The Conscious & Subconscious
How can we do horrible things in dreams that we have not the remotest desire to do in real-life?
Why can’t I use meditation to become a genius? Or has anyone truly become a genius from drugs? Or would the opposite actually happen – I would become so enthralled with this world without limits that I would stay there forever and waste my life there? – What if you could life in a perfect psychedelic world forever? Would you do it?
Attention & consciousness: Normally if you’re sleepy, you also can’t concentrate. That makes sense. So then why are attention and physical sleepiness sometimes correlated, and sometimes not? This happens to me sometimes at night, perhaps because I’m nocturnal. I’ll be reading, and I know I’m physically sleepy (my head is buzzing), though I don’t feel sleepy, and my powers of concentration aren’t affected at all. Very important note: I don’t necessarily think that I retain my powers of concentration because of the interest level I have of the reading material.
Then there’s lesser degrees and other versions of this. For example, if you’re listening to a boring lecture or reading a boring book, you’ll get sleepy. The boringness is what subtracts from your attention. But it could also work the other way around – you may find a lecture interesting, but because you didn’t get enough sleep the previous night, you have difficulty concentrating. So on one hand it’s the “spiritual” side that’s affecting the physical, and in the second scenario, it’s the physical side that’s affecting the “spiritual”.
In the example in the first paragraph, this is reversed. Despite not being physically able to concentrate, the “spiritual” interest is there, and so the spiritual will overcomes the physical demand to sleep.
Sometimes I have such vivid dreams. This is the paradox – the clearer the dream, the more realistic the dream, the more I know I’m dreaming and the more I can control the dream, although at that point, I’m in great danger of waking up. It seems that dreams, the subconscious, the impossible, are all mutually exclusive of reality, awareness and control, but why?
And it’s strange – the thing I find most astonishing is that I have the most insight into the dream, not when the dream contents are most improbable, but when they are most startlingly realistic. That is, it’s not the improbabilities that cause me to realize I’m dreaming, but that I suddenly realize how astonishing it is that everything looks exactly as it does in real life and that I can train my eyes on an object and the effect doesn’t vanish in the least. (ie, the detail and accuracy is so great that I can examine the way light passes through various transparent and reflective objects or substances and the light will pass through or be dispersed according to the laws of physics in real life.)
Then there was the time that I choreographed the most beautiful dance I’ve ever seen in my life for the Chinese performers on the stage in my dream, and I’m thinking, all the while this is unfolding before me – “how can I come up with this?” And how can I be more creative and more of a genius than the greatest choreographers of history? What’s inside the human mind, what’s the true human potential and why is it never let out? Why has nature forbidden it? And I don’t think a choreographer in their dream could have done better than me.
So why are there 2 levels of consciousness? The genius consciousness is the one that has no control and that’s forgotten and unappreciated. The consciousness that observes all this is the one that controls everything, but that’s stupid and uninspired and can only observe.
Might this have something to do with God moving and working in us? It’s when we let go that we can be productive, it’s when we don’t try and have no object, aspiration or ambition that we can, paradoxically, achieve all these things. (This sounds like the Tao.) But this is such a paradox, and it goes against everything that we’ve been taught since we were little (work hard and you can make anything happen), and, in short, it seems unfair. But then again, in a way, you could say the grace of God is unfair.
And interestingly, lucid dreaming is even related to the physical body, in that it’s prolonged by spinning oneself in the dream.
That was a bit complex and interrelated, so to sum up, 5 points:
1.waking consciousness (lucidity) arising not from realization of logical incongruities, but from realization of a violation of the nature of dreams (unnatural clarity)
2.dreams, the subconscious, the illogical are mutually exclusive of reality, awareness and control
3.2 consciouses – the genius subconscious, and the normal waking one
4.grace vs work (supernatural/spiritual vs the natural), the Tao
5.the relationship between the physical (your body in your dream) and the spiritual (the dream)
Why, and how is it even possible, that we can experience atmospheres and emotions in dreams that we've never felt in real life, and that indeed, are impossible to feel in real life?
Why does the mind so cleverly disguise meanings in dreams, often in the form of a personal symbol, which at the time isn't realized, but upon waking and thinking about it, can be seen as obvious. I don't see why these things should have to be hidden.
Why can’t I use meditation to become a genius? Or has anyone truly become a genius from drugs? Or would the opposite actually happen – I would become so enthralled with this world without limits that I would stay there forever and waste my life there? – What if you could life in a perfect psychedelic world forever? Would you do it?
Attention & consciousness: Normally if you’re sleepy, you also can’t concentrate. That makes sense. So then why are attention and physical sleepiness sometimes correlated, and sometimes not? This happens to me sometimes at night, perhaps because I’m nocturnal. I’ll be reading, and I know I’m physically sleepy (my head is buzzing), though I don’t feel sleepy, and my powers of concentration aren’t affected at all. Very important note: I don’t necessarily think that I retain my powers of concentration because of the interest level I have of the reading material.
Then there’s lesser degrees and other versions of this. For example, if you’re listening to a boring lecture or reading a boring book, you’ll get sleepy. The boringness is what subtracts from your attention. But it could also work the other way around – you may find a lecture interesting, but because you didn’t get enough sleep the previous night, you have difficulty concentrating. So on one hand it’s the “spiritual” side that’s affecting the physical, and in the second scenario, it’s the physical side that’s affecting the “spiritual”.
In the example in the first paragraph, this is reversed. Despite not being physically able to concentrate, the “spiritual” interest is there, and so the spiritual will overcomes the physical demand to sleep.
Sometimes I have such vivid dreams. This is the paradox – the clearer the dream, the more realistic the dream, the more I know I’m dreaming and the more I can control the dream, although at that point, I’m in great danger of waking up. It seems that dreams, the subconscious, the impossible, are all mutually exclusive of reality, awareness and control, but why?
And it’s strange – the thing I find most astonishing is that I have the most insight into the dream, not when the dream contents are most improbable, but when they are most startlingly realistic. That is, it’s not the improbabilities that cause me to realize I’m dreaming, but that I suddenly realize how astonishing it is that everything looks exactly as it does in real life and that I can train my eyes on an object and the effect doesn’t vanish in the least. (ie, the detail and accuracy is so great that I can examine the way light passes through various transparent and reflective objects or substances and the light will pass through or be dispersed according to the laws of physics in real life.)
Then there was the time that I choreographed the most beautiful dance I’ve ever seen in my life for the Chinese performers on the stage in my dream, and I’m thinking, all the while this is unfolding before me – “how can I come up with this?” And how can I be more creative and more of a genius than the greatest choreographers of history? What’s inside the human mind, what’s the true human potential and why is it never let out? Why has nature forbidden it? And I don’t think a choreographer in their dream could have done better than me.
So why are there 2 levels of consciousness? The genius consciousness is the one that has no control and that’s forgotten and unappreciated. The consciousness that observes all this is the one that controls everything, but that’s stupid and uninspired and can only observe.
Might this have something to do with God moving and working in us? It’s when we let go that we can be productive, it’s when we don’t try and have no object, aspiration or ambition that we can, paradoxically, achieve all these things. (This sounds like the Tao.) But this is such a paradox, and it goes against everything that we’ve been taught since we were little (work hard and you can make anything happen), and, in short, it seems unfair. But then again, in a way, you could say the grace of God is unfair.
And interestingly, lucid dreaming is even related to the physical body, in that it’s prolonged by spinning oneself in the dream.
That was a bit complex and interrelated, so to sum up, 5 points:
1.waking consciousness (lucidity) arising not from realization of logical incongruities, but from realization of a violation of the nature of dreams (unnatural clarity)
2.dreams, the subconscious, the illogical are mutually exclusive of reality, awareness and control
3.2 consciouses – the genius subconscious, and the normal waking one
4.grace vs work (supernatural/spiritual vs the natural), the Tao
5.the relationship between the physical (your body in your dream) and the spiritual (the dream)
Why, and how is it even possible, that we can experience atmospheres and emotions in dreams that we've never felt in real life, and that indeed, are impossible to feel in real life?
Why does the mind so cleverly disguise meanings in dreams, often in the form of a personal symbol, which at the time isn't realized, but upon waking and thinking about it, can be seen as obvious. I don't see why these things should have to be hidden.
