Balancing ongoing RCs & psychological health

[Morphenius]

I have a question about how to balance work leading up to a DILD and work involving grounding in the here-and-now for psychological purposes. I'm sure there's a way to balance them but I've personally had a lot of trouble finding it. Perhaps the most effective DILD induction method I know of (at least for me) is developing a kind of continuous RC based on an overall sense of whether I'm dreaming. This leverages the fact that I often know the answer to the question of whether I'm dreaming before I try to do a typical RC, and in fact trying to reason about it is less reliable than that first sense of direct knowing. For instance, in a dream I might reason with myself that there can be pink elephants walking on the ceiling because I have a friend in China and thus I must not be dreaming since the situation makes sense. But if I develop a familiarity with how my dreams "feel" for lack of a better term, I can check with that feeling and immediately know whether I'm dreaming regardless of how much sense the dream is or is not making. It takes a lot of initial work with dream interpretation but I find it definitely worthwhile. The one problem I have with this approach is that it has me putting a mental layer on my experiences. I'm admittedly a little bit baffled about how to explain why that's a problem without referring to the Enneagram, so my apologies if doing so is a bit confusing. This tendency to put a mental layer on things is a cognitive error that practically defines Ennea-type Five; rather than experiencing the world as it honestly appears, Fives add mental commentary and models to what they encounter, thinking all the while that this is "insight". A typical example is a Five who thinks about what psychological model fits the person with whom he or she is talking; while that might provide some relationship between the person and the model, this mental noise actually prevents the Five in question from engaging in an honest and open manner with the other person. Type Fives get caught up in these mental analysis games, forgetting the world for the sake of their mental commentary. It becomes an ongoing habit since Fives are often more comfortable with their mental models than they are with the messy, demanding world as it is. The problem with this strategy is that it's actually this evasion of reality that causes Fives to feel the sense of anxiety that they aren't skilled enough or prepared enough to engage with life. Their need to know everything before taking action is something they need to let go of in order to develop authentic confidence and fulfill their Basic Desire of being useful, capable, and competent and of having a place in the world. The challenge for me is that this ongoing awareness of whether I'm dreaming seems to act in large part as a kind of mental commentary. I've noticed fairly frequently that when I practice this regularly, I (as a Five) go down the Health Levels. This is a much more severe problem when I'm trying to practice MILD. I know this isn't an unavoidable problem. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche in his book The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep refers to this constant awareness of all experience as a dream as being a path to enlightenment, which is in many ways the same goal as increasing one's psychological health as measured by the Enneagram. So clearly there's a way for even type Fives to experience reality with this awareness of its dreamlike nature without losing a sense of immediacy to experience. I'm just baffled about how one goes about doing so. Does anyone have any insights into this that they'd be willing to share?

[imj]

I don't really understand what you are referring to by five. But I can relate in some way....I have been aloof more than ever since I started Lucid Dreaming. By aloof I mean I developed a glazed over effect on my perception of reality as compared to before Lucid Dreaming. Before it was only known to me that there is only ONE reality and I have to live in it both mentally and physically, there was no option. But with Lucid Dreaming it became TWO realities...I have the option to choose which one I felt was more worthwhile so naturally I chose the latter and abandoned the former. Been 4 years now and I cannot return to my previous perception without feeling a sense of emptiness when I try to percieve reality as reality. It is a problem when I'm in a job because it affects learning and awareness of the environment because of like you mentioned 'commentary' in action so it's more like I'm watching Youtube rather than living and experiencing reality. You also mentioned balance...sadly after doing Lucid Dreaming for 4 years full time...there isn't any balance because if you have two realites running side by side, you can only live in one and stay there. If you say "I live in reality and I want to also be in the dream" then you are splitting them as two realities and from expereince that does not help in lucidity since the mind will ALWAYS choose REALITY because you are never in a dream while awake. That brings to another reason Y dreams are more reality than lucid dreaming. Reality is what you face every minute of your waking life....Lucid dreaming isn't...then you'd say that's not true I come to the forrum and 'practise' lucid dreaming and do checks. But really.....have you ever been in a lucid dream while awake and soak up the expereince like as though it's a real expreince? Reality YES but lucid dreams...only a memory. So the only way around this is to choose....which one you want to forgo, Reality or Dreaming. If you want Dreaming bad enough then you have to let reality go and convert reality as dreaming and go on from there as a way of life. But if you want both Dreaming AND Reality then you will have a hard time because there will be confusion as what you are going through now because you aren't really sure which is it you are experiencing or want to exprerience. You may think I'm a nutcase but think about it, if you cling on to the idea of reality then still want to realise you are dreaming how are you going to instruct the mind to separate the two when you are in the dreamstate? IMJ

[Morphenius]

Hello IMJ, I don't really understand what you are referring to by five. Sorry about that. "Five" is a reference to the fifth Enneagram personality type. I personally best like the system described by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson through the Enneagram Institute. You can find links to that system in my original post. But I can relate in some way....I have been aloof more than ever since I started Lucid Dreaming. By aloof I mean I developed a glazed over effect on my perception of reality as compared to before Lucid Dreaming. Before it was only known to me that there is only ONE reality and I have to live in it both mentally and physically, there was no option. But with Lucid Dreaming it became TWO realities...I have the option to choose which one I felt was more worthwhile so naturally I chose the latter and abandoned the former. I personally wouldn't phrase it this way, but yes I think you're describing the same thing I was talking about. Been 4 years now and I cannot return to my previous perception without feeling a sense of emptiness when I try to percieve reality as reality. It is a problem when I'm in a job because it affects learning and awareness of the environment because of like you mentioned 'commentary' in action so it's more like I'm watching Youtube rather than living and experiencing reality. Exactly! You also mentioned balance...sadly after doing Lucid Dreaming for 4 years full time...there isn't any balance because if you have two realites running side by side, you can only live in one and stay there. Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but I'm inclined to think that there's a way around this paradox. Like I mentioned in my leading post, Tibetan dream yoga takes exactly the approach of having these two worlds running simultaneously - except that one merges them in some sense by learning to view the physical world as also being a dream. The goal is to perceive the dreamlike nature of all of experience, and to not engage with our habitual tendencies such that we perpetuate those habits responsible for revulsion or attachment. This turns out to be very psychologically healthy to do. Where I perceive a problem is in applying this awareness to the physical world. If you were practicing Tibetan dream yoga, for instance, you would need to go one step beyond just perceiving the monitor you're currently reading this on and think something akin to, "This monitor is a dream-monitor." It doesn't have to be with words; you can generate the feeling of the monitor being a dream-monitor on a dream-desk in a dream-room, etc. But that's still adding a mental layer on top of one's experiences - which is exactly the cognitive error of Enneagram personality type Five. Being a Five, I have a hard time perceiving a way around this conundrum. Yet I know there must be one because people have been successfully practicing dream yoga for thousands of years! Usually the answer to type Five struggles like this is "Don't think so much. Just relax and be present to your experiences." But if there's a more detailed or intellectual answer than that, I'd much like to hear it. But really.....have you ever been in a lucid dream while awake and soak up the expereince like as though it's a real expreince? Reality YES but lucid dreams...only a memory. I'm afraid I don't quite follow your meaning here. Would you mind elaborating somewhat? So the only way around this is to choose....which one you want to forgo, Reality or Dreaming. If you want Dreaming bad enough then you have to let reality go and convert reality as dreaming and go on from there as a way of life. But if you want both Dreaming AND Reality then you will have a hard time because there will be confusion as what you are going through now because you aren't really sure which is it you are experiencing or want to exprerience. On this point I'm afraid I just disagree. Dreams provide some fantastic insight into one's psyche and give one a way of working with one's subconscious mind rather directly. It can also be a source of spiritual insight (without meaning to get into mysticism here; the simple fact is that people do have spiritual experiences, and those experiences occur through our minds somehow, so by engaging with the subconscious mind we can access those spiritual experiences and come to have a more spiritual life regardless of whether we think spirituality is an experience of God, an accident of brain chemistry, or something else entirely). We can also develop skills and solve problems in our lucid dreams in ways that apply to our waking lives. And in symmetry, work that we do while awake can help us develop vividness and lucidity in our dreams, among other effects. So since these two realms are so clearly intertwined, there's no reason to choose one over the other. I choose life, which includes both my waking experiences and my dreaming ones. You may think I'm a nutcase but think about it, if you cling on to the idea of reality then still want to realise you are dreaming how are you going to instruct the mind to separate the two when you are in the dreamstate? By recognizing that dreams are also part of reality. Thank you for your reply, IMJ. I really appreciate your personal input!