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We can learn alot about how we are programmed by observing what we classify as good or as evil.

Jeffery Dahmer was in pain his whole life, the only way he found to express it was to kill people and drink alot.  Bush drank alot.  He may also be at least partially responsible for the 655,000 non-combatant Iraqi folks who've died as a result of the war, and the torture of more people than Sadam ever ordered.  And reveling in the killing of al-Zarqawi may be considered evil its self. 

"Nazi's killed Communists, does that make them good?" Does that mean you think Communists are evil? Many people think capitalists are evil. However, can everyone born in to an economic system be either good or bad?

Even with human or heroin trafficing. Who's to blame? The junky? The trafficker? The investors? The system which rewards the use of slaves? The pressures which cause a junky to escape on a fix? The schools which didn't teach empathy? Perhaps a brain and evolutionary legacy which makes us think that physical accumulation and ego fortification will give our genes a safer chance at surviving.

The law and justice system, telling people what is good and what is safe. This system is often the source of more pain than that which landed people in its hands.

This is life. It's all just a bunch of scared people trying to make themselves, and occasionally others, safe according to what they know and how they feel.

As RealmExplorer brought up, I believe in nonduality. Everything is the same thing.   

"If the universe doesn't have a spectrum then how can it be divided over frequencies? And if the universe didn't care about us then it wouldn't have wasted energy on gifting us with its consciousness."

As for this quote, I should remind that this is an Integral Philosophy forum, and that Ken Wilber, the founder of Integral Philosophy talks alot about heirarchy, and the hollowness of value judgement based on heirarchy. As a nondualist, I answer the second question thusly: Everything is God. Everything has consciousness. Any person or thing you can label as 'evil' is simply an aspect of yourself (ourself) which you deny expression.

All I can do is soothe pain and promote love, I think we can mostly agree on that. But how can we promote love with we don't practice love, even for those who cause pain.

OK, this thread started off on an uninformed foot. While there is not a lot of research out there on the effects of entheogenic medicine (due to prohibition), there is enough to know a bit about how it works.

Weed stimulates unused parts of the brain, and induces stronger, faster thinking which is also much more vivid and clear than normal. Weed does NOT kill braincells, pretty much most of the rumors behind marijuana being harmful are fake.

Cannabis does not necessarily stimulate unused parts of the brain. The most neuro-active chemical in Cannabis is THC.  THC docks on the neuron receptor site for naturally occurring chemical called anandamine (literally "bliss molecule").  So the brain thinks that THC is anandamine, and lets it bind to neurons in its place.  Chocolate also has chemicals which bind to the anandamine site.

The effects of this are widely varied from one persons psychology and biology to the next. There is a shift in state of consciousness, which is more or less overwhelming depending on the strength of the dose and the persons ability to mindfully observe shifts in consciousness.  You can then count on the medicine to have a sensitizing effect.  If you are comfortable and relaxed, you will feel VERY comfortable and relaxed.  If you are nervous or paranoid you will feel VERY nervous or paranoid.  If you are doing energy work, you will be delighted to feel the textures and movements of your energy in amazing new ways.

It may cause you to use your brain/mind in ways that are not typical (aka teach you things), but that all depends on what the state reminds you of and what associations are triggered. If it makes you feel stupid or slow, then you're not interfacing with the state efficiently and should probably avoid it.  In my experience, cannabis can be mind expanding, and show me certain limitations and abilities I would not have otherwise noticed.  However, once you have learned all you can from the state, yet you still keep accessing it out of comfort and familiarity, it can then become simply a habitual vice.

You must use these substances with respect. I cannot stress this enough. It is wise to interface with them using an animistic/shamanistic mentality, where each of these medicines has a spirit that can teach you or torture you, depending on how humble and respectful you are in your interactions.

As for the health implications, THC has shown to reduce tumors, reduce pain, increase appetite, help glaucoma, treat depression, and reduce and prevent Alzheimer's (that one was just published last month http://www.nerdshit.com/wordpress/?p=2233).  Ganja does NOT kill brain cells. There has strangely never been a case of lung cancer or emphysema related to the smoking of cannabis, it has even been shown to help lung cancer, however I can tell you from personal experience that it may reduce lung capacity.

LSD directly stimulates the pineal gland, artificially 'oppening' the third eye.

LSD DOES NOT ACT ON THE PINEAL ORGAN! LSD is a serotonin agonist, which, similar to THC, means that the brain thinks that the LSD molecule is serotonin and allows it to dock on serotonin receptor sites on individual neurons.  Serotonin's role in the brain is very complex and not completely understood, but has been linked with: mood, sleep, anxiety, sexuality, and perception.  So basically, if you take LSD, you are experiencing reality through the filter of LSD rather than the 'natural' filter of serotonin. The same goes for mushrooms (psilocybin) and DMT.

Serotonin, psilocybin, LSD and DMT are all part of the tryptamine chemical family.  The other chemical family for entheogens is the phenthylamines, which includes dopamine, mescaline (from peyote), and MDMA (ecstasy).

By the way, 'entheogen' is the newly accepted word for 'psychedelics' aka 'hallucinogens'.  Entheogen is Latin for... "en" = inside "theo" = divinity "gen" = substance ... so "substance which evokes inner divinity".

All of these chemicals (outlined and tested by Alexander Shulgin) are powerful mind-altering agents.  What you get out of the experience is highly dependant on Set and Setting.  Your Set is your psychology, biology, past experiences, and the why you are tripping etc. Your Setting is whom your with and where you are.

On the rare occasion that I imbibe one of these medicines I tend to fast for a day, to allow for contemplation and sanctification.  I then ask the spirit of the medicine to help me answer the questions I come with (or to teach me something new, or to help me work through a blockage or help me integrate something into my personality) and take care of me and safely guide me through the experience.  Then I dose. And try and stay as mindful and grounded as possible. After the experience I thank the medicine.

These experiences can help show you techniques or knock down inhibitions/blockages which may be hindering your energy/dreaming/projecting practice.  However, they are not good to induce projection per say.  Not to say that it won't happen, just that it is harder to control and more something you witness for educational purposes.  If you are building your experience for any of these practices, medicine is no short cut.

Logic was right in that if you have a genetic predisposition towards psychosis in your family, an entheogenic experience can trigger it. I highly recommend that you are emotionally stable and well grounded mentally before even attempting to trip.  These experiences can range from mild euphoria to an entirely out of body vision quest where you are put against your deepest fears and may even be asked to let go of your ego, which can be extremely painful for most people.

What Logic means when he says that DMT is "the spirit molecule in which life enters and exits this third dimension." Is that DMT has been shown to secrete from the Pineal organ which is an endocrine gland located in the center of the brain.  DMT induces intense visionary experiences, and some think that since the Pineal gland releases DMT into the brain fluid during such events as birth and death, that it is involved when the 'spirit' enters and leaves the body. I have no opinion on this personally, for me these are subjective experiences that we must be prepared to deal with when they arrive.  If there is a chemical process behind the experience, it doesn't really matter when its happening.

This is a very, very limited introduction and many details have been omitted for the sake of brevity.  However, in conclusion, these chemicals are not bad or good. It is all in how the subject uses them.  They are tools or allies by which we can learn a bit about the inner dimensions of the Kosmos. The experiences are highly subjective, so even if you have a negative disposition to the word 'drug' you might go into the experience with your defenses up, aka with fear. That is why I call them medicine. You must interface with them with a steady, open mind and a strong, open heart and be very critical as to what is helpful enough to take back and integrate into your waking life and what is simply 'noise'.

If you are educated (www.erowid.com), and safe, medicine can be very helpful.

i learned about the "what you do in your mind, builds real neuronal connections" in a recent BBC series "The Human Mind", unfortunately I can't find sources for the arguments they make on the show.

Anyway, just because you can do anything you want in your dreams doesn't mean you can do anything you want in waking life.  Waking life is infinitely harder to manipulate than any of the subtler dimensions. In order to do something like psychokinesis in your waking life you will either have to be a born master or you'll have to do energy work and other spiritual work for decades to build a root understanding, confidence and to gain the confidence of others. Then you MIGHT be able to spin the wheel. However, other sensitive people will probably be able to sense what you're doing long before you manifest physical results.

First you should read Astral Dynamics, because if you don't know about the awareness arms, then you haven't read the book yet.

Then I would take a couple years off and practice the NEW as well as mindfulness and patience.

In lucid dreams there are different levels of lucidity.  First you are barely lucid, your control is fleeting and you desperately desire things. Beyond that level you become mindful in your dreams, and your clarity and groundedness increase from there. In order to successfully practice stuff in your dreams, you need to at least be mindful while in your dreams.  As you gain mindfulness in your dreams, then you will be much more aware of your body, your environment and the relationship between the two. Then, once you can do this, by practicing you are only going to improve the technique and not necessarily the results.

Any practice you can do in a dream, can be done with visualization while awake or in trance and it will have similar (and for some people better) results.

Your energy body and your physical body are different creatures.  It seems reasonable to me that you can do actual energy work while dreaming, though you would have to be fairly mindful otherwise you would just be catching glimpses of sensation that may or may not be hallucinations. Whether or not you can directly stimulate your energy body while in a dream is unknown to me, but I do know that you can solidify technique and build confidence while in dreams.  But it's alot easier to practice say martial arts while dream side than psychics, just like in waking life.

Reality checks work. You simply have to be patient and condition your mind.  The more simple the stimulus and response the faster you can recondition yourself.

Communication with your subconscious is also a matter of conditioning and confidence.  Really all it takes is a firm affirmation made while mindful or in a trance. Repetition might help.

As for techniques, there are a billion books and online resources for techniques to do anything. Or, even better, create your own.

Also, are you sure you're ready for this? What would you use your powers for? Why do you want to accumulate power? What are you intentions and how strong is your integrity? These are questions to consider, as you might not allow yourself to achieve these powers unless you know you can handle them respectfully.

I hope this is helpful. Good luck.

Not my journal, but a blog with a new dream every day.

http://dream365.blogspot.com/

first, is if there is any kind of psychic exercise training that we can do in a lucid dream that can help our psychic development MORE and more efficiently than if practiced while awake?

Psychic training in dreams is often times much easier than while awake.  You can project your visualizations into your environment very easily. For example you could actually grow the "awareness arms" and use them to reach into your body and massage your energy body.  Or create a defensive shell around you that you can see, feel and touch. If you have the confidence and clarity, you can manifest anything in your lucid dream. In Tibet, Dream Yoga is one path to enlightenment. They have a whole careers worth of dream side exercises.

Also, your brain doesn't know the difference between sensory input from waking life, and the input from your experience of the virtual dream world. This means that anything which you practice in the dream space will create real neuronal pathways in your brain which once established will serve equally well in waking life or in a dream.

Second, is it really required to do a dream log and good dream recall to have lucid dreams ? Also from what i remember my dreams (i usually have medium recall of them) they are so real life like that there AREN'T any dream signs or recurring symbols on them like i read in articles about lucid dream. Besides doing reality checks everyday while awake (which i started doing) is there any other way to trigger lucid dreams ? Doing energy raising like it says in n.e.w. is completely inefficient in my case, as it NEVER affected my dreams quality even if done during a half hour before i go to sleep...

You could be having lucid dreams all the time and just forgetting about them.  Keeping a journal means that you're paying attention to your dream life. The more attention you pay to something, the better you get at it and the more detailed memories you can bring back from it. When you are in a regular dream, you are "mindless". You simply react to your environment based on habitualized responses. In this state, everything is convincing enough because you're only paying attention to a small portion of what's going on. Enough to be able to adapt to the situation. By keeping a dream journal you can be sure that you will become more aware of dreamspace and bring back more detailed memories more often.

Other tricks you can use are affirmations before going to sleep and after waking up, "Next time I'm in a dream, I will recognize it's true nature" "I will have a lucid dream tonight" followed by a moment of mindfulness to add sincerity and weight to the affirmation (thus giving it a better chance of being remembered).

Another way is associating one phenomena with a reality check. For example, every time you touch water ask yourself if you are dreaming, then be mindful of your environment for a moment. Eventually you will condition yourself to the point where you will touch water in a dream one day and figure out that you're dreaming. You can associate anything with a reality check.

And third and final question if there is any kind of action done in lucid reams to improve subconscious cooperation/communication later when i am awake. I tried just doing post-hypnotic suggestions inside the lucid dream, this doesn't ever work. Also i always had big difficulties when i try to change things in my dream, they only work more or less 50% of the times. But what i would like to know, if the more we try to change things in the dreams like this, if this would have any improvement when trying to communicate with subconscious while awake, and the subconscious reacting better.

This is what lucid dreaming is all about. It's being embedded perspectively into your mind. It is a virtual environment in which if you learn to become lucid, mindful and confident in, you can do anything you like. And, as I mentioned before, anything which you practice in your dream-life will carry over into your waking-life.  The same thing goes for visualization. If you practice in your mind, your brain will support that action (due to a well established neuronal pathway / conditioned memory) no matter what dimension it is carried out in.

If you are serious about developing your dream work, you have to devote a significant amount of attention to it. It is the same as mastering any skill.

Follow up:

The next time I had a mindful-lucid-dream I went right back to work at flying.

This time I tried three different experiments.

1) I remembered this time that I couldn't experience physical pain in a dream. So I decided I would fly as fast as I could directly into the branches of a tree (not the trunk).  I zoomed right at them, but before I slammed into them, I lost (took away) my altitude and glided/fell to the ground.  I felt a pressure as I landed on my knees but it did not hurt.  I concluded that I wasn't confident enough yet to let myself do such things.

2) I wanted to fly into space.  I started soaring up and up.  Up up up.  Eventually everything above me was the night sky/space. It's vastness became so overwhelming that I lost my propulsion... almost like hitting an invisible (psychological) barrier.  It took so much effort to try and fly against this barrier that I much rather wanted to fall back to earth than keep trying.  Which is exactly what I did.

3) I remembered a visualization trick I use in my waking life for balance and attaching my intent to goals.  I send and attach luminous awareness tendrils to that which I want to attract or manifest in my life. Anyway, In my dream I thought perhaps I could use my "intenticles" to quickly maneuver through space, attaching them to objects and pulling myself towards those objects with the "intenticles", much like Spider Man uses his webbing.  This worked very well anywhere there were destinations to attach the tendrils to (trees, peaks, even clouds). Eventually though I tried attaching them to things I couldn't see like "the sky", and my confidence based on causal "attach then pull" fell apart. I got so confused over the physical dynamics involved with using this technique (was I supposed to pull, push, swing or just focus, and how could I attach them to an imaginary point in space?) that I eventually lost my finesse with them and lost the lucid dream all together in a mire of confusion and eventually helplessness.

My conclusion is that with the proper confidence, based on the proper techniques/experience, you can fly or move through space however you choose to in a lucid dream. The hardest part for me is getting over inhibitions rooted in waking life physics, and staying grounded in a mindful-lucid-dream state long enough to accomplish what I want.

I've been working my way up through the murkiness of beginner lucid dreams to mindful lucid dreams.  I recently had a mindful lucid dream experience which might be of interest to others here.

I had been dreaming all night and then I was walking up a hill with some folks, I was outside and it was day time, and I realized I was dreaming. Rather than my hasty "I'm dreaming! I better take what I want while I have time!" I thought, "Ok, I'm dreaming... I'm going to ground myself... *breathe*... I know this can last as long as I want it to... what do I want to do?"

I decided I wanted to fly.

So I took off the ground like a character from "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon".  I moved upward above the trees and was frantically wobbling around.  I then noticed something shimmering above one of the tall fur trees. I made my way up to it and saw that it was a wooden carving of myself, balanced on the very tip of the tree, in a "flying sidekick" posture.  I immediately assumed this posture and began flying very fast in a straight line.  The land beneath me was short green grass with tall green fur trees all over it.  I was moving up an incline as if I were in the foothills of a mountain.  There was no wind, no clouds, and the sun was bright but not hot.  The landscape was so perfect it seemed almost "computer generated".

I realized that my posture while flying made a huge difference. Based on my associations with that posture, I was more or less confident to fly fast and under control.  I decided that if I were flying head first I could even move faster due to less resistance. So I moved my head into the fore position and flew on.  I did begin to move faster, but I wasn't comfortable moving this fast head first for fear of a crash.  So I "waved" as I flew headfirst like an eel or the waves of the sea.  This impeded my ability to maneuver well and stay moving fast.  So, I moved back to the "flying sidekick" posture.

At this point. I was coming to the outskirts of a town and there were randomly placed buildings. I flew down to one of these buildings.  It was large, concrete and painted white, with smoke stacks and glassless windows.  There were people on the veranda.  I landed and went inside.  Inside was a scene I will never forget.  

The inside was all concrete, floors walls and ceiling, all stained and dirty.  There was sparse florescent lighting. There were dozens of cubicles which were roughly 3ft wide, 3ft deep, 4 ft tall.  Above the concrete cubicle were rusty metal grates which continued the walls of the cubicles from 4ft to the ceiling. So each cubicle was almost a kennel, but had an open face to the hall.  Inside each cubicle was a desk, chair and a well dressed middle class person.  These semi-formally dressed people were all over this place, talking and working and carrying on like they didn't even notice their environment.  All of this chaos became to much for me and I slowly lost my mindfulness and then lost the lucid dream all together.