Posted on 01/09/2011 6:55:06 AM PST by St_Thomas_Aquinas
Booklist review of "Conscious Dreaming: A Spiritual Path for Everyday Life," by Robert Moss, on Amazon.com:
This is more and better than just a book about how to remember and understand dreams, although it is that kind of book and as good as any such recently published. Moss covers all the expected terrain, from how to train the mind to recall its nightly narratives, through how to unravel meaning from them, to how to start and sustain a dream group. But his book excels because he extends its purview to include shamanic dreaming, dreams of dead loved ones, healing dreams, angels, and spirit guides. Moss explores these more esoteric matters with great skill. Taking his cue from ancient and tribal traditions that see in dreams more than a set of symbols connected to individual psychology, Moss offers evidence that in dreams we connect with the transpersonal. Thus, an angel in a dream could be the dreamer's better self--or a real angel, come to help the dreamer through life's challenges. Moss' unusual approach to a perpetually intriguing subject is likely to appeal to a wide spectrum of readers. --Patricia Monaghan
"Conscience dreams were a great study in college!" --Jared Leee Loughner
That quote interested me. What was Loughner learning in college? I looked through the Pima College on-line catalogue for "Conscience Dreaming" and couldn't find anything.
But when I googled "conscience dreaming," I found a lot of links to "conscious dreaming," which is also referred to as "lucid dreaming."
Lucid Dreaming --Wikipedia:
In a study of fourteen lucid dreamers performed in 1991, people who perform wake-initiated lucid dreams operation (WILD) reported experiences consistent with aspects of out-of-body experiences such as floating above their beds and the feeling of leaving their bodies.
It seems to be a New Age practice that blends Eastern meditation techniques with astral projection and old-fashioned "consorting with spirits."
Christians know that attempts to conjure up "spirit guides" and "dead loved ones" are occult activities that place the practitioner in grave spiritual danger.
Equally as frightening is this quote from the Booklist review: "an angel in a dream could be the dreamer's better self." Ideas like these, if taken to heart, can provoke profound psychological disturbance --even psychotic breaks-- as do New Age practices like "A Course in Miracles":
During a time of incredible loss, (the murder of her infant nephew and subsequent life sentencing of her brother, the suicide of one of her New Thought students, and the mental collapse of another; resulting in her being committed to a psychiatric ward) Sharon says she saw clearly, as if for the first time, the very real consequences of sin and the true teachings of the Bible playing out right before her eyes amid the tragic events surrounding her. With courageous honesty, she reveals how her "New Age" influence may have unwittingly played a part in these tragedies. --About Sharon Lee Giganti
From a review of the book on Amazon:
I loved this book, and found it to be a very "shamanic" dreamwork manual. It has wonderful exercises for both the beginning and more advanced dreamworker and includes everything you could imagine, from dream incubation, dream reentry and working with nightmares to shape-shifting, meeting deceased loved ones, angels and psychic self defense.
What are they teaching at Pima College?
Can we find out what courses Loughner was taking?
He was a violent pot user with drug infected mentality.
Mind. Just say no.
I would suspect he could have encountered a bad trip on LSD or another Psycho drug.
He’s just crazy, probably schizophrenic.
Lots of people have lucid dreams—it’s nothing more than a dream in which the dreamer becomes aware he is dreaming.
He is just plain mentally ill, nothing more than that.
His friend said he had alcohol poisoning so that could effect everything he thinks, up to the day he took it out on the folks at Safeway. He was nuts.
There are plenty of non-violent, non-insane pot smokers. I know. I lived with a bunch of Deadheads in college.
My guess is schizophrenia. But his psychosis could have been brought on, or exacerbated by, "Conscious Dreaming."
New Age teachings aren't simply daffy. They are often deadly. I've listened to Sharon Lee Giganti describe the horrifying mental unraveling of her New Age disciples on a Catholic Answers radio program. Absolutely heartbreaking.
“Did “Conscious Dreaming” Cause a Psychotic Break?”
You would need a psychiatrist to weigh in on this topic. Maybe Dr. Charles Krauthammer will address this when he’s on Fox News.
It’s also possible that Jared suffered from some type of drug induced psychosis. Or maybe he was having severe mental health problems all along, and the drugs only worsened his condition. As to the latter, his mother had a responsibility to get him psychiatric help.
Are you kidding?
He almost killed himself with alcohol.
Lucid dreams are not related to mental instability.
IMO those that have them are intelligent individuals far less likely to engage in violence than the general population.
I managed to lucid dream after doing just a few exercises. It was actually a lot of fun. My son only has lucid dreams and he does this naturally. I think that he manages to do this because he suffered terribly from nightmares from age two until he was about six. He got control of his dreams and he’s steered every bad dream into a good one since.
This guy was a nut. He probably has schizophrenia. He was obviously into just about every conspiracy theory out there.
It’s impossible to understand crazy. That’s why it’s crazy! Trying to link his insanity to music, political ideology or anything else is tilting at windmills. Sane people will never be able to really understand insanity. It’s the very nature of the thing.
And yet, for some strange reason, we all want to try. We don’t want to accept that some people just have broken brains and that’s all there is to it. That he’d be driven over the edge if he’d been exposed to nothing more than videos of playing puppies. He’d manage to act out if he’d had access to nothing more than plastic butter knives.
That's my first choice, but New-Age-induced psychosis is a close second.
Lots of people have lucid dreams—it’s nothing more than a dream in which the dreamer becomes aware he is dreaming.
Check the Wikipedia entry for "Lucid Dreams" that I posted above. "Lucid Dreams" is much more than being aware of one's dreams. This is a full-blown New Age meditation/astral projection practice involving out-of-body-experiences, consulting "spirit guides," etc.
Since he was taught this in college, we can assume that he was getting the full course. Robert Moss (the author cited above) offers extensive courses in this.
I'm not saying that I have the definitive answer. But consider the following from the Wikipedia entry on "Lucid Dreams":
Another theory presented by transpersonal psychology and some Eastern religions is that it is the individual's state of consciousness (or awareness) that determines their ability to discriminate and differentiate between what is real, and what is false or illusory. In the dream state, many experiences are accepted as real by the dreamer that would not be accepted as real in the waking state. Some religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism describe states of consciousness (i.e., Nirvana or Moksha) where individuals "wake up", and discover a new or altered state of consciousness that reveals their normal waking experience to be unreal, dream-like, or maya (illusion).At the very least, don't you think that this could push an already-unstable person over the edge, and induce psychosis?
This is straight-up New Age teaching, which has been known to induce psychosis. See my link to Sharon Lee Giganti above.
I have some past experience with lucid dreaming. It’s not all fun and games. For me it was not a positive experience, it was very disturbing.
Look into Carlos Castaneda, in particular his personal life and that of his close associates, to see what can happen.
It’s opening a door that should remain closed, imho. I can see how it would send an already disturbed individual over the edge. The bounds of waking and sleeping, fantasy and reality can and do get obscured.
Read Loughner’s rambling screeds again knowing this, and the one thing that shines through is that he thinks he’s as able to manipulate and control waking reality as he is in the fleeting unreality of his dreams.
Some dream beings persist, though. You’re not in control of them. This is a time honored and known experience of practically all who attempt to practice lucid or conscious dreaming, to the point of being regarded as “spirit guides.”
Castaneda advised embracing them. Very bad idea, imho. Particularly if you’re Christian. I am, now.
I am acquainted with an individual who is involved with the New Age nonsense. Amazing to see a bright and educated individual become so brain fogged from their practices that they loose the ability for critical thinking. ‘Their reality’ and point of reference becomes a matter of that which they experience in their minds/imaginations, thru these practices, and their point of reference in how they view pretty much everything and everyone.
The tragic part of the above is they become so dependant on these experiences that it does not take long before they live for the next one...and the next. Isolation is not uncommon..Job loss..family loss..but even with this they “believe” their path is real though they are indeed in a fantasy land ‘of their minds own making.” Very sad.
When you add New Age practices to this guys apparent lack of stability in the first place, nothing good would come from the path he choose.
He had alcohol overdose in ‘06, which can most certainly cause brain damage. Importantly, he seemed to have a fixation on literacy and language, which is interesting because two parts of the brain that are readily damaged with oxygen deprivation are involved with language.
Has anyone considered that it could have been Meth and/or SSRIs ???
When I first heard the bit about “conscious dreaming†(lucid dreaming)I wondered if he was under some mind-controlled, MK Ultra type psy ops. I’d like to know more of his background, including who his parents are. Some are recruited by their parents. His history reveals that he was somewhat of a loner. Maybe he had been manipulated for years. It did happen at a most opportune time for those trying to usher in a “transformation”. Sacrificing a moderate, so-called Blue Dog would get them a lot of mileage.
So very glad you got away from this stuff RC....it seems to take people deeper and deeper into dangerous areas they have no control over....fear happens frequently but those who instruct or teach this often preach to move thru the fear. Nasty business and dangerous to play even on the edges of.
I know an individual who played too close to the edge and fell off. Has great difficulty focusing on reality so much so many job loses in just a years time. And yet still the individual thinks he’s in control!
I got stuck with the spelling errors and never made it as far as you did. “Conscience dreaming” is a bit removed from “Conscious dreaming”...
So there I sat...trying to imagine - does one dream about Jiminy Cricket? How does one dream a conscience? Wouldn’t someone without one not know they didn’t have one? Do sociopaths wish they had a conscience? I became tired trying to grapple with the whole idea.
IMO it’s not the conscious dreaming that is the problem, it is that the subconscious that creates the dreams is messed up by drug use and physical brain malfunctions. There is little we can do to control our subconscious over the short run (in the long run it is easy: live a virtuous life). What we cannot do is let our subconscious control us as this guy is apparently advising us to do.
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