I thought I'd toss another angle into the mix. One of the primary practices I have followed for several decades now, is the methodless method. Or perhaps another way of conceptualizing it is, the pathless path? An approach anchored in the insubstantial essence. Which I admit, is a paradox, after all. Circular logic meeting abstract expressionism?



Such identification with this nebulous self non-description... whereby we undo all that we have meticulously collected and catagorized, in this physical lifetime, manifests a truly spontaneous rebirthing. By reversing the forward impulse of self, the emptiness can be cultivated and integrated, as a gradual counterbalancing act within the time-space-continuum.

And so, this very rebirthing echoes beyond our mind, into the shimmering silence of No Mind. We re-enter that frequency of being, which we once were, looooooong before we were materially incarnated. The Divine Remembrance. I believe, that this, and this alone, will be our fulcrum of existence after our own personal incarnation is returned to the formlessness of the Godhead. Ironically, on a quintessentially core level of being, we are always this Spirit. No such dream as before, during or after... just the effulgence of the eternal present.



I have found that Kriya Yoga and Surat Shabd Yoga are optimum, in this regard. Deep meditation upon the Inner Light and the indwelling Sound Current, are wonderful dimension-skipping exercises. Through contemplation and meditation upon the Clear Light of the Void, getting lost in the endless sonic ramifications of the AUM vibration, this training/sadhana quickens the release from the material paradigmatic circumstances.

A rather self-erasing way of living and being... but one in which much bliss is received. We've all gone through these potentially infinite cycles of endless rounds of ego-deaths. We are forever called into this vortex, eh? Like moths into the flame! And so, this allows the shift in our awareness to fully bloom, exponentially. Thus elicits The Awakening of the Omniself, within this most precious moment, the very dawning of the here & now.

RS...

Always a pleasure to read your poetic verses on the subtleties of consciousness expansion.

Great imagery in those last two posts. Sadly, though, I doubt that anyone not already familiar with those states will grasp the wicked cool encapsulations you're dropping here.

Anyway, MOAR techniques!

RS You alway's say it with such elegance.


Lucid dreaming as Jamie noted is another very transcendant state of consciousness.

The best way I have found for me personally to induce a lucid dream is to continuously test my reality at various point in the day. "Am i dreaming right now?" I'll put a rubber band on my arm and every time I see the rubber band I'll take the time to seriously confirm whether I'm dreaming or awake.

Eventually I'll look down in a dream and see the rubber band and ask myself if I'm dreaming or not. When the knot of consciousness unravels and you become aware that you are inside a dream world It's lik waking up in the matrix. There are various degrees of lucidity, but full lucidity is indeed like waking up in the matrix.

Sadly I use pot a little to much these day's to have consistent lucid dreams.

Yeah, Jamie & Joedirt... Lucid Dreaming FTW!

It is the art of arts. The über technique in this bag of tricks. I heartily recommend it to anyone who is even remotely interested in crawling all the way down this rabbit hole. It is the skill of skills, if only because of the extreme time dilation that one can leverage. If done well, you can have many lifetimes worth of experience, training, and cultivation knocked out in a few nights of heavy sleep.

There IS a good reason why the taoists, tibetans and a slew of other heavy trailblazers all considered dream work the highest and most sacred of yogas.

I've not read the whole thread so apologies if it's been asked already, but would you recommend some good books/documentaries/websites to learn more about lucid dreaming?

You will find a number of good ones on this very site https://www.dmt-nexus.me/Files.aspx?Filetype=Books for free no less.

I haven't read any that were worthless, tbh. The basic techniques for beginners are rather simple to explain, but take time to see results. There are plenty of people who learn about lucid dreaming, and bam have a full blown lucid dream that very night. But there are also a very large number of people who try and try for months and can't seem to do it.

My opinion on the matter is this has to do with a number of factors, most important being that people simply don't remember their dreams in any significant amounts. Even if you wake up remembering a few vivid dreams, this is only a tiny percentage of your actual dreaming. Thus, it is likely that most people have actually already had any number of lucid dreams and simply not remembered them upon awakening.

There is a decent series of free videos on YouTube called lucidology 101 (search You Tube and you should find 10 or so videos)... this is a pretty good introduction to what was at one time a very mysterious and advanced practice in the LD world, WILDing. Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming is where you go consciously and directly from waking into the dream state and stay lucid the whole time, thus eliminating the necessity of waking up within the dream. Very cool if you can pull it off, and it dovetails with another advanced esoteric practice... that of astral projection and OOBEs.

At any rate, there is an overabundance of info on both subjects and their overlap if you have interest. There has probably been no time in human history where such powerful information was so widely available.

Good luck
HF

Lucid dreaming is really really friggin awesome, and amazing for exploring the intricacies of how we operate, but man is it tiring. It's such a drag to sacrifice wonderful rest, especially when one is diving into the nooks and crannies of experience from time to time (It sure does demand a lot of energy and neurochemicals, haha!)

As opposed to exploring these energies in a semi-waking or lucid dreaming state, I much prefer to relax into these energies while awake and mindful of my environment. It takes much more energy and a bit of balls from time to time, but man is it worth it. All that amazing background energy is always there, and when it flows forth into "reality", it's really useful in actually integrating the relationship of these energies into everyday perception, and provides sort of a compass for where to put one's energy in a way that's in sync with the flow of things inside and outside of the body.
If I had to give an example, it's like how many people relate the low-moderate LSD experience to somehow pushing a button in the brain that brings things together perfectly without effort. The trick, of course, is to cause and allow this function to take place without the assistance of the substance and to allow the experience to flow without interruption by the ego. Some people call this body rapture or perfect zen.
As HF pointed out earlier, it's very useful to have an clear feeling of what sort of perception one is compelled to explore and to make peace with one's ego for the time one is away. There's no need to stay in these states forever and in modern life it's not really possible to do so, but the ego need not be a trap... it's an amazing tool that can be at our disposal to use or set down as we wish.

I gotta say though... it's a trip. Not only is the full spectrum of psychedelic perception at one's immediate disposal, but many more aspects of experience as well, anything one has the creativity, attention and will to summon up, really. Hell, one can even leave conventional existence behind and blow into the eternal flow for a time if they want. It's all right there.
I wouldn't recommend it to everyone though. I see that a few people have noted that they feel like they don't know what they're messing with in these situations, and "bridging the gap" like I'm speaking of brings all of it front and center. It can be pretty challenging to come to terms with the reality of it and take it by the horns. At times it's scary, intensely emotional, heavier than the hardest rock and roll, deeper than deep and sometimes more real than the "reality" that we're used to. It can really give one a new look on egocentric perception though... It can be SO nice to settle back down into the familiarity of mundane day-to-day life after one has been venturing around the universe all morning.