Here we go, everybody. Hello Hello Hello, welcome to one session this is Andy duino 4343. Oh my gosh. Let's get up there. So, we do this totally geeky thing for 30 seconds everybody has to turn on their camera, so I can wave and say hi. Because otherwise, I'm also lonely over here. Hello Joe I love your background. That's awesome. This is just the best. Thank you, everybody. All my friends. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay, So, lots of things going on here in Colorado. Polar Vortex coming up, it's gonna be a high on Sunday high four degrees, high. I saw a guy golfing today it's like 15 degrees, there's a golfer out there, it's like, I live on a golf course just crazy. So a couple of things. If you're new to this event for 43 weeks starting 43 weeks ago we just get together and and chat and I love these events because I don't have to do a thing. I don't have to prepare anything I mean sometimes I've scribble a few notes. But I always start with a few little announcements so we had a really great webinar yesterday with the sleep Doc, at O'Malley who's a member of the nightclub community, and he just gave the first a really spanking good talk. The first three first of three PowerPoint presentations on the science of medicine of sleep, so if you haven't heard that yet check it out. It's really good. He kind of nailed it. Saturday night he's Movie Night, what's the movie for this week. You know, Vanilla Sky sky Yes, hell yeah Tom Cruise. Yeah, I can't stand Tom Cruise actually. But this is a good movie. This is a good movie Vanilla Sky is it's a real mindbender Penelope Cruz and, can't I wasn't named Diaz whatever somebody else's. Yeah, it's a fun movie. Sunday A dream sharing group Monday. Second installation. We started, we've been requested for quite some months now actually. People have been asking about doing a weekly meditation thing together and finally finally after really thinking about it and plotting it out, we launched it so we had our first session on Monday, that's recorded, you can listen to it. We had like any people show up I thought we'd have 10. So I'm excited about this, this is, this is not just a kind of get together and practice thing which we obviously do that. But I put some real thought into it and so once a week with myself and you know they're really qualified people leaving when when I can't or even just to bring in extra talent. I'm going to, we are going to present a somewhat systematic guided meditation, with, you know, overview of some of the practices histories contexts. What it means to accomplish the practice why to do it, all that sort of thing. And then q&a so our hour and a half. You know 40 minutes or so of actual guided practice. This will include. In fact, and if you could pick up the little thing I wrote on that. We're going to go through a ton of practices. Just a lot referential Shama to non referential Shama to open awareness, Tom land. The inner Yoga is some breathing practices somatic meditations, a bunch. And also include the art of contemplation, which I'm kind of big on these days. So we'll be doing guided contemplations as well. When I really thought about and kind of charted this out it's gonna take probably some couple years to get through which is great. I'm into this more relaxed open, you know, just take your time and do what needs to be done kind of thing so I'm jazzed about it. So that's on Mondays, mostly it'll be around 6pm Mountain Standard Time, there might be a little bit of flex here and there, depending on I'm doing some traveling these days so I have to work on on schedules, but stay tuned for that. Yeah, and then the book study group that's still going on on Tuesdays. We're in part three of that book streams of light where we talk about the illusion of externality my favorite part. Lots of science really cool science neuroscience of perception.
Developmental Psychology all these kinds of things. So come join us for some of these adventures more and more than welcome and here's what I thought I was going to do. Today we had some really good questions come in. But I thought I would share with you this is kind of my new fun thing to do. I usually write and do my research every day. Right up till about now actually, which is why sometimes I get a little giddy. Because I'm. Some sometimes just whatever speedy, whatever. But I did take I took my 20 minute power nap before this one so I'm totally chilled. I will be meditative during this presentation, but I wanted to share with you what I wrote this morning. This is kind of fun. This is from I'm writing two books. Completely different track stepping aside just a tiny bit from all this kind of nocturnal meditation stuff to write two books on general mindfulness meditation what's beyond reverse meditations and stuff so this is from my first of these two books, which I've already, I already got 150 pages I'm going to slam the door shut on that. Those of you who write you know the essence of writing is rewriting. And so now you know this is going over and over and cleaning it up so this is what I wrote this morning. I want to share it with you because it's kind of cool about the body the role of the body that sooner or later, when you do meditation, you're going to run into the body. You have no choice. You have no choice but to bring the body along with you, and you know a lot of people actually don't you know a lot of people get stuck in disembodied practices. And that's not so healthy. So this is why I wrote this morning. And then I'm gonna return right to the questions, there's some good ones really good ones today. So as we progressed from the mindfulness revolution into the meditation revolution so I'm doing a little critique of mindfulness, the whole Mac mindfulness thing. How mindfulness itself is just a pacifier mindfulness will not liberate mindfulness, pacifies. In fact, if you're not careful mindfulness can sedate and get you stuck in blissful meditative states of mind, they're not so good. So I critique that a little bit. As we progress sooner or later we're going to run into the body. If we don't, we may find ourselves having to run into serious therapy. So true, which often delivers its healing results by teaching us how to stay embodied mindfulness does work with the body to some extent isn't the second of the four foundations of mindfulness, mindfulness or body, But it does not explore the depths of our Soma, and the natural resources, contained within exploring the wonders of the mind mandates that we also explore the wonders of the body that's the subtitle subtitle of the book exploring the wonders of the mind. And then a quote from the meditation Master saraha where he says quote there is no place of pilgrimage as fabulous and as open as this body of mind, mine. No place more worth exploring and quote to appreciate the importance of body work on the path we need to refine our understanding of both body and mind. The influential philosopher Rene Descartes successfully divorced mind from body with devastating consequences. It's time for a gut check on Cartesian dualism meditation works commend the philosophical fracture that results in the duality of mind and body science can also lead to healing or holding hand. So this is why I wanted to share with you because here's some cool science. We often talk about a gut feeling when we first meet someone or trusting your gut instinct. When faced with difficult decisions. The mind gut connection which deals with the entire length of our inner tube medical image the inner tube from one end to the other. From esophagus to anus is more than just a metaphor, the enteric nervous system, E and T Ric is often referred to as our body second brain hundreds of millions of neurons connected the brain to the enteric nervous system, a network is complex and abundant is a network of neurons in our spine and spinal column. You have as many neurons in your gut, as you have in your spinal column,
the brain in your head and the brain in your gut are truly a one mind and then constantly communication, and then I quote, these two microbiologist and immunologist from Stanford, quote, two scientists, is that voice in your head so now what they're doing is they're talking about what's called the microbiome all the little goodies you have more you have more cells associated with bacteria in your body than you do so called your own cells, this is mind bending. Is that voice in your head that is asking for a snack coming from your mind or is it emanating from the insatiable masses in your bowels. Recent evidence indicates that that not only, not only is our mind aware of our guide gut microbes. But these bacteria can influence our perception of the world and alter our behavior. Sure knows that whenever I smoke a joint. Actually I don't do pot, I really don't. But no, the munchies. Actually I don't do pots. I don't like the buzz from that stuff doesn't work for me back to them. It is becoming clear that the influence of our microbiota microbiome reaches far beyond the guts to effect an aspect of our biology few would have expected or predicted, our mind and quote, it's a two way street with signals streaming back and forth from head to gut and got to head on a bi directional way, lest you think that your heart isn't into it quote unquote my playful, wordage wordplay. And that is traffic between body and brain is just a two way street. Scientists estimate at least 40,000 neurons called sensory neurites abide in the heart, creating a cardiac neural network neurologist cool reach child buddy I'm reading this book by her I'm almost done. She's a cool girl she's a neurologist MD trained in the US, now living in India. She wrote this book called sound medicine wonderful play on words. She's a practitioner of Ayurvedic and Siddha Medicine. It's a fabulous book because she talks about the healing power of sound using mantra and things like that. I was, I am quite taken with it almost done. So this is what she says. This cardiac nervous system is comprised of independently operating intracardiac neurons, leading some research to characterize it as the little brain in the heart, and quote the heart actually sends more signals to the brain than the brain does to the heart, back to her, which has a significant effect on brain functions such as attention perception memory and problem solving and quote. When heart and head are not in harmony, this actually inhibits higher cognitive functions limiting our ability to think clearly, remembering things, remember things learn reason and make effective decisions. By learning to control our hearts, whether through deep breathing or meditation, we can gain mastery over our brains and vice versa. That was her and quote. This adds scientific backing to an ancient meditation masters discovered 1000s of years ago as embodied in the Sanskrit, and Pali word Chitta heart, mind. So let's see, I wanted to skip there's one other thing here, let me skip it. Oh yeah here so I'm just gonna skip a paragraph. So, talking about the gut in the brain, the gut, in the hearts. So, this is what I say, then we'll open it up. But why limit things to just brain to just two brains or even three in her study of the human brain. The neuroscientists Candace pert discovered that the information processing receptors on nerve cells were present on most if not all of the fifth of the body's 50 trillion cells. This is a really good book she died not that long ago, really great lady, wonderful book quite influential called the molecules of emotion, she established this is Candace pert she established that the mind is not merely in the head, but a strip is distributed throughout the entire body. And then Bruce Lipton who I've been reading lately as well. Biologists he's a very brave scholar researcher, went to step further and showed how the cell membrane memb era me, is best described as a mem brain, Dr. Aim as his, his neologism.
Don't just think of one brain sitting on top of a mindless body or even a second brain in your gut or a third brain in your heart. Think of a mindful body composed the 50 trillion little brains. In other words, a body absolutely full of mind. So when the Hey viaja Tantra one of the most elevated texts in Buddhism proclaims that quote wisdom abides in the body and quote. It now has scientific backing. I love this kind of stuff. Anyway, so that's why I wrote just this morning part of what I wrote. Okay so good questions came in today let me turn to those in the Google Doc, and then we'll open it up for everybody so let me get to this document. That's what we do here it's mostly q&a. Yeah, Linda keeps asking me in a very sweet way about whether sharing I should share that dream. I don't even remember which one it is. At this point, Linda sorry. I have so many dreams, it's like, I mean, I can't remember which one. So I apologize if I don't, kind of seize the moment and share the dream at that at that incident, I honestly do not remember which one I mentioned at that time so my dad, I apologize. Next time I have something worth sharing, I'll be a little bit more spontaneous. Okay, this is from Kathy. Can we say sleep Yoga is deep meditation while lying down. And that a master doesn't go unconscious, because their gross body and mind are not tired, so that they can remain aware for long periods of time and and quit and and question. Okay. Well, you know, sleep Yoga is much more than deep meditation while lying down. That's certainly part of it, it's, it's more than that, it's basically cultivating lucidity awareness in completely formless dimensions, and that's what arises in the deep dreamless sleep state. That's when all the display has been turned down there's no dream images there's no thought so those two states are gone, the dimmer has turned all the way down where the display has completely gone off any, any kind of form mental content is completely gone. Which is why most people don't recognize it. We recognize the forms that arise in awareness, we don't recognize formless awareness itself. That's why we blackout so it's much more than, than deep meditation while lying down. I mean really on one level deep meditation while lying down. That's more Yoga nidra, same word nidra meaning sleep but totally different practice. And then you say that a master doesn't go unconscious because it goes body and mind are not that tired. Well, it's also more than that, you know the the mind of a meditation Master, never turns off just goes from gross to subtle to very subtle, the body may lay down to reconstitute and do its kind of physiological things. But the mind of an awakened one, like what you're suggesting is never exhausted because it's never, it's never distracted. So sleep is a product of ignorance. Sleep is a product and I've asked a lot of teachers about this sleep is a product of ignorance and distraction, is the moment to moment expression of that ignorance. And so this is actually quite interesting. This is why meditation masters who are not distracted during the day, are not distracted when they sleep. And so if distraction is a manifestation of ignorance. There is no distraction there's no ignorance therefore meditation masters don't sleep at night because they don't fall asleep during the day, they don't get lost in the display during the day. So another way to say this is that, you know, these, these amazing beings are aware 24 seven, because the clear light mind that Great Eastern sun, this is a sun that never sets the clear light mind never turns off. Never. It's constant, it's, it's what's called the changeless nature, this, this survives, old age, sickness death. I mean, nothing can touch this. So it's not merely just because the girl's body and mind are not tired, it's, it's actually more foundational than that. Okay. From Astro. What a great name. Hi Andrew I would love it if you could please give me some ideas for completing a few dream goals that I have. I would love to perfect a technique, which would allow me to use a door for example as a portal to transport me to a predetermined location.
Also revisiting a memory sounds interesting to me, my attempts with portal so far have not led me to my location in mind. Do you have any tips or techniques that would help. Yeah, if you're listening I could get a little bit more information would help some of what you're saying here as to what's a bit opaque so if you're listening and can come on in a second. It would help if you could tell me a little bit more. I'm assuming that what you're alluding to here is using the dream door is a portal to another location. Is that what you're asking seems like it. If so, there are several techniques you can do the spinning technique is a technique that's like a whirling dervish technique. It's a technique that you can use to stay in a lucid dream as a lucid dream starts to fade with some sensitivity you'll be able to tell when the lucid dream is falling apart. Usually, it becomes more cartoon like colors fades more disjointed and sooner or later you actually be able to tell whoa I'm about to, I'm about to come out of this dream. Stephen laberge came up with this it totally works. What you can do because it actually kind of floods the vestibular system also keeps you involved in the dream, you literally, you can do several things you can spin like a top with your arms out I've done that. The other thing you can do is just twirl your dream arms like a pinwheel. But the spinning technique is pretty cool because what you can do is that while you're actually spinning. You know you're kind of scrambling the whole dreamscape. And what you can do there is you can while you're spinning, you can actually set the intention that when I like like a revolving door right, that when you stop spinning, you will be in that new location. That's one technique. So you got it. So you set that intention before you go to bed. As the dream falls apart. Again, you know lucid dreaming is kind of mandatory here. You set the intention when I stopped spinning, that's where that door so to speak will open and and see where see where that takes you. Let's see what else here. The other way to do this, that's a little bit more advanced is you can cultivate a special dream body. This is also connected to what's called dream yoga power, where you can create a special dream body made out of the mind, that can that you can then FedEx I playfully say you can overnight it. You can overnight your consciousness to whatever destination you want to go. So what is it what is not clear to me is are you talking about so called physical locations. Are you talking What are you talking about when you say a location, because that actually helps me understand the postage that's necessary to get you there. Right, so if you're on and can help me with that. That's great. I do not understand your question revisiting a memory that I just don't know what you mean by that. Why can't you just revisit a memory and waking consciousness, so I think I'm missing something there it's not clear to me from what you write. So, if you're there, I can say something, you're more than welcome to come on. Otherwise I'll continue from Travis, I've heard you mentioned this before so I wanted to see if you could talk a little bit more about the winds. Oh yeah. Yeah long value prana Holy Spirit and Christianity holy wind and the Navajo. Yeah, so if you could say something more about the winds entering the central channel, I am wondering about what signs go along with it. I know there are visual signs like colors so I'm wondering what colors and what do they correspond to. Are there other signs too I'm interested in a roadmap of these experiences yeah cool topic so the inner Yogi's are big on this, as are the are Bardo Bharti Yoga is being on this. This is a big topic in these arenas where, you know, as we start to meditate and our meditation gets deeper and deeper. The winds actually do progressively enter the central channel you can't force them there. I'm using what's called khumba in the Hindu tradition, inner he practices and Buddhist tradition. You can actually force those winds into the central channel but you seem to be talking about a more natural occurrence of these winds entering. Excuse me when they do that. This is such an interesting topic. This also has to do with the first of the six limbs of the completion stage practices in the kalachakra Tantra so again I don't know where you are with with what you do in your traditions, but if you're interested in Buddhism.
There are what are called the completion stage practices of the kalachakra Tantra you can read about this in an amazing book called automotive stainless nite ornament of stainless light. It's a wildly esoteric text as is the kalachakra Tantra in the first of the six limbs of completion stage practices, I think it's called Project data right withdrawal. It's exactly about this. It's about how you you withdraw your malpractice system, these wins into the central channel, and as you do that, by the way, this happens just naturally, when you engage in really deep meditation, or when you're dying, dying is a form of really deep meditation. And so what happens here are the 10 signs, there are 10, what are called secret signs associated with this. They're called secret because only practitioners see these. And they are each encroach, they're each indicative or signs of the encroaching of the clear light mind. So you're getting closer and closer to the clear light you can see this in your meditation. And so the place to go for this is, you know, the Bardo yoga teaching so the signs a classic signs are first of all mirage. When the gross when the earth element dissolves into water element, you have, you literally have experience of a mirage with your mind's eye. The next one when water dissolves into fire you literally have an appearance of smoke and Kimbo Rinpoche MIT he was once asked, well what what does that really look like he was great. Well, he said you know it's like this room we're in here it's like somebody just pipes out a bunch of smoke. Okay, got it. And then there's the letters of fireflies and then there's the candle and so, because there's so much to say here, I recommend. I'm thinking of which books in the Bardo mind beyond death by pulling up or che goes into this. So I got read PJ's book and I get I get some flack these days about still recommending so you're in PJ's book this is a tricky topic Patrick Pema children still continues to recommend him before he, you know, kind of strayed in a rather colossal way that book which he wrote decades before he strayed. It's a pretty darn good book and so do we categorically throw the baby out with the bathwater and say I don't care what this guy wrote, I don't want anything to do with him. I leave that up to you, but this is a good book and even Pamela she was, she was attacked, I wouldn't say attack but question and quite pointedly. And she just said hey you know exactly what I'm saying. Now, this is a good book. And it was before he did whatever he did so in that book. He also goes into it, a lot of Bardo texts. Talk about these sorts of things. Are there other signs well there's 10 of them, I think, isn't that enough. How many more signs Do you want, dude. 10 signs and again you, you see these or. That's interesting phrase it's non dual perception, they see themselves you don't actually, you're not actually seeing the signs, they, they are reflexively aware. So, I'm recommend that and then if you're a really deep diver in the Buddhist tradition. The first completion stage practice of the six limbs on the collar chakra is all about this. This is awesomely interesting stuff. Okay from Chris. Next question. Sometimes I have what I call a tactile lucid dream. If I for example take hold of someone's arm. Then the physical sensation of doing so, are exactly the same as I would have felt in the daytime. I mean, isn't that cool. I love that kind of stuff back to his question the intensity of the sensation invariably shocks me awake. How can I avoid be woke being woken up to in this way. Well, a prep for it, prepare for it. Use that actually as a dream sign. So with a little bit of preparatory work you know you can actually say okay I know this is gonna happen.
I when I feel that experience I'm actually going to use it as a dream sign to stay in the dream. And the other thing I might recommend you can just experiment here it's gonna be different for different people. But you can, you can actually try to engage the dream. Visually, in other words get get more involved with that so called sense faculty. I mean, isn't it interesting there there are no sense faculties in there, there's no, there's no arm in there there's no, no, no, no, it doesn't none of that is in there, but yet you can feel hear, smell, taste thank, just as you can in the waking state. I mean this is super interesting to me. So if you have this kind of jolting experience. I would prep for it during the day. Almost rehearse it like mentally and do what's called active imagination type practices, back to visualization actually visualize it, feel it, return to that feeling and memory, and so that when you have it again, you're kind of almost in a certain sense desensitizing yourself to it, you're actually kind of reducing the charge by becoming more familiar with it, see, so that then when it happens, it won't jolt you back up. And then the other thing you can do is just distribute more of your awareness to other senses. So as you wake up and you start to do that, you can go okay usually what when this happens I wake up so I'm going to distribute my awareness to my other senses, of course, even though they're not there, you're creating them. I'm going to look a little bit more. I'm going to try to hear a little bit more, maybe even smell more, so that dilutes the concentration of the action of the, of the tactile sensation see. So then, in a certain sense you're reducing the charge, and that will help you stay in. So give it a try. That's kind of an interesting so called problem from okay from Farzad tion do does mastering Oh another product question cool does mastering one's prana accelerate the deepening of realization. Absolutely. How does Chinese, yigong, I don't know about neigong I know about Qigong. So, I wonder if you're referring to the same thing I don't know about neigong but how does Chinese negotiate Gong compared with Tibetan energy work. Well it compares it's not quite the same and again I don't know this particular practice you're referring to, but there are obvious similarities I'm sure there are differences between subtle body work in the Chinese and Tibetan system so I can't speak with real authority on that because I'm not sure what you're referring to. But the real question is does mastering one's prana accelerate the deepening. Oh my gosh. Absolutely. I mean this idea of working with wind breath prana. This is so colossal that even the word spirit isn't spirituality comes from a root that means breath. So, breath work prana work is hugely important in the Tibetan arena. Some scholars say that it makes sense to me that one third of all laundry on a tantric practice one third is devoted to the inner yogas, and those inner yoga are when do goes. When prana, this is the most powerful element in the universe, xikar um. His Holiness can say Rinpoche Jay talks about it no wind. Wind is that which creates and destroys individual and collective world systems because wind is space and motion mind emotions activated mind. So prana is working with prana is huge. And so therefore yeah if you're into this sort of stuff. Whether it's pranayama, whether it's, again, all these weird practices. The combat cow the inner yogas chandauli choke or that kind of stuff. Anything that works with mastering prana because the mind rides on these winds and so by by mastering prana you're learning how to master your mind. Same thing. So in short, absolutely. Okay. Couple more. Then I'll pause there a couple more that came in, but I'll pause so like people can ask and then we'll come back. So this is from let, let, Tisha Leticia if certain brainwave frequencies are conducive to REM. Yeah, they are such as theta. Yeah, it's mostly theta.
And maybe Delta for clear light. Delta for deep sleep, delta is not necessarily a signature for clear light. Delta zero to four hertz, that's associated with deep sleep 01 the display, you know the EKG display is flatline so to speak. That's probably somewhat resonant with clear light mind but you can't say for sure. The clear light is associated with just delta i think there's also some interesting data that could be connected to gamma so they're the five brainwave status, going from the lowest to the highest there's Delta, which is deep dreamless sleep, zero to four theta, which I think is like four to eight, roughly, alpha, beta, alpha is what you experience when you're in that liminal phase one sleep beta is where most of us are now. And then there's gamma which is 40 hertz and above, which is really indicative of synchronization in the brain altogether. It's really interesting state. So, I think it's possible that clear light could also be connected with gamma, interestingly enough, but anyway back to your question what is your regard for binaural brainwave entrainment recordings. How about brainwave entrainment devices such as the heartmath em wave device any to recommend. I think these are cool, I don't use them. But I think they're cool they work with this kind of more integral approach. There's really I think is a great contribution of the West that is based on this big word called neuro phenomenology neuro phenomenology. This is a term coined by the neuroscientist Francisco Varela. And what this refers to is that any experience. That's the phenomenology part has a brain or a neurological signature, and so therefore, when you enter a particular state. There is a brainwave correlate. That's why you can have brainwaves that are related to certain, you know, waking dreaming sleeping states. And so this is a two way street. You know, you can bring about changes in your experience that's the phenomenology part by what you do with a neural part, whether it's supplemental drugs agents, or in this case these entrainment devices. So, you know I haven't tried them so I can't really speak about them, they make sense to me honestly what I would do is I would work more with mantra. I mean that's what mantra does mantra is is an entrainment device. So you know, if you're trying to work with clear light mind states you can try the sound of the mind that's associated with deep dreamless sleep which is home, at least in this tradition, hmm, home, home, home, home, home. That's an entrainment. It's more effective than these by neural things in my estimation. That's one reason I don't use these gadgets though, again, I think they are completely viable. These are called bija mantras. And so, see, see syllable mantra so home for the heart for deep deep sleep. The deep dreamless clearlight sleep. ohm. I'm sorry. My mistake, ah, ah. For dream, that's the seed bija syllable for the dream state. So what I would do is I would just consider reciting that bija Mantra. You know, for instance, for the heart. Home deep dream. dreamless for the, for the dream state and the throat. Ah. And notice what happens if you do this repetitively. I mean, it's really powerful you activate that chakra, you bring energy into it, you open it, you're inviting the pianos the winds the dues instead area. So that's what I would do. And this is why you know I'm going to be interviewing a couple people on my club coming up, because I'm you know i mean musicians music has been a big part of my life. So Krishna das is agreed to talk to me so I'm going to bring him on. And I'm going to try to get cool read Shadi on this as well, because I'm pretty impressed with your book so I'm going to start to do a little riff with a couple of mantric people around all this. So, in short, that's what I have to say about that. So, maybe one more and then Andy we can bring a couple live ones and then I'll come back to some more written ones. These are good questions. So this one Doug, the subtext of your book dream Yoga is panic. Is it. Maybe, maybe not me but I have PTSD I don't remember the subtext of the book dream Yoga is panic. Okay.
When you experience emptiness both in college is related to the prologue oh yeah I did relate that story. And on page 236 panic and wake myself up. I don't remember what page 236, but I believe you, stepping in emptiness brings an existential panic, it yes, it definitely can. But between the time you wrote dream yoga in 2015, and your new book in 2020, you apparently overcame your existential panic. When your inner subtle body died when you're reading one of my books dude this is awesome. You just I keep mentioning all my books preparing to die, you're my friend, no matter what you do, how did you overcome the panic reaction to formlessness and move into the jokes and dharmakaya zone. Oh yeah, okay. But a standard time is Lama Surya das talks about it. Yeah, this is, this one's kind of easy to answer maybe not so easy to do. By by becoming more familiar with the nature of fear. This is why I've written so much about fear. This comes from my experience, you know, really working a lot with this thing called fear of which panic is just a more heightened manifestation. So for me, a lot of it was working very directly with fear. What is this thing called fear, why am I afraid, where's that coming from. So that's why I works so much with that topic. So I worked a lot deeply, deeply exploring the nature of fear and actually putting myself in. You know without being a spiritual like thrill seeker that's the near enemy of these sorts of things actually putting myself in in frightful circumstances fifl situations intentionally safely. meditatively as a way to establish a relationship to that contraction because the reason you panic is because you contract. And so I wanted to understand the fabric of contraction, so much so that the second book I'm writing, you know, 50% of that book is on contraction. So this is a very personal thing for me. And the other thing deeply connected to this dog is by doing more and more formulas meditations, doing these formulas practices becoming familiar during the day and remember that's what meditation means right to become familiar with. If I can become familiar with these formless dimensions during the day. I'll recognize them at night and they won't freak me out anymore, because I'll have had that introduction that familiarity So, even then, it is a little bit like EMDR it's a it's a little bit like a desensitization technique, just, you know, titrating going back into it more and more and more, so that it just doesn't have that same panicky charge and so I actually use that fear and panic as a kind of a sign is a good thing is a place to go. You know, if you really want to grow don't follow your bliss may pop follow it a little bit but be careful. Follow your fear, you really want to grow, follow your fear. So, yeah, just that, and then strengthening the view, you know really really deeply studying these maps of the mind. Understanding like where's this fear coming from, even on the level the map. Why, why is there fear, what is that all about. So, yeah, thanks for the opportunity to riff on that. And it's definitely changed I mean we'll see what happens when I die I'll probably just completely freak out and everything I'm saying will be, you know, total bust and I'll go right to hell. You never know Let's drink to that. But honestly, I feel somewhat prepared. We'll see. Because I work with this stuff all the time. I work a lot with here. My teacher Campbell River che allegedly attained his awakening doing what he called charnel ground meditations, you know in Indian Tibet. He went to these really horrific terrifying places. That's where he went to meditate and because I'm a power, you know, strong student of this guy. He also worked a lot with us with fear I mean to the point no kidding where he he said and I used to do this at my programs. But then I don't do them because they scare too many people away. We're literally I would watch these just god awful wretched horror movies like the whole saw series, remember those. There's so bad. I mean they're really bad. They're revolting, they're more stupid than creepy. But I watched them because
he said you know you can work with fear by watching these The other thing I did, and these really creeped me out, is some of these really unsettling VR virtual reality programs I don't know if anybody out there has seen these puppies. They are seriously creepy. I mean I did one. A couple years ago I mean, and this is, I mean, here I am. I'm in the damn VR so I know it's I know it's a virtual thing. And the setup here was you know I'm in the I'm in this VR setup and I'm on this bed. So this is my environment. And what happens is these damn little creepy Gremlins and ghouls were just like pop up all over the place. I mean, and I knew it was so bizarre, it was like I knew this is VR. I knew these guys are going to be there to scare me and they still scared me so me sitting in, it was bad, like, and then all of a sudden one of these mofos would just, I turn over out there he is, you know, scared the bejesus out of me. And so, the VR thing around this is really powerful. You can really work with your fear and my friend Pema children when I took her to the VR lab. She actually to her credit. She did something somewhat similar when she came in, and to hurt her amazing credit. She, she called me up a couple months later, she said Andrew I want to do it again. She wanted to work with her fear. And she came up to this one little kind of terrifying location her knees where I was it was amazing, her knees are shaking. And finally I just said to her, I said I said Pam I think of your guru. Think of your teacher, and it just completely pacify her so that's the other thing you can do is, you know, think of your teacher think of you grow so that's the way I did it and it's this is a really big topic this is super important, because when you die, you know, in the darkness of frightful existence, you're going to be heading towards this sort of thing. Fear is the affective matrix of samsara everything we do sublimates is sublimated by fear. So I'm going to let that go because there's so much to say about this. So a couple questions from you all live and then they keep coming in, which is great. I'll do my best to get to all of these but I want to make sure, for some live questions.
Yeah. Right now we just have David queued up for a live question, bringing.
Okay, then I can come back.
Thank you.
Hey,
I've been wanting to ask you this question Andrew for a while.
The partner of a dear friend, family friend of mine
is just consumed every night by nightmare after nightmare. To the point that falling asleep, is almost desperation. And she's had so much unhelpful advice that she did, and it's and she's so terrified of the whole thing. She doesn't want to talk about it much. And I want to help her. When I find things that will work. What would you suggest learning what techniques, and what books both oh geez. So tell me a little bit about her background David is she spiritually oriented, no path. Tell me a little bit about her history and where she kind of lives. Well, so we're all in Nova Scotia she's from from New Brunswick Chico, she came out of a, an old time well established cold, sort of thing. Watchtower bunch sort of stuff.
And so very cultish family but she still loves them. But, um, so there's really heavy background stuff she's, she's a very strong community activist, she's, she has a disability that will get stronger as she gets older, and her partner has done. You know, they're still pretty young but has done lots of meditation practice, but he's not doing much at all. Ever since
the soccer issues, hit. Eliminate right around him you know he was pretty close to it all. So, that enough. Well, look, so this person does not seem to have a spiritual allegiance or path or practice or anything like that. How spiritual person is she is there a spiritual component to her life or No. Is it super ethical component to it. And, but I don't see any spiritual practices, you're not new church, she's, she doesn't hate yeah that helps because then I mean, the first thing that came to mind if if the person was spiritual to direct them towards teachings and maps that point out, you know the basic goodness of the mind, but that may not work for her. Yeah, these sorts of things are challenging honestly what I would do. I mean this is where the professionals come into play, I can say a couple things from my own experience. But one thing that she could consider is my dear friend Claire Johnson PhD. Excuse me first person to get I think PhD and lucid dream therapy. I just got her book this week. It's really good. It's called the art of transforming nightmares. Oh, I would recommend it. Yeah, I endorsed it. I literally just got it in the mail this week and it's really good Claire's a very sensitive scholar, spiritual person it's a really good read. You know, outside of that. There has to be a willingness, you know, there has to be some crack in her fabric that can allow you even the opportunity to bring some light. Because if there isn't that sometimes there's so much contraction which which is such an irony because it is in fact contraction, that initially generated these experiences that are now lodged in that dimension of her unconscious mind which is where she goes contraction she feels is a defense against it but it just exacerbates it. So, you know, working against so many levels of contraction is not easy and there may not be a way to get in there for you. Outside of maybe just passively saying hey have you considered looking at this book. That way she can flip the pages on her own time, she can look at it and see if anything in there speaks to her, but you know sleep doctors like my friend O'Malley who did the webinar yesterday, I mean, these people, they are professionals they are trained in this. And when you start having this level of sleep nightmares and the like. I mean, you start talking about things like trauma and trauma is. It's difficult for me David because these, you know, these are really deep in, you know, intertwined complex topics and for me to spit out a life changing bit of information in three minutes, you know, you know how much can I actually say. But, these things are fundamentally absolutely they are workable because your mind is workable. And so I would probably is a very safe unobtrusive way so you're not, you know, coming in with too much information even though your hearts in the right place I might just give her that book and just say just let me know what you think is anything here that speaks to you. Because if she doesn't allow that she's so contracted I hate to say it, there's not a whole lot you can do. If there are avenues where she's willing she's hurting enough, where she wants help. Oh my gosh, there's so much that can be done for her. I mean there's so much. This is not that terribly uncommon people that suffer from PTSD. I mean, speaking of virtual reality. You can you can absolutely positively desensitize people from these states, using VR using EMDR you know the eye movement desensitization techniques, there are a host of very skillful Western skillful means that can 100% address this for her. But there has to be an avenue of receptivity on her part. So, you know. Yeah, I'll probably leave it at that because there's just so much to say get Claire's book just came out pretty darn good and is by PhD she's a scientist type you know so it's rigorous, and it's heartfelt. And that might she might just flute flip through it and say, oh, oh I didn't know I could do this. Oh, and that way she can kind of titrate it she can do it on her own terms. So, probably the best I can say amigo. You know, when you start talking about things like trauma night panics night terrors.
You know, these are these are topics where the the terror and the panic and whatnot is proportional to the, to the trauma to the degree of unprocessed on digested and metabolized experience and so these things take a little bit of time, but they absolutely positively can be managed. It's just a matter of how much she wants to release it and as strange as it may appear, and I have no idea if this is the case with her. Some people are so invested in their pain that whether they know it or not it's working for them. This is a really interesting kind of bizarre phenomena that on wonder one way or their level, it's something's working for her. And so you have to also be aware of that that she may you know, again I can't say for sure because I don't know this person, but sometimes people hold on to these things for a reason. But basically, they take a little bit of time and energy and care and love to be kind of teased apart but they absolutely positively 100%, they can be managed. There just has to be a chink in his armor that allows that light to come in, otherwise you can't do anything.
That sounds pretty good. The state of the art book. Yeah, and she's very intellectual.
She, she has a consulting firm on people with disabilities. Yeah. You can also you can also tell her, Hey, I have a friend who knows this author, and he can put you in contact with her. So if she resonates with it I can put her in contact with Claire and she can work with Claire so I would start there.
Oh right on. Okay, amigo. Thank you, Andrew. Welcome. Nice to see you. We've got some more live ones you want to take. Yeah. Next we'll bring in Jared, and then we have Kathy and Evelyn in the queue. He heard me Okay. Hey, bud. Oh, yeah, thanks for putting this on. It's my first time. Oh, what's your name. I'm Jared. Hey, Jerry. So I was initially just gonna chat my question, but after your talk on beer I thought I'd speak up because I don't really like public speaking. Oh perfect Good for you. I guess my question. I was talking with my brother last night about like astral bodies. Regarding like the causal astral and the gross body, and we were wondering what happens. Kind of during the day your astral body can I, if I'm at work can my astral body go off and like interact in astral planes or astral realms. Or, if I'm sleeping. Can I need the astral body of someone who's awake, and then kind of the last question was
does my astral body, kind of have its own. I guess life. I guess that's my question. Yeah, so no. And yeah, and so first of all, when you use a term like astral body. This is one of these Jared, this is one of these what are called multi valence terms, which means it has a lot of different meanings depending on different contexts and so when you use the word astral that that is not a term that is generally used in in the wisdom traditions or literature that I study in practice but it's just, you know, astral body is deeply connected and astral projection and all that sort of thing is deeply connected to this whole intermediate bandwidth that we associate with subtle body and so, you know, it's difficult to say. You can learn about this from both a Hindu, and a Buddhist context. And one way to look at this is to explore the coaches in Hinduism, you know the five sheets, right. So this is more associated with what they call prana Maya kosha. And you can it's really worth exploring. I actually think because they you know the Buddhists have one kind of bandwidth for that called sambhogakaya, the Hindus you know we have, but let me say it this way the Buddhists have three kind of Kaiser bodies, the Hindus have five. So the Hindus have a little bit more granularity. So I would explore explore this using the an exploration of the five coaches the five sheets. And then with that said, I can speak with a little bit more authority about the nighttime arena where in fact this so called astral body subtle body. In fact can separate from this. That's where near death experiences, out of body experiences come from that that type of body can differentiate from this one and travel so that's a little bit connected to that earlier question and you like traveling to different places, even His Holiness the Dalai Lama playfully so you know, if you mastered this you could become the perfect spy, right. So, it is definitely it's actually part of dream Yoga is cultivating this. So absolutely, positively that's that's where that is nurtured, the most, the first part of your question, you know can that astral component of yours separate out. I can't speak with authority on that. It would see my first intuition and it's just a guess, is probably not. But again, I'm not the person to talk about, you know the kind of translocation of the sheets my understanding is is that I can speak with some authority from the Buddhist perspective, from the Hindu perspective. My understanding is biofield his aura whatever you want to call it. I don't know of any literature that talks about that translocating during the day. But again, I'm not sure, like for instance if you're really, you know, like a shaman, and you have the capacity to really powerful breath control imagination control to like Move your mind in that space during the day. That would make sense to me. But again, I'm shooting a little bit from the hip here, so maybe I'll pause for a second and see if any of this is landing with you but that's what my first response is.
Yeah, so, so thanks for that answer. So I don't need to worry about my astral body running off on you know at work or anything. No,
no, not really, um, no I mean there are there are translocations of wind energy that can take place through, you know, kind of trauma, through working and appropriately with wind energy so when this connects a little bit to what we were talking about earlier, The subtle bodies are connected to these very subtle winds, for sure. And and with kind of really abuse abusive relationships to wind energy practices, these energies can in fact be dislocated translocated. And that can be problematic. But everything I'm hearing from you. There's no suggestion of that type of experience and so fundamentally. I mean intuitively what I'm picking up here using my astral body connect to connect to yours is I think you're cool I think you're good, you know, that kind of thing is is important. I have a side note here is interesting is these phenomena really truly are. I think the most important thing is to be as fully embodied as you possibly can in this in this body. On the Maya kosha, and because once you maintain full embodiment here, then in fact, you know, you can very safely safely whatever kind of translocation projection you want to talk about. Once you have a healthy center. You can then decentralize and it'll never be a problem. So I think in the larger scheme to me from what I'm hearing in terms of like a take home thing is whatever you can do to wake down to be fully utterly embodied in this body because when you're fully planted in your body, then it resonates through all these bio fields. And then if in fact you know from that healthy stance, then you can do this emanation thing this projection kind of thing. So I just say that as a sidebar so that you know the these these, like the Monroe Institute and all this, OBE stuff. I get a little bit careful around those sorts of things. They can be sorcerers traps, it can be very kind of high level distractions. And while they have a place, it's not the central place the central place is Be Here Now, in this body. And then from there, these other subtleties will naturally start to manifest themselves for you. So, that's what comes to mind.
Okay, needed
extra thanks for joining us. Oh yeah, sorry i think i muted myself. Thank you. Could I ask you a really quick follow up question. Is there a tip to tell if you're meeting someone or something in a dream, or if it's just like a dream character, or if it's like a real someone's real astral body. Yeah, there's definitely some tips. One thing you can do is a little bit like what I was talking about before you know one of the differences between an OBE, and a hyper lucid dream is constancy. So, first thing you want to do is that, you know, you can determine in a number of ways, whether you're dreaming or having an OBE by constancy by object constancy. And so one thing you can do is, is if there's something you can look at, pull it away, bring it back. If it doesn't change multiple times that's more like obiee, if you bring it into your line of vision like your hand or whatever, bring it back and it changes that's a dream, spin, like I was talking about earlier. That's a really great litmus test, because if you're in a dream and you spend 99% of the time I don't know the exact stats are but I'm sure somebody's done a study on it. When you stop spinning you're going to be in a different environment. If you're in an OBE and you spin and you stop you're going to be in the same environment. So that's a really powerful litmus test just spin. If you're in the same place do it again same place do it again same place that's an OBE. If you spend in your different place that's a hyper lucid dream. The other thing is try to read because generally you know left hemisphere is mostly off outline that's why it's so hard to read in a dream for most people. If there's something there that you can read See if you can read if there's constancy and reading more likely than not it's an OBE. So those are things that you can play with they'll give you a little bit of a test, you can suss that out for sure. Okay, great. Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks, bye. Okay, maybe one more live one Andy and then or whatever to and then we'll go back to some of these written ones.
Next to bring in Kathy.
Hi, Andrew. Thank you so much for all the answers. It's so wonderful, super appreciate. Yeah, I wanted to ask you, um, so I'm trying to practice lucid dreaming and all that, but I have two cats, and they like, come and wake me up almost every two hours for different things. So I just kind of I just wake up after two hours, three and I feed them a little go back to bed, and you know somehow I managed like eight hours and then if during the day I'm a little bit tired I kind of just take some naps. But I don't know I guess that's maybe not so good for lucid dreaming.
Well, it's not so great for sleep health altogether. Yeah. Listen to the interview we did with the webinar we did with Dr O'Malley yesterday. Is this sleep thing is super important you know i mean the, you will die of sleep deprivation before you die of starvation. Sleep is more important than food. And so, personally, I mean, you know, this is just me. Sleep is pretty darn precious for me. I'm not too keen on letting anything, as much as I love pets and cats or whatever. I'm not going to let them ruin my sleep sorry, that's just me. So, my thing is, do whatever you can to maintain the integrity of your sleep you will live longer, you'll, you'll literally live longer. You'll circumvent ate you'll slow down aging processes, you'll have, it's just the benefits of good sleep are just colossal. With that said, you know, if you're in that kind of situation and you don't want to change it, then so be it then you can in fact use it. You can use the sleep interruptions, to practice what's called awakened back to bed method. If you're not familiar with that I recommend you read up on it. Stephen the bears writes about it in both his books lucid dreaming and exploring the world of lucid dreaming that's kind of his invention. The waking back to waking back to bed method conjoined with what he calls the pneumonic induction of lucid dreams the mild method. These are very powerful ways to bring about lucidity with these types of sleep interruption issues so if you don't want to change your lifestyle, I would read about wild and mild and incorporate it. But I think honestly, it's more important for me to just maintain really solid good sleep health, your pets are not gonna die from abandonment issues, put them in the other room, but again that's that's a decision you have to make. So something like that. Okay.
Yeah. And in general, does like sleeping more help with lucid dreaming practice like the more you know, the more like you get used to that, my mindset and then I don't know maybe sleep like 16 hours a day.
no no at a certain point that, no, no. At a certain point, the benefits of sleep backfire actually if you sleep too long. Interestingly enough, that paradoxically can also hurt you. So, you know, again we talked about this with Ed yesterday, depending on the age, you know, seven to nine hours. Eight hours being the sweetspot. So, sleeping longer than that. Yeah, some people need 10 hours of sleep, but generally sleeping longer than that actually the benefits backfire. It can actually be somewhat, you know, deleterious to do that. But having good sleep patterns being able to sleep and that sort of thing if I'm understanding your question, absolutely, positively will help you have more success with lucidity because you're, you're paying more homage to the natural sleep cycles and the rhythms of REM and non REM. So just establishing regularity, you know, kind of homogeneity in your sleep patterns, super helpful. that's why we brought it on to do this because it's like my teachers when I did my long retreat you know they had this kind of thing, no dreams no dream yoga, no good sleep no dreams. So you start with good sleep, from that dreams more likely arise from that then you know they build on each other, and foundation of good infrastructure biological sleep is super important. Okay.
Yeah, and it should be sleep like in one session right not
necessarily, not necessarily consolidated sleep is a Western invention. I mean, we used to have what's called biphasic polyphasic sleep cycles. With the until the advent of artificial light. People would sleep when they get dark, three, four hours they'd sleep they'd wake up, they'd be up for 234 hours, then they go back to what's called the second sleep. So, the consolidated eight hour block is a relatively recent invention, believe it or not, brought about by the artificial light. So that's one reason I think people do you know have kind of sleep disruption issues sometimes because there's this kind of, you know, archeology of consciousness this fossil of consciousness, which we inherit that actually predisposes us towards biphasic sleep. But most people, you know when it gets dark tend to consolidate. So it depends on you you know this is why it's helpful to understand your own patterns to understand sleep cycles good sleep hygiene, all these things come together to really help you have good sleep, which is colossally important.
Thank you, Andrew,
I'll drink to that. Okay. Well, okay, bye
bye.
Good night. So maybe one more live on Sunday and then I'll return to some of these written ones. Okay, perfect because we just have one more in the queue and it's good. Yeah, then let's, we'll close down that line because otherwise I'm not going to get through these guys, maybe I will, we'll see.
Andrew,
my video is off I hope that's okay. I've been thinking about what you said over the weekend about how emptiness can harm emptiness. And it makes perfect sense that if a meditator is stabilized in pure awareness that nothing would really harm them because they're resting in space. I've just been thinking, especially over the talks we've done about politics recently about how it seems necessary to go out of my comfort zone to expose myself to things that I guess I would consider might harm my heart in some ways, but I guess give a little background on this I've basically just strictly kept news consumption to reading for three years. And when you've introduced to us practices like turning off the audio or, you know, it makes sense to me it seems like that's sort of a zone of discomfort that I should slowly be edging toward. But then there's also this part of me that feels like it's good to take certain precautions and measures to protect. And I was wondering if you can speak to how I should balance that it's
a good question. Good question. Um, yeah. First of all, I might amend something you said early on when he talked about, you know, harming my heart. You don't want to do that obviously you want to work with experiences that will actually fundamentally, open your heart, and sometimes to open your heart. Your heart needs to be broken. And that's really interesting thing you know i mean the heart is a really unique organ that, unlike other things when they break when the heart breaks if it's broken properly the heart gets bigger. Right. So that's what we want to do we want to and this is the issue of not too tight not too loose balancing titrating your experience where. Yes, one of the biggest dangers we have is, especially in the West is getting stuck in our bubble bath, our comfort plan, you know that's the no growth that's you know remember the three concentric circles thing I don't know if you've heard me talk about that. Yeah. Three concentric circles in the middle is your comfort zone. That's where everybody wants to be. I mean, it's okay. But if you live there you just kind of drown and comfort. Yeah, outside of that you know you have the stretch zone, and that's what we're talking about here, where you want to step out of a bubble bath, you want to, you know, get a little cold get out of your comfort zone stretch, so that you know you can expand because if you just try to stay in your bubble bath guess what happens that comfort zone just gets smaller and smaller and smaller and you get more brittle and picky and bitchy and complaining right, that's what a lot of old people do. They, I'm not saying you're old I'm old, but you know, so you know, if you're trying to just everything is about the comfort zone your comfort zone gets smaller. Yeah. What we're talking about is step out into sometimes uncomfortable situations, reverse meditations are really helpful here, and you find if you do that in the growth zone challenge zone, you actually find your comfort zone expands it doesn't get smaller. It grows. The farthest zone outside of that of course is that is the danger risk or. Yeah, just, that's when you stretch, too far. Yeah, that's when you can get hurt and so we have to find our way. We have to be really honest with ourselves, sometimes having a glass of wine and getting into the bubble bath and hanging out is just the perfect thing to do, sometimes really stretching out and just in dimensions that are really quite uncomfortable. You know like working with fear as I was alluding to before, super important, but if you just yeah like if you follow your bliss in the hot tub you're just gonna get drowned in your bliss, you just get blissed out. The other extreme is if you just follow your fear, you're just going to get freaked out. Yeah. So somewhere in there is the middle way, and only we know that, so I recommend people just aren't aware of this kind of pedagogical approach, be willing to get out stretch, get dinged a little bit, you know, get, I wouldn't say hurt but just challenged. Yeah, and then come back to regroup and then come back out and you'll notice if you do that you'll just do where you gradually get bigger and bigger bigger as your heart, mind opens opens opens to what you were talking about at the outset. So that's what comes to mind.
Thank you.
Welcome. Okay, so let me get through some of these written ones. When the you spoke about how important it was to attain merit. I did say that, as do the traditions, can you riff on exactly how to do that, I can, I assume, it means being a good person. Yes. Honest giving etc does it include meditation. Yes. Are there some things I may not expect that would attain merit in the Buddhist tradition. Yes, I'll talk about all this. Cool. So yeah merit is a big deal you know I mean, like I mentioned, when I think I've talked about this on the five paths in the Buddhist tradition which are just basically five stages of one path really they're not five separate paths. The first path is really the path of accumulation. And it's principally the accumulation of merit good deeds. And so in addition to what you were talking about which is the most important thing. There are classic prescriptions for good deeds good karma. Classically, these would be the you know the first five parameters of the six these are transcendent actions generosity discipline. Patience exertion meditation. And the reason I include this kind of mapping of the five is because in fact meditation is part of the accumulation of merit of good karma. Before I measurables, you know, loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. The four what are called the four Brahma the horiz the four divine abodes fantastic classic practice. Thinking speaking doing good deeds. In other words, whatever we say speak or act that creates good karma. Good merit, and then some surprising things to address that. You can do this in your dreams. You can accumulate merit in your dreams. So if you and go to sleep with a good intention, you do good action your dreams intention creates merit. And if you're lucid in a dream intentions involved so you can, you know, somewhat surprising, you can accumulate merit by your dreams also intention itself what's called aspirational bodhichitta you know just the heartfelt honest intent accumulates what you think you know what you do with your mind accumulates merit. So, maybe I'll let that go for now, it's an incredibly important part of the journey that many practitioners tend to hopscotch over thinking that they can just do the highfalutin meditations the high technology practices, those practices are not nearly as effective, unless they're charged with these so called preliminaries, you know, in many ways the preliminaries are more important than the main practice. So Mary, let me share the story with you. At the end of my three year retreat we had Mingo river he came in to talk to us. And, you know, we're all excited because like oh you know we're, we just graduated were advanced practitioners, and we all expected to have this really esoteric talk right on the most. You know, nuanced esoteric practice for two hours, minimum mpj talked about merit. I was blown away. First of all, I thought it was you know I was first I was disappointed is like Oh, man, everybody knows about married idol all about merit. I realized I didn't know squat about marriage. And so I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Here we are at the end of, you know, these really long intensive training do these doing these so called super advanced practices. And here comes this you know this high high Lama comes in and talks to us about merit, which is like talking about kindergarten. Well he put us back in kindergarten we needed to be there. Because everybody runs over to the highfalutin stuff and these hopscotch over this. You will never understand, you know the nature of mind reality without merit. So merit is colossally important. Good question. Okay. Laura, can you elaborate on that sleep is a product of ignorance specifically what about the four stages of sleep, the functions of each one including restoration healing etc. Would that imply that if ignorance were eliminated. Then physical sleep itself would not happen or be needed, or does that refer to the analogy of to sleep as unawareness only yeah nice questions. Yes. Sleep is in fact it is a product of ignorance. Oh what to say let me just look at this a little bit more slowly the functions of each one includes restoring.
Yeah So would that imply that if ignorance were eliminated and physical is it sleep would that happen. Yes, that's exactly what it implies, and as unbelievable as this is Laura, when I first heard it with, you know, my kind of medical scientific background. I said, Are you kidding me. No way. And so I made it a personal point, you know, to ask a ton of really respected really high level Lamas are in PJ's. And after like the fifth one they all said the same thing. You know, you don't sleep, literally, body may go into repose but the mind doesn't turn off 24 seven, no longer need to sleep and in fact at a very deep level this is even more outrageous Laura, you don't even need a body at that point, because body is is a repository store of the unconscious mind your body is your unconscious mind, when we sleep that's what we drop into we go unconscious we drop into the body. So, when you leave when you truly eliminate all ignorance. Not only do you no longer need sleep. You no longer need a body, literally, and therefore when you die, those people what do they do they go up in light, and this is no kidding rainbow light rainbow body. Listen to my interview with Father Francis tiso on rainbow body and resurrection, you no longer need a body. So if you don't need a body you surely don't need to sleep. Right. So yeah, does that refer to the analogy to sleep as unawareness only, no it's it's it's both. It's both. And again, really the important thing here for us. In addition to somewhat esoteric stuff is that the the the moment to moment expression of this primordial ignorance is distraction. I mean, tons of Longo writes about this quite beautifully in his book The Tibetan Yogi's of dream and sleep where he says, you know, you know, this is, this is why these, these practices by the way are challenging because this is where ego goes to recharge its samsaric batteries ego feeds on distraction, it's an archetype of distraction. Ego feeds on ignorance, ignorance and distraction are two faces of the same coin. So, this is why when you do these deep practices, sooner or later ego tends to put you know Do Not Disturb sign saying hey wait a second man. You can wake me up during the day you can Rouse me during the day but do not Rouse me at night, because this is where I go this is where ego goes for ultimate samsaric refuge Buddhists don't sleep they don't fall asleep they fall awake, Tim. Uh, hi Andrew we are not always aware of the clear light mind, that's for sure. But would it be correct to say that the clear light mind is always aware of us, yes and no. I'll elaborate on that. If so, then could we say that no one's experiences ever lost since they were to remain in existence in the clear light mind. Yeah well as to the last question, that depends on who you ask. This is where the whole Akashic thing comes into play the Hindus have some cool things to say about this was called the Akasha, and the Akashic records that what they say in that tradition that nothing is ever lost everything is kind of coded and encoded in the Akasha in the Akashic Records somewhat connected to, you know, the collective unconscious and somewhat connected to the a consciousness, but not the same. And so, yeah, this is it depends on who you ask, that no one's experiences ever lost depends on who you ask. First part. We are not always aware of the clear light mind but would it be correct to say the clear light mind is always aware of us. Well, yes and no. Not not quite because the clear light, light mind is not separate from us. And so I wouldn't use that phraseology I mean, you know, for one thing. And this is important, Tim is that there's only the clear light mind, I mean that's all there is, like, even right now. No kidding. I mean like right here right now. This is the clear light line, we just don't see it as such. When we dream, that's the clear light mind we don't see it as such in deep dreamless sleep. That's the clear light mind. We don't see it that way. So, the clear light mind is all there is. And so it isn't it isn't quite accurate nor is it quite inaccurate to say that declare light mind is always aware of us that that kind of nomenclature doesn't is come at somewhat nonsensical at this level. The clear light mind, in and of itself is always aware. When you say it's aware of us. That's a tricky thing to say I wouldn't actually say that, but the nature of declare light awareness is in fact awareness. So when you imply that it's aware of us that implies that there's some thing aware of something else no.
It's reflective awareness aware of itself, so that subtle nuances around your nomenclature here but that's what comes to mind. So one second last question here from Doug and then perfect timing and we'll close it up for today. So this is from Doug second question, I am curious about when you move from localized awareness within the subtle body to now localized awareness awakening Ripa. Did you receive a clear transmission pointing out or did your teacher say that experience that was a little flame of awakening a glimpse of Britpop. Did you receive instructions about how to turn the state, that's an Yame rigpa into a state or trait Taka. Did you receive instructions about how to do this. I did, and if you did, would you share with this, would you share this with us. Oh, yeah, I can share a little bit, I guess. Doug is prying into my deep meditative life here. You're gonna write an article here but or what National Enquirer just playing with you. Yeah, so I mean what's important here. Let me just read this again real quick. I'm curious about when you move from localized awareness to non localized awareness Did you receive a clear pointing out transmission. Yeah, so you know in this tradition and others. Shakti Shakti pot in the Hindu tradition pointing out transmission in this tradition or pointing in. I think is a more appropriate term. The teacher who lives in this, in this domain non stop, they can you know if you're open to it, they can point out this dimension of your being. That is, in fact, as you say that's a mere experience it's a state. It's not realization it's not stable it's not a trait. But what it does is it points something out. And then the question is stability so that's when you go from speaking of the five paths. They are pointing out, if it's recognized it's actually the third path, called the path of seeing are connected through the first buoy. That's when you see reality emptiness the nature of mind for the first time, then what happens is you enter the fourth path which is the path of familiarity. That's where you then transform that glimpse into a gaze. And that's really what constitutes the path in the Adrianna so that's what that's what makes tantric audrianna practice different from causal vehicle hinayana Mahayana different from Adrianna. Those are called causal vehicles. This is a fruition of vehicle by that what it means is it. It starts at the end points out that V omega. And then you come back to alpha and work your way back up to stabilize it that's what constitutes the path. So in my own experience you know it pretty kind of classic not special at all. Um, I, I had a great gift, you know, like many do to have these this kind of experience. And then I drank, you know I was gonna say I drank the Kool Aid but I just then simply did the practices as they were presented to me because I trusted the stabilization approaches and all that, and then I started in conjunction with the classic approaches of stabilizing I kind of experimented on my own. You know just realizing like what can I do to work with this. And so for me. You know what's key here is devotion guru Yoga is really incredibly helpful. That was super helpful for me to, to kind of do a little progress. And then you know working with the jhana states the high was called access concentration high level Shama to. So I'm not sure I want to go too much further into this. This could come back to haunt me when I run for political office.
So in order to protect protect protect protect my future political aspirations. I probably ought to stop. But I mean the idea that I think the important thing here Doug, is that, you know, the traditions have very thought out intelligent sophisticated systems that work that you know like you say a particular dimension of mind is pointed out, it's revealed. Most wisdom traditions have that standard. Then each tradition will have its own supporting you know how do you as Houston Smith put it transform that flash of illumination into abiding light, and I you know because the Buddhist path is the one I follow the most passionately, the Buddhist prescription just completely worked for me and the ways that I said and they work for everybody really if you just do it. And then merits, you know, kind of, underlies this entire thing so I'm not sure where else I can go with that. Otherwise I'll never get elected to Congress next year. Thanks everybody. Great to see you another full, rich period, we end right at the hour and a half, Mark. Join us on Monday night. Join us on Saturday for the movie, we got so many cool things happening right now. Thank you everybody for taking time to join us great fun to be with you all with whoever extent merit dedication of merit, since we're talking about married at the beginning. It's always great to set the intention before you started teaching that the aspiration is, you know, I will accumulate merit, not merely for myself but really for the benefit of all. And at the end you give the merit away. It's a great, kind of, the only way to seal it is to give it away It's perfect. I love it. The only way to maintain your merit is to give it away. Isn't that beautiful. So whatever merit we may have accumulated here, we dedicate it in whatever way that speaks to us for the benefit of all sentient beings, so do that on your own has more impact than you think. And see you, same time, same place next week. Bye.