Vision quests, anyone?

[Piney]

9 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

I guess I've just got that vibe naturally. 

That's the whole point. 

[littlebrowndragon]

20 hours ago, Desertrat56 said:

What harm exactly are you talking about?  I need specifics.

Ok, to specifics.  If I was speaking to you face-to-face, I would begin by asking you what, specifically, you know about dreams.  I could ask you here too, but in these forums one rarely, if ever, gets an answer to a question.  So, on that basis, I will tell you what, specifically, you know about dreams: nothing. I will also ask: do you know, specifically, what you are doing to your mind when you attempt any of these techniques?  Answer: no.  That being the case, why, specifically, are you playing games with, experimenting with, your mind when you know absolutely nothing about what you are doing?  Why are you playing games with your mind when you are ignorant of any damage being caused?  And since you don’t know, specifically, what you are doing, you do not even know how to cure that damage.

Back to specifics.  When a person has a condition like e.g. flu or a cold, one symptom is a temperature.  Why that specific symptom?  The person’s immune system causes a rise in body temperature, this to kill the bacteria/viruses causing the condition.  However, doctors, when they treat these conditions, routinely prescribe drugs which lower the body’s temperature.  (Over-the-counter drugs do likewise.)  By doing so, doctors are damaging a person’s immune system.  Eventually it will stop working altogether.  And the really scary thing?  The really scary thing is that doctors know the effects of their actions.  They know they are damaging the immune system. They even question the ethics of this treatment.  And does that stop them?  No.

As to the body specifically, it is a very complex organism.  Consider heart or organ transplants.  Surgeons do not simply switch one heart/lung/kidney for another.  They have to inject the body with drugs to suppress the body’s immune system so as to fool it into accepting the new organ.  That is a measure of the body’s complexity, of how the organs etc. are interdependent.  So, tinker with one part of the body and you simply don’t know what effect this has on the rest of the body.   This complexity is way beyond the scope of any human to understand.  And that is why the body is self-regulating.  That is why it has an immune system.  The mind, too, is self-regulating i.e. everyone has a psychological immune system.  You simply do not know what harm is being done to that part of the mind when playing these mind games.

More specifics:  medical history is littered with incidents where the early physicians have played around with, say, the body’s organs, put them under all sorts of stresses e.g. injected them with drugs, applied electric currents etc, etc, without knowing specifically what they were doing, what the function of the body part they were playing with is, nor, precisely, what damage they were doing.  Well, I suppose when the patient finally died, they may have realised that pulling out that big, muscular pump which makes a boom-boom sound from the chest of a living patient has catastrophic results.  They may also have discovered that draining a patient of blood has catastrophic results.  But that was the extent of it.

 

And in more recent history: electroconvulsive therapy (ect).  Physicians, when playing around with electric shock treatment discovered that when applied to the brain the patient underwent some changes.  Not knowing specifically what these changes were, nor what damage they were doing, didn’t/doesn’t stop ect from being used.  Yet despite knowing nothing about how the mind works the gung-ho attitude of medicine prevails and ect is a common “treatment” for certain mental conditions.   Also, what one has to remember is that the effects of these treatments may not manifest immediately.  So, when they do manifest, maybe several years or even decades later, no connection is then made between the side-effects and the treatment that caused them.

And to non-medical scientific experimentation: Robert Oppenheimer and his colleagues, when testing the first atomic bomb, did so in the knowledge that it could have had a catastrophic, world destroying outcome.  The scientists simply didn’t know one way or the other.  But did that stop them?  No.

 

These are the games medics play.  These are the games scientists in general play.  These are the games you play.  Are you sure you really want to play them.

 

 

Edited November 21, 2019 by littlebrowndragon

[littlebrowndragon]

21 hours ago, XenoFish said:

Spoken like a true noob.

The trouble with forums is that they are, basically, echo chambers.  Therefore all that forum members want to hear are their own opinions echoed back at them.  (Those opinions being the opinions of the forum to which they belong.)  People who inhabit echo chambers have no idea the damage they are doing to their minds.

 

I have no wish to live in an echo chamber.  That said, living in a world in which people say “black is white”, I reserve the right to my own opinions and the use of personal experience to back them up or even to revise them.  Indeed, that, to me, is the benefit of discussion.  First, it exercises the mind.  Second, by answering challenges to my opinions, my position with respect to those opinions is being fortified.  For example, if I cannot answer challenges, then I must question those opinions and revise them if necessary.  Conversely, if I answer challenges to my staisfaction, then no need to revise my opinions.  In that way, I keep my mind healthy.

[XenoFish]

1 minute ago, littlebrowndragon said:

The trouble with forums is that they are, basically, echo chambers.  Therefore all that forum members want to hear are their own opinions echoed back at them.  (Those opinions being the opinions of the forum to which they belong.)  People who inhabit echo chambers have no idea the damage they are doing to their minds.

 

I have no wish to live in an echo chamber.  That said, living in a world in which people say “black is white”, I reserve the right to my own opinions and the use of personal experience to back them up or even to revise them.  Indeed, that, to me, is the benefit of discussion.  First, it exercises the mind.  Second, by answering challenges to my opinions, my position with respect to those opinions is being fortified.  For example, if I cannot answer challenges, then I must question those opinions and revise them if necessary.  Conversely, if I answer challenges to my staisfaction, then no need to revise my opinions.  In that way, I keep my mind healthy.

 

You are free to continue spreading misinformation at leisure. 

I'll ask you once again. How long have you been into this? 

[+Desertrat56]

4 minutes ago, littlebrowndragon said:

Ok, to specifics.  If I was speaking to you face-to-face, I would begin by asking you what, specifically, you know about dreams.  I could ask you here too, but in these forums one rarely, if ever, gets an answer to a question.  So, on that basis, I will tell you what, specifically, you know about dreams: nothing. I will also ask: do you know, specifically, what you are doing to your mind when you attempt any of these techniques?  Answer: no.  That being the case, why, specifically, are you playing games with, experimenting with, your mind when you know absolutely nothing about what you are doing?  Why are you playing games with your mind when you are ignorant of any damage being caused?  And since you don’t know, specifically, what you are doing, you do not even know how to cure that damage.

Back to specifics.  When a person has a condition like e.g. flu or a cold, one symptom is a temperature.  Why that specific symptom?  The person’s immune system causes a rise in body temperature, this to kill the bacteria/viruses causing the condition.  However, doctors, when they treat these conditions, routinely prescribe drugs which lower the body’s temperature.  (Over-the-counter drugs do likewise.)  By doing so, doctors are damaging a person’s immune system.  Eventually it will stop working altogether.  And the really scary thing?  The really scary thing is that doctors know the effects of their actions.  They know they are damaging the immune system. They even question the ethics of this treatment.  And does that stop them?  No.

As to the body specifically, it is a very complex organism.  Consider heart or organ transplants.  Surgeons do not simply switch one heart/lung/kidney for another.  They have to inject the body with drugs to suppress the body’s immune system so as to fool it into accepting the new organ.  That is a measure of the body’s complexity, of how the organs etc. are interdependent.  So, tinker with one part of the body and you simply don’t know what effect this has on the rest of the body.   This complexity is way beyond the scope of any human to understand.  And that is why the body is self-regulating.  That is why it has an immune system.  The mind, too, is self-regulating i.e. everyone has a psychological immune system.  You simply do not know what harm is being done to that part of the mind when playing these mind games.

More specifics:  medical history is littered with incidents where the early physicians have played around with, say, the body’s organs, put them under all sorts of stresses e.g. injected them with drugs, applied electric currents etc, etc, without knowing specifically what they were doing, what the function of the body part they were playing with is, nor, precisely, what damage they were doing.  Well, I suppose when the patient finally died, they may have realised that pulling out that big, muscular pump which makes a boom-boom sound from the chest of a living patient has catastrophic results.  They may also have discovered that draining a patient of blood has catastrophic results.  But that was the extent of it.

 

And in more recent history: electroconvulsive therapy (ect).  Physicians, when playing around with electric shock treatment discovered that when applied to the brain the patient underwent some changes.  Not knowing specifically what these changes were, nor what damage they were doing, didn’t/doesn’t stop ect from being used.  Yet despite knowing nothing about how the mind works the gung-ho attitude of medicine prevails and ect is a common “treatment” for certain mental conditions.   Also, what one has to remember is that the effects of these treatments may not manifest immediately.  So, when they do manifest, maybe several years or even decades later, no connection is then made between the side-effects and the treatment that caused them.

And to non-medical scientific experimentation: Robert Oppenheimer and his colleagues, when testing the first atomic bomb, did so in the knowledge that it could have had a catastrophic, world destroying outcome.  The scientists simply didn’t know one way or the other.  But did that stop them?  No.

 

These are the games medics play.  These are the games scientists in general play.  These are the games you play.  Are you sure you really want to play them.

 

 

Good lord, not only did you not answer my question about how lucid dreaming damages the physical body you showed yourself to be exceedingly arrogant.  You took so long to respond to my question I expected that you would not answer it and even though you responded you did NOT answer it.

What's with the assumptions of how everyone but you is stupid and that no one would answer your questions?  Not to mention the medical lectures, what is your point, goal, desire in communicating on this forum?  Do you think you are sharing information?  You haven't yet shared anything useful to anyone else.  I assume you are either very young or you have just found the internet.

Blessings on your journey, don't worry about answering my question or responding to this.

[littlebrowndragon]

18 minutes ago, Desertrat56 said:

  You took so long to respond to my question I expected that you would not answer it and even though you responded you did NOT answer it.

My answers require considered responses. 

Firstly, my mind is not a computer, therefore I do not have answers off pat i.e. they are not memorised.   Even if that were desirable (which it is not), there are too many considerations for it to be possible,   For example, as a result of participating on these boards my opinions develop as my thinking develops.  So, what I might have answered a week ago, will likely have altered in line with those developments.  Therefore my answers reflect those changes.  Secondly, good communication is not a one-response-fits-all scenario.  As you know, one must take consideration of the person one is addressing e.g. their age, level of understanding etc.  In other words, my replies are bespoke.

[+Desertrat56]

2 minutes ago, littlebrowndragon said:

My answers require considered responses. 

Firstly, my mind is not a computer, therefore I do not have answers off pat i.e. they are not memorised.   Even if that were desirable (which it is not), there are too many considerations for it to be possible,   For example, as a result of participating on these boards my opinions develop as my thinking develops.  So, what I might have answered a week ago, will likely have altered in line with those developments.  Therefore my answers reflect those changes.  Secondly, good communication is not a one-response-fits-all scenario.  As you know, one must take consideration of the person one is addressing e.g. their age, level of understanding etc.  In other words, my replies are bespoke.

Just give me ONE specific result of physical impairment or damage done by lucid dreaming.  You can't claim something is damaging if you have not one example and expect input from another in order to create an example.  You must have some experience of your own how this is damaging or why would you even state that it is Unless, unless you are parroting something someone told you that you decide to believe without thinking about it.

[littlebrowndragon]

2 hours ago, XenoFish said:

. How long have you been into this? 

Just under a quarter of a century.

The reason that you are asking,  I might suppose, is to determine my level of experience.  Let me say, however, that it is not length of experience, but breadth of experience, that is the crucial factor here.  Wisdom comes from breadth of experience.  If I specialized for 25 years on, say, one particular mystic practice, then that would tell me little about anything.  Breadth of experience, and not merely of mystical practices, but of as many different types of experience as possible, allows one to draw conclusions, to establish principles.  So, having established that putting the mind and/or body through stress damages the mind, I do not then have to put my mind/body through every stressful experience imaginable to know what the consequence will be.   

[XenoFish]

4 minutes ago, littlebrowndragon said:

Just under a quarter of a century.

 

The reason that you are asking,  I might suppose, is to determine my level of experience.  Let me say, however, that it is not length of experience, but breadth of experience, that is the crucial factor here.  Wisdom comes from breadth of experience.  If I specialized for 25 years on, say, one particular mystic practice, then that would tell me little about anything.  Breadth of experience, and not merely of mystical practices, but of as many different types of experience as possible, allows one to draw conclusions, to establish principles.  So, having established that putting the mind and/or body through stress damages the mind, I do not then have to put my mind/body through every stressful experience imaginable to know what the consequence will be.   

 

So 25 years of practice and you never realized you weren't doing a vision quest....yeah, okay. I spent 26 years practicing chaos magick, was the most enjoyable time in my life. Perhaps living the muggle life is for you. 

Edited November 21, 2019 by XenoFish

[littlebrowndragon]

2 hours ago, Desertrat56 said:

Just give me ONE specific result of physical impairment or damage done by lucid dreaming.  You can't claim something is damaging if you have not one example and expect input from another in order to create an example.  You must have some experience of your own how this is damaging or why would you even state that it is Unless, unless you are parroting something someone told you that you decide to believe without thinking about it.

I do not know what the physical symptoms may be.  For example, they may depend on the individual e.g. their current state of mental/physical health.  Also, the human body (and mind) are highly complex entities.  One tampers with one part and who knows what will happen elsewhere.  In addition, such physical symptoms as do appear may not even seem to be connected in any way with the tampering, they may not even appear until some considerable time later, and are not therefore attributed to the mental stresses that caused them.   Indeed, so complex is the body (and mind) that it is way beyond my ability, or, for that matter, a doctor’s ability, to know precisely what physical impairments will result.  Unlike doctors, however, I know my limitations and the reason for them.

 

PS:  Speed of response: I note that your response #55, an answer to my post #52, followed in what seemed like seconds after I posted – in a very short time, anyway.  This tells me 2 things: first, you are not digesting i.e. thinking, about what I am saying and that, secondly, your reactions are therefore knee-jerk.

[littlebrowndragon]

7 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

So 25 years of practice and you never realized you weren't doing a vision quest....yeah, okay. I spent 26 years practicing chaos magick, was the most enjoyable time in my life. Perhaps living the muggle life is for you. 

No.  As I explained, breadth of experience is the crucial factor, not specialisation.  I have not spent 25 years doing vision quests. I have spent 25 years exploring the mind.  To this end, and I repeat, a wide range of experience is necessary.  One learns very little through specialisation.

[+Desertrat56]

6 minutes ago, littlebrowndragon said:

I do not know what the physical symptoms may be.  For example, they may depend on the individual e.g. their current state of mental/physical health.  Also, the human body (and mind) are highly complex entities.  One tampers with one part and who knows what will happen elsewhere.  In addition, such physical symptoms as do appear may not even seem to be connected in any way with the tampering, they may not even appear until some considerable time later, and are not therefore attributed to the mental stresses that caused them.   Indeed, so complex is the body (and mind) that it is way beyond my ability, or, for that matter, a doctor’s ability, to know precisely what physical impairments will result.  Unlike doctors, however, I know my limitations and the reason for them.

 

 

 

PS:  Speed of response: I note that your response #55, an answer to my post #52, followed in what seemed like seconds after I posted – in a very short time, anyway.  This tells me 2 things: first, you are not digesting i.e. thinking, about what I am saying and that, secondly, your reactions are therefore knee-jerk.

 

So, you really don't have an answer or an example of something you experienced.  So maybe you could explain exactly how lucid dreaming is "tampering". 

 

[XenoFish]

5 minutes ago, littlebrowndragon said:

No.  As I explained, breadth of experience is the crucial factor, not specialisation.  I have not spent 25 years doing vision quests. I have spent 25 years exploring the mind.  To this end, and I repeat, a wide range of experience is necessary.  One learns very little through specialisation.

So you've got nothing. 

[littlebrowndragon]

18 minutes ago, Desertrat56 said:

So, you really don't have an answer or an example of something you experienced.  So maybe you could explain exactly how lucid dreaming is "tampering". 

 

 I recommend that you re-read all of my responses - and not just those in response to you - and think about them. You should therein find the answers you seek.  If, after having thought about them, you still have questions, then please ask again.

 

[+Desertrat56]

8 minutes ago, littlebrowndragon said:

 I recommend that you re-read all of my responses - and not just those in response to you - and think about them. You should therein find the answers you seek.  If, after having thought about them, you still have questions, then please ask again.

 

The reason I asked in the first place is that I had read all your responses and I did not see an answer to my question, just a bunch of diatribes about doctors and how complex the human body and mind are.  I won't bother you any more as I see it distresses you.

Edited November 21, 2019 by Desertrat56

[littlebrowndragon]

3 minutes ago, Desertrat56 said:

The reason I asked in the first place is that I had read all your responses and I did not see an answer to my question,

When reading for comprehension, one sometimes has to read the text at least three times, thinking about it in-between.  Also, it can be better to just leave the texts for a few days and then come back to them.  As I said, the mind needs time to assimilate and digest, especially the unfamiliar..

[+Desertrat56]

31 minutes ago, littlebrowndragon said:

When reading for comprehension, one sometimes has to read the text at least three times, thinking about it in-between.  Also, it can be better to just leave the texts for a few days and then come back to them.  As I said, the mind needs time to assimilate and digest, especially the unfamiliar..

If you don't read well that may be true.  I have been reading since I was 3 and I was taught to read for comprehension so you again are assuming everyone is stupid except yourself, which actually indicates that you are the one who needs education or at the very least to learn how to interact with others.  You don't know me or how well I read.  You have not explained anything in any reasonable manner. 

Your mind may need time to assimilate, that is not a bad thing to admit, but don't project it on others.

Edited November 21, 2019 by Desertrat56

[XenoFish]

3 minutes ago, Desertrat56 said:

You have not explained anything in any reasonable manner. 

You know just as well as I do that you won't get a proper response. 

[+Desertrat56]

Just now, XenoFish said:

You know just as well as I do that you won't get a proper response. 

I know.  I think I have given up on this, just couldn't fathom why anyone would tell me how to read. 

[XenoFish]

1 minute ago, Desertrat56 said:

I know.  I think I have given up on this, just couldn't fathom why anyone would tell me how to read. 

Or treat everyone like idiots. Without ever explaining the down side to whatever practices. 

[Relam]

On 11/20/2019 at 2:35 AM, Not A Rockstar said:

Wow,  "detrimental consequences for people’s mental and physical health"  ??? 

"Lucid Dreaming is another technique which attempts to control the emergence of waking dreams and therefore carries the same health warnings."

How alarming!  

Perhaps, you can tell me how I as a Mystic with a generally Christian bent, trance worker and shaman force anything when I journey or meditate. Do explain to me exactly what it is in my practice that is so dangerous and wrong and ill informed to warrant you talking about it here the way you do? I assume you have actually worked with these forms long enough to know exactly what force is used and how it is dangerous enough to possibly require an inference that any of this has anything to do with schizophrenia. I would also like to know your actual direct experience to be able to claim a mental health hazard inherent in lucid dreaming, or Christian mysticism (I assume all the other forms are as hazardous?). How about shamanism? How about shadow work? 

It is important that this forum, which is a resource for many, has good info, so I am speaking up now and really want to know where you get your "facts" from. You already have revealed you have almost no understanding of NA Vision Quests, but, you corrected and that was pretty adult of you. Then you go and post that mess in #32 about other spiritualities you do not know firsthand or personally, but, so be it. 

I have only been at this for 50 years so I am sure interested. Go for it.

Hey @Not A Rockstar can you give us some good technuques for shadow work?

[+Not A Rockstar]

7 hours ago, Relam said:

Hey @Not A Rockstar can you give us some good technuques for shadow work?

Thank you for asking. Yes, I can and will, but am about to get into phase 2 of mass cooking for the Thanksgiving holiday for a group of folks (did the desserts today) and so give me a day or two please. I may start a forum topic for it or just add it to my blog. Tonight I am exhausted and tomorrow is shot as well as the house will be full of hungry people. Perhaps Friday I can come up with something useful  

edit to add: questions excite me and I may do a blog series to do it slight justice and may well do part 1 tonight for ya. It doesn't suit a single, couple paragraph post to present the whys and whats of it let alone the applications   Ideas are flying so part 1 is in draft now who needs sleep?

Edited November 28, 2019 by Not A Rockstar