When does thought transition to belief?

[+Sherapy]

Just now, Habitat said:

Yes, some are like that, I think the sensation-seeking type of personality, is well recognized. To them. others may appear as sticks-in-the-mud.

I don’t think that, we are all different and it is our differences that are fun to share. 
I also have a lot of friends which is a big time commitment. I work too.
Sleep for me is a vacation. 

[+Sherapy]

Just now, Hammerclaw said:

You sleep like a baby, your dreams glide deeply beneath waters, placid and serene.

Yes, my friend. 

[Habitat]

3 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

We almost always know when we're imagining, unless we're delusional, we're conscious and awake. Dreams are of sleep time, some remembered on awakening, some not. Dreams may influence imagination and imagination may influence dreams. In dreams the subconscious runs riot with the artefacts of imagination, memories, suppressed creative impulses, weaving stories and sagas, poetry and song oft remembered and recorded. Some can seem astonishingly real, wondrous or frightening, joyful or poignantly sad when the dear parted pay us a visit in the halls of dream's illusions. Dreams are an intimate part of one's personal reality, ensconced and illuminated by the desire for them to be, the longing to see beyond life's horizons.

Dreams are more than imagination, but do hint that the mind can conjure "experience" every bit or more intense than "real"pfexperience. Who can say what people cannot conjure it in conscious waking, and become titans of art and literature. Most f us certainly cannot do that, and that is probably because it is safer to be paying attention to the external, when awake. "Daydreaming" can be risky !

[Habitat]

18 minutes ago, Sherapy said:

I don’t think that, we are all different and it is our differences that are fun to share. 

People are different, but tend to congregate with those of like mind, and are sometimes are silly enough to think their way, is the "right" way. You like travel, some think it a chore, e,g, and would rather be in familiar surrounds.

[Mr Walker]

1 hour ago, Sherapy said:

 I did even better I asked the Neurologist I work for.

No offense Walker but you do not have the background to address this.

You were completely wrong, hun.

But, non the less it is a great question, thanks for asking it.

My Doc said it was a good question. I even gave you credit for it. 

 

I don't believe you. This only came up today so how did you speak to the neurologist and get back online 

Please prove your case with sources not anecdotal and unbelievable opinion (not doubting your neurologist but she may not even exist) 

Anyone of normal  reading abilty can find the sources which explain the nature and structure of memory y and why/how memories of dreams are identical memories of real events.

Plus why would "your " neurologist contradict one of the top  neurologists in Australia, speaking on national radio 

Evidences please  

[Mr Walker]

1 hour ago, Sherapy said:

Walls, you are completely wrong the part of the brain that imagines is separate from the part of the brain that experiences something. An experience is much more intense and implanted in the brain. It is almost impossible to talk someone out of their  experience. For example: this is why Schizophrenia is so difficult to treat. Imagining does not come close to the experience. 

 

read this

https://www.scienceabc.com/humans/how-are-memory-stored-retrieved-forget-encode-retrieve-hippocampus-long-term-memory-short-term-memory.html

i think you misunderstood my point.

It is not about the difference between waking and dreaming but the similarity between MEMORIES of waking and dreaming.

  We store both memories identically and retrieve them the same way.The brain does not differentiate between tne memory of a dream and the memory of real life

BUT, given the process of remembering, if you don't have vivid dreams or you cant remember your dreams on awakening, this might not seem true to you.

In fact our dreams play a part in fixing our waking memories and often connect to events or thoughts from the day before or a few days back 

[+Sherapy]

20 minutes ago, Mr Walker said:

I don't believe you. This only came up today so how did you speak to the neurologist and get back online 

Please prove your case with sources not anecdotal and unbelievable opinion (not doubting your neurologist but she may not even exist) 

Anyone of normal  reading abilty can find the sources which explain the nature and structure of memory y and why/how memories of dreams are identical memories of real events.

Plus why would "your " neurologist contradict one of the top  neurologists in Australia, speaking on national radio 

Evidences please  

I text her about it.that was her response.

 I have no reason to doubt her, she is the authority. But you are appropriate to ask. 

I see her on Sunday, I will ask her for reading material#sources for you, then.

I think it is wonderful you are actually asking for sources, no problem will to get them for you. 
 

Stay tuned, 

 
 

 

 

Edited October 12, 2019 by Sherapy

[+Sherapy]

Just now, Mr Walker said:

read this

https://www.scienceabc.com/humans/how-are-memory-stored-retrieved-forget-encode-retrieve-hippocampus-long-term-memory-short-term-memory.html

i think you misunderstood my point.

It is not about the difference between waking and dreaming but the similarity between MEMORIES of waking and dreaming.

  We store both memories identically and retrieve them the same way.The brain does not differentiate between tne memory of a dream and the memory of real life

BUT, given the process of remembering, if you don't have vivid dreams or you cant remember your dreams on awakening, this might not seem true to you.

In fact our dreams play a part in fixing our waking memories and often connect to events or thoughts from the day before or a few days back 

Okay, I will ask. 

[Mr Walker]

1 minute ago, Sherapy said:

I text her about it.that was her response.

 I have no reason to doubt her, she is the authority. 

I see her on Sunday, I will ask her for reading material#sources for you, then.

I think it is wonderful you are actually asking for sources, no problem will to get them for you. 
 

Stay tuned, 

 
 

 

 

lol Typical Therapy  

[+Sherapy]

2 minutes ago, Mr Walker said:

lol Typical Therapy  

[Habitat]

My concern is that sherapy asks the neurologist so many questions, she may get a bill for services rendered !

[Mr Walker]

1 hour ago, Sherapy said:

I am super extroverted too, and have a lot going on all the time. I do think you have a point. When I sleep, it is to rest from life. 
 

Has anyone seem the Joker yet? We are going tomorrow. 

To me life has always been half waking and half dreaming  The two worlds are of equal quality ad equal value but one is amenable to my imgination and alteration in phusicla form with no p[physical effort The waking world takes more effort to change 

Why be satisfied with ONLY a rich waking life?  A rich dreaming life adds hours of fun and entertainment richness and experience every night to a life.

As a very young child i actually had to create a portal in my  mental home yard which i used as i fell to sleep, to transition from  waking consciousness to dreaming consciousness.

I was fully aware what was going on and that i had entered my dreamscape  via the portal. I had a praetorian guard in ceremonial uniform to guard the portal ad welcome me into the first part of this underground world  The worlds inside were as real as the waking world, but different 

when i was a young person the dream world was much more fun interesting safe and exciting than the real world, but as i got older i needed dreams less and less, as i took control of my life and gained the freedom to do anything i wanted to in the waking world By the time i was married and working i was dreaming less and using dreams for other purposes to experiment with consciousness.  

Edited October 12, 2019 by Mr Walker

[+Sherapy]

49 minutes ago, Habitat said:

My concern is that sherapy asks the neurologist so many questions, she may get a bill for services rendered !

No, a perk of working for her. 

[jmccr8]

4 hours ago, Habitat said:

I have a sister who claims she never dreams ! My counter to that, is that she possibly just forgets them. I think we have touched on something significant here, that there is a wide variation in the imaginative or fantasy life of individuals, and that gives rise to misunderstandings about behaviours, the person with a muted "inner world", is likely more apt to seek stimulation externally, and be rather more extroverted. I can recall many times in my life, that a powerful dream has left a strong emotional trace in me, for the following day. Maybe there are those, for whom that seems a strange oddity.

Hi habitat

I was just reading this and thought you might like to look through it, it is about drugs and alcohol and their effects on dream states.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/dream-catcher/201112/psychopharmacology-rem-sleep-and-dreams

jmccr8

[psyche101]

18 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

It is  you who don't get it  Commonality means nothing when it comes to proof Just because YOU have a dog should not make you more inclined to believe me when I say I have one.

Of course not. I get it. Everyone here does, the late great Carl Sagan did. You simply refuse to factor in that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I just don't agree with you. I see how you are trying to justify your claims. Your trying to broadbrush evidences regardless of the claim. As I say, I know dogs exist. I know many people have dogs. People who have visits from God are regularly shown to be mentally unstable, irrational fanatics and fantasy prone. There's plenty of instances like that just like there are plenty of instances of people who have dogs. I can't think of a single verified instance where somebody has evidenced visits from aliens, gods and or alien gods. As such, its far more likely that the answer lies in the individual, not the supernatural. If an answer is known to exist, its the default over something claimed to exist, without any evidence whatsoever. 

18 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

  What you are saying is what i have been arguing.

I really don't think so. 

18 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

People are prepared to accept some things without interrogating the evidences, because they  are able to believe them on faith. It is where they cannot believe ,in faith, that they demand proof 

That is not an evidenced conclusion based on proofs. Its a choice.

Apples exist for instance. We know that. If one says they have an apple, that's very probable. We can accept the probability of that is high. We don't have God's at supermarket's and literally growing on trees. One can interpret certain aspects that befuddle them as acts of God, but that's not proof of God either. It's their choice to interpret a certain instance that way. 

Probability is what influences these decisions. Not faith. 

18 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

i work out what is real using evidences available to me. Those evidences are not available to you I have proof of gods existence You do not Thus you have to choose a belief positon

No, I can make a choice based on probability. The probability of your interpretation being different to actual reality is much much higher than it is that you are reporting an accurate description of your claimed experiences, abilities and life experiences. 

18 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

Proofs and evidences are available to one person and not to others, all the time  You are talking about transferable proofs The y are rare and still depend on the recipient trusting the source of the proof  

Again, you are brodbrushing to wash over the obvious. One might catch the world's biggest bream but have no evidence of that. People are known to catch fish. I've done it myself. There's no good reason to question if one caught a huge Bream. If the person said it was 2.5 meters long, well there's very good reason to consider the claim not to be true. They don't get that big. We can't probe that such a monster did not exist, but the probability is highly unlikely. 

If one brought a 2.5 meter bream to a university or fishery, then we would have to rewrite what we know about bream, but untill that point there's no reason to believe the claim, or suspend judgement. 

18 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

Only bias makes a person predisposed to belief or disbelief  The rational position would be to suspend both belief and disbelief until you have more evidence and can know. 

No its not. Just like with a 2.5 meter bream. 

Its not rational to suspend belief for the unlikely and improbable. 

This is Habits tactic. Argument from ignorance where the impossible remains as beyond the reach of evidence to dismiss or confirm either way. That's not validation or good reason to suspend conclusions. It does not validate your position. It weakens it.

37% of people seem to struggle with reality. That's a factor in the conclusions here too. 

18 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

I wouldnt have a clue who accepts rejects or hasn't made up their mind about the stories except where the y explicitly tell me.

You have been here a long time. You must have some idea. I know I do, I suspect everyone does. 

The only people who I have seen that accept your claims appear to also be extremely fantasy prone, making ridiculous claims, or like illy, just aggressively attacking others out of rage. It's not a good indicator. 

18 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

As far as i can see it is not a religious bias but a kind of bias towards  disbelieving ANYTHING that the y haven't had proven to them.

What is commonly referred to as 'woo'. 

That's not unusual. It's quite natural. People with unevidenced claims often have an alterior motive for deceiving someone else. It's just instinct. Sometimes the act is benign, sometimes not. I'd say most default to caution naturally. 

18 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

  Again fair enough, but suspending belief would be more logical than choosing disbelief. 

Not logical at all. There needs to be a genuine reason to suspend belief. 

18 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

 I think people have different reasons for rejecting such things.

it can be fear

A need to be in control of their world.

  A very rationalist/materialist view about the nature of life and reality etc

a rejection of the beliefs of their parents and the authority figures from their childhood . 

The problem here is that your trying to box in a finite set of reasons so you can check them off one at a time and achieve credibility for your harder to believe claims. 

People don't work like that. Others might reject your claims for one of the above, all or none of them. Its not that simple. 

Fear is one I just can't see being a reason. What on earth could one possibly fear even in the unlikely event that your claims were evidenced to be factually and physically substantiated? 

The big one you missed is plain logic and common sense. That's what you are asking others to suspend in order to consider your claims as even realistically possible. 

18 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

lol I am not irrational I am about the most rational person you will find. Indeed over y life i have been accused more of being to rational and logical, and not emotional enough, than the opposite 

I know you seem to believe this, but it's just not what I, or most others have experienced here. 

18 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

The truth is that i care deeply but always behave logically and rationally. It is how i was raised from birth My parents were humanists They never lost their temper but did demonstrate a lot of love The y never spoke angrily, never put us down, or abused us verbally The y were never unreasonable or unfair, but quite strict and just.

  Thats how I learned to treat others not emotionally but rationally.  Eg If someone needs help, help them, don't just tell them how sorry you are for them  

No Its not about me or how I feel.

it is about people who may miss out on an important part of life if they refuse to accept it   Who may live a life less than it could be 

Its probably why people show a genuine interest in you.

You are a polite person, you would probably be a great neighbour in suburbia. You have some very strange ideas and beliefs, and you express yourself rather unconventionally often. There's a lot worse than you out there and even on these boards. You are harmless and at times quite likeable. A little strange sure, but really, who isn't.

18 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

My stories have been consistent since 2014 when i came to UM Others come in on parts of them or put their own biases on them. But basically none have changed Any minor discrepancies just show the y are true rather than fabrications that  I maintain perfectly eg i might say the doorway was 8 moons high one decade and the next say it was 7 or 9.  

I have no dog in this race. I've aired my protests with regards to our own discussions. I don't see either of us changing our views so as the Catholics say, peace be with you. 

The posters you are referring to seem quite familiar with your posting history. I imagine that a little digging and quoting would settle that dispute appropriately. 

[jmccr8]

15 hours ago, jmccr8 said:

I have just taken a couple of photos of a print that an artist who was a client gave me using the forum in the background on my projector so that both can be seen at the same time with my user name taped on the picture. The photo on the back side of the print has a personal note of thanks written on it by the artist and the print was a thank you from him and his family for the work I did building the art gallery that is the subject of the in the print. I will run them through google paint to resize them and send a PM to you and a few other members that are familiar with me along with links to both the art gallery as well as the artist. So those are things that can be verified and can be used to show that that event happened and I was involved. I am only doing this to demonstrate that it is possible to show that people can give credible reference and we can discuss whether others believe me or not in the thread if you are not satisfied.

 

6 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

No need t present evidences. 

Hi Walker

I finally got the pictures off my phone to my pc no I just have to read up again on getting them down to the size allowed here but will be sending them out.

jmccr8

[+DieChecker]

44 minutes ago, jmccr8 said:

 

Hi Walker

I finally got the pictures off my phone to my pc no I just have to read up again on getting them down to the size allowed here but will be sending them out.

jmccr8

I usually just open them in Paint, resize them to 25%, or smaller, and then save them again. Will cut the file size by quite a lot. Also save them in JPG form, rather then one of the higher memory file types.

[Habitat]

1 hour ago, jmccr8 said:

Hi habitat

I was just reading this and thought you might like to look through it, it is about drugs and alcohol and their effects on dream states.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/dream-catcher/201112/psychopharmacology-rem-sleep-and-dreams

jmccr8

Alcohol does play havoc with sleeping patterns, and whilst a few drinks can send people off to sleep, they often wake up in the middle of the night, and are no longer sleepy enough to go back off to sleep.

[Golden Duck]

7 hours ago, XenoFish said:

Effects of visualization. Sports performance.

This might be useful for the current conversation.

This came to mind in the thread about the 30 year quarrel with a witch.

[XenoFish]

1 hour ago, Golden Duck said:

This came to mind in the thread about the 30 year quarrel with a witch.

How so? 

[Golden Duck]

18 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

How so? 

How do you "just ignore" the witch? 

To me it's  like making sure your shot at goal doesn't go over the top. Or watching the hazard your trying to avoid instead of watching the space you want to go.

Visualising what you don't want to happen.

 

[quiXilver]

The Tibetans have an entire course of higher study and skill training related to the world of dreaming.

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche:  Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep.  Is a very practical book that shares many functional skills to enhance the ability to work on awareness and the relation of the self, while in dreaming awareness. 

"real life" In Tibetan cosmology, is akin to the shared dreaming aspect of conscious awareness.  Whereas dreams are private, waking life is co-active dreaming.

Private dreams shift and alter instantly, influenced by one facet of local awareness, whereas 'real life', shifts slowly as it is the resulting manifestation expression of multitudes of facets of awareness all co-acting.  Yet hard to deny, that thoughts, bring about shifts in physical reality.  Thought, communication (perhaps), action, then manifestation.  Thought affects physical reality.

Awareness is like a gem to me.  Many facets.  Not all reflect source the same, yet all are part of one fluid, connected process.  My local awareness is one facet and reflects the light of source/awareness subjectively.  This is why I no longer strive to alter other's notions of life, but only seek to share.  I inherently suspect that my reflected awareness of source, will not necessarily ever coincide directly with another's... nor should it.  If it were to exactly coincide, then it would not be another facet of the gem.

Dreams for me, are so wholly immersive and so detailed as to rival and often surpass in memory and impact, many experiences of the 'real world' of sensory input.  Dreams are as real when I'm in them as this keyboard and screen with the smell of coffee lingering.  Afterwards, upon waking, or in the dream when becoming lucid the realization may hit "oh this is a dream".  Yet even with this awareness, the effects of the world of the dream are still just as vivid, just as impacting. 

Fascinating.  Dreams are thoughts.  Yet I can move through them as i move through the 'real world'  as immersive, even moreso often, due to their potentially much more fantastical and suprarealistic vividness.

They engender emotional response that elicits as much reactivity as any actions in the 'waking world', but in the end, dreams are vivid thoughts... imaginings.  Yet if the world can be recreated so viscerally and vividly in mind only... subjectively.  What does this say about our very internal generation of a picture of the world, through the interpretation of the transduction of electrical signals in our sensory organs?

Sherapy... has your neurologist seen any of the images of the areas of mind being lit up when a person sees an object and holds it, say an apple, versus when they just think about holding said object?  I've read that the exact same aspects of the brain light up whether we are holding an apple and looking at it, versus thinking about holding it... hinting that our entire perception of reality is akin to an hallucination.

I'm fascinated by the potential of EMDR treatment for complex PTSD.  As my wife has been in a six year spiral of trauma release and healing.  Dream eye Movement and how this aids in processing complex emotions related to trauma have been gaining some traction lately.

This interaction of local awareness with dreaming was my first inroad into exploring, playing and eventually training local awareness through meditation, entheogenic chemicals, isolation, shared dreaming experiments and a myriad of consciousness affecting breathing techniques.  Consciousness is so fluid, as I have experienced it.  It oscillates, expands, contracts, isolates, accomodates... it's endlessly fluid/vaporous, non physical, yet physically impacting.

My first memory in this life, is of a nightmare so real and horrific, it led to my first out of body experience.  In the dream, I ride down the stairs of our home.  At the basement level I turn to the left and from behind the water heater, comes a hooded man wielding a headsman's axe.  I turn and begin crawling up the stairs.  Eventually near the top, I slip and begin to slide down.  I can feel the carpet slide under my fingers and arms as I try to grasp on.  I hear the steps of the headsman and know... with absolute dream certainty that as I reach the last step, the axe will descend and split me in two.

In my desperation to escape the situation, I suddenly find I am looking down on a small red headed boy, asleep in bed.  I was three-ish. 

All emotion vanished in the shock of the new image.  Serene sleepy boy, totally quiet house.

When this thought arose... "is that me?"  I snapped awake in bed, looking up at the spot where I'd just been gazing down from a moment before.

 

Now perhaps the floating awareness of the body was also dream induced.  and I wasn't truly out of body.  Totally possible and even plausible.  Yet undeniably, in my life experience.  The thoughts and visceral emotional responses of the dream impacted me in a very real manner.  For years later, when I first encountered the notion of death, I found I had no fear of it.  After that dream and the experience of looking on 'my own body' with the same conscious awareness that is looking at this screen, I inherently knew that the body was not the manufacturer of awareness, but a method of interacting with it.

 

This has been rather instrumental in my experience that awareness gives rise to phenomenon, not vice versa.

 

Thoughts are real to a point.  Real enough to impact my experience of myself.  Yet just because I think something and perhaps even feel strongly about it, doesn't make it real, true, or even important.  They're just thoughts.  Yet some thoughts lead to realizations about the nature of myself, that make them as real as anything ever could be.

 

Paradoxical and awesome and strange and wonderful.  What a great conversation.  So grateful for you all.  Not selling anything, just sharing and at this point badly rambling.  Dreams, Thoughts, Memories, Waking Life... all facets of a gem of awareness.  A gem that accomodates all aspects, not just human.  Stone, insect, elemental.

There is now, after decades of pursuit, training and exploring always underlying all of it, a sense of a playful quality to awareness... to the dance of life and living... like a palpable sense of Maya playing the game of masks in Samsara and through the play of public co-arising and entirely personally generated illusions combined, that allow me to explore my true nature through the dance of awareness... in a way that takes the seriousness out of it, without draining it of sincerity. 

I am very seldom ever serious any longer, yet I am always unfolding and exploring in awareness with a sense of profound sincerity and a growing gratitude.

 

If any of you've read this far... lol and thank you.  This much verbage feels like a massive indulgence.

Gratitude and Love for taking your time to share your thoughts here... they are as invaluable as they are transitory, which is to say, I appreciate them all the more, as you may have all decided to spend what attention you have on something else and I'd have been denied this lovely unfolding...

 

[SHaYap]

16 minutes ago, quiXilver said:

I am very seldom ever serious any longer, yet I am always unfolding and exploring in awareness with a sense of profound sincerity and a growing gratitude.

To me this is an indication of you realizing what "serious" truly means and not merely as defined or learned. 

~

[quiXilver]

simple raw presence...

playfully engaging in simply being alive, here, now.

this is it

 

recognized among the highest skills in my process currently

[jmccr8]

17 hours ago, DieChecker said:

I usually just open them in Paint, resize them to 25%, or smaller, and then save them again. Will cut the file size by quite a lot. Also save them in JPG form, rather then one of the higher memory file types.

Hi Diechecker

Thanks that is what I am trying to do but haven't found where it saves them to But did get one of the five pics done somehow I think.

Kinda weird yesterday when I was trying to get all the new pictures onto my laptop and  it just wasn't happening after the pictures update loaded when I was scanning my phone and that was it it would not transfer so I used one of my desktops and exactly the same ting happened so I email these 5 to myself and copied them into a folder. There may have been some pop ups asking for me to do something as I was trying to do this while working on the house and wasn't at the computer all the time.

It has been 2 yrs since I last used paint so It may take a day but I will get it figured out like last time. 

jmccr8