The Faculty of True Discernment

The Faculty of True Discernment

The Dream Scene was a well sun lit grassy field with large rocks and fallen trees that created a natural gathering place for hikers and nature lovers to sit down and rest. Sitting down and playing a guitar was this ... I have to say it ... an extremely ugly woman. But the guitar playing was the most beautiful I had ever heard. Then there were these men, crude fellows, who approached, and gathered around her to ridicule her merely for her unattractive appearance. I was concerned that this would annoy her into stopping her music, and I became irritated that the boisterous laughing was drowning out the guitar playing, so I told the young men, "Listen! Everything else aside, can't you hear the quality of that music. We are in the presence of some real talent. Shut up!" Then the lady, who had seemed oblivious to all of us, suddenly looked up, and looking me square in the eye said, "The faculty most worth cultivating, is the faculty of True Discernment".


In an instant I was transported to a moon-lit arbor. It was a young growth forest with as many bushes on the forest floor as the trees around them, which formed a low canopy. The air was cool, and this felt like a nice place to be. Much of the Moon light came through and gave a silvery glow to the furry little down-covered pods on the drooping branches of the willow trees. I was a disembodied presence, simply witnessing; I would not be an Actor in this Dream; I would just watch. What I witnessed was a beautify Greek Goddess Diana, Goddess of the Hunt in a pearl-white translucent toga, belted at her waist, and bare foot. She had a bow and a quiver of arrows. She was serenely languid and in no hurry. It was breathtaking, and I knew this was a special vision. But the tranquility was shattered when along came this strong bearded man too old to be called young, but not old enough to be supposed wise. He was delighted to happen upon such a pretty woman and of course wanted to make her acquaintance. He said, boastfully, as if boasting could endear his self to her, "I am hunting tonight. It is misfortunate for the poor animals, because I am such a good shot that the animals surely don't stand a chance". Diana paused not hurrying any reply, but rather pulled a special arrow from her quiver. She held it out for a moment so that the hunter could see that it was probably the most crocked arrow that could still be straight enough to be shot from a bow. She loaded it onto the string and pulled back in preparation of shooting... then turned her head to the side so it could be seen that she was not aiming, and she released the shot. S H HO O O PP, the arrow whistled off. It lodged inside a bush I could see the feathers sticking out. She walked over and took hold of the arrow and withdrew it from the shrub, and, amazingly, there impaled on the end of it was a game bird. Then she spoke, not to the Hunter, but to me, "Chance? Nothing happens by Chance".' Then I awoke.

What does it mean? The first part of the Dream was prelude to the second part. If I had not seen behind the appearance in the First Dream, I would not have been shown the Second. The injunction "The faculty most worth cultivating is the Faculty of True Discernment", was to be my guiding mantra if I were to properly understand the next dream, indeed, to understand my subsequent Life. The Night, the Trees, Moon Light, the Anima Goddess. This was my inner life. The Bearded Hunter was the invasion of my aggressive persona, my conceit, pride, perhaps even my intellect. The Huntress provided a lesson that teaches that a Greater Unity would always subsume and transcend any actions of the Hunter. Could this Unity be understood? No. The Arrow was crooked and no deliberation guided its aim -- it was released into Fate. Yet there was Intention, there was Will. The Goddess meant to hit the Bird. Apart from Design, pure Volition can resonate enough to evoke its own Results. But the Dynamics here are beyond ordinary cause and effect. It happened because it was both destined to happen and willed to happen. So, what is left for True Discernment to discern, if we omit the rational? Why, the Importance of It All, that is what. If we see Life and the World as arbitrary, a conglomeration of accidents, then we dismiss it. But to see it as a riddle with imbedded meaning makes us look at it harder and deeper. We can understand it as Mystery, but in the positive sense.

Well it certainly seems that the same theme carries through both of the dreams. Both take place in a scene of great beauty that is the habitat of some anima figure. The harmony of both scenes are interupted by some form of male chauvenism. In essence it seems to be a struggle between the anima and the ego. Each dream also wraps its self up quite nicely with a lesson at the end.

"The faculty most worth cultivating, is the faculty of True Discernment"
To see beyond the purely phsical appearance of the woman down to the beauty of the music she plays is certainly a display of this faculty. To recognize the figures in the next dream for what they represent is also quite sharp. But you assume the second dream is a gift due to your amazing faculties of discernment, when really it is the same lesson under a different guise.

"Chance? Nothing happens by Chance"
This seems like a reaction to your surprise that the arrow struck its target. You have fallen prey as the hunter to pride in your faculties. How could the goddess of the Hunt miss her mark? How can the anima reveal your weaknesses without the use of symbols?

'If we see Life and the World as arbitrary, a conglomeration of accidents, then we dismiss it. But to see it as a riddle with imbedded meaning makes us look at it harder and deeper.'
Dreams such as these are certainly not arbitrary configurations, but messages from the subconscious, encoded in symbols, designed to teach us a lesson. The lesson is specific to you. But I have found that the anima rarely appears to teach us something we already know.

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Originally posted by magusarts


\"The faculty most worth cultivating, is the faculty of True Discernment\"
To see beyond the purely phsical appearance of the woman down to the beauty of the music she plays is certainly a display of this faculty. To recognize the figures in the next dream for what they represent is also quite sharp. But you assume the second dream is a gift due to your amazing faculties of discernment, when really it is the same lesson under a different guise.

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very perceptive!

Now that you mention it, I wonder whether the Lady would have said the very same words no matter how I acted. You know, I am only assuming that my decision was the key to opening up the Second Dream, but if what you say is true, then nothing I did could have mattered in the least, and that had I laughed and jeered and even thrown things at her in order to emphasize the ridicule of her ugliness, that she still would have said "The Faculty most worthy of cultivation is the faculty of True Discernment", and the next dream would have occurred just as it did after the more charitable observation. But in that case it would have seemed to affirm that her music and manner counted for nothing, and that True Discernment consisted in taking note of her extreme ugliness, and raising a riot on account of it.

Wait, that doesn't seem right! Not only I had a choice in this Dream, but so did the Uncomely Singer. There were those who condemned her for her ugliness, and there was me who defended her for her talents. It was only I she spoke to.

I am not convinced that my actions in this dream did not matter. Indeed, when you say that both dreams were of the same theme, and that the second dream was not a reward for the first, it seems to imply that I could have veritably stoned that woman and spit on her dead body, and she would have still looked up and said "The Faculty most worthy of cultivation is the faculty of True Discernment", and I still would have moved forward to the Dream of "Chance!? Nothing happens by Chance".

Indeed, I suspect you of being a Paulist of the Presbyterian Extreme as far as dreams are concerned -- that our Moral Behavior counts for nothing and that the Dreamer goes forward benefited by a fixed predestination and election, that bestows the same rewards whether they are earned or not.

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Originally posted by Leo Volont


Indeed, I suspect you of being a Paulist of the Presbyterian Extreme as far as dreams are concerned -- that our Moral Behavior counts for nothing and that the Dreamer goes forward benefited by a fixed predestination and election, that bestows the same rewards whether they are earned or not.

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Nothing of the sort. I'm not saying you don't have any influence in your dreams, or that they are going to unfold in a certain way whatever you do. What I do think is that most dreams take place within your own mind and that the characters and things within your dream are as a result the contents of your subconscious.

So, if your subconscious thinks you have ego/temper/chauvenism issues, why wouldn't it first show you a scene it knew you would react positively to and then try and trick you with a similar situation you would react negatively to? True you could have told the woman playing guitar she was an ugly cow. But, that doesn't realy seem like something you'd do. You could have become lucid and flown away from the whole thing. But, you didn't.

I was just trying to think about the dream from a different perspective. I guess I'll keep my thoughts to myself. You shouldn't be so quick to assume what other people believe.

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Originally posted by magusarts


What I do think is that most dreams take place within your own mind and that the characters and things within your dream are as a result the contents of your subconscious.

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Then explain why some dreams have been found to have objective content for more than one dreamer. If two people have the same Dream Experience, both from their own viewpoints but sharing the same Dream Scene and Dream Content, then WHOSE Subconscious created the Dream.

If two people have the same dream, then the Dream must have occurred independently of both of them, as from a Third Entity.

And I had just such a dream experience. This is why I find it so very important that people very intellectually honest on these Pages. Some very core arguments depend upon what we can trust to be the Truth.

Now, if you could trust me when I say that Dreams are Objective Shared Phenomena, then this would totally revolutionize your thinking. But if you thought me one more liar in a culture of liars, then you would have to persist in your narrow "All Men are Islands" view until you yourself could have a dream with a friend and then afterward meet that friend and exchange notes so cleverly that no tricks could be supposed. In my case, I met the young lady I dreamed with the very next morning and we both had the sense to speak simultaneously -- not just one person speaking and the other agreeing, but we both launched into saying where we met and what each of us said and did.

Besides, I'm not the only one. Every so often somebody comes to this site talking of premonitional dreams. What, do you disregard them?

What of the experiments here on Shared Dreaming. has nobody been able to make that work, and are they going into it with not a single instance from Known Dream History that anybody has ever been able to share a dream?

so, your isolationist view of dreaming, respectable as it would have been a hundred years ago, has not been able to keep up with what is now reported.... if you can convince yourself that not everybody is lying.

Unfortunately people do lie. Back in the seventies and eighties there was a famous fraud and liar who wrote a series of books, in which dreaming was mentioned. Discredited by every respectable Organization, certain moderators on this page hold him as something of a cult hero. Since they have so little regard for the Truth, one needs to suspect anything they would say, no?

But I have been honest, if you can believe that.

So, do you suppose that because certain moderators take great stock in dubious sources of information and that many of the people on this site seem to be new to lucid dreaming or interested in it only for amusement, that everone on these forums are morons? Can you realy make an acurate judgement about what someone knows or believes based on a few forum posts?

First I was "a Paulist of the Presbyterian Extreme," and now I have an "isolationist view of dreaming." By my count that's two strikes in trying to pigeonhole me into some category of intelectual inferiour you can eassily scoff at. Did I offend you by trying to offer a different perspective on your dreams and engage in conversation? Or, are you such an elitist that you think no one could possibly know what you know, and thus pass everyone off as beyond conversation and only worthy of scorn?

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Originally posted by magusarts
So, do you suppose that because certain moderators take great stock in dubious sources of information and that many of the people on this site seem to be new to lucid dreaming or interested in it only for amusement, that everone on these forums are morons? *Can you realy make an acurate judgement about what someone knows or believes based on a few forum posts?

First I was \"a Paulist of the Presbyterian Extreme,\" and now I have an \"isolationist view of dreaming.\" *By my count that's two strikes in trying to pigeonhole me into some category of intelectual inferiour you can eassily scoff at. *Did I offend you by trying to offer a different perspective on your dreams and engage in conversation? *Or, are you such an elitist that you think no one could possibly know what you know, and thus pass everyone off as beyond conversation and only worthy of scorn?

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You object to being 'pigeon-holed', but where are your essays full of any of the details that would be necessary to flesh out any opinion I could have of you? And indeed, what am I supposed to do with your complaints? How are they supposed to help?

You know, if I am wrong about my opinion of you, then you could elucidate upon how my picture of you swerves from Reality. But what I am getting may just be the touchiness of your denial. You see me as somebody who can evaluate you as a person and say to himself that he is not very impressed. At that goads you.

No, a person does not have to be an elitest simply because he thinks himself better than you. That would be holding yourself at too high a standard, don't you think? But perhaps you suppose that we should all suppose ourselves equal? Oh, really. In all other endeavors in Life, the Intellectual has to confront situations where the competition is unforgiving. In our youth we had to take the Athletic Field with no guarantee of equality. and then in the business world there is no guaranteed equality in the distribution of wealth. But the Intellectual could always reassure himself that he had some brains. And now, we would have people like you that would take that away -- the only supremacy the intellectual has would have to be surrendered for the sake of a theoretical equality that exists nowhere else in life. Or maybe you could learn to be a Good Sport and lose without all the sour grapes.

As Iraq was holding what they passed off as free and open ellections I was sound asleep. I dreamed of being on a street filled with hundreds of people. All the buildings around me looked like they'd been looted and destroyed. The endless crowd of people was all slowly walking in one direction and I was trying to get away from them. All around me was a sense of anxiety and fear.

When I awoke I couldn't help but wonder if all the turmoil the ellections were causing somehow seeped into my dreams. My room mate also had troubling dreams about Iraq that night.

When I was much younger I dreamed of going over to a friends house to spend the night before I'd ever seen his house. In my dream I saw an almost perfect representation of his house. The only difference was in my dream there were stairs going up to a second story, when the house was only one story. But everything on the first floor was where I dreamed it was when I saw it in real life.


Dreams come in many shapes and sizes. Some show evidence of previously unexplained connections between the mind and the external world. Other dreams seem to be nothing more than a rearrangement of the previous days activites and thoughts. Another category of dreams seem to be what Jung described, an attempt by the subconscious to communicate symbolicly with the consciousnes.

What exactly do dreams mean? How can we understand them? The answer surely isn't going to come from some guide to dream interpretation you pick up at the local book store for $5.99. Most of the answers will have to come from yourself. Observation and exploration are the keys to studying what science tries to pass off as a simple phenomenon of REM sleep.

In the study of my own dreams I have found several reoccuring characters and themes. The house I grew up in as a child is a location I seem to keep finding myself at in my dreams. From looking through other peoples dream journals here it seems that they too have certain symbols that pop up over and over again (dream signs if you will). To me this seems to imply that a certain amount of the content in dreams is generated internally. That's not to say dreams only come from within. But I would say that we are not always tapping into the collective consciousnes when we sleep.

Lucidity alone is proof that there is interaction between the conscious and subconscious during dreams. The fact that we can remember our dreams adds support to this idea. The more we pay attention to our dreams and try to recall them, the better we get at making that connection between the subconscious and conscious mind.

It seems that dreams are the bridge between the two states. The wise will see this and work to unite the two. Lucidity is an invaluable tool for this task. Once we learn how to awaken within our dreams we are no longer forced to explore as passive observers, but we can dive right in and look for things the subsconscious might not think to show us. But, that is not to say lucidity is definitavely the best means of bridging the gap. For often the subconscious will have things to show the consciousness it would not have thought to look for.

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Originally posted by magusarts
As Iraq was holding what they passed off as free and open ellections I was sound asleep. *I dreamed of being on a street filled with hundreds of people. *All the buildings around me looked like they'd been looted and destroyed. *The endless crowd of people was all slowly walking in one direction and I was trying to get away from them. *All around me was a sense of anxiety and fear.

When I awoke I couldn't help but wonder if all the turmoil the ellections were causing somehow seeped into my dreams. *My room mate also had troubling dreams about Iraq that night.

When I was much younger I dreamed of going over to a friends house to spend the night before I'd ever seen his house. *In my dream I saw an almost perfect representation of his house. *The only difference was in my dream there were stairs going up to a second story, when the house was only one story. *But everything on the first floor was where I dreamed it was when I saw it in real life.


Dreams come in many shapes and sizes. *Some show evidence of previously unexplained connections between the mind and the external world. *Other dreams seem to be nothing more than a rearrangement of the previous days activites and thoughts. *Another category of dreams seem to be what Jung described, an attempt by the subconscious to communicate symbolicly with the consciousnes.

What exactly do dreams mean? *How can we understand them? *The answer surely isn't going to come from some guide to dream interpretation you pick up at the local book store for $5.99. *Most of the answers will have to come from yourself. *Observation and exploration are the keys to studying what science tries to pass off as a simple phenomenon of REM sleep.

In the study of my own dreams I have found several reoccuring characters and themes. *The house I grew up in as a child is a location I seem to keep finding myself at in my dreams. *From looking through other peoples dream journals here it seems that they too have certain symbols that pop up over and over again (dream signs if you will). *To me this seems to imply that a certain amount of the content in dreams is generated internally. *That's not to say dreams only come from within. *But I would say that we are not always tapping into the collective consciousnes when we sleep.

Lucidity alone is proof that there is interaction between the conscious and subconscious during dreams. *The fact that we can remember our dreams adds support to this idea. *The more we pay attention to our dreams and try to recall them, the better we get at making that connection between the subconscious and conscious mind.

It seems that dreams are the bridge between the two states. *The wise will see this and work to unite the two. *Lucidity is an invaluable tool for this task. *Once we learn how to awaken within our dreams we are no longer forced to explore as passive observers, but we can dive right in and look for things the subsconscious might not think to show us. *But, that is not to say lucidity is definitavely the best means of bridging the gap. *For often the subconscious will have things to show the consciousness it would not have thought to look for.

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Oh, good! That was substantial.

I think that one of primary reasons that people cannot find meaning in their dreams is that they are not asking for much meaning from their dreams. Suggestions are not made, and then punishments are not inflicted when the Dream Mind does not deliver. There is one person on this page whose dream retention went way up when he started slapping his left arm on mornings when he would wake up without a dream.

I too have often had dreams where the settings have come out of the past. This occassioned my one essay, "The Disengaged Dream Self". sometimes I think the Dream Self is too possessed by inertia, and resists moving forward with the actual self. Again, suggestion is the remedy.

I am conscious that I seem to contradict myself at times. At times I seem entirely dedicated to the proposition that the Higher Self be given a free hand to conduct and control all Dream Activities. But first, I suppose, one has to get the attention of the Higher Self, which takes some personal initiative. Seek and you shall find; knock and it will be openned. When one has engaged the Higher Self, THEN it becomes a matter of trying to achieve a balance.