chilli

Yes as you say, it is not always easy to tell if you are dreaming in a dream, especially when false awakenings and dreams within dreams are involved. Nevertheless. it is quite straightforward to rule out the possibility you are dreaming when awake. Waking life could be something like a dream but regardless of the similarities it is distinguishable from the dreams we have when we are asleep.

It is the success of the technique that helps you become lucid, not lucidity that makes the technique work. eg. in a dream you wonder 'is this as dream?' You check by using one of the technoques above, realize it is a dream and become lucid. Realizing it is a dream is how you become lucid, not the other way around. Anyway, I think anything that reliably fosters lucid dreams is far from useless. *edit: I missed the part where you said about not being able to interrogate yourself unless already lucid, but that is not true. If you do these enough while awake, the habit eventually spills into dreams and you do the check without consciously thinking about it, and then you may become lucid. The techniques are for inducing lucid dreams, so it wouldn't make much sense if one already had to be lucid to employ them, would it?

My first cactus.

So are you saying your EEG results were the same sleeping and waking? EEG taken during REM phases can appear similar top waking states. You don't have to take anyone's word for it, you can test it for yourself right now. It is not something someone just made up, it is the result of a lot of people's research into sleep and dreams. Like I said earlier, regularity and continuity are features of waking life that dreams do not share. These reality checks exploit that difference. Been where done what?

Hardly a simple fact. There are many ways you can tell, I just listed 10. If you try the things on that list in a dream vs real life, there will be noticeable differences. For example, try flying right now. Oh you can't? ok you are probably not in a dream then. If you can fly, you're dreaming. Or look at some text, look away and then back again. Is it the same? not dreaming. Did the text change in some way? You are in a dream. Lucid dreams are based around the idea that you can become aware of the fact you are dreaming. This is why getting in the habit of doing these reality checks works. Sooner or later, you do it in a dream and you get a different result and you realize it is a dream and become lucid. Usually, even just wondering if it is a dream is enough to make me lucid. I am not sure what EEG has to do with this? Sorry if I missed your point.

What are you referring to?

There are many ways to tell if you are in a dream. If you practice them regularly and seriously enough in waking life you will greatly increase your chances of having a lucid dream: Breathe - Can you hold your nose and mouth shut and breathe? Jump - When you jump, do you float back down? Read - Can you read a sentence twice without it changing? Look - Is your vision clearer or blurrier than normal? Hand - Can you push hand through a solid surface? Time - Can you read a clock face or digital watch? Fly - Can you will yourself to fly or hover above the ground? Palms - Do the palms of your hands look normal close-up? Mirrors - Does your reflection look normal in the mirror? Math - Can you add up two numbers for a correct answer? http://www.world-of-...ity-checks.html

waking life is different to dreams in the way it has continuity and regularity sometimes dreams overlap and you go back to the same places or meet the same characters etc, but there is rarely continuity unless you master lucid dreaming, but then you are conscious. Some dreams seem more real than waking life, and in a sense dreams are real. the parts of the brain that create the dream world also create the real world. the subjective self witnesses both data from the real world and data from the dream world. the butterfly is symbolic in both worlds it seems the prefrontal cortex is mostly offline during dreaming, unless one becomes lucid when the 'higher' parts of the brain kick in.. interesting because lucid dreaming by definition means that one has become conscious of the fact that one is experiencing a dream, some say enlightenment is the recognition of the same in what is commonly considered real life, and some say true enlightenment occurs during the deepest part of sleep, so in a sense we mediatet every night some studies have shown most people have negative dreams: anxious, angry and confused in nature, so it would be no wonder some people dread sleep, or sleep poorly. maybe the continuity of waking life is an illusion constructed by the supposedly logical parts of the brain and all of reality is subjective in nature as you say qualia, exercise and good sleep hygiene will probably go a long way to solving your problem. exercise is the easiest one to nail first

So much denial. I love Cannabis, but as many of us know it can lead to real withdrawal symptoms for a percentage of heavy, chronic users. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_dependence

Sounds good. What halloween doof?

Wouldn't that make it unlimited? lol

I love it too, where did you get yours? I have been trying for a while to get one from Hamilton's but they seem to have stopped replying to my emails just after he told me they had what I wanted.

Don't forget the Two-Spirit people of the Native Americans. Don't stress too much. Unprejudiced readers are also going *facepalm* and bigots won't be convinced by any amount of reasoned argument anyway.

Haha I can relate to that, I'll be well into my forties by then! You can always get more beautiful on the inside though (which rules me out ) Have you seen the huge monstrose L. schottii at Castle Rock nursery? If you haven't already, I recommend checking it out next time you're up that way.

I think maybe people were put on the defensive by the confrontational title topic? 'You think your life is bad?' implies that people here have nothing to complain about compared to these poor souls. I think probably many people here have had a life as bad or worse than a lot of the folk writing in that suicide forum, but they handled it differently and so are moving on with their lives instead of wallowing in despair. We have all lost people, and life is often painful and unfair, and the pain those people are going through is real, but if the pain becomes how you define yourself and you give up hope, things are only going to get worse. Sometimes, people who see only pain in life seem to have suffered far less than someone who looks for the good in life, so I think that shows that there is much more to this issue than a competition to see who has had the worst life. To me it seems like it doesn't matter how many bad things have happened in our lives. I think the crucial factor is in the way we look at those things, how we respond to them, how we learn from them and grow through them. Good to hear you are doing well BoP, and that this is not a reflection of your own emotional state. Losing people before their time is painful, but the best thing you can do for all those people is to choose a different way of dealing with pain, and live your own life, which is what you seem to be doing.

Very Tipper-esque!

Picked out some weeds, shuffled some things around, a little fert and seasol. Getting a bit worried about how soft a little L. koehresii is, hopefully it is just dehydration.

Nice plants! Is that a Lophocereus schottii monstrose hiding back there? Favorite cactus evar!

Wow, sounds like a great deal. The only problem with your argument is the premise that Greg will be painted as a lone fruitloop. Who says this is the way it would be portrayed? Very recently the entire community was dragged into the spotlight in connection with SAB and made to look very sinister, so it doesn't seem inconceivable to me that something like this has at least as much potential to be presented in a way that will be damaging to the image of the entire community, in fact it seems very likely knowing what we know of the way the media always twists anything to do with drugs. Good, because that is the kind of thing I have been voicing concern over all along. In any situation, I think it is unhealthy if everyone is expected to agree or see things the same way or support a particular action, and are dismissed or bullied into acquiescence or silence if they object. That is the hallmark of fucked up shit in society at all levels, not only the religious. A lot of people including Greg have demonized those who have raised objections, and seem to think that the only conscionable decision is for everyone to get on board and support this campaign, or to shut up and get out of the way. There actually seem to be a lot of people here laboring under the misapprehension that the support of the entire community is exactly what is needed for this campaign to be a success, including Greg himself who said for example in his original post in this thread: 'This action will not succeed without the support of the broader Entheogenic Community, so I'd hope that everyone will help in one way, or another.' Even though you and I might see this as perfectly reasonable, you know how exaggerated things become in the media. Think about how you were so careful to be circumspect with what you said to the media recently, and how it was then distorted and misrepresented to the public. Couldn't your support be interpreted differently and presented as some kind of underground drug cult network propagating subversive, dangerous ideas through this forum? I find it strange anyone would dismiss this after the the recent Channel 7 story on you and SAB. Or else... they find something far more unusual, colorful and newsworthy: MAN WHO CLAIMS TO BE GOD STARVES HIMSELF FOR DRUGS DRUG GURU REFUSES TO EAT UNTIL HALLUCINOGENS MADE LEGAL OZ RELIGION USES LEGAL PLANTS TO GET HIGH AND MEET GOD DRUG CULT WANTS TO MAKE LSD LEGAL To me there seems to be plenty of room for a hysterical interpretation of Greg's religion and campaign. Remember, the kind of people in media and government we have to worry about don't care about the truth or actual likely consequences, they just want drama they can turn into support for themselves, their political party or religious group.

That is an interesting angle, you've appealed to the postmodernist in me. That is something I have been unsure about, whether there could in actually be negative repurcussions from something like this. For example, isn't there the potential for it to be twisted by spin doctors and used to gain support for even harsher laws like the recent (and probably soon to return in a modified form) attempts to legislate DMT and mescaline containing plants? Isn't there potential for such a dramatic public action like this to actually backfire and feed into negative outcomes? Maybe I just have too vivid an imagination, or more likely I am insufficiently knowledgeable of the way the legal system, media and society really work with regards to these matters, which is why I have appreciated your informative posts on legistlation Torsten. Like Greg's last post where he put personal feelings aside and explained his reasoning to me, I find those kind of responses very helpful and persuasive.

How old was he? The boys are cuddlier anyway.. nawww squishy ratties!

happy birthday watertrade!

Haha sorry mate I thought you said rats. Haven't examined any mouse balls, believe it or not.

I completely agree with Torsten that equal rights for marriage is about equal recognition and protection by the legal system. This actually matters in very practical ways to a lot of gay couples. It is a common misperception fostered by the religious that marriage has it's origins in religion. Marriage takes many different forms in different cultures and predates recorded history.

You were a softhearted kid bogfrog, that sounds slightly traumatizing. I remember playing with mice around that age, I grabbed one too hard and accidentally split its stomach open and it's guts spilled out and I just blamed it on my sister. Atom, not sure how they could get them mixed up, the males are very obvious: