Report 41

I have so much to share about the topic of viewing everything as a dream, that I think it must have been an unintentional blessing that I was turned around last week and therefore missed the session! I am sorry to have kept everyone waiting, but really enjoyed reading the transcript just now.

These things jumped out from the log:

Dao Yheng: for me, it can be more vivid, but also less solid

Mitsu Ishii: But to bring it back to the Lojong I was thinking that the whole "treat everything you perceive as a dream" is intended specifically for those moments that seem the most real

Gaya Ethaniel: Not sure if this has anything to do with the homework, but couple of mornings I saw sense of self gathering up.

Dao Yheng: so seeing anger as a dream for instance might also mean seeing it not as some small ridiculous thing but also seeing it in its true context, which is this unimaginably grand thing

Mitsu Ishii: So the dream metaphor I think is more than just a metaphor, it's actually pointing to an aspect of the nature of reality at all times

Also, from Dao's report:
Later, sitting in a restaurant, I couldn't help noticing the the ephemeral nature of our own biology too -- that young woman will soon be middle aged, the other woman sitting over there was young just a little bit ago and will soon be older still

It is difficult for me to write about these things, mostly because I try to hear myself from the angle of others and think "Oh, she's flaky or trippy", or whatever. :) I'm going to drop all those concerns and just share what I observed this week, and also a bit of background that dream life is a significant aspect of what I think of as my practice, and also has steadily been taking over more and more of my real life... a bit like The Blob. >grins<...  Its a wonderful Blob, and what I mean to convey with that description is a sense of heavy substance in both dreams and waking which feels to me more 'real' than other 'feelings'. 

So, the last two weeks I have payed attention to what acts are 'awakening' to me during the day ... which things I do that are more open portals I guess. It used to be that water was the biggest one... that paying attention to drinking a glass of water, or washing the dishes, or swimming, I could experience a kind of spaciousness that shows me I'm dreaming. If I stop and really slow down with it, then this is still very true... very there.

What I notice now, is that things that are 'hard', that I don't 'want' to do, like sort the finances or deal with paperwork or clean the refigerator, can be like digging into a 'more' tangible clay which then gives 'breaks 'me' down' a bit, allowing the dreamy substance in to things ...

I wont use this 'blob' imagery again I think... but I'm trying not to censor too much. :)

In night time dreams, winds seem to be the most powerful expression of that substance. I really hesitate to compare to 'natural light' which is refered to in some books, but there are conversations with people in dreams which, when combined with that Presence, are deeply real and *actually* affect the rest of the day when I wake up... things falling into unusually notable timing or synchronicities, etc.  Writing about it becomes the same sort of exercize. 

I've been talking a little about some of these things in other settings too, but it seems like *here* I need to just express as openly as possible. I guess I'm saying that the substance is more 'important', in a sense, than whether it is night time or day time. That when in/with that sense of presence, one sees the dreaming going on either way.  

Meditatively is somewhere in between, as is Second Life. I rarely have flying dreams since being part of SL... maybe because I can fly around all the time now.

Okay... crab dream re-added :) :

One thing I wanted to share, which Gaya has to be terribly tired of hearing about, is that when we first were learning co-dependent origination with Stim, I had a dream which has been like a koan cracking open over and over since that time. I found later, that it is a startlingly similar imagery to the Shambhala vision of opening/awakening Trungpa writes about. When I read over what I said about it then, it seems very incomplete and very simple, but it gives a taste of how dreams can spill out I guess.

It is toward the bottom of this PaB interview for anyone interested :   http://playasbeing.wik.is/PaB_Chronicles/The_Chapter_13%3a_Beginning_of_the_Second_Year_of_Play_as_Being/C._Eliza_Madrigal

I can tell you that I was really struggling to 'grasp' teachings and topics and practice at that point, and felt like I was very stuck. Not to mention that learning wasn't openly connecting with the rest of my life in any practical way. It seems to me quite a display of mind/world co-dependent, etc., because after I felt that most things were either 'open' or at least could be. 

The dream helped me to view at different levels. The crab couldn't see that she was in a mandala, for instance. That took me a while to notice and work with.

Thanks for reading.

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Hahah... Editing this again, because when I re-read the log, Mitsu referred to 'heating' in a way to parallel the computer science as zen metaphor... loosening the grip on our conceptual attachments.

This BEGS me to wind up the dream more completely here... that just a few weeks ago I had a day of frustration with that crab ... looking at her like she was so limited ... and I started dreaming of cooking. So I dreamed first of a pot that was too sticky to get the heat from the stove into the water. Then I dreamt about pouring very hot liquid from tea kettles... even in daytime if I'd drink a hot liquid it felt like something to pay attention to.

Then, confiding in a friend, I referenced the crab. The friend wisely said "The crab will take care of itself", and the dreams became many crabs, then crab soup... now a food offering. 

As Gaya brought focus to, I felt that it was time to let go of actively working with the dream. It is now just a story which feels to have played itself out, or will do so 'by itself', and admittedly a fun one to share. :)