truth
Perhaps so, for some kinds of meditation. The kinds I'm familiar with involve no trances of any kind, just wide-awake intense awareness.
Would that be more of self awarness of that you are aware of everything that would be going on around you to another level?
truth
Not as far as I know. I'm referring to the buddhist methods of vippassana and shikantaza. Both seek to produce an awareness of one's "original mind."
truth
Not as far as I know. I'm referring to the buddhist methods of vippassana and shikantaza. Both seek to produce an awareness of one's "original mind."
Set, as usual, good post.
Dreams is funny stuff.
Its rubbish really. But it grips you at the time, especially when weird stuff happens, like you start dictating the plot or "real" people make a guest appearance.
Personally I dont give dreams any credit over and above a rather personal and dramatic entertainment.
I think dreams are waste product - or end product to put a less perjorative label on them biochemically - transactions myself, but am fairly interested in what our conscious minds make of them, immediately and on analysis and reanalysis....and possibly why they stepped to the front of the "waste product line" in the first place...
truth
I've forgotten or brushed aside most of my psychological training--I even took a course in adminstering and interpreting Rorschach tests. I've since concluded that it was mainly voodu, but I have maintained a vague and unprovable notion that dreams are, among other things, a way of adapting to the demands of our culture and our conditioned psyche that we be logical, rational, reasonable, sensible, etc. In our dreams we let ourselves go, as it were, and behave "freely", without restraints. I don't know how to fit this eufunction with negative dreams and nightmares. By negative dreams (I never have nightmares), I refer to dreams in which non-frightening but nevertheless unpleasant things happen. For example, I frequently dream that I am young again and have no idea where in the city I have parked my car (dude). I also dream at least once a year that my wife and have another residence, a furnished apartment somewhere in Los Angeles, but we can't remember where it is. Bummer, but no nightmare. It's almost a pleasant dream, giving us something to do--find it.
Well, then, probably on similar nights I find myself driving from Evanston, where I lived from age 9-13, to Chicago downtown, and I seem to be waylaid by my neigborhood friends now grown taking me to the university. Maybe the one in the skyscraper... This all is mixed up with some real life adventure to buy a kitchen appliance somewhere in south Chicago, some place with big plate glass windows with big salesy letters...
truth
Osso, yes. I think the content of dreams are very often mixed up with "real life" events and things. Most of my dreams, I think, reflect what has happened that day, or sometime recent. If a distant time, it's probably a very emotionally significant event.
so dreams may be symbolic of your thoughts or something to that affect?
truth
Aressler, according to Freudians that is so. They are symbolic of emotions.
But I must add to my speculation above about dreams permitting release from excessive rationality. That may be so, but it would have to be a fairly recent emergent function in animal evolution. I don't think that in the earliest days of our species' evolution we were very straight-jacketed by the demands of reason, as we are now. Yet we probably dreamed. It seems to serve some neurological functions as well. And we have indications that our pets dream in some way.
