In some ways, it really is so sweet. Yeah, always enjoy this.
Nice to see everybody.
Excellent, excellent. So what we do on these books, study things most of you know, but in case you're new, we read from, in this case, Dream Yoga, I run some spontaneous commentary, whatever comes to mind. That's why I love this thing. I just show up and do this. I really enjoy it. And then time for question and answer discussion on any topic you'd like to be connected to the reading or not. But it's usually just a couple of small things. So this is the very last announcement. You'll hear from me about the luminous particle Dermatol week starting next Wednesday night at the newly named Rolla Mountain Center. So this is a hybrid program in person and online. My favorite of all the Bardo programs by far super excited about that one. The Dream sharing group with Marianne is this Sunday, I'm sorry, Saturday, I believe is at nine o'clock and Alyssa will put the link up to that. The Delson Armstrong interview, this is the second or the third one, but it's the first self contained complete one where we go into arguably the most important topic in all Buddhism, emptiness in the form of dependent origination using the wheel of life. And so that we just posted I had a really good time talking to this guy. He really knows this stuff. And it was a wonderful way to dance between him and more terrified and classic mainstream approach to this great teaching and also a kind of more tantric approach. So I really had a good time with that. And also, I think I mentioned before, a three hour interview with Bernardo kastrup. I'm still editing that. We're going to release that in two parts because that one's a little bit. Hefty, a little bit meaty. So I think that's it for the announcements. I'm supposed to take this big pause for Alyssa so here's the posit Alyssa, recording in progress. Okay. recording in progress already. So we left off on page 162, the practice of a loose reform, which as I mentioned last time, two weeks ago. It's such a hefty topic that basically in a real way I use this top this chapter as a see for the entire dreams of light book. And remember, just just to contextualize it loose reform is of such centrality that this practice is actually the main practice. In most or many kind of classifications. Dream Yoga is actually considered a subset of illusory form. So it's a big deal practice. It's basically a way to work with what a way to work with kind of apply the emptiness, seeing the ephemeral, translucent impermanent nature of whatever arises. And, again, what does it do it circumambulate, emptiness, everything, Shakespeare and all that much ado about nothing. Everything in Buddhism circumambulating nothing. Of course, it's not nothing, it's no thing. So that's what we're talking about. And so we left off with the second of the three practices the practice of illusory speech, cutting through sound so here we are so words like physical forms can hurt us when they're solidified. They're not as solid as bullets and bats are properly digitally delivered word packs a punch. Words can make our hearts flutter like when someone says I love you always know it's great the first time you hear that I just I just, you know, it's like, it's just like, your, you turn into putty. It's like just the most beautiful thing right? And then you know, give her give the situation give the relationship a couple months, couple of years, right? And then it transforms into the following smack, right? Like when somebody says cue into your face, right? It's so appreciate your endurance of that. Isn't it amazing, though, really, the impact when someone really hurls and insulted you? How solid these words can be. I'm the kind of Filoli deliver. It's no small thing really they mean that literally kill even though the shock of words delivering bad news could give us a heart attack, but they can incite us to kill. A war of words can spark a literal war and has for sure we put value into the words of others. Right. What would people say carries weight, reputations are created and destroyed with words it's interesting in the in the Buddhist mapping of the 10, virtuous and non virtuous deeds
divvied up between body speech and mind four of the 10. So higher proportion is related to speech. So we create a heck of a lot of positive or negative karma, habit patterns, by how we express ourselves. And this is why silence is so bloody important. Honestly. When I'm doing the Bardo teachings, we work a lot with his impulse control, impulse control, his birth control, and it's really very powerful to work with silence as a form of fasting. And to notice the impulse so many of us have to just fill space is empty. I gotta say something I got it. You know, like super glue, I gotta caulk this gap and reality was speech. A Vulcan container restrict experience almost as much as a physical constraint, or container. The 10 commandments, for example, are powerful restraints. Oh, see you here I talked about this. But as I described the 10 virtual with non virtuous deeds, distributed between the actions of body speech and mind what are called the three gates. Of those 10 Four are allotted to speech, lying, slander, harsh speech and idle talk. Well let's just apply these for to the political scene right I don't want to wait too deep into these waters but it doesn't take too long. That's why the temperatures gets keeps notch like global warming and is this kind of inter Miss cultural war heating up? A lot of it has to do with the power of speech. Note that the category of wrong speech has more wrongful actions and either wrong physical or mental, right. One of the most non virtuous and passive speech is gossip it's an amazing how people love to gossip. What soap operas are all about? A mixture of lying slander, harsh thieves and idle talk. I've reflected on this. This is where I came up with this idea. Gossip often involves trying to get others to agree with our views right to help us make our views more solid and real. Mean isn't a true look at your own experience. We're not I'm not entirely sure about this. Maybe I can seduce someone into my worldview by flapping my lips and then pulling them in through gossip helps us reinforce our unstable impressions. Illusory speech practice is about seeing through the solidity of words cutting through memory. There's this structure that's this is a really big topic in Xhosa High School of the New England tradition of Tibetan Buddhism divided into two major branches the cutting through practice practices, Kodak fracture, cutting through to prime all your purity in other words, cutting through to the nature of reality. And then the second one that I talked a little bit about, not in this book, but in dreams of life took all the crossing over into spontaneous presence. But the most important practice really is this cutting through practice, taking my judiciaries blade and slicing through appearances mental, auditory, physical, penetrating their imputed, reified status, kind of slicing and dicing it back to what it is just the empty display the luminous mind. Illusory speech is by cutting through the auditory bullets and buttering up that take us down or lift us up. the fruition of illusory speech practice is to hear everything with equanimity and therefore not to be so affected or offended by what other people say. Right? Isn't that amazing? Really? Isn't that amazing? How often were lifted up by praise taken down by blame. And so developing this kind of a quantumness relationship to any of those auditory expressions allows us to in fact, develop a more quantumness in balance graceful relationship to life, right? So it's like a duck on a water. Duck Duck kind of waters back. The one thing about these practices it really helps you with speech in that regard, right? Why water on a duck's back we have a pond nearby and I often go there to sit as I do I really liked bodies of water like Walden. You know, I can see why throw into Walden. And then we have these cool ducks and geese that come by all the time, and I always really enjoy. There's teachings everywhere symbolic guru that you know, the Ducks become a teacher really dive underwater and you can see all the water creeping on their feathers, and then it just rolls right off. It just rolls right off. There's no problem with somebody teaching me in the form of a duck. I'll take it wherever I can get it.
We can still be moved by what we hear. Words still touch us. But only if we let them and again what does this mean to you is that we take things seriously but we don't take them literally. Taking them literally is a mistake from a modern perspective that your traditional take on techniques of illusory speech can seem archaic. Or share them out of homage to the tradition and then show you more contemporary ways to work with this practice. The first practice the text recommends is Echo practice. I get a chuckle out of some of this stuff. Actually. The idea here is to go into a canyon and shout into it. Curse at yourself and listen to the words as they come back and relate to them as the empty echoes. They really are right and do the same thing with praise. Few of us can get to canyons these days. And actually do this but you get the idea right? These days you could record yourself or someone else praising or blending you. I mean, this is why it says and there's traditional texts that you should you know your your, your girl your teachers should do that. Your they should level these assaults on you and then you should see if you can relate with equanimity to the speech coming from a power source like that. Sometimes suggests yeah, there it is. Hey, see oppression some tech suggests you should get your teacher to praise you and then blame you. All the manuals talk about the Marketplace test. This is a good one. This is a good one. Go to a public place do something outrageous but not dangerous. And see how you respond when others verbally assault you if remain unfazed, you pass the test so this is pretty classic traditional thing that your energy you're doing a solo thing you feel like you're attaining some stability. And then you know you're the teacher will say hey, go go to the marketplace, go to the flea market, go to whatever. And then see, man How can you fare when you have these kinds of real world situations arise? Sociologist Bernard McCray and Bernie I became friends with him really cool guy
in the LA area,
devised a similar exercise that might feel more safe. I've actually done this one. Let me share my story. I think I have it here. Go to a public place and stand perfectly still in the midst of other people. So everybody listening here, so we got 46 people. I challenge you, I dare you. I double dare you. It's really interesting. Go to a public place. And literally just stand perfectly still in a mall I did in front of a entrance to a King Soopers supermarket thing somewhere in public. And you'll see this of course when you go to like you know some squares in Europe where people are dressed up if I can the bolder mall people spray themselves with gold and they form statues. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about literally as simple as it sounds go into a public place. stand perfectly still. And notice the enormous impact of peer pressure. I double dare you to give it a try. It is really interesting. thing to do. Highly recommended not easy. If someone approaches you don't engage them stand like a statue and remain silent. Observe the reactions of the people who walk by more importantly observe your own response and reactions as people give you the strange looks or start to talk about you I've done is practice and it was difficult. I stood perfectly still in the center of a shopping mall. It wasn't a shopping mall, actually. Oh, actually, it was a shopping mall. Yeah, there was a grocery store entrance there. That's right. And within seconds people were looking at me and kids came to check me out. That's the really fun thing. Because kids are you know, they have their childlike wonder they'll come up and they'll like look at you. They go mommy, mommy, what's he doing? And then they go, honey, come back. He may have just had a stroke or something. And so just just try to sit there try to stand there and remain unmoved. It's really interesting. Sooner or later the security will come and either there or the EMT will come. And then you just say hey, you know, I'm connected to this really bizarre community. And the instructor said I should do this as a short social study, right? That's why you may notice this new disclaimer if you notice when you click on we put this new disclaimer on the all these sites right? Because we're going to be doing crazier and crazier things. Just kidding. I discovered that I did care what people thought and said about me I failed the test. I really did. I did fail the test. So I double dare you. I'll be back in two weeks. A double dare you try it, come back and buy litter litter report. This is a really revelatory practice. This practice, by the way comes from a book, the great title by Bernie called the on TV and the 10 mile per hour car. I mean, what a great title. And what he does in this book is he collects just a really a quite a battery of these very interesting little exercises, contemplations test and the like that I've actually worked with a number of them. They're they're really quite compelling. If you're scientifically oriented, you can deconstruct the Power of Words by remembering the physics of sound words are just longitudinal compression and refraction waves, they're not sine waves. They're not sinusoid or they're they're compression refraction waves that strike your ear that cause your eardrum to vibrate that transmit electrochemical signals to the auditory parts of your brain that are mixed with signals from other parts of the brain that you impute meaning upon. They're just vibrations good or bad or not intrinsic to longitudinal ways, but are qualities we impose upon them and this is actually really interesting thing to do, which I have done with all the sense faculties is looking at the the physiology, in this case, neurophysiology of what actually takes place, when some sensory stimulation from the seemingly external world hits your sense faculties, whatever it is, and the amazing purely physiological processes that take place. When any sensory input is registered by a sense faculty that actually registered in the brain. It is really interesting to do. And then on top of that, you know what, you'll discover it just by doing that, it's like, oh, my gosh, this is this is a total construction project, even in a purely physiological level. There's so much literature hear you all this stuff on vision I find to be the most compelling all the works of Donald Hoffman, visual intelligence. Richard Gregory, there's just a ton of books out here. And then on top of that, you add all the social cultural phenomenological constructs that take place and then you know, when you do this kind of contemplation, you realize, hey, when there's no way I'm seeing the world the way it really is no way. It's a complete fabrication, complete construct, with all these vectors that create our version of what's real. It's a completely made up story. It's called a V culpa construct.
Another exercise is to listen to your native language and try to hear the words as if they were a foreign language or as mere sounds. I mean, you can try this right now is our read these next four sentences everybody here. Try to listen to my voice your native language, try to listen to my voice as if it was a foreign language as if it was neutral sound, without the immediacy that we bring when we bring meaning to what is fundamentally just neutral sound waves right? So for these next four sentences, I mean, try it. It is almost impossible to do. De familiarize the word back to pure sound. This practice reveals how instantly we bring meaning to sound. The moment we hear a word We already hear it infused with its meaning and our history of association with that word. We translate to mere sound into a word, and therefore into meaning on the spot. Anybody have luck with that? It is really hard to do. And it shows you just how fast the mind is. milliseconds within a few milliseconds, a millisecond is a 1,000th of a second, within a few milliseconds. You can't hear my voice as if it was a foreign language, or is it was that bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla, there's no meaning there. Right? How quickly do we bring meaning to just sound we do this with all this sounds faculties, not just with audition. I mean, one of the really cool things is, oh my gosh, there's so much to say here but this whole notion of non contextual realism. This is incredibly fascinating stuff that it's a very, very powerful contemplation that the room that you're you're you're in a particular room right now, I don't know where it is, but you're in a particular room. Obviously, you have other rooms in your house and in even actually, for that matter, like the space behind you. Well, what the scientists will tell you a little on the spiritual community. Is that that room that scene behind you actually doesn't exist until you turn around and enact that room. And one powerful way to look at this, this really smacked me when I was doing some experiments in my lucid dreams. It's exactly what happens in their dream. Exactly. You may think in an unexamined way that there's a dreamscape. And they're, you know, I'm having this dream, whatever it is, there's a dream world I'm in it. And everywhere I turn, there's the dream world. So therefore, I assume that world is somehow pre existing. Well, with a little reflection on the nocturnal arena, you realize that is not the case. There's no pre existing dreamscape in there. So every time you turn around in a dream, like you know, you're turning around in the dream and you're seeing something that's not there until you turn it in and actually enact it. So I use this example all the time, like when Carlos Castaneda says is one of his tips for lucidity, which I've tried and by the way, it does work in the art of dreaming, look at your hand. Well, he doesn't say is the hand isn't there, and neither is your body. The hand is generated. It's actually what's part of what's called Creation stage or generation stage practice Buddhism. That's where generation stage practice really comes to life in the dream world, you regenerate the hand and the act of looking at it it's not there. You don't have a dream body in there. Exactly the same thing in the Bartles there's no body in the Bardot's there's no nothing in the Bardot's but your mind. So what's what's harder to believe is like, Okay, you're telling me that's happening here? Yes. It's called non contextual realism, or naive realism that you think there's something there waiting to be passively represented. Remember, we talked about this a year ago, whenever we're going through dreams of light. This is a colossal topic in that book, the complete fallacy of representational ism that there is no objective reality that we passively we present not even close. We enact it, we create it, we bring it forth, moment to moment, a moment. And really reflecting on this and using the dream example, as an example is really quite a powerful thing. So when you leave this session and you go upstairs whatever, that doesn't exist, you're going to bring it forth in your activity of stepping into that space and acting it with your sense faculties. Reflect on that for a while. The illusion of contextuality so bloody fascinating.
To help you strip words back to pure sound, take a neutral word like car and repeat it out loud. Let's do this together. This is actually cool. Let's let's do this for a minute. Okay, we're gonna take this word car. And together, we're gonna say it out loud together. For a minute or two. And notice after about X amount of time for you, how that words you start to, you start to strip it of its meaning, all of a sudden the car that now has, oh, you know, I'm thinking of whatever particular image you will actually strip it down to bare sound. So for the next minute, I'll time it. Let's like a mantra. Let's repeat the word car together and notice how you can strip the power away through this exercise. Okay, here we go.
After a while it starts to sound like the crows that sit at my house out here, right? This is a really interesting thing to do. It's not just a parlor game. This is why linguistics in the power of language is such a massive topic in philosophy, and even in the contemplative arts, because we reify through the through the nature of language altogether. It's very interesting to me. Yes, notice how after a minute or so of hearing the word the meaning strips away and you hear car very differently right. Now the next one, whatever word Yeah, I won't say the N word even though it's written here. The next thing is to take a word that's really charged for you and I won't do that because I don't want to offend people, but take you know, we'll do it on your own later. Take a word that's extraordinarily offensive to you. And repeat it over and over and over and see if you can actually deconstruct that. Or conversely a word that has tremendous kind of elevation has power for you. Notice the extraordinary power of words language to trap us to reify us see how much longer it takes to strip the infuse meaning away from the supercharged words. In a workshop led by Roberto, I've done three of these with him. We do it every time and the first time I did it. I thought man, this is awesome. Participants listen to a recorded word over and over for several minutes without being informed what the word was. Our task was to see how many words we could hear within the repeated sounds like an auditory Rorschach test or slash block the word he used for the exercise was words itself. Try it for a few minutes and see what you hear. Okay, so let's do this one. Let's for 30 seconds. Let's all recite words together right now I already spoiler alert. I already told you what it was. But let's do it for 30 seconds or so. And all these following words you may you actually may start to hear them here, right? So here we go. Let's do this together.
Where it's where it's where it's where it's where it's where it's words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words where it's worse. This all sounds
like a car alarm to me, right? Sounds like somebody bumping into a car in a parking garage, right? I find this stuff really interesting. Our group came up with around two dozen words I wrote this now. And we did it because it was so fascinating. That we all heard none of which were actually there. People heard sword wear it, wore it, swore it score it, square it. It's squirts heads, courts, forehead Lawrence to name just a few how crazy it's just loading. Lawrence isn't there Norris courts nurse swore nor anything else but words. This is the kind of auditory Rostock test designed to expose how we project ourselves onto things. We hear things that aren't there, see things that aren't there, like spooked inhabitants in the haunted house of our own mind. Well, that's a nice that's a nice phrase actually. spooked inhabitants in the haunted house of our own mind. And that's one reason we worry we reify things so that we're less spooked. So where they have a greater sense of continuity, constancy and stability, when there isn't any. When I did this exercise after about a minute the reiterated words melted back into pure meaningless sound. But soon after that, I started hearing some of these words these other words I stripped words dry down, then quickly dressed that backup. As mentioned above, you can also join illusory speech practice to illusory body practice by doing it in front of a mirror. I'm telling you on this one. Try this. Yes, it's weird. Yes, it's goofy. Yes, it's contrived. 100% But try this. I did it like I told you, I think last week or whatever two seconds ago I can't remember when I had to do this for like months on end. And I thought it was like, oh my god, this is ridiculous. Right? But I figured hey, miles will do it. If turned out to be incredibly impactful. And I mean, I can tell you it to the point now that when I'm praised, it's nice thank you doesn't really lift me up anymore. Someone gives me an auditory flip off or whatever. You know, my feeling for a microsecond doesn't take me down anymore. I would recommend just I really, I highly recommend it. So do homework assignments between now and next week. Number one, go to the public arena and do that. Number two, do this mirror thing and come back and file a report for me praise and blame yourself until you can enter the marketplace and have the words of others affect you as much as they do on a mirror. Right? So remember what we did last time. Stand in front of a mirror and just lavish all this praise on yourself. Notice what feelings come up outside of it takes 30 seconds to go man this is just stupid. Yes, it is. Stay with it. After a while just notice how it feels. Then flip. Flip it and literally insult yourself criticize yourself, tear yourself down. How does it feel? You do this enough then eventually when other people do it. You're gonna go ahead well, I'll just keep this person a loading on me is no more real than what I experienced when I did this stupid mirror practice. Try it. When you can relate to words directed towards you with equanimity you have accomplished illusory speech. Cool. All right, the practice of illusory mind cutting through thoughts in the progression from illusory body to illusory speech to illusory mind we're going from gross to subtle to very subtle form, and learning how to see the dreamlike nature of each In other words, we're learning how to de reify to deconstruct the contents of our minds are pretty formless, relatively speaking, but they still have enough form to dictate our lives. While being the most subtle they're ironically the most powerful, aren't they? Everything we say or do through body and speech starts with what we think or feel lucify the contents of your mind regard your thoughts and feelings as dreamlike. And watch your entire world soften. Your speech becomes gentler and your ex become kinder. Kind of self explanatory. With illusory mind practice we focus on the projector, not the projection. We relate directly to the mind which is what happens when we go to sleep right. When we lie down to sleep where we tracked we retreat the really a kind of an interesting retreat from the world senses retract everything withdraws, completely analogous to the eight stages of dissolution of the dying process. Absolutely.
We retract we retreat from our bodily actions and our speech and return to our mind right the mind stands up one body and speech lie down. Just look at your experience. When you lie down, the contents of your mind rise up. If you suffer from insomnia, they keep you up. So here I wasn't involved in this at the time. The whole liminal practice comes into play here. This is where liminal dreaming in the hypnagogic forum comes into play. And again using that practice, right when you lay down, very interesting dimension, first of all thoughts definitely stand up. And then it gives you a heightened opportunity to relate to the display of that arising of mental content and then through the practice of liminal dreaming, you can start to notice the narrative structure of the cell sense. How literally as you fall asleep, the stream of thoughts the stream of mind, a narrative structure literally falls apart if you didn't, you'd never fall asleep. And with it, the ego because the ego itself is just nothing but that storyline. So this is a great way to conjoin liminal dreaming with this practice of illusory mind. We suffer in direct oh man we should write we should just you should put this on your refrigerator. We suffer in direct proportion to how solidly we take the contents of our mind. Oh, lordy, is that a loaded statement? Let's say that one again. In fact, we should read the footnote on this let what is the footnote say so what chapter are we on? This is such a loaded statement. All on
Oh, yeah, so nine, flicker fusion. Yeah, let's talk about this. For a second because this is a big deal. flicker fusion is thought to arise I love that the name is pretty pretty descriptive. Basically what it's what it's pointing out to is that reality arises in a pixelated fashion like a pointillistic painting. Look at your own experience. From the zero point energy field that Dharmakaya Dharma has experienced moments of experience called dharmas pop up moment to moment to moment. You can see this in a dream. You know, there's no inherent continuity in the dream. The waking state we don't see it because of the speed of the mind glosses over the discontinuous nature fusing it together literally confusing it to create the confusion, of solidity largely brought about by what speed of mind it's literally called flicker fusion. I love it. flicker fusion is thought to arise which is this this unconscious propensity the ego has to super glue everything together principally by speed. Because of a process called persistence of vision, this is associated with the ability of your retina or in the case of meditation in your mind's eye to retain an image of an object for up to one for up to 1/5 of a second after it's gone from your visual field kind of visual echo of the object. Persistence of Vision is what creates the illusion of object constancy and therefore good continuation. You know this is there's some good stuff here in these footnotes. Cool, now we'll find this quite a bit I think in I think a dreams of light, right? I returned to this whole notion of flicker fusion but let's reinstate this again. Look at your mind. Look at your life. See if it's not true. We suffer in direct proportion to how solidly we take the contents of our mind. Right here is the power of Dream Yoga. Where when we start to realize that everything arises in a non lucid dream only affects us especially in a nightmare, to the degree that we take it to be real. That's why not make nightmares can be so terrifying. But at the moment of lucidity, and that's what these practices do. All these practices will lose reform are designed to cultivate lucidity in the waking state. Each one of them is designed to create a lucid relationship to the contents of body speech and mind. Still there. But now you no longer take it so literally so solidly. You see through it. That is really in many ways the essence of ultimate archetypal lucidity, archetypal awareness, which is the lucidity the awakening lucidity of a Buddha an awakened one. At extreme levels total reification of our thoughts and emotions is one way to look at madness. We may not be completely mad, but we do go crazy whenever we take our thoughts and emotions to be real. Mean madness is a matter of degree. And he really, it's really, it's an interesting aspect of contemplative psychotherapy. That we all have a bit of madness psychosis in us. We all have a bit of schizophrenia in us. We all have a bit of, of dissociative identity disorder within us. Largely, it's a matter of degree, how we relate to the arising of the contents of our mind and largely how open we are to it, or how close contracted and reified we are to it. Look at your own experience to see if it's not true. At the other extreme of the awakened ones, the same thoughts and emotions that arise in the madman or madwoman can also arise in the Buddha. But the relationship to those thoughts and emotions is very different. And here's the kicker we can't really control yes, temporarily, you can control the arising of the contents of your mind temporarily. But fundamentally, you can't and you shouldn't even try. Let whatever arises arise. It's just what the mind does. It plays it thinks it dances, it moves, that's just what it does. That's not the problem. The problem is inappropriate relationship. So don't try to control the mind in that regard. Control your relationship that's something you can control. So the mind of a psychotic or the mind of a Budda, you could do a little thought experiment here almost literally, same arising. Vastly different relationship to that arising. Deluded person, one who was asleep. Both psychologically spiritually physically buys into the thought. The same way they buy into a non lucid dream. So this is lucidity again in this archetypal manifestation.
Whereas a Buddha sees right through it. That's the cutting through the attraction part. This penetrating awareness is what we cultivate with the practice of illusory mind. Illusory mind is an intimate and immediate application of the cutting through meditation as discussed earlier. With illusory mind cutting through the psyche and the substrate takes place on the spot is what Xhosa and Pollock Rinpoche refers to as wild awakening says he has a wonderful book I probably published it 15 Maybe even longer than that 20 years ago, by that title, highly recommended. Wild awakening. We can cut through false appearances to glimpse the clear light mind every single time we see through a thought stabilizing a glimpse into a gaze takes time that's the path the cutting through to the clear light mind can happen in a flash. The path is scholar Houston Smith put it is to transform those flashes of illumination into abiding light that's really lovely. Technically in Buddhist languaging that's the what's called the fourth path, the path of literally familiarity, taking the insights from the path of seeing which is seeing into the nature of reality, seeing the empty nature, what arises. It's not stable at first, it's just a glimpse to transform that into a gaze steady gaze. That's the fourth path, the path of familiarity stability. Remember, the thoughts are not the issue, never the issue, thoughts of the innocent play on the mind if left alone, they naturally dissolve or self liberate. Sahaja Jana the highest form of liberation back into the clear light mind from which they arose. But of course, we rarely leave them alone. See, this is very interesting. So this is a brief interjection quite subtle, but this is a good one. Because this is just one way to look at the the natural self liberation thing. That the thoughts actually dissolve back in to that, but that's, that denotes a very subtle cosmological dualism, right? That somehow thoughts have to return to the clear light mind for the self liberation to rise. What I didn't riff on here because it was just too subtle. Is that a more absolute approach to this is actually recognizing the thought as the clear, light mind. Then the cosmological dualism is gone, then it doesn't have to return to anything. It's a matter of recognition. You see the thought or whatever arises, the form doesn't matter. You see that as the clear, light mind. That's the subtle inner rendering of this but of course, we rarely leave them alone, right? That's poncha conceptual proliferation. That's the problem. We pour the gasoline of attention onto these tiny sparks of the mind and whoosh, they ignite into the worries, dramas ruminations anxieties, expectations, hopes and fears, ad infinitum, comprise the entirety of our lives. All born from taking our thoughts to be so bloody solid and real. Just like we take our non lucid dreams to be so solid and real. Oh my gosh.
is so important. Oh my gosh, this is it right here. This is the this is the dividing line between sentient beings and Buddha's. This is the dividing line between samsara and nirvana. I am not kidding. It's this simple, but simple is not easy. It's just let whatever arises the highest form of liberation Sahaja Jana self liberation, whatever arises. This is great for Monday night meditation class actually. Let whatever arises arise, like snowflakes falling on a hot rock like campfire spark dissolving into the nighttime sky. harmlessly self liberates if the mind is open enough, aware enough, but of course the untamed untrained mind mind isn't right grasps onto it contracts onto it proliferates whoosh look at your mind. You're sitting in meditation and especially a beginner given the instruction to label your thoughts, you know, you're sitting there thought arises, oh my gosh, 10 minutes later, after you've been lost in this amazing fantasy. You realize holy crap thinking back to body and breath. One way to really, you know, if you're cautious a metric for progress on the path is you start to notice self deliberation occurs more and more quickly. Instead of being lost in thought for five minutes. Maybe you're lost in thought for a minute then 30 seconds then 10 seconds and then the minute a thought arises that's gone. thought arises it's gone. Then in various ways the maturation of the path and one's relationship to to mind to meditation still comes up still, they're still they're just doing its thing. But now it's just liberates liberates liberates these know karma, good and bad, happy and sad. All thoughts vanish into emptiness, like the imprint of a bird in the sky. Well, a bird doesn't leave an imprint in the sky. And that's the whole point here. No karma, no imprint, no karmic footprint nothing. Still there. Just like in the mind. Of a Buddha. But the big difference is it's also gone stillborn in both senses still arises stillborn but do a stillborn in that sense it arises and die celebrates at the same time. So, wow, this is here's what here's what I would prefer to do, even though I'm not into the next section. I don't want to race through this because I forgot how juicy This is. And this stuff is really, really important. And so what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to draw a line here and pick it up next time from this place. So we can reinstate this as a way to emphasize the centrality of this little riff here. This is no small deal. And if you really reflect on this, you may start to notice how you create you generate samsara, you're suffering. Every time you reify every time you can track every time you grasp and proliferate. And it happens all the time. Why? Because of habit patterns, and because that's what keeps the ego alive because ego is a storyline. That's all it is. It's just a narrative. It's a story. It therefore feeds on stories, and it's constantly generating stories as a way to generate itself. So this little riff here is all about really the transition from samsara, to Nirvana, the construction of the self sense the ego, and therefore what can be done to help deconstruct it and we can tie this back in to liminal dreaming, to working with the exploration of this arising because when you're falling asleep, you start to see this a little bit more because we're not feeding it we're getting tired, the mind is literally exhausted. Then we start to see this kind of parse pixelated nature. We generally don't pay attention to it unless we're doing something like liminal dreaming, but with the liminal dreaming the witnessing stance, you can start to see this phenomenology taking place not only in the context of your meditation, but in the context of your nocturnal descent into sleep. So because I want to put an exclamation point on this, I don't want to rush through this. Let's just stop here. We'll pick it up next week because this stuff I cannot tell you. This is so bloody important. So there was one question that came in from my friend, Eric. So let me pull up my other computer real quick. And then we can have a discussion on anything you would like.
Like a stockbroker, I have so many computers in my office now it's just ridiculous.
Okay, here it is. Okay.
I was listening to your talk on tricycle. Yeah. So I did this thing on Tuesday for tri cycle, which is kind of fun and liminality. And you said something along the lines of the nine stages of Dream Yoga mapping directly onto the progressive stages of meditation and emptiness, and I was hoping you might elaborate on where you were going with that. Yes, well, a couple of things are first of all, if you listened to it again, I didn't quite say that. I didn't say it maps directly. I simply said, the nocturnal nine stages of Dream Yoga are really a progressive stages on meditation on emptiness. I didn't mention it. I didn't correlate it with with Khenpo Rinpoche thing at all. So if you listen back to that I didn't say that. But that said, the kind of the, the gist of the matter is, in fact, it's exactly the same, that they are progressive stages of meditation on emptiness. Khenpo Rinpoche his book, and by the way, those of you who haven't read this yet it's in my estimation, the single best book from a yogic scholarly point of view on emptiness ever written. It's short, I don't know. 114 pages or something? No exaggeration. I probably read it. Maybe eight 910 times It's a masterpiece. In fact, I sent it to Swami Satyananda, that great Advaita Vedanta guy who I just love this guy. I sent it to him because he was studying emptiness with Professor garland at Harvard. And he wasn't familiar with this book. I sent it to him. Actually, I didn't send it to him. I told him what it was he ordered it and it just blew them out. of the water. He said, This is unbelievable book. So for those of you who really wants to explore these teachings on emptiness, this is an indispensable tax and the reason it's so awesome. Is that there I mean, there's I have an entire shelf two shelves on emptiness. It's like like I mentioned you know, Much Ado About Nothing. There is so much written on this topic. And largely in the West, much of it comes from the academic community, which is great. It's fantastic. But the real juice comes from the yogi's from someone like Kimball Rinpoche who brings not only tremendous scholasticism, but also tremendous personal experience and insight as a yogi, and that's what makes this book an absolute jewel and diamond. So Eric, the progressive stages on emptiness applies to both vectors, either a Khenpo Rinpoche stages, the five stages there. Or if you look at the nine stages closely with my mapping of Dream Yoga, and the nine stages, each one of them for sure, works with emptiness, because what it means you Rinpoche say, you know, they time is a tougher classroom for emptiness, because there's so much habit pattern here things seems so much more solid. And then his words, nighttime is a much easier classroom. So therefore, Dream Yoga, again, massive, massive way everything and Dream Yoga, without doubt, is centered around nothing. Discovering the empty nature, and again, this is so unbelievably important. Because to attain ultimate lucidity, awakening enlightenment. This is what it means it means to discover the empty nature of reality. So that's why there's a reason emptiness is so important. Okay, so if anybody has a raised hand or question I see one. And Eric if you're if you're here, and you want to follow up on that, more than welcome to entertain it, but if there's I think there's a live question from Evelyn. Go ahead, Evelyn, and then I'll see what's in the chat column.
Thank you very much. I wonder if you can comment on the distinction between those thoughts that arise out of a physiological need for us to survive like I have to drink some water now, or I have to eat some food or I have to jump out from the street because I'll be hit by a car right. So is there any any distinction in in this theory of, of thinking? And
that's a really good question. Well, first thing I would do online is invite you to take a really close look to see if in fact there's actually a thought behind that instinct. I would argue not. This is why animals and again, who knows what's actually happening cognitively in the mind of an animal knows, but I would argue that it's actually pre thought level. It's at the level of instinct. And so I invite you, you know, you know, this wonderful term. Quantum phenomenology. Do you know this term, Evelyn? Yeah. This is that wonderful term by Evan Thompson, who is one of my favorite philosophers that it's his languaging for meditators, people who develop an extremely acute refined capacity to bear witness to their mind and that's where all these discoveries come from. They come from meditators whose minds are so refined, so stalled, like I use the analogies like the Webb telescope, which by the way, Barry here's my mind tracking over, very synthesis amazing link. Night Club about the Webb telescope is actually starting to show that there's no such thing as the Big Bang, the Big Bang is a big bust. So very, thanks for sending that. So I like to look at the mind, similar to the Hubble or Webb telescope. Where through Shama tonfa, passionate you create tremendous stability, tremendous Polish mirror of the mind, that allows you to see not in this case to the beginning of the end of the universe, but to see these extremely subtle dimensions of your own mind. And so I invite you, here's the third exercise for you. Is the next time you have this. What you think is a thought to go and do something you will realize that there's something happening instinctually before the thought level, it's pre thought. And then the thought comes in as quickly as you bring meaning to my voice. Thoughts comes in so fast, that you think it's actually a thought that's driving it. But it's actually I would argue it's more an instinctual level. That said, with that said, it doesn't matter. Even with that said, it doesn't matter. Whatever arises if it's just left alone, becomes completely non problematic, even at the level of instinct. Now, that doesn't mean yes, at that level, we should like, somehow label it let it go and dissolve and then like, starve ourselves to death, right? You still want to get to the fridge, right? So that's where you have to understand this whole notion of transcend but include, still have capacities, they'll have that ability. You transcend it, while including it. It's there. Because it's necessary for for biophysical survival, you need it, but at a certain point, and this is where it gets so tricky. I talked about this in relationship to fear, all these other factors, these these particular phenomena that are associated with biophysical evolution, at a certain point can come to retire and spiritual evolution, but it's an investigation. I invite you to look at that and see for yourself, right? It's very interesting. It's like, hey, wait a second. There's no thought involved here. There's actually something that's instinctual is pre pre cognitive in that regard.
Okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome very much. Okay, from what lane? In the chat column How can I work with liminal dreaming when I fall asleep so quickly? Oh, okay. Well, that that eliminated a couple things. One is liminal dreaming may not be and the hypnagogic and so remember liminal dreaming is Jennifer Doom pairs term that I love. She coined it with her wonderful short book by that title called liminal dreaming, and you guys are not club members. I interviewed her like three years ago on this. I really liked her. And so limited gaming is her term for what is really more classically called hypnagogic hypnopompic. So in your case, if you're working with liminal dreaming, when you're falling asleep, you're working with the hypnagogic space. That may not work for you because you fall asleep so quickly, but you can still work with it perhaps on the other end to hypnopompic and that's also a liminal dreaming threshold. liminality means threshold. So then you can work with liminal principles on the back end. Or you can do it in your meditation. When you're sitting in practice. You had a big meal, it's warm, mine's getting soggy. I doubt that you immediately just crash over and literally, like fall off the cushion. I doubt it. I bet any money. You enter a liminal space where your heads bobbing and you're kind of like you know that space. That's liminal dreaming. You can then work with it in that capacity. So two things one is if it doesn't work for you on the hypnagogic end, explore it on the hypnopompic and the backside. Secondly, when you're doing your meditations and you starting yourself, you know if you're starting to feel yourself getting really soggy dozing off, you can work with it then. Okay. Oh, yeah, so yeah, references to camper images book oh my gosh, this is a masterpiece. There's another follow up book by him called the to choose progressive stages is it's just without here. Okay, any anybody else? Anything else? Are we are we hear someone from Linda? Neuro psychiatrist agree with you. Oh, that's nice. It's nice when people agree with me see, I tell you that I've transcended praise and blame. But when the intellectual elite praise me then all bets are off it really in place me I feel really good. So thank you for sharing that. Just kidding. neuropsychologist agree with you, Andrew. Yes, that's essentially it's nice to hear. instinct for survival and related fears come to the amygdala part of the brain. Well, great contribution and goes from there to the frontal cortex where thought is formed. Bingo. High five. Thank you for sharing that Linda. That's really awesome. Thank you.
Hey, Dr. G.
Are you unmuted fire away my friend as usual, all
you know, fantastic program. That reminds me of something I heard from a spiritual master many years ago. What like this? My dogma just got run over by my karma.
There's like a bumper sticker like that. I love it. Yeah, that's really great. I love it. I love it. Yeah, we should we should. We should have these kind of paraphernalia, you know, and, and send them to each other. I love that kind of stuff. That's great. So is there anything else besides dogma and karma Do you have a
is that I have
I have a whole list of stuff. I have a archive. I accidentally erased it. But I have jokes from almost any category you could think of. If you want, I'll tell you like. One of my favorite comedians was Rodney Dangerfield. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There was one of his many sayings. He says, you know, like when I was born, you know, like, Doctor was with, you know, my wife and the obstetrics room while my father is waiting, and then the obstetrician comes out to the Father and says, Mr. Dangerfield, I have some really bad news for you. He says we did everything we could, let's say kid pull through.
That's so bad. So here's another one from him. Just because, you know, I knew this. This. Actually I should. I'll pause on that. I have to be careful. What I say in public is he was edgy, right? He could say some sort of edgy thing. So yeah, I should practice mindfulness of speech and make sure I don't offend anybody. But here's something interesting. As a quantum from now phenomenologist. This is actually a very interesting thing to do, is to look and again, this stuff is so fascinating to me. Look at the moment that you actually crack up and laughter. This is a very interesting thing to do. Because what happens with a joke and a certain way it's like, okay, Is nothing sacred? No. Are we gonna like take apart a joke? Well, yeah, for a second we are here. If you look at what happens when you're setting up a joke, right? There's a particular narrative structure that's created your use just spent 45 seconds talking about this operating room. So you're creating a particular storyline, right. And so at a certain point, what actually creates a good joke is a particular narrative. You're heading you're heading in a particular direction, particular story is created. And then something happens that either completely reverses the context or just completely pulls out the narrative that's under construction, right? That's what creates the crack up. And so it's actually said, I think I heard a Jewish mystics say this once. Some rabbi at a program with a wonderful rabbi in Seattle, and he said this, he said, reality is touched through tears and laughter. I thought that was amazing. And I think what he's meaning by that is whether it's breaking down or cracking up, it's the breaking of the cracking that puts you in contact with reality. Look at your own experience. And so in the moment of laughter, again, be a quantum phenomenologist and see if it's not true. There'll be a moment it's like when when somebody tosses out a joke. There's always a gap before the punchline is delivered and people get the joke, right? They either are working for it, or there's just the space and then the crack up. And so that space is a very interesting space to examine. Because you may notice that in that tiny little gap, the mind has been stopped. There's there's there's a brief contact point with reality there. So as a way to just look at again, oh my gosh, I didn't ever thought about that. Notice your mind in instances of humor. Notice how when you crack up the narrative structure is being flipped, cracked. And there's a moment of insight that can actually take place there. It's very interesting thing to watch. Okay. All right. What page did we stop on? I'll tell you to leave.
PAGE 166. I actually got up there.
All right. Coolness. Okay, so any other jokes since we're talking about jokes any other contributions on the like otherwise? Dream sharing group on Saturday. I think Joseph is taking the meditation group on Monday. I leave Tuesday to head up to draw the Mountain Center to start my luminous burial Dharma tapping so you can still join us there. And then I'll be back the following week. My guess is I think it ends on Wednesday. So probably two weeks. I'll come back and join you for another round of this sort of thing. So unless there's a last minute something or other it's kind of nice to keep these around the hour mark. Honestly, I really like it. Anything else? I'm scanning? Looks like we're good. Cool. So to whatever extent it works for you, you can turn on your cameras turn on your side, we can dedicate the merit if it means anything to you to all sentient beings. Bob Thurman is really big on this. Hey, Darrell, it turns out I can't all it's so fun to see all these people again. All these people I meet in my life programs are so cool because all these little avatars that are like this big in my world, all of a sudden they're real people. And so it's so fun, but great to spend time with everybody here. I'll be back in a couple of weeks between now and then pleasant dreams and do these little exercises. Go stand in front of a mall. Go stand in public work with this sort of thing. And then tell me how it works. We'll catch up on this last time. Bye everybody. See you in a bit
