Archive for the 'Mind/Consciousness' Category
The dream blogging zone has been unusually quiet over the past couple of months. With the exception of Ryan, who continues to post great new articles over at the Dream Studies Portal, many of the folks who blog about dreaming have been silent lately.
I'm guilty of it myself. I like to think it's because we're all deep thinkers and need some time to ourselves to spend in quiet contemplation. In my case, the silence is partly because I've had an unusually long span of nightmares not worth writing about and partly because I've been working on content for a different project.
Last month, we added a new blog to my company's web site. We'll be posting articles, book reviews, relaxation and meditation techniques, and other new content a few times each week. Any articles related to personal growth and wellness that I would have posted here will now be posted to that blog instead.
The Reality Shifter blog will continue to focus on dreams and lucid dreaming, with occasional forays into the realms of consciousness and mysticism. Here is a taste of what's to come (listed in no particular order):
- Can a Computer Become Conscious?
- What Dreams Teach Us About Reality
- Feeling Physical Pain In Dreams
- Why You Should Stop Trying To Be An Early Riser
- Brain-in-a-dish Study Raises Questions About Consciousness
- Discovering the Hidden Meaning in Recurring Dreams
- The Most Common Dream Themes
- Can Prescription Meds Interfere With Your Dreams?
- Prophetic Dreams: Can Your Dreams Tell the Future?
Stay tuned for these articles and much more. The first of the new articles will appear on the site this week. If you'd like to receive it via email as soon as it appears online, please subscribe to receive email updates.
A false awakening occurs when you're dreaming and believe you've woken up when in actuality you are still dreaming and only dreamed of waking up. You "wake up" and begin to go about your daily routine — visit the bathroom, brush your teeth, get dressed, etc. — until eventually you realize you're still dreaming.
At that point, you may slip into a completely new dream or you may wake up from the dream for real this time. Or, even more intriguingly, you may have another false awakening and believe you've woken up when instead you're still dreaming and once again only dreamed of waking up.
You can "wake up" from a dream only to discover you haven't really woken up at all and you're still dreaming, and then you can "wake up" from your first false awakening and think to yourself "This time I'm REALLY awake," only to find out you've had another false awakening and you're still dreaming, and then you can "wake up" again into another dream of awakening, and so forth.
This cycle of false awakenings can go on and on. In fact, it can go on so long you begin to constantly question whether or not you're awake, and you wonder how you can ever be one hundred percent certain you're not still dreaming. This is exactly the kind of persistent questioning of reality that rests at the heart of lucid dreaming.
Lucid dreaming offers so much more than entertainment. It can lead to an entirely new awareness and insight into the nature of reality. …Continue reading
It's no secret that what we eat affects our health, but how does it affect the mind? Can eating specific foods help you think more clearly, improve your ability to focus, or increase your creativity? By the same token, can avoiding certain foods have a similar effect? Can your diet also increase or decrease your odds of experiencing expanded states of consciousness or awareness?
Those are the questions I'll be exploring over the next few months as I transition from being a carnivore to being a vegetarian. During the first month, I'll eliminate only meat, fish and poultry. That will put me in the category of "lacto-ovo vegetarian" — a vegetarian who doesn't eat meat but still eats eggs and dairy products. During the second month, I'll also eliminate eggs and dairy products, which will put me in the vegan category.
My goal is to observe how the change in diet affects my mind, and to get answers to these questions, among others:
- Will I think more clearly or have an easier time focusing?
- Will I feel more creative or inspired?
- Will I notice any changes in dreaming or an increase in the frequency of lucid dreams?
- Will my awareness or sensitivity increase?
- Will I notice changes in my emotional state, in how I react or respond to various situations?
- Will my experiences during meditation and other consciousness-related practices be affected by the change in diet?
I'll stick to a vegan diet for a minimum of a few months. I believe it will take at least that long (probably longer) for my body to fully shed the toxins from my current meat-eating diet and adjust to the new neurochemical balance triggered by the vegan diet. If the positive results outweigh any negative results, I'll remain a vegan for the long-term. It's something I've often considered doing over the past few years, but until now I wasn't ready to make that change in my life.
There has been a recent resurgence in the use of psychoactive substances* to aid in achieving trance states or spiritual experiences, so I thought I'd write an article about why I made a personal decision not to use them in my own exploration of consciousness.
Though many of these substances have been used for centuries in various cultures around the world, I don't believe their use is needed in the study of expanded states of consciousness, particularly in modern times and with so many other options available. I'll even go as far as to say for many modern seekers the use of psychoactive substances is more of a hindrance than a help because they learn to rely on a drug to trigger altered states instead of learning how to achieve those states on their own.
With drug-free methods of practice — such as meditation, drumming, chanting, hypnosis, yoga, dance, and others — the practitioner can achieve an altered state, and may choose to fully embrace that state for the course of the event, but even in doing so and allowing herself to be carried away by that current, she always retains the option of being in 100% conscious control of her mental and emotional state. At any time, at any moment, she can consciously choose to end the experience.
Psychoactive substances restrict the user's freedom by limiting — and in some cases eliminating — his conscious control. Once the substance is ingested, injected or inhaled, it begins to act on the user's brain and body and there is no turning back. Until the effects …Continue reading
Meditation, once considered a spiritual practice reserved for monks and yogis, is gradually achieving mainstream popularity as more people discover its many benefits.
Meditation doesn't have to be complicated, doesn't require you to subscribe to any particular spiritual belief, and doesn't necessitate sitting cross-legged on the floor and chanting mantras. It can be as simple as sitting in a quiet room and focusing on your breath, or counting your steps while walking around your neighborhood. You can also turn everyday activities like washing the dishes or vacuuming the carpet into a meditation.
There are many different forms of meditation, making it easy for everyone to find a style that best suits their lifestyle. At the end of this article, I'll describe a few simple meditation techniques, including one method that will allow you to meditate deeply without even trying.
But first, let's talk about the top five reasons you should try meditation.
1. Your health will improve
No matter what your age, meditation is one of the easiest ways to improve your health. Research at the Medical College of Georgia found that meditation lowered blood pressure and reduced the risk of …Continue reading
This month's issue of Popular Science magazine includes a sizeable section about current brain/mind research, including an article devoted to what they call "eerie mysteries of perception" — synesthesia, out-of-body experiences, the sense of being watched, and deja vu. For the sake of this article, I'm going to focus on deja vu because I believe the research mentioned in the magazine does little to further an understanding of the phenomenon.
Deja vu, a French term for "already seen", is the feeling of having previously experienced a current situation. It often provokes a strong sense of familiarity because the subject feels with near certainty that he/she has already been through the same experience once before.
Deja vu comes in different forms. There is situational deja vu, referred to as deja vecu ("already lived" or "already experienced"), in which a person feels he has already experienced an entire event exactly as it is currently being experienced, in the same surroundings at the same time of day with the same people, the same conversation, the …Continue reading
