Alysia - if you can make sense out of my fishy dream, go for it. It's kinda obvious. My recall was that the hardest part was taking fish and extending their flippers into arms and legs. The actual reason for mentioning it at all was that my wife continually complains that she doesn't get restorative sleep and that she has "goofy dreams" - for once, I could out-goofy her.

Lucy- I make no judgement about having to have anything except a point of view in order to be aware. Your experience (samadhi) of being pure consciousness is to the point of that. Seems like we are no-thing and no-body, if you'll pardon the pun. The next two levels of the same experience, if recall serves, is to become ALL of consciousness (sarvastarka samadhi), and then to just be All of Being (nirvastarka samadhi). Then one often goes into the stage of always being in trance, and can have goofy dreams of this and other realities etc. I am perpetually amazed at the exceptionally high level of spiritual development of the folks on this forum.

Kardec has raised one side of an interesting dichotomy here - and Lucy has especially pointed it out - We have a spiritual experience and bring back a slightly distorted image, and on that basis we do what we can to make life work better. Then we create a new psychic environment, and as we re-enter it we again have a sppiritual experience from which we bring back a slightly distorted image, create a new psychic environment ... etc. It's rather like getting rid of "original sin" by working through it, until we finally get to the point of simply being aware. (This is precisely the same sequence I use when I do psychotherapy with people, and it seems to be generic to all the ways that we work to advance ourselves.) It's not so much a problem of chicken and egg, as a matter of trial and error for survival and growth.  Jean said about as much - we create reality ourselves.

One of the things available from the Tiobetan Bardo Thodol tradition is a mandala of "six worlds" - three positive states of being (from the Hindu three gunas), built on activity and process (rajas), structural unity and integrity (tamas), and truthful awareness and wisdom (sattva) - and the three antithetical worlds in which we misuse these options. The essence of teachings in this area is to maximize our positive aspects, as before.

Back to work - see y'all later-
dave

alrighty, since I have your permission Dave I'll interpret the hard part in the dream was Dave figuring out how to be of service in his profession as hynotherapist. I could call you a facilitator, as you try to make it easy for them to go into their own subconscious and facilitating means to make easy. Life, at least physical life started out as something small in the water, and then a fish, and then it grew some legs and said "hey! I need legs to crawl out of the water, so I'll just sprout some. life is curious and like to walk sometimes, not swim all the time. so here's Dave and he knows something. he helps others who ask for his help. hes not really sure he should take money for his helpfulness. I say, yes, take the money; trust me its a genuine service.
money aside, Dave is saying to himself this is hard, I struggle to give them an arm and a leg and I don't see the full results I'd like to. the problem with working in these types of fields is we are all still exploring the mind. its not finished science and might never be.
so we see by your feelings in the dream that you feel its difficult. maybe theres not enough satisfaction to continue even, and you might feel that way sometimes.
yet the way I see it, I applaud that you even want to help others by giving them arms and legs, which only means, that these members are extentions of the mind. you're trying to give them what they already have and don't know it.
dreams are never goofy to me, but I love it when I show myself I can laugh about them too. so maybe you don't need my interpretation really, I think you are smart enough to interpret it yourself, but I enjoy what I seen in it and maybe I can come to your neck of the woods and shake your hand some day! I'm in CA now you know!

blessings, alysia

another way to look at it: as we are mind, not bodies, our minds interpentrate the body cells. I don't think we need a body especially; it just gives mind a point of physical expression of identification. I don't know about anybody else, but personally I'm just hanging out on Earth nowadays. its seems so easy to leave the body as I don't identify it as what I am or who I am; just as a vehicle for this area, which does not release me from responsibility from taking care of it though!

I like what you said Lucy that : maybe I'm doing my thinking somewhere in my disk ...(or tapestry) instead of here, where I think I am.

I agree. I have a dual world going on. my tapestry is way ahead of my C1 thinking. I'd like to be able to catch up to it. perhaps I have high hopes?

Lucy said: It would be fun to be an orb and go around everywhere. How do I learn to do that?
____

if you are serious I'll write out a point by point thesis how I did it that one time. doing so will help me to understand it better too. you're right...at least I communicated the fun aspect...it was an experience I'd been waiting to have for at least 15 years or so..I'd been at it awhile. each time I write something down I understand it better so I'd be glad to do so..just not sure that it happens the same way for all of us to follow another's method, but sure would like you to experience the same thing and then come and post here!   let me know if I should do that, as I'm not sure I would be boring someone?

hugs, alysia

ok Vicky, you twisted my arm!

I had been trying to go obe forever and was frustrated with the efforts. bout ready to chuck the entire notion when thought I'd try something new.
my usual method was to lie flat as a board on the bed and simply wait for the vibrations. the vibrations would always come after wishing hard for a few days that they would, and that I'd then go obe.
it was fun thinking I even had this much control. I could make vibrations occur by pure desire; whoop de do!  but I'd always fall asleep after the vibrations and recall absolutely nothing where I'd been or even if I'd been somewhere by going out. I assumed I was exiting the body as a unit of consciousness.

to describe the vibrations, each of us experience it slightly differently. mine felt very pleasant, like waves all over the body originating in the crown chakra and flowing down the body. almost felt like PUL, although I didn't think of it that way then.
another time, recently felt the vibrations with the addition of a sound like a train rumbling through the platform of my mind!! what the 'ell? must have been one of my rusty chakras, but I swear this was real!

ok, back to point by point thing. was so frustrated with just the pleasurable vibrations never taking me to the mental planes I wanted to go to, I was thinking this and making the decision to give it up; I think someone was listening to me think these thoughts and assisted me that day, and so its hard to say I did this all on my own..must have had help as it just happened that I "popped" out and became an orb for what seemed like an hour, but was really only perhaps 15 minutes or 30.

I thought, well since I know you have to be relaxed to do this, I wonder why I relax so well I fall right to sleep? maybe if I sat in a chair then I would not fall asleep. so that was the new thing to try. I kept arguing with myself that this was too much work trying to relax and stay awake at the same time. lol...so I promised myself I wouldn't stress out while trying to relax!!  I remember some deep breathing exercises my spiritualist church had taught me. I used the in breath to count to 10, the out breath to count to 10. this is hard too. concentrating on the in and out breath shuts the mind effluvia up just long enough so you can pop out of the body; maybe...it worked anyway. as you're doing that you're thinking, would be nice if it worked...you're talking to yourself, or a guide. you're asking: will it work? the other voice is saying concentrate on the breath and shut up for one minute. you pop open an eyelid to see if you're still in the room. yup. still in the room. breath. you do the relaxing then by centering on each muscle of your body to consciously release the tension even in your toes and your eyelids. all my tension is on my face, so I had to relax each eyebrow, the lips, my tongue, yegads, I had to notice wherever I held tension; I had to relax all of it. finally, then you get an itch, and you relax the itch without touching it. meanwhile this voice in your head or your own self is asking you to make a plan. where do you want to go "if" you get out? so you pick a destination that you know about. maybe you visit a friend. you have to have a definete destination, and this is where I went wrong in all my other efforts, I just didn't have a destination; even if you want to go walk into the sun, something crazy, you have to have an idea where to sail or you're not getting out.

I'd been relaxing for close to 20 minutes thinking this is a waste of time really when I started to feel a peaceful quiet settle over me. I was completely content to just sit there. it no longer mattered if I got out or not it was so peaceful that I smiled at myself and just accepted myself that someday I would get this kind of knowledge if I kept focusing on it. and it didn't matter if it was today. thats when I felt something an action going on between my physical eyes, like a wind sensation. a small imaginary door opened there and a sensation of a pop, really subtle. I focused my awarenss in that part of my body. a body form formed on this little energy which seemed to glide forth. I followed it as this pinpoint of awareness that I was I and I had just succeeded to be going somewhere finally and completely aware of my physical body in the chair, as not being me, but since I had relaxed it, I had gathered the tension from it and now had impetus to travel out of it.

what if? what if I could? I kept wondering that. I meditated on it. for years. and even now as I sat there I wondered what if?
Bruce has breath exercises in his books and so he knows a secret of the breath, how it can quiet you down and deepen your mind levels.
In the back of my mind I'd asked for help. I believe there are invisible guides working these areas and so in my imagination they were there. what if it turns out its more than my imagination that they were there? and what if they are my disc members and we are all one?

hugs, alysia