Quick note to share a friend's latest musical efforts. Ian Rhett is a singer/songwriter in San Francisco who wrote, recorded, produced, and made the music video for this new piece. Ian is a cool cat with loads of talent so I invite you to check out his efforts in the video below. If you dig the piece be sure to rate it on youtube to get him more visibility.
Just saw this docu-comedy and though it is 11:35pm and past my bedtime I felt the need to share this link so that many of you can find salvation this holiday season. Let your soul find comfort in the knowledge that you are not alone in your credit card worship. You are not alooooone in your over extended and underfunded home equity lines of credit. You have come to a cross roads in the depth of the "Shopocolypse"!
Let Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir lead you to the promise land and liberate you from the false idols of Mickey Mouse and the logos of... OK you get the idea. Definitly check out this film. Is produced by Morgan Spurlock so you know it's good.
I have been diving deeper in to lucid dreaming lately and was thinking it might be cool to share my first real clear lucid dreaming experience. I had written this up on another site and never really did anything with it so I am now sharing here in hopes it can inspire someone else to lucidity.
[Original Post Below]
As of late I have been learning about Lucid Dreaming. I have to say this is truly an amazing capacity of our minds and spirits. I was first introduced to the idea of "waking up in your dream" through an powerful book titled "The Holographic Universe" which covered everything under the sun in relation to possible descriptors for reality. This lead me to Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge which has now transformed my understanding of reality in a way I could not have foreseen.
Yes this sounds very dramatic and all but dramatics aside I have some invaluable lessons from my experiences with lucid dreaming thus far. So for my first foray into the blog sphere I would like to share you these initial learnings...
I will not outline the details of the many ways to go about learning to lucid dream as they are clearly outlined in the book mentioned above. Instead I offer an insight into why you might want to pursue this somewhat bizarre and fascinating endeavor.
One of my first experiences 'waking up in my dream' , or more accurately realizing I was dreaming and becoming clearly conscious of the fact that I was in a dream, was truly a life changing moment. I woke as as always and slowly climbed out of bed to start my walk through the house to check on the kids and as I entered their room I became a bit uneasy. There in the corner of their room was an old-timey television like the one used in the Matrix. Since we don't own a television I found myself standing in the doorway wondering where this T.V. came from during the night. Then I remembered something I had read in the lucid dreaming book... to ask this question when things are seeming or feeling strange in your day to day life: "Am I dreaming right now?"
Let me say here friends that this moment is one that will jar the very essence of your seeming stable world. I asked this question and immediately felt a new and yet very familiar feeling. I expressed the thought "I think this is a dream."
Immediately I started to awaken. I felt a dose of adrenaline and the visual experience of the dream began to fade very similar to the experience of blacking out where your visual field reduces to a small circle in the center of your vision and everything goes black. Again remembering a snippet from the book I made a calm effort to relax and move forward back into the full dream experience and to my great surprise it worked! Now with a change of tense to better express the moment... The visual returns the same way it left like a hole opening in a black field of vision and here I am standing in the doorway of my kids room noticing how everything is a little different and out of place. With a sense of absolute wonder I reach over and knock my knuckles on the wall to see what it feels like and sure enough "knock knock" the wall is solid (well cheap paneling anyway). Then the strangest sense comes over me where I feel an awareness of my body laying in bed on my right side, knees bent, with my left arm under my pillow and yet I am fully aware of an experience of physicality in this dream world. Arms, legs, hands, etc feeling, hearing, seeing, it is all here ... like being in two places at once.
Let me just take a moment to say that I have honestly been a firm skeptic of all this until i experienced it. Though fascinated with the possibilities I just couldn't seem to get my mind around the idea of being totally conscious in a dream and having control over what happens and yet here I am standing in a totally fluid and creative reality of my mind.
So I take a few steps forward and remember that a good way to help prove to yourself you are dreaming is to try to fly. So I say levitate and make the intention in my mind and lean forward. Instantly I begin to levitate into the middle of the room at about shoulder level. Then the conscious feeling of the position of my sleeping body comes in again with strength and I rotate in the air onto my side into the sleeping position and fall straight to the floor with a smack almost waking myself up. Now my take on this is that my mind is still trying to wake up because it is conscious and hasn't quite settled itself to the idea of being conscious in the dream state so it responds to consciousness my wanting to return to the waking state.
At this point I get up off the floor and decide it best not to try to fly just yet as I am a total noob in this realm and instead look out the window with a thought of going outside. As another element from the book I close my eye and say "change the weather' and open my eyes and sure enough it is raining so I close then a few more times and rotate the weather around to a beautiful sunny day. Now mind you a beautiful sunny day in your dream is no minor thing. We are talking about the most brilliant blue sky, bright rayed, astonishingly gorgeous summer day you can imagine.. literally. So I begin to make my way through the house to go outside and walk into my living room to find a screened in porch which we do not have and step outside onto the porch...
Suddenly two large polar bears come running up the side of the house to the porch. I turn my head in fear and turn back and now it is one polar bear, fully grown in all his splendor, standing at the edge of the porch. I am frozen with fear forgetting for a moment I am dreaming. I think to myself at least there is screen between me and the bear and at that very moment I notice a large hole in the screen just big enough for the bear to put his head through. As usually happens in dreams, as I notice this so does the bear and he walks over and sticks his head in right up to my face. So here I am standing face to face with a polar bear, out weighed by a thousand pounds at least, and filled with terror. I raise my fist in a fight or flight moment of panic and then it hits me again... "This is a dream.." still feeling the fear but conscious enough to remember another snippet from the book I decide to face the fear and offer the seeming aggressor love instead of a fight. I slowly reach out both my hands to the bears face, palms up, and extend my arms fully with a feeling of openness and love no matter what this bear decides. The bear instantly lays his enormous head in my hands and begins licking my hands and fingers with his giant bear tongue. He does this for a moment or two and then sits back and smiles at me turning into the CocaCola bear from the old T.V. commercials. And then... I wake up.
So what does this mean? What on earth could this be good for other than some late night entertainment and good stories to tell around the camp fire? Well here is what I have gathered so far. Learning the ability to face ones fears with love and openness in an environment that is completely safe and free from danger is an experience every living being should have on a regular basis. Standing there knowing that I could be "killed" but that I would wake up and have another chance tomorrow allowed me a level of courage I had previously not known. Now remember.. for those of you who have not had a lucid dream yet.. we are talking about a "virtual reality" that would shame any game console or Disney ride that will ever exist. Full reality immersion with all the senses and experiences plus no limitations like gravity or cultural norms. To take this further as time has gone on I am beginning to glean an even more valuable understanding from the lucid experiences.
I have made a study of many of God's Scriptures including the Dhammapadda, Qu'ran, Bible, Baha'i Writings, Bhagavad Gita, as well as great thinkers and spiritualists through history like Jiddu Krishnamurti, Thomas Merton, Charles Haanel, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avilla, Don Miguel Ruiz, Rom Doss, and on and on and on. I have always sought an understanding of how I am a spiritual being and not just a physical body. All of these sources told me in different ways that we are not the physical, we are just hear to experience the physical and the lessons a limited and finite world can teach an unlimited and eternal soul. And yet after studying all these things I still always felt mostly like a body with a spirit. Then comes the lucid dream. Suddenly I have a context to say I have experienced a "seeming physical reality" and yet knew full well that it was not "phyisical". I have knocked on the wall of a thought that was so real it made the distinct sound of cheap wood paneling.
This is it my friends. A realization that we are hear experiencing an entire shared "physical reality" that can actually be physical to us only as long as we are in that state of consciousness. Only as long as we are hear to experience physicality, time, and limitation. With the experiences from lucid dreaming I can tell you I know what it is like to travel without distance, change at the speed of thought, move without effort. To exist in a reality that is actually not physical but can seem so as we need it to. This has been the single deepest blessing so far from the lucid dream. An awaking in my heart and mind to the fluid nature of this waking dream. A glimpse into the reality that this world, this waking world of people and places and time and things is much more fluid that I have ever realized. Much more flexible and responsive to our thoughts. As I learn the disciplines of the dream world they begin to cross over into my waking day. The ability to step back in a stressful situation and remember that this life too is a dream. That these things we see as so real are made of the substance of dreams. That most of the limitations we experience are of our own creation and that our feelings of helplessness, doubt, fear, and smallness are nothing more real than the polar bear I so happily shared and evening with.
Well that is all for now .. I gotta get some paying work done. :-) Hope this helps someone in this dream of this life.
So many feel that voting and politics in general is a done deal, game over scenario. And who the hell am I to argue... let's face the fact the game is rigged and we are playing with a short deck on the surface of things. But on a deeper level there have always been mini tyrants, there have always been shit ends of the stick and humanity has continued to grow and develop (albeit at what seems like an incredibly slow pace) so there is something more powerful at the heart of things that would tell us clearly no matter how small minded and foolish we are as presidents and individuals, at the heart of things life is good and as a whole so are we.
So maybe we can all take the initiative (and this is coming from someone who has never cast a ballet) to step out and vote in this election... I think it is pretty clear as bad as all politicians are there are some who are worse still and if we can keep from trodding let us make that happen.
I have attached here a poster/mailer a friend made out of the goodness of her own conscience and I share it with you now and to kindly say VOTE SUCKAS!
Here is yet another documentary telling us that no matter how shiny the paint job is on our Titanic... we are still headed for the iceburg. I haven't seen this one yet, just heard about it and wanted to pass it along. Here is the site link: http://www.iousathemovie.com/
I will be sharing more on the inspiration I am finding in Napoleon Hill's life and work but for now check out this video, apparently the only one in existence, of this brilliant and humble fellow who has influenced all of us whether we know it or not.
Vanilla Sky has always been one of my favorite films because of its ability to convey that dream like sense of situations, characters, and emotions. I have been intending to watch the original Spanish film "Open your eyes: Abre los ojos" that Vanilla Sky was remade from and finally took the time last night when I saw it was on Hulu.com.
I enjoyed the original even more than the remake and found the fact the Penelope Cruz is playing the same role to add to the sense of recurring dream like story line. Given that I saw these in reverse order I suppose I was seeing her play the role for the second time first and then the first time... well you get the idea. This is mos def on the top 10 list of lucid dream films and well worth watching a few times. I have included here from Hulu for your viewing pleasure. (Yes the commercials suck, especially the trippy Friskies one, but hey it is free!)
The Story of Stuff is an excellent fundamentals crash course in materials manufacturing and "consumerism" as our national past time. Clearly articulating the cycles churning around "planned obsolescence" which basically heralds the notion of making stuff to break as fast as possible while still maintaining some sense of "consumer confidence". From a design point of view this little documentary also illustrates the power of design and how it can be used for the dark side all to well. Help us Obi-Wan!
Here is a telling quote featured in the film from retailing analyst Victor Lebow, "Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption . . . we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."
It sounds like someone is on the design team for SATAN! (church lady face and voice added for emphasis).
On a brighter note this film also offers us a laundry list of ways to get involved and bring about the means to change this mess. So this is far from yet another doomsday docu-drama.
Watch the trailer below and then go check out the 20 minute film at www.TheStoryofStuff.com with Annie Leonard.
I have just started learning about Muhammad Yunus and can only say that this man is as brilliant as he is inspiring. In this video clip he tells the story of how he was inspired to create the micro-loan banking system for the poor, called the Grameen Bank, that has grown to global proportions and is redefining the banking systems and showing the world that financial systems can serve the many not just the few. He also offers us a vision for social businesses which hold a goal of uplifting people from poverty and have no blood sucking shareholders draining all value and life from the business or service.
After DVR watching the Walton's for the past year with my 7 and 9 year old daughters I just had to post this clip and give props to the show and its crew. This is hands down the best (and one of the only) television shows I am willing to expose the kids to on a regular basis. Family focused themes with real people working through real life timeless issues are consistent as long as this show was on the air.
I remember as a kid mocking the seeming corny nature of the family but now having my own family I realize the value of seeing something with human heart on the dreaded brain drain box. No matter what the various schools of pshychology and sociology say about human development and modeling behavior I can say first hand I have clearly observed some modeled behavior from the idiot box in all children and since you can't shield them from it forever the least we can do is make an effort to show them the difference between something of quality and the rest of the crappola that passes for "entertainment".
So props to the Walton's crew from writers to cast... thanks for your work!
