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Archive for October, 2008
« Previous Entries Friday, October 31st, 2008Halloween Dreams and the Celtic Otherworld
Through Halloween, the castrated remnants of the Celtic influence on Western culture play out through communal rituals: of giving gifts to strangers, protecting the house with carved gourds that resemble spirits, and dressing in costumes to disguise ourselves after nightfall as a wandering ghost.
But we are also culturally predisposed to dream darkly, or at least [...]
Hallucinogens in the Stone Age
I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to discuss the recent discovery of “prehistoric drug paraphernalia” found in a Caribbean island archaeological site dated to @ 400 BC. Bone tubes and ceramic bowls were found in a human occupation site, suggesting the use of a sniffed substance, most likely cohoba, a hallucinogen made from the [...]
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008Guide to Lucid Dreaming Supplements
I just uploaded my latest article that explores lucid dreaming supplements. Dream herbs and supplements are getting a lot of press these days, especially from the “life-hack” crowd.
My take is that a lucid dreaming pill is not going to be of much help for beginner lucid dreamers unless they are also engaging in mind-development practices [...]
Dream Theater in Berkeley: Silk Passages
For those of you living in the San Francisco Bay Area, a dream theater performance is taking place in Berkeley on November 1st.
The event is part of the opening night festivities for the art show Balancing Perspectives: East Asian Influences in Contemporary Art.
Silk Passage is a dream theater performance exploring the kinetic union of body [...]
Dreaming in Black and White
Do we usually dream in black & white? Or is the color in our remembered dreams just hard to remember? This has been a perplexing question for dream scientists for half a century, with most studies not able to report a firm conclusion.
Here’s a new take: TV may call the shots for whether we dream [...]
Children’s Snoring and Cognitive Deficiencies Linked
Science Daily published this article last week about the new links between snoring and mental deficiences in children. The results are a little perplexing, especially where sleep apnea is concerned.
As expected, they found that children with snoring had lower regional cerebral oxygen concentration than healthy children. But, paradoxically, they found that children with sleep apnea, [...]
Google is Pro-Ecstasy, Professors Claim
For a change of pace, a recent study suggests that taking ecstasy only once can cause memory impairments. According to Keith Laws and Fabrizio Schifano from the University of Hertfordshire,
ecstasy users show significantly impaired memory when compared to non-ecstasy users and that the amount of ecstasy consumed is largely irrelevant. Indeed, taking the drug even [...]
Lucid Nightmares - Fear, Initiation, and Beyond
This is my final post on scary lucid dreams, also known as lucid nightmares. So far, we have looked into attitudes about nightmares, and some of the stumbling blocks to appreciating lucid nightmares at face value. Now, in part V, we’ll explore some alternative ways to frame these important experiences.
Fear as Projection
First off, sometimes there [...]
Lucid Nightmares & Frightening Near Death Experiences
Today I want to talk about lucid nightmares using the metaphor of frightening Near Death Experiences (fNDEs). Both of these states of consciousness are under-reported, most likely due to the taboos I explored in Part I of this series.
In general, Near Death Experiences have been compared to lucid dreams for decades. In both of these [...]
The Dark Side of Lucid Dreams
Welcome to part III of my series Lucid Nightmares.
Many of us were introduced to lucid dreaming spontaneously – when we found ourselves in the middle of a disturbing dream. What a wake up call!
Surprisingly, even though lucid nightmares are quite natural, we still do not know much about them. That’s because we usually wield lucidity [...]