4 26 2014 ~One of our most mysterious and intriguing states of consciousness is the dream. We lose consciousness when we enter the deep waters of sleep, only to regain it as we emerge into a series of uncanny private realities. These air pockets of inner experience have been difficult for psychologists to study scientifically and, as a result, researchers have mostly resorted to measuring brain activity as the sleeper lies passive. But interest has recently returned to a technique that allows real-time communication from within the dream world.
The rabbit hole between these worlds of consciousness turns out to be the lucid dream, where people become aware that they are dreaming and can influence what happens within their self-generated world. Studies suggest that the majority of people have had a lucid dream at some point in their life but that the experience is not common. As a result, there is now a minor industry in technologies and training techniques that claim to increase your chance of having a lucid dream although a recent scientific review estimated that the effect of any particular strategy is moderate at best. Some people, however, can reliably induce lucid dreams and it's these people who are allowing us to conduct experiments inside dreams.
*Active participation in experiments is hard when separated from the world by the blanket of sleep.
When trying to study an experience or behaviour, cognitive scientists usually combine subjective reports, what people describe about their experience, with behavioural experiments, to see what effect a particular state has on how people reason, act or remember. But both are difficult in dreamers, because they can't tell you much until they wake up and active participation in experiments is difficult when you are separated from the world by a blanket of sleep-induced paralysis.
This paralysis is caused by neurons in the brainstem that block signals from the action-generating areas in the brain to the spinal nerves and muscles. The shutdown happens when Rapid Eye Movement or REM sleep starts, meaning that dreaming of even the most energetic actions results in no more than a slight twitch. One of the few actions that are not paralysed, however, is eye movement. This is where REM sleep gets its name from and this window of free action provides the lucid dreamer a way of signalling to the outside world.
Using a procedure first verified by sleep researcher Stephen LaBerge, the sleeper can signal to researchers when they have begun their lucid dream by using pre-arranged eye movements. The person moves their eyes in the agreed way in the dream, which occur as genuine eye movements, which are recorded and verified by electrodes that are placed around the eye sockets.
This simple but ingenious technique has allowed a series of experiments on the properties of the dream world and how they are reflected in brain function. These neuroscientific studies have been important for overcoming an initial objection to the concept of lucid dreaming: that lucid dreamers were awake but just relaxed, or perhaps even fraudulent, claiming to be experiencing a dream world when they were not. Studies led by neuropsychologists Ursula Voss and Martin Dresler have shown that the brain activity during lucid dreaming bears the core features of REM sleep but is distinct from both non-lucid dreaming and the awake state, suggesting that it is not just a case of wishful thinking on the part of either the participants or the researchers.
Some of the most interesting studies involve in-dream experiments, where participants are asked to complete pre-arranged actions in their lucid dreams while using eye movements to signal the beginning and end of their behavioural sequences. A recent study by neuroscientist Daniel Erlacher and his colleagues at the University of Bern compared how long it took to complete different tasks while lucid dreaming and while awake. These included counting, walking a specified number of steps, and a simple gymnastics-like routine. They found that the "mental action" of counting happened at the same speed regardless of whether volunteers were dreaming or awake, but the "physical actions" took longer in dreams than in real life. The research team suggested that this might be due to not having the normal sensory feedback from the body to help the brain work out the most efficient way of coordinating itself.
There is also an amateur community of lucid dream enthusiasts keen to explore this unique form of virtual reality. This stretches from the fringes of the New Age movement who want to use lucid dreams to access other planes of existence (best of luck with that), to a more technologically oriented community of dream hackers who sample scientific research to try to find reliable methods for triggering lucidity. The connection with established studies can be a little haphazard and methods veer between the verified and the barely tested. In some online discussion boards, there have been reports of people using medications intended for Alzheimer's sufferers, which have the side-effect of causing vivid dreams, based on little more than hearsay and data reported in a patent application.
Some researchers have highlighted the potential of lucid dreaming to advance the science of consciousness but it's a difficult area to study. The currents of consciousness run unpredictably through the tides of sleep and the science of dreaming is still very much in the age of exploration. It's also a conceptual problem that some feel unequipped to tackle. After all, what can we make of consciousness when it creates a new world and our experience of it?
read full article at: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/apr/27/mysteries-lucid-dreaming-brain-consciousness-research
http://realitysandwich.com/218870/the-mysteries-of-lucid-dreaming/
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& some more Multidimensional food for thought, Ashtar Massive...
21st Century Guide to Cross Cultural Initiation
by Sarah Maiden
Sometimes when we lose our minds, we go stark raving mad. At these times, we are beaten with figurative sticks and kicks, maybe there is blood and death or sex. The fluids and elements mix with our shattered psyches in a gaping gash of consciousness. But I have found there are other ways to break. I have found the simple strand that weaves a new story when you follow its thread. I fell down and followed, after the breaking, before the death, near to the edge, I reached above my head, blinded until frozen fingers clenched a line that wove me into this story. Listen, and listen well if you also choose to rewrite your very blood and bone. There is a way.
INITIATION
Line breaks: ini¦ti|ation. Pronunciation: /ɪˌnɪʃɪˈeɪʃn /NOUN
1. The action of admitting someone into a secret or obscure society or group, typically with a ritual:rituals of initiation: an initiation ceremony.
1. The introduction of someone to a particular activity or skill:his initiation into the world of martial arts.
2. The action of beginning something:the initiation of criminal proceedings.
Our ideas of initiation, as shown above in the Oxford English dictionary, are all too often those of an outdated, mystical remnant of an animist or occult society. The definition refers to a "secret or obscure society or group," rather than a rite of passage into the adulthood of every human. In actuality, initiation is an age old human technology ranging from puberty itself, to secret cults, to fraternity houses, to the prevalent high school prom -- all forms of rite of passage into a more mature stage of life.
Initiation is a crucial part of life, for it helps us define ourselves through the many layers of our minds, spirits, and bodies. True initiation makes a fractal imprint on the hologram of our souls, letting us know who we are, our purpose, our role in society, and where we came from. For example, in some African Bwiti tribes, adolescent boys undergo extreme five-day entheogenic initiation rites to emerge with their lifelong career and social role meaningfully revealed to them through the ensuing visions. In America, we have high school guidance counselors working in cubicles who recommend lifelong vocations after simple 20 question quizzes! We have forgotten the sacred, the techniques for showing our children the methods to talk with Spirit and find their way.
As James Curcio eloquently wrote in "Initiation, Part 1: The Masks of identity":
"Initiation is such a constant in the cultural body that it is evident in one form or another in nearly every human culture that has ever existed before the industrial age, at which point it became notably absent, at least on the surface. This absence has produced a very real psychological crisis on a cultural scale, although as we will see in many ways the initiatory impulse has merely transferred itself, oftentimes to behaviour and beliefs which only shallowly fulfill that impulse."
When societies lose their initiation practices, new ones emerge, for rites of passage are hardwired in the human psychological formula. New ways of reforming the psyche are not always successful or safe. For instance, gang members sometimes initiate by killing people. Or teenagers pull death-defying pranks in search of a witnessed "cool" communal identity. Many people coming of age in the isolation of technological society, or even a deteriorating ancient culture, self initiate either with lone entheogenic stupors or the common self destruction of adolescence in the form of suicide attempts or cutting themselves. The soul naturally seeks ways to reform itself and create a solid identity in adulthood.
There are great risks to self initiation. The lack of sacred Witness and group communion risks creating a long-term sense of alienation by imprinting the "lone warrior" caricature. Psychosis is possible due to opening energies without a suitable guide or supportive social network. Narcissistic and/or psychopathic ego inflation is also a risk of initiates. For example, there is the common psychiatric ward case of patients believing they are the one and only true Jesus Christ, implying that none have walked this path of self actualization before them.
We seek initiation for the sake of self definition, meaningful vocation, and to transform the energy of past wounds into the present form of gifts to our societies. We seek initiation to become co-evolving participants of a society that communes with the sacred.
In 2014, many cultural creatives hope to evolve, yet we have lost so many of the keys to the maps of the Way. We find them in various cultures world wide, and weave them into new ways of awakening. For, as a world culture that desperately needs to re-imprint its relation to ecology, other nations, and the divine masculine and feminine, we seek large scale initiation. It is arguably best accomplished through the personal salvation of initiation. How do we begin? What does the territory of planetary initiation look like?
Lacking initiation, we have come to associate power with the superficial egoic traits of dominance, money, exploitation, image (as in advertising and/or self image), social standing, and labels (such as college degrees) instead of learning to value the embodied power in sage spiritual elders with proficiency to transform the dark of the psyche, surrender the ego, lose control (through repeated practises of ritual, dance, music, or entheogenic trance), and share the wisdom of the ages through restoring faith in the Mystery. Particularly, the concept of restoring Power through quieting the ego and losing control has been lost in Western society as we value the domination of intellect over the sacred tool of humbly listening in a state of surrender. We egotistically believe that by releasing our grasp on control, we will lose our minds. Ancient people knew that this sacred Surrender, done within the correct ceremonial container, is the best route to restoring our minds in relation to the whole, not losing it.
Once, I witnessed a 20 year old woman having a psychotic break. I helped her while the group I was with created safe space for her to touch the grief of her childhood for the first time, in ceremony. That was the energy of initiation. When she asked me later with a stunned expression what had happened, I said, "You are shifting a pattern." She understood.
As we are seeing more studies about the possibility of DNA carrying intergenerational memory and information, we begin to realize, through science, that ancestral wounds are present with us. As the Native Americans say, you heal yourself to affect "seven generations back and seven generations forward." The lingering impact of these wounds seek initiation and cleansing. We carry both personal as well as ancestral wounding patterns which hold untapped gifts of personal power. Initiation can transform these energies and mark the transition with shared ritual.
"What is the meaning of Initiation? It is the Path to the realisation of your Self as the sole, the supreme, the absolute of all Truth, Beauty, Purity,Perfection!"
Below is my list of 20 traits of true initiation. They are guidelines and suggestions from a life replete with magical, and often isolated and harsh initiatory transition. I offer them to you, in hopes that we collectively recreate meaningful rites of passage for the transformation of consciousness for this prophecied time in history...
read entire essay at: http://realitysandwich.com/217184/21st-century-guide-to-cross-cultu...
R E M E M B E R
Thanks Stick, very interesting.
Glad you enjoyed it Happy Person ;-)
I love this subject because I have very vivid dreams...dreaming in color and smells. I used to have a recurring dream as a child that terrified me so I taught myself to come out of it the minute I started going into it so in that sense I learned to control it.
Let's learn how to lucid dream: Lucid Dreaming: A Beginner's Guide :)
Avatar, your recurring dream reminds me of one I used to have as a child... where I would be chased around a deserted city by a fierce and over-sized Tyrannosaurus Rex... finally I had the idea to make myself as big as he was... which I did, and suddenly we became the best of friends... and we went off together playfully. : )
Wow...what a happy ending and what a smart idea to make you the size of the Rex. I wish mine had been like that.
Mine was so totally strange. It would start out with a low humming sound that I could just barely detect and there was a hypnotist's swirl that seemed to be right in front of my eyes...that's all I could see...the humming sound would gradually get louder and louder and as the sound got louder the swirl went faster and faster until the sound was so loud and the swirl was going so fast I could not stand it. I would then become aware of very loud breathing. I would wake up screaming. I came to realize later on the loud breathing was mine because I was so upset. I had this dream from the time I was about 5 until 7 or 8...eventually I taught myself to wake up the minute I heard the low hum...I knew what it meant. I was once telling my older brother about it and I was making the humming sound and how it would get loud...he put his hands over his ears and told me to be quiet!...he left the room and refused to talk about it. I do not know if he also experienced that type of dream but it clearly upset him. I've always wondered what that dream could possibly mean?
I've not been able to watch this vid but I know it's a hypnotist's spiral..it played for a few minutes and it started to freak me out...silly I know but...I do not know what the sound is like but will try to watch it later. I wanted to give you an idea of what it was like.
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