Dreaming Life » Website Admin

CaleaZDreams.com launched – New website on Dream Herb!

Ben — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:29:18 +0000

I’ve finally launched CaleaZdreams.com!

This website is exclusively devoted to using Calea Zacatechichi in relation to working with your dreams.

Calea Z, also called dream herb, comes up constantly on lucid dreaming forums and dream discussion groups. People always have questions on it! And there’s not one site people always get referred to – there’s actually NO websites just on Calea Z, until now! So I’m hoping this site will help fill the void.

CaleaZdreams.com isn’t a “blog” but rather a resource site or a guide on Calea Z.

If you have experience with Calea Zacatechichi, consider writing it up and posting an experience report! Email me for more info.

Click here or on the banner to visit CaleaZdreams.com.

PS Let me know what you think too by adding a comment below.

Waking back up from a blog break…

Ben — Sat, 24 May 2008 18:30:57 +0000

It’s been a long time since Dreaming Life had an update & I’m currently assessing what I want to do with this blog.

I’m absolutely thrilled to see some of the more popular posts here receive a steady stream of visitors, no matter what. Because of this, I’m considering changing this site into more of a “resource” site with the more popular posts / articles put out front for all to see, with maybe the blog being just another section of the site? We’ll see.

Even though Dreaming Life hasn’t been getting any action, I’ve been working on a bunch of related stuff in background!

Very soon I will be publicly launching a handful of new sites, including :

a website exclusively on dream herb AKA Calea Zacatechichi
a website exclusively on Vitamin B6 & Dreams

Anyone with experiences with dream herb or B6 that they want to share, email me! Both sites feature an ‘experience reports’-type section of individuals experiences.

PS I also switched back to the nice, clean, crisp layout I used to have for Dreaming Life. Looks nicer eh? All those ads plus the big-ass text on the other design were starting to look brutally ugly to me… I will probably change the design again though, ha!

Website Redesign

Ben — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 00:22:03 +0000

Today I’ve been experimenting with a few different layouts. As much I liked the old design, it was started to look stagnant and I found it’s inherent design limiting for presenting information in two columns.

It’s been a long search trying to find a good 3 column WordPress theme with all the geeky details I want for the blog, both back-end and front-end! But I think I found it with this one…

I hope it provides for a more user friendly visit to the site and all the different pages here. I’m still working on tweaking the settings, so things might look a little funny here and there.

If you have any comments or technical issues with the new design, let me know!

Thanks.

Why I Haven’t Posted In The Last 2 Week: Confession Time…

Ben — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 02:13:08 +0000

Life has been rough lately.

Making that time for Dreaming Life between an increasingly demanding job, my role as a husband, and just dealing with my life is partly to blame, but it goes deeper than this.

To be honest, I’ve been struggling with personal issues that have taken up much of my time and emotional energy.

I think I’m experiencing some growing pains of adulthood. This is a rough transition, ya know? In the last few years I’ve gone to school, gotten married, bought a place, and started a real career. It’s a lot to take in, and somewhere in between it all, I struggle to find personal fulfillment and just plain happiness.

I know writing helps keep me sane – I’ve kept journals all my life, and this blog is an extension of that need to write. The best part of doing it here though is that I don’t just write but I converse, connect, listen, and learn. So I know through it all Dreaming Life will stay up because I need this outlet to keep me sane.

I’m revving up to publish some cool things soon – like an interview with the founder of the Aether Lucid Dreaming Retreat (the first one of which is happening right now in Mexico this week!), a review of the film Waking Life, and a discussion panel with some of my favorite bloggers and thinkers on lucid dreaming. (I can’t wait for this last feature to go public!)

So stick around for what’s coming. Dreaming Life isn’t going to fade away, it’s just going through growing pains along with me.

Attention Fellow Bloggers!

Ben — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:35:21 +0000

The second edition of Dreaming Life’s carnival is coming out Novembe 28, 2007.

If you’ve got a blog post about dreams, lucid dreaming, OBE, NDE, brain science, and even posts from a skeptic viewpoint on the aforementioned subjects, please submit something to be featured.

Click here for the general info on the carnival.

Click here to go directly to the submission form.

I am happy to say that with the first edition I was able to promote some wonderful blogs and blog posts. Click here to check it out.

Carnival of Dreams, Mysticism, Near Death, and Out of Body Experiences: First Edition for October 2007

Ben — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 20:42:39 +0000

Welcome to the First Edition of Dreaming Life’s newest Carnival. I got many awesome entries this time around that I’m psyched to share with you. I was much more selective about what was included and what was not, so rest assured, you’re only getting the best of the best here. Thanks to all the bloggers who submitted such quality posts! Everyone please check them out and be sure to leave them some comments

First up, Will Mitchell presents an Introduction to Lucid Dreams and the Lucid Dream Experiment posted at www.SparkedBlog.com.

This is a well written piece on lucid dreaming, including some interesting historical bits. I challenge the author though on the claim that although lucid dreaming has been scientifically proven, it still resides in the “speculative realm.” The concept and experience of lucid dreaming is far from speculation. Was this a typo or something?

Eric Michael Johnson submitted The Feeling of What Happens posted at The Primate Diaries, a post that’s sure to piss off some readers of this blog and intrigue others (I find myself in the latter camp.)

To give you an idea of where he’s going with this, I’ll give you some quotes:

“It’s not too much of a stretch to link such phantom limbs with a feeling for God. What’s more likely? That an invisible world exists that controls our destiny (but that people around the globe interpret in vastly different ways) or that all humans have similar neural networks that, under certain circumstances, engender a feeling of the divine?”

And this one below is a great talking point. Interesting how he uses the word “trick”…

“A further argument in favor of the view that the divine is an internal state is that people in cultures all over the world shock their systems through fasting, rhythmic prayer, chanting or even with hallucinogens in order to trick their brains into a mystical experience.”

At the other end of the spectrum,, we have a story about an out of body experience titled My Astral Encounter With a Tribal Shaman posted at Season of Shadows Blog, by John Wolfe. John submitted this entry saying, “A story of my out-of-body encounter with a Native American healer, during (what was possibly) the 19th Century.”

I don’t know what to think of OOBE, but I love to hear about them from all perspectives; the personal subjective perspective, as above, and the neurological happenings of the brain, too.

In other strangeness:

Dream precognition weirds me out because doesn’t it pre-suppose that there’s no such thing as free will? If that’s the case, I guess I have no choice but to share with you Tristan Sullivan’s account at Imagine, titled simply Dreams.

Next up we have a clevel post by Dr. Martin W. Russell called The Quicksand Guide To Professional Help. Martin invites us to post a “NDE” take on the scenario he’s presented. (It’ll make sense when you read it.) Check it out and give it your best shot.

Don’t stop reading!

These last two entries are certainly worth your awhile.

Both posts come from Erin Pavlina (partner of famous lucid dreamer and blogger Steven Pavlina), posted at Erin Pavlina’s Blog, and address different aspects of lucid dreaming.

In Enhancing Dream Recall, she shares the skills she uses to remember her dreams, including the clever act of remember a dream by becoming lucid and talking about it with a dream character in the dream that follows.

In this post she also mention the lucid dreaming podcast posted on Steve Pavlina’s blog. This podcast is free to download and has some great info on lucid dreaming. (While you’re there, check out the other podcasts, they are awesome.)

Finally, Erin hits us with an awesome story of how she “used lucid dreaming to conquer a major fear,” in Embracing Your Fear.This is a fascinating account of being haunted by the popular horror figure from Nightmare on Elm Street! Erin relays how Freddy haunted her – even in her lucid dreams! – for nearly a year, how she tried to stop him, and ultimately, how she was able to succeed in conquering her fear.

A fascinating account of dream symbolism and the personal growth made possible through lucid dreaming. (And probably my favorite link in the whole carnival.)

…

Hope you enjoyed this edition of the carnival. The next one will be coming out before Christmas (Yikes! Guess what – Christmas isn’t all that far away now is it!)

If you found something here really interesting, let me know by leaving a comment below with your thoughts.

Help Me Create a New Website on Calea Zacatechichi – Experience Reports needed!

Ben — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 20:03:42 +0000

I am opening a new website dedicated solely to Calea Zacatechichi!

I want to create the internet’s best resource on Calea Z, including history, preperation, methods of ingesting it, cultivation, and more.

I especially want to create a resource that documents the relationship between Calea Zacetechichi and dreams.

And this is what I need your help with the most!

If you have taken the dream herb, I need to hear your story. I am looking to publish user reports / experience reports about peoples experience with Calea Z. The “reports” need not be formal or especially polished – just a simple reflection of the facts and the ensuing experience works best.

For example, a basic report would document how much was taken, how it was taken, and what happened. It doesn’t matter if you had crazy dreams, lucid dreams, and no dreams at all, I want to hear about it and put it online so people have a thorough resource on Calea Zacatechichi.

Also, if you have experience cultivating the plant, I would also like to hear from you!

For more info, please send me an email at consciousdreaming@gmail.com. You can also leave your email address by filling out the comment form below (your email is only shown to me, not website visitors) and I will contact you.

I am really excited about putting this site online. If you want to be involved in any way or have any questions, leave a comment or send me an email.

My goal is to have the site up and running in 4-12 weeks.

Hey everybody, I’m back!

Ben — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:31:16 +0000

Hey everybody! I’m back from my trip to Belarus!

My wife and I made it home safe after a grueling 24 hours of security checkpoints, layovers, and 3 flights covering many thousands of miles.

The flights themselves offered one brilliant experience: that of watching the world that exists up in the sky, there in between the cities of clouds. The landscapes created by clouds was utterly beautiful and surreal and reminded me of a dream. I made a mental note to myself to come back to this wonderful world in a lucid dream and fly through all this beauty.

Traveling for 3 weeks definitely shook up the dream-maker inside my head!

I repeatedly had bizarre and complex dreams.

I also experienced 3 lucid dreams during these 3 weeks and many “semi-lucid” episodes.

Because I was sleeping in different and often uncomfortable beds, couches, or floors, I woke up more than usual throughout the night. Every time I fell back asleep, I used the opportunity to achieve lucidity by guiding my thoughts towards dreams and situations I intended to have. This method was successful in generating many small dream sequences with a certain amount of conscious awareness that I was dreaming, beyond the 3 “full-blown” lucid dreams I mentioned above.

Very cool stuff!

I often struggle with implementing induction methods but this one is so easy and straight forward, I’m psyched about where it will take my dreams.

One last bit in the “I’m back” post:

I read The Self-Aware Universe while traveling. This book is totally awesome and I highly recommend it for anyone with an interest in both science and spirituality.

A good summary of the book can be found here:

A Synopsis of Amit Goswami’s Theory of Physics and Psychic Phenomena.

For those interested in psychic phenomena, take note that his theory leaves room for a scientific explanation of experiences such as out of body experiences and for capabilities such as remote viewing and telepathy.By the way, if you’ve seen the movie What the Bleep, remember the older Indian scientist in the film talking about consciousness and physics? That’s him, the author of The Self Aware Universe, quantum physicist Amit Goswami.

I will be gone for the next 3 weeks…

Ben — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 21:53:24 +0000

As much as I hate doing this, I will hardly be doing any blogging until October!!

Why?

Well…

Tomorrow I leave for a 3 week to visit family in Belarus. My access to the internet will be sporadic at best, and even then it will be with an 28k modem connection. I will make it up for you all when I get back with all sorts of goodies, but until . . . → Read More: I will be gone for the next 3 weeks…

If you have a blog…

Ben — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 21:30:28 +0000

…then check out the latest blog carnival I set up:

Carnival of Dreams, Lucid Dreaming….and even OBE and NDE.

Description: “Submit your posts on dreams, lucid dreaming, out of body experiences, even near death experiences. Posts can be personal stories, criticisms/skeptical, video blogs, how-to, or whatever really. ”

Click Here to Submit A Blog Post To This Carnival

First edition comes out in about 8 weeks!

PS. Am I the only one who gets confused and lost trying to navigate the horrible un-intuitive content navigation design of Blog Carnival? Call me crazy, but maybe the search function should allow you to search for open carnivals? And what about a nice clear link that takes you to all the open carnivals? (Oh its there, but don’t expect it to jump out at at you.)

PSS. It only gets worse once you register and attempt to start a new carnival.

PSSS. On a similiar note of annoyance with Blog Carnival, they deleted the Inner Exploration Carnival! I guess too much time had passed since the first and now only edition.