Thread: Dreams of Transcendence

Ive read that when ceremonial magicians practice the 'Lesser banishing Ritual of the Pentagram' in lucid dreams the Archangels begin to manifest at the cardinal points over time.

Sageous,

Since it seems like the best way forward for you, I will make an effort to lucid dream. My hope is that my doing that will add a little bit of my variety of awareness to your thought world, making it easier for you to do what you are trying to do, and vice versa.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Sageous,

Since it seems like the best way forward for you, I will make an effort to lucid dream. My hope is that my doing that will add a little bit of my variety of awareness to your thought world, making it easier for you to do what you are trying to do, and vice versa.

Coming from you, Shadowofwind, that is an honor indeed. Thank you!

Well, thanks and you're welcome. I don't mean that like I'm a guru blessing you with the presence of my powerful mind though, or some other BS ego trip that I should be slapped around for. I just think that different people have different things going, and its worth making an effort to bridge the gaps.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Well, thanks and you're welcome. I don't mean that like I'm a guru blessing you with the presence of my powerful mind though, or some other BS ego trip that I should be slapped around for. I just think that different people have different things going, and its worth making an effort to bridge the gaps.

That's all I ever ask for. Kudos, Shadowofwind!

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

A second point, that goes along with the first one, is that having a transcendent experience may be of little value unless you can extract something from it that alters your physical reality.

Not necessarily. I view transcendent experiences as preparation for death, and whatever state that immediately follows it - whether that be entering bardo and reincarnating or simply a brief, but controllable expanse of dream consciousness.

Originally Posted by hermine_hesse

Not necessarily. I view transcendent experiences as preparation for death, and whatever state that immediately follows it - whether that be entering bardo and reincarnating or simply a brief, but controllable expanse of dream consciousness.

Things having to do with after death states fall under what I was referring to as physical reality. Although after death is not physical like knocking rocks together, and its something that I'm more ignorant of than not, it's still physical in the sense that there's thought and astral stuff related to it and to preparing for it, which is different from what I understood Sageous to be pointing towards.

And, Hermine_Hesse, for what it's worth:

As you might know by now I'm fairly involved in dream and sleep yoga practice, but I've never considered its goals transcendent: even if "it's all true," and sleep yoga mastery affords me an opportunity to turn my "freed" Self and Soul in directions of my choosing, I don't see that as a transcendental event; more like a mild sidestep of what would otherwise occur. Indeed, if post-death consciousness is the natural order of things, being prepared to navigate it might be a truly natural, innately known, event; my physical reality would be no different than any other of the recently dead, I may just be better prepared to handle it. I don't know. But I will someday; we all will.

In other words, in my opinion what sleep yoga is all about is preparation for transition rather than transcendence. In a sense, there's nothing "new" or unknown in the practice of sleep yoga: the transition will certainly be awesome (I hope), but it won't exceed the experience or physical reality of the other souls who've already transitioned in the same manner... of course, that might change if I have the same drive for spiritual change after life that I have now!

And, in an attempt to tie in your thought with our conversation -- and the thread in general -- let me add that if one were able to use LD'ing to properly identify, understand, and adapt the nature of transcendental experiences, one of the potential uses of that skill could be to seek transcendental moment that will push her closer to a post-human understanding of death, and perhaps bypass that transition completely -- or perhaps experience it before corporeal death (similar to the Tibetan "Light Body," or, for the folks at home, the "ascended" beings in Stargate). After all, if the yogis are right, then the answers are out there waiting for us; perhaps they surround us all the time, and we only need a way to stretch our consciousness far enough out to grasp them!

Broadly speaking, I regard all yoga-like teachings the way I regard pyramid marketing schemes. The product may have value, and may be worth buying to investigate. But their promise of transcending the human condition is sort of like the promise of transcending the bottom of the commercial pyramid by rising to the top of it. If everything they claim is true, the best that they offer is eternal bliss that was made possible by never-ending manvantaras of treachery and fear. I don't accept that vision. Furthermore I don't think it even works that well, I think that being-conscious(ness)-bliss remains dependent on the physical world of life and death, and gets drawn back down into it, though available words aren't saying quite what I mean here.

I don't care if my experiences are transcendent or not, as long lead to a better dynamic. I don't think humans are the pinnacle of evolution, there will be other beings and entities with far more powerful and flexible minds that make our efforts look like baboons trying to solve physics equations. But I think that at every level there is behavior that worsens our condition and behavior that improves it, and I desire to do more of the latter.

Straying somewhat further off topic....I didn't have any strongly lucid dreams last night. I did get a higher than usual number of weakly lucid scripted dreams that seem to have some kind of point. In the first I was lured, by appeals to vain desires and a willingness to bend the truth a tiny bit, though a series of bait and switches to a situation that I would not have chosen. (At the end I was cornered by a fat man who intended to flog me to death.) My lucidity was limited in a way that just barely excluded my desire to become more lucid. In the next dream, I was a young Russian right after the second world war who had been admitted to the scientific academy, but had been given some kind of indefinite leave to find what had become of his family. A particular kind of life had been laid out before me, in this case a life of scientific research, but I wasn't actually living that life, I was off to the side doing something else. This same essential pattern was repeated in other dreams, in other forms, and it was pointed out how the pattern existed in my life and in another person's life. In no case was the pattern freely chosen, it was mostly forced by events. It seems that this image is intended toward understanding how our reality differs from what is possible, and what to do about that. Off hand I can't say much about how its relevant though, particularly without thinking about it more. It definitely mirrors a more subtle awareness that I'm currently incapable of grasping.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Broadly speaking, I regard all yoga-like teachings the way I regard pyramid marketing schemes. The product may have value, and may be worth buying to investigate. But their promise of transcending the human condition is sort of like the promise of transcending the bottom of the commercial pyramid by rising to the top of it. If everything they claim is true, the best that they offer is eternal bliss that was made possible by never-ending manvantaras of treachery and fear. I don't accept that vision. Furthermore I don't think it even works that well, I think that being-conscious(ness)-bliss remains dependent on the physical world of life and death, and gets drawn back down into it, though available words aren't saying quite what I mean here.

Like I said, I was doing this before I ever heard of the Yogis, and trust me, I haven't given much thought to their teachings, or instructions. Also, I've never been much of a fan of bliss -- it sounds like a fairly dull condition to me, more a manifestation of human penchant for laziness than anything else...

Instead of thinking of the teachings, think of the dream/sleep yoga folks as a couple of guys who centuries ago discovered that they could maintain their waking consciousness in a potentially constructive, 24/7 manner, and they figured that, well, if there is an afterlife, then they ought to be able to continue that maintenance straight through death. That the generations of lesser-equipped lamas who followed diluted the core idea in a deep briny pool of religious doctrine and often pointless exercises (yes, that pyramid scheme analogy is a good one) is beside the point: it's the core that matters here, and not the trimming applied by priests more interested in flocks, tithes, and power than bliss.

So yeah, Hermine: You might pay attention to Shadowofwind and tread lightly when listening to the Dream Yoga salesmen -- but I suggest you keep up the research, though, because somewhere at the core of their tenets, routines, and doctrine is a practical plan for extending your consciousness past death, should it be possible.

I don't care if my experiences are transcendent or not, as long lead to a better dynamic. I don't think humans are the pinnacle of evolution, there will be other beings and entities with far more powerful and flexible minds that make our efforts look like baboons trying to solve physics equations. But I think that at every level there is behavior that worsens our condition and behavior that improves it, and I desire to do more of the latter.

Agreed. Feed me a few glasses of Bourbon and I'll start listing the species on earth who are more evolved than we are; I never said otherwise. But does that even matter? We are who we are, and we work with what we have. And what we have is sentience, imagination, and a real interest in improving our nature. That seems enough to me, all evolution aside.

Straying somewhat further off topic....I didn't have any strongly lucid dreams last night. I did get a higher than usual number of weakly lucid scripted dreams that seem to have some kind of point. In the first I was lured, by appeals to vain desires and a willingness to bend the truth a tiny bit, though a series of bait and switches to a situation that I would not have chosen. (At the end I was cornered by a fat man who intended to flog me to death.) My lucidity was limited in a way that just barely excluded my desire to become more lucid. In the next dream, I was a young Russian right after the second world war who had been admitted to the scientific academy, but had been given some kind of indefinite leave to find what had become of his family. A particular kind of life had been laid out before me, in this case a life of scientific research, but I wasn't actually living that life, I was off to the side doing something else. This same essential pattern was repeated in other dreams, in other forms, and it was pointed out how the pattern existed in my life and in another person's life. In no case was the pattern freely chosen, it was mostly forced by events. It seems that this image is intended toward understanding how our reality differs from what is possible, and what to do about that. Off hand I can't say much about how its relevant though, particularly without thinking about it more. It definitely mirrors a more subtle awareness that I'm currently incapable of grasping.

Interesting dream set, but I think you're right... did better than I did, though!

And now back to our show?

Point of possible clarification....The pyramid scheme I refer to isn't the teacher/acolyte hierarchy. It is the entire 'wheel of life and death' of individuals and civilizations. Though their teaching ostensibly solves the problem for individual aspirants, it offers no answer for nature as a whole. Even after the last drop of humanity has rejoined the ocean of consciousness, the cycle just starts over again. There's no vision of an alternative.

Many western teachings (Masonry, Christian Science, A Course in Miracles, Gnostic Christianity (arguably)) do offer a vision of an alternative. But in these cases I don't think the vision makes sense, and if taken seriously is counterproductive. All existing arrows loop back around to whence we came. Maybe those arrows can be uncurled a little bit though, reformed into something better.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Point of possible clarification....The pyramid scheme I refer to isn't the teacher/acolyte hierarchy. It is the entire 'wheel of life and death' of individuals and civilizations. Though their teaching ostensibly solves the problem for individual aspirants, it offers no answer for nature as a whole. Even after the last drop of humanity has rejoined the ocean of consciousness, the cycle just starts over again. There's no vision of an alternative.

The tenets are depressing, that's for sure... But that aside, are we really supposed, on any level, to be fixing or even enhancing nature as a whole? Isn't that way bigger than any of us? Shouldn't we simply do our best as individuals to add what little we can to the whole?

Many western teachings (Masonry, Christian Science, A Course in Miracles, Gnostic Christianity (arguably)) do offer a vision of an alternative. But in these cases I don't think the vision makes sense, and if taken seriously is counterproductive. All existing arrows loop back around to whence we came. Maybe those arrows can be uncurled a little bit though, reformed into something better.

Isn't that what we're here for?

I think you just said pretty much the same thing that I said.

What's the best course of action if you're a peon in a huge seemingly inescapable criminal gang? You can't hope to reform it as a whole, but you can at least make your part of it as positive as possible while seeking to build a way out.

I don't think the universe is necessarily as overwhelmingly big as it sometimes seems. To use a mathematical analogy, an infinite volume can be put in a 1-to-1 correspondence with the interval between 0 and 1 on a line. One isn't bigger than the other. I also don't think that far away parts of the universe are necessarily more real than numbers that we don't use. And of course there are different orders of infinity, one infinite thing can be vastly lesser than another infinite thing. The points in a cantor set compared to the rest of the number line for example.

Here's a couple of less-bleak ideas for the place of the universe in a larger scheme of things. (Maybe off topic for you, but not so much for me. No doubt it will soon disappear in the flood of on-topic posts in any case.)

1. There exists an infinitely large, magical universe where justice and compassion reign. There is a tiny bit inherently unavoidable friction in this universe, decay. Our universe is a dense distillation of that wrong, where it gets cleaned up, the sewer of paradise. Forms cycle through, learn the nature of error and virtue, and return to the much vaster reality beyond.
2. Our universe is a mistake, it isn't actually necessary. But it is possible for individual tangles of mistake-spirit to reform themselves, thereby putting themselves back into the non-mistake reality.

Okay, in the name of getting this thread back on track (not that I minded the diversion!), and because it’s time for me to give up a bit, let me share a couple of LD’s from both ends of the awareness spectrum that I believe have a transcendental element. Keep in mind that I can only believe they do; I can’t prove it, even to myself, and the parts that really matter fall into the “you had to be there” category, so I cannot describe them with any kind of accuracy.

First, I was in a low-level LD where I was sitting in a room with two male strangers, all of us in green wingback chairs, having an intense conversation about a subject I no longer remember, mostly because it meant nothing to me at the time. Just as I was beginning to have the feeling that I was in someone else’s dream, a large blue door appeared in the white wall behind us. It was worn with great age, heavy, and had no knob or hinges. We were all surprised, and quickly silenced, by its presence. Then the door opened, slowly.

At first there was absolutely nothing behind the door, but then it became backlit in a sort of orange (I thought the sun might be rising, though there was no landscape). We all rose from our chairs and approached the door. As we peered over its threshold, everything began to change. The light shifted hues to a brilliant light blue, like a dwarf star might make, and the atmosphere on the other side of the door seemed to be active with energy. Then that moment that can’t be described happened, and all I can say is that it was mostly visual -- I felt like I was being introduced to a place or being that was simply too overwhelming for me to absorb, and, as I simultaneously tried to understand and wondered if I should understand, the door slowly closed, the light fading back to black before it thudded home and disappeared. As the three of us stared at each other in disbelief my lucidity increased (what a shock) and the two strangers faded with the room around me. I stood for a moment in a quiet pastoral setting, trying to grasp what just happened, before nature took over and I awoke.

Now for the other end of the spectrum: I was in a state of full-on lucidity. I had already dismissed (and forgotten) whatever dream I was in, and my DC body was long gone. So there I was, as planned, floating in my favorite featureless gray mist, relaxing, gathering my awareness and -- again as planned -- setting aside as best I could all expectation and memory. While I did so, I also waited.

In time, maybe ten minutes, I can’t be sure, things started to change, and those things had nothing to do with my actions or thoughts (as far as I know), as they normally must have in this situation. Of course I can’t properly describe what came next, but I’ll at least do a bad job: My essence, which at the time was the entire dreamscape, was suddenly engulfed, overwhelmed, by a new essence that was both familiar, as if it was as much a part of me as the gray mist (now gone, replaced by a limbo-like white blankness; not bright, just bereft of any color or texture), as it was completely alien. I was intrigued, and struggled to fend off those inevitable instinctive expectations that might form this into some stereotypical religious “vision.” In a moment the presence gelled, energy-wise: I was engulfed -- here we go -- in a thick sea composed not of water but of some strange new energy, an energy that throbbed with power but could not threaten me, or be truly used by me, because it was not really there. But it was. And that wasn’t even the most amazing, or (upon waking) intriguing, part. No, most fascinating was the alien emotion expressed by the energy! Yes, “emotion” was the only word I could attach to it, and that was after waking, and I really can’t describe it, save that it was an emotion I had never imagined could exist. No, it wasn’t bliss (which I’m okay with), but something closer to joy mixed with a rush you might get while doing something physically dangerous like cliff-climbing or jumping a motorcycle. Sorry -- that’s all I got.

I held onto all this for as long as I could, but it took great effort and eventually (probably in just a few minutes) it all faded and I was left not in the gray mist but in space amid a sea of stars. Energized, I went through a series of false-awakenings and actual awakenings, each ending with a failed attempt to get back to that place and that feeling. Finally I woke up for real, thoroughly exhausted yet oddly energized.


I know, I know, lousy descriptions, but if I tried to make it clearer I fear I would add things to the moments that were never there. That is the nature of transcendental dreams, I think -- which is why these two might qualify.

So. Any thoughts? Any others with similar (or completely different, but just as qualifying) experiences? Please shout out if so!

I think those are great dreams. I can see why you want to try to share this sort of thing. Something beyond you, apparently, contributed something to the dreams, and you don't understand why (as far as I know), so it seems like you should try to do something with it.

The first dream seems 'shared' in about the same sense that I occasionally have shared dreams. I would guess that the other two people did not perceive the room and the door the same way you did, or experience what was beyond it in the same way, and quite possibly they don't even lucid dreams. But it seems unlikely to me that they were nothing more than dream characters, and it seems likely to me that the experience had at least some kind of subconscious effect on them, though of course we can't guess what they experienced since that would have been particular to who they are.

In my last two years of high school I had a friend who was in some ways psychologically very similar to me - often I could almost read his mind. He was more important to me than friends often are, because I wasn't close to my family, and did not have other friends. We would listen to music and study together almost daily, and do other activities like fishing or running. After two years of college he abruptly turned away, and it was apparent that he'd never cared about me as a person, that for the most part he had just enjoyed my company. In a dream last night without pictures, he asked me if I would forgive him for not being who I wanted him to be. I said that I would. I doubt that he was aware of the dream, and doubt that he ever thinks about me, but I don't think it was all in my mind either, I think a part of him participated somehow. Three points here: one I'm just sharing something of my experience, two this is an illustration of how a dream can be sort of shared but not very much, three I'm just telling you my dream last night since I said I would try to lucid dream, and haven't been more lucid than that so far. I usually get up at 8am, but had to get up before 6am this morning.

Here is another dream I had years ago that has some similarities to yours. I'm pretty sure I've at least mentioned this one before. I was in a sequence of semi-nested invisible boxes, imagine a line of overlapping rectangles decreasing in size, but in 3D. The sides of the next box in the sequence were swept out by giant blades that seemed to come from nowhere, as if I was seeing a 2 dimensional projection (the back of the eye being 2D) of a 3 dimensional cross section of something higher dimensional. A voice/thought said to me "this is how I experience time". The mind behind that voice seemed alien to me. It somewhat of reminds me of the aliens in the War of the Worlds remake with Tom Cruise, except neutral/benevolent instead of creepy/evil. The sequence of boxes expressed something of the way the range of possibilities becomes both more limited and definite as time progresses. And probably it expressed other things that I didn't grasp as easily.

Years later, when driving across the country, I saw a giant windmill with the top hidden behind fog or something, so that I could see the blades sweeping out of the sky, but not the hub or even enough of it to easily perceive that they were sweeping in a circle. This was where that part of the dream image came from. (There are no windmills near my house in southern Ohio.) As I've mentioned elsewhere, this is typical for this kind of dream for me: the images are cobbled together from my own experience, but usually not in order. The sequence of boxes part of it was just a generalization of limit points in math, which I was already familiar with.

I guess everyone feels a little bit alien, because we live in an alienating world. And people who have weird dreams are particularly that way, both as a cause and an effect of having that kind of mind. But thinking about the dream subsequently, I feel alien. The world's religions seem like foreign religions to me, even though I was raised in one of them. Its not just that I rejected it, in a way it doesn't even seem familiar. If you grow up in a small town, it feels like the town where you grew up, even if you also hate the place. But for me it doesn't even feel like the place where I grew up. Very many of the things that people care about seem strange to me too. The closest thing I've felt to 'home' is I worked in Colorado for a few months, which is where I was born, but I had never been there after I was a few months old. When I went hiking in the mountains it felt very comfortable and familiar in a way that I have not felt in the mountains anywhere else. I feel like I want to be buried there and go back into the rock, and from there to wherever I came from.

As I have mentioned previously, I have also felt that my body is wrong, for instance, there should be two spinal columns, one on the left and one on the right. When the brain and nervous system is more divided that way, it makes it easy to do the dream type thinking while awake. The human design is harder, in that it forces us to alternate sequentially between waking and sleeping cycles. But it also forces us towards integrating the two aspects of our minds, and in that regard I think the human design is better and the other way is more of a dead-end. I miss the other spine like I imagine someone might miss a dead twin. I feel as if it has been violently torn out of my body, like Eve from Adam. I don't know if any of this is true or real, I'm just saying what I experience, since there is some common element with your dream. I have also experienced alien emotions in dreams, though none are coming to me at the moment.

Oh yeah, one other thing I intended to mention....In the past I felt my will as an isolated thing, constrained by physical limitations and circumstances. Lately I feel more like a fish embedded in an ocean of greater will. An example of this is the way my options for what I'm capable of desiring are restricted when I'm semi-lucid. Its not just a "that part of the brain is randomly turned off" restriction, it feels like more than that. Your second dream reminded me of this.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

I think those are great dreams. I can see why you want to try to share this sort of thing. Something beyond you, apparently, contributed something to the dreams, and you don't understand why (as far as I know), so it seems like you should try to do something with it.

The first dream seems 'shared' in about the same sense that I occasionally have shared dreams. I would guess that the other two people did not perceive the room and the door the same way you did, or experience what was beyond it in the same way, and quite possibly they don't even lucid dreams. But it seems unlikely to me that they were nothing more than dream characters, and it seems likely to me that the experience had at least some kind of subconscious effect on them, though of course we can't guess what they experienced since that would have been particular to who they are.

I did wonder at the time (after waking) what those other two guys saw, and what the whole scene might have meant to them.

This is without question interesting stuff, Shadowofwind, but I don't think shared dreams are in any way dreams of transcendence (i.e., if the first dream above was a shared dream, I think that was coincidental with the door bit, not its cause). Why? Because, if they are real, then shared dreams are likely firmly imbedded in the human collective consciousness: If for instance you accept the general consensus and combined anecdotal evidence here on this forum alone as reality, then shared dreaming is quite common. So experiencing one does not involve experiencing something that cannot be described, or that otherwise rises above current human understanding/experience. Now should a person ever have a dream wherein he learns how to conclusively prove shared dreaming, and can then write the required amendment to the laws of physics such proof would require, that dream would definitely be transcendental!

Here is another dream I had years ago that has some similarities to yours. I'm pretty sure I've at least mentioned this one before. I was in a sequence of semi-nested invisible boxes, imagine a line of overlapping rectangles decreasing in size, but in 3D. The sides of the next box in the sequence were swept out by giant blades that seemed to come from nowhere, as if I was seeing a 2 dimensional projection (the back of the eye being 2D) of a 3 dimensional cross section of something higher dimensional. A voice/thought said to me "this is how I experience time". The mind behind that voice seemed alien to me. It somewhat of reminds me of the aliens in the War of the Worlds remake with Tom Cruise, except neutral/benevolent instead of creepy/evil. The sequence of boxes expressed something of the way the range of possibilities becomes both more limited and definite as time progresses. And probably it expressed other things that I didn't grasp as easily.

Years later, when driving across the country, I saw a giant windmill with the top hidden behind fog or something, so that I could see the blades sweeping out of the sky, but not the hub or even enough of it to easily perceive that they were sweeping in a circle. This was where that part of the dream image came from. (There are no windmills near my house in southern Ohio.) As I've mentioned elsewhere, this is typical for this kind of dream for me: the images are cobbled together from my own experience, but usually not in order. The sequence of boxes part of it was just a generalization of limit points in math, which I was already familiar with.

Fascinating...and definitely relevant, I think. Thanks for sharing!

I guess everyone feels a little bit alien, because we live in an alienating world. And people who have weird dreams are particularly that way, both as a cause and an effect of having that kind of mind. But thinking about the dream subsequently, I feel alien. The world's religions seem like foreign religions to me, even though I was raised in one of them. Its not just that I rejected it, in a way it doesn't even seem familiar. If you grow up in a small town, it feels like the town where you grew up, even if you also hate the place. But for me it doesn't even feel like the place where I grew up. Very many of the things that people care about seem strange to me too. The closest thing I've felt to 'home' is I worked in Colorado for a few months, which is where I was born, but I had never been there after I was a few months old. When I went hiking in the mountains it felt very comfortable and familiar in a way that I have not felt in the mountains anywhere else. I feel like I want to be buried there and go back into the rock, and from there to wherever I came from.

As I have mentioned previously, I have also felt that my body is wrong, for instance, there should be two spinal columns, one on the left and one on the right. When the brain and nervous system is more divided that way, it makes it easy to do the dream type thinking while awake. The human design is harder, in that it forces us to alternate sequentially between waking and sleeping cycles. But it also forces us towards integrating the two aspects of our minds, and in that regard I think the human design is better and the other way is more of a dead-end. I miss the other spine like I imagine someone might miss a dead twin. I feel as if it has been violently torn out of my body, like Eve from Adam. I don't know if any of this is true or real, I'm just saying what I experience, since there is some common element with your dream. I have also experienced alien emotions in dreams, though none are coming to me at the moment.

Perhaps that feeling of alienation, and transcendental moments that it might spawn, is a archetype in itself. Maybe we're all changing, thanks to a spiritual (as opposed to physical) evolution, and some of us are noticing the transition slightly ahead of time? That would explain quite a bit, I think.

Oh yeah, one other thing I intended to mention....In the past I felt my will as an isolated thing, constrained by physical limitations and circumstances. Lately I feel more like a fish embedded in an ocean of greater will. An example of this is the way my options for what I'm capable of desiring are restricted when I'm semi-lucid. Its not just a "that part of the brain is randomly turned off" restriction, it feels like more than that. Your second dream reminded me of this.

Hmm. I find myself agreeing with that point on a lot of levels these days -- especially as I watch my full-on LD's be erased by "unexpected" distraction or as imagery/actions that were once easy to conjure become oddly unobtainable. Nice image too, by the way... odd that that ocean you mention was once a pond -- apparently easily navigable -- but the more you learn and experience, the more water that flows in, until you find yourself in an ocean that threatens to permanently defy navigation... or you can get a bigger boat.

A point that someone else made a bit a year ago, and which I've repeated a couple of times, is that if a person does deep self-inquiry without sufficient love, the results they get back are distorted and don't point towards the truth. I think the same principle applies even more directly here. I think the transcendent experience is a curse rather than a blessing if a person isn't ready for it. This is part of the problem with drugs, but it applies even where drugs aren't involved. It seems I keep getting pushed back to social relationships, and dealing with those issues, because that's where most of the work needs to be done, notwithstanding that thinking in these other areas is important too.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

A point that someone else made a bit a year ago, and which I've repeated a couple of times, is that if a person does deep self-inquiry without sufficient love, the results they get back are distorted and don't point towards the truth. I think the same principle applies even more directly here. I think the transcendent experience is a curse rather than a blessing if a person isn't ready for it. This is part of the problem with drugs, but it applies even where drugs aren't involved. It seems I keep getting pushed back to social relationships, and dealing with those issues, because that's where most of the work needs to be done, notwithstanding that thinking in these other areas is important too.

I think you're right, except you might not have reached far enough on one point: I think that if a person isn't ready for a transcendent experience, it either will not happen, at all, or will not be remembered, at all.

If a person single-mindedly desires transcendent experiences, without having attended sufficiently to the other stuff, their question essentially becomes "what happens when I get a transcendent experience when I'm not ready? I really, really want to know." In my experience, providence does not forever ignore that question. Even though it may answer only to extent sufficient for the answer to be understood at the level its being asked from, that's still saying a lot. Its sort of like what happens to the scientific-idealist lady at the end of of the nuke-the-fridge Indiana Jones movie. (Terrible movie, but I think the point still has truth in it, distorted as it may have been.)

The way I see my situation, I've passed that point but I've still got to move forward anyway, because a person can't stop or go backwards. Ideally, some of the other stuff will gradually catch up, and I'll wind up in a good place some other tomorrow.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

If a person single-mindedly desires transcendent experiences, without having attended sufficiently to the other stuff, their question essentially becomes "what happens when I get a transcendent experience when I'm not ready? I really, really want to know." In my experience, providence does not forever ignore that question. Even though it may answer only to extent sufficient for the answer to be understood at the level its being asked from, that's still saying a lot. Its sort of like what happens to the scientific-idealist lady at the end of of the nuke-the-fridge Indiana Jones movie. (Terrible movie, but I think the point still has truth in it, distorted as it may have been.)

So normally I would disagree with this, by saying that the vast majority of people, no matter how badly they want something, especially a thing as self-oriented as transcendence, will not be rewarded (or shown it, as it were) with exposure to it. Ever. That would be akin to assuming that everyone who really, really wants to win lotto will eventually do so. Providence, or blind chance, I think, is not that kind (or attentive).

Normally, I would disagree. But your Indiana Jones example got me thinking. The scientific-idealist lady was searching for ultimate knowledge, and constantly failing, in spite of her abilities and power. So she had someone search for her (Jones) and then asked the question the moment she was in a room with the purveyor of that knowledge. So she asked, she wasn't ready, the info came, and bam. If the trans-dimensional aliens and their spaceship weren't there, and pissed, she never would have gotten that "answer" that thoroughly killed her.

Here's the part that got me thinking: One of the things I'm suggesting on this thread is that advanced LD'ing may be the tool uniquely suited to enable a person to enter transcendental situations without sufficient love. All they would need are powerful LD'ing skills, imagination, patience, and self-awareness. Though I'm not sure how you can reach transcendent-level LD's (or master transcendent-level self-awareness, for that matter) without love or compassion, it must be possible. In other words, advanced LD'ing could be like that alien ship, in that it might enable access to transcendent experience to those who are not ready...providence could be bypassed. Maybe I should end this thread?

The way I see my situation, I've passed that point but I've still got to move forward anyway, because a person can't stop or go backwards. Ideally, some of the other stuff will gradually catch up, and I'll wind up in a good place some other tomorrow.

... I already knew that.

Lottery is zero sum, transcendent experience is not. Also, I think that there's no clean division between providence and ourselves. It's possible to bite off more than we can chew. Not a reason not to eat of course.

I don't know if it's like attracting the attention of a god so much as causing a living thought of god to come temporarily into being. Gravity doesn't care about us but it still draws us together, it is already in us.

Sorry for terseness. Not disagreeing. Typing on phone.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Lottery is zero sum, transcendent experience is not. Also, I think that there's no clean division between providence and ourselves. It's possible to bite off more than we can chew. Not a reason not to eat of course.

I don't know if it's like attracting the attention of a god so much as causing a living thought of god to come temporarily into being. Gravity doesn't care about us but it still draws us together, it is already in us.

Perhaps lotto was a bad example, logic-wise; perhaps healing yourself of cancer with positive thoughts only would have made more sense? Lots of people are sure they're going to get better and, after months of positive thought, they die anyway, regardless of their desire to be cured. Damn, that's dark. I like the lotto bit better!

Yes, gravity is certainly in us, in a very, very tiny way, cosmologically. It's there, but we are not able to defy it, amplify it, corrupt it, or use it to get people or objects to fall into our particular well. In other words, it would be an enormous event to change gravity, which would likely require much knowledge, preparation, and disciplined action -- you must be physically prepared, or else your attempt will fail, possibly spectacularly. And yes, there may be a wee bit of "god" in us all, and, likewise, I believe it would be very difficult to cause a recognizable bit of that "living thought of god" to enter your consciousness -- and be properly remembered -- without strong spiritual preparation, including sufficient love, compassion, and self-awareness.

All that said, I still have to go back to what you made me consider earlier, because it still stands: What if advanced LD'ing, coupled with the invention of a metaphorical "interface" that allows us to comprehend and remember transcendental experience, were to exist? Would it provide people who lack spiritual and emotional preparation for the event opportunity to be exposed to transcendence anyway?

Though I doubt that would happen -- there's simply too much self-awareness involved in LD'ing of that caliber -- if it did, I'm guessing that some impact on physical reality might just happen, good and bad...