i think i go from asleep to awake faster than you, johnnyam
Well, yeah, I don't wake up like that every time. When our kids were infants my wife and I shared getting up at 3AM for stuff and you develop a new set of reflexes, but I saw a show where Paul McCartney said he got 'Yesterday' while in that half awake state. Who knows, maybe Peter nodded out while praying on Simon the tanner's roof and saw those animals while waking up.
Who knows, maybe Peter nodded out while praying on Simon the tanner's roof and saw those animals while waking up.
i was gonna point to that too. not as intense, but at least of the same state or substance or medium
but i also think Peter (being a disciple of Jesus the wilderness wanderer) was highly disciplined at sitting cross-legged and staying awake as long as he could.
no food, no sleep = drop awareness of your body and time and such.
and so...no wonder the jman needed food and sleep and medical attention when he was done with his 40 days and nights
Thats probably my favorite moment of the day, when you are straddling the bridge from the dream world to the waking world , the veil is very thin between the two, the consciousness has yet to be bounded by the normal waking restrictions, and the voice of the subconscious, the spirit, or whatever the heck it is seems to be the clearest...
...but I saw a show where Paul McCartney said he got 'Yesterday' while in that half awake state.
Interesting.
Pat Enright (guitarist, and lead vocalist) for THE DREADFUL SNAKES, and later THE NASHVILLE BLUEGRASS BAND was in a hospital bed, in a coma, and found by his bedside on a piece of paper (in his handwriting), were the following lyrics, which became a big bluegrass hit back in the 80's.
Once he emerged from the coma -- he had no recollection of writing anything, but it was undeniably his handwriting, and a nurse found it on the floor by his bed during a routine check on him while he was still in the coma. Guess there is something to be said for that *in between state*.
quote:
Who's That Knocking At My Door
by Pat Enright
chorus:Â
Whose that knocking at my door, have I heard that knock before,
Is it evil trying to get into my room?
Who’s that tapping at my window, who's calling me to go,
To a place that’s filled with dark and gloom.
Oh this life that I’m living, it seems so unforgiving
I find trouble everywhere that I go.
I always seek it first, just to quench my burning thirst
In waters that are cool as fallen snow.
But the waters are oh so deep, what you sow you must reap.
Now I hear a knocking at my door.
It’s evil standing outside, and there’s no place to run and hide.
It plucks my soul and presses me to the floor.
(chorus)
Oh I’ve been down that pathway, it always leads the wrong way
But this time I don’t think I’ll be back.
Like a freight train pulling me, there’s a dark tunnel ahead I see
Who made these waking restrictions anyway; they sure can be annoying.
We've been ;)-->programmed by religion, schools, society and friends..not to linger in that state...at least our society doesnt place much value on it....gotta Get Up! Get Busy! be a good producer and consumer! Buy Something!
Even if there was no pressure to buy something as you say, natural laws seem to mandate being awake eventually, but you hit on something. Consider these Beatles lyrics...
please don't wake me, no don't shake me, leave me where I am; I'm only sleeping.
Yes, avoiding mainstream awake consciousness is sometimes a "welcomed friend". Maybe that's why a lot of our generation took drugs.
i'm glad this thread is staying alive. forgive if i "go doctrinal," but heerz a crude summation of what ive learned and experienced. maybe some of it will address some of the points brought up:
it appears that we move thru approx 3 states of awareness each day...
...waking, dreaming, and a deep formless state
these are often called things like:
body, soul and spirit, or gross, subtle and causal realms
(though there are a thousand other sets of terms and models throughout history, these seem to float to the top in the east-meets-west discussions)
we "move" thru each of them in a sense, every day, in that we relax into (or literally "sit in") each state for a period of time
most people (modern or ancient) naturally do not practice or seek much of the latter 2 state
and if they do, its usually only the soul/subtle, and even then, only partially, or accidentally, or perhaps even addictively
and so we usually miss out on being aware in the soul and spirit realms, pretty consistently throughout our lives.
and the causal/spirit deep formless sleep realms are about as close to "death" state as one can get, and the way we often fearfully approach death and dying reflects our lack of practicing maintaining awareness thru "dying" on a daily basis throughout our lives
for an adept at resting in the subtle realms, one pretty much knows they are in the dreaming state. they do not forget they are dreaming and believe they are in it. they are in the audience watching the sublime flics of their soul with a box of popcorn in their lap, taking notes (like saint Peter, when he "entered into that closet")
for an adept at resting in the causual realms, one is still aware when the dreams fade and come to an end. infinite bliss and radiance is how its been described. no mind, no body, no time, but wide awake...and then watching as the soul and body fade back into awareness
we simply usually just miss the latter 2 states due to lack of practice, education, interest, religious/cultural taboos and ignorances, etc...
but we can and do peak/peek into these realms often. drugs, fasting, trauma, etc... can all kinda throw us into these states while still awake, even though we have not made them a habit of our "being," if you will (and so we "fall" back out)
also, to say that we "move thru" these states every day is one thing, but the truth is, all of these states are active and present during every breath we take. the result of practicing them is that they eventually all become present in our moment by moment awareness. we became acutely aware of ours and others' "layeredness" (even that of cats and dogs...;)-->)
and imo, it was this kind of inner salvation and wholeness that allowed the saints of the first century to do such amazing and wonderfully good things. i mean, when you no longer solely identify yourself with your waking/gross/body state (or just body and soul states), there is a liberation that bleeds into your behaviour and interactions. what you are simply willing and able to do and say and sacrifice expands quite a bit.
I once took a college class, intro to psyche, where they showed us films of college students who volunteered to have their brain waves monitored while they slept. They figure everybody dreams every 1 1/2 hrs all night, so I guess anyone can wake up woozy depending on what part of the sleep cycle they're in when they wake up.
in fact, the ole lo shanta shanta style "speaking in tongues" has played a role in some kinds of meditation for me
as it all pertains to "waking up woozy"...i have had some real profound and often startling "successes" in playing in these states since i started practicing
When I was in college I saw a lot of people who were into meditation. Two guys I lived with for a time went to a Bhuddist place in Chicago and they'd be supposed to meditate and the leader would walk among everybody and the guys said he'd know if they weren't focussed and occasionally whack them on the shoulder in a certain spot which would be painful.
I never tried it myself. In Dec of '02 I was at a John Hendricks advanced class and he asked everybody one day to sing in tongues for 2 hours during the afternoon. My wife and I sat on beach chairs on the Gulf of Mexico and did it to the tunes of Christmas carols and other familiar songs. I didn't feel "high" but it felt good.
I never would have associated this with waking up woozy though. There was a guy in my WOW twig who meditated and sometimes I wondered if he was out of control, but he didn't seem to be harmed by it.
and what might this mean to our modern christian states of mind?
(and sorry if i derailed yer thread, johniam...but i've seen some strong connections between of the crude way VP taught "speaking in tongues" and various refined methods of meditation. which might benefit some here. a distant latter rain parallel development, if you ask me...kinda like ive described in the "vps spiritual spike" thread...which also has something to do with "waking up woozy" and human capacity to have visions (even of snow) and such, and many many other various states of mind can we read of in all scripture (1 Cor 2:13ff) and experience in day to day life)
Sirguess: I didn't feel like you derailed the thread; just added another dimension to it. TWI put their "possession stamp" on meditation, but they did that with other things, too. I've never thought of being able to control a woozy, half awake state; mine come haphazardly, but although it doesn't say that Jesus meditated, it says he got up a great while before day and prayed. Peter's vision is also significant. Even VP called it a "dormant state of mental awareness".
That guy in my WOW twig said his meditation was better when he listened to music; he specifically mentioned certain songs on "Takin' it to the streets" by the Doobies. He said taking PFAL helped his meditation, too.
yeah, "meditation" is just a word, like any other word.
some buddhist lineages seemed to have really honed the arts of it over the past centuries, but all spiritual traditions and scriptures have aspects of contemplation and meditation in them, even if they describe it with a different tongue.
and there are many styles of meditation, just as there are many recipes for tea. some zinger and honey for this, some earl grey for that...
but the common thread, is that all bloods of humanity have naturally developed valid ways to "rest in The Witness" (from Hopi to Sufi to Jesuit to Aborigine) via a simple means to a generic place where subjects becomes objects in nested layers, and "the stuff" dreams are made of becomes more tangible and useful and subordinate to increasingly "higher ground"
imo, every epistle and gospel and OT record shows many many shades and degrees of evidence that this level of human experience (reached via what we often call "meditation") was alive and well (and downright majestic) in the many of the spiritual lineages that came out of Abraham
to learn to meditate is to enter the "death" state. the last enemy (within) is finally overcome. reminds me of how we are to "trim the wicks of all the smoking candles in the temple," by becoming adept at "snuffing them," then relighting them. "meditation" practice allows us to simply see these "candles of the soul" as objects rather than subjects.
though, also, not all things called "meditation" function on the same level. a lot of McMeditation out there in materialist culture (even in Asia). a lot of crude delusional half-baked "PFALs" of meditation. they may "bump" and "rattle" us a bit and help us along and make us calm, but they do not all bring one to the same state of awareness that led Jesus to say "I AM," lt alone teach how to remain there in waking life. in other words, we might still always need to crank up that Barnes and Noble meditation CD to find "Abraham's rest"
for Christians, "contemplative christianity" is something very worth googling, imo. maybe check out Father Thomas Keating's work, too.
"contemplative christianity" is something very worth googling
If it wasn't for the contemplative wing of christianity, I would have totally given it up a long tme ago.
The contemplatives and mystics through the ages have left us a great body of work that transcends denominations and religions and in many ways approaches the core of our human experience..
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satori001
ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz
Wha?
I'd see a doctor about it.
Coyote is an amazing tune though. It was written about... me... I... think...
ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz
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excathedra
are you an arc ?
;)-->
i think i go from asleep to awake faster than you, johnnyam
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johniam
I'm not surprised.
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johniam
Well, yeah, I don't wake up like that every time. When our kids were infants my wife and I shared getting up at 3AM for stuff and you develop a new set of reflexes, but I saw a show where Paul McCartney said he got 'Yesterday' while in that half awake state. Who knows, maybe Peter nodded out while praying on Simon the tanner's roof and saw those animals while waking up.
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sharon
I know this was written for me-
I went to Staten Island.
To buy myself a mandolin
And I saw the long white dress of love
On a storefront mannequin
Big boat chuggin' back with a belly full of cars...
All for something lacy
Some girl's going to see that dress
And crave that day like crazy
Little Indian kids on a bridge up in Canada
They can balance and they can climb
Like their fathers before them
They'll walk the girders of the Manhattan skyline
Shine your light on me Miss Liberty
Because as soon as this ferry boat docks
I'm headed to the church
To play Bingo
Fleece me with the gamblers' flocks
I can keep my cool at poker
But I'm a fool when love's at stake
Because I can't conceal emotion
What I'm feeling's always written on my face
There's a gypsy down on Bleecker Street
I went in to see her as a kind of joke
And she lit a candle for my love luck
And eighteen bucks went up in smoke
Sharon, I left my man
At a North Dakota junction
And I came out to the "Big Apple" here
To face the dream's malfunction
Love's a repetitious danger
You'd think I'd be accustomed to
Well, I do accept the changes
At least better than I used to do
(song for sharon)
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sirguessalot
i was gonna point to that too. not as intense, but at least of the same state or substance or medium
but i also think Peter (being a disciple of Jesus the wilderness wanderer) was highly disciplined at sitting cross-legged and staying awake as long as he could.
no food, no sleep = drop awareness of your body and time and such.
and so...no wonder the jman needed food and sleep and medical attention when he was done with his 40 days and nights
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mstar1
Thats probably my favorite moment of the day, when you are straddling the bridge from the dream world to the waking world , the veil is very thin between the two, the consciousness has yet to be bounded by the normal waking restrictions, and the voice of the subconscious, the spirit, or whatever the heck it is seems to be the clearest...
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dmiller
Interesting.
Pat Enright (guitarist, and lead vocalist) for THE DREADFUL SNAKES, and later THE NASHVILLE BLUEGRASS BAND was in a hospital bed, in a coma, and found by his bedside on a piece of paper (in his handwriting), were the following lyrics, which became a big bluegrass hit back in the 80's.
Once he emerged from the coma -- he had no recollection of writing anything, but it was undeniably his handwriting, and a nurse found it on the floor by his bed during a routine check on him while he was still in the coma. Guess there is something to be said for that *in between state*.
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sirguessalot
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johniam
Who made these waking restrictions anyway; they sure can be annoying.
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mstar1
We've been
;)-->programmed by religion, schools, society and friends..not to linger in that state...at least our society doesnt place much value on it....gotta Get Up! Get Busy! be a good producer and consumer! Buy Something!
ugh --leave me alone...
What a day for a day dream
Custom made for a daydreamin boy
Now I'm lost in a sweet dream
dreamin 'bout my bundle of joy
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johniam
Even if there was no pressure to buy something as you say, natural laws seem to mandate being awake eventually, but you hit on something. Consider these Beatles lyrics...
please don't wake me, no don't shake me, leave me where I am; I'm only sleeping.
Yes, avoiding mainstream awake consciousness is sometimes a "welcomed friend". Maybe that's why a lot of our generation took drugs.
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sirguessalot
i'm glad this thread is staying alive. forgive if i "go doctrinal," but heerz a crude summation of what ive learned and experienced. maybe some of it will address some of the points brought up:
it appears that we move thru approx 3 states of awareness each day...
...waking, dreaming, and a deep formless state
these are often called things like:
body, soul and spirit, or gross, subtle and causal realms
(though there are a thousand other sets of terms and models throughout history, these seem to float to the top in the east-meets-west discussions)
we "move" thru each of them in a sense, every day, in that we relax into (or literally "sit in") each state for a period of time
most people (modern or ancient) naturally do not practice or seek much of the latter 2 state
and if they do, its usually only the soul/subtle, and even then, only partially, or accidentally, or perhaps even addictively
and so we usually miss out on being aware in the soul and spirit realms, pretty consistently throughout our lives.
and the causal/spirit deep formless sleep realms are about as close to "death" state as one can get, and the way we often fearfully approach death and dying reflects our lack of practicing maintaining awareness thru "dying" on a daily basis throughout our lives
for an adept at resting in the subtle realms, one pretty much knows they are in the dreaming state. they do not forget they are dreaming and believe they are in it. they are in the audience watching the sublime flics of their soul with a box of popcorn in their lap, taking notes (like saint Peter, when he "entered into that closet")
for an adept at resting in the causual realms, one is still aware when the dreams fade and come to an end. infinite bliss and radiance is how its been described. no mind, no body, no time, but wide awake...and then watching as the soul and body fade back into awareness
we simply usually just miss the latter 2 states due to lack of practice, education, interest, religious/cultural taboos and ignorances, etc...
but we can and do peak/peek into these realms often. drugs, fasting, trauma, etc... can all kinda throw us into these states while still awake, even though we have not made them a habit of our "being," if you will (and so we "fall" back out)
also, to say that we "move thru" these states every day is one thing, but the truth is, all of these states are active and present during every breath we take. the result of practicing them is that they eventually all become present in our moment by moment awareness. we became acutely aware of ours and others' "layeredness" (even that of cats and dogs...
;)-->)
and imo, it was this kind of inner salvation and wholeness that allowed the saints of the first century to do such amazing and wonderfully good things. i mean, when you no longer solely identify yourself with your waking/gross/body state (or just body and soul states), there is a liberation that bleeds into your behaviour and interactions. what you are simply willing and able to do and say and sacrifice expands quite a bit.
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johniam
I once took a college class, intro to psyche, where they showed us films of college students who volunteered to have their brain waves monitored while they slept. They figure everybody dreams every 1 1/2 hrs all night, so I guess anyone can wake up woozy depending on what part of the sleep cycle they're in when they wake up.
Sirguess: do you do meditation?
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sirguessalot
Yes. A few different kinds, for different applications.
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sirguessalot
in fact, the ole lo shanta shanta style "speaking in tongues" has played a role in some kinds of meditation for me
as it all pertains to "waking up woozy"...i have had some real profound and often startling "successes" in playing in these states since i started practicing
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johniam
When I was in college I saw a lot of people who were into meditation. Two guys I lived with for a time went to a Bhuddist place in Chicago and they'd be supposed to meditate and the leader would walk among everybody and the guys said he'd know if they weren't focussed and occasionally whack them on the shoulder in a certain spot which would be painful.
I never tried it myself. In Dec of '02 I was at a John Hendricks advanced class and he asked everybody one day to sing in tongues for 2 hours during the afternoon. My wife and I sat on beach chairs on the Gulf of Mexico and did it to the tunes of Christmas carols and other familiar songs. I didn't feel "high" but it felt good.
I never would have associated this with waking up woozy though. There was a guy in my WOW twig who meditated and sometimes I wondered if he was out of control, but he didn't seem to be harmed by it.
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sirguessalot
i think "meditation" is a univeral biological process/tool
even animals and trees "meditate," in a sense
its just that some racial lineages excelled at developing more effective means of entering the dreaming and dreamless sleep states
and some excelled at recording and/or expressing these methods
also, in our age of hyper-languages, the word "meditation" is used to describe a wide variety of things
some meditation methods will get one in touch will "soul"
some will destroy the soul
some will go farther than soul
a lot of strip mall "meditations" and "yogas" these days seem to lack the traditional depth (and patience, affordability, etc...)
materialist meditations, materialist yogas, materialist churches, etc...
some good questions for Christians might be:
Did Jesus "meditate?"
Did he teach his disciples to "meditate?"
Did Abraham meditate?
Did Moses meditate?
Did Solomon meditate?
Did Ezekial meditate?
Did Paul meditate?
Did Peter meditate?
etc...
and what might this mean to our modern christian states of mind?
(and sorry if i derailed yer thread, johniam...but i've seen some strong connections between of the crude way VP taught "speaking in tongues" and various refined methods of meditation. which might benefit some here. a distant latter rain parallel development, if you ask me...kinda like ive described in the "vps spiritual spike" thread...which also has something to do with "waking up woozy" and human capacity to have visions (even of snow) and such, and many many other various states of mind can we read of in all scripture (1 Cor 2:13ff) and experience in day to day life)
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johniam
Sirguess: I didn't feel like you derailed the thread; just added another dimension to it. TWI put their "possession stamp" on meditation, but they did that with other things, too. I've never thought of being able to control a woozy, half awake state; mine come haphazardly, but although it doesn't say that Jesus meditated, it says he got up a great while before day and prayed. Peter's vision is also significant. Even VP called it a "dormant state of mental awareness".
That guy in my WOW twig said his meditation was better when he listened to music; he specifically mentioned certain songs on "Takin' it to the streets" by the Doobies. He said taking PFAL helped his meditation, too.
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sirguessalot
yeah, "meditation" is just a word, like any other word.
some buddhist lineages seemed to have really honed the arts of it over the past centuries, but all spiritual traditions and scriptures have aspects of contemplation and meditation in them, even if they describe it with a different tongue.
and there are many styles of meditation, just as there are many recipes for tea. some zinger and honey for this, some earl grey for that...
but the common thread, is that all bloods of humanity have naturally developed valid ways to "rest in The Witness" (from Hopi to Sufi to Jesuit to Aborigine) via a simple means to a generic place where subjects becomes objects in nested layers, and "the stuff" dreams are made of becomes more tangible and useful and subordinate to increasingly "higher ground"
imo, every epistle and gospel and OT record shows many many shades and degrees of evidence that this level of human experience (reached via what we often call "meditation") was alive and well (and downright majestic) in the many of the spiritual lineages that came out of Abraham
to learn to meditate is to enter the "death" state. the last enemy (within) is finally overcome. reminds me of how we are to "trim the wicks of all the smoking candles in the temple," by becoming adept at "snuffing them," then relighting them. "meditation" practice allows us to simply see these "candles of the soul" as objects rather than subjects.
though, also, not all things called "meditation" function on the same level. a lot of McMeditation out there in materialist culture (even in Asia). a lot of crude delusional half-baked "PFALs" of meditation. they may "bump" and "rattle" us a bit and help us along and make us calm, but they do not all bring one to the same state of awareness that led Jesus to say "I AM," lt alone teach how to remain there in waking life. in other words, we might still always need to crank up that Barnes and Noble meditation CD to find "Abraham's rest"
for Christians, "contemplative christianity" is something very worth googling, imo. maybe check out Father Thomas Keating's work, too.
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mstar1
If it wasn't for the contemplative wing of christianity, I would have totally given it up a long tme ago.
The contemplatives and mystics through the ages have left us a great body of work that transcends denominations and religions and in many ways approaches the core of our human experience..
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