Can dreams just be produced by the brain?

[Nahm]

@seeking_brilliance

Mind sharing your most recent dream?

Just leave out what is derived of thoughts, perception, and sensation. 

I just wanna hear the rest...the other stuff.

That differentiating other stuff. 

I’d also love to here what’s on your dream board...what you’re creating of this. Rather, what you’ve become conscious you are creating. 

[Forestluv]

On 1/15/2020 at 6:09 AM, Baotrader said:

Last night I had a dream which I go to a store that sells armodafinil in PINK package. It's just because I once saw a guy on this forum posted that PINK packaged armodafinil and was curious because I always buy Blue packaged armodafinil. 

I think this brings up an interesting question of what is "internal" and what is "external". Of course we could say there is no difference and everything is one. Yet part of the fun of being human is observing and creating differences based on our observations. 

For centuries humans have been curious about the source of content of dreams. Is it random? Is it related to other things? Is there intention?. . . One observation is that dreams often contain content from our waking life. For example, people and places in our waking life. As well, this familiar content is often factors in your recent waking life. One psychological study involves students that played the game Tetris for three hours everyday. This is a simple game in which a variety of differently shaped blocks fall down the screen and the player must organize the blocks. . . After a couple weeks of this, most of the students started having dreams that included Tetris-like blocks and themes of organizing blocks (yet the dream wasn't literally playing Tetris). 

This would be consistent with you observing a post about PINK packaged armodafinil in waking life and it appearing in dream life. I like how this inter-connects three components that we often see as separate. There is the reality "external" to me in waking life (the post about PINK armodafinil), there is the reality of "internal" to me (noticing the post about PINK armodafinil, imagining it and thinking about it "internally") and there is the dream state (the PINK armodafinil re-appears in the dream).

For fun, we could contemplate some new questions. In the dream state, what is "external" and "internal" to "me"? For example, the dream character went to a store that sells PINK packaged armodafinil. Is that PIINK armodafinil "external" or "internal"? . . . It depends on the relative perspective. From the perspective of the dream character, it is external. If awareness identifies as the dream character, the store and PINK armodafinal is "external". To have an experience as this dream character, there needs to be identification as being the dream character. . . Yet from the perpective of the "real me" dreaming, it is all "internal" - it is all occurring in "my" consciousness. The dream character, the store and PINK armodafinil are are internal to "my" mind. This awareness may be realized if a realization that this is all a dream is revealed. There may be identification to the dream character, yet the dream character may awaken that it is all a dream. Then there is a major energetic shift. There is a realization that Everything within this dream is occurring in "my" mind.

This can be taken to a higher level in waking life. In waking life, there is identification to a "me" character. Trees, stores, armodafinl, cars, people etc. are all perceived as "external" to me. This is necessary to have an experience as "me". Yet just like the dream character realized it was all a dream and a higher awareness appeared, the waking character can also realize it's all a dream and a higher awareness can be revealed. Remember, the "dream" character thinks it is a real waking character, until it realizes the dream. Similarly, the "waking" character thinks  it is a real waking character, until it realizes the dream. . . . When this realization occurs in dreams, we can call it "lucid dreaming" and conscious awareness we are dreaming arises. When this realization occurs in waking life, we can call it "awakening" and conscious awareness we are dreaming arises. 

To me, the practices to attain lucid dream life awareness is quite similar to the practices to attain awakened wakeful life awareness. For example, one practice to attain lucid dream life awareness is to do "reality checks" during the wakeful day. We may ask "Is this real? Is this imagined? Am I awake or am I dreaming". Then the person does a reality check - such as looking at a clock (if there are numbers on the clock it is awake reality, if there are no numbers on the clock it is a dream). Then while someone is dreaming, hopefully the dream character asks the same question, looks at a clock, notices there are no numbers and then realizes this is a dream. . . This is very similar to the practices to wake up during "wakeful" life. Much of the self inquiry, contemplations, insights are related to "what is reality? what is real? what is imagined? How do I know what is real/true and what is imagined/false?". Similar to lucid dreaming, there can be a glimpse of awakening that "I" am within a hallucination, a dream. Also similar to a dream, the identification to the "me" character dissolves and a new higher meta consciousness that this is all happening within the transcendent "ME". There is realization of "me" the dream character and "ME" the dreamer of the dream character. . . In our "waking" life, there can be an immense amount of attachment / identification to the character and there is an immense amount of resistance to awakening. The character doesn't want to be in the dream, the character wants to be the meta DREAMER. This is one of the hardest things to get over. . . Imagine you are having a dream and the dream character wants to realize itself. Yet the dream character wants to be the meta DREAMER. You will not be able to wake up and enter of meta consciousness of lucid dreaming. The dream character has to let go of its attachment/identification of being the DREAMER. If the dream character is unwilling to do this, there may be a massive struggle. From the perspective of a dream character, entering meta awareness of the dream is death. The dream character still exists, yet the identification as the dream character dies, an energetic shift occurs and a meta awareness that Everything in the dream is within the DREAMER. Now, the dream character is just another thing within the dream. The dream character, other people, trees, houses etc. all have an equivalency in that they are all hallucinations within the meta DREAMER. . . It's a similar dynamic in "waking" life. One of the hardest parts of waking up is that the personal "I" wants to be the meta DREAMER. Waking up can be an amazing process like entering a lucid dream state. Yet, waking up can also feel like death of the character (actually death of identification of the character). From the perspective of the character true waking up may seem like a nightmare - "I" gets nothing out of this. In transitional states, some mind may enter nihilism or solipsism which is a kind of half-way point - yet some minds try to get grounding in this state, can get stuck and spiral into dark places. Other minds seem to let go much easier. My guess is that minds that are curious, flexible, imaginative and like to explore various conscious states, the paranormal and dreams are able to let go and make more efficient progress than minds that are highly analytical and want static, concrete grounding of what reality is. 

[seeking_brilliance]

1 hour ago, Nahm said:

@seeking_brilliance

Mind sharing your most recent dream?

Just leave out what is derived of thoughts, perception, and sensation. 

I just wanna hear the rest...the other stuff.

That differentiating other stuff. 

Lol why do I feel like I'm being set up here? ? Ok fine... Mu... 

I would have to engage thought to say 'I dreamed this' and 'my husband dreamed that'.  Of course, he could just tell me his dreams and I can compare... But again I'm not trying to talk about nonduality here, unless that's just unavoidable... 

And, sorry I haven't made a dream board.  I don't know what I've become conscious of creating besides my own suffering by believing thoughts, and sometimes pleasant things as well which can be manifested through imagination. I've been trying to become more conscious of creating during a lucid dream but it is taking alot of experimentation or just isn't possible beyond small instant manifestations. 

Edited January 21, 2020 by seeking_brilliance

[Nahm]

21 minutes ago, seeking_brilliance said:

Lol why do I feel like I'm being set up here? ? Ok fine... Mu... 

I would have to engage thought to say 'I dreamed this' and 'my husband dreamed that'.  Of course, he could just tell me his dreams and I can compare... But again I'm not trying to talk about nonduality here, unless that's just unavoidable... 

And, sorry I haven't made a dream board.  I don't know what I've become conscious of creating besides my own suffering by believing thoughts, and sometimes pleasant things as well which can be manifested through imagination. I've been trying to become more conscious of creating during a lucid dream but it is taking alot of experimentation or just isn't possible beyond small instant manifestations. 

⬆️ created in a lucid dream ⬆️

“Nonduality”. Lol. You’re hilarious!

⬆️ created in a lucid dream ⬆️

[seeking_brilliance]

36 minutes ago, Nahm said:

⬆️ created in a lucid dream ⬆️

“Nonduality”. Lol. You’re hilarious!

⬆️ created in a lucid dream ⬆️

Its hopeless ?

but thanks for conversing with me, or whatever ? at least now I can maybe settle down a bit.  

Edited January 21, 2020 by seeking_brilliance

[Nahm]

53 minutes ago, seeking_brilliance said:

I've been trying to become more conscious of creating during a lucid dream but it is taking alot of experimentation or just isn't possible beyond small instant manifestations. 

It’s that it’s all a dream, that the simplicity is missed. A dry erase board from Office Depot. Who’d have ever guessed? 

“My reality is a dream and I am it’s dreamer” - not John Keats

[seeking_brilliance]

@Nahm well, I mean I guess I could say that my husband is a dream character who happens to tell me about interesting dreams, but I haven't had an awakening so I shouldn't speak on that kind of stuff. But I can't help myself so I'm going to add that I'm also a dream character of my husband ??‍♂️

[Nahm]

@seeking_brilliance

You don’t need to have an awakening, there has never been an experience of the brain producing dreams. There is only the holding of the belief that it is. In a similar sense, one holding the belief that the body produces awareness, doesn’t need an awakening, there is only to examine the belief and see through it.

The spoon is bent by no longer believing  there is a spoon. It is you which bends. Some people call a dream reality. Some people call reality a dream. 

[Leo Gura]

12 hours ago, Apparition of Jack said:

@Leo Gura For what it's worth, learning about the double-slit experiment in year 11 physics is the first time I truly had my mind blown and started to question the nature of reality, so there's that

You gotta start somewhere I guess.

But such things feel childish to me these days. After a certain amount of mindfuckery you forget what used to count as a mindfuck years ago.

If you think the double slit is a mindfuck, you're in for a rude awakening

[seeking_brilliance]

@Nahm I don't believe that the brain produces dreams, I'm only trying to get to the bottom of how memory is involved in the creation process.  But no one will tell me what memory is, or how it's transmitted /received... again the Zoltar machine breaks down. 

And I don't believe that the body produces awareness.  I notice there is awareness and I notice that a camera construct (the eyes) are very easily misleading into thinking that the awareness is inside the body.  From my experience with dream work, I'm well aware that isn't the case. Although being lucid I can 'get this' but while the body is awake it's all a guessing game

[Leo Gura]

4 minutes ago, seeking_brilliance said:

But no one will tell me what memory is, or how it's transmitted /received

Reality is 100% direct!

There is no how.

Your looking for a how is the dualistic mistake.

You are engaged in the process of asking what the Earth stands upon? Elephants. And what do the elephants stand upon? A turtle. And so on...

This entire pursuit of elephants and turtles is misguided. There is just the Earth! No elephants or turtles. No how. 100% direct. Nothing is hidden. You need to realize that and stop chasing your tail.

[The1One]

You're already in the dream. 

When you "go to sleep" at night... it is similar to when you 'go to sleep inside a dream'

Just add 1 more level to the dream world like in INCEPTION

[Bno]

I'm curious if anyone has ever experienced a dream that was then experienced in a similar fashion years later.

When I was little I had a dream that my dad was in the hospital and I walked with him in the halls while he held on to his IV. He was bald in my dream too. Many years later when he had lymphoma (blood cancer), I was walking with my dad in the hospital as he held on to his IV and felt the strongest sense of deja vu. I remembered the dream I had as a child. The exact same depressing feeling I felt during that dream was also felt in that moment.  It all just came back to me. 

To what capacity do dreams have with this "reality" we perceive?

[Nahm]

3 hours ago, seeking_brilliance said:

@Nahm I don't believe that the brain produces dreams, I'm only trying to get to the bottom of how memory is involved in the creation process.  But no one will tell me what memory is, or how it's transmitted /received... again the Zoltar machine breaks down. 

If you’re asking in the ...actually what is it... sense - it is, actually, you.  There is not a ‘second ago past’, nor a ‘second from now future’.  Just now / you, creating, using you. 

 

Quote

And I don't believe that the body produces awareness.  I notice there is awareness and I notice that a camera construct (the eyes) are very easily misleading into thinking that the awareness is inside the body.  From my experience with dream work, I'm well aware that isn't the case. Although being lucid I can 'get this' but while the body is awake it's all a guessing game

The body is never awake (or asleep).  Go with awareness, so to speak. Memory is awareness. Vision is awareness. Being lucid, understanding,  ‘getting this’...all awareness. 

In inspecting...the premise ‘this is a dream’....’that is not a dream’...breaks down. So everything that followed it no longer is something to be resolved, as it was just content, built on a premise, which having been inspected, disappears. 

[seeking_brilliance]

@Leo Gura @Nahm

Thank you thank you thank you!!! ??

 

[seeking_brilliance]

27 minutes ago, Nahm said:

If you’re asking in the ...actually what is it... sense - it is, actually, you.  There is not a ‘second ago past’, nor a ‘second from now future’.  Just now / you, creating, using you. 

Thank for bringing awareness to this - I can intuit what you are saying 

31 minutes ago, Nahm said:

 

 

 

 

[seeking_brilliance]

22 hours ago, Serotoninluv said:

I think this brings up an interesting question of what is "internal" and what is "external". Of course we could say there is no difference and everything is one. Yet part of the fun of being human is observing and creating differences based on our observations. 

For centuries humans have been curious about the source of content of dreams. Is it random? Is it related to other things? Is there intention?. . . One observation is that dreams often contain content from our waking life. For example, people and places in our waking life. As well, this familiar content is often factors in your recent waking life. One psychological study involves students that played the game Tetris for three hours everyday. This is a simple game in which a variety of differently shaped blocks fall down the screen and the player must organize the blocks. . . After a couple weeks of this, most of the students started having dreams that included Tetris-like blocks and themes of organizing blocks (yet the dream wasn't literally playing Tetris). ............

I loved this entire post! !!!!!! I can't give it enough exclamation points. 

 so question: why is lucid dreaming not taught more as a supplemental means of awakening? If the awakening is the same in both realms, isn't this the best, free experience one could get?  

Also, I get hung up on the practice of trying to realize what is real vs imagined, if this truly is a dream and everything is imagined and made of dream fluff (consciousness/awareness). The end goal is to realize there is no difference between real and imagined? I keep getting told Im stuck in conceptualization but... I feel a little beyond that... like in a type of limbo between getting it and not. 

Edited January 22, 2020 by seeking_brilliance

[Forestluv]

2 hours ago, seeking_brilliance said:

so question: why is lucid dreaming not taught more as a supplemental means of awakening? If the awakening is the same in both realms, isn't this the best, free experience one could get?  

I would say it depends on resonance. Some people might not resonate with dreams and lucid dreaming. They may not have the predisposition. As well, I think it becomes harder to recall dreams and lucid dreams as we age. To me, the lucid dreaming path to awakenings would not merely be through analysis and creating intellectual constructs. The direct experience is key. One would need to actually lucid dream in both sleeping and wakeful states - and have direct experience of dualisms such as "real vs imagined" start to become interconnected and collapse, then reform in many different ways - then collapse again and reform again in new ways. Formless = form.

Many children seem to be talented at lucid dreaming. My three nieces are aged 7-11 y.o. They are masters of lucid dreaming. High level stuff. Yet adults try to suppress this and to create/condition contructs of real (waking life) and imagined (sleep life). This can have practical value to function in society, yet it comes at a cost. Last summer, I spent a week with this part of my family. My nieces and I tried to enter group dreams. I talked about us having a collective consciousness within a shared dream and the "got it". We went to the beach and drew large portals in the sand. We created all sorts of realms we would enter. Each night, we got together and formed a plan. We set an intention to meet at the portal and what our mission would be. . . Yet this wasn't "pretending", unless we framed it as "pretending". It was as real as waking life. Yet there was no "real vs. imagined". The idea never even entered our discussions or experience. . . . One of my nieces identifies as a cat in a cat world in her dreams. She says at times she sees things differently and "knows everything", like where a mouse hiding. She doesn't have words like "omniscience" or "meta view". Yet, she has the direct experience "knowing" that comes prior to those words. We call it "Big brain awareness". That term works for her. . . When I ask her if she likes the "big brain awareness" - she says "not really, because I am no longer being the cat and being the cat is fun". Her she is having direct experience of being One "Big Brain awareness" and partitioning herself off as a cat, so she can identify as the cat and have a subjective experience of a cat. This is a nondual awakening. Yet it is getting conditioned out of her by adults. She tells me I'm the only one she can talk to about this. 

2 hours ago, seeking_brilliance said:

Also, I get hung up on the practice of trying to realize what is real vs imagined, if this truly is a dream and everything is imagined and made of dream fluff (consciousness/awareness). The end goal is to realize there is no difference between real and imagined? I keep getting told Im stuck in conceptualization but... I feel a little beyond that... like in a type of limbo between getting it and not. 

My nieces' minds are not yet grounded in "real vs imagined" now - yet they will be. Most adult brains are conditioned to perceive dualistically as "real vs imagined" or "dream vs not dream". . . If I perceive and interpret my waking world as "real", I already have that part down. I don't need any practice or training for that. The contraction is a binary "real vs imagined". At an extreme, a thing is 100% real or 100% imagined. One key for me was to start entering grey zones, where it's sorta real and sorta imagined. Then the boundaries start to break down. I start seeing interconnections. Another realization is that my waking life "is all a dream". If I was locked into "my waking life is all real", seeing "my waking life is all imagined" is a big realization. Yet we've got to be careful not to re-create our "real vs imagined" duality and become attached/identified with the other side of the duality. We could say waking life is either 100% real or 100% imagined and become attached/identified to everything is imagined. That's a big realization, yet now we are locked back into one side of the duality. Another realization is that "real = imagined". This is "prior" to the constructs of "real" and "imagined". This realization allows for flow. Now infinite possibilities arise. Everything is real, check. Everything is imagined, check. Some things are real, other things are imagined, check. An infinite number of possibilities of what is real and what is imagined, check. We can flow with it all. Form now equals formless.

Ime, when that first duality fully collapses a domino falls and then other dominoes start to fall. Slowly at first, and then more rapidly. I don't think it matters that much which is the first dualistic domino to fall and the path taken to that falling. . . If we realize real = imagined, then there is space to see that the past = Now, that form = formless, That "I" = "You", material = immaterial, truth = lie. Not intellectually, yet in "omg!!" realizations. And all sorts of windows open up. Our relationship to reality changes. It's not just intellectual, there is an energetic shift. When we have realized that real is not imagined, real is imagined and real is sorta imagined in an infinite numbers of ways, we enter a miraculous groundedless grounding. We can create form from formless, de-create form back to formless and create new form. Like a mound of clay. We are free. We are no longer restricted and trapped - trying to figure out and define what is real and what is imagined. I can read a book in which an author says "this is what dreams are. . . " and he can create a construct. We no longer need to think "Yea, but is that really what dreams are?". We don't need to grasp what he writes and think "he is an expert on dreams. This is what dreams are". This is a contraction. We can read his creation of what dreams are and appreciate the beauty of his creation. It can expand our experience and mental imagery. Yet we aren't attached or identified with it. We can read another book on dreams having a different contruct and appreciate that. "Wow, I haven't thought of it like that, how beautiful. These two books have different views on dreams. In a way they are inter-related, in other ways unique". Almost like going to various rooftops and getting various views. 

[seeking_brilliance]

@Serotoninluv  @Nahm  It gets confusing when things can have multiple meanings, such as the phrase, "when I see you, I see me."

Well the first interpretation of that is when I look at you, I'm not really seeing you, I'm seeing myself in you. I'm interpreting your visuals, and your actions, by cross examining them with how  I see myself, and how I act. 

The second interpretation is that when I look at you, I don't see you, I see myself, because vision is a complete interpretation of the brain (sorry!) (shapes, colors, movement), and what I "see" is very personal, even when looking at you. 

The third interpretation is, if this is all a dream- that I am dreaming, then when "these eyes" look out at "your" body,  I am not seeing you, I am seeing me, who took the form of "you."  

The problem is that all of these interpretations are correct, depending on your paradigm and perspective, and many spiritual people spout any one of them as what it means when its said "When I see you, I see me."  The first two interpretations can be easily understood by materialists, I think, which is maybe a gateway to a deeper mystery. 

  The poem I posted, "Mirrors, Mirrors"  was based on this idea. 

Edited January 22, 2020 by seeking_brilliance

[Forestluv]

33 minutes ago, seeking_brilliance said:

It gets confusing when things can have multiple meanings, such as the phrase, "when I see you, I see me."

We could say it gets confusing when things can have multiple meanings. We can also say things get mysterious when things have multiple meanings. Things get fascinating. . . Things get miraculous. .  . Things get magical.. . . Things get liberated. . . Things make complete sense. . . 

33 minutes ago, seeking_brilliance said:

The problem is that all of these interpretations are correct, depending on your paradigm and perspective. 

This can be a problem or this can be a solution. . . There is an underlying freedom available here.