Thread: How can I easily reach Sleep paralysis?

If you look back at my posts prior to a year ago, you will see that I let people mis-use the term and made my best guess at what they probably were refering to. I do a highly advanced form of WILD that requires a step where you feel the chemical changes induced by bodily sleep. In that stage (I am still not sure if it is actually defined by any term) you have such a reduced amount of bodily awareness that moving will require focused attention, basically choosing to wake yourself. I would try to tell students some logic that would incorperate the mis-use of SP, so they would not argue (they expected SP). I would say, here is how you know you have reached SP, but never try to test it. Do not test it, because you will be able to move and moving will break it.
I am fairly confident that that stage is what others are calling SP. I tried re-educating the forum, by explaining that what they called "SP" could be broken by intent, and there fore any attempt to confirm SP by trying to move would set back their WILD attempt. People want to reach a state where they can not move. The state they should be seeking only prevents dream based stimulation of waking motor response. Testing the state by moving leads to failed WILDs.
I just attempted as a teacher to accept the fact that they wanted to call the state I refer to as SP, which made little sense to me, but hey, whatever. I just taught using their inncorrect term, with added caution that it was not actually paralysis. I probably helped a few people with this logic.
Then Sageous started saying he thought the mis-use was harmful and how he wished no one had ever started the whole mess. He also said he thought it could no longer be corrected. Well hell, why not try the impossible? I found out Myzzk and Zoth felt the same way, so I pushed for a refromation. In that sense perhaps some of us sound like zealots. We are attempting to fix a problem that makes it hard for us to teach. The world of DV only has so many good teachers and we are vexed by everyone confusing the heck out beginners with this issue.
The approach is supposed to be simple, refer them to an informative thread, and refuse to accept the term to be used for any other sleep state. People can mis use it, but they will likely have Sageous, a DG or Mod refer them to the correct information.

Originally Posted by sivason

I would say, here is how you know you have reached SP, but never try to test it. Do not test it, because you will be able to move and moving will break it.

I assume you don't really mean the never here? If they test it, and they wake up, they've just traded one night in exchange for discovering that they can move in that state and that trying to move will wake them up. Then if that same person ever finds themselves in a state where they can't move, they can tell you about that and you can trust that they know what they're talking about. Not a bad haul for one night I don't think.

If their mental abilities are so weak and erratic that they persist in testing it every time, even though they've already explored that and you've told them that something more interesting waits if they don't move, then I don't really see the point of the whole enterprise. It could be like a rite of passage. If they're not competent to understand something that trivial, then they're not qualified to take the class. If they're that intellectually undeveloped when they're awake, what can they possibly gain by following your directions that they're not likely to hurt themselves with? Unless the goal is for you to be a teacher with students, and their goal is to be a student with a teacher. In that case what a person does with their time really is all the same, except that a hobby like doll dressing would be a lot safer.

To briefly review where I'm coming from here....I encountered people who wanted to be spiritual teachers, and I took their assumed competence at face value. I didn't even practice anything in the conventional sense, but I listened to and thought about what they had to say with an open mind, and it changed me. It raped me. Not only is my personal mental experience permanently changed, my fate is changed too. Stuff happens to me every day that's outside of my control, and which would not be happening were I someone else who I can now never be.

Speech on these subjects is not just free speech, its speech that does something. If your thinking opens a chakra too soon you can't just close it again and have it be the same as it was, its not reversible like that. And lucid dreaming is like this also, its almost a kind of mental yoga. Lazy and insincere people may be protected to some extent by the shallowness of their attention, but for open, innocent people the shaft goes in deep.

In a karmic sense I can't say I've been wronged, or that I'm worse off as a result of what I've experienced. In memory I was never innocent, and I've always preferred exploration and change to safety. But I can say without a doubt that its wrong to set oneself up as a teacher with the implication that you have more mastery of understanding of a subject and its implications than you actually have. I'm not alleging you're doing that with lucid dreaming, since I haven't paid attention to what you teach. But this pattern is almost universal with esoteric and occult teachers, and it pisses me off, and I see several of the signs here. So I am suggesting that it may be a possibility. I'd say the same thing to Sageous.

I understand that sometimes you just have to do stuff, you can't wait until you understand everything before you start living. Doing stuff is part of how you get the strength and experience to understand more. So in that sense, teaching something you're not totally on top of yourself is unavoidable and necessary. But there's a pretty high cost to not being completely straight with people about this, and the student pays an awfully big part of it. And there's another side too, gaining new understanding and correcting errors in understanding. The world is full of teachings, and people who disbelieve those teachings. But it seems almost nobody cares about making those teachings better, except insofar as its a part of establishing their own brand. Where can I go, for instance, to talk to someone who knows something about raja yoga but who isn't pushing a dogma, who is willing to interact without me prostrating my mind to their chosen power structure? Nowhere that I can find. The world's 'free thinkers' who are interested in such subjects mostly seem to be people who are trying to set themselves up at the top of their own power structures. Meanwhile, we have almost no idea what's going on during astral projection, for instance. We have scarcely any idea what astral matter is, and only a few very vague, flawed ideas about how it interacts with our physical world and with our minds. If someone wants to experiment with it and find out more, then God bless them, and I'm grateful for their sacrifice. But if they presume to teach other people that cultivating the practice is safe, when we barely even know what it is, and pretty much all we know about safety is that none of us have died in a mishap while doing it, then I have a problem with that. We understand that its safe in the sense that you're not going to get physically killed by a demon, or trapped outside of your body. But when the gods kill that's generally not how its done anyway, its a lot more subtle than that. It takes a lot longer to see the effects, and they might be difficult or impossible to connect unambiguously with their cause.

For the most part this stuff is not a hobby for me, to fill my time and attention. If that's what it is for you, then I think that's an insufficiently responsible attitude to have when teaching it. I don't believe that's all it is for you either though.


I don't think that I can move my physical body while astral projecting. I'm sure this is not a medical condition, that its just in the nature of what I'm doing. It would be a medical condition if it happened a lot when I didn't want it to, but the same could be said for practically anything. Maybe I could learn to move my physical body while astral projecting, but it would be a matter of doing two different things at once, a bit like trying to use my eyes independently. I'm not interested in persuing that right now though, it seems like the wrong thing at the wrong time.

As usual, I apologize for my aggressive tone. When I'm being passive aggressive, I always add a double dose of active aggressive to go with it. Part of that's just my own deformity. Part if its because our goals really do conflict in certain regards, and there's no way to speak to that without some of that conflict coming to the surface.

^^ Outstanding post, Shadowofwind, and I sincerely hope Sivason responds and is able to shrug off your signature tone, as he should. I do want to butt in an comment about teaching, though:

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

...But I can say without a doubt that its wrong to set oneself up as a teacher with the implication that you have more mastery of understanding of a subject and its implications than you actually have. I'm not alleging you're doing that with lucid dreaming, since I haven't paid attention to what you teach. But this pattern is almost universal with esoteric and occult teachers, and it pisses me off, and I see several of the signs here. So I am suggesting that it may be a possibility. I'd say the same thing to Sageous.

This is a good point, and one that represents a real danger in teaching: When a teacher is trying to teach someone something, anything, that teacher must instill in the student a palpable sense that the teacher is an expert at whatever he is teaching, or at least is far more knowledgeable than the student. There are a few rare exceptions to this rule, for instance there are some teachers who possess the talent to ask the right questions and let the students learn on their own regardless of the teachers' knowledge, but generally a mastery or, at minimum, an understanding of the material must be projected in order for the teacher to maintain credibility and get the students to listen. This holds in the esoteric trade as well, in spite of the vagueness of that knowledge in general.

This is a delicate situation, because I personally subscribe to the adage that "Those who can't, teach," so to me there are a great many teachers out there who lack even a curiosity about their subject, much less mastery or strong knowledge. A teacher who lacks solid understanding of a subject will often find himself clinging dogmatically to the few things he reasonably understands or spiritually accepts just to maintain that necessary air of superiority -- at the expense or omission of other things. The teacher may initially be doing this in good faith and with the best of intentions, but his choice risks closing his mind to new ideas, or, worse, convincing his students to close their minds (usually very loudly). This is not a good thing, and rarely ends well for the teachers, the students, and the subject.

This is why I don't like to consider myself a teacher, but more a student who might have a few things to share with fellow students, and who knows he has something to learn from them as well. Indeed, the reason I participate here at DV is to learn, not teach, and the day I have nothing more to learn here (or discover that I was never learning anything at all) is the day I stop signing in. That sounds selfish, I know, but it seems a fair exchange and much less karmically risky than assuming airs of a master and deigning to teach my doctrine (if I had a doctrine, and even if that doctrine turned out to be correct). If I ever seem like I'm doing that, it was not intentional and I have corrected myself when I caught myself erring in that direction.

That's my take, anyway. I don't know why, but I felt a need to share. And Sivason, if you read this, be assured that this post in no way references your teaching skills, mastery, or positions on this thread -- that bit is up to you!