Francis,
devekut means attachment, but the term is used extremely differently than it is in Buddhism. It's almost the complete opposite. It's related to the modern hebrew word for glue. And the general aim of hasidism, which is frequently an acosmic monism (within certain parameters, the different lineages of hasidism can vary very greatly in their emphases and methods,) is devekut. It means attachment to G!d who in hasidism is more parallel to G!d in some forms of Hinduism. He's an Ultimate Reality beyond attributes that we interact with by means of the attributes of the sefirot, which are the pathways by which G!d interacts with the world.
tzimtzum (contraction, one of the important ideas in the kabbalistic myth of creation) then becomes more of a happening to consciousness instead of to all of creation. Instead of creating a space for the world to be, it creates space for the individual ego. Instead of the light clearing away in one space, it's really just dimmed so that the individual can perceive duality. There are different types of devekut in that sometimes it can be an event that happens at one time and it can also refer to a constant awareness.
Another concept in hasidism with some curious similarities to the dharmas is ayin m'yesh. Yesh m'ayin is hebrew for something from nothing. It's creatio ex nihilo. But in hasidism they say G!d made yesh m'ayin so that man could make ayin m'yesh, and the key to decoding that is that sometimes G!d is called Ayin. Anything that we can apply an attribute or label to is called yesh. It's got thingness. But when attributeless G!d lacks that. And humility in the hasidic sense is realizing that oneself is also ayin.
It was a reaction to a lot of things including the asceticism of the day, the fall of Sabbateanism and the stifling of popularist mysticism (consequently, there are some Sabbatean ideas that make their way into hasidism, but the way it handles messianism is radically different) and socio-economic factors (the Jewish communities in Poland at that time were self-governed by a leadership that had become increasingly corrupt and financially comfortable. The Jews in the countryside were being ignored. And there were maggidim, underpaid wandering preachers who became very popular in the countryside because they showed that they cared about the commonpeople there. But that's only a very brief and basic overview.) Originally they were a very radical movement. But over time due to a number of different pressures they became very conservative, and the hasidism of today is most associated with black hats and restorationism. I consider myself a neo-hasid in that I take a lot of hasidic ideas and apply them in a progressive framework, leaving behind some of the oppressive baggage and translating some of the less agreeable concepts into a more compatible language (e.g. annihilation of the self changes to becoming transparent.)
I know that's a lot more information than you asked for, but I thought the context might be helpful, and hasidism is one of the subjects I enjoy discussing the most.
Dauer
Hey Neemai.
I found that the more I thought of dreams (or dreaming) while awake, the easier it became to remember them. Also, by writing them down straight away on waking (before getting up etc...) or even in rough scribbles during the night I managed to catch things that I'd have otherwise forgotten.
I have heard both of these suggestions. The webmaster of one site, when suggesting thinking and reading about dreaming a lot so that the unconscious will be processing it all that night, pointed out that he has LDs more frequently when working on the site. It's very difficult for me to take notes in bed because my penmanship is so terrible. I've had experiences (when I was fully awake) of writing things which I could read for the next few days, but when I'd put them away for a while and found them again, they were nearly indecipherable. Especially when I have a lot to say. When I first wake up I try to recall all of my dreams before I get out of bed, at least the basics of them, and then after I've done that dream recall I go onto my laptop and type them up. Now I've a few more steps. Sometimes I'll interpret my dream according to the dream interpretation process of analytical psych and I also transfer the dream to my lucidipedia journal and parse all of the characters and make note of each dreamsign.
Lucid dreaming always proved to be very difficult to control - but is suposed to be more likely if you wake up early, then go back to sleep.
That's a technique known as WBTB (wake back to bed.) The idea is to get a good five or six hours of sleep and then get up, stay up (some say for 10 or 15 minutes, some say for 60 to 90 minutes) to allow awareness to restore itself, and then go back to bed. I've been practicing that the past couple of days as part of the infinity software training. Yesterday I only had to get up and browse the web a little to read about lucid dreaming, but today I used a post-hypnotic suggestion mp3 and then went back to bed. While my dream wasn't lucid, the dreams keep getting clearer, and this time it was also a lot longer and more involved. I had a weird experience in a park of seeing the type of radar common to an mmog in the top right of my field of vision, and using it to track down some friends who'd gotten ahead of me.
Some people suggest having some kind of reality test which you can perform when awake or dreaming, but if you just dream that it's real, then it's not always a fool-proof plan either!
I've been applying RC's very regularly, each time I walk through a doorway I'll pinch my nose to see if I can still dream. Before I go to bed I do Carlos Castaneda's hand technique and then use the MILD (mnemonic induction into lucid dreaming) technique. Based on some advice I read last night on an LD forum I didn't repeat it over and over again, because then it can lose its meaning. Instead I said the verbal part of castaneda's and the mild technique three times each, and when I did it I focused very intensely on visualizing myself in the dream, becoming aware, doing a second RC, rubbing my hands together so that I don't wake up (it's a technique discovered by Dr. Laberge. Sometimes when we become lucid we'll disconnect from the dream and wake up, so we have to become involved in the dream through our sense. He suggests rubbing one's hands together, spinning in a circle, or I think also stomping on the ground a few times to concretize lucidity) and then, because I read that a big trick to being able to lucid dream is not making the goal lucid dreaming, but making the goal doing something in a lucid dream, I'll visualize myself meditating and the contents of my mind expanding to swallow up the whole dreamscape. I think I might add another RC that's a bit less easy to be aware of, like every time I see a certain color. And now that I think about it, my girlfriend has appeared in almost half of my dreams so I should rc when I see her or speak with her. And also any time I start playing an mmog because a few aspects of them have appeared in my dreams. One time I think I dreamt in 3d rendered graphics instead of the real world.
I think I'm lucky because my dreams just are so contextually wrong. I never have objective dreams. They're always extremely subjective. And it's never just in a small way. Usually almost every situation in my dream makes little sense at all, sometimes in very bizarre ways (like visiting the beit hamikdash where I'm part of a chorus that's all singing except for me who has been constantly screaming without taking a breath through every scene of the dream (besides the one where for a moment I started throat singing)) and sometimes in very ordinary ways (like I'm visiting my grandmother who's already moved.) Each night I seem to be able to recall more dreamsigns, and they're predominantly contextual. I don't think the laws of physics have ever been violated. Ocasionally the shape of something may be off. And in these recent dreams there haven't been any very intense feelings.
Have you had any experiences with Deja-Vu in your dreams at all?
Not in my dreams. If I did it would be a fantastic way to RC I think. But now that I think about it I've had a lot more synchronicitous waking moments. I'll be typing something and hear something in hte music I'm listening to that says exactly what I was reading or thinking when taken out of the context of the song, or other things like that. So if I make that an RC I can become more aware of moments like that and maybe bring that into my dreaming.
When I was attending a Jewish high school I used to come home very tired. The day was extremely long because of hte dual curriculum (as well as prayer services) and when I was on the soccer team I'd get home even later. I had to get up very early and at some time I got into the habit of staying up to watch conan. I was on medications that also made me a little more tired. When I got home I'm stumble into my parent's bedroom and fall asleep on their bed until dinner, which was no more than 30 to 40 minutes away. I'd have extremely vivid dreams. I wasn't self-aware but they were very very vivid. They'd usually begin with a false awakening. I'd think I woke up just where I was. And then I'd continue the rest of the day. I think they usually ended when I went to bed. And then it was really time for dinner. lol. I'd often get deja vu the days I dreamt like that, not in the dreams but after, from the dreams. I think those dreams were all objective.
There was some advice on one website, that The Matrix actually gives a lot of good information about lucid dreaming if you analyze it. I'm going to be watching it again but, thinking back, there's a lot of good stuff in there. The mirror's not solid. Neo thinks seeing a cat twice is nothing but it turns out that it's an important signal to RC. He tells himself that if he ingests something he'll become more lucid than he already is, and he does. The only thing stopping him from being able to do what he wants in dreams are his own limiting beliefs.
The way they have their operator upload programs into them to teach them things, this is like another technique. You create scripts to tell your mind how to operate in a dream. Like if you have trouble going through a wall at first because you don't believe you can, tell yourself the wall is water, and then walk through it. If you can't fly just by jumping up, fly like an airplane or a bird. You can modify your method of flight as you get used to it.
When he finally breaks through the matrix he realizes some of the fundamental concepts for the novice dreamer to come to terms with in order to controls his/her dreams more effectively: he's no longer afraid of physical harm, and he doesn't think any longer that the agents are really there. he sees them as a part of the dream. He also realizes the limitations of physics don't apply. One thing he doesn't come to terms with is that he can even manipulate the dreamscape without taking physical action within the dream, or maybe he just enjoys being physically involved (makes ofr a better movie anyway.) Iirc he also realizes that there are no social consequences when he kills some innocent people as part of the operation to free morpheus. There's another connection. He freed morpheus, the god of dreams.
Dauer
