This evening, Maxine was the first one to arrive. Gambhira and Pia arrived soon after.
Fael Illyar: Hello Maxine :)
Maxine Walden: hi, Fael
Maxine Walden: Faenik looks comfortable this morning
Faenik meaows happily.
Fael Illyar: Hello Gambhira :)
Fael Illyar: Hi Pia :)
Pia Iger: Hi, Fael, coming
Gambhira Skytower: hi Fael
Maxine Walden: Hi, Pia, and Gambhira
Pia Iger: good morning, everyone.
Gambhira Skytower: cute puff ball
Faenik meows happily at being noticed.
Pia Iger: Gam , do you still go to Zazen?
Faenik: indeed?
Gambhira Skytower: yes
Pia Iger: I want to keep going. I like their notecards.
Gambhira Skytower: i haven’t read all of them cuz they are so long
Pia Iger: true:)
Fael Illyar: It’s a lot of work to read them all :)
Pia Iger: What was the topic of newest notecard?
Gambhira Skytower: meditation is a noun
Pia Iger: Yes, Fael. but I read a few and very inspring.
Pia Iger: inspiring.
Pia Iger: Maxine, I gave you last time a card of “take refuge”
Maxine Walden: yes, I recall and thank you again
Maxine Walden: so nice to have things at hand to inspire us
Maxine Walden: Pia, you asked several days ago about dreams, is that still a topic of interest?
Pia Iger: of cause.
Pia Iger: Do you have anything to share?
Moon arrived, just in time to join the conversation about dreams that was just beginning.
Fael Illyar: Hi Moon :)
Moon Fargis: hello everyone :)
Gambhira Skytower: hi Moon
Maxine Walden: I have found it useful to think about dreams as messengers from that region of our experience we cannot be directly aware of
Maxine Walden: hi, Moon,
Moon Fargis: ah a dream topic
Maxine Walden: and that dreams can continue the internal discourse, inner thoughts we may be having, questions we may be asking ourselves
Pia Iger: I just woke up from an interesting dream. but I forgot now.
Moon Fargis: :)
Moon Fargis: maxime: belive me or not but you can listen to your dreams while you are awake
Maxine Walden: dreams can seem to fall over the horizen of memory, can’t they, often frustrating
Gambhira Skytower: last night i found myself in a dream i didn’t enjoy and i realized I was dreaming and became afraid i wouldn’t wake up
Fael Illyar: Moon, while meditating?
Maxine Walden: yes, actually I believe we are always dreaming, awake or asleep,
Pia Iger: daydream?
Moon Fargis: yes.. remember the confuse thoughts layers i talk about?
Moon Fargis: maxime: our brain has alot of different layers of toughts
Maxine Walden: and it is something to feel trapped in a dream or nitemare, Gambhia
Moon Fargis: loud ones and verry quiet confuse ones
Dulcinea arrives.
Moon Fargis: hi dulci
Dulcinea Denimore: hi
Pia Iger: I had similar to Gamb
Faenik is a hairy black ball with eyes and ears.
Maxine Walden: I agree, Moon, many simultaneous levels of experience, perhaps voices
Maxine Walden: care to talk about that experience, Pia?
Pia Iger: yes, it happend quite often
Moon Fargis: maxine: yes you can listen to these quiet confuse thoughts when you settle doe loud ones down
At this point I received IM from Dulcinea Denimore asking “what’s this discussion about?”. I decided to do the introduction through chat though. At the same time, Pia is describing her nightmare.
Pia Iger: usually in my dream, I saw a man standing by my bed,
Pia Iger: he want to strangle me.
Fael Illyar: Hi dulcinea, this a Play as Being meeting.
Fael Illyar: http://playasbeing.wordpress.com/
Pia Iger: I realize I was dreaming and want to wake up
Pia Iger: but I could not, I was stuck in dream, in panic
Fael Illyar: we do these 9-second explorations and these meetings are for discussing them but we often go wildly offtopic :)
Maxine Walden: that can feel terrifying, trapped in such a dream, as if the dream is a kind of strangler
Dulcinea Denimore: oh, cool
Moon Fargis: pia: you have to talk to pema, he did experiments and practise with dreamcontroll
Moon Fargis: he can give you some hints
Pia Iger: You guys are good, too
Fael Illyar: Also, these meetings are blogged, do you mind your name appearing in there?
Pia Iger: different ppl have different angles.
Maxine Walden: Pia, is it possible to look upon that dream right now as a kind of messenger of something?
Maxine Walden: in the safety of the daytime the dream may offer some message
Pia Iger: no idea what the message can be.
Moon Fargis: hmm pia… when you realise that it is a dreamm..then you also try to stand up in your dream next time
Moon Fargis: and hug the person
Moon Fargis: :)
Pia Iger: my god!
Fael Illyar: Pia, he wanted to strangle you but did he ever do that?
This detail was missing from Pia’s explanation and I felt it’s important somehow.
Pia Iger: no.
Dulcinea Denimore: haha.. thats a frightening thought
Moon Fargis: atleast its your dream
Maxine Walden: a terrifying thought which may say don’t come closer, don’t think about me, don;’t try to embrace me…the terror may keep us away from thinking about something or letting something just come to mind;
Dulcinea Denimore nods
Pia Iger: sound right. Maxine.
Faenik: indeed?
Pia Iger: actually I never dare to look at the man’face,
Maxine Walden: these may be times not to force a thought, but just observe what drifts in mind…something like that
Maxine Walden: inner terrors, in my experience, may be like thugs, not wanting to be unmasked
Dulcinea Denimore: hmmm
Moon Fargis: well thats the onl way to get rid of them.. accept them..
Moon Fargis: “hug the man”
Maxine Walden: or dare to look at his face perhaps
Maxine Walden: might not be as frightening if we can look
Fael Illyar: Yes, it often works for dispelling those is to react to them in a completely unexpected way.
Gambhira Skytower: or figure out a way to wake yourself up, i did
Maxine Walden: Gambhira, how did you wake yourself up?
Fael Illyar: Tends to work in RL too. If someone is mad at you, if you react in a completely unexpected way, they might forget being angry.
Gambhira Skytower: i concentrate on opening my eyes very strongly i think, and I may repeat to myself , “wakeup!”
Pia Iger: Fael, I did notice that happen in RL.
Maxine Walden: very interesting, and you can reach into the dreaming state and bring yourself out of it
Dulcinea Denimore: but like a real situation with an attacker, i think the primary action i would face is to be frozen with fear… I find the same problem with my RL challengees.
Gambhira Skytower: but sometimes it just “wakes you up” into another different dream!!
Pia Iger: more pleasant dream, hopefully.
Fael Illyar: Sometime after I’d been playing around with lucid dreams for a bit, during one nightmare I suddenly realized it’s a dream and just started concentrating on changing things so that it’s no longer scary. Very minimal changes.
I describe how I’ve dealt with nightmares myself.
Gambhira Skytower: Also, i think i may have tried to imagine the room i was sleeping in to help wake up
Fael Illyar: After that, I can’t recall a single nightmare anymore.
Gambhira Skytower: So it worked Fael?
Faenik: なるほど^^
Fael Illyar: well, mostly just realizing that it’s my dream, I decide what happens :P
Pia Iger: cool.
Gambhira Skytower: but how do you realize that you are dreaming?
Maxine Walden: bringing some control into the dream dispells the terror perhaps, makes you the one in control, not the figure or circumstances of the dream
Fael Illyar: Well, just get a habit of thinking sometimes how would you know if you’re dreaming or not.
Faenik loves wells!
Fael Illyar: if you think that sometimes while awake, you will also when you’re dreaming
Fael Illyar: There are several situations that automatically make me check if I’m dreaming or not
Fael Illyar: it’s usually very obvious if I’m dreaming :)
Fael Illyar: strangely, I’m very certain of this, even though I can’t recall doing it much
Maxine Walden: In my experience, not everyone has such continuity between their waking and dreaming selves as you describe, Fael, that is a wonderful ability you have
Maxine Walden: and maybe one that we can all develop
Fael Illyar: I don’t think the skill is limited to just dreaming.
Faenik: ah :)
Fael Illyar: might help in thinking about scary things even while awake
Fael Illyar: helps you realize that things you think about can only affect you if you let them.
Maxine Walden: addressing the scary thoughts/things as that, thoughts rather than truly threatening things
Fael Illyar: Yes
Maxine Walden: I find that helpful as well, realizing that the fear or anxiety may be triggered as a warning, not a true threat
Fael Illyar: it might also be a completely imaginary threat it warns about
Maxine Walden: right, or something that may have been threatening to a younger more vulnerable self
Fael Illyar: Yes, that too
Maxine Walden: but not need to be a current threat/dread
Maxine Walden: seems that our inner alarm system, probably a legacy of our jungle ancestors, has difficulty discerning between past and present; that is where our thoughtful minds may come in
Maxine Walden: to help dispell old fears from current concerns
Moon Fargis: the playfull mind
Pia Iger: pls say more, Moon
Faenik: indeed?
Moon Fargis: well i also could say the babbling mind :)
Moon Fargis: dreams are mostly bablish nonsense even when they are scary, i wouldnt interprete too much in them exept there is a dream that continues…but mostly ou mind just play while we dream
Pia Iger: The dream I mentioned happened repeatly.
Pia relates another recurring dream too.
Pia Iger: another one I just recalled is
Pia Iger: that I can’t not catch plane
Moon Fargis: catch a plane?
Maxine Walden: can’t quite get to it, to reach it?
Pia Iger: Yes. I only have 10 min to get to airport, either because I can’t find my passport at last min, or
Pia Iger: I have to do some damn errands before I can go to airport.
Moon Fargis: meh!
Pia Iger: so constantly I am constantly in the urgent state of mind, afraid of missing the plane.
Maxine Walden: something goes missing at the last moment or interrupts your connection to the plane
Pia Iger: although I never found out if I miss or not
Pia Iger: yes. Maxine. many things made it impossible for me to get airport in time.
SLisms :)
Moon Fargis: pia.. next time.. press the fly button :)
Moon Fargis: and fly there
Pia Iger: hahaa
Pia Iger: Why I did not think of that??
Fael Illyar: or use a dream landmark :P
Maxine Walden: perhaps one way to think about that is the anxiety that at the last minute something will interfere with the goal; in my experience, anxiety itself can make us lose touch with the goal, seem to cut us off from all we feel we need
Maxine Walden: to reach the goal
Moon Fargis: ohh im glad buddhism is a goalless goal :)
Pia Iger: it occurs to me that I am quite attached to the fear and anxiety instead of real things.
Maxine Walden: In my own experience, such a dream is helpful for me to read as a warning that when I get into ‘last minute anxiety’ I am likely to have such interruptions…so watch the anxiety and thus dispel it
Faenik: could be
Pia Iger: also bear with me one more detail
Pia Iger: sometimes when I really got on the airplane, I found the plane do not fly normally
Pia Iger: it does all kinds of stunt, fly upside down,
Moon Fargis: yeeehaw
Pia Iger: or changes speed dramaticly
Pia Iger: so I could not hold on to my seat.
Moon Fargis: then next time you dream it.. aks yourself. why the hel should i go into that plane?
Gambhira Skytower: lol
Pia Iger: cause I have to go somewhere, in the dream at least
Moon Fargis: pia: ok flybutton sollution then :)
Pia Iger: thanks for reminding..
Maxine Walden: as if the anxiety extends then to destabilize or make untrustworthy the flight as well as your preparations…
Pia Iger: yes, you can say I felt very much out of control.
Maxine Walden: right. You know this reminds me of my struggles at times to go into the new (the flight to a new place) and the pull toward the old might say ‘you can’t do that, you will be out of control’; dreads of the new come to me in terms of ‘voices’ which tell me it is dangerous to make that new journey
Maxine Walden: but there are so many ways to understand dreams and their messages; don’t mean to be taking up too much space
Maxine Walden: (I will have to go in about 3 minutes, don’t want to just disappear…)
The meeting starts breaking up.
Gambhira Skytower: i gotta go
Fael Illyar: Bye Gambhira :)
Gambhira Skytower: bye everybody
Moon Fargis: mye gam
Moon Fargis: bye
Maxine Walden: bye, Gambhira
Pia Iger: bye, Gamb, nice talking to you.
Pia Iger: Maxine, the talk does give me some lights
Pia Iger: to discern the fear/anxiety from the reality
Faenik: could be
Maxine Walden: I’ll be going as well; nice to talk, and happy of some of these ways to understand are interesting, Pia, nice to share our experiences
Maxine Walden: Bye, all
Fael Illyar: Bye Maxine
Moon Fargis: bye maxine
Pia Iger: bye Maxine
Pia Iger: what Moon doing?
Moon Fargis: :) createing a inworld pab logo
Fael Illyar: you could use the texture version helping get the parts in right positions and sizes?
Moon Fargis: yes sure:)
Pia Iger: the screen behind Fael disappeared!
Fael Illyar: oh, it did
Pia Iger: Fael, you look very cool, like having super power:)
Pia Iger: I was thinking if we can hang a plaque of PaB at the entrance of pavilion
Moon Fargis: seems someoe call me so i have to leave see you later :)
Pia Iger: bye, Moon
Pia Iger: Fael, I need to go too.
Pia Iger: see you next time.
Faenik: indeed?
Alas, I got slightly distracted by RL right at the end so I didn’t manage to respond to Pia before she was gone. Well, at least Faenik said something.
