Why dream at all if you can't dream big?
Cos when it is incredible, then are you really dreaming.
"If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn't even know you are thinking." "You would be like a dreamer who doesn't know he is dreaming." "When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream."
"I'm laughing. I'm chanting. I'm dancing. I'm dreaming. I'm living. I'm loving. It's good to be alive!"
"any dream will do"
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.
"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."
- Carl Jung
"Those who are realistic and practical are less realistic and practical in the long run than those who dream big dreams and passionately pursue them."
- Hans Selye
Don't dream it, be it.
Do not assume that divine guidance flows only when you are in need of help. Guidance continues to flow whether or not you have problems. It transcends problems, heartbreaks, and traumas, flowing through dreams and illuminations.... Whether guidance comes during times of tranquility or trauma, however, it is up to you to have the courage to acknowledge it....
"AS WE PRESS UPON ONE ANOTHER WITH OUR INTENTIONS,
FROM OUR HEARTS FLY LUMINOUS BUTTERFLIES,
THAT INTERMINGLE AND CROSSOVER TO BE ABSORBED.
IN ABEYANCE OUR HEARTS AWAIT"
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;
If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings -- nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!
Give of yourself,
except for that which weakens you.
Accept what is given,
but not that which compromises.
In a special sense… the three great natural states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep contain an entire spectrum of spiritual enlightenment.
By following "the path of reverie"--a constantly downhill path--consciousness relaxes and wanders--and consequently becomes clouded. So it is never the right time, when one is dreaming, to "do phenomenology."
I have two judges and two only; the ten year old inside who told me never to stop dreaming and the dying man who told me never to stop living.
"I'm hiding baby and I'm dreaming
I'm riding down your moonlight mile"
Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise, risking more than others think is safe, dreaming more than others think is practical, and expecting more than others think is possible.
In the end, the secret to learning is so simple: Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream about it...and it will hit you: learning was there all the time, happening by itself.
"Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning."
Ultimately we want to use dream to liberate ourselves from all relative conditions, not simply to improve them.
Dream as if you'll live forever and live as if you'll die tomorrow
I suggested that dreams are simulations of the world created by our perceptual systems. The introduction to waking perception that you just read will help you understand this theory.
Consider, first of all, how sleep modifies the process of perception. During REM sleep, as you learned in chapter 2, sensory input from the outside world and body movement are both suppressed, while the entire brain is highly active. The activity of the brain raises certain schemas above their perceptual thresholds. These schemas enter consciousness, causing the dreamer to see, feel, hear, and experience things not present in the external environment.
Ordinarily, if you were to see something that wasn't really there, contradictory sensory input would rapidly correct your mistaken impression. Why doesn't the same thing happen during dreaming? The answer is because there is little or no sensory input available to the brain for correcting such mistakes.
But why are people interested in learning to be conscious in their dreams? According to my own experience, and the testimony of thousands of other lucid dreamers, lucid dreams can be extraordinarily vivid, intense, pleasurable, and exhilarating. People frequently consider their lucid dreams as among the most wonderful experiences of their lives.
If this were all there were to it, lucid dreams would be delightful, but ultimately trivial entertainment. However, as many have already discovered, you can use lucid dreaming to improve the quality of your waking life. Thousands of people have written to me at Stanford telling how they are using the knowledge and experience they have acquired in lucid dreams to help them get more out of living.
The Yoga of the Dream State has always held to be one of the fastest, most efficient ways of reaching a plateau experience of subtle and causal realms, thus quickly opening the door to stable adaptation at - and transcendence of - those realms.
If you are having a dream and you think it's real, it can get very
scary. Say you are dreaming you are tightrope walking across Niagara
Falls. If you fall off, you plunge to your death. So you are walking
very slowly, very carefully. Then suppose you start lucid dreaming, and
you realise it's all a dream. What do you do? Become more cautious and
careful? Noo, you start jumping up and down on the tightrope, you do
flips, you bounce around, you have a ball - precisely because you know
isn't real. When you realise it's a dream you can afford to play.
The same thing happens when you realise that ordinary life is a dream,
just a movie, just a play. You don't become more cautious, more timid,
more reserved. You start jumping up and down and doing flips, precisely
because it's all a dream, it's all pure Emptiness. You don't feel less ,
you feel more - because you can afford to. You are no longer afraid of
dying, and therefore you are not afraid of living. You become radical
and wild, intense and vivid, shocking and silly. You let it all come
pouring through, because it's all your dream.
Life then assumes its true intensity, its vivid luminosity, its radical
effervescence.
(From One Taste)
If you are having a dream and you think it's real, it can get very
scary. Say you are dreaming you are tightrope walking across Niagara
Falls. If you fall off, you plunge to your death. So you are walking
very slowly, very carefully. Then suppose you start lucid dreaming, and
you realise it's all a dream. What do you do? Become more cautious and
careful? Noo, you start jumping up and down on the tightrope, you do
flips, you bounce around, you have a ball - precisely because you know
isn't real. When you realise it's a dream you can afford to play.
The same thing happens when you realise that ordinary life is a dream,
just a movie, just a play. You don't become more cautious, more timid,
more reserved. You start jumping up and down and doing flips, precisely
because it's all a dream, it's all pure Emptiness. You don't feel less ,
you feel more - because you can afford to. You are no longer afraid of
dying, and therefore you are not afraid of living. You become radical
and wild, intense and vivid, shocking and silly. You let it all come
pouring through, because it's all your dream.
Life then assumes its true intensity, its vivid luminosity, its radical
effervescence.
(From One Taste)
If you are having a dream and you think it's real, it can get very
scary. Say you are dreaming you are tightrope walking across Niagara
Falls. If you fall off, you plunge to your death. So you are walking
very slowly, very carefully. Then suppose you start lucid dreaming, and
you realise it's all a dream. What do you do? Become more cautious and
careful? Noo, you start jumping up and down on the tightrope, you do
flips, you bounce around, you have a ball - precisely because you know
isn't real. When you realise it's a dream you can afford to play.
The same thing happens when you realise that ordinary life is a dream,
just a movie, just a play. You don't become more cautious, more timid,
more reserved. You start jumping up and down and doing flips, precisely
because it's all a dream, it's all pure Emptiness. You don't feel less ,
you feel more - because you can afford to. You are no longer afraid of
dying, and therefore you are not afraid of living. You become radical
and wild, intense and vivid, shocking and silly. You let it all come
pouring through, because it's all your dream.
Life then assumes its true intensity, its vivid luminosity, its radical
effervescence.
(From One Taste)
If you are having a dream and you think it's real, it can get very
scary. Say you are dreaming you are tightrope walking across Niagara
Falls. If you fall off, you plunge to your death. So you are walking
very slowly, very carefully. Then suppose you start lucid dreaming, and
you realise it's all a dream. What do you do? Become more cautious and
careful? Noo, you start jumping up and down on the tightrope, you do
flips, you bounce around, you have a ball - precisely because you know
isn't real. When you realise it's a dream you can afford to play.
The same thing happens when you realise that ordinary life is a dream,
just a movie, just a play. You don't become more cautious, more timid,
more reserved. You start jumping up and down and doing flips, precisely
because it's all a dream, it's all pure Emptiness. You don't feel less ,
you feel more - because you can afford to. You are no longer afraid of
dying, and therefore you are not afraid of living. You become radical
and wild, intense and vivid, shocking and silly. You let it all come
pouring through, because it's all your dream.
Life then assumes its true intensity, its vivid luminosity, its radical
effervescence.
(From One Taste)
If you are having a dream and you think it's real, it can get very
scary. Say you are dreaming you are tightrope walking across Niagara
Falls. If you fall off, you plunge to your death. So you are walking
very slowly, very carefully. Then suppose you start lucid dreaming, and
you realise it's all a dream. What do you do? Become more cautious and
careful? Noo, you start jumping up and down on the tightrope, you do
flips, you bounce around, you have a ball - precisely because you know
isn't real. When you realise it's a dream you can afford to play.
The same thing happens when you realise that ordinary life is a dream,
just a movie, just a play. You don't become more cautious, more timid,
more reserved. You start jumping up and down and doing flips, precisely
because it's all a dream, it's all pure Emptiness. You don't feel less ,
you feel more - because you can afford to. You are no longer afraid of
dying, and therefore you are not afraid of living. You become radical
and wild, intense and vivid, shocking and silly. You let it all come
pouring through, because it's all your dream.
Life then assumes its true intensity, its vivid luminosity, its radical
effervescence.
(From One Taste)
When a man in the process of dreaming becomes conscious that he is dreaming, he is no longer identified with the phenomena; he is not affected exultantly or dolefully. God consciously dreams His cosmic play and is unaffected by it's dualities. A yogi who perceives his real self as separate from his active senses and their objects never becomes attached to anything. He is aware of the dream nature of the universe and watches it without being entangled in its complex but ephemeral nature.
