Hello everyone, I am very happy to be here, my name is Boris, I am an entrepreneur from Russia, I was born in the city of Tula, not far from Moscow, Tula is known as the birthplace of the famous Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, now I live and work mainly in Moscow. I consider lucid dreaming as part of my larger Buddhist practice, I have been practicing Buddhism, predominantly in the Vajrayana tradition, for over 20 year.I also practiced Zen in the Korean tradition, there it is called Seon or SĹn, I participated in the Kolche (90 day retreat) in the Korean temple in Seoul.
For the first time I became interested in lucid dreams years ago, in 2006, under the guidance of a Taoist teacher, and experienced lucid dreams after a couple of months of practice, however, at that moment in Russia there were almost no available sources on this topic, so I stopped practicing.
The terrible events of this year in Russia and Ukraine made my spiritual training much more intense . I was on a 10 day Vipassana retreat of Goenka Ji tradition and began to look for more advanced practices.
I was surprised to find that books by Andrew Holecek, Alen Walles and Tibetan teachers such as Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche are now available in Russian. So, exactly Mr. Holecekâs books inspired me to practice dream yoga and profound daytime practice of Lucid Dreaming.
I recently experienced the first case of lucid dreaming in 15 years. It could hardly be a coincidence, but it happened on the night after the initiation of Padmasabhava, a revered saint in the Tibetan Tradition who is revered as a second Buddha. I prayed to Guru Rinpoche in the night after the initiation and I had amazingly vivid and lively dreams. I suddenly realized that I was dreaming and I tried to tell people about it in my dream. However, they did not believe me. Then, remembering the advice from the book of Mr. Holecek I jumped up and slowly flew over the surface.I was literally filled with pleasure and joy, and when I woke up, I kept these feelings for the whole day.
May all sentient beings be happy!
Welcome to the Night Club.Glad all those books are available in Russian. Are you familiar with the paintings of Nicholas Roerich? I first became aware of his spiritual paintings many years ago and studied his Agni Yoga teachings with some of his students for a few years. Your work with Guru Rinpocheâs teachings is inspiring and hope to hear more of your adventures.
Hey Barry! how are you? nice to meet you! Iâm glad you asked! yes, of course, I am familiar with the creativity of the Roerichs, both of them, in the paintings of Nicholas Roerich there is some very unusual coloring, isnât it? But now in Russia, the Roerichs are not the most popular personalities, the peak of their popularity came in the early 90s of the last century. How time flies! However, like the popularity of other famous Russian mystics, such as Blavatsky and GurdjieffâŚSic transit gloria mundiâŚ
Welcome to the club,( it should be called a university), so much great resources and materials to lewrn from. After 92 days of being a member, I had my first lucid dream in years. Very impressed with Andrews work, and how much knowledge the members here bring to the table.
Welcome @BorisA, This is a very friendly group and you are very welcome!!
Thanks and much love
Steve
Hi Steve, I have already noticed that there is a very friendly atmosphere here.
Thanks a lot
Hello NghtHawk!
Thank you so much
Welcome Boris, great to have you with us. Hope you enjoy the many offerings here at the Club. Maybe Iâll see you at one of our weekly live events. Andrew
Good afternoon Andrew!
Thank you again for your invitation to the NC, itâs really a pleasure to be here. No doubt I will join the events with will take place in the NC.
Sincerely yours
Boris
I am very sorry that you are caught up in the middle of that turmoil. I was really upset when I learned that our politicians decided to employ nasty sanctions and economic warfare with Russia, becuase I knew it would not stop Putin, and worse, it would cause a great deal of suffering to the Russian people.
I would be very interested in hearing your first hand experience of how life has been for you and other citizens living there over the past 2 years.
Hello nighthawk! Thanks for the sympathy you express! This is a really hard issue to discuss. Sanctions are really unlikely to stop our leader, and indeed can cost a lot of hardship for ordinary people like me. For example, we cannot use international credit cards like Visa MasterCard any more, and recently Chinese cards like Union Pay stopped working in our country too, for this reason it is impossible to pay for antivirus programs and for additional Google services, such as extra mailbox volume. By the way, itâs impossible to pay the entrance fee to the nightclub directly from Russia too, Iâm going to ask my Korean friends to make payment from Korea.Also regarding the censorship, more than 1000 sites on the Internet are blocked in Russia, even on Facebook I have to access via VPN, or an anonymizer. For public criticism of the actions of the army, there is a risk of getting a fine of about 1000usd and then going to jail for up to 10 years. I am not kiddingâŚ
The economic situation is a bit better so far, although in my business, we distribute refrigeration-equipped car vans, we have problems with the availability of the chassis on which we mount our vans.Almost all Western vehicle manufacturers have left the Russian market, American, Japanese and European chassis are no longer available with us. Both commercial and passenger cars. So the situation looks pretty lousyâŚ
On the other hand, civilians do not die on the territory of Russia, unlike Ukraine. Reporting on their suffering literally breaks my heart. I am an adult, 51 years old man, sometimes I canât hold back my tears, people in Ukraine look like us, dress like us, live in exactly the same houses, since we are all from the former USSR, and when refugees with crying children and pets are forced to leave they destroyed home itâs really scary! The feeling of oneâs own impotence is especially terrible. Unfortunately, I think that about 80% of the Russian population supports the war and, unfortunately, among my friends and some relatives also.
Therefore, communication within the country these days is not always comfortable. For this reason, communication in a nightclub is especially importance to me. So, thanks again for the words of support. Sincerely Boris
Welcome, Boris. And thanks for your words of peace and compassion.
It is terrible what the US and other countries are doing to the Russian people via economic warfare. It is my understanding that your stock market and your currency was attacked as well, greatly devaluing both, is this true? I heard that on the news, and it was supposed to punish the rich russian oligarchs, but my guess it it hurt the middle class far more. Oligarchs can pull their money supply out of the market far faster and get inside information, so my guess is they were out ofmthe market a year ago, even before Putins summer announcements that he was planning on invading.
I blame the Western countires for this war far more than I blame Putin. If the US and UK and their allys really wanted to provent the deaths of so many innocent civillians they would have agreed to never allow Ukraine to join Nato (which would have been a simple treaty to break in the future) or they would have droned the hell out of the Russian Military as soon as they stepped foot into the Ukraine boarder.
Russian oil companies are not the only ones making record profits, American oil companies are as well. Something smells very foul about this crisis.
I did not realize that 80% of Russians support the war. Our media outlets have said that number is much lower. I will take your word for it over them.
I feel like if Ukraine was an Orphanage, and Russia was a serial killer attacking it, the US would be the neighbor that decided to mail a box of butter knives to the children to defend themselves. Very said that after 20 years of war in Afganistan, we allowed for the start of a potentially equally long war in Ukraine. How many civilians died in the Iraq war?
I am sincerely hoping that after a winter of energy and gas shortages Europe wakes up, and decides to protect the sheep from these wolves.
My heart goes out to you and your people, along with so many who are suffering in Ukraine. I think you definitely came to the right place. When you can not change the nature of a situation or enviornment, there is always the option to change our relationship to the views of that reality. Far easier said than done though.
Stay strong and be well
If you canât count it, it doesnât count. Literally. All politicians like to quote statistics to support their positions. Doing so is especially important in democracies, where reasoned arguments matter, not just the top leaderâs command.
Reality, of course, is often not as clear as numbers lead us to believe. Winston Churchill once reportedly said that âthe only statistics you can trust are the ones you have falsified yourselfâ. His predecessor , Benjamin Disraeli, allegedly said there were âthree kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statisticsâ.Nevertheless, one should be careful about my opinion too. those people who support the war, to what extent do they support it? Itâs one thing to talk about it while drinking a glass of vodka, itâs another thing to participate in hostilities yourself ,or even worse, send your own children to participate in the massacre. Certainly in this case, the percentages can be inversely proportional.
Hundred percent true! It is especially suspicious that during the 6 months of hostilities the gas pipeline from Russia to Europe, which passes through the territory of Ukraine, has never been accidentally or intentionally damaged. Very strange selectivity of missiles or shells ,in fact
I just met my old friend yesterday, he is a bhikkhu in the Tibetan tradition and has been living in Moscow for many years and he told me almost the same thing. So it would be wise to follow this double advice. Weirdly, but I have a strange feeling of deja vu, as if I had already answered a similar letter. Thanks for the good wishes. Boris
surprisingly, but not true, the dollar and the euro even fell compared to pre-war times. I think in the language of economics, this is called deflation. Perhaps the reason for this is the lack of tourist activity, as well as a sharp drop in imports. In other words, Russian companies simply do not buy dollars and euros on the market, and it really depreciates, but I am still not an expert in this area.
hello, nice to meet you!
@NightHawk999 You might want to read up on the facts of this war. I recommend theguardian.com
Fact is that Ukraine is a sovereign country. It was invaded by Russia. This is illegal according to international laws and statues, period. The prelude of the invasion was accompanied by weeks of denials and lies by the Russian government regarding its intentions regarding the 100.000 troops gathered at the border to Ukraine. Except for small border skirmishes all fighting is on Ukrainian soil. Ukraine is not part of NATO or EU. It is up to the sovereign people of Ukraine to decide on its political associations- not up to the US or Russia. Check also the real intentions for Putinâs invasion of Ukraine which he published openly which clearly illustrates that he sees Ukraine as part of a greater Russia.
Since I am on this forum for lucid dreaming and dream yoga, I will not further engage in political discussions but this I needed to reply.
So true.
Never heard either of those quotes, but they definiely made my day! Very true. It almost sounds like something the Buddha would say, and it is a very healthy reminder to question everything 