Background: I was living off the grid in the Upper Amazon Basin some years ago. In one of my infrequent visits to town, I come upon OMNI (Magazine). In it is a small report about the exciting new experience of lucid dreaming. That night, back in the jungle, I have my first lucid dream!
Dream: I awaken into the LD to find myself on the back of a giant. The lucid dream is utterly real, and since I have never before had an experience like this, I ask the giant what is going on. He answers, âI am a dream and so are youâ. I was so impacted that I drew this dream event.
This is fine. I donât think most of us think about these categories at all. I donât. I just click on Community/Latest Topics, and go from there. All the new posts appear. I bookmark the ones I donât want to lose track of.
Terrific story! It seems your artistic soul just oozes awareness! Thanks for posting the picture. Youâre inspiring me to draw some of these myself.
âBackground: I was living off the grid in the Upper Amazon Basin some years ago. In one of my infrequent visits to town, I come upon OMNI (Magazine).â
Love to hear more about your experience there, that sounds like quite the adventure!!!
Very wise words. Do you think that was your subconscious communicating with you? Or do you think that message came from a higher power?
Thank you @Barry
I am glad that these conversations are giving inspiration to you to put your dreams into images. I am getting ideas and some strength of purpose, too, to perhaps move out into some new genres to better express the dream. The Art category in NC is full of playful, yet serious discovery.
@NightHawk999
First about jungle:
I lived in the Oriente jungle of Ecuador for about 7 years. Our farm is called Omega, on the shores of the Rio Napo, a tributary of the Amazon. We grew chocolate, and took the dried beans by canoe to town every Sunday. I was a colonist. I drew and painted my surreal work, fished for dreams, was haunted by vivid night terrors. I collected and illustrated orchids and was hired by botanical gardens. Fast forward: I was forced to leave. Fast forward again: I have been returning to the farm, which has reverted to jungle now, and belongs to my sons. I visit as often as possible, and last month took Ayahuasca there. I met the local spirits (supay, they are called here). I met my dead ex-husbandâs supay and supays of large trees. They mentally told me that I can return, that it is important for me to be there again. For me and for that location. Perhaps it is my favorite place.
@NightHawk999
Second:
I have been seeking to understand for years who this Other is, who the dream characters are. Do they have autonomy or are they part of oneself?
We call the Ayahuasca experience, âMedicineâ. âWe get what we need, not what we wantâ is the common dictum from Shamans here, and I think they are right. The Ayahuasca experience is custom fit, caring, it knows you. So who knows who? The plant activates and makes visable the large Self, so we can savor a small facet of a hidden alternate reality for a short time-is the best description I can offer. In the lucid dream, who is it that shows you something greater than corporeal existence? Does the lucid dream expose visually our greater hidden god-like Self? What I know so far is that the Dream creator (self, Self?) is caring and healing and informative in a wisdom practice that is heavily concealed. And in my short time that I have been in this dream sangha here at NC, I observe how many of us have been rearranging our days and our nights (sometimes for months, years) to get close to this source and that we suffer when we can no longer enter into these territories.
Iâve heard Andrew offer a quote as it being âlight unseen.â
During my Waldorf teacher training, which focused so much on the natural world and bio-dynamic farming, Iâve heard that Rudolf Steiner, Austrian Mystic and Waldorf founder, described man/woman as an âupside down plantâ with roots in the cosmos. The reverence for the plant, animal and mineral worlds was unmatched in any other educational system that Iâve encountered.
I also had many experiences with Ayahuasca, although I never made it down to the Amazon. I worked with Ayahuasca shamans who were traveling through the U.S. to offer the Medicine.) Itâs definitely a powerful healing path! My experiences were at times terrifying and other times blissful but always healing and revealing of deeper wisdom. And yes, it seems the dream is saying that you are being carried by something bigger, as I believe we all are.
Really loved that story, talk about living life to its fullest! I believe in Supays, and I find it very fascinating that throughout time and throughout many cultures, this belief was shared by many religions. Even the ancient Romans believed in rivers and streams and trees having spirits, along with the 12 major Olympian Gods and Goddesses, they had thousands of âsmallerâ dieties. Same goes for the Egyptians.
I have not done Ayahuasca, but it is on my bucket list. My biggest fear holding me back is being incapacitated around a stranger in a foreign location.
I hate to say it, the more I learn, the more I feel that there is a âconspiracyâ in our society to keep people as detached from the source as possible. Can you imagine what would happen to the economy if all people got close to the source? I think there is a direct correlation to how much people suffer, and how much they then consume.
âI have not done Ayahuasca, but it is on my bucket list. My biggest fear holding me back is being incapacitated around a stranger in a foreign locationâ. @NightHawk999
This is definitely a valid fear and a wise approach. There is no hurry. To visit a foreign land, without language skills and expose your raw psyche to strangers is not advisable, in my opinion. We cannot entrust our most sacred inner being to total unknown hearsay, and hope for the best! One suggestion is to partake of these travels with a trusted friend, someone who has your back, but only after thorough investigation. Or perhaps even an opportunity will arrive closer to your home some day as @fenwizard has experienced.
In my case, I have done this many times in safe situations in the Andes, these plants grow about 3 hours away on the eastern slope to the Oriente, and I happen to be a plant person. In this last situation on the Rio Napo, my son had prepared the brew, and we embibed it in our old home grounds full of our personal history. Interestingly, he did not have a vivid experience as I did, but we were together to protect each other anyway, and we were both concerned for each other as night descended, as we both went thru the normal sickness/purification, and the arriving engagement with the Ayahuasca/chacruna, to the level that it affected each of us.
A final note: in Ayahuasca tourism, often the Shaman adds a small amount of datura to the Ayahuasca brew so that the voyager has a more potent journey. I am deathly afraid of the scopaline in this plant that gives intense hellish visions accompanied by temporary loss of Will and personal identity and possible wiped out memory as your body continues to engage in the world without your knowledge! If you read any Carlos Castaneda, this plant was his greatest fear.
So ask before you leap!
âThere is no hurry. To visit a foreign land, without language skills and expose your raw psyche to strangers is not advisable, in my opinion. We cannot entrust our most sacred inner being to total unknown hearsay, and hope for the best! One suggestion is to partake of these travels with a trusted friend, someone who has your back, but only after thorough investigation. Or perhaps even an opportunity will arrive closer to your home some day as @fenwizard has experienced.â @Carolel
Great advice, I think you are 100% right, the only way I would travel to domit would be with a trusted friend, and someone who was in a good head space for trip.
I am glad that you mentioned Datura, it is a drug that Imdont think many people know about and is terrifingly dangerous. I first learned about it through this documentary:
There is another video talking about one of the Voodoo practices in the carribeon of giving people a cocktail potion and burrying them, and having them ârise from the deadâ as a zombie. The investigator trys to learn the make up of this potion, and theorizes that it contains Datura along with Puffer fish poisen as too of the major components. I will try to find a link for that video.
if you like part 1, you should be able to search the title to find the other 5 parts on youtube. Not the most scientific documentary, but I still found it fascinating and horrifying.
@Nighthawk999 There are Shamans in the US in private communities that offer journeys using various plants including Ayahuasca and if one keeps an ear to the ground the opportunity may present itself!
I am very glad you and @fenwizard brought up that point, I did not know you could access the pure form of the plant here.
I have heard of people getting synthetic forms of the DMT drug through drug dealers, but that does not interest me. Would rather do it the traditional route, with an experienced Shaman and trusted friend(s).
Will keep my ear close to the ground for sure, I have faith that when the time is right, the opportunity will present itself.
Actually, I think that it is only myself, (not society) that is in the way to more lucid dreams and deeper perception in these yogas. In art, and in music especially, it is said that we need to practice 10,000 hours to become a master. Lucid dreaming is a kind of art form, and we work with very subtle and nuanced parts of ourselves. It is a kind of balancing act in a straight and narrow path. Too much or too little, an incorrect proportion of awake:asleep consciousness, and we donât enter into the territory. There is plenty of help out there now, here in NC, as well as many other places too. We just have to do the work. I donât think that society even cares about us, let alone conspiracists!!
One of the things that I like about the Night Club strata is the use of lucid dreaming as part of a greater Dream Yoga practice, which uses lucid dreaming and cultivating awareness to further âclearâ oneâs mind, both in the sensori-rich daytime and the sensori-sleeping resting at night. The Dream Yoga practices do take effort to develop and sustain, but Iâve seen people succeed when the intent and practices are totally congruent. Again, this is where the NC excels by offering the virtual practice platform for perfecting lucidity and beyond.
There are people who have been lucid dreaming all their lives and those who have only done it when they heard about it. Thatâs me, having my first lucid dream at 71 years of age. For me, lots of conditions have to be just right for lucidity, just like the conditions have to be just right for a rainbow to appear. I have learned somewhat how to set up those conditions, and succeed more often than not, but the fact is that not all the conditions are under my control. Itâs an art form, but weâre all creative artistsâto paraphrase Andrew Holececk, Look at the amazing things in the world we have co-created.
I agree, best to take responsibility! However, society can be a quickening medium or retardant as well. One person in my Dream Group has a 9 year old daughter with whom she has been working to cultivate her lucid dreaming skills, and the youngster has been successfully lucid frequently, even sharing her dreams with the adult group. Participating in Night Club discussions and webinars has been very motivational for many folks, showing that societal influences, or a sangha (Buddhist community) can be quite beneficial for lucid-dreaming development.
place.
