you know, thoughts are to waking consciousness as dreams or to dreaming consciousness. This phenomenally important reason why we have so many non lucid dreams, because that's our default practice. We practice non lucidity all the time. And so part of the charter of these meditation groups sessions that we started some, I don't know two or three years ago at this point, is in fact to emphasize this to emphasize the importance that when you're working with dreams, right, what are you really doing? Alright, I gave a talk this morning to Naropa a group of graduate students and European University is really really, really fun. They wanted me to riff on emptiness and the centrality the importance of understanding emptiness, the dreamlike nature of reality for their psychotherapy. And so one of the things I pounded in with them is that when you're studying things like emptiness, and unearthing the dreamlike nature reality, you're studying the reduction base, you're studying the heart essence, everything can be fundamentally reduced to this fundamental pathology reification the lack of understanding of the dreamlike nature of reality, the lack of emptiness. And so the point here is that we can do a type of healthy reductionism and we can look at things in a much more clearer way with this type of health and reductionism. And what I'm alluding to here is in the context of dreams and life, dreams, What are dreams made of? They're made of your mind. And you're always working with your mind whether you know it or not. You're either doing it volition volitionally, consciously lucidly. That's the spiritual path, or the forces of the dark side takeover. And your habit patterns your karma takes over and your default practice comes in distraction, forgetfulness, and the like. So we start this kind of track of meditation, which is a absolute clear, kind of separating quality between classic Lucid Dream Yoga. You will not really find this in lucid dreaming, even though it's starting to infiltrate over a little bit more with the studies of Benjamin Baird another he's the one who remember, I got piped out to you guys a little survey that he did about actually he's he's got some preliminary data that absolutely positively meditators have more lucid dreams, and in particular practices like open awareness. These are supercharged practices for bringing about heightened lucidity. So we engage in this track with with a nightclub is a Dream Yoga track. Because the more you meditate, the more you're going to have lucid dreams. Makes total sense. Look at your mind, see how often you're distracted? See how often you forget, see how often you're mindless. Wow, what a surprise. I have mindless, forgetful dark dreams Wow, what a surprise right? Basic causality causality. So one of the characteristics is working, as I mentioned at the outset, studying remembering kind of trying to reinstate the centrality of some of these principles is I don't know, you're probably a little bit like me, where I feel like oh, the next meditation is going to do it. The next sacred text is going to do it. The next great teaching is going to do it. I'm not dissing that at all. I think there's tremendous validity in that but one near enemy of this Information Age. With all this information is TMI, we confused information for experience. Let me say that again. We confuse information for experience. And so one quality that I want to try to reinstate today is just stabilizing, integrating fully incorporating, repeating, repeating, repeating practices themselves to get them into your system because otherwise, if we're always looking for the next thing, the next meditation the next gadget the next whatever, you can actually become discursive and the meditations themselves, you can become discursive and the teachings themselves. Instead of digging deep, you've heard this parable. A man wants to find water on his property. Dig six feet down, doesn't find any water. It gets discouraged. Walks, you know, 20 yards away, digs another 10 feet well the water goes another 100 feet away another 1010 10 feet no water. Well, you know why? Why is he not hitting water because he's not digging deep enough. And so this is a problem. I see this in my own path. I see my own experience. It was one of the near enemies of my really long retreat was being introduced to no exaggeration. 5060 different types of practices. And this, by the way, parenthetically, is why many people who do a three year retreat do it twice, because the practice has come so fast, furious, that you may think that you're able to spend as much time as necessary to digest this, but you're really not. And so I came out of a retreat and elected to dive deeper into these nocturnal meditations. And the fact that I went deeper than 10 feet, six feet, 10 feet, the fact that I went as deep as I possibly could, I've committed to these practices, and I dug deep into them. That's when you start to hit the well that's when you start to really get the results of these practices. So I tossed this out, hopefully it'll land with you that with all this information, all the practices, all the meditations, and again, I'm not dissing it in the slightest, the great contributions of Jeffrey and Joe and everybody else who's doing these amazing things. I'm not dissing that at all this stuff is fantastic. But I want to drive in the times when I come to be with you. I want to keep pounding in gently, firmly, resolutely, um, take the practices that you're already doing, and go deep, stick with them. Go deep. And so with that said, what I worked with last time is I introduced to you if you remember the extraordinary old centrality the role of mantra. So this is a just a repeat a couple of things. And I'd be curious to see on either in the chat column if you want to make an offering, like how this worked for you, or if you want to raise your hand and see and share some of how this might work with you. The introduction of this Dream Yoga mantra, excuse me, on New Tara and the just the power of working with the sacred sounds altogether that they have. They're like template practices. You know, they work with archetypal qualities of the mind. And in this particular case, the arm and Tara mantra. I can't I'm not 100% Sure I mentioned this last time, but even if I did, I'm gonna say it again. And then I'm going to give you a new mantra for today. Each one of the syllables of this five syllable mantra is the seed syllable. With called the Beija mantra the seed syllable of one of the title are called meditation Buddha's and so these you may know them. If not, I will introduce you to them and here. Oh, there's Eric. He's always the best if you do your gallery's shot, you'll see the Red Lotus. And yeah, it's a little hard to see the red syllable. But this these are the syllables are in the center. The white syllable represents the butt of the seed syllable, the beach a mantra of viral Chana. So this is the Buddha of the center of the mandala associated with the central channel in yogic theory and then in the east, which is always in front that's our, the blue syllable that you're seeing there are. This is the seed syllable of Akshobhya. The syllable to the right knew that's the seed syllable of the Buddha, Ratna sambava. These are all associated with elements by the way. You know, space water, earth, fire, wind, in order. And so, down below is tar. This is the seed syllable of Amitabha. This is particularly important in the realm that we live in the human realm, the realm of desire, we live in what's called the realm of desire of the three cosmological realms. There's the realm of desire the form, the realm of form and the formless realm. We live in the realm of desire. And therefore I meet Amitabha is really the Buddha of this realm. He's the Buddha that transforms the heat of passion desire, into the warmth of compassion. So he's a big one for us. Slight sidebar, he's the he's the one that's associated with the pureland traditions. So much to say about this guy, Chen Raizy, is an emanation of Amitabha. And so I mentioned this because I'm going to introduce you to his mantra today. This is the mantra of love, kindness, compassion, and I'm using it a lot these days because of what's happening in the Middle East. And I'll say a little bit more about that in a second. And then of course, the emanation of the further emanation of Buddha Amitabha Buddha Amitabha.