How do thoughts arise ... along with duality?

[MikeS80]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

When you understand what the dream is all about you understand what 'you' are all about, because you are the dream thinking it is the dreamer. Dreams come from the unconscious and your unconscious produces the 'framework' of your reality. Your dreams are closer to your true internal reality than what's in your conscious, and lucid dreaming that changes the dream because it doesn't like the 'contents' is just another level of Spiritual bypassing.

Yes, it is all mental activity. Dreaming is mental activity as much as thinking while awake is mental activity. Knowing that it is all mental activity is more important than knowing you are dreaming. And not dreaming will be better yet for an anti-thought and anti-mind person.

The 5 mental modifications ( memory, right understanding, wrong understanding, and imagination) of the mind is mental activity. The intellect and ego works with any of the 5 mental modifications.

[MikeS80]

An example of spiritual bypassing is when a person replaces the one's/brahman's intelligence, which includes the intellect, common sense, intuition etc etc with his/her personal imagination to bypass, escape or ignore what he/she thinks he/she can't or do not want to change or deal with.

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

The unconscious is also a snake. All things are snakes and the rope is no thing.

The unconscious, like the ego, is a Gestalt or a 'collection'. It's that 'collection' that creates the snake from associations with things like the collective unconscious, of which the snake is an archetype that was probably originated by cavemen. My being from the north of Scotland means that I'm less likely to see a snake, because the climate isn't conducive to their survival. it's less of a cultural influence that the snake might be to someone else. The mind is also quite capable of creating a very different reality that our senses hallucinates in the first place, I've seen that in action during my time in mental health.

That which is aware of JASG is still JASG, is a snake - an 'object' of consciousness. What is pure awareness itself has no 'objects' of awareness. It is not 'aware of' and is neither rope nor snake - it just IS. The ego differentiates between the 'object' and awareness and that's what becomes what we become 'aware of'. Awareness is also relative to our senses in this case, and how our unconscious processes what our senses see. The brain has some some serious processing even before we are aware that there's either a rope or a snake.

The problem here is making what is a psychological process into Spirituality. The psychological process creates our realities, and Spirituality is also a part of those psychological processes. It was psychology and not Spirituality that turned a rope into a snake, and the rope remains a rope.

"He has no consciousness of that which enables his senses and organs to perform their tasks." and
"By whom commanded and directed does the mind go towards its objects? Commanded by whom does the life-force, the first (cause), move?"
That is the unconscious, and despite what many educated Spiritual people might say the ancients were well-versed in what we would call psychology. It's the Western mind that separates them, the Eastern mind integrates it to such an extent that they didn't have a word for it.

"In Jung's terms, the individuation means the realization of the Self, which is the conjunction of the conscious and the unconscious. In the practical accomplishment of this goal, the interpretation of the dreams plays a dominant role because dreams are the expression of the unconscious, both of the personal and of the collective one."

Is lucid dreaming just creating more snakes from ropes?

Y'see, to the ego or mind the unconscious is ineffable.

Consciousness - and the ego is the centre of the field of consciousness - is the 'end result' of cognitive and other unconscious processes, so in that respect the psychology is in agreement with the Spirituality and the neuroscience. Similarly with the Ahamkara, since it's the 'I' of a 'collection' of invented things. If 'I' is an invented thing then "I have free will" can't be anything else but invented. 'I' is also aware of.

[Maisy]

I think I don't create dream environments, my brain does. Just like in waking life, I am not making thoughts my brain does. But I can influence some stuff the brain does and I can influence some dream elements. Me and my body are pretty intertwined until I leave the body. Here's where I come into this content the unconscious and brain are making, I can be fully intertwined in it, accept it's real, not see it for what it really is. That's my potential. So it's not that I am it or I am always making it, but by being aware of what it really is,
I have the option to transform my experience of it.

I was in a dream once standing by a cliff, scared I might fall off. In that moment I realized I was in a dream so the normal dream became a lucid dream. I then thought, "oh I can't get hurt it's a dream" and so I jumped off the cliff expecting to fall but I floated like a feather.

[Maisy]

Originally Posted by MikeS80

What does really matter on the deepest of levels is knowing that you create the experiences you have here on earth,...

It's kind of crazy but I wonder if a more precise way to say that is " we create the experiences of experiences we have here on earth"

Like some stranger starts yelling at us in a store, we did not create whatever that person is doing or yelling, we did not create the experience of being yelled at, but we have the potential to have control over how we experience that experience.

Originally Posted by Maisy

It's kind of crazy but I wonder if a more precise way to say that is " we create the experiences of experiences we have here on earth"

Like some stranger starts yelling at us in a store, we did not create whatever that person is doing or yelling, we did not create the experience of being yelled at, but we have the potential to have control over how we experience that experience.

That's the Buddha's Second Arrow parable. https://mindfulnessmeditation.net.au/arrow/

‘In life, we can’t always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. This second arrow is optional.’

Originally Posted by Maisy

I was in a dream once standing by a cliff, scared I might fall off. In that moment I realized I was in a dream so the normal dream became a lucid dream. I then thought, "oh I can't get hurt it's a dream" and so I jumped off the cliff expecting to fall but I floated like a feather.

Imagine a waking equivalent minus actually jumping off a cliff.

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

Imagine a waking equivalent minus actually jumping off a cliff.

Just need to forget the dog, representing the lower mind in this image.

Enjoy!

[iamthat]

Originally Posted by Maisy

The words mind, consciousness, and self are all just words for "me" or "I." All the talking about ourselves in 3rd person or as parts is confusing to me.

I think we are this me that perceives. So whatever you are perceiving is not you, and so should not be called the self lol! If you are looking at it or aware of it, it is not you. Sure it's closer than close as some of this is from the brain, but it's still not you, it's just the stuff we are currently intimate with until we leave this body.

An incarnate human being is both Being and personality. Consciousness is the intermediary between the two. Consciousness is the sense of "I AM".

If Consciousness identifies with personality then we see things as separate from us and other than us. This is me and that is a table, a car, a tree, etc.

If Consciousness identifies with Being then we experience limitless Being everywhere. The table, the car and the tree continue to exist but there is no separation. Being pervades all of it.

People may give different names to this state but I prefer to call it the Self, because this is our true nature. So my physical senses may be perceiving these other objects but it is all the Self. This is not talking about myself in the 3rd person, but simply acknowledging our true nature.

The spiritual journey we are all talking about is the journey from identification with personality to identification with Being. And in the process we recognise that we are not our personality or mind or brain.

Peace

[Maisy]

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

Imagine a waking equivalent minus actually jumping off a cliff.

I think in waking life the lucid dream equivalent is when you become aware of this now from a new perspective somehow apart and not effected by the thoughts and ideas the unconscious is presenting to us. You get this feeling and experience of freedom and liberation. I think it's almost the same experience when you become lucid in a dream. A change of perspective changes the experience. It's like an "ah ha" realization.

I think the change of perspective is just a boost in awareness. Like in a dream, you become aware you are in a dream. You became more aware of the actual. In waking life, you become aware you are focusing on mind and don't have to be. You become aware you can be here now and give no heed to any ideas or thoughts that present themselves. Instead of being "hypnotized" by the dream or the mind, and feeling all those negative feelings and emotions, we "wake up" or increase our awareness.