Tag: Buddhism

Dreams Posted on

2013: DREAMING WHILE AWAKE PRACTICES

This simple dreaming while awake practice pulls the unconscious mind into the realm of the conscious mind. Meditate with a partner at dusk or in a low light situation with your eyes open. Look into each other’s eyes for a long period of time while blanking your mind. Let your eyes be slightly soft-focused and see. Allow any change in your vision to occur naturally. Be aware of the entire peripheral area and notice the highlights and shadows intensify. The face may disappear altogether or may change to other faces. Whatever you see, there is nothing to fear. A variation of this practice is to stare in a mirror in a low light situation. Another practice is to meditate facing someone, with your eyes […] Read More

Alternative Realities Posted on

Alternative Cosmologies and Altered States

by Stanislav Grof Noetic Sciences Review, Winter 1994, pages 21-29 From a talk given at the Institute of Noetic Sciences conference “The Sacred Source: Life, Death, and the Survival of Consciousness”, Chicago, Illinois, July 15-17, 1994. Editor’s Note: In Western societies, the dominant paradigm presents a cosmology in which humans, as biological matter, live and die in a universe governed by the laws of physics. In this worldview, there is no room for the possibility of life after death, and different states of consciousness have significance only as pathological deviations from that worldview. In sharp contrast, the cosmologies of other cultures, ancient and contemporary pre-industrial, have taken for granted the existence of an afterlife. For them, dying is a meaningful part of life, and death […] Read More

The Mind Posted on

Finding Reality Through Meditation

  By Ansley Roche January 18, 2006 When I first started to practice meditation, part of me dreaded taking a seat in the circle. I knew it was good for me, but I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing with my chatty little mind, and I was frustrated with the fact that sitting down to meditate brought out a narcoleptic tendency I didn’t know I had. The meditation leader would sound a bell to initiate the session and within 2 minutes, I would start the sway—sitting upright as I drifted off to sleep only to be jerked awake by my head falling forward: the sway. It didn’t take long to learn that during these sleep-deprived college years, I would need caffeine […] Read More

Living the Illusion Posted on

2006: Finding Reality Through Meditation

By Ansley Roche January 18, 2006 When I first started to practice meditation, part of me dreaded taking a seat in the circle. I knew it was good for me, but I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing with my chatty little mind, and I was frustrated with the fact that sitting down to meditate brought out a narcoleptic tendency I didn’t know I had. The meditation leader would sound a bell to initiate the session and within 2 minutes, I would start the sway—sitting upright as I drifted off to sleep only to be jerked awake by my head falling forward: the sway. It didn’t take long to learn that during these sleep-deprived college years, I would need caffeine to […] Read More