Hello!

I started dream logging recently, but it was leaving me feeling even more untethered to tangible stuff than when I was permanently stoned, so I thought maybe writing a bit about that might be useful.

Recall returned faster than I had expected, but maybe I had just enforced distance from that for too long. And some of them have a mildly lucid or yogic sort of feel, which is sometimes nice but also seems like a distraction. Most notably, dream specters that seize my reactionary tendencies in a moment and disappear upon interaction, only to pop up again seem to be the real obstacle to more fluidity or depth of my dream experience/recall. Ironic, since in waking I often suffer from stoic inaction and a will to just fade away. Yet they seem oddly linked, as though stonewalling were its own reactionary stance that just happens to stretch moments out rather than syncopating them a bit too rapidly for staying on-beat.

Before giving up smoking, I had a sense of being haunted by people I used to be but had sought to will away like a silly occultic child. I had experienced them in the past year not so much in dreams, or at least I could barely ever remember, but more in liminal moments between the momentums that carry me through the days. Cultivating a will to confront them in dreamspace seems to just make more specters though, at least for now. But there are 2 of them (at least, or they used to be, and the frame of reference grew sticky with time), and they tend to communicate by staring rather than speaking. As silent types, they often like to steal faces and appear as someone else. Sometimes very specifically as people who evoke emotional reactions, but that's an old jam for them.

Doubling down on dreams seems like a terrible way to get out of myself and meet like-minded people (well, real fleshy ones at any rate). But it also seems more grounding than seeking ever more neutral language for perceptual weirdness, or indulging in "just moments" where everything is always on the one because there's never an opportunity afforded for more distinctly extended meters. Regardless, I can't bring myself to join sitting groups, and am surprised that I've found a will to post anything in an online space at all. I guess it's a start...

Out of curiousity, what would success look like to you with your dream practice?

EDIT: Percy this is Shargrol --- I'm very sorry, I accidently deleted your post. Perhaps other moderators can retrieve the original post. Again. I'm very sorry.

There were two sentences this was the first line in your reply...

​​​​​​​

"Hello!"

​​​​​​​Hello! I just wanted to say that I like the name Percy and welcome to DhO! Looking forward to read you more! 

I don't know if a deleted post is easy to recover or if that's even possible. The best course of action is for Percy to re-post what was deleted, especially if it's a short post.

Sorry

Chris M
DhO Moderator

Ugh, again I'm very sorry. Thanks for checking Chris.

I did say on many occasions "do not drink and drive!" And this is even more important during a festive season as this one!  

Fasten your seatbelts folks! This dream seems unfolding on and on! Yohoooooooo!!! 

No worries, I had a good laugh!

I think the second sentence was just to say that something like dream yoga as a more results-oriented direction of focus would seem fitting.

Thank you Papa for the kind words.

This experience is in such a flux! 

"Be careful what you wish for"

I was reminded last night that intent, whether in dreams, life, or other magical works, is often an adventure in dimensional reduction bordering on absurdity.

It sounds like you have been through a lot, and I wish you well

Thank you kind sir

I read a thing this evening and it left me feeling many ways.

https://jewschool.com/on-finding-our-temple-covered-in-blood-174355

Perhaps my first thought was rather selfish, insular. "How long will I have to stay awake to keep this out of my dreams"

And of how often my married life left me feeling spiritually alienated and far away...

But then it kept bringing me back to the weird way in which I've felt more Buddhist than I ever expected or think I really deserve since I decided to give up formal practice almost 10 years ago now (about which I hope to unpack further). Sure, I've practiced and read and practiced some more, but the origin of that was staring sideways at perceptual weirdness and just happening to find better vehicles for that journey in the methods and words of quite a few Buddhists, old and new. And I often felt alienated in that as well, with so much weight given to language and attitudes about things like enlightenment as an absolute end-goal rather than aspirational next-miling.

I don't know. I feel sad and angry for and about things beyond myself. What could I possibly do in the face of a momentum that's seemed inevitable throughout my entire adult life? What good is tradition anyway, when the end-goal proves itself to be in-grouping for militant selfishness?

At any rate, reading it left me feeling less alone in my sense of alienation, somehow.

Dreams generally don't seem to have sound, or touch or taste for that matter (and surely not just for me?). Words usually convey by intuition, visual recognition, or some other ever-present sort of felt vice. For the most part dreaming seems to be just a comingling of visual and emotional experience.

And it doesn't even seem weird in the dream. Kind of like how touch is often not experienced, and if so, all other details wind down to a bare minimum, as though observing a still frame imbued with deeper meaning than the image alone could convey.

But also thinking about primitivity of senses, and how audio experience tends to a more immediate and less mutable sort of jam.

Also, the notion that thoughts are essentially feelings in self-special wrapping.

The fabric of dreams, in this regard at least, seems to be woven of the higher order bits of sense that inform perceptual experience. More deeply layered than iterating over the senses in isolation. Not exactly sorting, not explicitly anyway, but more akin to recursive graph traversal... Well, maybe.

Strange upon recall when dreams blend or criss-cross, but in the dream often it feels quite fluid and natural. Seems to happen most often when returning to sleep, as though the bodily need to pee was dream-consistency's arch nemesis. But also maybe sometimes when dreams first begin and lack their own distinct inertia, scanning for the most appropriate scene to match the mood. Very much a feel of traversing for some higher order filtering or alignment, and the deeper the momentum of immersion, the easier it is to rediscover.

"Radiant light serenely illuminates the sands of the Ganges. The ordinary and sages, beings with spirits, are equally my home. A single moment is beyond birth, actualizing the undivided. A subtle movement of the six sense roots shelters the clouds. Removing delusions increases sickness. Going toward true thusness is also wrong. Follow the worldly conditions with no hindrance. Nirvana and birth-and-death are both flowers in the sky."

A quote from Dogen's Flowers in the Sky, attributed to Zhang Zhou

'Is this that fear & terror coming?' Then the thought occurred to me: 'Why do I just keep waiting for fear?

What if I, in whatever state I'm in when fear & terror come to me, were to subdue that fear & terror in that very state?' So when fear & terror came to me while I was walking back & forth, I would not stand or sit or lie down. I would keep walking back & forth until I had subdued that fear & terror. When fear & terror came to me while I was standing, I would not walk or sit or lie down. I would keep standing until I had subdued that fear & terror. When fear & terror came to me while I was sitting, I would not lie down or stand up or walk. I would keep sitting until I had subdued that fear & terror. When fear & terror came to me while I was lying down, I would not sit up or stand or walk. I would keep lying down until I had subdued that fear & terror.

'A being not subject to delusion has appeared in the world for the benefit & happiness of many, out of sympathy for the world, for the welfare, benefit, & happiness of human & divine beings,' he would rightly be speaking of me.

"When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, & attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of recollecting my past lives.
I directed it to the knowledge of the passing away & reappearance of beings. I saw — by means of the divine eye, purified & surpassing the human — beings passing away & re-appearing, and I discerned how they are inferior & superior, beautiful & ugly, fortunate & unfortunate in accordance with their kamma: 'These beings — who were endowed with bad conduct of body, speech & mind, who reviled noble ones, held wrong views and undertook actions under the influence of wrong views — with the break-up of the body, after death, have re-appeared in the plane of deprivation, the bad destination, the lower realms, in hell. But these beings — who were endowed with good conduct of body, speech, & mind, who did not revile noble ones, who held right views and undertook actions under the influence of right views — with the break-up of the body, after death, have re-appeared in the good destinations, in the heavenly world.' Thus — by means of the divine eye, purified & surpassing the human — I saw beings passing away & re-appearing, and I discerned how they are inferior & superior, beautiful & ugly, fortunate & unfortunate in accordance with their kamma.

'Released.' I discerned that 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.'

Bhaya-bherava Sutta: Fear & Terror

Check your messages

Clarity and consistency. I seem to use them interchangeably. Maybe a bit lazy of me, or unclear as it were...

And yet, what's more clear than a consistent frame? In contrast, a brief moment of clarity that quickly washes away in a glimpse sounds more like a little death lusted after with the full passion and foolishness of youth.

But moments are all I've got... Well, sure, but some moments stretch out, suspending the will to run away with the momentousness of felt experience. And some moments fall off only to circle back with an almost fractal-like periodicity, a bit like a dreamscape that's easy to return to but similarly impossible to sustain against the inevitability of eventual waking. Just cascading some silly sense of self through the moments like a relatively scale-free hierarchy of associative presence.

Sounds magical, I'm wishing you well. Ive really enjoyed reading your logs, and the self reflection that's been causing me on my end. Welcome to DhO!

"You can be in my dream if I can be in yours" - Bob Dylan, Talkin' World War 3 Blues

Was reminded last night that, in the absence of preparing my disposition and/or focus, I easily find myself back where I started. Not so much wrt recall as embodying unpleasant states and temperments, the likes of which led me to turn it off so to speak in the first place.

Perhaps I need to rethink my practice goals and return to just sitting. And getting out more...

Really, in the back of my mind, there's been a sense that this was almost diversionary, if rather soothing. This has been good for getting me to write more, and I hope to continue. But I think I had found the clarity I was seeking already, and was just sort of seeking to reject its conclusions.

Conveniently timed for a ny resolution I guess, but I thoroughly dislike goal-orientation, not least of which for its tendency to narrow all the things into permutations of "are we there yet?"

It sounds like your practice is going well, keep going!

Did you end up making a good new years wish/resolution?

Nope. What I did do: feel ill and talk to the ex. Fun day!

"And getting out more..."

+1

"What I did do: feel ill and talk to the ex."

​​​​​​​Oh shit! I know how that feels! 

Damn but I just want to trance out on perceptual weirdness. Getting out and enjoying the sun, while nice, still serves to bring the noise. Intent for nightly dreaming also seems to increasingly go there. The consistency is something, I guess.

funny how altering simple conditions of sleep can make their way into dream themes

Sometimes reality hits hard.

When dealing with maybes, it can be useful to work with multiple perspectives. In the absence of conclusive/first hand evidence, a 50/50 or even-odds stance is a safe fallback. Alongside that, accumulated plausible evidence can also be useful for contingency planning. Emotions often lead us to expect an immediate conclusion, reactionary responses are easy and the sense of closure they provide can be comforting. Sitting with maybes can be really tough.

fun times when the stress dream feels better than waking conditions

Even in the face of disaster, I thought to reevaluate things but keep coming back to the same conclusions.

Fuck

Things are too crazy to do much logging right now, but a few quick notes.

Sleeping in a different place seems to take a day or two to get back to recall.

When life is relatively chill, emotions can still feel overwhelming and practice can seem like a way to distill emotional response, holding everything far away. But when chaos ensues, that same bit of repose seems to enable a greater realization of the felt experience of being there.

Uncofortably, when I'm able to recall lately, I see an angry face of myself that I had hoped to leave behind long ago. Sometimes I lose control and am all anger and rage, but at others I'm more measured. Sitting with the angry face until it gave way to something less reactive is much of what all this dream logging stuff was about, I think. Not sure how to size this up as progress or just shades of the thing.

Well, practice is a gradual training. I think what happens is as we work through suffering, we are on the whole more happy, productive, and content. This seems to have an interesting effect that the mind gets better at detecting suffering, but basically it needs to be stronger to detect it, so it becomes more sensitive to it, which reveals deeper hidden suffering. So while things get better, it can definately feel like running in circles sometimes. But keep going, keep practicing, youre doing great.