Transpersonal Responsibility

I was recently watching clips from one of my favorite movies, Waking Life, and as always, discovered even more good material in the movie that I must have glanced over before. But my favorite scene hasn’t changed, and I’ve decided to share it with you now:

The most insightful and thought-provoking line from this clip comes at its end:

“As one realizes that one is a dream figure in another person’s dream, that is self-awareness!”

A beautiful recognition of the way it feels to be human.  I would add that perhaps it is not just one person’s dream, but rather, that we are all dreaming up this “public dream” together. In this way, we really are the co-authors of this story called “Life.”

And thus my consciousness turns back on itself: What is it that my personal dream is offering to this collective dream of reality? It seems much less about what blog post I write or even how much money I donate to charities this year. Instead, I would ask: Is my state of consciousness, at this moment, contributing positively or negatively this shared reality? There’s a lot of talk about personal responsibility–but I’d rather talk about what I call transpersonal responsibility.

What about the fact that taking personal responsibility for my reality directly rubs off on yours?  What about the fact that personal responsibility involves not just what I do, how orderly my life is, or what words I say, but even the thoughts that I think?  If we accept the notion that reality is a public dream, then in each moment your thoughts are rippling out into the world with huge implications for everyone.  Transpersonal responsibility therefore acknowledges the profound interconnectedness of my state of consciousness on yours, and your state of consciousness on mine.

Put another way: Is my dream improving your dream? Is your dream improving mine?  And furthermore, what can we do to dream a better dream for everyone’s sake?

Dreams: Your Carrot on a Stick

Can’t understand that recent dream?

“All I can do is share my dream about your dream – fortunately, when we do this, something good almost always comes of it… I have noticed that dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer is himself, only they are always a little bit ahead of the dreamer’s consciousness. I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you, for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage when it is a matter of one’s own dreams.”

- Carl G. Jung

Always drawing you further along, like a carrot on a stick, your nightly dreams are wanting to be chased, caught, peeled, and eaten. Just as carrots improve the vision of your waking life, dreams are like these orange roots helping you peer backwards, into your mind.

Death As A Goal

What if death wasn’t viewed as an end, but instead as something to work towards with the entirety of your life?  How might this perspective change the way you live life, today?

“Death is not an end but a goal, and life’s inclination towards death begins as soon as the meridian is past.”–C.G. Jung

From the Buddhist perspective, the entirety of life can be seen as practice for dying.  Furthermore, cultivating awareness in the dream states facilitates your capacity for choosing another life.  If you want to see how prepared you are for death, say the traditions, look to your dreams. Jung’s quote thus illuminates the life of East and West.

Imperfect Perfection

Just googled my name and came across this:

http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/300

Somehow, I had completely forgotten about that feature. For those not familiar with Ken Wilber’s theories, check out this quote where he mentions lucid dreaming as a state of consciousness at the leading edges of human development and the cutting-edge of the evolution of consciousness:

“And so one of the things that becomes really important is that in order to move into…true transpersonal structures, you have to have some sort of state training and state realization to allow wakefulness, which starts out confined to the waking state, to be able to move into subtle states of consciousness and not lose track of its own I AM-ness, or its own ground. Sometimes that actually includes lucid dreaming, or it may not. But it always includes being able to objectify the subtle, to transcend and include it, to make that subject and object.”

I agree with Ken’s view that transpersonal development is at least partially dependent upon state training. As discussed in my presentation, this allows for a wider and higher sense of identity, because selfhood is no longer confined to only one aspect of the psyche, of daily experience. When the self recognizes the presence of itself throughout various states of consciousness, such as in a lucid dream, it’s only natural for a wider sense of identity to emerge.

You no longer think you’re just who you are while awake. You come to see a more complex inner life which includes all those characters that appear in your dream state. Who you are includes inner space and outer space. The self then becomes more flexible, clings less to one state of consciousness, embraces self-identity temporally as what is arising in the present moment, and consequently opens the door into higher levels of lucidity and potential.  Sounds a bit like one approaches perfect imperfection.

My Ignite Boulder Presentation

Here’s video from my Ignite Boulder Presentation on Lucid Dreaming: A Psychotechnology:

As you’ll see, each slide rotates automatically after 15 seconds, as per the premise of Ignite.  Good luck lucid dreaming!

Embody Your Dream

Transpersonal psychology envisions a radical shift in awareness for our generation. Perhaps the greatest contribution Buddhism has to offer our lives is one that physics is also arguing: As human beings, we are much more like flickering flames than like slabs of meat. And since it’s Hallow’s Eve, I thought it the perfect time to address and contest our ordinary, meaty view.

People: the objective, materialistic lens of science has distorted your self-perception. As researchers splice, dice, and cut open human bodies for study, we’ve come to paint a picture of ourselves as splicable, dicable, and only material too.  In our culture, we view human bodies as hunks of meat, and live in fear of being butchered by our violent world, even while our subjective experience is telling us something radically different.

I am here to say that there is a more accurate, and even more scientifically accurate, vision of the human being, of your human life.  Physics, which stands at the core of science, has actually proven that human beings are made of trillions of tiny atomic particles, each buzzing, “flickering” in and out of existence millions of times each second.  As opposed to a steak dinner, your body is literally more like a play of lights, a dance of flames, a spacious mirage.  Staying consistent with this blog’s theme, your body is as transient and ephemeral as dream.

This might sound bad on the surface, but I promise you this vision is not just truer to your experience, but helps make it more real. The apparent solidity of your hand, for example, is in actuality about 99.99% empty space. The vast distances between each atomic particle are connected only by an energetic field. So instead of a hunk of meat, you become a field of energy.

As such, transpersonal psychology begs the question: What if we thought of ourselves more like an energy field than a hunk of meat?  How might that shift our self-identity and experience of the world?

As it turns out, this perspective facilitates a radical increase in aliveness, awareness, and lucidity.  Shifting our self-identity from a spatially-conceived, appetite-based sense of self, to a temporally-conceived, breath-based sense of self brings us more fully into the present moment.  After all, the present moment is the only moment there ever is.  And by honestly acknowledging this transience, our transience, we feel more inspired, not less inspired, to live for today.

Suddenly, we’re not hunks of meat fearful of our doomed and bloody ending. Our lived perception is instead transformed and returned to these two eyes, from this one breath, in this one moment. Moving, dancing, flickering, evolving and unfolding, lucidly, in the present-tense now, and now, and…

So here’s a question: What would you rather be? A hunk of meat? Or a dance of energy?

Happy Halloween.

Dreaming Life

“They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn’t you say the same thing about life?”–Waking Life

Ignite Boulder

I’m thinking about all the gurus on Youtube these days…

Because last night I used Western technology (and language, for that matter) to give a presentation on Eastern concepts, an often overlooked but growing phenomenon. Ignite Boulder was an event organized by Andrew Hyde, the founder of Startup Weekend, and my presentation was about Lucid Dreaming as a Psychotechnology.

By a psychotechnology, I mean to say that the “altered-state” of lucid dreaming is functional in that it satisfies human needs. As a matter of fact, consciousness-modulation in service of self-actualization needs has been going on since before recorded history. What’s unique about our times is what’s unique about all these gurus on Youtube—the recognition, reflection, and transmission of consciousness-raising psychotech through the West’s “wisdom tradition” of science. Welcome to the new paradigm…where suddenly, altering your consciousness isn’t just beyond taboos, it’s functional.

Dream Yoga And The Practice Of Natural Light

Just started reading the above title by Chogyal Namkhai Norbu and I’m enjoying the casual flow of his wisdom. It seems to me like not only does this master know a lot about the dreamworld, but his experiences are cross-cultural too. One example that’s really struck me so far was that when he visited the US he had a series of dreams where he learned a dance very similar to the Native American Ghost Dance, night after night being visited by a teacher who taught him the complex steps for this dance of up to 36 people. Here’s another example of an Eastern teacher embracing and communing with the indigenous wisdoms of the West–all through the context of dreaming.

The reason I have great respect for this is because many teachers of Dreamwork are bound to the symbols of one culture and miss out on a whole range of other archetypes that are possible to encounter in the dream state. From personal experience, the content and context of dreaming is trans-cultural.

I’ll be keep you updated on other unique insights that this Eastern author has to share with the Western world.

A different “you”

An article on CelticBear’s blog talks about a comment made by neurologist Steven Novella which I found illuminating to the topic of lucid dreams. Asked a question about dreaming and the brain, Novella went on to explain that because you are in an altered state during your dreams, the dreamer is quite literally a different “you.”

I’ve long been searching for a simple way to convey to new lucid dreamers the subtleties of consciousness required to become lucid, but especially remain lucid, during a dream. You quite literally have to stabilize a sense of self while in an altered state (then again, what’s an unaltered state look like?)—much like trying to touch your nose with your eyes closed while intoxicated…so now you know the real reason why pinching your nose is such an effective reality test.