I'm really aware, I'm I'm like, oh, yeah, that was really an insight. Then. So I'd like to bring that bring my awareness into that aspect of my dream that what's under
Yeah, that's really great. Well, one thing you could do is just by setting more intentionality around that, that may seem like a facile suggestion, but really make more of an intention to do that. And you know, a couple things here one, of course, is you probably know not all dreams deliver messages, the dreams come through a manifesting along the spectrum from really just random neurological noise to what are called the authentic dreams where these big dreams were life changing kind of dreams and then you have this vast spectrum of dream somewhere in the middle and so not all dreams carry those messages, but to order to, to cultivate that you can simply just nurture the intention, the aspiration, to cultivate this type of relationship. Now what again, also throwing it to the next Yes, that's important. I still do that. When I have really big dreams. I still date them, I write them down. I highlight certain aspects of them. I actually titled them their vast majority of dreams these days, because I have so many, I mean, if I was writing them all down, I'd be writing for four hours every morning. So I don't do that anymore, unless it's a really big dream. And so it was beautiful and viable as that is and then I'll pause and see if this is paying what you're after. Always remember that the Dream Yoga like meditation, Dream Yoga isn't interested in content, right? It's interested in one's relationship to that content. Now that's not in any way to dismiss what you're doing again, I do it. But Dream Yoga, per se, actually. transcends that. It's like how meditation transcends therapy. When you're meditating, you're not interested in analyzing your boss like a therapist. You're interested in changing the relationship, your thoughts. Mm hmm. So with that in mind, that's that's one reason why I think Dream Yoga, dear we say is a little bit more advanced. Because it's more about not so much interpreting why things come up, what comes up, but actually dealing with like, why they came up, period like what is the display all about regardless, but I think in relation to what I'm hearing from you, just it may seem I don't know just that's all to say, notion, the aspiration to do that either during the day or especially when you're going to sleep. But I want to develop a more nuanced relationship to this dimension of my dream life. And then I think also if especially in the later parts of the night, if it's not too inconvenient to just don't be afraid to wake yourself up, or more repeat repetitively, because that's when you can really kind of break into the more important trains. So is that am I understanding you properly? Is that hitting your sweet spot?
Yes, is it I think it's really accurate. Go ahead. Yeah. I haven't been intending that in my ritual.
It's amazing how powerful intention is it times, we often seem to think that it really can't be that simple, but I think I've shared the story. I took a I did a Dream Yoga thing with Sonia Rinpoche once and the only thing number one and only one induction method he gave was intention. That was it, nothing else. So intentionality is really pretty powerful. And the more you set that up, like visualize it, really work with it, the more you'll find actualizing that dream state. And before I forget, thanks to you, I'm actually in conversation with Delson. So he's one of the people that I'm thinking of bringing back on I've changed my tune on this guy. My initial skepticism was more about the hype around him than who he really is. But I think he's the real deal. So stay tuned. He's one of the people I'm hoping to get up.
I'm going to get to meet him. I'm doing a half day long and near where I live. I'm going to be the registrar and go to this event. So I'm going to get
Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, one of the people are when I was in. In Mexico, Liam is a developing neuroscientist actually is a buddy of his so we started talking about him a lot. And the more I heard about him, I said, Well, this guy really is impressive. So let me know what your impressions are with him and I were already conversations I'm hoping to get him on and see what he has to share with me sounds like a pretty interesting character. So let me know how that goes. Okay.
I will. That's not April though, but yeah,
yeah, it's all good. Thanks. Happy. Merry Christmas to you. Right.
Thank you. Yes. Hey, Kelly. Hi, Andrew. Hello, everybody. Some nice to see you again. It's been a while.
I've been hiding in Mexico doing my Mexican thing. Well, and then I don't get to
get on during the actual events very often. I'm always on streaming after the event. So nice to be here. So in in one of my questions, will a lot what you were talking about tonight is related to my question and a little bit of a comment about fear. And then also in one of the I can't remember which episode I was listening to, I think it was one of your interviews. Talking about dream paralysis. Yeah. And is it the Tony um, I can't remember but dream paralysis specifically. And so, um, I've mentioned before that, I think like in 2018, I did. A class through tricycle. On Dream Yoga that you offered and Oh, yeah. Okay. I was. Yep. And I was really doing, practicing and doing all of you know, the dream signs and all that and I and I had several really powerful lucid dreams. And one of them was well I woke up, I woke up and I thought my, my partner at the time was like, getting out of bed to like, get up you know, and, and then I realized that he wasn't even in the house that he was in California. And I got really, really scared like, we go there's somebody in my house and in my bed. And then he kind of he kind of made this like growl in this grant. And it was like, you know, that I really freaked out like, Oh, my God, it's like a demon. And then I realized I was, I was dreaming. And I'm, you know, I was dreaming. I was I had been asleep and I was waking up and, and, and I, I wanted to, I was trying to like, you know, once I realized I was dreaming about a demon, I realized that this was a fear thing. And I tried to get him to or get this demon to like stop. He got up he got out of bed. You got really big, but I couldn't see him. And he was like, like, leaving my bedroom and I was still in bad and I was like, stop it. Wait, turn around, face me. Base me. You know, don't you can't leave. And and he and it wouldn't it wouldn't turn around. And then I felt like I couldn't. I couldn't talk. Like I was trying to like, stop it. And I couldn't talk now and then ultimately, I mean, the thing did kind of turn around and it kind of thought space and was like this weird little bird thing. You know, but the thing is that I wanted to ask about is that I get I think I was experiencing some dream paralysis. Oh, like I wanted to get up and get a hold of it. Like not let it go. And then also that I couldn't speak like when I when I came out of the dream. You know, I was like, I was like making this work. I wasn't really talking. So I was kind of curious about that because I've been told before that I make weird noises when I'm sleeping. Is that I guess a form of dream paralysis, but
oh, yeah, it is. It is.
These are the classic indicators and I talked about this in the interview with Ryan Hurd sleep researcher who wrote a book by that title. Oh, yeah, this is a this is one of the sleep disorders that's really interesting. It's it's called Sleep a Tonia and see by Talia in and of itself is is completely natural. In fact, if we didn't have it, in some cases we dealt with called what's called REM behavioral sleep disorder. You don't have that and that's a real problem because what it is it's nature's way. As you probably know Kelly to protect you from acting out your dreams and you are literally paralyzed, and so on. Sleeping atonia in itself is completely non problematic. It becomes a little bit disconcerting when you don't know what it is. And you freak out that's when it transitions into what's called Sleep paralysis. So sleep paralysis by understanding is an inappropriate relationship to sleep a Tonia that's when you freak out feel like somebody's pressing down on you can't move, you can't talk. And it's in fact, it's so freaky that there's not too much of a distracting sidebar here. But there's a really interesting paper and then a book about a group of young Norwegian men who literally mysteriously started dying in their sleep. Really healthy guys is that they just are dying in their sleep and this very interesting forensic medical gal, surely other went through it and actually kind of sussed out that they were she called a sudden, unexpected nocturnal Death Syndrome. What a great name, where these people were literally scaring themselves to death by a misunderstanding of sleep paralysis. And so if you understand it, it's not it's not an issue at all. I find it interesting. Now, in those rare instances is when you have an out of phase REM sleep cycle. So this is where the next reading will come into play, because that's what we're going to be talking about. When you're actually awake when you're not supposed to be. That's the start of a cycle. And so that's where things get a little weird because you're like, wait a second, I can't move I can barely breathe and I can't talk and you and you're seeing these forms and figures and they can get really freaky if you don't know what's going on. If you do I kind of find it interesting. Now I find out I'm in a kind of a liminal space. And I can tell immediately because like, I can't move my arms. And instead of Oh crap, it's like, oh, cool. And also here I am in this weird space, and I'm just like looking around and playing with it saying, Okay, can I speak No, I can't speak Can I move? No, I can't move. But I'm partly awake and partly asleep. This is wonderful liminal space. Prior to that was really quite unsettling. So I'll pause for a second to see if that's of some benefit to you, but that's what's going on. Yeah,
it's very interesting. And yeah, I appreciate that. I would say you know, in listening to, to your interviews and the stuff that you know, your books and in the class that I was in with you earlier this fall, that you know, this one dream that I had, you know, really all my my childhood dreams my whole life up until that dream, you know, I would I've frequently had scary dreams. I was being chased. I was caught in tornadoes. I was lost in scary houses, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I don't really have frightening dreams like that anymore. I have powerful, amazing dreams. And I don't get lucid all that often. But that one dream where I actually, you know, was had that scary thing happen and faced it like one or two face it has to a great degree in my waking my waking dream. You know, I don't I don't suffer from the fear. That's awesome. It is it's pretty amazing because I was kind of one of those people that you know, like the list of things that that I was afraid of, you know, was shorter than the list of things I I was afraid of. So I thought that I don't you know, I still have fears of course, you know, but, but anyway, I guess I just want to throw that out there that and a lot of that to that I have that powerful dream. You know, I was really doing the the stuff in the course. You know, and practicing dream states. And, and you don't really have that intention. I really liked what you were talking about intention, because I really had the intention of waking up in a dream and when I did I just had that really life changing dream.
Yeah, yeah. It's really amazing. And the other thing that's very cool is that dreams are truth tellers. That's why the moniker for a Dream Yoga is the measure of the past. And so you can absolutely gain a metric of where you are psycho spiritually based on what's happening in your dreams. And so for me, it's the same thing. I haven't had a nightmare and decades. I hardly ever have wigged out weird dreams. I have more dreams about the Dharma and teachers and these kinds of cool things. And that's actually on my level. That's really no surprise because you're cleaning up your unconscious mind. So all those spiders and snakes are coming up. And they're being replaced by sages and saints. And so when you see that in your dreams, high five to you, it's like, well, this is awesome. My dreams are actually revealing to me. And the reason they're so truth telling is because the parents are out of the house. The executive functions of the prefrontal cortex are offline. That's what mediates so called control life, experience and brain activity. So when that when that is shut off. That's why dreams are so bloody weird is because the parents are gone, the parents are out of the house, and the kids go ballistic. And that's why you can get a real honest assessment when that kind of repressing controlling dimension of your brain is off. You can really learn a lot about yourself in the dream and that's why also, Dream Yoga is a tad bit more advanced, because some people don't want to be so exposed, so revealed. Like PJ said they'd prefer to be stupid. And so it takes a little bit of an advanced attitude to take a look at your junk and I think I shared let me share this one story with you because it's definitely worth sharing lest you think my dreams are so elevated. I'm about to become a Buddha. Oh my god, far from it. So here's the story a completely along these lines. I have to share this because it's such a great story for me, lucid dream happened about a year or two ago where I was in some really seedy ship town you know like with all these sailors and just get this leak gritty, grimy sailors kind of thing. And I remember I was going I was walking down the steps that it was interesting metaphorically like Silence of the Lambs you know, walking down deeper into the my unconscious mind right? So I'm walking down the steps is really seedy bar. And there's all these just really gritty, grimy, nasty looking dudes, Popeye, you know, just really nasty guys. And finally, I'm just like, I'm hanging out pretty darn lucid. And finally, I say like, Who are you guys? And so this one dude in this just kick ass kind of Ozzy accent he's that I made where your unconscious mind. I mean, I just thought it woke me up. It was so bloody funny. So here I am. Thinking I may be getting somebody involved. And then here comes the sailor gridding nasty kind of guys that say hey, my where your unconscious mind. It was so funny. I wasn't like, oh guy, you know, I'm a loser, or whatever. It's like no, thank you for telling me that I still have a little work to do, right. Sorry. Anyway, Kelly. Thanks. For sharing. I appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, hey, Glen. You're in the green room, as usual.
All right. Ah, I guess well, I'm going to do the kind of a sharing but it's I had been working in the last year on a documentary in which I'm taking events that I see I live in downtown San Francisco and there are a lot of homeless around me. And not a super lot like you see a newspaper but enough and so what I got into before the pandemic was looking at the security camera when I heard things like, Oh, what's that sound outside? You know, and of course, when I was hearing things, a lot of it was my projections. Oh, what is this? Yeah. So it's and now I'm actually really working on this documentary, which is taking the events that have cropped up and pulling them apart and writing them, which is actually a really interesting form of Dreamworks during the day. That isn't it, and I'm working on the one that is most serious where a fellow comes up and bashes in now this is in reality, Nash's in my window into my space. It's at five o'clock in the morning. If I'm woken up, and I yell down to him, I'm asleep, like, get out. And he he says, so what is it to you found someone in my simulation? Right so So then from that event, which obviously was very shocking, which associated with him taking a concrete block and making all these fools in the glass lobby door down the street, there's about 40 condominiums in this building. So yesterday night, or the last couple of days, I've been working on this stuff, and this is highly emotionally. You know, this was, this is like my biggest fear. I'm asleep. I've got a big glass wall in the street. Someone breaks in and they want to do something, rob my stuff or whatever. And and actually, at one point, he throws the suit cannon which gets all over my drawings. Um, so last night, I'm working on this and I realized, because I have the video which has a timestamp on it, and it turns out because of the app on my smartphone that I use, so that I can record my dreams when I want to. I actually, I found out six months ago actually had a recording of my encounter with him. Oh, I think so. I started running through the thing and I realized I had the entire whole set of events wrong in terms of time, and I had created this whole thing and was shot and I'd given a police report based on this time today, you know, and I Oh, my God, I I got it all mixed up. Well, the bottom line is that in terms of my own personal sense of oh my god, he's here to attack me or steal something. It had nothing to do with me. The guy was totally stoned on meth. And a young white guy and he was probably trying to get into friends upstairs and party and they weren't letting him into just off broke tried to break the door, but he didn't break it in a way to get in. Then he was pissed off. This is the thing I didn't realize that he hid my window after he broke the door. But then with the timestamps, I said, Oh my God, He broke my window because it was something that he can do in addition to expressing his anger and then that explains these encounters that I have for about 30 seconds, which are just out of this world. I mean, yeah, I didn't even remember the conversation. And then all of a sudden, two days later, I realized it was on my phone. And then I listened to it and I said, Oh my God, that's what actually went on that you remembered. It. Anyways, that's,
that's out there. You know, I mean, what comes to mind is what Josh billings says, you know, again, these these liminal spaces are incredibly interesting and you can learn a lot about the narratives that we construct and how we are basically storytelling creatures. And that the somewhat playful comment along these lines that comes up is from Josh billings when he says, some of the worst things in my life never actually happened. You know, they're they're confabulations they're catastrophizing, they're poncha. They're just the mind going ballistic with proliferating tendencies. And so what happens is very interesting, you start to see it with meditation and these types of practices. There's a little bit a kind of spark, a seed syllable type thing. And then the conceptual proliferating mind the apparatus, six consciousness, whatever comes roaring. In to just fabricate this harebrained scenario some of which is resonant with so called physical reality and others like your experience has nothing to do with actually what happened. So what what kind of residue has it left with you or what have you, so to speak, learn from that teachable
moment. Well, I wouldn't like it say something deep but I have been holding off dealing with this one particular incident for as long as possible. And then when I started dealing with this, another one which is related to it, last week, I said I will know how I feel because I will know how they start impacting my dreams. Oh, nice. And the impact on the dreams is technical. My dreams have been about and they're not the they're non lucidly about having a next computer that analyzes people on its cube, and then I smoothed and this has been happening over the last month or so. I go from being non lucid and dreaming to very smoothly just waking up. And so there's this there's there's hypnopompic hypnopompic lucidity at the end doing little stupid things like because of something I did. They gave me a certificate and the certificate was to a restaurant I didn't like so I said, Oh, well, I don't like this restaurant. How about this restaurant and the certificate rewrote itself, right? So that's the kind of it's kind of a liminal laminal I've been waiting for something more, but it's not happening right now.
Boy, right nearby.
So I didn't get any nightmares out of this thing. So that's good.
So why were you resistant to go back and explore these what was the resistance?
The fear of the attack? Exactly. And in fact, my whole reason for doing this fear of what's going on outside my window. My windows are all frosted, so I can't see you know, and and so I begin this documentary with this crazy thing where these two homeless people drag this big black sofa and stick it right in front of my office on the sidewalk right. And what happens to it when six hours later a guy on an electric scooter comes up says oh boy, look at the sofa, juggles the sofa on top of his electric scooter and walk in rides off down, right? So that's relatively inconsequential thing that you have to look at over time. And yet, kind of like a dream that if you just see it for the moment, you'll say what the hell is this sofa doing out here? It's just attracting people to shoot up on the street. Or to eat or whatever, you know. Yeah, but
yeah, fascinating. You live in an interesting yeah. Anyone have an interesting line? Right?
Yeah, it's actually tremendous. I mean, all my friends are talking about why am I not going out to they go to Puerto Vallarta and meet their own family try to avoid that. Well. I think the reason it is right outside my my window.
Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that. That's that's a I mean, I was gonna say awesome because awesome. Isn't the right phrase here, but very poignant. poignant and very interesting. Yeah. So thanks. Thanks for sharing that my friend. To the holidays to you. Cool. Okay. I think we got Dennis and then maybe one that came in on the chat. Hey, Dennis.
Andrew. So I've just been experimenting with trying to recall I dream since last March. So less than a year now. Before this, I was someone who went to bed and just went right to sleep and I get up to go to the bathroom and then went right back to bed and dreams were few and far between. They're definitely increasing. Cool. Certainly more in the morning. I tend to wake up around 530 And I may or may not go back to bed. Yeah. My ability to remember them as well. As I say it's improving. But I'm wondering, I feel like I wake up having a sense that things that happen, you know, and I'm just wondering if I'm actually getting asleep, just like I'm busy. In my dreams, I guess. I mean, so I know is that normal? As we start to recall our dreams more.
That is what
normal that you kind of feel like you've but for me, I mean, I've been used to just sleeping my whole life and not having dreams. And now I'm working in developing this skill and getting making progress and now I feel like I'm I don't know just feel like I'm awake more. Yeah, not getting enough sleep, perhaps well,
not necessarily. Because when you when you have this type of increase in dream recall, it doesn't really affect your rest. And there are ways to assess this. I mean, this this would be a great question to bring to Dr. Ed. During our monthly sessions with him because he could talk to you a little bit more clinically about certain gadgets like the o ring and others that you can wear to help you better assess like, Am I in fact losing a little bit of sleep but generally, when when you're in in the dream state, your brain is as active and sometimes even more than it isn't a waking state. And so you're not interrupting that restorative function. You're you interrupt that when you're more in deep Delta phase sleep really early in the evening type stuff when you're just predominantly Delta restorative phase four stuff. That's a different story. That can if you interrupt that that can adversely affect your rest. But based on what I'm hearing from you, I wouldn't say so. I mean, you could. Again, I can't say what complete authority because you'd have to get some data on this. But generally, when you develop more nuanced relationship to liminality to the dream arena, you're going to have more awareness. Of your dreamscape and it's not going to deleteriously affect your sleep. So, I mean, are you finding yourself more tired during the day? Are you napping more? Are you dozing off more? Those are classic indicators and is that part of your experience or not? Or no,
no, no, it's not my experience. consistent, but this is different, I guess than when I'm used to.
Yeah, exactly. And it doesn't again, that's what it sounds like to me. It doesn't sound like you're actually losing sleep. Sounds who you just becoming more aware. So I would just say continue and if you if you are starting to have sleep, issues like that, it will start to manifest during the day. I mean, classic indicators, just drowsiness and all the kind of normal things you might think of. And then you might want to pay attention a little bit to that but don't sure it doesn't sound like it to me. It just sounds like you're becoming more awake and aware to what's happening in your MindScape
that's good thing. Yeah. Great.
Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so let me look at these real quick here. From Tim. Hi, Andrew. I know we want to achieve lucidity to really work with Jamie Oh God. I am continuing to work with that aspect of whatever I wanted to ask you about non lucid teaching type dreams that I sometimes have, which seemed to give a lesson totally. Sometimes there is even a guru yogi or spiritual master teaching something which seems important. Do you have them also? Absolutely. And what do you think of these? I think they're great. They're fantastic. So that's the other thing to have that like in relation to this question that dreams occur across a spectrum. And therefore you can engage a spectrum of approaches to working with them. So even though you're not having lucidity, there is value in interpreting some of the dreams that you're talking about or using them as metrics for where you might be. So I want to just reinstate that not in any way. Am I categorically dismissing the validity of dream interpretation? Now law? I think that kind of dream work is super important. I think it was. I'm not sure if it was Freud, but probably an uninterpreted dream was like an unopened letter. So continue to open the letters and and to work with him in that capacity, so completely viable. I don't work with that. So I can't speak with tremendous authority about dream techniques and dream interpretation outside the work of using getelan. If you want to go there, you can pick something and we can talk about it but that's not my area of expertise. Okay. But otherwise, yeah. Use whatever you got. And just take advantage of whatever dreams arise either in the interpretive bandwidth or in the lucid dreaming
bandwidth. Okay. All right.
Well, everybody,
it is
it was one more that came in from very sorry my cat is very unhappy. Okay. I'm kind of it was about 6:50pm
Oh, there it is. Yeah, okay. Oh yeah. I as you are writing decide. As you are writing, researching, many of us are reading exploring and discovering too. Can we send you references that might be useful for your work? Oh, absolutely. Are you kidding? Totally. I mean, I try to stay up on what's happening but there's so much happening that if you have something that you feel is of some interest or worthwhile based on what you understand my silliness is to be totally me and let me know. That's I mean, I probably get 90% of my reading references based on those social referrals. Barry, so yeah, go for it. Well, everybody, we do this totally funny thing. Because this is Merry Christmas time. Everybody turns on the cameras if you want. Everybody turns off their unmute themselves and we do this big cyber hug. Merry Christmas. Everybody have a happy holiday. Thank you, Andrew. Everyone Happy Holidays everybody. See you.
