--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Richard M" <compost...@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <noozguru@> wrote: > > > > I've mentioned one lucid dream I've had several times on > > FFL and that was the one with "Jesus" who looked more like > > Naveen Andrews than the way that Christianity portrays him. > > He told me he wanted to tell me something and I had to walk > > over to talk to him and there were fundamentalist Christians > > who seemed to be stuck in the ground telling me I had no > > right to talk to him. He just nodded at them in disgust > > and said "pay no attention to them." He essentially warned > > me that things were going to get really bad in the world > > (and it did happen). The experience makes it a little > > difficult for me as I really didn't think there actually > > was such an individual as Roman history makes no mention > > of him (and they were good historians) and might actually > > may be a work of fiction derived possibly from some activist's > > activities (which would have been so minor the Romans wouldn't > > have bothered with a mention) and a mystic at the time. Some > > theologians seem to buy into this idea. > > Interesting. I think it points up a curious "tension" in > this thread between, on the one hand, the idea of cultivating > dreams because they might have the potential to point to > something, or to intimate something "profound" (though like > looking for a black cat through a very dark glass darkly!). > And on the other, trying to take control over dreams and > direct them. I would have thought trying to practise > the latter technique might bollocks up any hope of benefit > from the former? i.e. It is the innocence of the state of > dreaming that *may* allow it to open a door to something? > Perhaps.
An excellent point, and since I initiated the thread, I'll reply. The dichotomy you mention between the idea of innocently "interpreting" dreams and the idea of waking up in them and controlling them via the techniques of Dream Yoga or Lucid Dreaming is based on a dichotomy between these approaches' core beliefs about what dreams ARE. The Western "interpret dreams" approach is largely based on the idea that dreams have no real exis- tence. They are mental constructs only, something that happens in the brain and may or may not have something to do with the release of stress. The Eastern approach to dreams is that they are REAL. They're really happening, just on another plane of existence, in what Castaneda called a "separate reality." Your relationship TO the dream if you can wake up in it and change it is the SAME as your relationship to the daily world you see around you in the waking state. On the whole, those who are interested in Dream Yoga and Lucid Dreaming (in my experience) are not terribly interested in "interpreting dreams," as symbols for something else. They treat the dreams as very real (in another plane of existence) and something that one doesn't "analyze" for possible "meaning," but that one *interacts with*, in the same way that one interacts with daily life. Me personally, I've never been much for symbology, or for "analyzing dreams" to suss out their pos- sible "meaning." That has been true my whole life, and continues to this day. I understand that not everyone is like that, and that many look to dreams as symbols from which they can learn something, in much the same way that JohnR looks to the Ramayana as a set of symbols from which he can learn some- thing. And that's cool, if that's what gets you off. When I was practicing Dream Yoga and Lucid Dreaming, I wasn't looking for "meaning" from dreams. I was treating them as a "separate reality," an environ- ment in which I could be as interactive as I was in my daily life. The dreams were REAL, within their own reality. Eastern philosophies tend to agree with this latter view. They tend to view dreams as NOT "happening inside one's brain," but as another level of reality (the astral plane) that one accesses during dreaming, and between incarnations. Thus they are looking to gain more mastery over their actions in this separate dreaming reality, just as they are looking to gain more mastery over their actions in waking reality.
