The Warrior Path

Topic moved from the Quest for Lucidity forum into the Beyond Dreaming forum cause you can find here the dream yogas topics, etc.

I want to become a sage and I suppose with lucid dreaming you need to become the so called warrior.

My questions are narrowed down:

1: What difficulties “intellectually” can you find on this path
2: What dangers lie there in this path? I’ve read that there are characters in dreams that persuade you into doing something? (Castaneda on the web)
3: What books/websites are about the “warrior’s path”

This is what I already found:

Dissociation

Lucid dreaming may weaken the borders between waking and dreaming, the conscious and subconscious mind, reality and fantasy. This might lead to problems of a dissociative nature. Probably the most common form of dissociation involves having problems distinguishing your waking memories from dream memories. Everyone who recalls at least one dream will have to sort out their dreams from reality in the morning. This can really be a problem for those who have previously had zero recall and, due to lucid dreaming, have had a major uptick in recall. Now, suddenly, they have all these excess, illogical memories to sort out. This is unlikely to be a major problem, but may be a big annoyance.

However, there are signs that you should watch for that indicate a bigger problem may be developing. Lucid dreaming in itself should not cause these to appear in a waking state:

* Ability to ignore extreme pain or what would normally cause extreme pain
* Absorption in a computer game, television program or movie
* Remembering the past so vividly one seems to be reliving it
* Finding evidence of having done things one can’t remember doing
* Not remembering important events in one’s life
* Being in a familiar place but finding it unfamiliar
* Seeing oneself as if looking at another person
* Other people and objects do not seem real
* Looking at the world through a fog or haze
* Not recognizing friends or family members
* Finding unfamiliar things among one’s belongings
* Finding oneself in a place but unaware of how one got there
* Finding oneself dressed in clothes one doesn’t remember putting on

If this has happened, and there is no other cause (e.g. drugs), take a break from lucid dreaming for a while. In fact, take a break from anything fictional for a while, at least until symptoms stop. In addition, you may consider avoiding experimentation with lucid dreaming if you have some form of schizophrenia.

Sorry, I don’t get it. What do you mean by the warrior’s path? Do you mean the way to enlightment of the warrior’s caste, the kshatryia?

I think this is a big exaggeration. You discribe LD as a kind of way where danger lie in ambush behind every shrubbery, and great evil awaits for a dreamer. Every dreamer is a warrior who fight to find what is real and what is only his crazy imagination. He fight not only with a reality but with world… In the beginning I had some kind of shock when I awoke- something like “where I am?” but only in the beginning. There is a huge difference between a dream and reality. It’s impossible to make a mistake. You can think a dream is reality, but never that reality is a dream. And in Castaneda books warrior is man who like wisdom, and he want to get perfect in everything he do. Castaneda’s warrior isn’t a kind of don Kichot who fight with windmills, and don’t recognize what’s reality and what’s just a dream

I agree with Carlo about reality sensing. In fact, the Lucid Dreamer would be even better at discerning what is real from what is not. We’re the ones who are always doing Reality Checks! It’s those non-lucid dreamers you have to worry about.

I’m unsure to understand what you mean by "“intellectually”. Yet, according to the warrior path, I think you have to be disciplined and persevering. Then I found that most of the very good LD’ers will finally end up in practicing meditation.

I don’t really agree with Castaneda’s “inorganic beings” theory. I know some people who practise LD’ing for a long time and they don’t confirm this. But people who have read Castaneda generally have the most terrible lucid nightmares, cause they are afraid of LD’ing, and when you are afraid, you have nightmares. I’ve two examples : a friend of mine was so afraid that he stopped LD’ing. Three years later, after having read other LD’ing accounts, he realized that what he believed real was only the projection of his fears. He decided to start again and had no more problem. Somebody whom I’ve read the DJ related that he has read Castaneda and when he practised LD’ing, he had lucid nightmares: he believed the dream characters were “real”, tried to wake up from his LD’s, what provoked sleep paralysis (and of course it was even worse, etc.) One day, he found Flo’s LD’ing journal on the web, he mailed her and she told him he has not to be afraid cause DC’s were not real. From this day, he had no more problem. The same trouble can also happen to people who believe in astral entities. Moreover, tibetan buddhist books about lucid dreaming don’t mention this problem. So, as for me, I think there is no danger.

The best Castaneda’s books are “Separate Reality”, “Journey to Ixtlan”, “Tales of power”, “The second ring of power”, “The eagle’s gift”, “Fire from within”, and “The power of silence”. I don’t like his other books. You have to read them all, at least from “Journey to Ixtlan” to “The power of silence” because the concepts are developped in each books in a newer and larger way. There are many other books by other authors which have been written about Castaneda’s warrior path, but they are far less good.

It’s in the Lucid Wikibook. I don’t agree with that. It may happen if you already have mental trouble. Yet some people are schizophrenic on the forum and LD’ing seems not to create trouble.

As I said above, a bigger problem, IMO, may happen if you believe in the reality of dream characters. This may lead to some slight form of paranoïa (but not irreversible). People who are subject to sleep paralysis may face exactly the same problem indeed if they believe they are abducted by aliens, visited by demons, etc. These cases are more common than dissociation, which I never heard about… with the exception of the wikibook.

My best wishes on your path.

Castaneda’s path… I am reading his “art of dreaming” I interpret it as a way of attaining something and afterwards you should get rid of the dogma’s. And thnks for the refresher, I already found out that there are a lot of NLP technique’s in the book.

One teaching of don juan is that you shouldn’t fear anything. Another is called “seeing” and is a intermediate state of meditation. I think this is part of the training and you shouldnt indeed take things to serious but it will help you induce without much meditation to learn how to not fear things. At least I think so.

So, meditation is the best way along with dreaming? Hmm, interesting

I will post more in this threath about my warrior path (which I for a part invented myself), in my dream someone told me not to hasten myself. I hastened myself and the dream ended. I want to continue my adventure.

I had a lot of fun reading the Art of Dreaming. I read it for the first time in 1993 and had a great dream. Here it is:

[color=blue]
Dream: In the Desert - This dream occurred in 1993:

I was in a desert and I was fully lucid. I met up with a group of men and woman. They were talking about dream traveling and gave me the impression that they were all quite adept at it. They were somewhat pleased to see me, talking to me about various things. They were not all travelers from Earth, some were not even human, although I was perceiving them all this way.

During this interesting conversation, I saw a stick lying on the ground in the sand. It seemed extremely out of place, one of the men in the group came over and told me that it was another being, but this being wasn’t able to interact with us. It came from a world so different from ours that it didn’t even know how to communicate, so I had given it the image of an inanimate stick.

Suddenly, something changed. We were all being attacked by something. It was vicious, but it was animalistic. It was trying to feed off of our consciousness. I helped the others, following their lead and trying to take ITS consciousness from it. Together, we defeated the thing, but we were all very tired from this fight.

The man whom I had spoken to told me that I was talented, but I wasn’t ready to be out “this far”. He sent me back and I awoke.[/color]

I’m a pretty big sceptic, but I did love this dream. Coincidentally, I have recently reread Art of Dreaming and am currently reading Being-In-Dreaming by Florinda Donner, Carlos’ friend. Not nearly as good, btw.

Ha! In a dream I wanted to meet someone but they didn’t dare to call its name, I was not advanced enough, I had to train myself. The first assignment was to “not be to hasty”, obviously enough I saw some electrical flying suite and well I had to take the skates which I didnt saw in my dream but saw when the skaters passed beyond me in the depths of my dream. I awoke, I even tried to do some techniques to stay in the dream but my hands, head and legs where in a suit that didn’t want to move.

I was not totally lucid though, so next time I will have more questions and revisit this adventure.

BTW, this dream motivated me to do research into lucid dreaming.

Totaly Lucid- I have battled with Beasts. If they win, in general, they do wake me up. Its like sometimes they are taking my conciousness from my subconcious (unconcious state). One of these Things kept growing back the parts I destroyed, Some take the strength of your attack & use it against you to paralise you wile they move in. These battles went on every lucid experience for a fiew month untill…
I stood still, looking strait at it or indeed them. What could it /they do afterall? They stoped also -looking at me all still waiting for my next move, judging my ideas, looking for & finding my wakness.
These experiences sent a severe chill through what seemed like my whole being. What was this? It was my demons, my fears & I was more than fighting with them now. I was suddenly reolising They were Me. I put out my hand and thought Go… Go away. This did not work at all and with that they would start to close in on me, I thought hard and had an idea. I held out my hand and instead of Go I used ‘Gone’. Bingo- it worked!
I was rewarded, the large stone bridge near by grew into what could only be described as a Dinasaur like the Ultrasaurous. Made from crumbling stone it walked through the Incredibly deep river the bridge was over, its toes not even submerged it was so huge. I meen Realy, Realy Huge! I also noticed four others peacefully stroling all around us. I flew to its head, its eyes were looking at me, smiling eyes with pupils the size of me. The power, The glory, forever & ever. That was the begining of a tour too large, long & indepth to continue to explain to you. I had won them over, they were my Good Friends! But the Monsters return again & again in different dreams, different forms, riddles, surroundings, you name it, harder to beat but Beatable Every Time.
It continues (always). I Continue to win (mostly).

Great!

Thats f’in crazy!

To be honest, I’ve had a lot of these symptoms since I started in all of this Lucid Dreaming, crystalomancy, and hypnogogic crap. But, to again be honest, I enjoy it.

I have very vivid dreams, lucid or not, and have no trouble remembering them. This can probably be accounted to much practice as a dreamer. I take my dreaming seriously.

As a result, a lot of them appear as reality. Sometimes I recount events in my mind only to remember that they didn’t happen. I like those few moments of uncertainty until I find something to contradict the whole happening. It gives me something to do. Personally, I like to be half asleep well into the afternoon, and since I haven’t got any real responsabilities yet, I think I’ll enjoy it. Thank you Lucid Dream practice, you’ve given me enjoyable grogginess and uncertainty.

OK a few questions.

I assume the Original Poster (OP) is talking about a book. Whats this book about exactly? What is a sage? is this just someone who has full control over their lucid dreams? and what is the warrior’s path? is this just someone who isn’t afraid to do abnormal things in lucid dreams eg. kill dream characters? help me out here I’m not to sure I understand the OP’s post.

Also I wouldn’t mind knowing what crystalomancy is? is this just meditation with crystals?

Thanks in Advance,
Eonnn

Hi Eonnn,

I replied to some of yours questions in my post above, thus I’ll don’t say it twice.

I don’t remember that the notion of “sage” was included into the Castaneda’s books, so that I suppose the initial poster just meant a “wise man”.

The “warrior path” is a way of behaving. It’s a metaphorical meaning, a “warrior” doesn’t kill people, it means he has to be as much aware in his life as a warrior on the battlefield. I can’t explain all the castanedian concepts in this thread, it would be long too much. I’ll just say it has to do with shamanism.

All this is half-related to LD’ing cause some parts of Castaneda’s books are related to it. The two first books are related to psychedelic plants, so that you’ll have to read the next books, from “The journey to Ixtlan” or else you’ll be completely mislead.

About cristallography, etc. I don’t know.

What about dream hackers.they are not just lucid dreamers.they allso mix teachings of castaneda(shamanisam), and Tibetan book of dead ,chinese dream map books(dont know),etc.And their own dream map construction.and as i remember they talk about anorganic creatures,flyers, labyrinths ,like castaneda does.so qestion is :is this stuff for real.it does not sound metaphorical
when involving real health problems. they say that after you start LD -ing awake and when you make your dream map remembering every dream in life,Nagual,death starts attacking…If it is a fake,then it is realy good one.But why scare off dreamers ,and on the other hand inviting everyone to become one.Same as castaneda inviting us to live the warrior path.And just to say,many people today say as long as some writhers (DeMill),that
Castaneda is a pice of ****…

For me it look like a big thing to cash money with dream…