Thread: Geography and Navigation in Dreams

Originally Posted by Mzzkc

White rooms and oceans count as geography. Weren't you paying attention in middle school?

Okay, okay.. nice to know we're staying on topic then!

... attention in middle school? I think it was during all those mid-afternoon history desktop naps that my dream work began!

Originally Posted by Sageous

Okay, okay.. nice to know we're staying on topic then!

... attention in middle school? I think it was during all those mid-afternoon history desktop naps that my dream work began!

Oh, that is awesome. I did alot of my first dream work on a desk top too!

So, back to how it relates to navigation. The dreamer who can erase the entire scene and eliminate the distractions faces a new concept in navigation. That of bringing a place to you, instead of travelling to a place. I one time had decided to demonstrate my telepot skills to myself in a personal challenge. One part is to teleport to famous locations.

I did not go to these places. I dreamt that I teleported there. In order to say i teleported to Eygpt, I erase the white room (which was almost a bit purple that time) and made the visuals shimmer, then I created a pyramid. To me in the dream it had the effect of me appearing suddenly on top of the great pyramid. I do not know where I am going with this, but maybe some one else will use the thought to go somewhere in this discussion. I would play a little more now, but have to take my wife to lunch.

Originally Posted by Mzzkc

It's just a matter of overcoming self-built, psychological barriers. Anyone can do it if they work to understand themselves. Sure, I might have the advantage of getting a head start on most of the population (I've pretty much been doing the spirituality and self-reflection thing since I was old enough to speak [6 months, if you're curious]), but I wouldn't say the process is difficult. Just time intensive.

How can I tie this in with navigation? Ok, is navigation (or all mystical LD stuff) easy? Of course my take on the universe is just mine and no one needs agree with me here. Both Mzzkc and Sageous, as well as myself have all stated at various times something more or less like this,,, "I discovered this stuff before anyone told me about it,,, it is almost like I always knew how to do such and such but just had to work it all out a bit,,, or if people could just realize such and such and stop limiting themselves"

We all three seem to have skills above and beyond the average. Here is how it would be explained in my version of reality. Reincarnation. How many life times would you think the average human has had? Well, this one universe has been able to support life for so long, that if someone was created even 1/10 of the way back to the beginning (?1.3 Billion years) and incarnated in forms that lived 100 years (for quick math) they may have been in over 10 million bodies so far. So, let's not go that far back, let's just say some of us have been kicking around a good long time. Humans who have been exposed to Dream Yoga teachings or through self study work to reach odd new states of reality. The theory being that good Dream Yogis gett more direct control on what happens to them after death. That kind of training would stick with you.

Mzzkc, I, like you was clearly an odd little spiritually aware child very early. Even raised in a normal setting I freaked out when i was 5 and saw Wonder Woman sitting lotus style and doing a mantra on TV. People always commented on the odd spiritual intrests I was showing. So here is my conclusion. Me, you, and Sageous have been exposed to LD type teaching before in prior life times. It gives us a clear advantage when compared to any one who has not.

Now I think about humility as a good virtue to cultivate. The simple fact that any of us have an advantage due to our past, does not make us special, we simply have this one skill in our past. However, it is a risk we all three must face, that we may frustrate students who do not have the same advantage. If we come across like "come on, this is so obvious" it will make perfectly good student feel inferior which is no good thing.

So, cheers to any one who has this wonderful advantage, and here's to anyone who needs to crawl before they can run. Back to the topic! Anyone who has a hard time moving around in the LD world, don't get discouraged, it actually is a hard thing to figure out. Take your time and ignore people who say they can teleport at will You will get where ever you are going if you train your skills and don't spend every LD trying to get laid.

Originally Posted by sivason

Me, you, and Sageous have been exposed to LD type teaching before in prior life times. It gives us a clear advantage when compared to any one who has not.

And to think I felt old before I read this!

Originally Posted by sivason

We all three seem to have skills above and beyond the average. Here is how it would be explained in my version of reality. Reincarnation. How many life times would you think the average human has had? Well, this one universe has been able to support life for so long, that if someone was created even 1/10 of the way back to the beginning (?1.3 Billion years) and incarnated in forms that lived 100 years (for quick math) they may have been in over 10 million bodies so far.

Of course, this assumes only one body at a time can be 'occupied,' as it were. Which itself is a limitation, don't you think?

To contribute to the topic at hand, however, I present a straightforward "how to" that anyone can follow with a bit of introspection: http://www.dreamviews.com/f14/archet...t-tool-104409/

Originally Posted by Sageous

And to think I felt old before I read this!

Heh.

I keep forgetting how long you guys have been poking at the wasp nest. XP

As for the clear light being the 'ultimate' I'd like to think there's no 'end' in this crazy world of lucid dreaming we know and love.

Here we go. I call this trick "White Room" dreams. (The background can actually be grey sometimes) I get to the state of egoless trancendence, and then I pull back just enough to start to remember my own ego and self. I create a dream body to my liking and work on stablizing it. At this point no scenery exists except for my body. You can then, free from DCs and such, begin to create any scene you want. The background only fills in as you wish, so it can be you and a table, or you and a cottage that is floating in a feild of white.
Here is how this creates stunning and amazing dream control,,, you only bring a tiny portion of your ego and sub-concious mind back, so you are free from the distractions normal LDs have.

This is pretty awesome and it's funny that when I first learned of lucid dreaming I wanted to go into the 'construct' from the matrix and spawn things in it, unaware of the metaphysical implications of existing in a void unified with your unconscious.
But like Sageous I think you might be discounting the experience a somewhat lightly.

Indeed, the whole "Neo seeing the code" bit at the end could stand as a metaphor for a transcendent dive into the sea of his unconscious (at least in the first movie, before it all went south). Damn, that's deep... Hey, maybe the Wachowsky Bros were trying to tell us something important after all, and really weren't just a couple of over-amped comic book fan-boys channeling Philip K. Dick to make a cool fists-of-fury movie ... Nah!

I did, and still do, get hair standing on the back of my neck when I first saw the scene in which Neo realises he is 'The One' and sees the matrix clearly for the first time, before I had any idea of the Buddhist/Taoist subtext.

I'm finding out much the same thing, myself; I just wonder why people claim some things are so difficult. Sure, everyone's path might take a bit of traveling, but you're fine if you don't stray too much. It also helps if you can manage to hitch a ride.

It would defeat the purposes of drawing up a complex and prescriptive set of doctrines dating from thousands of years ago, only to say that goals are ultimately easy and for everyone to find their own way.

I just remembered something really quite interesting. In my first lucid dream, at the instant of attaining lucidity I suddenly found myself hanging in a white void without a dream body, and this was before I read anything about dream yoga.

Does this mean that the results of dream yoga don't simply arise from expectation from the teaching and have a basis in some underlying mechanism of lucidity, is the 'base reality' of tibetan buddhism simply a state of consciousness where one is inherently connected with the unconscious, past the egoic duality?

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

It would defeat the purposes of drawing up a complex and prescriptive set of doctrines dating from thousands of years ago, only to say that goals are ultimately easy and for everyone to find their own way.

Exactly my point. ^.^

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

I just remembered something really quite interesting. In my first lucid dream, at the instant of attaining lucidity I suddenly found myself hanging in a white void without a dream body, and this was before I read anything about dream yoga.

Does this mean that the results of dream yoga don't simply arise from expectation from the teaching and have a basis in some underlying mechanism of lucidity, is the 'base reality' of tibetan buddhism simply a state of consciousness where one is inherently connected with the unconscious, past the egoic duality?

That would seem to follow...at least loosely.

After all, these mountains of doctrine and terminology had to start somewhere universally attainable. Right?

This is another one of those cases where understanding why these things happen is more important than following the how to. In my experience, anyways.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Does this mean that the results of dream yoga don't simply arise from expectation from the teaching and have a basis in some underlying mechanism of lucidity, is the 'base reality' of tibetan buddhism simply a state of consciousness where one is inherently connected with the unconscious, past the egoic duality?

Why yes, yes it does.

Most sincere religions follow a phenomenon, they don't invent it. So I'd say the thing the Tibetans are chasing existed long before they did, and they have since spent a thousand years investigating it, categorizing it. and, often, way over-complicating it.

I think that there were probably cavemen who once questioned, no doubt in a series of grunts, their egoic duality. This stuff is not new, or unique to some old guys in Tibet. As you noticed, anyone who delves deeply and lucidly into their dreams (likely in the process abandoning duality and some ego in the process, just because it works better that way) could find themselves sampling the tenets of Buddhist, Hindu, American Indian, and even Catholic mysticism without ever having read a word from of any of those religions' dusty texts. Kind of makes it all a bit more real, I think.

... Now I can only hope that the growing LD Nation doesn't codify all these established "techniques" and "mysterious" natural noise like SP or hypnagogia into the tenets of its own religion... I wonder what Dr. LaBerge would think of the title "Holy DreamFather?"

Originally Posted by Sageous

Why yes, yes it does.

Most sincere religions follow a phenomenon, they don't invent it. So I'd say the thing the Tibetans are chasing existed long before they did, and they have since spent a thousand years investigating it, categorizing it. and, often, way over-complicating it.

Bravo! I like that. Well spoken.

So, back to how it relates to navigation. The dreamer who can erase the entire scene and eliminate the distractions faces a new concept in navigation. That of bringing a place to you, instead of travelling to a place.

So in mental space you are only as far as a thought away from any destination. Throw away all conventional measures of distance and space, they don't apply.

^^ That to me, Ctharlhie, is the foundation of lucid dream navigation -- and creation, since we're talking geography as well!

It must suck to be a DG when you're engaged in an interesting and worthwhile conversation that skirts the "off-topic" bounds. XP

Sorry to have kept pushing; I think I'll retire from this thread for now.

Originally Posted by Mzzkc

It must suck to be a DG when you're engaged in an interesting and worthwhile conversation that skirts the "off-topic" bounds. Sorry to have kept pushing; I think I'll retire from this thread for now.

Too bad...the off-topic stuff was getting fun. And we were at least saying words like "geography" and "navigation" now and then.

So, back to navigation? Anybody have any excellent dream-drive stories?

Test drove a Smart Car in a nap today. The steering was awful, the brakes barely worked, and I almost got hit when the car failed to stop at an intersection. I told the salesperson flat out that no matter how good the price was, driving it to and from work every day would suck...hard.

Then I got out and walked home.

Pretty gorram excellent, if I do say so myself.

Wow. Sometimes dreams just imitate life, huh?

But could you read the gages?

Yeah, I used the speed gauge to point out that it shouldn't take 100 yards to stop when you have the brake fully depressed and are only traveling 20mph.

Haha, no it's not just you, and it wasn't the Liberace quote, it seems a user has found a way to hack the forum to make the forum font pink. At least that's what I've heard.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Haha, no it's not just you, and it wasn't the Liberace quote, it seems a user has found a way to hack the forum to make the forum font pink. At least that's what I've heard.

No, I do not think it was a user. Mindgame was showing how she could change her text back, by using the change text color feature in the market place. Someone thought Mindgame was saying she had caused the pink issue, and Mindgame never corrected the idea. Another person pointed out that today is a National HIV testing day. The thought being that the text may be in support of that event.

Originally Posted by sivason

No, I do not think it was a user. Mindgame was showing how she could change her text back, by using the change text color feature in the market place. Someone thought Mindgame was saying she had caused the pink issue, and Mindgame never corrected the idea. Another person pointed out that today is a National HIV testing day. The thought being that the text may be in support of that event.

Nope! It was really me.

Congrats Stephen, it is a great feeling, helping others.