Dreams as closed spaces within consciousness

[NobodySpecial268]

There's most definitely a difference with the spontaneous or sleeping lucid dreams as opposed to moving into them from a waking state. This thread will probably end up being a decent intermediate step between parts 3 and 4 of my series, both for me and readers. I don't know if I'd call it dreams, but it's different. Easier to feel than to describe. You know when you got there, when you get there, if you remember the trip. I feel like remembering is the part that has no shortcuts. You either have a knack for it or you spend time working out how to do it, which involves time and effort.

We can always try to figure it out.

Remembering is something that needs to be explored. I know that the further out I go (in the waking state) the more difficult it is to remember what happens, and what one does there.

There is an inversion of consciousness when awakening and falling asleep. I studied that in an American teenager who would likely be diagnosed as a 'paranoid schizophrenic'. She is also a 'seer' in the sense that she can see normally unseen Beings and hear voices.

I drew this for the girl's mother when the girl was a patient of mine:

   

That may represent a 'chakra' in the eastern mystical sense. They may dismiss it as such, though I feel the diagram represents the entire consciousness. The colours are correct along with the number of petals. Though, the actual number of petals varies from person to person. At the time, it was found that if any of the petals' had not changed in colour during the process of waking up, one knew that some aspects of the sleeping state were still active. Vice versa, this would apply as 'poor sleeping' problems. If the colour change was clean and complete, so was the transition between asleep and awake. That may apply somehow to 'remembering' dreams. (more research needed here.)

Castaneda is a bit intense with his recommendations on open-eyed meditation in a totally dark room for long durations, but it's a clever use of Ganzfeld effect that also exploits the high sensitivity of the rods in your eyes. There's also a routine of what is sort of like shamanistic tai-chi movements. It has an analog in Eastern tradition. It may be a type of tummo, but I don't recall. It also fits under the Japanese definition of kata, I believe. Indian tradition has some variants too. I do recall an old video with a practitioner of one technique doing a "levitation" practice which amounted to leaping straight up in the air and then entering the lotus position before hitting the ground. Castaneda's physical work isn't that intense to my recollection, but it is done in the same totally dark space as the meditations.

Castenada did quite a few gazing techniques in his books. I wonder if anyone here can remember them.

McMoneagle hasn't offered much in the way of guidance that I know of. I think the most helpful thing he offered, for some people, is his method for distracting the frontal lobes with mathematics. I think that's a good technique in principle, but doing hard math in your head isn't something for everyone. It's not my idea of a good time, but doing intense visualization seems to have accomplished the same thing for me when I've been successful.

Agh! Maths. I will pass on that too : ) Ol' Joe does give examples of what it is like to do field work. I reckon those stories are valuable to give a feel for the work. The ol' fella is quite entertaining too.

I consider it to be a sort of utilitarian twist on transcendental meditation. Emptiness meditation coupled with conscious intent

I think you're right there. I always got the impression that meditation was completely without conscious volition on the meditator's part. That was what I didn't like about the Monroe writings. It was like they would go look at people as tourists. There was a case where Monroe visited deceased people who were caught in a time-loop of sorts, and there was no inclination to help them, to intervene.

Personally I find the interactive side to be the most interesting and where one can do some good.

Skywalker and their ilk, I would leave be. There is always someone who wants to be the governing body. That is when they lose sight of what they thought important in the beginning. In a sense that is when corruption of the original goal sets in, and they just become noise.