Dreaming Life

My September Goals: Let’s See What A Little Public Accountability Will Do….

Ben — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 01:00:12 +0000

Sharing my goals publicly is something new for me that I think will be interesting and rewarding to try. Public accountability and social support count for a lot, so let’s see how this all pans out and maybe it will be beneficial to keep doing this.

I’ll get right to it.

September Goals

1. Be active for 30 minutes every day.
Whether it’s jump roping, running, walking, lifting weights, or doing yoga – I will be active for a minimum or 30 minutes each day.

2. Publish 88,000 words online – either on my websites or to support my websites.
I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this on Dreaming Life, but my career ambition is to make a living writing and publishing content online. About a year and half ago I committed to making this dream a reality and have worked on it part time to full time ever since.

At the end of July, after a depressing drop in my online income (read: over 50%), I decided to buckle up and commit to publishing 150,000 words as part of the TKA Summer Rush program put on my mentors and friends at The Keyword Academy. I joined a month late, published 62,000 words in August, and need to publish 88,000 words in September to meet my goal here. This is going to stretch me but I have to do it.

3. Transfer $500 into my savings account.
Yep.

4. Break the habit of hitting snooze on my alarm.
I’ve indulged for far too long in the habit of hitting snooze on my alarm clock over and over and over…it’s something you can get away with quite easily if you’re single and won’t annoy the living shit out of anyone doing so. (Except for yourself.) This bad habit has got to go.

5. Brush my teeth twice a day.
Oh man – am I really sharing this goal with you publicly? I swear now that I’ve written this here, it will be a cold day in hell before I brush my teeth only one time in a day.

I will post an update to my goals at the end of September.

What’s the Best Way To Take Calea Zacatechichi?

Ben — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 01:33:52 +0000

Every Tuesday, I throw up questions from readers on the blog as a point of discussion. I invite your feedback in the comments! You can submit a question using the contact form here. Thanks!

. . .

If you’ve used Calea Z for dream-work before, please take a second to vote in the poll.

Calea Zacatechichi, the popular “dream herb” plant native to Mexico, offers many different options when it comes to how you would like to take it. A very common question I see and often get asked is:

What’s the best Way to Take Calea Zacatechichi?

The reason behind this question is two fold:

Many people are aware of how bitter the taste can be, so they’re looking for other ways to successfully work with Calea Z. Secondly, perhaps some ways of taking Calea Zacatechichi yield better results for dream work – naturally you’d want know what works best and go from there.

Here is what I think are the most effective methods, in order of most effective/most popular, to least effective/least popular.

Smoking Calea Zacatechichi Leaves and Resin

This includes “normal” leaves, smoking it with blended herbs such as this popular Dream Blend, which many find less harsh than straight Calea Z, enhanced leaves – such as 10x CZ Leaves, as well as smoking specially made resin, like this 20x resin.

In my experience, smoking calea leaves is the most common and effective method. If you have a water pipe, using cold water or water with ice cubes is a nice way to make the smoke more gentle on your lungs. This is what I personally do.

Drinking Calea Zacatechichi Tea

Making and drinking Calea Zacatechichi tea is seen as the “traditional” method, as this is the way natives use this herb when working with their dreams.

Calea tea is a very popular option.

One thing to note if you’ve never tried drinking Calea tea; it’s quite bitter. Here you can read more about how to make calea zacatechichi less bitter.

Swallowing Calea Zacatechichi Pills

Places like I am Shaman also offer pills you can take that are full of powdered dream herb. You can also make these pills yourself.

In my experience, this was not a very effective method. You can read more about this here in my post on making Calea Zacatechichi pills.

Chewing Calea Zacatechichi Leaves

This is the only method of ingestion I’ve not tried myself. I know little about it, having only heard of it through people writing in on this website about Calea Zacatechichi that they’ve done this before. I’d ask you to share your experience with this if you have tried such a thing.

What Do you Think?

It’s been a long time since I used any dream herbs and my own calea z experiences are less than stellar, but I just can’t get this fascinating plant out of my head. It’s traditional to work with Calea via smoking it and drinking it in a tea - and from reading experience reports and talking to others, the consensus seems to be that this is the best method. Or is it? I’m hoping you’ll vote in the poll above to help clarify this.

My No Alcohol for 30 Days Experiment

Ben — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 21:41:11 +0000

I’m at the tail end of a 30 day experiment of not drinking any alcohol. In this post I want to talk about my motivation for doing this, what it’s been like, and what I’ve learned from the experience.

I’ve been aware for quite some time that I drink too much and have had a lurking desire to do something about it for over a year.

A few months ago, without altering my behavior any, I decided to keep track of every bit of alcohol I was putting into my body. The results were no surprise to me: I was drinking 2-5 drinks a day, with a few jumps where this amount doubles due to a party or hanging out and really going at it.

I’ll be honest: looking at this list, I felt shameful. This is not the person I aspire to be.

After a stupid night of aimlessly drinking far too much for no apparent reason, I was determined to not drink anything the following night. And then I did the same the next night, and that’s when I silently decided I wanted to simply drop this attachment to alcohol out of my life.

And now that 30 days have passed, I really feel that’s what I’ve accomplished. I’ve broken this habit of always drinking a few beers every night. And what a habit it had become, because I mean that literally; I would always drink a 22 oz or 40 oz of beer, and sometimes more. It was a true habit in that I just always did it!

Here’s a few things I noticed in the last 30 days:

I was astonished how strong the desire to drink was for the first few nights. Habits die hard! This observation further fueled my desire to not drink because it was aggravating to think that I had become so habituated to getting an alcohol buzz. My gut reaction to this? My heart screamed out: Fuck that!
My dreams were super vivid and long the first few nights. This was a very interesting side effect, and one observed many times by others upon the cessation of various drugs. It seems like any physical dependency the body has will result in crazy dreams when broken.
Removing alcohol from my life made it infinitely easier to get up early. I work from home and set my own hours, so it’s incredibly easy to stay up late and sleep in late. It feels like I have forever been trying to push my schedule back to getting up earlier, and finally I have found the key to making this happen. I’m now getting up at 8:15am, which is an hour to two hours earlier than what was my normal wake up time. (As a side, I’m fascinated with the idea of become a true “early riser” and starting my day at 7am or even 6am. This might make for a great follow up 30 day experiment.)
One good decision helps propel and support other good decisions. This month I’ve felt more congruent in my decisions regarding health and what I put into my body than I have in a very long time. For instance, it’s unlikely I would have completed that 35 minute run 2 days ago if I hadn’t been doing this no alcohol experiment.
Tea is my new best friend. Hell, I’m even drinking a cup of tea right now as I type this article up. Ha!
By the way, I don’t think I’m an alcoholic. My AA friend tells me that for her, when I say I would often drink a 22 oz or a 40 oz of beer and then stop, this is “like drinking nothing” and the big contrast here with an alcoholic is that there is no stopping. You just continue drinking. But that doesn’t mean alcohol can’t be problematic or that habitual casual drinking is not a behavior worth assessing & being more conscious of.

The idea behind a 30 day experiment is something I learned from Steve Pavlina and his fantastic book, Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth.

The idea is that you can test out a new habit – or break an old one – without psychologically committing to the idea that what you’re doing you’ll have to do forever. This makes it a lot easier to muster the motivation to do it! You try something for 30 days, assess, and then make a conscious decision about what to do next. Awesome.

For me, my goal was to remove my attachment to feeling like I had to drink every night, casually or not. This term “attachment” describes exactly how I feel my behavior had become, both in the normal sense and even in a more deep, Buddhist-minded sense. With this habit broken, it’s like something is freed up in my brain. I feel super good about this.

By default, I am going to continue doing what I’m doing but I haven’t mind an intentional decision one way or the other. I really like the idea of basically not drinking for the rest of the year, but I’m open to the idea that maybe there will be a few situations where I will want to and will be OK with doing so.

I mainly just want to make conscious decisions in regards to what I’m doing and not do anything by default or out of habit, unless it’s a habit I’ve intentionally cultivated.

Also, for what it’s worth, I am trying to lose weight, and the proposition that by simply doing what I’m already doing will lead to shedding some extra pounds between now and New Years is a very seductive one indeed!

I Ran For 35 Minutes Today!

Ben — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 21:53:44 +0000

Today I hit a mini-milestone in my efforts to be active and healthy: I ran for 35 minutes straight. Wahoo!

This is something only I’ve done a few times in my life, and all those times were in the 6 weeks in which I followed Bill Phillips brilliant Body for Life program (now called Transformation.) back in… eish! It was all the way back in 1999. So it’s been 11 years since I’ve ran this far!!

I’d been slowly upping the ante in my walks and runs, beginning all the way back in April 2010.

This involved first just walking for an hour, then adding a 10 minute run into my walks, then a 20 minute run, then alternating between running and walking for 5 minute intervals for 35 minutes, to then running for 35 minutes this afternoon.

It felt really wonderful to run* for that long, and my neighborhood has all sorts of natural hills in it – one of which feels like a small mountain when you’re running the damn thing – so that makes for a nice diverse workout.

*or should I say jog? It’s really more like jogging than running. But I like to think I’m a runner, not a “jogger.” Heh.

I then walked for 30 minutes after my run.

Final totals according to my lovely Timex Heart Rate Monitor:

Total Time: 1 hour 6 minutes
Average Heart Rate: 162 bpm
Peak Heart Rate: 188 bpm
Calories Burned: 1079

That last number made me particularly thrilled – most of my workouts are about half this, and this is the first time I hit over a 1,000 calories from a single training session. (So if you want to know how to burn 1,000 calories: run for 35 minutes, then walk for 30 minutes. Boom! There ya go.)

Very cool.

I’m thinking about blogging about this stuff all the time now because I’m started to really enjoy exercising and tracking all the data in my journal. A bit different than my normal posts on dreams but then again, maybe there’s something to dreaming and running a blogging about it. (I know my friend ZATAOD would agree.)

Is Dreaming Like Tripping?

Ben — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 05:51:10 +0000

Note: every Tuesday I take a question from my logs or from my emails and throw it up on the site as a point of discussion. If there’s something you’d like to see discussed, send your question here. Thanks!

Today’s discussion question is a great one and touches on the sneaky relationship between different states of consciousness.

Here’s the big Q:

“Is dreaming like tripping?”

I think the answer is simple:

yes, there are definitely similarities between the two states.

In my own experience studying and working with my dreams, including taking drugs (mushrooms, etc) inside a dream in order to “dream trip”, and my own experience with taking drugs, I can say with certainty that yes, in my own experience at least, there is a strong parallel between dreams and tripping. So yes, I would say the dreaming is like tripping and vice versa.

This is an experience that many people have confirmed. I’ve even talked about it some here before. In my interview with friend and fellow psychonautic explorer Chad Watts, he discusses the relationship between entheogens and lucid dreaming. (And it’s fascinating stuff – please check out this interview!)

Some drugs lend themselves very much to the dream world experience. My experience taking diphenhydramine years ago was incredibly dream like (and not in a positive way, BTW) and many psychonauts have long noted the relationship between various substances such as LSD and mushrooms and dreaming, as well as the more recently popularly entheogen, Salvia Divinorum, and it’s similarly dream-like effects on the brain.

What does this all mean?

For one, it doesn’t mean that taking any of the aforementioned substances should be taken lightly since it’s “just like dreaming.” Dreams can’t kill you…. but putting substances into your body can kill you at worst, and reasonably put you at risk both in a mental sense and physical sense if you’re being foolish about it.

Secondly, it’s doesn’t mean that the experiences are the same. It’s just that, yes, there are parallels!

SO what are some of the parallels? How is dreaming like tripping?

In my own experience, I’ve noted the following:

1) The ability to think of something and have it happen. In a dream, this meant making something appear when lucid because I intended for it to appear. While tripping, it meant hallucinating (and not realizing I was doing so) after thinking about something. (Kind of scary, in retrospect.)

2) The fluid nature of both reality and time in both circumstances. And by this I mean the general disconnect between “scenes” in dreams and the disconnect between one minute to the next when tripping.

3) The amazing ability to trip within a dream by taking drugs only in the dream. So-called “dream tripping” fascinates the hell out of me and it’s something I’ve done a few times in my dreams. In every instance, taking the substance had a big effect on me and resulted in an altered state of consciousness, very much like tripping for real, yet it all occurred in the dream. (For more on this phenomenon, watch this fascinating Neurosoup video on dream tripping.)

4) An absence of logical thinking, as well as the ability to intuit importance and emphasis on situations and feelings beyond their ordinary meaning.
This is hard to put into words. Maybe a pointer here is that dreams can seem more “real than reality” and when taking a psychedelic, the resulting experience can seem “more real” than every day reality. This is certainly a common theme to both the psychedelic experience and the dream world – especially vivid dreams and lucid dreams. Somehow, the user feels the experience is “more real” than their normal experience of reality.

What Do You Think?

Those are 4 points I can see where there’s a consistency or blending of experiences in regards to tripping and dreaming. What about you? What you have experienced? What do you think about these ideas?

Please share your own thoughts and experiences as it relates to dreaming and tripping in the comments below. Thanks!

Does Masturbation Effect Lucid Dreams?

Ben — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 00:55:17 +0000

Attention! Every Tuesday, I’ll be answering questions from readers about dreams or anything else we talk about here on Dreaming Life! And guess what? I’d love to hear from you, too! Send your questions using the contact form here. Thanks!

AHHH -now here’s a question that’s sure to generate some interest:

“Does Masturbation Effect Lucid Dreams?”

The timing of receiving such a question couldn’t be more perfect! I’d been wanting to talk about masturbation and lucid dreaming but felt somewhat at odds with the right way to bring it up. I’m going to use this as an opportunity to mention an experiment I recently performed related to this question, and then go back to answering this question specifically as best I can.

So, here’s my experiment:

I had a theory that I could use abstinence as a way to becoming lucid.

My idea was that if I did not masturbate (or otherwise release any “sexual energy”), I would see an increase in the sexual content of my dreams.

Simultaneously, I would set my intentions towards affirming that any sexual experience I was having must mean I am dreaming.

In other words, if sexual abstinence created an environment in which sexual experiences appeared more frequently in my dreams, I could then use sex as a dream sign, do a reality test, and realize I’m dreaming.

Sounds fairly logical, right?

So what happened?

I did this for 2 weeks and the results did not yield any lucid dreams.

I don’t think there’s any problems with the logic behind my experiment, however. For me, the problem was that the lack of masturbating did not correlate with a rise in sex dreams. This is interesting especially in that over my entire life, I very rarely have dreams where I’m actually, literally having sex anyway.

And so I ask of you, DEAR READER: I know this is something that other people have tried and I’d love to hear if your experience led to better results than mine or were about the same.

NOW – back to the question the reader asked:

Does masturbation affect lucid dreams?

In my opinion:

In general, no.
But there are some exceptions.

Here’s my thoughts on the subject.

1) In general, I don’t think that by masturbating or not masturbating you’re going to see any difference in your ability to have lucid dreams. Why? Because becoming lucid for most people involves practicing specific tasks (such as reality tests and other lucid dreaming techniques) designed to create a situation in a dream where you realize you’re dreaming. This is what’s going to effect your ability to have or not have lucid dreams, not the issue of whether or not you gave yourself an orgasm before going to bed.

2) If you’re a frequent lucid dreamer, and you’re worried that by masturbating you’ll be less successfully at becoming lucid… I think this worry is unfounded. What’s the connection here? Does any one know something about this or have any personal experience they want to share on this point?

3) On a similar note if you’re trying super hard to have lucid dreams and are having unsuccessful results….maybe that’s where this question is coming from. Could fault lie in the act of masturbating before going to sleep? I suppose I can imagine how releasing sexual energy could calm the mind and thus make it harder to “wake up” in your dreams, maybe - but again, I don’t think this is really a big factor. A much more meaningful question to ask would be what are you doing to try and have lucid dreams? This is basically point number 1 all over again.

4) All that being said, I do think that if you are very in touch with your body and your mind, you can use abstinence as a means of storing and saving your own sexual energy which can then favorably be leveraged into inducing more conscious awareness in the dream state. But I don’t know this from personal experience. It’s more of a speculative thought experiment.

. . . . . . . .

So that is my take on the question of masturbation and dreams.

However:

Anything having to do with sex and lucid dreaming generates a lot of interest.

And so I hope to hear from ya’ll on this one.:)

Do you think that masturbating effects lucid dreaming? And if so, does masturbation help or hurt the ability to become lucid in a dream?

Hit up the comments below with your opinions & experiences.

Photo Credit:TruBlueBoy

Can B6 Keep Me Awake At Night?

Ben — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 00:55:34 +0000

Attention! Every Tuesday, I’ll be answering questions from readers about dreams or anything else we talk about here on Dreaming Life! And guess what? I’d love to hear from you, too! Send your questions using the contact form here. Thanks!

People interested in their dreams have long noted the fascinating relationship between Vitamin B6 and dreams.

My own interest in dreams is no exception: one of the earliest blog posts I ever wrote about documented my dream reports after taking B6. It’s something that still intrigues the hell out of me to this day.

So why this all fascination with B6?

For one:

B6 is familiar. People aren’t scared to try it out of fear or unfamiliarity, such as that which might be felt in regard to experimenting with other dream potentiators, such as Calea Zacatechichi, African Dream Root, or galantamine.

Yet most importantly:

B6 works. And by that, I mean it tends to have a dramatic effect on the dreams of everyone who tries it. Whereas the aforementioned “dream herbs” are infamous for having mixed results, B6 tends to slam you over the head and take your dreaming mind for a little roller coaster ride! (For me, the dreams tend to always be so intense they become nightmares.)

However, surely knowing that B6 can effect your dreams, I recently had someone ask the question:

“Can B6 Keep Me Awake At Night?”

In my own experience, this has never been the case. Additionally, I have never heard of anyone having problems falling asleep after taking B6. I don’t think there’s any correlation between B6 and insomnia or any kind of sleep problems. I don’t see how it would act on the brain to keep you up.

But, since so many people out there reading this have experience dosing up with B6 to effect their dreams it got me curious: do any of you have any experiences where B6 kept you awake at night?

Please leave a comment below with your experiences taking B6 and if it had any effect on your ability to fall asleep or not fall asleep!

The Inception Movie & Dreams: 5 Things I Really Liked About This Film

Ben — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 02:54:04 +0000

SO I’m thrilled to say I saw INCEPTION tonight for my 30th birthday at IMAX.

Verdict?

It was pretty awesome.

In fact, I’d say this is the best film that’s come along that is specifically about dreams and the architecture of the dreaming mind since Vanilla Sky was released in 2001.

Instead of a movie review, I just want to bring up some points of the film that intrigue me. If you’ve not seen the movie, I don’t know if you will want to read any further!

…still with me?

OK, here we go!

1) The use of dreams signs.

Sort of.

But if you’ve seen the film and you’re familiar with lucid dreaming, you probably know what I’m referencing: in the movie they use small, unique objects that only they know something distinct about. Because of this uniqueness, they are used as a test of their reality, since someone else designing their dreamscape or dream landscape would be unable to replicate what’s unique about the object, and thus, the dreamer would know this meant the experience is a dream.

I thought this was very cool twist on the lucid dreaming community’s use of dream signs as a way to test reality to realize you’re dreaming.

2) The discussion on how dreams just “start” without a beginning.

In the beginning of the film, Leonardo Dicaprio is training his new dream architect and asks her how they got to where they are now. She cannot remember and realizes that they are actually in a dream right then and there.

This is definitely something familiar to lucid dreamers as a means of lucid dream induction. i.e. to train yourself to ask the question “How did I get here? What was I doing 20 minutes ago?” so that you do it while dreaming, and it becomes a lucid dream cue.

This is very cool and I don’t believe I’ve seen any film on dreams mention this concept.

3) The huge use of dreams within dreams and false awakenings.

The idea that within each dream inside a dream one is closer to both the subconscious and an increasingly unstable dreamscape is awesome. They did a really good job on this one I think.

4) The nature of dream time.

The idea that dream time gets exponentially longer as you move down each level of a dream within a dream was very clever both as a plot device and just as an idea on dreams.

But I couldn’t help thinking of Stephen LaBerge’s lucid dream experiments where they had a subject fall asleep, become lucid, cue the outside world that they were lucid (I believe with pre-approved motions of their eyes, which move in real life parallel with the subjects dream movements) and then count from 1 to 30 followed by a second eye movement cue to signal the count is complete. From what I recall, the research found that the time experienced in the subjects dream was basically the same as the time experienced outside of the dream.

In other words, time passes the same in a dream as it does when awake.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that all dreams experience time like this, does it? Perhaps it was just that one dreamers experience and that specific dream.

For me personally, I’ve never had a dream experience that led me to believe that time can stretch in huge ways in the dream world. But I have had visitors here discuss in the comments that they’ve had dreams that lasted years or entire lifetimes – something I must admit I find hard to believe, but nevertheless, am eager to hear about.

Do you have dream experiences that stretch the concept of time?

5) The notion that characters in our dreams are projections of our subconscious.

Yep, they hit the nail on the head with that one and it was nice to see it be a strong part of the story. I loved how the dream characters became resistant to the people coming into the dreams when they sensed someone was messing with their world, like a subconscious psychological defense of the dreaming mind.

. . .

All in all, a kick ass movie about dreaming, for sure!

If you’ve seen the Inception dream movie already, I’d love to know what you think!

Did they “got it right”?

What did you like or dislike?

How does it compare to other movies about dreams?

And most importantly, did you think it was a little silly how many people they had shooting machine guns at each other while skiing on a mountain side? I did..

So I Went To This Buddhist Class Last Night … Part I

Ben — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 01:45:03 +0000

Last night I went to an introductory Buddhist class here in my town.

I had a great time!

And as can be expected, the experience got my brain cells moving around and you know I love it when that happens…

I have been having a slow yet steady love affair with Buddhism for quite some time now. I feel that the theories laid out in the Buddhist philosophy, or religion, if you prefer, mostly make sense.

To cut to the chase, I think that the Buddhist framework for identifying the causes of suffering and removing those causes are realistic, tangible, practical, and meaningful.

Furthermore, I also think this framework inherently has nothing to do with theology or God, which in my search for truth, I find incredibly seductive.

You see, I have a kind of unspoken motto I follow when it comes to all spiritual stuff: I don’t want to fool myself.

I strongly feel this way!

I’ll say it again: I don’t want to fool myself!

And that is why Buddhism is so wonderful to me because it presents such a well thought out method for being happy and living life; something that it testable and doesn’t rely on faith, in order to “believe” it.

That’s the thing really – there’s nothing to “believe.”

Yet there is one prominent aspect of Buddhism that is faith based.

And it’s the biggest hurdle I see that Buddhism has to jump here in the West in order for it to be applicable in the modern world: it’s those pesky ideas having to do with rebirth and reincarnation!

Even the teacher noted as such when he stated that the concept of rebirth was a big speed bump for him. He went on to say that if it was a problem for you, to simply set it aside and not worry about it. I really like that open mindedness but at the same time, I think it’s something that ultimately holds back Buddhist ideas from being applicable and relevant to a couple billion people. It’s a cultural speed bump, and one that many secular people are not going to accept because it doesn’t make sense to them.

Recently, Buddhist teacher and writer Stephen Bachelor took a nice step in jumping over that speed bump by publishing Confession of a Buddhist Atheist. I have not had a chance to fully read this book (yet) but it points to what I think is an inevitable evolution of Buddhism in an increasingly scientific world: Buddhism eventually is going to drop theological ideas concerning rebirth, reincarnation, and to the small extent that it’s even present now, it will also drop any emphasis on worship or deification of Siddhartha Gautama, aka The Buddha.

At least that is what will happen if Buddhism continues to spread in the Western world, where these two partners will evolve together in the ongoing dance that all cultures and religions take part in as each one adapts to the other.

Case in point: when was the last time you read a book on Buddhism written for Westerners that put any emphasis on reincarnation? For sure, it is in some, but even then, my point is that it’s not emphasized. And for many teachers, when talking to Western students via their books, rebirth is rarely mentioned at all.

A sign of things to come?

Theology and Faith: Just A Distraction from What Matters?

Atheist Sam Harris states that:

“The wisdom of the Buddha is currently trapped within the religion of Buddhism.” (Source: Shambala Sun)

I felt much the same way during a Q&A session of the class, wherein which people asked such questions as:

Can an animal be enlightened in a single lifetime?
Are people born into poverty and suffering because of their previous lives?
Can a human being be reborn into a lower realm?

(By the way, the teachers answer was no, yes, and yes, respectively.)

Now by no means am I mocking the individuals asking these questions. I don’t know their motivation for seeking clarifications on such things, but either way, I don’t have any personal ill will towards them for seeking answers to these questions.

But I couldn’t help thinking:

Isn’t this just a huge distraction from what really matters?

To put it in Buddhist terminology, if the goal is to eliminate all negative qualities of mind and instead to actualize or realize all positive qualities of mind, then to me, these questions surrounding rebirth and reincarnation are a pointless distraction.

Nothing in my day to day life has anything to do with the theological concept of whether or not an animal can become enlightened or whether I might be reborn as a roach or an ant.

And in this way, I see a connection between how when Buddhism (or anything) steers into theology, you quickly get steered into activities that are somewhat meaningless.

What do you guys think?

See, per my motto of “not fooling myself” I tend to get really hung up on points like this. I need everything to make sense, to add up. In a way, the idea that these things are distractions has become a self fulfilling prophecy for me – the irony being that (even the absence of ) these beliefs has still become a distraction. Oh vey!

Note: I really would love to hear others thoughts on the points raised in this article. And to clarify, I have much love and respect for the millions of Buddhists who believe in rebirth, which includes nearly every Buddhist teacher I’ve studied and learned from by reading their books.

Dream #9: Dreamsigns & The Hilarity of How Dreams Mock Us

Ben — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 03:51:05 +0000

Photo by Ben

I’ve noticed before how my intentions with my own dreams often strike back in clever ways.

For instance, when I was readily working with Calea Zacatechichi, it’s powers alluded me, even mocked me. I would have dreams about taking dream herbs instead of having lucid dreams or crazy vivid dreams! Ha! Oh Calea Z…

Anyhow – I wanted to share a dream today that’s about having a hole in my palm.

This comes from the fact that one of my favorite means of reality testing, and by extension, testing the reality (or lack thereof) in the dream world, is putting my hands through things and putting a finger from my left hand into my right palm, or vice versa. (As I type this out it sounds a lot creepier than it is when I actually do it in a dream, which is that context is like striking gold.)

This is a great method for reality testing because you can do this no matter where you are, in any context, in both the dream world and in waking life.

I had a dream that tied into this method for reality testing, which is both clever and maddening at once. It hints at some kind of intelligence operating within our dreaming minds, unconscious or irrelevant to our intentions.

Here’s what I wrote down in my dream journal:

I’ve got this hole in my left hand. It’s not huge, but it’s there, and it’s kinda freaking me out. I mean, maybe I should see a doctor about it! Couldn’t it get infected? I look it up online and find some dumbass who posted on Yahoo! Answers something about a hole in his hand, complete with an obviously doctored photo of his hand with a big hole in it.

After this post, the responses included many beautiful pieces of art that were created in the shape of a hand. For instance, ballerinas or dancing figures, that overall are in the shape of a hand.

I realize if I take a picture of my hand, it’s going to be hard to see the hole. The palm side of the hole is larger than the top of my hand, which is sort of black around the edges of the hole.

I realize one thing I can do is shine a laser through it! So I shine a laser through it, putting this large flashlight-like device over the top of my hand, cupping it, and then it comes out in a laser beam from my palm, down towards the bathroom counter. I’m showing N and someone else this, in my bathroom, and they think it’s a magic trick.

It’s not, and it actually seals up the hole mostly, causing it to burn like hell and bleed a bit too.

I added the following commentary about this dream that morning:

Note: Hilarious that I dream of a hole in my hand when everyday i do reality checks counting my fingers, sometimes followed up by imagining a hole in my hand and/or trying to put a finger through my palm.

It’s almost like inside of all our heads, there’s a little shaman dream prankster, ready to push back when we overly get attached to setting a certain intention with a dream – whether it be a dream sign or getting to excited about the idea of using a dream herb to have vivid dreams or lucid dreams.

Why do you think it is that it works like this? What’s going on here when our dreams mock our intentions to work with them?

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