No, there not.
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I think there is a little bit of truth to all your comments. Stuff like this is hard to define. We really dont know anything. We just donthe best with the information we have.
Back to topic... I see lucid dreaming as being as spiritual as you want to make it. Dreams are a reflection of yourself lucid or not. If you are a spiritual person or have been contemplating spiritual things then so will your dreams.
I believe that the title of this thread is just as antagonizing as your last.
It seems to be another assumption with no personal experience to back it up.
As I noted in your other thread, your approach at raising a discussion here is quite unskillful. You are stating opinions that are grounded in nothing but the biases of your mind as if they are facts, opinions that I'm sure you know clearly go against the experiences of many of the members here.
I have two questions for you, Barry my friend.
One, what do you mean by spiritual?
Two, what will you achieve by getting people to admit that LDing is purely for entertainment purposes and does not make one more spiritual? What is your motivation? To cause a commotion? To attempt to get people to conform to your limited perspective? To attempt to negate all of the spiritually transformative experiences that you have read about on the forum?
Thanks in advanced for answering my questions. :)
well my perspective on krishnamurti's speech called the critical juncture is that there is no ultimate authority. He is a supremely wise human spirit, however all of humanity cannot look to jiddu krishnamurti for the ultimate guide of how to be. He can only give out advice and instruction. It is up to the seeker to learn everything. Teachers can only say, or demonstrate, but only the seeker, or the "eye of the dream" is the only one who can apply herself to grow. what he is saying is really more like: You yourself are. And you must trust yourself, for you cannot trust what anyone says but by measuring it with your heart. He speaks somewhat paradoxically, but I think it's so fascinating given that he was predicted to be somewhat of a maitreya, and then he later renounced his high status as the next great star of the age or whatnot. He was known for being uncomfortable with being a great master soul, and so he speaks as if there are no great masters who can tell you what's right and what's not...
I find this recording of Krishnamurti very enticing of further discussion elswhere... but another good clip to go along with the message of "Trust yourself, not what anyone tells you" is: Terence McKenna - The Message - YouTube esp. at right around 3:50. The video is really, really amazing. One of the best animated film shorts I've seen!
anyway!! hahaha, so I digress,
Mostly what I meant when I said something about "while the world turns..." and "in the end it's all silence in space," was that, we can just choose how we want to be! I'mma do me, you'mma do you, and we'mma do we! I can be red, blue orange purple or green, I can dance everywhere, eat only vegetables, draw an eye on every tree I see, sing in made up languages, write in cursive, but never use the letter Q, because I believe it is the sacred letter.... etc. etc. We can be however we wish to be. There is no authority on how to live other than our own selves. In saying this, I claim that you are the authority over your "nexus of time and space" as terrence mckenna says in the video I posted above. I hope this makes you feel inspired! It really fires me up to hear these great mystics.
anyway, back to the subject of dreaming:
I often use my lucid dreaming for healing rituals and prayer. I am very spiritual, and if you continually ask for a need to be supplied, and earnestly seek it, it will come. Like, if you want to be healthy, you must save your money, learn to do yoga, hire a trainer, abandon smoking. It's a real commitment, but you see that anything is possible with the power of seeking with prayer.
This past summer I dreamt alot about talking over my issues, as if I needed therapy. I talked and talked in the psychic dreaming mental connection with all my friends about myself and my problems and I just couldnt shut up. Then I discovered there was nothing better than inner peace. (again). so I decided to dream about nice, relaxing things like being aware to the degree that I may speak through the lips of another's body, and feel what it means to be one with everything. I am here.
dream beautiful, nourishing, healthy, joyful, creative, free-spirited, adventurous, harmonious, healing dreams!
Maybe for some people but spirituality will make you lucid dream at some point along the way, so it's a mistake to dissociate entirely these two things. This a kind of egg-chicken problem
lucid dreaming brought me to believe in god, and life after death
If you believe that lucid dreaming will not make you more spiritual, then it will not. Carry on playing in blissful ignorance (nothing wrong with that by the way - whatever floats your boat).
If you believe that lucid dreaming can make you more spiritual, then it might. Carry on learning.
(How can the possibility of talking with your subconscious, for example, NOT inspire spirituality?)
Lucid dreaming is a tool. No tool has power over you. You put power into the tool to use it and create what you want. Therefore, lucid dreaming does not make you more spiritual, but how you use it can.
I'm sorry, but this is really ignorant and rude. Some people label themselves as spiritual, some people label themselves as not being spiritual at all. Therefore, the spiritual people literally are more spiritual than the non-spiritual people.
I'm not saying the statement you made never applies, but sweeping generalities like that are wrong!
Finally, why do you feel the need to make this thread? I find it childish and bane to assume your opinion is 100% correct and post it knowing it will upset people. It seems like you are trolling.
It's all about intentions. Ruffling some feathers can be advantageous if it leads to the development of wholesome qualities in one's self and others.
In this case, it seems his initial comments came from a place of attachment and delusion, and undoubtedly caused aversion and defensiveness in others. Thus his "means" came from a place of unwholesomeness and lead to the arising of unwholesome qualities in others. This is not justifiable.
A more wholesome discussing could have arisen from an OP somewhere a long the lines of, "Does lucid dreaming make you more spiritual?"
But would it have?
I'm not quite so sure. I think that, regardless of his motives, when Barry set the OP as he did (here and on another thread at the same time), he elicited responses, arguments, and passions that might not have emerged had he set an OP that simply invited yet another echo chamber of folks who felt that LD'ing made them more spiritual, but had no need to defend or justify the feeling.
Barry may not have meant to (perhaps he was just trolling), but his abrasive OP(s) might have opened an interesting door or two...
He did, Sageous, agreed.
I like it that people thought about what the term means to them, what it can mean to others, explore the boundaries of the word a bit.
Like - I as a staunch atheist have a use and a personal meaning for it anyway, well - I wrote my part.
I agree that his approach has opened doors of discussion that wouldn't have been brought to light otherwise, causing arguments, passions, and defenses to emerge and thus making the discussion more interesting.
However, the issue I raised was not the appeal of the discussion, as obviously passionate and defensive responses are perceived as being more interesting to our western drama-addicted culture.
Rather, the issue was the wholesomeness of the discussion, or it's conduciveness to the well-being of those involved. I believe a more wholesome discussion would not illicit aversion and defense mechanisms arising from attachment to views and fabricated identifications, but would be a conversation of sharing views and experiences in which the posters are coming from a place of equanimity and a selfless desire to help one another acquire a clearer perspective, rather than simply asserting one's opinions because their beliefs were put into question. The need to defend or justify one's views is generally an attribute of an unwholesome state of mind.
^^ Fair enough.
The high road is always better than the low road, I suppose... but it is also the more difficult path, and honestly "a conversation of sharing views and experiences in which the posters are coming from a place of equanimity and a selfless desire to help one another acquire a clearer perspective" is a rare conversation indeed, especially when initiated simply by asking for one. Sometimes a kick in the pants, annoying and unwholesome as it may be, is the only way to stir an actual conversation. That sucks more than a little, but, as you noted, we're all just a bunch of drama queens these days, who only tend to move when kicked.
Every time I have Lucid Dream, I feel better for likely 7h~. Not sure hwo to explain it, but I guess it's because we get to use our brain a lot or something.
I don't disagree with your sentiment VinceField, but you can just ignore his tone! The rest of us can then make it more "wholesome" (not really a word I would use).
I did just check one definition of spritual;
"relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things".
I guess you could say that makes the pursuit of LDing very spiritual. It's certainly not material or directly physical.
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Spirituality is so viscerally personal for everyone.
Albeit a piece of fiction (Vanilla Sky), David Ames needed his lucid dream to understand and discover his spiritual worth and the equity of the love he was so desperate to give to another soul.
With so much of ourselves and our universe that we just don't understand, how can we possibly think that we know the answer to the spiritual efficacy of lucid dreaming.
Just one noobs opinion...
My intention was to bring the behavior into the spotlight so that perhaps a degree of transparency can gained by the poster and to provide a perspective that he may learn from. I ignored his tone in the sense that I did not take it personally; I did not allow it to have a negative effect on my mind and emotions.
But Sageous, I think the conversation between you and VinceField was the most intellectually stimulating discourse seen on this thread so far, and that came from a neutral beginning. I haven't seen too many people go in depth with their own experiences or beliefs here at all. I think that when you start a conversation aggressively you put people on the defense and they guard themselves, so they won't say anything that might be too personal and could therefore be used against them.
At any rate, I for one am glad to see the cooling down of this thread because I do not like to see people upset unnecessarily. :whyohwhy:
How awesome! Thank you for looking this up!
I would say lucid dreaming absolutely makes you more spiritual. At least if you use it right. This is because you can use it to understand yourself, and if you want to understand the world around you, you must first understand what is within yourself.
The Tibetan's have a highly-evolved system for using lucid dreaming as a spiritual practice. This is a really good book on the subject:
The Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
We are spirit, we need to realize that... there are many spiritual things around, even some videogames (especially RPG) contain spiritual stuff. Our dreams, can be very spiritual if we desire so, but if we have a LD where we are stopping a horde or zombies, then no, it is not.