Podcast | Distortions and Dreams

The event description for this edited audio version from a recent Insight Timer live talk Distortions and Dreams:

A 15 minute side glance at making New Years resolutions by an exploratory barraging of the barriers of distortions and the ups and downs of (some) dreams.

While the local church bells at 6pm are still audible, I’ve edited out most of me reading back the audience comments and my responses to them. My original notes are more or less as follows:

• Intent and Disclaimer: could all be enlightening, rubbish or anywhere in between. A sharing to discerned for oneself. Take what’s helpful and discard the rest
• Inspired by a comment asking what’s so bad about dreams. I responded by addressing distortions

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Dream definition:

	1. a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep

	2. a cherished aspiration, ambition, or ideal

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• What is/are a dream/dreams?
  • Daydreams?
  • Lofty goals?
  • Nightly/sleeping phenomena?
  • Relationship to sexual activity?
  • American Dream (will address in a moment)
• Don’t mean MLK “I have a dream” which is more of a vision — we need more visions and resolves and betterment
• English language is tricky
• Pop culture:
  • nightmares
  • dream a little dream for me
  • in your dreams
  • dream on, dream away
  • living the dream
  • make your dreams come true
• Dream interpretation — psychological side
• Awakening on the spiritual path like waking up out of a dream.
• “The only thing we don’t wake up out of is love”
• Dream within a dream preferable to “everything is an illusion” (run into that tree at full speed and tell me it is an illusion)
• Two Truths
• “American Dream” as justification for distortions? (Not an invalidation)

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Distortion definiton:

	1. pull or twist out of shape

	2. the action of giving a misleading account or impression

	3. change in the form of an electrical signal or sound wave during processing

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• Perhaps distortion is another facet of the Pali word Moha — often translated as delusion (not in psychiatric sense) or ignorance. Moha can be not recognizing the other two poisons of greed and ill-will.
• Ever been convinced something is one way then find out it’s not?
• Distortion synonyms and the like : funhouse of mirrors, counterfeit, inversions, reversals, twisting, misrepresentation, partial truths, deceptions, unreal(ity)
• Negentropy, retro-causation but then into metaphysics, physics of reality constructions and systems, but how much of this leads toward stress and how much away from it?
• Teaching of the arrow
• How to address: recognition, observation, investigation, questioning, study, discernment, knowing, truth, reality, wisdom
• How are dreams made? How do they come about? What is the level, degree, amount of attachment to each?
• Being enthusiastic about whatever comes our way in life as it can be way stranger (in a good way) and way more wonderful and beautiful than anything we could dream up
• Why pick apart dreams and distortions? Wouldn’t it be easier, safer and more comfortable not addressing truth?
• ‘Truth is a reliable stream of light, faithfully guiding your journey of unraveling, only able to dismantle the parts that cannot proceed any further. When awakening strips us down to our core, even loving ourselves can sometimes feel too much. This is when we shift into the silent “I love you’s” where each breath you take infuses all sentient beings with a love always transmitted, even without being intended or spoken.’