JOURNALS -- PART TWO (1986-present)
The end of
wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
--William Faulkner
The Impetus to Begin Again
Since the mid-1980's I have renewed my interest
and efforts in the dream-conscious state. This interest derived partly
from a revitalized effort to writing poetry; composing classical music;
reading treatises on Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism; travelling widely
in India, China, Russia, and elsewhere; and especially returning to a personal
reading and contemplating study of Zen. What also has rekindled my
interest in lucid dreaming is the sense that a part of me -- the conscious-subconscious
link -- had suffered much neglect during a period of too much attention
given to doing science and writing about rather positivist, concretist,
materialist technological matters.
My current-period effort again is aimed at
an empirical approach. I still have little interest in the cultist
interpretations. Once again I pursue lucid dream experiences and
experiments sans these new age trappings. There is so much the mind
can do and can teach, us, if but we make the effort through intense concentration,
meditation, self-awareness and appraisal ... that all the cultist crystals
and pyramids and mantras and charts and chants in the world can't begin
to offer.
During this "recent period" -- since the mid-1980's
-- I've not kept nightly journal notes of specific dream experiences as
I did previously, but can nonetheless recount some important, recent experiments
and experiences, as follows.
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