zedpapa
Living by Dhamma

Age

32

About zedpapa

LD Count:

~6

Biography:

My dreams captivated me since my early childhood. There are many dreams (mostly nightmares) that I still remember vividly even after 15-16 years. In my adolescent years I began to question life's meaning, and developed an interest in everything theoretically related to the question, especially in different religions. Though I was born in a christian family, we never talked about such topics as god or afterlife, we barely even visited a church once every few years. So I considered myself to be not religious, and established my image of self to be agnostic at around the age of 16, accepting the fact that I can't have first-hand evidence on either the existence or non-existence of a creator who made this world happen. But I wasn't content with being just agnostic, I wanted to find out if there is a way to know the truth, or if there is someone else living on this planet right now who knows it. I introduced myself to eastern philosophies through books about world religions, thus I met the core concept of Buddhism, which is to end all our sufferings by getting rid of our desires. It grasped my attention from the first moment this idea met my mind, and I feel it has shaped my life ever since. In my late teen years I got introduced to weed and really enjoyed the clarity of thoughts and the feeling of gaining new insights and new perceptions for everything. I started using it more and more (though not abusing it), and I started to really explore this new experience. I even developed my own theory how our reactions to the effects of weed evolve just like we are growing up from being a baby to being an adult. At first every experience causes a sense of wonder and amazement, then as we start to get accustomed to these sensations they become dull and seem commonplace (like the touch of the wind, the shape of trees, the taste of food, etc.) With drugs, many of these experiences lose their dullness and you kinda explore everything over again with new perspective. This is what I was doing for a couple years, using weed on a recreational purpose with friends. Around this time was when I started pondering if this perspective change is achievable without the use of drugs, through some mind techniques alone. And of course I concluded the answer that it's definitely possible! Our mind is a wonder, yet we walk past by this fact from moment to moment. I stumbled across an old book at home, the Jose Silva Mind Control method, and started practicing basic techniques to manipulate my state of mind. It was during these little experiments that I first felt these unexplainable vibrations racing through my body, like millions of tiny electric shocks passing through me. This experience was enough proof for me to believe that there are techniques out there that could really change our perception of reality. Shortly after I had my first lucid dream spontaneously. In fact, I did a reality check without being aware what it was. I was dreaming about a lot of UFOs flying around in my childhood, and this one time I saw another one floating above me. That's when the thought kicked in, that I always dream about this, and the sudden realization that I am inside a dream right now. The following few minutes were unlike anything I ever felt before. The most euphoric and profound moment when I tried to fly and I could with ease. The joy brought tear to my eyes, happiness was overflowing me. After this experience, I consciously started to develop a lucid dreaming practice, started keeping a dream journal and always shared my insightful dreams with close friends. However I lacked determination and I had a lot of confusing factors in my life, overall I felt more and more depressed for some reason. So lucid dreams remained an exotic occurrence to me, although I tried several methods to gain lucidity many times, I couldn't keep practice for more than a few days. I yearned for spiritual guidance and personal growth, yet I couldn't decide which direction to start. This spring I went through an existential crisis, life seemed pointless and nothing could motivate me to attend classes any more, so after 3 years of struggling in higher education, I quit for good. The only thing that I was looking forward to was a Vipassana meditation course which I found out about last winter. I didn't really expect anything out from it, I was just curious about what I can learn from the whole experience. After the 10 days of living in monastic conditions, not speaking to anyone but myself and meditating almost all day long, I really feel like my whole life was leading up to this moment. I experienced for myself how real the Buddha's teachings are, and was ensured by these experiences that the way to liberation is very real. Since then I became content with what I have and who I am, and I feel my true journey has just begun, and I can finally leave behind my years of doubt and illusion. Now I feel the time has come to make a determined effort to develop my practice of lucid dreaming, and start to explore my inner world within. The words of Goenkaji, the teacher of Vipassana echo in my head - "be patient and persistent... you're bound to be successful"

Country Flag:

Hungary

Location:

Exeter, Devon, UK

Interests:

Gaming (LoL, Civ 5 nowadays), writing down streams of thoughts, philosophising, meditating

Gender:

Male

How you found us:

I googled 'meditating in lucid dreams' and found a thread as a result