Originally published at: http://nightclub.andrewholecek.com/webinar/webinar-25/
This webinar was devoted entirely to question and answer.
Webinar Questions:
1.
My “Mission Statement” on this path is coalescing into this:
-Practice pure perception and non-dual awareness.
-Abide in pure presence and exist in the primordial luminous state.
-Break the grasp of karmic conditioning and become your true self.
Can you correct any way that I may be misguiding myself in that?
2.
I read an excerpt from your book Preparing to Die recently. I appreciated all that was said. However, I was challenged by the small point about watching horror movies on purpose…I think I fully understand the logic and value of reverse meditations, and have heard about past yogis visiting charnel grounds, etc. Still, I’m not convinced about horror movies.
A final issue for me is that I’ve recently begun to try sleep meditation and lucid dreaming more seriously, and while I have never had a problem with nightmares, I admit to being a bit more sensitive to the prospect of negative imagery than before.
3.
I have always been terrified of the dark. If I sleep in a dark room without a nightlight I systematically have an appalling nightmare. I wake up screaming and believing I am about to be killed. It is too quick and too late to become lucid. Do you have any advice about this?
4.
Do you have advice on how to best cope if faced with terrifying circumstances in the waking state & being confronted with death?
5.
How to live freely without fear in a world that is driven by differences, and fear?
6.
Can you give me some advice? I have neuropathy in my hands. In your dream yoga book, you mentioned a gentleman who healed his chronic pain using dream yoga (in one night no less!!). Do you have any advice on how I can proceed?”
7.
Why is it so difficult to control my dreams?
8.
What is the Tibetan Dream Yogic stance on precognitive dreams? Throughout my life, I have occasionally had what seem to be precognitive dreams.
9.
– Is Belief simply a reified thought?
– Would this render all Beliefs equally legitimate or illegitimate?
– Does this suggest that there is no absolute truth… Is truth relative? What IS Truth?
10.
I would like to ask you why I have almost stopped dreaming, when I started practicing zazen? I would like to be lucid and conscious in dreams, but I do not have them or do not remember them [anymore]. My teacher Roshi teacher says that more important is to polish my mind and to be aware and compassionate – that’s it. But I want to be aware in my dreams as well. My question is how to integrate dzogchen and zen? The Rinzai school has no thodol bardo teachings. What do I need to do?
11.
I’m currently studying under the Rinzai Zen tradition and I am interested in Dream Yoga. Under the Rinzai Zen tradition we use the Chinese energetic system and not the Indian/Tibetan chakra based system. Seeing that I come from the Rinzai Zen tradition (with an entirely different energy map) and would like to practice dream yoga would there be any conflict?
Last, is keeping a dream journal absolutely crucial in the practice of dream yoga? I ask because I personally find the more mainstream Lucid Dreaming methods to be rather distracting (with critical state testing) and rather forceful (with all the dream journaling/analysis).
12.
Does one ever become so proficient that the diurnal and nocturnal instructions / practices are no longer necessary?
13.
I am working through Evan Thompson’s book and he references the Fourth State of consciousness that underlies the Waking State, the Dream State and the Dreamless Sleep state. Would you consider that Fourth State to be the realm of that true self (non-self)… a place from which we can illuminate the Waking, Sleep and Dreamless Sleep states?
14.
I’m wondering what the body in illusory body refers to. I understand ‘illusory’ but I don’t understand ‘body’. Is it a reference to the subtle body or the after-death experience?