Having the shakes in the morning after meditation and chanting
Phew, I meditated and chanted so hard and long last night, I ended up dreaming an entirely different life overnight, one of those long dreams that seems to be many times longer than the actual time you slept, in this case several days of leading another life. As I write this, it's now more than one hour after I woke up from those dreams, and my body and hands are still shaking from the experience.
Calming phrases before evening meditation or sleep
Through most of my life I've used my thoughts to try to calm myself down before going to sleep at night, and before evening meditations. I thought I'd share some of those phrases here today.
In my teens
When I was in my teens and had too much energy, I'd lay in bed at night, unable to fall asleep, so I'd follow this pattern of thoughts:
The man who would rather meditate than have margaritas with three women
Over the last five years there have been many, many examples that "timing is everything", and of those I can share, no example is truer than this afternoon.
While on my usual afternoon bike ride I passed three young women who were also out for a ride, but at a slower pace. It took a few moments to pass them, and as I did they mentioned that they were discussing margaritas.
I immediately had at least three thoughts:
Don't believe anything you can't demonstrate
A long time ago in a Zen book I read a phrase that I really like, and it goes something like this:
"Don't believe anything you can't demonstrate for yourself."
Quotes from Autobiography of a Yogi
Before going to bed tonight, I thought I'd share some quotes from the book, Autobiography of a Yogi.
I've written many times in this blog about "vibrations", and here's one quote regarding thought vibrations:
"All thoughts vibrate eternally in the cosmos. By deep concentration, a master is able to detect the thoughts of any mind, living or dead."
I've also discussed my own ability to slow my breath. While I have a very long way to go in this regard, here is a quote about slowing the breath and consciousness:
Want to be rich?
One of my favorite books these days is a very short Buddhist book titled "Life in Relation to Death". While you might think the answer to that statement is obvious (death comes after life), well, I wrote the answer here before, and I'll repeat it again:
"In enlightenment, death has no relevance to one's state of being."
As the chef Emiril would say, "Bam!"
In regards to those wanting wealth, the author offers another gold nugget.
Thinking about not-thinking
Many times when I meditate I engage in a struggle: "Okay, count from 1 to 10 while breathing in and out ... 1, 2, 3, ... oh man, I forgot to do xyz at work ... it's kinda bright in here ... pay the credit card bill tomorrow ... darn neighbor's dog is barking, why don't they let it in? ... Oh, crap, I forgot, I was counting ... 1, 2 ...", and so on. It's not always that bad, but if you've ever meditated, you know how it goes some times.
A short OBE, and OBE, lucid dreams, and Zen thoughts
On Friday I drove to a lodge about ninety miles north of my current apartment. I got there too early to check in, so I did what I planned to do: Changed my clothes, pulled my bicycle out of the back of the car, and road a 25-mile bike path.
When I got back from the ride I checked into the lodge, took a shower, and walked around for a while. Tired from a lack of sleep the last two nights, I had dinner, came back to the lodge, read a book for a while, then began to fall asleep.
Inception notes
Just a few quick notes after watching Inception last night. First, whoever wrote it knew what they were writing about. The wife's emotions, the use of totems, environmental influences on dreams, and many other concepts were right on. I think someone would have to be an experienced lucid dreamer to know those things, or else they did their research very well.
Precognition and The Theory of Relativity
Note: The ideas discussed here are a work in progress. When I get to the end of the article, I don't know how a thing made of pure energy (and no physical matter) would work in Einstein's Theory of Relativity. I know it would be a very different frame of reference than our normal human condition, and it would observe Time and Space differently than our physical body, but I don't know how.
