White Light Black Light

Most people assume there is an objective physical world outside of themselves which they explore while awake—and then as they sleep, their experiences are entirely a by-product of their own minds. I've been rebelling against this duality and claiming that it is possible to receive signals from "outside" during the dreamstate. I say the reason it doesn't seem like there is a coherent dreamworld is that we are like babies who haven't yet learned how to assimilate the dream stimulus into a fitting coherent model. Thus, for us "dreamstate babies" it takes time for the right signals to fall into place so we can really understand what we are seeing, even if it doesn't fit the 3-D model we learned as "waking babies". Well, that's ONE idea... Another way to break the duality would be to argue that our waking experience is not as firm and rigid as we believe, but rather emerges from our own mind and not from the "outside". Thus, one might want to practice bringing one's waking life toward using more of the models that come from dreams (being able to conjure and transmute matter, levitate). This is a very different direction than constantly bringing reality checks and stability into dreams... it's about bringing the malleability of the dreamstate into waking life. Touche. I used to be very open to this other model. Many years ago, as part of my first foray into the New Age movement, I was into books like The Nature of Personal Reality by Jane Roberts. This is one of the better known books in the conscious creation movement, in which she offers advice that she delivers in a trance state from an entity that names itself Seth. (Incidentally, her explanation of channeling and model of oversouls as presented in the "Oversoul 7" books was actually very persuasive to me. When discussing the nature of her channeling work, she said that it was a model she had adopted because she internally could 'feel' the difference between when a thought came to her instantly and when she had to work for it, so she began to gain an awareness of her internal dialogue and could tell what came from "Jane" and what came from "Seth". I go through something similar--in fact, this blog is only one aspect of my personality and I break it down through a certain name and identity, and that is a useful division.) Seth's advice is similar but opposite to mine. I suggest that goals like reading and writing persistently in dreams are very attainable, though they require discipline and practice on small things... like reality-checks in your daily life. Seth suggests that we can consciously create our bodies out of physical matter and do extreme things like heal our organs or grow wings... but it involves a process of greater attention to our conscious thoughts. Dreams are a footnote in Seth's world, because he thinks where we are and where we need to focus is on greater empowerment through raised consciousness; the gateway to his plane of reality is through being more awake, not more drugged and fuzzy. I've been mesmerized by the weirdness of what I go through in the "drugged and fuzzy" dreams, as well as what hypnotized or trance-state people say when they're in that state. There's enough structure and coherence that it points toward an escape from my waking life, and I'm looking for that escape. So my wishful thinking is that empowerment will come from study of these occult secrets. Yet if you believe that we are "here" because we are "supposed to be" (a very new age concept) then attempts at escape miss the point. Because of some various personal frustrations with the ability to manipulate waking life, I stopped reading things like Seth's words. My challenge to Seth would sound like this: "If you're from another dimension of super-evolved beings, why don't you describe your daily life? Map coordinates that we can test with radio waves? Why don't you tell us about an invention we've never heard of? After all, even the dumbest person in our society could describe a Rubik's Cube to an alien, or draw one. You are clearly smart but you offer us nothing besides feel-good mumbo jumbo. Why does everything you say fit so consistently with what a literate new age lady with a perm might make up? Give me alien PROOF, something ASTONISHING! Interdimensional channels should do more than paraphrase!" Or in other words, I came to feel that my own transcripts were besting those of Jane in terms of contact-with-transdimensional-alien proof territory. So I turned toward my own experience, looking to it for guidance instead of the New Age section at Powell's. But moving on doesn't mean I don't believe what Jane/Seth said, I just wanted MORE. And as Jane is dead, I can't go to her to have my questions addressed. Recently I met someone (who has training in hypnosis and a family history of working with it) who has the "We Create Our Reality, even in Waking Life" point of view. I had not really thought about how this was contentious with my "We Don't Entirely Create Our Reality, Not Even In Dreams" agenda. It is and it isn't, but as one of my big goals of meeting hypnotists is to get transcripts of what I might say in a trance state... she asked the tough question: "What is your ideal result from such a session?" ...and the even tougher metaphysical issue... "What if your desire for what will come from that session is the critical factor of determining what will happen in that session, and how you will interpret it?" As evidenced by the fact that I used to really identify with The Nature of Personal Reality and consider it a must-read for everybody... I can't just dismiss these questions. Most people don't ask them because they're so busy attacking my thesis of dream-as-objective-experience that they don't turn it around to reality-as-subjective-experience. The best analogy I have to explain my wish has a lot to do with validation, and I am reminded of the Invader Zim episode Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom... I don't want people to think I'm crazy. But in further conversations about reality and challenges therein, I had to ask: who is my audience? Why do I care about proving things to people who elect to dismiss my ideas on their own merits? Is my entire system of goals misguided from inception? These are questions that are very big, and I don't necessarily have very good answers. I don't think elementary school kids often have very good answers for why they want to drive a car, or drink beer... but if they get an awareness of those concepts they might tend to obsess over them rather than focus on making the most of "the phase they are there to experience". General challenges to why I want to rebuild waking reality in dream life rather than turn waking life into my ideal vision is a valid point to bring up... and I'll work on that explanation. In the meantime, I think perhaps I should try and refine my goal for being (myself) hypnotized as that I wish to become a channel and speak to an interrogating audience directly, whilst awake.