2009.10.26 19:00 - wild life, lucid dreaming and earworms

The Guardian for this meeting was Fox Monacular. The comments are by Fox Monacular.

Fox Monacular: Hi Eos!
Eos Amaterasu: Hi Fox!
Eos Amaterasu: wuw, some wings!
Fox Monacular: how are you doing tonight?
Eos Amaterasu: pretty good, lots of busyness
Fox Monacular: yes, my boyfriend said my new avatar looked silly, so I added these wings for a good measure:)
Eos Amaterasu: our appearance is a consensual reality :-)
Fox Monacular: exactly:) there are degrees of how others will influence it
Fox Monacular: starting with out parents... and so on
Eos Amaterasu: our entire local history, in fact, has shaped us, and presented as us
Fox Monacular: yes, and global too.. to some extent perhaps
Fox Monacular: but many seem reluctant to acknowledge it
Eos Amaterasu: why reluctant?
Fox Monacular: I guess to enforce their sense of agency
Fox Monacular: or individuality?
Eos Amaterasu: ah, I suppose that's one thing
Eos Amaterasu: yes, it puts "ego" or apparent self or self image in question when you see how interdependent it and you all are
Eos Amaterasu: For, would you like to propose a way to spend the upcoming 90 secs?
Fox Monacular: it can be hard to accept... interdependence...
Eos Amaterasu: maybe that's the theme - interdependence
Eos Amaterasu: how independent am i?
--BELL--
Eos Amaterasu: :-)
Eos Amaterasu: Fox, in the 90 secs your AV woke up and looked around :-)
Fox Monacular: well, i have experienced interdependence tonight.... when my neighbors woke me at 4am... screaming
Fox Monacular: yes, I know:)
Fox Monacular: virtual awakening
Eos Amaterasu: we need a certain separation from ourselves
Fox Monacular: I don't know why it went to sleep, I was in SL... it must be narcoleptic
Eos Amaterasu: good thing there's no flood of telepathy (usually)
Fox Monacular: :)
Eos Amaterasu: the wings add some kind of touch of potential
Eos Amaterasu: they're slightly spooky wings
Eos Amaterasu: Halloween as well?
Fox Monacular: like tatoo
Fox Monacular: yeah:)
Fox Monacular: I agree that we need a separation from ourselves... and it doesn't always come naturally
Eos Amaterasu: Fox, I wonder about interdependence and what you described about dying for someone else (if I recall right)
Fox Monacular: for instance, these days I hardly have time to meditate or to be alone at all, and I feel that I'm becoming more irritated and selfish
Fox Monacular: in the dream?
Eos Amaterasu: yes
Fox Monacular: I recall in the dream it was like I couldn't bear the idea that my mother would learn about the death of my brother, so I needed to go find him
Fox Monacular: and the only way to do it was by dying
Fox Monacular: a really powerful feeling of something i just "had to do"
Fox Monacular: I think now that I have a child, the idea of dying for someone else is becoming less and less abstract
Fox Monacular: how do you feel about it?
Eos Amaterasu: wow, that's a powerful way to say it
Fox Monacular: for women I think it's more 'embodied'... I mean there's always a risk of dying in labour and such things
Eos Amaterasu: I have a son, and got married, and both are tributes to finitude and time and earth, and to its presentation which is a bigger story
Eos Amaterasu: life is very intense - it can look you right in the eyes :-)
Fox Monacular: :)
Fox Monacular: yes
Eos Amaterasu: some kind of wild being there :-)
Fox Monacular: awesome and aweful
Fox Monacular: in a kinda awesome way
Eos Amaterasu: it is kind of amazing, and kind of humbles you
Eos Amaterasu: I'm just part of this process, a little blip
Fox Monacular: a part of the process with limitless possibilities
--BELL--
Eos Amaterasu: (a wild animal roving in the 90 secs)
Fox Monacular: in the 90 sec interconnectedness manifested itself through a number of facebook requests that opened on a screen:)
Eos Amaterasu: :-)
Fox Monacular: a real wild animal?
Eos Amaterasu: the sense of a wild animal; has energy; can be fierce; wakes you up
Eos Amaterasu: (maybe the wings give a taste of that :-)
Eos Amaterasu has turned off growl notifications (sometimes too weird)
Fox Monacular: as a city dweller I miss the natural world.... all I get are racoons
Fox Monacular: I don'
Fox Monacular: I don't have the sound on:) baby sleepung
Eos Amaterasu: I used to live in Granby, south of Montreal; there the town square had a beaver pond with beavers!
Fox Monacular: nice!
Eos Amaterasu: I am lucky to have a very woodsy area with trails right near where I live
Fox Monacular: in Montreal there are beavers too...
Fox Monacular: where do you live now? I'm sure I asked before, but can't recall
Eos Amaterasu: Halifax
Fox Monacular: I would very much like to visit one day
Fox Monacular: you know, after Moscow, Montreal actually struck me as animal-ful
Eos Amaterasu: No foxes in Moscow?
Fox Monacular: nope.... hardly any squirrels
Fox Monacular: but lots of stray dogs - really scary, they get organized.... in packs...
Eos Amaterasu: There was actually a bear in a neighbor's yard a few years ago :-)
Fox Monacular: wow:)
Eos Amaterasu: but that's unusual
Eos Amaterasu: I picked up a book by Robert Waggoner, "Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self", which seems by far the most PaB-like approach to dreaming I've seen
Fox Monacular: stray dogs in Moscow are a real problem in some neighborhoods... they are hungry, angry at people...
Fox Monacular: I haven't read this one
Eos Amaterasu: Halifax has lots of feral cats, but they are discrete
Fox Monacular: is it this one?
Fox Monacular: http://www.lucidadvice.com/
Eos Amaterasu: Yes
Eos Amaterasu: He does a real exploration ( I have only just looked quickly at the book)
Fox Monacular: looks really interesting
Fox Monacular: you know, some people use lucid dreaming techniques to deal with recurrent distressing nightmares
--BELL--
Eos Amaterasu: Part of the interdependence is all the unexamined or less looked at things we carry around, subconcious, unconscious, repressed emotion, locked out stuff, mythical images
Fox Monacular: yes, definitely
Eos Amaterasu: IN waking life I think we have mini and micro dream-like episodes
Eos Amaterasu: we're carried away somewhere, and for a moment we're more there than here
Fox Monacular: yes, like daydreaming... but not necessarily conscioues
Fox Monacular: much like in meditation
Eos Amaterasu: I've been impressed with how some PaB people use active imagery, dream-like, or in dreams
Fox Monacular: listen
Eos Amaterasu: you can also "wake" more to that and play with it
Fox Monacular: listens
Eos Amaterasu: which maybe is similar to waking in a dream, or nightmare?
Fox Monacular: like in a lucid dream?
Eos Amaterasu: I think it has some similarities, yes
Fox Monacular: in nightmare treatment they sometimes will learn lucid dreaming techniques to be able to 'wake up" to it and change something
Eos Amaterasu: That must be pretty amazing
Eos Amaterasu: especially if they have been terrified
Fox Monacular: exactly
Fox Monacular: I guess lucidity plays a double role - they change the content to soemthing less distressing or even pleasant, and also they realize that all this is 'just a dream'
Eos Amaterasu: is that transformative in some cases?
Fox Monacular: I'm sure it is
Eos Amaterasu: I have heard amazingly beautiful music in my dreams
Fox Monacular: I would guess that gaining more mastery over the dream life will also spill over into waking life
Fox Monacular: music? that's unusual
Eos Amaterasu: and wondered where it came from (?!?)
Fox Monacular: interesting! would you hear complete musical pieces?
Eos Amaterasu: yes, long pieces. On a number of occasions. Sometimes classical. Sometimes rock (Grateful Dead)
Eos Amaterasu: Re spill over into waking life, relating to dream-like episodes, patterns, in waking life is one spill-over
Eos Amaterasu: and then relating to how we shape this experience
Eos Amaterasu: through similar kinds of projection
Eos Amaterasu: Certainly some dream experiences transcend the dream state
Eos Amaterasu: :-)
Fox Monacular: sorry, someone knocked on my door
Fox Monacular: sort of startled me
Eos Amaterasu: !
Fox Monacular: you know, I only had the music experience in a dream once
Fox Monacular: as far as I remember I sang the whole thing of hosanna from jesus christ superstar
Eos Amaterasu: :-)
Fox Monacular: and in the dream i knew all the lyrics (or so it seemed)
Eos Amaterasu: karaoke dreams!
Fox Monacular: hehe
--BELL--
Fox Monacular: you know, sometimes tunes get 'stuck' in your head
Fox Monacular: and I wonder if there's a deeper meaning to that
Eos Amaterasu: "earworms", I think
Fox Monacular: depending on which tune you can't get rid of:)
Eos Amaterasu: How so? (re deeper meaning)
Fox Monacular: for instance, in a meditation retreat I couldn't get rid of space oddity!
Fox Monacular: for 3 or 4 days in total silence all I heard was 'ground control to major tom..."
Eos Amaterasu: Ah yes, in a meditation retreat there's a lot of space for those things to play around in
Fox Monacular: sensory deprivation has a way to play with your mind for sure:)
Eos Amaterasu: the most dramatic is when after days of silence you suddenly get this wall of sound in your mind
Fox Monacular: yes!
Eos Amaterasu: I often have music stuck in me
Fox Monacular: have you done many retreats, Eos?
Eos Amaterasu: or playing me :-)
Fox Monacular: yes, me too:)
Eos Amaterasu: I've done some, relatively speaking (no like those people who do 30-year retreats)
Eos Amaterasu: some group sitting & practice, some solitary
Eos Amaterasu: you have too, Fox?
Fox Monacular: I've only done 1 10-day vipassana retreat in Sutton
Fox Monacular: and then many group sittings, 3 days, 1 day... zazen, tibetan.... trying to find my 'home'
Eos Amaterasu: It's very interesting, and I think very good, to be alone with your mind for some time
Fox Monacular: yes, it was a truly transformative experience
Fox Monacular: I was totally inexperienced in meditation... it was my first initiation - and quite a dramatic one
Fox Monacular: 10 days of silence
Eos Amaterasu: hmm, !
Fox Monacular: changed my life forever that's for sure
Fox Monacular: what kind of meditation you do?
Eos Amaterasu: can u say more about how it changed things?
Fox Monacular: it was very difficult... I really wanted to quit... but didn't...
Eos Amaterasu: I basically do mindfulness/awareness, in a way that's actually I feel very similar, or maybe ultimately the same as, PaB
Fox Monacular: and went through some major realizations about myself, about my own defences, about my monkey mind
Fox Monacular: :)
Eos Amaterasu: we have such monkey minds :-)
Fox Monacular: I knew very little about buddhism (apart from what I was taught in religious studies classes)
Fox Monacular: and realized that this was probably the right practice for me
Fox Monacular: my boyfriend at a time really insisted that I convert to judaism
Fox Monacular: so I had a hard time figuring out what to do
Fox Monacular: so after the retreat we just broke up, almost right away, and I felt immediately liberated
Fox Monacular: and then I stopped eating meat
Fox Monacular: how about you? when did you start?
Eos Amaterasu: I think I've gone through some journeys
Eos Amaterasu: and have been pursuing such things for a long time
Eos Amaterasu: when I was a child I could never understand how people could get excited about thingsP:
Eos Amaterasu: things: "didn't they know that things don't last?"
Fox Monacular: :-)
Eos Amaterasu: I got into a practice called the "Intution of Being", which Jacques Maritain, a medieval philosopher of being, described
--BELL--
Eos Amaterasu: (Maritain was 20th century)
Fox Monacular: what kind of practice is that?
Eos Amaterasu: I was interested in experiencing what philosophers and phenomenologists and others talked about
Eos Amaterasu: I was luckuy enough to meet someone who I think was a great Buddhist teacher
Eos Amaterasu: of how to be and how to work with your mind, Chogyam Trungpa
Eos Amaterasu: and did a lot of practice studying with him: working directly with your mind
Fox Monacular: yes, I have read Trungpa
Fox Monacular: with Trungpa?
Eos Amaterasu: yes
Fox Monacular: wow, you are really lucky!:)
Eos Amaterasu does feel that he was, and is, lucky
Fox Monacular: :-)
Eos Amaterasu: actually, that one feeling I tend to get on solitary retreats: "what did I do to deserve this?"
Fox Monacular: I can definitely relate to this
Fox Monacular: I feel that too
Eos Amaterasu: But I do think it is one of the best possible gifts you can give yourelf, and the world: to just be with yourself, especially in nature
Eos Amaterasu: you can find the wild sanity :-)
Fox Monacular: the best gift is the gift of dharma as many teachers say:)
Eos Amaterasu: (hmm, maybe that's why I just have a little forest clearing on my plot of land)
Fox Monacular: :)
Fox Monacular: where did you study with Trungpa? In Naropa?
Eos Amaterasu: Looks like you left your dream-lab controls on your plot of land :-)
Fox Monacular: hehe, yes, I just have no time to come and learn how to build stuff, so I just put some funny objects to 'mark the spot':)
Eos Amaterasu: I studied with him in Berkeley, Vermont (Karme-Choling), and Halifax, as well as various places for special programs (such as Rocky Mountain Dharma Center near Boulder)
Fox Monacular: wonderful, it looks like it was quite a long study
Eos Amaterasu: My wife edited a book on the Buddhist Christian dialogues that were held at Naropa, called "Speaking of Silence"
Eos Amaterasu: An adventure :-)
Fox Monacular: http://www.amazon.com/<wbr/>Speaking-Silence-Christians-<wbr/>Buddhists-Dialogue/dp/<wbr/>1550550195
Eos Amaterasu: Best possible thing I could think of doing :-)
Fox Monacular: this book?
Eos Amaterasu: Yes
Fox Monacular: adding to wish list:)
Eos Amaterasu: heh heh
Eos Amaterasu: I like how PaB is such a "strange attractor" to people around the world
Fox Monacular: it is amazing
Fox Monacular: you know I probably got here through some synchronicity
Eos Amaterasu: yes, synchronicity
Fox Monacular: just one day baby was sleeping and I felt like doing something pointless , so I got a SL account....
Fox Monacular: walked around for a while and was convinced that it's a waste of time
--BELL--
Eos Amaterasu: baby was dreaming and put that thought in your head
Fox Monacular: then searched for philosophy and buddhism, I think, in places
Fox Monacular: and found PaB in the middle of meeting
Fox Monacular: oups
Fox Monacular: so basically I wouldn't spend another hour in SL if it wasn't for PaB:) now I'm definitely addicted!
Fox Monacular: Have you been in PaB for a long time?
Eos Amaterasu: Not really, only since April
Fox Monacular: Hi Paradise!
Fox Monacular: after-session-session:)
Eos Amaterasu: But it has also become my main thing
Paradise Tennant: hiya fox .. eos .. just winding down :)
Eos Amaterasu: Hi Paradise
Fox Monacular: :)
Paradise Tennant: what is your main think eos ?
Paradise Tennant: thing
Eos Amaterasu: but this has been a great conversation
Fox Monacular: yes:)
Eos Amaterasu: yes, I need to segue to bed
Paradise Tennant: :)
Eos Amaterasu: PaB is the main thing I do in SL
Eos Amaterasu: if I had more time I would probably do more
Paradise Tennant: ahh kk
Fox Monacular: yes, me too actually... 11 30 pm here, baby's been sleeping for a while, I should really join her...
Fox Monacular: sorry Paradise
Paradise Tennant: no worries
Fox Monacular: I would have loved to stay longer
Paradise Tennant: just swinging by .. :)
Paradise Tennant: going to bed too
Fox Monacular: :)
Paradise Tennant: :)
Eos Amaterasu: Enjoy your chai!
Paradise Tennant: lol
Paradise Tennant: yes I will thanks
Eos Amaterasu: Thanks, Fox, bye, and bye paradise!
Paradise Tennant: nite nite eos :)
Fox Monacular: good night Eos
Fox Monacular: good night Paradise:)
Paradise Tennant: nite nite fox :)
Fox Monacular: see you another time:)
Paradise Tennant: okies