we know the perils of personal narratives – we are least reliable in our own case. therefore … hello community members, Andrew, and the NC team. where I’m from is impossible to say. i can rattle off a bunch of countries, my father an environmental engineer for the United Nations, and me hauled all over the world wherever assignments beckoned, plausibly i am an alien. having taken up shop recently on the island of madeira, an “autonomous” region belonging to Portugal (if you pardon the oxymoron, but that is how the wooden people refer to themselves), after emigrating with my dearest from the mountains of North Carolina (a prior NC community) in 2020, … let us call this home for the moment. hugo our bulldog joined us about a year ago and he is without a doubt an alien too – what would an alien look like if not a bulldog? as for professions and such, it just so happens that professing is precisely what I used to do, hence the label professor. as to the nature of my professing, well, consider me one of the puppet masters in Plato’s cave holding up images for the chained population to decipher (assuming students). i’m not proud of being a former indoctrinator, a licensed deceiver, a fraud, if you will, which is why I left the academy to become a yoga/meditation teacher. accustomed to captive audiences, I taught prisoners, women recovering from drug addiction and domestic violence, among the homeless, and at a non-profit, donation-based studio for those who weren’t into Lululemon outfits. which is to say, I finally found an audience I could relate to, who knew me better than I knew myself. i walked out of Plato’s cave, the proverbial ivory tower, because I was blinded by the light. no need for me to sing the song. truth is, i found “enlightenment” obfuscating, to say the least, and in order to recover from knowledge, i sought the darkness. it wasn’t so much that I walked “out” of the cave as it was that I walked deeper down the cave – further and further away from the artificial light, but not without a box of matches. after many years deceiving others with the pretense of knowledge, i discovered that i am, and perhaps this is true of most of us, by nature a cave-dweller. ignorant. having the propensity to “ignore.” so it is not a nature out to deceive so much as not knowing not knowing. hence, best not “to see” for a while. i found my home amidst the shadows. in the shadows I realized that there was little I should take for granted, nothing obvious, everything isn’t as it appears to be, and hence I was again able to see. new eyes beyond my physical eyes. see in the way I had seen before knowledge corrupted me – as a child where the multiverses are filled with monsters, angels, varied and wondrous beings, partially alienated and now wholly alien, fellow travelers, looking for home. to put this differently, I came back to the common sense of the matter. in the darkness i remembered. the multiverse of dreams and dreamers, where we are dreamed into existence, oddly enough “made sense.” by making “sense” i mean this multiverse is “sensible” – sensitive and sensational, even sentimental. and first and foremost among these – non-sense. i sorta started knowing things without having those things explained and justified, but that knowledge being partial in our failure to adequately account for, it isn’t dogmatic. maybe it is genuinely Socratic – knowing that we don’t know, which is knowledge of some kind, is it not? anyway, i read a bunch of stuff, as is the penchant of those who profess, reading being a euphemism for stealing (for what is reading if not stealing?) – I came upon the writings of Andrew Holecek. arriving here via Stephen LaBerge, I was at first skeptical. is this another fraud? had my run in with charlatans. was he another egomaniac trying to make a buck off our collective fear and stupidity? no, no, … but I didn’t automatically convert, and, frankly, didn’t see the point. instead I started stealing some more and doing my homework, and generally trusted the process, kind of, and then … as airline attendants say, “shift happens.” and did it – or I should should say, did “i” ever! the luggage of my life shifted, the locks burst open, stuff started falling out, and to my great surprise my luggage was empty and in emptiness I was at ease. then i thought, okay, let us follow this up, which is what I’m doing, here with fellow communitarians, thank you, signed up for the retreat in Spain May 2023, where I’ll meet the man himself and some of you in this community, … we’ll see, or is it, not see? maybe it is both, in the way shadows are both light and dark. see you in the shadows … 
Welcome to the NC Community. Lots to think about in your writing. Thinking . . . .
Welcome to the cave of darkness and ignorance evdriron! I’m also new here. Had a similar journey in academic circles. Was studying to become a professor of theology but got tired of my hyprocrisy trying to tell people things about God when I knew nothing myself, so I bailed after grad school and I’m glad I did. I too sought the darkness after academia to unschool myself and seek among the shadows what was too bright to find among the light. That process also eventually lead me here after many tortuous detours. Glad to have you here, fellow spelunker. Welcome to our community!
Thank you for your reply. I wonder if these detours are detours, or whether they are the main tour! We have to learn what to unlearn – and that is a gift, or so it seems to me now, a way of safe-guarding what is precious, oddly enough, avoiding presumptions and other deceptions of vanity. It is kind of you to welcome me to the community. Appreciated. My best wishes … until next time.
So much good stuff to chew on, so I can relate to this somewhat, as a former indoctrinated and then an indoctrinateder who saw the ivory tower from the inside and realized that it was just built from the tusks of dead elephants, with the emphasis on the word “dead.” I once read a quote that “The average Ph.D. thesis is just the movement of bones from one grave to another,” from which I took the larger meaning that this excavation is fostered in “Institutions of Higher Rotting.”
My liberation and subsequent super power aka retirement has given me that cave experience in both waking and dreaming life. Indeed, connecting with Andrew on a Tricycle a few years ago led me back to where I have always been, and still am, right here, wherever that is. Having a great partner (and pet(s) is/are a great gift. that for many of us is a necessary candle light to keep our hands around to prevent the wind from blowing it out.
I’ve been with Andrew at a few live retreats, many online as well. All were excellent and some more excellent that others, given the particulars of the environment and the canaries in the caves, so to speak.
Love your introduction, so much insight! I had a similar skeptical view when I first found Andrews youtube videos, but he made some really compelling points and sounded really smart. When I joined, I started watching his webinars and my skepticism quickly diminished. This guy is the real deal! And bloody brillinant too! Having read over a dozen LD authors before him, he was the first person to convince me to start a dream journal, and take it seriously. I am very greatful for that.
Really great story. I almost feel like one of the most important parts of education is to be indoctrinated, and then over time wise up to that ‘poisening’, drain it, and fill the viod with something more valuable. And then approach then world with increased skepticism and curiosity.
That is really funny! 
Whay pets do you have?
Still, I was grateful to work in the Houses of the Dead. I learned much there.
These days, we have turkeys, eagles, red tail hawks, squirrels, the non-sectarian bird community, and rabbits come to us for food.
That is so fucking cool!!! 
Do you raise or breed the raptors or take them in injured and rehabilitate them? When you getting some owls?
Maybe some extra carrots in the next few weeks might make the rabbits bless your new year?
What is your meditation practice like?
How long have you been practicing lucid dreaming and dream yoga for?
Nope, just feed them and don’t harm any animals including using lawn poisons. Our daughter and her husband used to take in injured animals like a squirrel, but they now have a dog and cats so they just refrain from killing or eating any animals.
Thank you. of tricycles and trinities, we need that third eye to garner the necessary perspective, seeing face-to-face not but rather askance. so enjoyed the metaphors! institutions of higher rotting – that was it, a sense of death, of my being decomposing. and yes to make these breaks (who wants to give up tenure after all!?) we have to die again, and learn too of the privilege of dying before we die. and now to do so each time my head rests on the pillow, death not as a cessation but as a renewal. with gratitude …
Thank you. to be playful with words is important, for me I am persuaded, maybe we write in odd ways to see the words reflected back in unexpected ways. which is what fills my heart with abundance when if not well understood at least acknowledged, not for vanity’s sake, but rather a kind of re-cognition of our shared human experience. whatever may be the vastness that separates us (I can’t say I know you and you me), still some echos resonate in this shadowy cave, like an old song from our teenage years, and together we sing along and let understanding be damned. we have song and dance and the revelry of the dream! peace.
regarding these I have so little to offer – i am a baby in the woods. i’m here like most of us, if you pardon the presumption, because “shift happens,” and maybe we can learn to put a few words to these events. or maybe as in Andrew Holecek’s case, he knew well or well enough not to seek the conventional interpretation of psychotherapists and psychiatrists, whose response would likely be psychopharmacological, but instead honored the experiences and learned along the way that they aren’t unusual. the most prominent and preeminent “rationalists,” scientists of the greatest renown, have had their “worlds” turned inside out by what could not be “explained,” “understood,” “comprehended” in conventional modes of thought. really the shadow isn’t a metaphor, I have a box of matches and it is raining.
I love that line “Shift happens”. Might be a coincidence that you sumbled onto NC, but I dont think it was. Since joining I have had some major Paradigm “Shifts”, and even better have had Paradigms shattered! Would highly reccomned you take advantage of the meditation videos here, as well as Andrews expertise in the area.
I think meditation is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Another powerful gift is to get yourself a Dream Journal and start logging your dreams daily. If you havent explored the depths of dreaming, I think it will eventually cuase some mind blowing paradigm shifts.
Shift happens, another way of putting it may be to say one of my favorite quotes Andrew says: “Chaos should be regarded as incredibly good news”
I definitely have felt that the path I’ve taken to here has helped me unlearn what I needed to learn in order to receive the wisdom and teaching offered here. Detours/ main tours- there is a flavor of pedagogical oneness in them. 
Perhaps some form of indoctrination is necessary to be human. As many spiritual teachers assert “You have to be someone first before you can become no one.” Education teaches you how to become someone. Having someones around is helpful; they are good at raising families, keeping crucial infrastructure going, keeping society functioning well. Unfortunately the poisons inherent in someoneness poison everything they touch so eventually people will see the limits of the usefulness of being someone and seek to become no one.
Maybe however the academic journey was necessary for the composting of your being to nourish the new life that has sprouted now. I’ve felt this way before. Always on the path even when I think I’m furthest away from it.
I second this. Meditation has been about the greatest gift I’ve ever received in my life. I am so grateful to have been introduced to the practice. Dream journaling too. So much wisdom in our dreams that we completely miss because we are biased to dismiss dreams as nonsense and take only the waking state as real. But dreams can be a powerful means of learning and transformation, as the teachings here show us. I’m very grateful to have found this community and these teachings. Buddhist teachers often say that human births are unique and I’m starting to feel the truth of that. So I plan to take advantage of this life as much as I can. 
Love that line!
Amen! You and me both.
… yes, I write both in seriousness and in jest, no regrets. so much beauty and love and wondrous moments throughout a 20 year career, the seven years grad school also marvelous, teachers who awakened the best in me and prepared me for a life well lived. we live cycles, I suppose, and to speak more plainly, i probably came to the end of a cycle – what made sense once didn’t, what i thought i was I wasn’t, or had ceased to be, and yoga helped me navigate through onto this new cycle … what brings me to sleep, dream, and bardo yoga. would love to hear about your journey – your journey through the house of the dead, where, what you taught, when you left, and why, and how you came to be here. at your leisure. @_Barry
This probably won’t be a popular opinion here but being coerced to join the military was one of the best things to ever happen to me because it taught me to how to be part of the human race. Imagine being forced into a working group with people of many races, from many parts of the country (and world) and taught to work together as a team, only to have that team be broken up and never see any of those teammates again. Then, be forced into a new team in electronics technical school with an even more diverse group of people who bonded together until this group too was also broken up and scattered to the five winds. Individuals, transformed, were then able to be stationed anywhere in the world yet perform highly skilled tasks together with relative strangers. In my experience all of those tasks were peaceful. Living and working in many amazing countries and being humbled in so many cultures. All this before age 25.
What an incredible conversation that has been had in this thread!
I’m Alyssa and I moderate the community here. I wanted to say hi and make sure to introduce myself. If you ever need anything, you know where to find me!!