Messages

Is there any way I can put a member name in somewhere and get to his or her profile? I am looking for Mendel and it is apparently right in the middle of the list. I don't have time to click through 200+ screens! Can you help?

I can say for sure that an OBE can be in the physical and not on the astral -- been there, done that.   I didn't have enough time to think about going far and have been unable to do it again so far, but time will tell...

So much of what we call OBE boils down to semantics -- how you define the term. Personally, I believe I frequently go OBE while dreaming. The main problem there is maintaining lucidity while OBE. Vilkate, you know what I mean -- you did the dream thing yourself!  

I can't comment from personal experience on the astral plan because I am not sure I've been there yet.

Nay,

I am always glad when you post -- always worth reading!  

My few experiences with negative images so far have been easily sent packing by imaging an appropriate weapon. Once I mentally smacked a BEM with a flyswatter and it came back as a huge beast of some kind. So I imagined a really huge foot coming down on its nasty little head and that was the end of that!  

So far, nothing has ever followed me from the meditative to the physical, knock on wood!  

TVoS,

You posted this statement on another topic:

when I feel a negativity I return back to the body.

Can you explain this a bit more? Have you ever had that negativity follow you back?

Thanks!  

Ivaldi,

Presuming you are speaking of yourself, my first question is do you do drugs? Any kind, booze, speed, pot, whatever -- any of it? I am not preaching "right" or "wrong" but that stuff can seriously mess over your mind. If you are seriously thinking of suicide then you owe it to yourself to be sure it is your decision, and not made by the chemicals in your body.

...full of hate, could no longer feel emotion...

Hate is an emotion, a bad one. You may also be feeling sadness, persecuted, misunderstood and absolutely alone. All of those are emotions.

One other (that you may deny) is very much there -- selfishness. Your example has nothing to do with thinking of others and everything to do with fixating on yourself!  :exclamation:

Have you ever said to yourself, "It's not fair! Why me?" or perhaps, "I should have that -- it's not right that they don't give it to me!" News flash: the world doesn't owe you a thing, and life is most certainly not fair! I could write a book, but I'll spare you the details. Just stop thinking about what everyone else owes you and start thinking how you can earn it yourself!

Stookie nailed it:

Suicide is to chicken-out on life.

Also consider this: it is very likely that your family has no idea how you are feeling, or what emotions are running through you. It would be very selfish of you to chicken out without giving them at least a chance to understand where you are coming from.

And for yourself, overcoming your selfishness may be just exactly the lesson that you are in this world to learn! Who knows? And if you decide to play hooky and skip the lesson, odds are you will just be sent right back to do it all again. Why not save the extra laps and learn it this time through!  

Suicide is a tool we have available to us, but its misuse doesn't get us anywhere!

My experiences, OBE, precognition, etc., have been totally without drugs.

Some native americans do use substances to induce metaphysical experiences. Others used (don't know if they still do) solitary journeys with little water or food to gain a spirit dream that gave them insight. Frankly, (though I am too lazy to do it,  ) I think the second group has the better idea. If you can get your body tired enough to just chill, then your mind has a chance to explore.

Alcohol is a drug. Tobacco is a drug. Sugar is a drug. If you don't believe that last one, fast for about 24 hours and then pig out on sugar and see what happens. The benefit to sugar is that it is legal and cheap!  

Philosophically, if you can afford it (no mooching off parents or friends, and no stealing) and it doesn't hurt anyone else, do what you want to do. Just be aware of the risk you take with the addictive stuff!

James,

You rock!!  

Yes, I was being a little picky on the physics thing, but it does seem to be everywhere: earth-water, rock-air, light-dark, and good-evil, just to name a few.

a universal source of all life energy and sentience

You and are in accord on this one. For the past few years I have increasingly found evidence of what I call an "energy sea." I can't decide whether it is sentient or not (though evidence seems to say it may be). The interesting thing is that when I call on it to guide me, or help me, interesting things happen. (It could be coincidence.) Wiccan philosophy says this energy is neutral. I wonder though, if it is just allowing us to make our own decisions -- sentience again!  

What we perceive as evil in this world comes as a result of those people who have rejected their soul's purpose or chosen path in life.

That makes a good deal of sense! It doesn't make me hate what they do any less, but it gives hope for their improvement at some point!

Kiwibonga, you say

humanity has strayed away from its original path by living an illusion, the illusion that the self is limited.

I agree, and believe that even on a physical level, we can do whatever we wish, if we just realized it. I see no reason why I cannot lay my hand on a metal wall, for instance, and by adjusting energies, put my hand right through that wall (and the rest of me too for that matter!) I proposed this on a recent post and totally messed with the head of another poster -- he could not grasp the concept.  

I cannot say yea or nay to extraterrestrials as I have no evidence of them so far, but I don't doubt the possibility.

Loppoppy,

You could do a lot worse than track the posts of folks like James (and Beth, Nay, Heather, TVoS, Kiwibonga and a few more). They have a lot of wisdom to share.  

Here's a link to the article on dreams:

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=23006&start=0

And here is a Web link to a site with tips on remembering dreams:

http://www.lucidity.com/

I have been having increasing success recalling dreams (4 to 6 per night now) by repeating an intention, "I will remember all my dreams and they will all be lucid." as I go to sleep. The times I have problems recalling dreams are those times when I am repeatedly disturbed and can't get really asleep.

Remember to hold onto the "sleep state" as you transition from sleep to wakefulness. Once you are fully awake and haven't thought about what you dreamed, it's usually too late.

James, good post!

You know we will never answer this question.    All of our astral experiences may be no more than electricity through synapses, stopping as soon as we die. Any afterlife theory is simply theory and thinking too hard about it will give you a roaring headache!    

However, I cannot resist a good discussion!  

You are one of this group who generally makes a lot of sense, but all of the statements you make here cannot be true -- they are antithetical.

You said

For every action there is a reaction.

Actually it is: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That being so, then by your own logic there must be both punishment and reward. Action-Reacton, Cause-Effect, etc.

I do find the idea of "karmic police" a bit strange, but if our soul is victim, defendant, judge & jury, all rolled into one, where does it get the standards it judges by? And if our soul decides our lessons, where does it get that knowledge?

I don't believe all souls are loving and kind. There is evil in the world, and there are beings (human and animal) at both ends of the spectrum. I just don't know if it arises from our own ignorance (the evolving thing) or what.

You make an interesting point about soul vs. ego. If our soul is the governing force, and it is fighting ego, then that raises the spector of "God" and "Satan," that has been hashed over so many times. Again, here are two opposites at work.

Good points -- thanks!  

Thanks folks! I always worry about posting too long, but that one seemed worth sharing.

IMO I believe dreams are perhaps a pathway to ... great things? (I don't know how to phrase it exactly). :confused: I believe OBE's may be much the same thing. They are, in effect, tools. If we can learn to use them properly, who knows what we can achieve!

For those of you with bad vision like me, it was almost like when you look up at an orange colored street light without your glasses on...

   I know exactly what you mean!

The first thing I would urge is that you not let yourself be convinced it was other than reality!  :exclamation: That was a fascinating journey to somewhere and well worth hanging on to.

I have had, call it one-and-a-half of those "instant OBE's," but never gotten out of the room I was in physically. The first one was just an instant split. I was looking into a mirror when suddenly "I" was behind and just slightly above me, observing the physical me. It lasted only until I became aware of the duality -- then I popped back into my body.

The second time I was also looking in a mirror. I saw a very subtle shift of what looked like a pale image of me. At the same time I felt my consciousness start to exit my body. (It was a very strange but definite sensation, not unpleasant at all.) Again though, when I became aware of what was happening, it all stopped and it was back to normal.  

I won't try to put a label on what happened to you, but again would urge that you treasure it. Yes, it was real!!

Astral man,

I have the same deja vu experience as you. The last one (quite awhile back) was a conversation in a car. The driver said something and all of a sudden I knew what the other person would say in reply. It was sort of funny because I would say mentally what would be said out loud just seconds later. This went on for probably 3 or 4 minutes, then faded into the normal "present." It was almost as if I were in two dimensions for a brief time, then phased back into just one.

Loppoppy,

Yes, every time I get that feeling, I am just slightly dizzy or somehow "out of it." As the deja vu passes, so does the physical oddness.

Seems like if people experienced this sort of thing chronically, they would be able to make a record of it and validate it.  But if all they get is that vague "been here before" feeling, that would not be possible.

Stookie, you don't come across on this forum as a "bumbling idiot"!  You are one of those whose posts I seek out.

E-B,
Yes, I believe that someone with an IQ of 80 could become a rocket scientist. IMO I believe evidence points to the fact that every single conscious entity has the power to shape themselves and their environment as they choose. Mind you, I don't say it is easy. I wonder if that is the lesson we are put here to learn?

Donal,
As to handling syness, it is a matter of mind-set.

In 7th grade I had to get up and read a poem in English class. I got the title out, then could not say a word or recall a single line. And it was a poem I liked!  :redface:  Teacher said I could try again the next day and I got through it. In those years I was very shy, wouldn't raise my hand in class or ask a question (even after class). It resulted in some lower grades than I could have made!  

I felt (and still do sometimes) that no one really liked me and that they spent a great deal of time laughing at me about any little thing. I finally just made up my mind that being shy was just caving into "them" and decided not to do it anymore.

Now, in a strange crowd, I will attach myself to a group (if it's two people, that's enough, though more is better). I will listen for a bit, then contribute something, even if it is only "I agree." Nowadays my problem is figuring out when to shut up!  It's always something!  

Nay, well said!  

Hi Maren, welcome aboard!  

First off, and only in my opinion, no dream is "just a dream." They can all tell you something about yourself or how you perceive your world. Sometimes they can tell you a lot more -- what I call the "guide dreams."

Now, if you mean were you having an OBE either time, I would say probably not, with a bit of an exception.

Your zoo dream certainly shows the experience had a huge impact on you. The fact that it was dark and empty reflects something you associate with the experience. How long ago was this -- how old are you now?

The "falling" dream is not unusual and there are a boatload of theories about what is actually going on. You could have been experiencing an OBE exit (that's the exception I mentioned). Some folks say that's what it means.

I have also read that your physical body is levitating during sleep, and the experience wakes you, causing the jolt. Others say it is simply that your body is becoming deeply relaxed as you enter sleep and that sensation makes you jerk back awake.

Short answer: it is definitely worth it to track your dreams and see what happens!  

Truly what is the differance between a person, a spirit, or a thought.

Good point!  

Leyla, you also make a very good point (and I'm glad you wound up under Dreams).  

I had never thought of the orbs as thoughts, but I have picked up impressions from those I have been around. However, I have not been able to say for sure if those impressions were because of the orbs or because of the environment and experiences I was having at the time.

I would be most interested in seeing more of your experiences in this area!  

Grigori,

Yes, it sounds like an OBE to me as well.  

My theory is that we should be able to transition from a lucid dream to an OBE without difficulty once we gain sufficient control. I am testing it now, but it is a long process.

It sounds to me like you were in a perfect transition -- with a foot in both astral and physical worlds. That's why you saw two candleholders. There "really" were two of them!   Man, if you can do that again and hold it, no telling what it will bring!!

Selski is right, at least in my experience. As soon as I become aware of or think about the physical, everything is over and it's back to square one!  

Nay, my best thoughts are with you and your dad!

The big boys are not going to surrender their choke-hold easily. I wouldn't look for practical alternative fuel until the oil companies figure a way to get a monopoly on it.

It was a long post and I apologize for that.
:redface:
But it is interesting reading, and right on topic.

TVoS,

The following is an article from US News, the May 5, 2006 issue. I tried to PM you and send it as an attachment, but can't find the "Send" button. So, I'm doing it the easy way.

This is pretty interesting:


Health & Medicine

What Dreams Are Made Of
By Marianne Szegedy-Maszak

Technologies that reveal the inner workings of the brain are beginning to tell the sleeping mind's secrets

Strange images appear from long-forgotten memories. Or out of nowhere: You're roller-skating on water; your mother flashes by on a trapeze; your father is in labor; a friend dead for years sits down at the dinner table. Here are moments of unspeakable terror; there, mo¬ments of euphoria or serenity. Shakespeare wrote, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on," and 300 years later, Sigmund Freud gave the poetry a neat psychoanalytic spin when he called dreams "the royal road to the unconscious." The movies that unfold in our heads some nights are so powerful¬ly resonant they haunt us for days -- or inspire us. Mary Shel¬ley dreamed of Frankenstein before she created him on paper; the melody to "Yesterday" came to Paul McCartney as he slept.

Everybody dreams – yet no one, throughout history, has fully grasped what the dreaming mind is doing. Art the nightly narratives a message from the unconscious to the conscious mind, as Freud believed? Or are they simply the product of random electrical flashes in the brain? Today, researchers aided by powerful technologies that reveal the brain in action are concluding that both schools of thought hold truth. "This is the greatest adventure of all time," says Harvard psychiatrist and dream re¬searcher J. Allan Hobson. "The devel¬opment of brain imaging is the equiva¬lent of Galileo's invention of the telescope, only we are now exploring inner space instead of outer space."

Mind-brain dance
The dream re¬searchers' new tools, functional mag¬netic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography (PET) scanning, have been used for some time to capture the waking brain at work – making deci¬sions, feeling frightened or joyous, cop¬ing with uncertainty. And those efforts have shown clearly that psychology and physiology are intimately related: In someone suffering from an anxiety disorder, for example, the fear center of the brain – the amygdale – "lights up" as neurons fire in response to images that trigger anxiety; it flickers in a minuet with the center of memory, the hippocampus. Scanning people who are sleeping, too, suggests that the same sort of mind-brain dance continues 24 hours a day.

"Psychology has built its model of the mind strictly out of waking behavior," say Rosalind Cartwright, chair of the department of behavioral science at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who has studied dreams for most of her 83 years. "We know that the mind does not turn off during sleep; it goes into a different stage." Brain cells fire, and the mind spins. Problems find solutions; emotional angst seems to be soothed; out-of-the-box ideas germinate and take root.

The door between the kitchen and the garage was split, so you could open the top half without opening the bottom half. It was the only safe way of doing it, because we had a rhinoceros in the garage. The garage was a lot bigger, though; it was also sort of a basement, and led underneath the rest of the house. My mother was cooking dinner, and I went into the bathroom where my brother Stuart was. The rhinoceros punched a hole in the floor with his horn.
- Madeline, third grade

What to make of young Madeline's dream? To Freud, had he met her, Madeline's rhinoceros horn would al¬most certainly have symbolized a penis, and the animal's violence would have been an expression of normal but threaten¬ing sexual feelings toward her brother – or perhaps of a fear of men in general. Freud saw dreams as deeply buried wishes disguised by symbols, a way to gratify de¬sires unacceptable to the conscious mind. His ideas endured for years, until scientists started systematical¬ly studying dream content and decided that actually, some¬thing less exotic is going on.

"Dreams do enact – they dramatize. They are like plays of how we view the world and oneself in it," says William Domhoff, who teaches psy¬chology and sociology at the Universi¬ty of California – Santa Cruz. "But they do not provide grandiose meanings." Domhoff bases his view on a study of themes and images that recur in a data¬bank of some 16,000 dreams – including Madeline's – that have been collect¬ed as oral narratives and are held at Santa Cruz. (The narratives can be read at www.dreambank.net.)

Post-Freudians might argue that the monsters lurking in children's dreams signal a growing awareness of the world around them and its dangers. Young children describe very simple and concrete images, while the dreams of 9- and 10-year-olds get decidedly more com¬plex. A monster that goes so far as to chase or attack might represent a person who is frightening to the child during wak¬ing hours. "Dreaming serves a vital function in the maturation of the brain and in proc¬essing the experi¬ences of the day," says Alan Siegel, professor of psychology at UC-Berkeley and author of Dream Wisdom.

Nonsense
Physiolo¬gy purists, who would say that Madeline's brain is simply flash¬ing random images, got their start in 1953 with the discovery of rapid eye movement sleep. Using primi¬tive electroencephalograms, researchers watched as every 90 minutes, sleepers' eyes darted back and forth and brain waves surged. Then, in 1977, Harvard psychia¬trists Hobson and Robert McCarley re¬ported that during sleep, electrical ac¬tivity picked up dramatically in the most primitive area of the brain – the pons – which, by simply stimulating other parts of the brain, produced weird and dis¬connected narratives. Much like people looking for meaning in an inkblot, they concluded, dreams are the brain's vain attempt to impose coherence where there is none.

Or maybe that's not the whole story, either, said a young neuropsychologist at the Royal London School of Medicine 20 years later, when his findings hinted that dreaming is both a mental and a physical process. Mark Solms showed that dreams can't be explained as sim¬ple physical reactions to flashes from the primitive pons, since some of the most active dreamers in his study had suffered brain damage in that area. On the other hand, in those with damage to regions of the brain associated with higher-order motivation, passion¬ate emotions, and abstract thinking, the nightly movies had stopped. That seemed a sign that dreams might indeed express the mind's ideas and motiva¬tions. "It is a mistake to think that we can study the brain using the same con¬cepts we use for the liver," says Solms. "From my perspective, dreaming is just thinking in a very different biochemical state," says Deirdre Barrett, who teaches psychology at Har¬vard and is editor of the journal Dreaming. The threads can be "just as complex as waking thought and just as dull. They are overwhelmingly visual, and language is less impor¬tant, and logic is less important."

I am a traveler carrying one light bag and looking for a place to spend the night. I...discover a hostel of a sort in a large in¬door space big enough to house a gymna¬sium. I find a spot near a corner and pre¬pare for bed. I think to myself "Luckily, I have my high-tech pillow." I take out of my bag a light, flat panel about 8 by 10 inch¬es and the thickness of a thick piece of card¬board. "It works by applying a voltage," I say." There's a new kind of material which fluffs up when you apply a voltage. "On the face of the panel is a liquid-crystal display with two buttons, one labeled "on "and one labeled "off. " I touch the "on" button with my index finger, and the fiat panel magically inflates to the dimen¬sions of a fluffy pillow. I lay it down on the ground and comfort¬ably go to sleep.
Chuck, scientist (from Dreambank.net)

If Chuck's experience is an example of logic gone to sleep, no won¬der dreamers so often wake up shouting, "Eureka!" Indeed, his¬tory is filled with ex¬amples of inspiration that blossomed dur¬ing sleep and eventu¬ally led to inventions or works of art or mil¬itary moves. Exactly what happens to in¬spire creativity is un¬clear, but the new technology is providing clues.

Crazy smart
Brain scans per¬formed on people in REM sleep, for example, have shown that even as certain brain cen¬ters turn on-the emotional seat of the brain and the part that processes all visual inputs are wide awake-one vital area goes absolutely dormant: the systematic and clear-thinking prefrontal cortex, where cau¬tion and organization reside. "This can explain the bizarreness you see in dreams, the crazy kind of sense that your brain is ignoring the usual ways that you put things together," says Robert Stickgold, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard and director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. "This is what you want in a state in which creativity is enhanced. Creativity is nothing more and nothing less than putting memories together in a way that they never have been before."

Putting memories together is also an essential part of learning; people integrate the memory of new information, be it how to fie shoelaces or conjugate French verbs, with existing knowledge. Does dreaming help people learn? No one knows-but some sort of boost seems to happen dur¬ing sleep. Many studies by sleep researchers have shown that people taught a new task performed it better after a night of sleep.
A study of how quickly dreamers solve problems supports Stickgold's theory that the sleeping mind can be quite nimble and inventive. Participants were asked to solve scrambled word puzzles after being awakened during both the REM phase of sleep and the less active non-REM phase. Their per¬formance improved by 3 2 percent when they worked on the puzzles coming out of REM sleep, which told researchers that that phase is more conducive to fluid reasoning. During non-REM sleep, it appears, our more cautious selves kick into gear.

Indeed, PET scans of people in a non-REM state show a decline in brain en¬ergy compared with REM sleep and increased activity in those dormant schoolmarmish lobes. Does this affect the content of dreams? Yes, say re¬searchers from Harvard and the Boston University School of Medicine.

Since people should theoretically be more uninhibited when the controlling prefrontal cortex is quiet, the team tracked participants for two weeks to see if their REM dreams were more social¬ly aggressive than the ones they report¬ed during non-REM sleep. The REM dreams, in fact, were much more likely to involve social interactions and tend¬ed to be more aggressive.

I had a horrible dream. Howard was in a coffin. I yelled and screamed at his morn that it was all her fault. I kicked myself that I hadn't waited to become a widow rather than a divorcee in order to get the in¬surance. I woke up feeling miserable, the dream was so icky. Barb (from Dreambank.net)

To many experts, Barb's bad dream would be a good sign, an indication that she would recover from the sorrow of her divorce. A vivid dream life, in which troubled or anxious people experience tough emotions while asleep, is thought to act, in the words of Cartwright, as "a kind of internal therapist."

The enduring and vexing question is: How much of value do dreams say? Despite all the efforts to quantify, to meas¬ure, no one has an answer yet. But dreams have played a role in psy¬chotherapy for over a century, since Freud theorized that they signal deep and hidden motivations. "A dream is the one domain in which many of a pa¬tient's defenses are sufficiently relaxed that themes emerge that ordinarily would not appear in waking life," says Glen Gabbard, professor of psychia¬try and psychoanalysis at Baylor College of Medicine.

Sometimes, dreams can be a helpful diagnostic tool, a way of taking the emo¬tional temperature of a patient. The dreams of clinically depressed people are notable for their utter lack of activ¬ity, for example.

Might there be a physiological reason? Erie Nofzinger, director of the Sleep Neuroimaging Research Program at the Uni¬versity of Pittsburgh medical school, has studied PET scans of depressed patients and has found that the difference be¬tween their waking and sleeping states is far less dramatic than normal. On the one hand, he says, "we were shocked, sur¬prised, "and amazed at how much activi¬ty" there was in the emotional brain of healthy people during sleep. In depressed patients, by contrast, the vigilant pre¬frontal cortex, which normally is not ac¬tive during sleep, worked overtime. Never surrendering to the soothing power of dreams, the brain is physically constrained, and its dream life shows it.

Healing power
Is it possible that dream¬ing can actually heal? "We know that 60 to 70 percent of peo¬ple who go through a depression will re¬cover without treat¬ment," says Cartwright, who recently tested her theory that maybe they are work¬ing through their troubles while asleep. In a study whose re-suits were published this spring in the journal Psychiatry Research, she recruit¬ed 30 people going through a divorce and asked them to record their dreams over five months. Depressed patients whose dreams were rich with emotion – one woman reported seething while her ex-husband danced with his new girlfriend – eventually recovered without the need for drugs or extensive psy¬chotherapy. But those whose dreams were bland and empty of feeling were not able to recover on their own.

I've sat straight up in bed many times, re¬living it, re-seeing it, rehearing it. And it's in the most absurd ways that only a dream could depict.., the one that comes to mind most, dreaming of a green pool in front of me. That was part of the radarscope. It was a pool of gel, and I reached into the radarscope to stop that flight. But in the dream, I didn't harm the plane. I just held it in my hand, and somehow that stopped everything.
Danielle O'Brien, air traffic controller for American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 (in an interview with ABC News)

Many clinicians working with trauma¬tized patients have found that their nightmares follow a common trajectory. First, the dreams re-create the horrors; later, as the person begins to recover, the stories involve better outcomes. One way to help victims of trauma move on is to encourage them to wake themselves up in the midst of a horrifying dream and consciously take control of the narrative, to take action, much as O'Brien appears to have done in her dream. This can break the cycle of nightmares by offering a sense of mastery. "If you can change the dream content," says Harvard's Bar¬rett, author of Trauma and Dreams, "you see a reduction in all the other post-traumatic symptoms."

Cartwright recalls helping a rape vic¬tim who came in suffering from night¬mares in which she felt an utter lack of control; together, they worked to edit the young woman's dreams of being in situations where she was powerless-of lying on the floor of an elevator with¬out walls as it rose higher and higher over Lake Michigan, for example. "I told her, 'Remember, this is your con¬struction. You made it up, and you can stop it,' "says Cartwright, who coached the woman to recognize the point at which the dream was becoming fright¬ening and try to seize control. At the next session, the woman reported that, as the elevator rose, she decided to stand in her dream and figure out what was happening. The walls rose around her until she felt safe.

A window? A royal road? A way for the brain to integrate today with yes¬terday? While definitive answers re¬main elusive, the experience of dream¬ing is clearly as universal as a heartbeat and as individual as a fingerprint-and rich with possibilities for both scientist and poet.

GETTING THE MESSAGE
Dreams may be reveal¬ing, but only if you can remember them. Even the most sophisticat¬ed dream chroniclers, notes Harvard researcher Robert Stickgold, typically can recall only about 15 minutes of their nightly two-hour movie. But dream recall is a skill that can be learned, says Alan Siegel, author of Dream Wisdom. Here's how to practice:

•   Keep a notebook by your bed, and record every dream-no matter how brief-immediately upon waking, even if it's when you're groggy at 3 a.m.
•   Prep before sleep by re¬viewing the day's events in your own mind or with a family member.
•   Rest quietly for a few moments before getting up so that images have a chance to resurface. It may help to assume your sleep¬ing position.
•   Record any image, feel¬ing, idea, or fragmentary narrative, no matter how garbled or weird or mun¬dane it may seem. People tend to feel that their dreams are unimportant, but treating even frag¬ments as legitimate will help more detail stick. When you write a dream down, don't make any ad¬ditional associations – stick to the facts.
•   Don't attempt to organ¬ize the dream or edit it, even if it seems illogical.
•   After you've finished de¬scribing a dream, note any feelings or associations that come to mind on the back of the page. For example: "I woke up terrified." Or: "It reminded me of my old childhood house."
•   Some people find re¬membered dreams to be more vivid if they draw them or describe them into a tape recorder.
•   Try giving yourself a pep talk before you go to sleep. Say, "When I wake up, I'll remember." - M.S.M.


Frankenstein and Mary Shelley
Can man create life? A talk on evolution that considered the possibility so disturbed Mary Godwin that she went to bed and dreamed up Frankenstein. She and three other writers, including her soon-to-be-husband, Percy Shelley, were staying at Lake Geneva in Switzerland during that summer of 1816, entertaining one an¬other by telling and competing to write the best ghost stories. Shelley's vivid dream, in which she saw a "hideous phantasm of a man stretched out" and a scientist using a machine to try to bring him to life, inspired hers. She began to write the next day. - Betsy Cluema

Joseph and a Word From God"
When Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant during their engagement, he was "just crushed," says Father Gerald Kleba, a Roman Catholic priest in St. Louis who wrote the his¬torical novel Joseph Remem¬bered. Assuming that she had committed adultery, Joseph fig¬ured he would have to leave her. But an angel visited him in a dream, according to the Bible, and told him not to be afraid. Mary had conceived through the Holy Spirit and would bear a special child. That "huge aha moment" shaped the rest of Joseph's life, says Kleba, and still speaks to many Christians of the power of faith. - B.Q.

Paul McCartney and "Yesterday"
"I woke up with a lovely tune in my head," Paul McCartney re¬called to his biographer, Barry Miles. "I thought, 'That's great. I wonder what that is?" He got up that morning in May 1965, went to the piano, and began playing the melody that would become "Yesterday." At first, lacking lyrics, he improvised with "Scrambled eggs, oh my baby, how I love your legs." While he really liked the tune, he had some reservations: "Be¬cause I'd dreamed it, I couldn't believe I'd written it." Today, with more than 1,600 covers, the song holds the Guinness world record for most recorded versions. - B.Q.

Saddam and His Winning Strategy
Saddam Hussein used his dreams to guide policy, some¬times to the befuddlement of his closest advisers. The dictator's personal secretary told U.S. military investigators in an in¬terview in 2003 that Hussein would sleep on difficult prob¬lems and report the solutions the next morning. One time that his dream got it right: During the Iran-lraq War of the 1980s, Hussein dreamed that the Irani¬ans would launch an offensive through a large marshland, so he ordered more troops there. His generals thought the move illogical but acquiesced. The Iranians attacked there, and the Iraqis prevailed. – B.Q.

Jack Nicklaus and His Grip
In the summer of 1964, Jack Nicklaus was in a slump: "It got to the point where a 76 looked like a great score to me," the golfer told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. One night, during the Cleveland Open, he dreamed he was hitting the ball with a dif¬ferent grip – and it worked bet¬ter. So he tried it the next day, shot a 68, then a 65, and ended the tournament tied for third place. For the year, he shot about a 70 average, the lowest in professional golf. 'Tin almost embarrassed to admit how I changed my grip this week," he told the reporter at the time. "But that's how it happened. It's kinda crazy, isn't it?" – B.Q.

Hello and welcome to the forum.  

You will likely get a boatload of book recommendations before all is done. Robert Bruce's Astral Dynamics is a good starting point. It's a thick one though, and will take some time.

There are about as many theories and techniques as there are people posting here, so just pick one and dive in. In my opinion meditation is very valuable, and can't hurt.

Right now I am concentrating on dream recall. Once I am satisfied with my progress in that area I am going to focus on lucid dreaming. My theory is that OBE and lucid dreams are very closely connected. If you master one, the other will follow. Mind you, that is just one person's theory and still under development at that!  

I think you have nailed it when you think back to childhood. I know it was so easy for me when I was young. I don't think it is totally a matter of imagination either. Perhaps as children we are more open to true mental ability -- before we are shoved into the adult mold. I just hope it is not a function of physical age. Your brain changes as you age -- scary thought!  

Anyway, welcome and good luck!

I have an article on dreams I found last week in US News, but I don't know how to attach it and it is about 5 pages long. It has some information that not only tells you about dreams, but how you can remember them.

Does anyone know how best to get it to the group?

Z,

No, my biggest criticism of Bush is that he talks about a "War on Terror." We are not fighting one. On a larger scale he is doing exactly the same thing that Clinton did, and Bush the Elder did, and Carter did, and so on ad nauseum -- playing politics!

I agree that nothing will stop terrorism. There will always be loonies who want to kill just for the sake of killing. However, I also believe that if you have murderers on your doorstop, it is only logical to at least try and close the door!

I agree that the Dept. of Homeland Security should never had been formed. That was one time he had my jaw dropping. All that added was another level of bureaucracy and another huge hog-trough for the politicians. Oh, well done!!

I also agree that any torture we are doing should stop! However, I don't think making folks wear pink uniforms is torture (as some have said). We would have to talk about definitions before I understand what you are saying on that one.

I guess I shouldn't let any of this bother me. The politicians are going to do whatever they want to do and there's not a #(*% thing we can do about it. My only plan right now is to vote independant as much as I can, and against every incumbent otherwise (of either party). It's not much.  

The war on terror should have never been declared.

I'm not sure what you are saying here. What would you have done after 9/11?

I read about half of the Iran letter and called it square. It is drivel for the most part and even the part I read had enough lies and distortions to drive a truck through. The author, like everyone else on earth it seems, has an agenda. Give me a bleeping break!!!  

So now on to a little Bush bashing of my own. (Oh lord, I could write a book!!)

As to the Iraqi war, does anyone know when Norman Schwartkof retired? If, as I believe, it was right around the time the Iraqi war began, I think I know why. Politics aside, when you go into a fight, you go in to win. But the good ole USA went in to "shock and awe" everyone. Some politico (Bush I guess) wanted a showy, short fight. At the time I wondered why in $#*&% we were pushing so fast and not stopping to wrap up and secure things behind our troops. Did they think the Iraqi army was just going to quit and go home? Idiots!

As justification for the war, and once it became clear we weren't going to find any smoking WMD type guns, Bush said our reason for fighting (aside from bringing democracy to the masses) was to fight the war on terror. I bought into that. After all, if we fight them over there, then we won't have to fight them over here. However....

After some good starts at cutting off terrorist funds by confiscating or freezing suspicious funds (Billions of dollars), our noble leadership has apparently decided it is okay to let that little effort die on the vine. Bottom line, from what I hear the terrorist money is flowing again.

Second, while making loud noises about airline security and tapping telephone conversations, Bush has left our borders (north and south) wide open! Anyone, carrying anything, can come into the US at any time.

I just heard yesterday that even that is not enough. Bush has ordered that the Border Patrol headquarters provide office space to Mexico. This is so the BP can give Mexico daily updates on where any civilians (Minutemen or private landowners) might be watching the border. That way Mexico can guide foreign nationals to safer crossings.

The radio commentator said the Mexican consulate's office in our Border Patrol has the authority to tell our agents where to patrol and what to do when they get there. Cool, eh?  

A question to those of you living in countries other than the US: How often does your country take orders from foreign nations on how to conduct its business. I am not talking "advice." I mean "orders."

I have not phrased the above very well, but it's hard to do when you are swearing!

Bush's war on terror so far has consisted of committing our troops to a very long and dangerous war for nebulous purposes; creating MORE bureaucracy by adding the Dept. of Homeland Security, and basically saying "borders, what borders?" when it comes to protecting our own turf.

In my personal opinion, Bush and every other politician in Washington who feels the status quo is acceptable, should be 1) impeached or removed from office and 2) sued for malfeasance and dereliction of duty. Treason doesn't begin to describe it.

Now before some idiot jumps on me for being anti-immigrant or some such, let me clarify that I have no problem with folks coming to the US, providing they do it legally. I have no problem with people remaining in the US, legally.

I have a problem with people jumping ahead in line just because they can, and then being told by our "leaders" that it's okay, since they are already here. What about the poor idiot who was stupid enough to try and get here legally and has been going through that red tape for years. Oh, I know "sucks to be them."

I also have a problem with the fact that foreign nationals, including terrorists, can freely vote in US elections, and have been doing so for years! Another question: Can anyone name another country that lets foreign nationals choose their leaders?

And I have a big problem with the fact that any of the 10-12,000 illegals that come across the border every day could be carrying those WMD Bush is so concerned about, while Bush (and the Texas governor) just sit back and say, "Oh, it's nothing to worry about."

Okay, rant finished, I feel better now.  :redface: