Nope, you have to put my gallery view on. Hello, everybody. Hey, there's Emily. I just saw Emily and in Bay Oh, we just finished our little five day Dream Yoga program which was so fun. So nice to see everybody here. I always like to go through and see who's hanging out with us. Excellent. Beautiful, wonderful. Okay, so what we do, just in case somebody's new, we started this with COVID. What, three plus years ago and this is one thing that seems to have obtained in mortality. We just can't seem to kill it. It just keeps going. So what I do here is people send me questions. I start with those. You can also ask a question in the chat. always best if you raise your hand and come on mine because then we can have a little interaction. And so the only thing two things I need to announce things are a little bit biased because I had this massive crunch of activity. The next thing I have is a week long program in August. And aluminous Bardot Dermatol so this is a this is the deepest of all the Bardo programs do not come. If you're afraid of the truth. Do not call me if you're afraid of blinding light, the light of reality. This is by far my favorite program in the Bardo. Kind of the five year check I'm doing there. It's a deep dive and unapologetic deep dive into the nature of reality. And then so what can I do and interestingly, the month after that and menma with Bob Thurman, my my wonderful dear friend, we started our annual nature mind program there and this was somewhat related to the Dhamma talk program in Melbourne center, but also quite different in that the one in Menlo is more like what does it take to realize the nature mind? I'm using analytic meditations using open awareness using all the little tips, tricks, gadgets that Bob and I can come up with. And so those are two really honestly these are two of my favorite programs, period heartstopper. So, show up, Be there or be very square. Okay, here's my pause, Alyssa, break recording in progress. Okay, so we do that so we can just record this and not all my blah blah blah. Okay. So here's a question from Zach. I enjoy I understand that the pre Buddhist button culture, religion of Tibet had the foundation of Dream Yoga Yes, it still does. Why do you think that other non Buddhist schools LineageOS have not developed a Dream Yoga? Well, they have let me tell you about him but particularly if he assume any the practitioners are Lucite. Yeah. Well, the the health again, there's very very little literature on these other traditions, but I get these most amazing correspondences from like my dear friend Youssef all who are the Islamic scholar who I've interviewed twice on edge of mind. He reached out to me like three years ago with an amazing translation of other classic Islamic texts undream yoga, which had never been translated. So it's there. It's just under public domain. And also my friends V. Shalom, the great Jewish mistake. Love this guy. Love them both. He wrote to me when we had some riffs on the side he's a friend we hang out in and again here. He tells me about Jewish Kabbalistic and post Qabalistic Dream Yoga. And the correlations are amazing. Same thing with throat chakra. I mean, so many similarities. And so we can't assume that other traditions haven't developed the Dream Yoga. We've aged may not be aware of them, right. It's just the Tibetans for I don't know, the reason I'm not sure why. They've just kind of taken hold of this also like the Bardo teachings. Those are two teachings that the Tibetans just seem to really run with. I can't speak at all about Christian mysticism. My guess it's there as well. But the theistic traditions i It's very interesting to me just a playful sidebar, the the theistic traditions, no criticism. I'm not here to disparage other traditions. I was raised a good solid Catholic. I'm still recovering. I say this tongue in cheek, because I loved it. I was an altar boy. I was a play the Oregon I loved it. I really did love it. I just didn't take it very seriously. But I don't know of any Krishna mystical approaches. But you know, the whole the whole theistic thing. This is just completely my rendering is that you know, they act kind of as the middleman like oil man instead of going directly to solar power and so I think I think some traditions theistic traditions may actually be intimidated by Dream Yoga if it's even their the Christian thing I don't know I should ask Father Francis T cell. That's actually a good question. Note to self he's the guy that I interviewed two years ago on Rainbow body. I tell you, if this guy would have been my Catholic priest, I'd still be Catholic. He's amazing. But this is a great question for me to ask Dr. Francis DeSales. So note to self, I'm going to do it right now. Francis T Sofer Dream Yoga. So in short, it is out there. It's just that a lot of this has not been translated and a lot of it is simply not in the public domain yet. So Francis t so on Jamie yoga and then I will get back to you to see a Francis has anything to say about a dream yoga tradition. Okay. Oh from a different Berry. The other night I had the dream where I was chasing some thing and ended up on the bedroom floor with a broken collarbone. Yeah, bummer. Bummer. I was there when you talked about that with Dr. Ed. Sorry about that very. It seems like it was a broken REM experience. Yeah. out of phase. Rem sequence REM behavioral REM sleep behavioral disorder could be could be, like Dr. Ed said, difficult to say if you've just had one episode. I've never had anything like this before. Okay, and it seems that this could alter my relationship to dreams. If this is a chronic issue with a broken collarbone. I won't be able to do any sleep studies for several months. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by sleep studies. Barry, so I'm not sure if that's important to your question. But if you want us to come out and say something, that's fine. This is great for slowing things down but also concerning any suggestions on how we can go forth with a lucid dreaming practice when I've had such an experience? Yeah, I wouldn't let just one experience completely derail your nocturnal experience. And especially with lucid dreaming practice, you can still work with lucid dreaming principles. Even if you have some of these parasomnias lucidity, cultivate aware it cultivates awareness and whatever awareness you can bring to your dreams. I mean, how often is awareness damaging like never maybe damaging to your ego, but awareness is about most fundamentally curative panacea that I know of. I can't think of anything that suffers with awareness. If there's someone out who can come up with something let me know ego will suffer. Ignorance will suffer. But outside of that it's about the single most curative agents in the business is once enough to assume this is a permanent condition. Definitely not sure. Should I see if I can experience something similar again, under much safer conditions. Really? Yeah, I would recommend the latter. And I think like doctrine, I thought on with his comments yesterday, by the way, those of you who weren't there, whoa. In the I don't know how many 50s 60s sessions I've done with Dr. Ed ever since he started. Yesterday session arguably could be the best yet. He spent the entire session collecting incredible data. Some of this I had never seen before. That's what makes him so great. We started with these questions and he doesn't know what he does the homework but the whole thing was about how meditation has been or there's this common proclamation that that meditators need less sleep and advanced meditators. No sleep is required. And so he came up with some really interesting data around it and I thought it was just brilliant. I thought it was probably the best session yet that I've experienced. So that'll be for those union club members that'll be posted probably within a day or so. Check it out. So yeah, I think what Dr. And said if I remember Barry was just let's see what happens. I think if you do experience it again, I might recommend a more professional consultation with Dr. Ed. And actually work with REM sleep behavior disorder. But one episode, I probably wouldn't be too freaked out. Yes, it does cause a little bit of interest concern. I think it's pretty mature. So hang with it. See what happens. You know where to turn. You got Dr. Ed, you can always ping him behind the scenes and he'll help you out. And then there are ways that this can be managed, right. So come on, if you have anything more to say or ask around that, but that's my intuition. I don't think it's going to fundamentally disrupt your lucid dreaming practice per se. That's that's my take. But let me know. Okay, from Joe, people are leaving my life through death and disease. Yeah. No kidding. Hi, Joe. I find I am grasping at those relationships because I have less and less long term relationships and connections. We all do we all grasp. I feel more alone in this world as a result. You're not alone in feeling alone. Go if that makes you feel any better. You're not alone and feeling alone.
Probably normal as a result of aging. Yes, yes, unfortunately. Yeah. It's just part of the life contracting. It includes impermanence and the end of life right and patronizing but we forget is it grasping and if so, any advice on practice for this grasping I think this is the situation many of us will face Yes, for sure. If we are lucky enough fortunate enough to live long enough to face it. Is it grasping? Yes, it is grasping. Any advice, or practicing of this? Well, first thing is, is give yourself a break. Get yourself some slack. Be kind to yourself, meta Maitri. You know, I do this thing I do this every morning. This is like my favorite new thing. I find this every practice every retreat I do now I start every retreat in public when I do this, I start every morning with this. It's just the most wonderful thing I just kind of developed it on my own some of the murders anyway, the practice itself is a kind of a variation of metta or Maitri. We just put your hand over your heart in the morning it's a nice thing we can do it all right now it's it's really a beautiful practice close your eyes and put your hand over your heart
simply feel whatever you're feeling completely. Whatever it is, if you're feeling the loss of someone something doesn't matter. It literally does not matter. That's what makes it so powerful. Whatever you're feeling, feel it fully. This is like for those of you who know the term is like Xiao Chen feeling feeling great completion feeling completely and so when you feel this, loneliness, this inevitable consequence of aging, just realize it's okay. Be kind to yourself, realize this is a normal part of life and your reaction is completely normal. I find this practice alone metta you can conjoin it with the liturgy if you want for sure before and measurable that cetera. But even without that, just this gesture of checking in holding, almost like hey, what's it like today? I'm okay whatever. Is happening, I'm okay give yourself permission to be human radical acceptance. And then you can put your hand down if you if you had it up. And then in addition to that is just, you know, understand first that it's completely normal to grasp as long as you have a sense of self and an ego which we all do until we attain Buddhahood. We're gonna grasp because that's what ego is. Ego is grasping. And so as we age and start to fall apart and things start to slip through like grains of sand. It's completely natural to grasp more and more and more because things are becoming more Bardot like more groundless. So advices on practice there is just continue with whatever spiritual practice you're doing practices of releasing, I'm not sure what meditation you do. Bardo yoga is specifically designed for this open awareness is specifically designed for this. Other more kind of generic practices will also help I mean, every time you release your relationship, grasping to a thought, I mean, fundamentally, I can't say every single meditation but so many meditations are really learning about letting go releasing. It's not easy. That's why the painful Bardo of dying is called painful it hurts to let and so as we age, there's going to be more and more grasping and also some you know, bitterness, some anger, some fear, because these are reconstituting, reifying emotions, and so the challenge is old age, sickness and death. This is just part of the human contract. And the more we can accept it, and where we can establish a relationship to it, relate to it instead of from it. Continue without practices of just releasing opening. The more we can have a graceful exit so I label a lot of my programs on the Bartles graceful exit, where our message graceful is the ability to let go. Easier said than done. That's why it's a practice on graceful exit is raging, grasping, thrashing, you know, just not not being able to slide into the transitional processes. Something like that job. Okay. Okay, a couple longer ones from Eric. Hi, I do I've been running into a bit of an obstacle with some of my loose IDs. That's interesting term, I guess you mean lucid dreams. And although I understand that obstacles are the path yes, if you relate to them properly, they are. Some guidance is appreciate Okay, let's see if I can give you some. Basically in many of my loosens. Last night for example, after several minutes I entered a black void between dreams seems cool, good for you. Let's see what this blackboards about essentially the dream images manifestations fade. Yes, they do. Like everything else, everything. Dream images as well. Back to you over the years, I noticed that I'm able to sustain awareness better during these dates good for you, possibly due to meditation. Practice. Yes, for sure. Definitely due to MIDI five to you. But I'm not always successful. Well join the nocturnal club, right. This is also par for the course. Back to you. I've tried some methods suggested by Stephen the bears and others rubbing hands engaging tech Dustin says says yes, spinning and everything good for you. But these methods are hit or miss as well. Yeah, that's also really common. So everything you're saying is really really common. I think your essence here is the following. I was hoping you could elaborate more on the causes of these void states. Eastern or Western causes simply neurological question and possibly ways to continue through or preferably circumvent altogether. Okay, why do you want to circumvent them? Why why do you see them as problematic? There's a one of the most important things than that I can give you some conjectures about causes is just like what the earlier question is just as curious acceptance or whatever arises. So why do you perceive this to be problematic would be one of my questions in terms of the causes boy you know, aren't FDIC some questions that just because there's a black void? What's not clear to me? Is Is there a perceiver of the void? In other words, are you when you're in that space? Is there a sense of I'm perceiving the black void? Well, that's one instance. That's different from you becoming the black boy. I'll say more about that in a second. So if there's an experience of I'm receiving the black void, that is, then perceiving the gap between your thoughts, it's the same thing. And so therefore, you can you can witness this as the type of Bardo experience a gap between two phenomenal risings in this case, Dream scenes. And so that would still be Dream Yoga, that's not sleep yoga, because it's still dualistic. It's not a criticism. It's just a way to understand you're having basically an experience of content less dream within the context of Dream Yoga. Now, if you're having the experience, and again, it's not clear from what you share. I kind of suspect you're not because you may have said something. If you're having a non dualistic relationship to the black void in other words, when you're in it, you actually don't proceed anything. You only come out of it retrospectively and say retrospectively, I experienced that void but there was actually no you experiencing it the blank boy was experiencing itself, then that's high level yoga nidra or sleep yoga. So i You can't I can't tell from what you're saying. The causes? Yeah, one cause from an Eastern perspective, is your mind slowing down and you're noticing the gaps between the phenomenal rising of your dream scenes just like the gaps between your thoughts? Simply neurological. Sure, of course, you can't rule that out. So these Eric, these questions are really hard to answer like, what exactly is it? Where's it coming from? Holy moly. I'd have to ask the questions. And even then, I probably just be guessing, but I think perhaps the most important thing is what is the nature of this black void? Why do you want to get rid of it? What is your affective or emotional relationship to it? I mean, so these are good question, but based on the material I have here, probably the best thing I can say PS I had a non lucid dream last night in which you were giving a talk and flying a spacecraft. Okay, cool. Usually when I enter people's dreams, it turns into a nightmare. So I'm glad you had a dream that wasn't okay, I'm being goofy because it's the end of the day. Okay, another music Let me get a short one and then I'll get a longer one here from Carrie. This is an easy one. Hi, Andrew thoroughly enjoyed Ryan herds lucid talisman book club. Yes, we brought my dear friend Orion on board when I was traveling in Europe for a month. I love this guy. And he took my place for the Thursday book study group and went through the lucid talisman book. I agree. He's a rockstar and hope he can come back to teach again Yeah, we were talking about it in the future. Yes, that's in the works. Would you consider invite consider inviting Sean s parent Hargens in Andorra for Reba bags around to teach a course. Short Course in the nightclub? No. Let me tell you why. I think it's a great idea. But these people there especially Shawn, I know Shawn really well. We were in a book study group we hang out all the time. I really love both these individuals, but they are so busy. They are unbelievably busy. So that's just not going to happen. I don't think less they approached me and say hey, I really want to do a course for a nightclub. So I wouldn't hold your breath on that. Bringing Ryan back for sure. Hang tight. He's got another book on sleep paralysis that we could definitely do. And I'm sure he's got something else up his sleeve as well. So I'm glad that coursework for you. Okay, a longer one again from Michelle. Hi, Andrew. I'm gonna read this somewhat quickly, to get to the to get to the quick
My question relates to the capacity to lucid dream and do things like state checks versus cultivating the capacity to be aware awareness at all times. Waking nocturnal states prepper dying. Okay. So this is I'm gonna run comment as I go through it. This is fundamentally the difference between what's called pet lucidity or witnessing aware, witnessing lucid dreams where it's just like you say, you're simply just watching the dream. You're lucid, completely aware. It's a lucid dream, but you're just witnessing it, you're not doing it. That's no Dream Yoga is just witnessing Dream Yoga. You're just not aging. Okay, the focus of my long term practice within Vijay and adduction continues to be to have more clarity, awareness. Absolutely. So in the game in town, a question related to lucid dreaming I am often aware I am dreaming I have a reasonable recall. Wonderful. My sleep is late. That's also nice. Awareness is present throughout the night and then waking up. But they don't seem to be able to go to that next of entering the dream or fully one recognizing I'm dreaming. Okay, yeah. So in other words, you're not from sounds like you're not actually able or practiced. Excuse me teach the dream content and transform it. I mean, that's fine. Let me go through the question to see if you actually want to do that. Because that's basically stage two through seven of my classic Dream Yoga stages. So back to you. Not always but I am in an awareness. You're not in an awareness, you're in awareness. Oh, I see. But I am in an awareness observer space rather than identifying with the content with that make sense? Yes, it does make sense. First of all, if you were fully identifying with the content, that's the definition of a non lucid dream. So there's some partial dis identification, differentiation taking place, otherwise you wouldn't be lucid at all, but I get what you're saying. I do experience feeling and move to tears at times I'll talk to myself and remind myself I must remember this bit when I'm awake, and I do so I'm present. But when I hear your guests and other lucid dreamers talk about their level of interaction within the dream, I'm wondering about my experience, perhaps is my training where over and over again, the instruction is to let go of trying to change anything no remaining open. For sure, like 100% 100% that's where it's coming from. And that's great. In the early days of my spiritual life three decades ago, I was very visual and had psychic sensitivity cool. Awareness practice seems to have lessened rather than increased these capacities. Yeah, I'm not sure why that would be. I can't answer why that might be listening to you. I'm now getting a bit suspicious about my dream experience. I'm wondering how I might brighten and bring more clarity. Okay. Yeah. Well, this is a nice question. To brighten and bring more clarity. Well, when you're having a dream, and you're having a stable dream, and a bright dream, and a clear dream. Where is that stability, clarity and brightness coming from? There's no pre existing dreamscape that somehow you have to turn on the lights or up whatever when you read it know what a dream is made up they're made of your mind. So you want to increase the brightness and clarity is increased the brightness and clarity of your mind? And there are so many ways to do this. But hey, here's a moment of shameless self promotion. This is exactly what we're going to be doing in the luminous Bardo Dharma talk program where we're going to be working hands luminous that has to do with the light of the mind. So Bryce luminous clarities so outside of doing like Bardo yoga, studying luminous clarity, and that capacity in the luminous Bardo, with avatar. Again, I don't know what practices you're doing here. But if you're doing like Giuliana zoek, shine, you probably done some Vietnam or deity yoga. You want to up that? That's what you want to do. The exercise same luminous muscles so to speak. And so you will find that the more you do that more you do daytime visualization, practice your dumb practices. The more stable that gets, the more clear that gets the more bright more stable like yes, well guess what? Your dreams get more bright and clear. So the other thing you can do it I think I shared this with you guys. Maybe I don't know when some time ago. I got into this jag a couple years ago exactly on this kind of thing. I was really interested in things like the light of the mind in how how much light I could bring to my dream. And so I did I started doing this thing. I do this stuff all the time, like constantly. I'm always experimenting. I'm always playing with stuff. And so I get this bug of my dream but where I'm just gonna take whatever image arises in the dream and I remember very clearly it happened to be an orange now that's a cool image right? So I hit this orange in the dream. I became lucid and I remembered I said, I want to explore this luminous light thing in my dream. And so what I did really it was it's actually hysterical. I'm like, man who? What is it Men Who Stare at Goats is that it's called that hysterical movie with Clooney. As a really fun movie, by the way, you know, what I did was okay, you know, here I am in the dream, right? So I'm looking at this orange and they can't of course, I'm not looking at the orange. It just appears that there's no me looking at the orange that orange is looking at itself, but that's a different story. So imagine I'm still you know, given the dream and what I did was something like the following year to go and I tried I tried to just been as much light or make the orange as luminous as I possibly could. It was actually quite hysterical. And so every time I did this one, I would like I was like, I was amping I went from 110 to a 220. I was just inserting more light of the mind and to the orange. It was actually pretty bloody cool. I did this enough where it actually kind of turned into the light of the Great Eastern sun, so Shambala, people might get a little riff on it this I turn this orange, I got it so bright and so hot. It morphed into the Great Eastern sun for some valid people out there that's a pretty cool exercise. So you can do this if you don't do visualization and you're listening here going I don't know what this deity yet I'm practices Shit, I don't know. Well, what you can do is I don't have an orange here, but you can visualize, visualize anything, right? Just for the heck of it. Oh, look at there. My good friend has an orange. Thanks, Jan. Dan was also at Vail. We had fun visualizing orange you know, you don't have to do a DND thing. You can do it with eyes closed eyes open. Take an orange. Usually at first is better with or easy with eyes closed. Take an orange or if you like Apple because of apple of the eye. Close your eyes and try to visualize that apple or orange as clearly as you possibly can. Make it vibrant make it resonant in in feel into it. Don't just visualize it cognitively get a kind of a somatic sense so to speak. If you just do that, it doesn't look quite the same power as a full blown deity yoga yoga practice but it's no small thing. You can sit there and just take that orange or Apple. Visualize it. Use it. It's a form of Shama test, it's actually larger Jana Shama to practice. shamatha is the ability where you can use a candle, a breath, a body a mantra, you can also use a visualization. And in the tantric world, that's tantric shamatha. We take a visual object, bring it into your mind's eye, make it as clear vibrant as you possibly can. That will definitely help. Okay. All right, few more than that, we can open it up from Ben. Thanks for your stuff. Okay. Thank you for saying those nice words. On Tibetan Buddhist practitioner in the UK and had the following questions about the Bardo, becoming. Okay. Question. How frequently do you do your lucid dreams have to be in order for you to realize you're dead in the bar to becoming?
Yeah, boy, I wish there was a number right? Like you bend for you 20 times and you're good to go. I mean, there's no there's no criteria like that. What the tradition says Padmasambhava for instance. Mitsuda who doesn't from India to Tibet, and others have said, if you can maintain lucidity seven times, you're gonna be good in the Bardo. Well, is this a real number? Or is an archetypal number you have to Rinpoche and l Wallace and the translation of the teachings where I first read this say, this is an archetypal number. Don't take it visually. What it means is some level of constancy. What does that mean? ACC? I don't know. I just think it means some level of regularity. But here's the really good news here, Jim. This is real. It's also good news, bad news. But the good news for us is whatever takes place in the Bardo, according to a number of Tantras teachings. And again, this number is also archetypal is seven to nine times more efficacious, more transformative than it is in this in his waking life. And what that means, therefore, is you don't need to have a glimpse before it can transform into a gaze in the Bardo. In other words, things can be very powerfully positively amplified. And this makes a lot of sense to me because you're no longer restricted the finitude of the body that limits awareness that limits the infinite mind that's being released. And so the light of awareness itself becomes much more heightened. And so this is actually really, really good news for all spiritual practitioners, for people who do these practices that you do not have to be a raging virtuoso to have tremendous success in the Bardot's. You just have to have some level of potency and faith in this doctrine. So how frequently I don't know. I mean, really, nobody can answer that question. Just some level of constancy. What does that mean? Wow. Presume is my favorite answer by the way? My favorite answer I love it. What Daffy John calls divine a grunts I just feel it makes me feel so why can free? I don't know. Know, the open question. This is a lovely thing to say. Sometimes that's the best answer, by the way. Okay, back to you. Presumably the more frequent the lucid dreams, the better true, but is there a level of frequency nothing I'm aware of that produces a reasonable likelihood that you realize you're dead in the bottle. There is no number outside of the seven but that's an accurate number relatedly if you've been frequently having lucid dreams for a few years Prem perhaps because of the illness. That that parenthetical interjection makes no sense to me, so I'll skip it. If you have been frequently having lucid news through yours, but you weren't lucid for a significant period before your death. Does that make it less likely that you will realize you're in the bar to becoming No Not necessarily? Not necessarily. You know, the the whole dream Bardo business? Because it's a much more open dimension that isn't constricted and dictated by the laws of logic or rationality and physics and space and time. That's why there's so many weird things that can happen in the dream state and in the Bardo, which is just a dream at the end of time. These domains of mind don't play by the same rules as waking reality. And so we have we bring and impose imposes the highlight our limitations and say, oh, you know, there has to be this way in the Baroda because it's this way in the daytime state. No, no, the Bardot's and the dreams are much more open. And so possibilities are heightened. There are actually more empty dimensions of reality and the empty are more open. They are, the more possibilities there are. So we cannot bring the same metrics and criteria that we use for success or lack thereof in the waking state to the dream or to the Birdland dimension doesn't play by the same rules. That's one reason why people get frustrated with it. Ah, you know, when it doesn't do it like this, and why does it why does it just completely disappear for whatever isn't supposed to be like in this linear vector? No, no. I mean, you're basically romancing your mind. You're romancing dimensions of reality, that just don't play by the Aristotelian worldview. So somewhere on there bad maybe that's of some benefit. Okay, last one from Eric. Good, bud. Eric. And then we'll open it up. Hey, Andrew, been meaning to say thanks for the talk you gave? Yeah. I Charlie Morley, my dear friend. He asked me to do a riff a couple of weeks ago. He's doing a really cool training. So I came in and subbed for a guy and we had fun. I was hoping you might be able to answer a question for today. Kay, how would you or someone who is able to maintain awareness throughout all the stages of sleep describe the phenomenological experience of light sleep? Yeah, non REM sleep stage two. Okay. I can align and experience with hypnagogia Yes, Nan RAM one. Okay, fair enough. ran in deep sleep paren and would be curious to hear your thoughts on each of those as well. Oh, you're asking a lot here but I'm having a hard time putting my finger on what the experience of light sleep would be. Okay. Well, I mean, again, I can only tell you what, what it's like for me, right. And I've never done a phenomenological report in the dream lab when I've got a high density EEG cap that says okay, you've now gone from beta to alpha to theta, delta, right? I've never been able to have that opportunity. So I can't tell you with complete authority that when I'm in what I think is light sleep, I'm actually in non REM two or whatever. So a little bit shooting from the hip here. But basically, you know, one of the things that constitutes light sleep for me is part of my my dream, my dream, my dream. My dream brain. Part of my brain is awake. Part of my brain is asleep. This is one of the things we talked about with Dr. Edie. That's actually quite important. It's not this big isomorphic unit that when you fall asleep you wake or whatever it's like a whole blocks like a block universes block consciousness Do you stage No, no, no. With increased measurements, neuroscientists are discovering what the wisdom traditions have actually been saying for 1000s of years that there are absolute granularities and gradations that part of your brain can be awake. Part of your brain can be asleep. And in the non dual Siva tantric tradition, I stumbled across it, I didn't stumble across it. A friend of mine scholar sent me this text, and I loved it, and I shared it with a bunch of neuroscientists and they go sit down. This is amazing. This is great. So what they have, they take the three main states of consciousness waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep and they do the following. They do the waking, of waking, dreaming of waking, the sleeping of waking, the dreaming of dreaming, the waking, of dreaming, sleeping, of dreaming, the sleeping of sleeping, the dreaming of sleeping the awake of sleeping. And so what they do then as they have a more granular nine stage description, which is much more accurate and high density, EEG measurements, I'm not confirming it. So for me, that's a little bit of the science. I like to blind people with science. For me, that's a little bit of what light sleep is like for me. I'm popping in and out. Definitely sensory awareness, the outward bound capacity of the mind is is diminishing. It's not fully internalized yet because I'm still unlike sleep. And so this is where you start to have this this really interesting transformation of consciousness where you go from thought to image, the thought, image amalgamation to micro dreams to dreams. And so light sleep for me constitutes this kind of plasma of mind. In by definition, at least, in my experience, it's inarticulate, it's just kind of all over the bloody place. So I'm not sure that's totally helpful for you, Eric. Um, the best thing you could do is is is, you know, fine. Find somebody who can put you in a hot fit you with a high density, EEG, and then just play with this stuff, or ring I don't think has enough resolution. So I'm not being totally helpful with you here. But the other I'm trying to where else you could find some data here
I can't remember for sure. But if you don't have it already, you should have this anyway. You're a scholar guy guy. You know, one of my favorite books in the last 10 years in this business. Evan Thompson is waking, dreaming being self and consciousness and neuroscience meditation to philosophy. This book is a masterpiece. And he goes through. He goes through the whole 24 hour cycle and how it is the cell phone consciousness go online come offline, and all these different dimensions. And the cool thing is he brings a heck of a lot of research, scholarship and science into it. I just can't remember with how much specificity he goes into this light sleep thing. So I wish I could be more helpful my friend that's kind of what comes to mind. Okay, here we go. So if anybody is here that I ran a comment on and want to follow up more than welcome, otherwise, I will start to go through the column and if somebody wants to raise their hand and ask her, it doesn't have to be a question. You can share something. Okay. From Dwight Andrew, please review the dreamless luminosity practice Yikes. Geez white as a big question, man. Yeah, that's luminosity yoga. Ah, I mean, that's yoga. Nidra. Right. So that's a massive topic, man. Well, there's a diurnal and nocturnal component, the principal practices that diurnal the daytime practice of luminosity which is working with formless dimensions, formless practices, open awareness, maha mudra absorption. So when you're talking about dreamless, luminosity practice, you're talking about graduate school. Nocturnal meditation, I mean, this is not easy, because it's so formless. It's so subtle and so therefore the daytime component is massive. Because like Kabir said of dreams of death applies to dream what is found that was found them or what is not found now is not found then. So if you have no relationship to the to the formless egoless selfless dimensions of your awareness during the day, you're not going to recognize it. At night. So number one practice is the diurnal daytime practice open awareness Maha Mudra zopim. The dreamless luminosity practices at night. Honestly, I'm getting more and more appreciation for classic yoga nidra once you get past where the phase where it's just this 5161 Point relaxation thing, I'm not dissing it. But once you take yoga nidra into the deeper dimensions, it's virtually synonymous. And I've changed my tune on this because I just didn't know better. It's virtually synonymous with Luminosity yoga, so I would recommend I'm reading the book right now. The Yoga Nidra the art of transformative sleep by Kamini Desai. She talks about this quite nicely in terms of references, you know, I have a chapter in my book Dream Yoga about luminosity practice. But you know, in terms of a night just briefly because again, it's such a big question, do I you visualize a blue lotus in your art center, not red blue, with a four petals with a seed syllables, and then you you kind of step your way down. The other thing that I've had actually more luck with, is do you use Dream Yoga as a halfway house. So you attain lucidity in the dream state. And then using that as a platform, you actually try to plunge into excuse me that the dream was dimension and you can do this a number of ways. One is just close your dream eyes a little bit like the earlier question, Ilya, there just wake you up. Because when you close your dream eyes, it tends to stop the cessation of your physical eye. That stops the REM rapid eye movement characteristic of your wake up. So on one level that can just bust you right out of a dream and then you've gone the wrong direction, right instead of going down you go up. Second thing that happened is like with the previous question, you just see black but you're still perceiving the black that's still my dream. Yoga is just a form. It's just a blank, formless experience of the dream. That's not That's not sleep yoga. And then the last one that works for me is close your eyes hold your dream bath dream breath implies through the floor, whatever dream you experience here and with the intention of arriving in your heart. Outside of that, the rest of it gets a little bit technical. The visualizations and stuff I think are above our pay grade for now. But maybe that is of some benefit. Okay, from tam this work with Dream Yoga is making me more aware of the mind created nature of all experience including waking high five, that's it. So do you think working with a path of Raja Yoga in the Hindu yogic tradition would be a great adjunct combination with Tibetan Dream Yoga? Yeah, why not? Sure. I mean, why not? I think any of the of the Hindu yoga is you know, kriya Raja is bhakti Jnana jhana. Absolutely. All of them can help. So, I mean, anything that works with awareness, anything that works with cope with cultivating openness is going to help. And so if you have some resonance with any of these Yogi's from the Hindu tradition, let's put it this way. It's not gonna hurt. Okay. All right. So hey, looks like we have a nothing coming in live. So unless somebody pipes in something else we could be done. I'll pause for a minute to see if somebody's just about to express themselves with a question. Hey, there's Kenneth. Yeah, hey, man. He was also a bee. Oh, this is so fun. Oh my gosh. And there's Maryland. Oh my gosh, this is so great. So these are all we see these all wonderful people that were with us at bail we I had fun. I'm not sure how much they did, but I thought it was great. This place is so beautiful. Oh, nice to see you guys. Excellent day. All right, so Okay, that looks like an auction. Right. Oh, one question was just piped in. From Jason, what is your opinion on imagery rehearsal? Therapy? You think those imagery rehearsal techniques should be more accessible for more people? I don't I can't speak with any authority about this as a therapy, I think is a rehearsal strategy altogether. absolutely valuable. So I can't speak about the therapy and have a Jason I can speak about it is a pure rehearsal and and in that capacity, it really is in the way I have practiced with it the way I've worked with it. It really is connected deeply to what I was talking about earlier about working with, with images in terms of heightening the power of the images, the quality of the mind, that's certainly very helpful. That in itself is helpful in relation to the natural world. The rehearsal capacity also, you know, you can do this Arthur Rubinstein. I know I'm not answering your question directly, because I'm not qualified to talk about the imagery rehearsal therapy. Rubinstein had such amazing powers of visualization, and imagination that he allegedly could conjure up in his imagination, and I actually did this a little bit when I was a kid as well didn't even know about it. He could conjure up a keyboard to dream keyboard, Dream keyboard and imaginary keyboard in his mind, and rehearse a composition completely within the context of his imagination. And then perform it without ever touching a piano. I completely believe it totally 100% Because what you do with your mind changes your brain exactly the same way that what you do with the physical world changes your brain, so I can speak a little bit about that. The rest of it I'm afraid I can't. Okay, oh, my rock comes in and buzzer shot. Hey, speaking a bunch of sites. My team the Denver Nuggets. World Champions right. Pretty cool. I'm sure most of you like I could care less. Actually. I never watched a basketball game period. But when your hometown gets to the finals, you know, I watched a couple of games and I have to say it was pretty cool. And when these athletes are amazing, they're like they're six feet 810 seven feet tall and they're dancing around like that on the floor. Are you kidding me? Okay, Myra far away and then maybe we'll be done. My dear friend Mayra.
Yes, I caught me by surprise when you mentioned the deep Nidra today and you recommended a book because I've been listening to you for so many years. negros Berto was part of my practice is what I do sometimes when I wake up at three in the morning and I immediately go into dreams. Cool. So what how do you know what was your transformation? What triggered your evolution?
In terms of my new relationship, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I'm
a yoga nidra itself and the way that you say that how it's related to Oh, yeah.
This part of it is I started reading more academic papers, because you know, yoga yoga nidra is is a multi Vaillant practice, right, this is what I'm discovering. And I'm sure this is probably old hat for you, but every single yoga nidra technique that I've ever experienced, and I've experienced a number, they never really say much and they never really get past the 61 point or whatever point relaxation thing. I mean, it's great, fantastic, wonderful. But it's like okay, well that's nice, but you know, where's the nature of mind here? Whereas luminosity yoga, whereas the nature of reality, not once have I heard it. So I just started being a little bit more curious when I dug deeper into it. And then I picked this book up, because I wanted to get a little bit more about the history of yoga nidra and then I realized that on one level, it really is this is when the taken to fruition. It is this kind of multi veil and practice that can take you all the way from the initial liminal phase, all the way deep into the complete, formless dimensions of your mind. And that's kind of cool. So it was basically just you know, I'm always learning I'm always studying, I'm always reading. And I'm having blind spots pointed out, and I continue to grow and learn. So my evolution is about being willing to say crap, I just didn't know better, right? It's that simple. So if you have another book that you might recommend or something in your own experience that ties your experience of yoga nidra and to classic Tibetan, luminosity, yoga, I'm all ears you can share with us now or you can pay me well.
So me became the reverse. Once I began to listen to you, I began to associate or some of those luminous parts in a way that yoga nidra is like looking back at some of your teachings, I realized that from the beginning, you may be saying things that I understood, but then you it's like marinating you keep listening and listening get deeper and any permeates your body in a different way. Yeah, that's nice. And in that sense, one day, you realize, Wow, that sensation that I have when I completely lost sense of where I was, and I came back when the teacher began to say again, isn't that a liminal state? So it gives the opportunity to open through relaxation, the body in a way that you are out of your head and you can feel more lovely
spot on. So you've been you've been doing this for a long time, right?
For you, but I didn't know what I was doing. I mean, I was like, I begin to the other day I was remembering one of the first questions that I asked you was I mentioned No, I want to know what you know, I'm trying to work in one taste. Not knowing absolutely. The extent of what that said but I just realized that teachers lead you and point out at you things from the beginning and it takes a while to you feel it in some spot on well said. Yeah, but thank you. I was curious.
Yeah, more than welcome. Susan laid by my Aristotle, scholar friend in the chat defining yoga nidra paper by Swami Veda, but after Yes, I read that paper. That's a good one. gives four stages. Yes, that's the paper that my friend Michelle Lowe. So she's, we I interviewed her a nightclub exclusive it's not an edge of mine is really big into this. And so she was the one that started sending me this stuff. After I had my conversation, or started to shape shift, and then I just started doing my own little adventurous research, blah, blah, blah. So hey, well, we're actually going to come in under the hour mark. That's great. Excellent. Okay, right. Let's like it's like an auction going once, going twice. Sold, this session is over. So nice to see everybody. Again, if it means anything to you always remember, we're not just doing this for ourselves. If what we're doing can't be of benefit to others. It's irrelevant. So take whatever we do here, gather it in whatever way speaks to you send it out, is it kind of dedication or merit to all sentient beings? So otherwise, we can just get too caught up on our own silly list silly little whatever is and lose contact with what's really important. But yeah, you know, usually ideally, next week, meditation thing on Monday, I can't remember if it's Joe or Jeffrey honestly don't remember schedule offerings coming up and you will see me around the hood so to speak, so thank you everybody for showing up. Let me see but annuals came in? No, I think we are good. Wonderful. Much love to you all. Sleep and Dream. Beautifully TaoTao. recording stopped