As Above So Below-Part 1

Dreaming has been a major source of knowledge and happiness for me.  I briefly described the techniques and benefits in my book but I did not get into much detail.  I met a young man yesterday who seemed to be a genuine truth seeker.  It is not common for a Filipino to get excited by such things as dreaming; however this young man was honestly stoked with the little I told him.  I have decided to write a how-to guide to help those interested in lucid dreaming get started.  I am not interested in dream interpretation or other psychological uses for the dream.  I cannot see the point of all that stuff when the very fact that things are happening without your conscious influence is the problem in the first place.  The warrior does not struggle with the knot, he cuts through it with a single blow from his super bad ass ninja sword.  The point I am trying to make is that with lucidity comes a wealth of understanding about life and the human condition.  With this new understanding one becomes aware of the subconscious bullshit that is clouding up your awareness and polluting the one place were you can be totally free to do what you want.  You may think this is trivial, after all it's only dreams right, not like it has a huge effect on your life.  Actually I hate to be the bearer of bad news but if your dreams are out of control then your subconscious is in control, and not only of your dreams.  More specifically the ego is in control.  That little voice in your head that is always whining about something or afraid of something or jealous of something and on and on, that's the ego.  People tend to think of the ego as being the source of pride and self-centered behavior, but the ego is more than that: it's the source of fear and desire and nearly every other nonintellectual thought we have.  The original purpose of the ego was to keep us alive.  The ego says take what you need and fight for your life.  The ego says you need to be a bad ass so the females will mate with you.  The ego is what puffs up our chest and gives us the courage to fight.  The ego is a tool and that tool has taken control of the human race as a whole.  We are destroying the world with the same egoic thoughts and desires that destroy our own life.  The ego was absolutely vital for survival not to long ago but now consciousness is necessary for our survival, and our happiness.  All that fighting and taking and needing and anger and jealousy may have gotten us to where we are now, but those days are over and the fire that once kept us alive is now burning down the house.  In this modern age it is necessary for us to pay attention to those thoughts bouncing around in our heads because whether or not we believe it those subconscious and egoic thoughts have great power.  When I talk about the subconscious and the ego as separate that is because they are.  The ego is the source of what I already laid out above.  The subconscious is where we store data of our habitual behaviors.  That's why in our dreams we find our selves at work or if we have been reading a big book we may find our selves reading.  These habits we log in our subconscious are obviously not produced by the ego, yet they still have the power to shape our dreams and our life.  The difference is our subconscious is an awesome tool and the ego is better off in storage.  I like to pull out the ego when I am in the gym or racing my motorbike, but I am controlling it, not the other way around.  This long-winded explanation of the ego and subconscious is important for two reasons: the ego is the problem and the subconscious is an important tool for life and dreaming.  When people talk about all the problems of the human condition they are really just talking about the constant stream of thoughts that drive people crazy.  Most psychological problems and chemical imbalances are simply products of the stress put on our body by the egoic thoughts and corresponding emotions.  I know this because I was a chemically imbalanced kid that found my way out.  The chemical imbalance is caused by the destructive thoughts and emotions.  Science has recently proved that outside stimuli at a young age can actually alter our DNA. They put me on medications to help me get a handle on my emotions but no one ever explained to me that I had the power to silence the mind babble.  The Tibetans were explaining this to their kids when they were toddlers, but in the west where we are so advanced the solution is to talk to someone who is just as lost as the rest of us-more so because now they have their ego telling them that they have all the answers and they stop searching for the great truths, or we take drugs.  My home life was messed up: my parents were miserable and my dad was an alcoholic, all I really wanted was help.  I acted out to vent my frustration and to get the attention I wasn't getting from my dad.  The church and the teachers and the psychologists think they have all the answers but I can honestly say that they never helped me at all to understand what was happening.  I had to fight my wounded ego for years and it nearly won the battle, but I never stopped looking for answers.  The answers came when I finally admitted that the church and all its bullshit did more harm than good.  For the Christian the answer is always to pray about everything and read the crazy shit in the bible that is in no way relevant to anything in the twenty-first century.  When I realized this I decided to explore the other religions and philosophies of the world.  It turns out that the answers were there all along but most people have no idea what to look for. When I learned to silence my ego and imprint positive thoughts onto my subconscious all my problems that had previously been a major source of catastrophe in my life became minor annoyances.  Now when I am angry or sad I analyze the thoughts bouncing around in my head and recognize the egos influence.  The reason dreaming is important is because it gives us a chance to see just how out of control our ego and subconscious are, and of course because lucid dreaming is awesome fun.  When we are dreaming our thoughts become reality all around us, our fears and desires manifest themselves within the framework of that place.  The awesome thing is that when we have full control of our cognitive ability during the dream we can create anything we want.  And now for the real kicker: we have all heard the saying "as above so below." That saying is absolutely true, what we do in our dreams we do in our waking life-hence the title of my book.  Have you ever seen someone so messed up that their life resembles a bad dream?  That's because it is a bad dream-it's all a dream.  There you have it: the great secret of the ancient and not so ancient sages of the world.  Our waking dreams are obviously controlled by the laws of this material world, but what we don't realize is that our habitual thoughts become reality just the same-albeit within a much greater time frame.  Just because you can't see a plant grow doesn't mean it is not growing.  The world aligns itself to bring us our dreams and unfortunately our nightmares.  As above so below, learn to dream and learn to live.  Be a creator and not a victim of circumstance.  Shit still happens but dreamers are better equipped to deal with it.  If you can become aware in the middle of the chaos of your dream, then you will probably be able to keep your cool when shit is crazy in the waking dream-it puts it all in perspective.  The first thing we need to do is become aware of our dreams and subconscious activity.  A dream journal is the perfect tool for the job and that is where we are going to start our journey into the rabbit hole.  Anytime you wake up you need to record your dreams.  Due to the separation between the two worlds we have a difficult time remembering our dreams, and some unfortunate slaves to the ego can never remember their dreams.  But the dream journal will be our light, it will make visible that which we are unaware of.  When we get a good idea of the recurring aspects of our dreams those aspects then become our tools.  When we begin to see the subconscious manifest then we build a bridge and infiltrate our subconscious with consciousness.  If you are always dreaming of your old car or girlfriend then you can use that to become aware of the dream.  First you need to recognize the patterns in your journal and document the recurring aspects of the dreams.  Then you will become conscious of the subconscious.  When the unconscious dreamer sees something that they have consciously related to their dreams the unconscious dreamer then becomes aware of the possibility that they are unconscious and lost in the dream.  Tomorrow I will get into all the methods of testing the reality of your world, but for now I feel that I have adequately explained the whys of the thing called dreaming and the first step in the process.  Start a journal and write in it immediately upon waking.  It doesn't matter if you wake up to pee in the night or just took a nap on the couch, write it down.  The amazing thing is that you will often write things upon waking that you will have absolutely no idea about by the afternoon, that's why the journal is so important.  Good luck.