Thread: Memory: the Forgotten Fundamental

FryingMan:

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Sageous, I don't know if given what you've written above if you'd be interested in reading it, but in "Mindfulness In Plain English" the author emphasizes the point of vipassana meditation is nothing more or less than "discovering the truth" about experience, reality, etc. I find that highly compatible with discovering the truth about one's state at any particular moment, and not at all about putting someone else's ideas into your head.

...Which is why I tend to recommend Vipassana to anyone who asks. There can be exceptions to every rule, I think.

There is certainly great value in many of these practices, even if you are eventually, perhaps inadvertently, led down a path that better reflects your teacher's religion than it does your own psyche (this is fine in general, BTW, since many disciplines -- especially the more mystical ones, have a lot to offer for bettering your waking-life... but we're talking about LD'ing here...). Even a discipline as apparently self-focused as Vipassana might find its teachers using Buddhist tenets to explain what you experience, and those tenets will probably be referenced, ironically, more often as your experiences of Self become more profound. So, since advanced LD'ing is potentially as close to a perfect experience of Self as you can experience, to find yourself drawing on those tenets during the dream is to find yourself basing your experience not upon what you are witnessing, but upon what you've been given by your teacher.

Of course, I could be wrong...

In fact, from the little I know about Buddhist practice, the emphasis always seems to be "don't take what we [the teachers] are saying at face value, test the teachings yourself and reach your own conclusions."

Yeah, they do like saying that, don't they? But, when your conclusions no longer line up with the teachers' beliefs, be prepared for them to either reject your experience or try to redefine it in terms of their worldview. I have wondered if this is why there are so many different versions of basically the same thing in Buddhist and Hindu meditation and mysticism... they may just reflect a long history of students being ignored or censured by their teachers and starting their own things, only to ignore the new discoveries made by their students, who then start their own things. Hmm.

Regardless, any discipline, no matter how lofty, requires rules, and teachers can only teach if they are somehow bound to those rules. So, even though their discipline says that discovery of Self requires that you draw your own conclusions and build (ironically) your own rules, your teacher cannot help you (or understand himself what you've done) without installing your experience into his given paradigm... so, if you are a good student, you will eventually absorb his parameters into your experience, and find yourself defining your experience by the things your were told, and not the things you see. This could be how Buddhist mysticism has gone pretty much unchanged over all these centuries, I think. This may also be way so few llamas actually seem to achieve nirvana .. you'd think at this point that they all would.

Of course, I could be wrong...

Patience:

Originally Posted by Patience108

...its funny because I feel I have come to a similar place but through being taught how to be with my thoughts and eventually myself with genuine wonder by a Buddist Lama - but more and more it feels the instructions are left behind and the bare presence is left in the form of 'life' and when I can remember and I am in this 'life' properly it feels very much like one of your RRC

I never denied having stolen some of the good stuff from the Lama's, have I?

When you remember who you are in this life "properly," are you remembering from your own perspective, or from the perspective given you by your teacher? This may be something to think about, especially as you continue shedding the need for a teacher: Are you seeing your world from the peak of your own mountain, or are you seeing it from the well-trod peak of someone else's mountain?

Often when walking people through the RRC, I found myself trying to tell people what they should be wondering, what true here&now presence feels like, etc, and later I was annoyed when the students simply looked for exactly what I just said while wondering why their RRC's didn't work.

There is much of great value in the meditative disciplines, I know, but when you reach a certain transcendental point you must abandon the discipline and, given all that value, what you've been taught can be real hard to leave behind.

Can you update me once more on how the RRC works for you throughout your life and for your LDing

For me? At this point, during waking-life I use a version of RRC that manifests in an almost unconscious manner: I am registering my interaction with reality almost constantly now (which drives my wife nuts, BTW), but very rarely actually ask questions or wonder -- I guess I've left my own teaching behind! I still have many moments of mindlessness, but whenever I do I'm somehow reminded that I've "left" my presence in reality, and maybe need to move back in. Since the RRC tends to reflect the overall, yes, tenets of my general practice and life experience, I would imagine that it is more involved in my daily life than that, but I'd have to give it some real time to map out and describe this involvement

The RRC in dreams is much simpler: with the "power" of the RRC in my lucid toolbox, I am better able to hold onto my understanding of the nature of the dream (that it is Me), and to maintain and exploit my connection with memory. This of course helps with prolonging and with control, not to mention lending some real potential depth to the dream (because that connection with memory makes it much easier to, say, build a dreamworld); but it also serves me well in the higher-end explorations, as sort of a rational tether that helps me to explore well beyond the realms of normal dreams without losing touch with who I am, so that I am both not absorbed by the transcendental places I am exploring and able to reel myself back to waking-life with those transcendental experiences as firmly in my memory's grasp as possible.

All high-end stuff aside, if you are able to do a sincere RRC during a LD, you might better understand your LD's real potentials, and you might have more confidence in acting on those potentials.

Also some new ways to work on the Fundamentals during LD's - could you give some ways from your experience to work on developing memory and self awareness in the LD maybe more specific goals or tasks that iyo help develop ones mind -

I guess I'll finish up by running contrary to your expectations again, Patience: I never develop the fundamentals during the dream -- not on purpose, anyway.

If you are trying techniques to build your self-awareness, memory, or expectation/intention during the dream, then you are doing so too late, and also reducing the quality of the LD itself. Developing the fundamentals is definitely daywork, I think. It is much better to have your mind in the right place before dreamtime, so that you can fully appreciate the dream itself.

Aside from rudimentary things like remembering your sleeping body, and whatever prolonging (i.e., spinning, RC's etc) or lucidity enhancing (i.e., the RRC) techniques work for you, there is really nothing to practice once you are fully lucid. Enjoy the dream, let your mind be one with itself in a truly global way, and count on the sense of self you developed during waking-life to sustain you... there might even be things to be learned in the dream that range beyond what you've been taught in waking-life, so open your mind to that, rather than trying to do exercises someone else told you in waking-life (yeah, I went there!).

I'm rambling.

Originally Posted by Sageous

If you are trying techniques to build your self-awareness, memory, or expectation/intention during the dream, then you are doing so too late, and also reducing the quality of the LD itself. Developing the fundamentals is definitely daywork, I think. It is much better to have your mind in the right place before dreamtime, so that you can fully appreciate the dream itself.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. For me, night time/ dream time is when I relax and let my work pay off. Its should I look forward to, to enjoy, to bear the fruits of what I sew during the day.

-Redrivertears-

Originally Posted by Sageous

For me? At this point, during waking-life I use a version of RRC that manifests in an almost unconscious manner: I am registering my interaction with reality almost constantly now (which drives my wife nuts, BTW), but very rarely actually ask questions or wonder -- I guess I've left my own teaching behind! I still have many moments of mindlessness, but whenever I do I'm somehow reminded that I've "left" my presence in reality, and maybe need to move back in. Since the RRC tends to reflect the overall, yes, tenets of my general practice and life experience, I would imagine that it is more involved in my daily life than that, but I'd have to give it some real time to map out and describe this involvement

I find that interesting, because I wonder if I might be on my way toward steering down that sort of path myself. Although I still do some RRCs (or their equivalent) occasionally, I have for a while now found myself focusing on more directly trying to develop a more continuous, nonverbal memory/self-awareness state. I still zone out sometimes, but as time has passed, it seems to take less time in general for me to “wake back up” and realize it's happened.

Back when I was still learning about the concept of self-awareness and toying with the RRC exercises, I admittedly didn't feel much like I knew what I was doing at first, but I decided to stick with it for the time being to give it a chance. I suspect that over time I've started to figure out what the self-awareness state is supposed to “feel” like, and maybe it was around that point that I started branching out a bit and experimenting with methods of my own for trying to further that.

Perhaps tying with some of the things said in the last few posts, it really does seem to me that a key part of this whole LD journey is for every person to do some critical thinking, try things out, and explore to find the specifics of their own path based on what they experience. The discussion of fundamentals and many of the techniques found in places like this forum are no doubt helpful for steering beginners in the right general direction, but I wonder if at least many of the really successful LDers are the ones who then took steps beyond the literal tutorials to map out their own personally-tailored variations of the practice.

^^ That. I couldn't have said it better myself (and am always glad when I don't need to!).

Also:

Originally Posted by Travis E.

... I wonder if at least many of the really successful LDers are the ones who then took steps beyond the literal tutorials to map out their own personally-tailored variations of the practice.

No need to wonder about that; be confident that it is the case.

Most of the advanced LD'ers that I've come across (myself included) invariably have their own techniques (or none at all), though they all seem to deeply know and respect the targets and processes of all the major techniques (i.e., MILD, WBTB). Their personal LD'ing techniques vary widely, but what they all seem to share is an active, clear sense of the fundamentals... including some additional fundamentals of their own (like focus).

There is indeed a point where the techniques as dictated in the books and tutorials become obsolete or inadequate by themselves, and advanced LD'ers realize that they (the techniques) might not matter as much as they first thought they did; all that really matters in the end is their mindset, and that mindset is invariably resting on a thick foundation of the fundamentals.