So I have an old Oculus Quest 1 that’s been sitting around gathering dust. I thought I might bring it out again and experiment to see if it could help my spiritual journey. I know AH has talked about VR before and how the experience is analogous to dreaming. Wondering if any of you have suggestions on how to use VR to dereify experience.
I plan on using the device to work with fear. I have The Exorcist app on it. I’m also planning on getting Richie’s Plank experience. Figure I could make it into an illusory form practice- these forms I am seeing are illusory, the fear I am feeling is also illusory. Figure this would be good practice for me until I can actually get lucid on a regular basis and start working with fear in dreams.
Same deal, Quest 1. Tripp is worth it. Very customizable, lots of features. Richie PE is good for the fall off the building, flying and the fear button on the elevator.
Same. I have an old occulus and vive collecting dust. When I saw the title I was thinking more about some of the trippy apps they have, but your right, it would also be a great way to work with fear and I’ve been searching for ways to work with fear. I know there are tons of games that focus on jump scares which would be good for practice, keeping the heart rate level through startling moments has always been a challenge, just because of the nature of those events. I’ll look into this later today and see if I can come up with a list of good ones to try with the help of AI.
Thanks for the info. I did look at Tripp before and liked the demo. Never got the subscription though.
Ooh I didn’t know you could fly on Richie’s. That’s probably another fear I need to work with. Remember back when I first tried lucid dreaming I tried to fly once and immediately grabbed the top of a tree because the experience was so terrifying.
That’d be great! I know the Exorcist has jump scares. So that’s what I’m going to be using for now. Afraid though that after a while I’ll be able to anticipate the scares, so having some other games to use would be helpful.
Zero experience with this Tech, but have heard nothing but good things from all the expert lucid dreamers on how effective this tool can be.
I am very excited to hear about your results.
For any technique, I highly recommend you test it out religiously for at least 2 weeks consistenly. but a full lunar cylce would be much better. I have heard studies show for the average person it takes around the 5 week mark, for these habits start to manifest in dreams.
I tried my horror illusory form practice today and chickened out . This is going to be tougher than I imagined I think. The Exorcist VR: Legion does a very good job at bring up feelings of terror and trepidation. There was a dead priest in a confessional with a decapitated pig head hanging above him. I knew if I grabbed the voice recorder in his hand, something scary would happen. So I closed the game.
I usually don’t have problems with watching horror films. But there’s something about horror in VR that’s different, that makes it scarier. I think it’s the greater immersion. Unlike watching it on a screen, you have no visual input besides the images the game is showing you. This makes it feel more real.
That I was so resistant to moving forward with the game tells me this is exactly the type of practice that will help me. Will try again tomorrow.
Oooh I hadn’t thought about trying to watch horror vids in VR. Thanks for the suggestion! And lol I can imagine. I was terrified of that movie when I first saw it, had trouble going to sleep after that for obvious reasons. It’s gotta be even worse seeing it in VR.
There was a special 8-10 minute featurette with Freddy and it just scared me shitless! I never scream at these things, but it reached the hairs on my scalp, it was so scary. Definitely a bardo experience. Not sure if it is still there, or was only posted for Halloween a couple of years ago.
Success! I finished chapter 1 of The Exorcist. Wasn’t too bad. My heart jumped a couple times, but it was manageable. I was repeating “This is a dream” to myself the whole time. When the big bad showed up I actually went towards it with my crucifix raised.
Having the lenses fog up and me having to take the headset off to wipe them off might have contributed though. Broke immersion. Will try to warm up the headset before playing for next session.
Now you got me really interested in testing out this technology. Can you buy VR googles compatible with a Play Station 2??? Been using it as a DVD player for the past decade, maybe I can get some more utility out of it before it dies…
Congratulations on this success. Regardless of weather u took the googles off or not, its still a big win, you are cultivating such a new and very powerful habit, and every drop in the bucket counts.
“Do one thing every day that scares you”- Words to live by, start with very small fears, and build gradually.
For any media that brings up fear or negative emotions, Andrew says the mute button is your best freind. Just like unfogging the mask may have taken the edge off a bit, so does cutting the sound out I think. This may dillute the experience a little bit, but I think of it like training wheels on a bike, a stepping stone that will eventually. get you riding full speed .
They sell stand alone VR sets, which are reasonably affordable now considering how expensive it was in the past (it’d require a powerful gaming computer ~$1200 and the vive or oculus ~$500+)
I actually have a fear of demons. I know that might sound a bit silly to some people. But growing up in an evangelical Christian milieu, demons were very real. My exploration of other cultures and religions hasn’t dissuaded me of that. They just have different names, such as the asuras in Hindu cosmology. The most terrifying horror films for me have always been the ones about demon possession. Like The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Couldn’t sleep after that movie. Was afraid I would wake up during the “witching hour” and smell sulfur. Even reading about demons can get me spooked. One time I spent a whole evening reading about the Hat Man, a demon that many people experience that always shows up as the shadow of a man wearing a brimmed hat, like a fedora. Had to turn on every single light in the whole house after reading these accounts before I felt safe enough to try to sleep.
I read in Paramahamsa Yogananda’s commentaries on the Gospels that those who engage in spiritual practice are protected from demonic possession. That’s comforted me. Still, I don’t even want to see one.
To clarify this isn’t like a constant fear I experience, it only pops up once in a while. But when it does it can be intense. Also I did have a history of experiencing sleep paralysis which I apparently cured by sleeping on my sides instead of my back (haven’t experienced it since I made the shift). So maybe some dark visitations during sleep paralysis episodes may contribute to my fear though I don’t remember any. Mostly I remember panic at not being able to move and a feeling like my head was exploding.
This is all to say that playing The Exorcist VR is in a way confronting a phobia of mine. I’m heartened it went so well yesterday. I was a little jumpy last night while walking around the home in the dark but the trepidations was just a passing thought and I was soon able to forget about it. Will play another chapter today.
You are doing the absolute optimal thing in my opinion by diving into something like the exorcist on VR then. When fear appears run directly at it. It is a very strong belief of mine that facing fear is one of the the quickest way to advance on the spiritual path.
Me either. Andrew says these evil spirits exist too, youre in good company.
I also believe the inverse is true, there are powerful pure spirits that can protect people like body guards from these evil ones.
May sound stupid, but I think at least one of my dogs who passed has been there to protect me in hairy situations. Not just her, but many of my ancestors who I know or even more who I dont know. I try to visualize them like a Ghost army behind me, when I have to go to ‘war’ with difficult life obsticles and situations, including the ones that induce fear.
Yes, they certainly do exist. They feed off believers and those who retract in fear IMO.
That is why when it comes to the darkest of the dark, like saying you, as mother earth would be eventually absorbed by a black hole, or on a more personal level, you think you’d sell your soul there has to come a realization that these things only have the power which is given to them. If you believe it to be true, it will happen. Conversely, if you look at the devil and fa fa fa fa fack his face it will also be true .
Never deny the power that is within. Every single one of us is a godself waiting to be realized. The devil and demons only have the power an all encompassing, infinite being gives it.
With that being said, turn a demon or the devil into a molecule or something silly and fart on it. Transmutation is key. The mind, as many videos say is the true philosophers stone, transmute any and all darkness into light and ride it into infinity brother .
Yeah they are just projections of our minds. Similar to the monsters in nightmares. If we can recognize them for what they are, they lose their power over us. This is one reason doing illusory form while playing the game has helped.
Update: got through chapter 2 no problem. My heart barely skipped. Was even annoyed at the end because it took forever for my crucifix to drive out the demon. Wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do.
Similarly got bored with chapter 3 because the demon locked itself in a bathroom and I wasn’t sure what to do after that. But it was plenty scary before that, especially when I looked behind me and saw it in the bathroom door.
. This is going to be tougher than I imagined I think. The Exorcist VR: Legion does a very good job at bring up feelings of terror and trepidation. There was a dead priest in a confessional with a decapitated pig head hanging above him. I knew if I grabbed the voice recorder in his hand, something scary would happen. So I closed the game.
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