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 dreamlife 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 expresses awakening to my sensibilities... 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 differently now though, 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, seem to be like digging into a 'more' tangible clay which then gives the Wonderful Blob Substance something to do...

Haha... I wont use this 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. 

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, I can see the dreaming going on.  

Then of course 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. The winds are definitely new though, and tangible and awe-inspiring at times.

One thing I wanted to share, which Gaya has to be terribly tired of hearing about, is that when we 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. 

At this point I clearly see that I was viewing things 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. Without going step by step... the story ends with Soup. :)  

Oh, so much more to say about Lojong in general too... but no hurry. Thanks for reading.