Thread: OneofMany's series of inexplicable Dream Yoga events workbook....

Hi,
Yeah totally, I really like how this last few lessons have brought to my awareness how much I miss already, I imagine I've just seen the tip of the iceberg on stuff I miss.

Version 1: Listening to a Noisy World.-Level 2
I've had more time to practice, and noticed the juggling sensation/feeling to lessen and it getting easier to maintain focus for longer periods of time. I still notice that if I practice as I'm going about my day, I still lean towards visual stuff, but if I close my eyes, after about twenty to thirty minutes, I start to loose sense of my body. It seems like there is alot of steering going on with myself. I continue to focus on listening and try to hold as many sounds equally in mind without sounding cacophonous. I try not to get irritated or distracted from my goal of maintaining focus on listening without focusing on how I feel like say I'm tilting in space/body morphing(like my neck feeling like it's creaked to the side but really I'm erect). After a few minutes though I get rather restless, and open my eyes, then go back to focusing, but once those sensations start, they seem to increase unless I stop and start over. This did bring back memories of when I was little, I would focus on an object to lessen pain or use it as a method of pain control during say a trip to our dentist. Rather similar sensations of loosing sense of body and trying to "be" the object I would look at. Except here it's with sounds and not interested in the side affects.

Version 1: Listening to a Noisy World.-Level 3
In trying to keep on practicing at every moment I can grab, I noticed how in life and dream are similar many ways. Whereas in the dream world, I'll get sidetracked by my impulses and loose lucidity easily or have trouble getting/maintaining lucidity. Similar occurs in life, where I go about my day, try to maintain focus on staying aware, then Oh, lookie a cute duckling, and bam, lost focus or this/that reminds me of how I need to do xyz, but hey something else needs to get done. When I do finally get in the "groove" it feels awesome though, as long as I can maintain it, and although I'm not doing this to "feel good," it's still nice. When things get really loud, like yesterday, when both kids were talking simultaneously, one saying "shoes!...pants!...more shoes!..etc." as we walked past people, and my other little one was asking about getting a cookie all by himself, it was so hard to listen to both kids, environment, etc. and not muddle it together. Which I did.

Funny thing in dreaming, I noticed that aside from just daily stuff playing out, when I tried to meditate inbetween dreams to clear out all the junk from the day, so to speak. My next dream was me meditating in a fog/mist. So yeah.

Question?--So when practicing listening or any of the exercises, as I've noticed it happen basically everytime I meditate with my eyes closed(after a particular amount of time passes), when I loose sensation of my body, should I ignore it and continue on the subject of focus? I toss those things under normal stuff not to get excited nor annoyed at, but at times I just get irritated with how distracted I get over it, like the other day, I felt like I was slowly falling over to the side, then I was worried I was, but it turns out I wasn't...what do you recommend?
Thank you.

Oops, sorry, I've been typing this over the past two days, didn't realize you had responded.

If you stray from your intended meditation, notice, and try not to engage your mind much. We live way to much in our monolouge thoughts. You will need to learn to experience and observe with reduced 'words' in your head. Therefore, if you have strayed and think "stop it, you must focus" that very act is undesirable. Better to enjoy the HIs if you have got that far, and come back to the lesson in a minute.

Okay, yeah definitely, that's what I've been doing. I didn't realize that HIs can occur during meditation, :face palm: I put it under a limited/narrow definition of falling asleep.

while dream yogi get H.I. for the same puprose. The next 3 times you reach a odd state of warped sensation, try not to think, forget about everything, and attempt to just observe the 'odd stuff'. Then please document briefly watch you experienced. No rush or time frame on this.

You know, sometimes I wondered about it if drugs caused similar sensations as an HI....Okay, will do. Thanks.

Next, I want you to observe an interesting human ability. This is the ability to form new neural pathways.

Yes! I have noticed that in doing meditation, over the course of some months, things have changed noticeably, that would only point to form new neural pathways. For example, I was dx'd with brain damage many years ago, but then my symptoms started to improve, for example, facial recognition.

Simply, do these lessons seriously one more time. Really spend a few minutes thinking about what happens during them. Then set them aside for 3 weeks. During that 3 weeks, attempt to enjoy your sense of hearing in a new enriched way, but do not do the formal lessons. You should pick another lesson and try to get absorbed in a new type of skill. Then, after 3 weeks of working on a new lesson, I want you to switch back. Find the time to attempt each lesson and then truely analyze your result compared to 3 weeks prior. I think you will be suprised.
What happens is you have now focused enough on a lesson that if you give your brrain a bit of time, it will grow neurons in anticipation of you calling upon it again.

Awesome, okay! I really like your idea. I'm going to write this down so I'll remember to do it. It usually takes me a few tries to get something to stick to memory.


This week's entry-------->
This week has been more hectic than normal..everyone getting sick, stuff breaking(car, mower, fenceline), and urgently needing mending/picking/processing/etc. Whatever, that's what lists are for...

So, it turns out I was mostly doing the wrong one this time, geez, I remember checking the list but things have been so hectic as soon as I put one thing down, someone cried, or get me this, draw on that, really on my toes, I *thought* I read the right section turns out not but anyway.... not practicing as much as I should have, but still tried to stick to schedule/layout....Also trying to build on the meditations, and with each new lesson, incorporate it into the next one, while also, still devoting time to focusing exclusively on the task at hand/next lesson. So several things going on.

Version 2: Feel an Intense World-Level 1At first impulse, I was worried about this exercise, I tend to get really irritated and overwhelmed by touch like sensory overload. Usually when I "feel an intense world" I turn to advil and such to dull the physical sensations as well as wear clothes to cover my skin as I feel so irritated by the soft touch of grass, a brush of the wind. I'm not sure how to deal with them, lot's of physical sensations, so I think this is a good exercise for me in developing better coping techniques or not be so bothered by sensations. I decided to first mostly stick to feeling one body part at a time, like my hands or feet, say as they touch the ground, as even that can get annoying especially this week with all the rain, I get really annoyed by all the input. I think just being tired and stressed is making it harder to handle all the physical sensations or lowering my personal threshold as I noticed stuff that only bothers me once in a while has become a nuisance, such as a button or fabric seam of my clothes.

Practicing this outside was easier than doing this inside sitting still, so outside, when it was sunny, and less mucky out, felt the grass, damp, pants clinging to my ankle, the harshness of the grass, how sharp each blade is as I'm pulling it out of the ground, I did end up cutting myself on the grass, but hey, that's what callouses are for. I felt how the sharp blade just slid through my skin, usually I don't notice getting those superfical cuts from weeding but I found it interesting how just focusing on the sensations of my hands sure brought that to my awareness. I dig my hand in my weedy onion bed, I feel blindly, each plant in it's own distinction, onion, burr, pull, onion, clover, pull, onion, grass, pull, the burrs have such a funny feel, sticky, stringy, rather than the cold, smooth edges of the onion blades. I imagine the weeds are screaming as I rip them out of the ground, I wonder what it feels like to be a weed, ripped out of the ground, then I refocus on sensation rather than imagery.

So sitting, trying to focus on my sensations, I would feel a chair button jab me in the back, then the fabric of the chair now bothers me, it's so rough/course. My pants have a seam which presses against my skin, I try to ignore it, I eventually roll my pants up so the bump on the seam faces out, and shift in the chair so the button lays more flat so I don't feel it as much. So I shift my focus more narrowly to body sensations, muscle tension, and feel how the pressure and irritation is affecting my body, I notice the various parts of my body holding lots of tension, and try to relax my muscles, from face, jaw, neck and downwards, which helps a bit.

I've been trying to just get out of the irritated state of mind, and I just call it that as it's been muddy, and wet, kinda sink into the ground, suction kinda muddy. I liked listening to the bubbles and sounds of water peculating down, but physical wise, ugh. Which I know is all my problem, just not sure what to do when encountering lots of irritating sensations. Do you have any recommendations when you're just buggy?

On a cool note, while dreaming, I remembered what I've been practicing during the day so during the dream, it was an irritating one about my family, and sister doing her old tricks. Go figure? LOL. A dc had asked to deal with what was bothering me, I told her that I wasn't willing to discuss it as I was having a good time and didn't want to ruin the moment by thinking about painful stuff. Anyway, long story short, I noticed my feelings well up. I watched as my emotions started to rise, and then I blocked them, but I remembered how during the day I've been trying to express myself rather than suppress emotions so I moved my block(which I imagined as a hand stopping the wave of emotion), and watched the emotion rise, crest, then cede. I was happy I didn't get swept away with the emotion and managed to experience it without becoming overwhelmed, it was like standing next to an ocean and watching the waves, the emotions weren't me, but occurred in me. I hope that makes sense :0) So I'm not sure how to bring that(whatever it is?) to waking state or daily living state? How to maintain it? I'm not sure what it is called but I've crudely called it being an empty vessel or comparing it to a soup bowl, where I identify with the bowl and my thoughts/emotions are the soup or I am the sky and thoughts/emotions are the clouds. Does it naturally occur when one both allows non-clinging/grabbing expression?

Thank you for doing this, it has really been so very helpful.
Best Regards, and have a good weekend!