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Tuesday, August 8


"If you think that everything is under control, you're not
driving fast enough." ~ Mario Andretti --Andrew Macnab

Or you haven't crashed yet! --Manchine
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Jerry, you wrote/asked:

Has anyone ever practiced meditation while lucid dreaming?
The great thing about it is that you don't have to relax
your body. Your body's already quite relaxed. In fact, it's
sleeping!

I've done lucid dreaming meditation a few times. The first
thing you notice is what I just mentioned: there's no
bodily relaxation to practice. How about the easing or
releasing of thoughts? There's none of that either. In fact
the only thought would be, 'I am dreaming'. There's none of
the other junk pressing on the mind. Then arises the
thought, 'I'm going to meditate'.

The meditation begins immediately. For me, there is direct
contact with the third eye. Whatever chakra you focus on
will immediately absorb your attention, I would think. I
don't know, though, because I've never talked to anyone
about it, nor have I ever read anything about this
practice.

What happens to me is that the third eye opens viciously,
it swirls and reveals all kinds of symbolic secrets and
offers to suck me in. It's very powerful.

I have also inquired 'Who am I?' in a lucid dream. It
throws me to my body, or it finds me looking into a mirror.
It shows me my real self, I think. I say, 'I think',
because the whole darn thing is a dream! It has the veil of
dreaminess about it no matter how lucid it is.

I don't know whether lucid dreaming meditation or inquiry
has value other than recreationally. It's possible that
inquiry would be more clearly understood when waking
inquiry is compared to lucid dreaming inquiry. Waking
inquiry is much more effective, I find. Lucid dreaming
meditation is recreational and very interesting. I wonder
if others sensitive to third eye activity would try it.
Maybe others could try inquiry during lucid dreaming and
report what happens. It's recreational inquiry, my latest
invention.


Hi Jerry,

I am familiar with what you say here.

In my own such dreams, I have the experience of leaping
vastly ahead, and of preparing the future for myself. This
includes pruning or parsing my identity, to the point that
I am undistinguishable from the future.

Jerry: Hi Gene, isn't the leap 'vastly ahead' the same as
the
leap into the deep present? I'm not sure why the 'future'
is used, unless the feel of the process of the pruning and
parsing dissolves the future and in that dissolving the
future opens as a vast and evident emptiness.

Gene replies: This is my tricky way of pointing out that
the future is unknown, and that like the future, I am
unknown. The future is The Unknown; we live here at the end
of time, the future is the spigot of Grace, can we take it
as it is? Can we take the flood of raw, and can we resist
projecting yesterdays colors and patterns upon it? Is it
true that we can 'know' only by comparison, and by
comparison to what 'was'? In sum, can we allow the unknown
to be just what it is, whatever it is?

If we can see that we now live in a 'reality' which is
perceived through formal protocols, If we can see that we
interpret rather than perceive, if we can see our own
folly, we can then see. Knowing our own folly, we can relax
about the need for stringency; we can see that our
stringent insistence upon accuracy is driven by criteria,
and that criteria are implanted, not essential. Still, I
feel it is good to be able to differentiate between our
folly and what is; in fact, our folly is just another
species of what is, and because it is so, it is possible
for us to see our folly. Our folly is in the face of what
is, pancake makeup and lipstick and eye-shadow, making us
the unknown in drag.

Gene had written: This is no different in 'waking' or
'dreaming'. I admit that I have lost the distinction
between the two.

Jerry responded: Whether one is dreaming or waking, there
could be the clarity that 'this is it' and so there would
be no distinction there between waking and sleeping. While
I can't say I have that clarity with every dream, or hardly
any dream, and while there is unconscious deep sleep, there
remains a continuity.

Gene responds: Yes. Is the continuity one of identity
(folly) or is it the continuity of the impersonal
background?

Perhaps this is the actual question, answered by the
eternal "First there is a mountain (identity), then there
is no mountain (identity lost, background now foreground),
then there is (foreground now mountain, identity is
background).

Jerry said: I don't feel that I awake to a new day each
day. Nor do I feel that going to sleep marks the end of the
day. Sleeping and waking happen, and so do dreams, but
there is a continuity of empty being that knows no break,
no discontinuity. However my body certainly knows waves of
emotion, thought, feeling, and all that, including
sleepiness and alertness! These waves always settle,
eventually, into the continuity of empty being. So there is
no distinction between waking and sleeping.

Gene responds: Understood. Perhaps at a certain point, each
person begins to experience a backflow of time, a sort of
doubling of presence, like how when one stands in the surf,
the water coming in, flows over the water going out,
producing what is called 'undertow'. This bi-layered
experience gives the option of experiencing both, or one or
the other. Or if one simply relaxes, one is rolled out to
sea.

Gene had said: If I don't like the future, I don't like
myself. If I like myself, I like the future.

I am like the future; when I get there, I will be only what
I am.

Jerry responded: In a sense, then, there is really no
getting there. If anything, I feel the future comes; it's
like an ever-welling of an ocean wave on the horizon.

Gene responds: Agreed. Have you seen the Australian movie
'The Last Wave'?

Gene had said: Face it, the future haunts like a ghost,
making identity squirm. Whose footfalls are those, heard
upstairs at midnight?

Jerry responded: The footfalls are vibrations sent to break
down the wall obstructing the view of the horizon. Until
one can see the horizon, the future can haunt.

Gene responds: Thanks, Jerry.

The future haunts in the same way as do the 'ghosts of
vanished vitamins' in the Uncle Ben's Rice commercials; and
our follies are the ghosts which must be made visible.
Eating our folly-vitamins makes us strong enough to surf
the unknown.

Hanging Ten,

==Gene Poole

------------------------------------------

J: In a sense, then, there is really no getting there. If
anything, I feel the future comes; it's like an
ever-welling of an ocean wave on the horizon.

G: Agreed. Have you seen the Australian movie 'The Last
Wave'?

Greg Goode: I love it, I've seen it about 6 times, starting
from
when it first came out in the U.S.

-------------------------------------------

Gene: Is the continuity one of identity (folly) or is it
the continuity of the impersonal background?

Ed Arrons: Identity/story/personality is some kind of
object that appears to the impersonal background. No object
that appears in consciousness can be continuous. Even
continuity is an object and is not continuous! The
impersonal background, which is what the object appears to,
is what is continuous.

_______________________________________________________________________

Any Byron Katie fans out there?

I just picked up a spicy little book:
_Losing the Moon_

This from Byron Katie:

God is good, God is everything - the end.
You go on with your illusion that something
is not okay
and you lose
and you lose
and you lose.

It's all been a misunderstanding:
The ego to me is a beautiful thing.

--------------

From Mu

My Lover

My lover has diamond lazer eyes
They pierce anything!
My lover has a furnace in her mouth
Her tounge burns anything!
My lover has arms like swords
They cut anything!

My lover wants you.
Why do you tremble?
Her eyes see only love.
Her kisses are wine.
Her embrace brings comfort.

Come, be destroyed by my lover.
Come, be alive!

----------------------------

HAHAHAH and HOHOHO!

Peace - Michael

______________________________________________________________________

A selection from A Long Day's Journey into Night was sent
to the list by Skye a few months ago. I've included it in
today's Nondual Daily Nugget:

http://www.nonduality.com/nugget.htm#6

--Jerry

________________________________________________________________________

The snapshots I scanned came out using a lot of KB, so they
take a while to load onto your screen. They are too much
for the limited memory left on NDS, but I think you all can
get into the HS files to see them. These are some rare
occurences caught on film here. OH came out of a 20 year
retirement from dancing to appear, and a photo that caught
Harsha actually levitating may be seen. (If anyone knows
how to reduce the KB, without sacrificing too much detail
quality, please assist.)

http://www.egroups.com/files/HarshaSatsangh/Still+More+Retreat/

UPDATE!!

Bruce rode to the rescue!! he reduced the Kb and put them
up into NDS. Thanks Bruce, you are a sweetheart too! ~Glo

http://www.egroups.com/files/NondualitySalon/More+retreat+photos+from+Glo/

-----------------------

MARY BIANCO

Gloria, nice job! The pictures are great. My heart warms
when I muse over that heavenly retreat and all you
magnificent souls that graced it. It really is a re-treat.
With fond memories and appreciation for your energetic and
caring involvement.

In this empty space,
the abyss of light comforts
like mother's warm arms.

Gloria, you are the light and the warm arms.
Love, Mary

------------------------------

I have been in a 'timeless' state of being
since coming back from the NDS/HS retreat.

HAHAHAH and HOHOHO!

Peace - I lost my watch! - Michael
___________________________________________________________________________

ED ARRONS: FOCUSING AND DEFOCUSING

It seems that the understanding of enlightenment,
nonduality, and duality etc., throughout the ages, boils
down to a process of focusing and defocusing attention, and
how that process conditions and remedies the perception of
separation.

One may notice, with sufficient experience, that breathing
and focusing work together in this conditioning (and
reconditioning) process.

This process typically operates randomly (or by grace),
agitating and pacifying the self. Upon experiencing
sufficient agitation (suffering) breathing becomes
arrhythmic followed by a gasping for breath. In that moment
of deep inbreath, a defocusing from agitated perception to
Awareness occurs. Apparently, this is how healing begins.
At some point this noticing remedies one's everyday
perceptions of separateness.


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A NET of JEWELS daily meditations for seekers of Truth
RAMESH S. BALSEKAR http://www.advaita.org

August 9

Anyone who has truly apprehended that it is impossible for
him to live independently according to his own "will power"
would naturally cease having any intentions. When he is
convinced that living is a sort of dreaming in which he has
no control over his actions, all tension ceases and a sense
of total freedom takes over.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Whatever is perceivable is perishable, but your true nature
is that which is neither perceivable nor perishable.

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