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
Mr. Gutierrez said his friend had become obsessed with the meaning of dreams and their importance. He talked about reading Friedrich Nietzsche’s book “The Will To Power” and embraced ideas about the corrosive, destructive effects of nihilism — a belief in nothing. And every day, his friend said, Mr. Loughner would get up and write in his dream journal, recording the world he experienced in sleep and its possible meanings.His "lucid dreaming" may have also opened him up to demonic influence:“Jared felt nothing existed but his subconscious,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “The dream world was what was real to Jared, not the day-to-day of our lives.”
[Textbook definition of psychosis]
And that dream world, his friend said, could be downright strange.
“He would ask me constantly, ‘Do you see that blue tree over there?’ He would admit to seeing the sky as orange and the grass as blue,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “Normal people don’t talk about that stuff.”
He added that Mr. Loughner “used the word hollow to describe how fake the real world was to him.”
The friends said Loughner told anyone who would listen that the world we see does not exist, that words have no meaning - and that the only way to derive meaning was during sleep. Loughner began obsessing about a practice called lucid dreaming, in which people try to actively control their sleeping world.
--Shooting suspect's nihilism rose with isolation
Hidden within a camouflage tent behind Jared Lee Loughner's home sits an alarming altar with a skull sitting atop a pot filled with shriveled oranges.Skeptical? Check out this discussion thread from the Catholic Answers website:--Frightening, twisted shrine in Arizona killer Jared Lee Loughner's yard
The Secret Ruined My DaughterMy daughters Health teacher decided to show her 9th grade class the movie: " The Secret"... At a public Charter high school.
This was three months ago, and my daughter is still talking about "positive" and "negative" energies, and how she can "make" things happen as she deems necessary. What does a 14 year old know about life that she should even attempt to make things happen "her: way...
On top of it all, I've noticed that since her new obsession, she's been escaping Sunday Mass as much as she can... I think she is using negative energy to get out of Mass.
Could I be overreacting, or should I start using good Catholic sense to purge her from The Secret.
People with his disorder tend to not deal with reality. They tend IMO to get more violent or to react badly to those who oppose their view.
They almost always blame others for their problems. They all seem to be extra horny and don't get why people and especially the opposite sex don't find them irresistible.
They often have high intelligence but they have no way to draw IMO rational conclusions.
My wife has one of these gems this moment in her Santa Monica College class. Talking death, killing and all that. My wife is staying second closest to the door and the student and college has done nothing with this guy yet.
Oddly enough, there is a peculiar rule of thumb for orderly manipulation of awareness. That is, the more rational a person is in their normal frame of mind, the better they will be when their awareness has shifted away from their normal frame of mind.
This can be very ordinary. For example, there is a considerable shift in awareness when a person is going about their ordinary day, and when they are submerged underwater. This is extremely dramatic for a child when they first learn how to swim underwater, but with practice, being underwater is no big deal to an adult.
But a person who is very rational when out of the water will be able to adjust much faster and better to being underwater. The same ability to be rational has an equivalent in different states of mind.
That being said, lucid dreaming is astoundingly complex, by some accounts more complex than waking life. So there are almost innumerable directions someone can go with it.
And no, trying to define it in terms of religious understanding is pretty much a waste of time. To do so, I suppose, the Bible would have to be ten times as large as it is, and they had other, more pressing things to write about.
Granted, there are people of all kinds, and all religions, scared of the true unknown, and their opinion is that mankind should never venture into it, lest they meet up with something that growls and has sharp teeth. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.
And most important, just because you ignore something that growls and has sharp teeth, does not mean that it ignores you. Better to know if it is a tiger, or just an irate dachshund.
Fascinating.
This young man seems to have had very little connection with the world we inhabit.
He added that Mr. Loughner “used the word hollow to describe how fake the real world was to him.”
I disagree with this statement. It may appear as so to the individual themself, but the evidence is they are living in a fantasy world of make believe, which doesn't require rationality to create. In fact their awarness becomes duller as they seek these experiences, though they do not see it as so as 'they've deluded themselves.' Important to remember is a large part of their fantasy world IS 'the fantasy that they see more clearly'. When they actually begin to 'believe' this then all stops are gone and they've taken the bait............ In reality they are seeing nothing more than their own imaginations. The problem then developes for them in where does fantasy and reality begin and end. They no longer have the discernment to distinguish this.
I’m beginning to wonder if some forms of schizophrenia are not actually a type of spiritual illness which is bleeding over into the physical realm. We know that mankind is actually a trifold, immortal being consisting of Mind, Body and Soul, so why do we treat mental illness as just a physical or chemical defect?
I think it’s pretty obvious that we’re dealing with more than just a schizophrenia patient here. He has issues that can’t be dealt with by using normal means.
Someone posted up-thread that the schizophrenia diagnosis is a catch-all.
There are some indications that it has an organic cause, such as the fact that it often develops in men between the ages of 18-22.
OTOH, there are indications that it is inorganic or extra-organic, such as the fact that schizophrenia often results in destructive or self-destructive behavior. Simple brain disfunction would presumably result in a wide variety of unpredictable behaviors --not necessarily and uniformly destructive ones.
As other posters have noted, schizophrenics are extraordinarily self-centered, and have wildly inflated opinions of themselves. But this can be explained by sin (pride).
I was told by a person who works with schizophrenics that a certain percentage could be possessed. It was a gut-level appraisal.
So... I think it's an open question.
But people should not rule out the destructiveness of malignant ideologies, such as "The Secret." If the previous century taught us anything, it's that bad ideas have bad consequences.
Well said. That is the essence of the danger in "The Secret," "A Course in Miracles," and apparently "Conscious Dreaming."
The idea that you can create your own reality appeals to pride, the cardinal sin, which young people are especially prone to when they're in the know-it-all stage.
There were some reports that his father was an abusive alcoholic. There are reports that the young man overdosed on alcohol and smoked pot. Couple that with the fact that he was probably mentally ill and it doesn’t matter what he was reading. He couldn’t understand simple instructions for walking dogs at the animal shelter.
One neighbor said even when he was young she knew something wasn’t right with him. I’d like to see reports from his elementary & high school teachers. He was a ticking time bomb. And for all the blah blah blah after each one of these events, somehow they still happen anyway.
This kid was obviously ‘crazy’ for a long time and no one - not parents, not law enforcement, not the education system - apparently, no one ever tried to get him into treatment. And according to news reports in Arizona they could have forced him into treatment. It isn’t against the law.
That’s the flip side of the coin. People who are not very rational seem to be able to stray into further irrationality, but not as far, and not as well.
A rather gifted expert referred to them as “fans”, he said they are interested in other perceptions, but not really, and are so “off center” that they can never get much out of the deal.
He contrasted them with “adepts”, people who are naturally able to jump from their normal awareness to a different one, and back. They don’t know how, and can’t do anything outside of what the two points offer.
The third, and rarest group are rational individuals, which he said is a rarity in itself, who systematically train to accomplish several different distinct perceptual realities. They are the ones who get the most out of the deal, and the clarity to appreciate what they have done, and the ability to repeat the accomplishment in a voluntary instead of haphazard manner. They are more like martial artists than New Age types.
This kind of thing is successfully weaving its way into the evangelical church in the form of “contemplative prayer”.
In the Catholic Church it's "centering prayer." The devil's good at what he does.
But not in the way you mean.
ACIM teaches that before we are born, our souls create our reality, our whole experience of life, in order to become better souls. It does not say our lives will be easy.
I would question who that “gifted expert” might be? Perhaps a Martial Arts Individual?
As for one being rational or not...by what/whose measure is this defined?
Anyone can create a sliding rule of rationality based on the very beliefs they may have, in whatever area of study they are in or practice. It’s done all the time.
The question will always remain...at what point does the break from reality occur...there is always a root where their involvement in something begins....from there it increases but there is always a start.
Yes,..all the way back to the garden..when satan said...."You shall not surely die, For God knows that when you eat of it.... your eyes will be open,..... and you will be like God...." Gen.3
The bait was first to make her doubt what she knew....twist the language...slather it over with religious talk, make it look like God is withholding, and entice with appeal to the senses. The appeal is always seductive and tantalizing to the senses....and the emotions.
Satans tactics have not changed, but man has grown less and less interested in the things of God and is ignorant of how the enemy works.... thus leaving himself wide open for a counterfeit. We are designed to worship God, if we turn away from Him it is a guarantee something else will fill that void...always.
Define soul.
As far as defining rationality goes, there is an odd exercise that seems particularly effective in fine tuning and centering the rational mind. It’s called mathematics. Seriously, it is used for just that purpose.
The basic principles of shifting awareness are simple and straightforward, have background explanations, and strip the mysticism out of it.
To start with, at some point in the distant past, the human species reached an agreement on a standard point of awareness, a common reality. This shared “frequency” as it were, was optimal for survival in a dangerous world. Though there is considerable variation in it, a person right smack dab in the middle is unusually rational. Not many people are naturally at that point, most are off to some degree.
But there was the additional problem that people’s minds tended to wander, to either a state of more intense focused concentration, or a less focused, more inspirational state of mind.
So people, again in the distant past, invented a technique universally taught to children even today, of an internal dialogue—talking to ourselves. It keeps our minds from straying too far in either a focused on unfocused direction. Instead we vacillate around the standard mind set. A much better place to be if you are being pursued by a hungry tiger.
But today, hungry tigers being in shortage, lots of people try to turn off that internal dialogue, so that their minds *can* shift out of neutral into a more focused or more unfocused state. This is why being internally quiet is important to prayer, meditation, artistic inspiration and a slew of other things.
Those who practice exercises to get more control over their internal dialogue generally enjoy doing so, because having a better ability to concentrate, on written tests for example, improves test scores solely because you aren’t distracted—and likewise, if you are trying to be creative, you can get a better handle on inspirational ideas, without some voice chirping in and disrupting it.
How far a particular person can go with this, once they have some control over talking to themselves, is based on how much internal energy and chutzpah they have, and how well and long they can hold on their new state of mind.
Not surprisingly, even religious people who overcome theoretical objections to the idea usually find that their prayers are deeper, more substantive, and more emotionally rewarding if they are not as distracted when they are praying.
You want my opinion? It’s that part of us that lives before we are conceived and that continues to live on after our body dies.
Well, before we are conceived the scriptures tell us we were already in the heart and mind oF God. It was His idea we be born. "I knew you before "I" formed you in the womb." However, what then is the difference between the soul and the spirit..in your opinion"
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