Lucid Dreaming: Boon or Bane for a Night of Rejevunating Sleep?

So last night I was listening to a self-hypnosis recording that was supposed to help guide me into a state of lucid dreaming. I'm not sure why I felt compelled to try this but I did. Recently, I've learned to trust my gut instincts and if I felt a compulsion to do something I usually followed through on it with positive results. However, this time I had a nagging doubt and worry in the back of mind of what if I'm messing with forces I shouldn't mess around with? What if I get trapped in a nightmare that becomes like a reality for me? After all, becoming aware during a dream...doesn't that take the fun out of letting go completely and abandoning consciousness during sleep? Isn't being awake during the day enough already?

Well, these nagging doubts won out in the end. I stopped the recording since I was really tired and the idea of grappling with such worries when I was so exhausted mentally and physically made me just want to sleep and not dream at all, or if I did dream I didn't want to remember it.

There are so many websites out there about lucid dreaming. They all tell us that lucid dreaming is completely safe, but this seems to be new territory...how much research has been done on this practice? I don't like one of "Dream Views' " motto: "Staying Up All Night." I for one enjoy sleeping all night...and yet why do I feel strangely drawn to this practice despite the back of the mind worries?

For those who have tried it and have had positive experiences please share. Also, for those who have had negative experiences, please share as well. I think I will try listening to the full audio tonight...perhaps nothing will happen...then again part of me is excited and dreading that I may be successful, if I do try...

So lucid dreaming—a boon or a bane for a night of rejuvenating sleep for the psyche and for the body—for me the verdict is still out.

Inspiring Words from God

Yes, you read right. I'm not just spouting blasphemy. The Big Man Himself (or Herself), the head honcho, the Man (or Woman) in charge ... Those who have read the CWG trilogy will not be lost here.

I just finished reading Friendship with God: An Uncommon Dialogue by Neale Donald Walsch and some passages really stayed with me. (How come amazing material like this always has really embarrassing titles like that? It makes me embarrassed to even tell others what I'm reading. Then again the very reason why it seems embarrassing may be due to this the egregious misplacement of values and collective beliefs in our modern society).

Without further ado:

You are God's orchestra. It is through you that God orchestrates life itself. There are no "sour notes" when you play. There is only you, My child, playing your heart out, trying to get it right.

If I failed to see the beauty in that, I would have no soul at all.

Remember this, always:
The soul is that which beholds beauty even when the mind denies it.

[...]

I cannot leave your soul, because I am your soul Your soul is made of what I Am. Go, then, My soul partner, and live in faith, hope, and love, these three; yet know that the greatest of these...is love.

Spread it, share it, be it, wherever you are, and yours will be a light that can truly light the world.

Isn't that beautiful?

Stop sleepwalking.
Go out and live life deliberately: with awareness, honesty, and responsibility.

Facing Death to Escape Slavery

There is no place on earth where death cannot find us — even if we constantly twist our heads about in all directions as in a dubious and suspect land...If there were any way of sheltering from death's blows — I am not the man to recoil from it ... But it is madness to think that you can succeed...

Men come and they go and they trot and they dance, and never a word about death. All well and good. yet when death does come — to them, their wives, their children, their friends — catching them unawares and unprepared, then what storms of passion overwhelm, them, what cries, what fury, what despair!...

To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death...We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.

-Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne

2 Questions From Sogyal Rinpoche

I started reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche and these two questions stuck with me.

Apparently, someone approached him and said that what he says is common sense that everyone knows this. Sogyal replied: "Ask yourself these two questions:

1. Do I remember at every moment that I am dying, and everyone and everything else is, and so treat all my beings at all times with compassion?

2. Has my understanding of death and impermanence become so keen and so urgent that I am devoting every second to the pursuit of enlightenment?

If you can answer 'yes' to both of these, then you have really understood impermanence."

Dire Warning for Humanity

This comes as no surprise to anyone who is aware that we are in the midst of Kali Yuga but in order to spark an awakening we should make others aware as well.

I believe the Brazilian Minister for the Environment, who is responsible for the Amazonian rainforest, cogently puts it as:

Modern industrial society is a fanatical religion. We are demolishing, poisoning, destroying all life-systems on the planet. We are signing IOUs our children will not be able to pay ... We are acting as if we were the last generation on the planet. Without a radical change in heart, in mind, in vision, the earth will end up like Venus, charred and dead.

The source of these short-sighted, destructive actions by a collective humanity is not mere selfishness or greed but the mistaken belief that this short life-span of ours is our only life to live.  Since we've got only one shot at this, might as well let the world go to damn — to hell with our descendants. A dramatic shift in consciousness has to occur before we can close this chapter of Kali Yuga and usher in the enlightened age of Satya Yuga.

Importance of Faith in a Sadhana

The Shiva-Samhita (3.16, 18 -19)

Success comes to a person of faith and self-confidence, but there is no success for others. Hence practice hard.

The first sign of success is confidence that [one's efforts] will bear fruit. The second is being firm in that faith; the third is worship of the guru;

The fourth is equanimity (samata-bhava); the fifth control over the senses; the sixth is moderate eating; there is no seventh.

Madre Teresa

I watched "Madre Teresa" last night on DVD and I heard the prayer of Saint Francis for the very first time. It resonated with me greatly after spending more than 3 months in the holy city of Rishikesh, UP, India. That prayer embodies not only the spirit of Christ but also Shiva, Krishna, Vishnu, Ganesh, Allah, etc.

I had left India with a negative view of organized religion and Christianity in particular but watching the film made me realize that individual Christians can practice as they please and Mother Theresa was the exemplar of a good Christian. She embodied the spirit of Christ unlike so many people of the cloth.

Without further ado, the text of the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon:
where there is doubt, faith ;
where there is despair, hope
where there is darkness, light
where there is sadness, joy
O divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

I find that with Westerners especially (I was no exception prior to the start of my sadhana in Rishikesh) are jaded and cynical, so reading an extraordinary passage like the above makes no impact on one's psyche. If this was the case for you then try and close your eyes for a second and pray for clarity and comprehension. Then slowly and with presence, re-read the passage —perhaps out loud — and I pray you will find the deeper meaning to resonate within your own heart and perhaps make a lasting change in your outlook on life.