I’ve come to what I think is a conclusion now about the meaning of life. In the previous article I talked about the meaning of life for the individual. Often times we come to our own conclusion about the meaning of life for us personally.

Whatever you come up with for your own life I want you to consider adding this one too…

The ultimate shared meaning of life for everyone on the planet is:

Helping others get through their lives a little bit easier.

That’s it.

That’s the whole meaning of life for mankind as a whole.

If you think about it - that’s what everything, every clue about the meaning of life is pointing toward…

Helping others get through life just a little easier than they would have without the help.

Life is full of suck for all of us. There’s a lot to deal with. Some have it easier than others, sure. But, in the end if you really took a realistic look at your life you’d see that your life is FILLED with pain.

The alarm clock rings in the morning. You know you should get up. The way society is in America, you must get up. If you don’t get up you must lie to your employer about why you didn’t make it to work that day. Do that a couple of times and you’ve lost your job and caused more problems than the pain that existed pulling yourself up out of bed.

From the time you wake up until the time you sleep you have things that you ‘need’ to do to keep participating in the society you live in. Most of these things are not what you would choose to be doing in an ideal life. If your life were ideal you would choose what to do with each part of your day. Few of us have that freedom.

Not all that many of us will take an objective look at their own life and see all that sucks about it. If we did - we’d ask ourselves - WHY are we going through life like this? Am I not SMARTER than this? Why do I owe 9-12 hours of my 16 hours awake to someone or some company I could care less about?

Life as is it in these United States, sucks basically.

There are those of us that can deal with it everyday. We might blow off steam once a year or once in three years. That’s all we need. There are those that can’t make it through each day without major drama.

Is it their fault? How long could you go being so poor you couldn’t buy clothes detergent to hand wash your clothes? How many times could you listen to your kids asking you what’s to eat for lunch when you know they’re going to have to make it through without lunch until they get some bread and peanut butter for dinner?

Me? Not too many times.

There are people in the USA like this. There are people in the world like this. There are HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of people in the world like this. In your town you might know someone like this. You may have had a problem with them in the past or you may know poor children that are in class with your children.

You might have been cut off while driving by someone that has just had enough of life’s stressors and can’t take anymore.

Here in Thailand the majority of people are doing OK on what little they have. They wake up and go to work like you do. They have families that need fed and they work 8-12 hours like you do. Overall most in Thailand are doing well enough to survive and thrive. At the end of the month after expenses they might have an average of $18 to spend on non-necessities. Most of them are OK with that. That’s what most people have. It’s the norm for Thai society. In American dollars that might equate to almost $100 USD.

Others, and there are thousands upon thousands in this country of 65 million, don’t have the education or the physical health to work as much as they need to in order to provide for their families. In the USA we tend to see poverty as something people can get out of if they just pulled themselves together. It’s their fault.

Pulling themselves together is the impossible part of that for most of them. For you and I, sure, we understand there are good times and bad and we roll with them. We tell ourselves there is more good than bad. But, what about those that tell themselves there is so much more bad than good? They’re impoverished and living in your town and every other town across America.

In Thailand there’s an understanding that older people have worked enough and the children are usually working to support them as they move into adulthood and get jobs. There is also an understanding that there are quite a few people that didn’t get a good education - maybe NO education. Thai society, individuals really, take it upon themselves to help those that are too poor to take care of daily needs like food and a place to sleep.

Even so, Thailand is caught up in an era where many are starting to be able to make a little more money. There are Thais driving Mercedes Benzs that cost $100K dollars. There are Land Rovers, Lexus SUV’s, Toyota Landcruisers, BMW SUVs, and all kinds of European supercars driven by the rich. Some Thais have it all. Imagine making $40,000 usd per year and being able to afford a Mercedes, a Lexus RV and a $100,000 home. They’re doing it in Thailand. The cost of living here is cheaper than the USA - much cheaper. But, it’s not free.

Every Thai adult still needs $100 per month for even the most basic necessities in the smallest of villages to survive.

Not every adult gets that here. There are those that work construction for 10 hours a day every day of the week and they receive 2,000 baht (66 dollars) a month for their labor. They sweat outside under Thailand’s blazing sun and in the unbearable humidity every single day building homes for rich Thais just to be able to survive.

All around the world are people that are having a tough time of life. Some more than others.

For myself… life isn’t that difficult. I feel like a winner in the game of life. I know that because I’ve continually pulled myself out of holes and accomplished whatever was necessary to get back to “good times”. I have that confidence about myself. I have the skills, the education, and the unsinkable attitude. I have a well rounded view of reality… Life sucks sometimes, and other times I’m doing everything I can to keep the suck in the background.

Are you like that? Most of you reading this article are. But, there are SO many people that aren’t.

I’ve been really thinking about this latest idea that life for each and every one of us is all about helping others get through their lives a little bit easier.

Some of us have it all. We laugh at others that tell us life sucks. We’ve got a house or houses, vacation home, boat, sports car, SUV, and every electronics toy that comes on the market. I’ve been there. It’s a great spot to be in. As I think back, it’s a selfish good feeling. Good yes, but it’s only being concerned with the self. That kind of good feeling doesn’t last very long.

Contrast your having it all with kids that are living in the projects that are shaking cockroaches out of their Corn Flakes box before they pour themselves a bowl to have with water (not milk).

Some of us are in a position to help. And, help a LOT. There are thousands of opportunities to help others that slip past us - often without us even noticing. I noticed that when I LOOK for ways to help I find some. I’ve been finding so many opportunities as I consciously go looking for them.

Helping others is the ultimate gratification in life. In a way it’s selfish too - because you’re actually making yourself feel really good. But, what better way to be selfish? It’s a win-win. We’re by nature, selfish beings. We seek to repeat experiences which make us feel good. We do that which makes us happy.

Try doing something for someone else. Try helping them do something, to accomplish something - however small, and see how you feel. I’ll bet it feels good. TRY it to feel it yourself and see how easy it is to get addicted to that feeling. I am seriously becoming addicted to it as I realize more each day that there’s nothing better for me to do with my life than help others.

What else can you do for yourself that makes you feel so good except giving something of yourself to others? Buy yourself a new iPhone? How long will that good feeling last? Until the next phone comes on the market. But really, not even that long.

Doing something for others that you didn’t need to do… weren’t obligated to do… maybe didn’t even have TIME to do… and that you did just because you wanted to help a fellow human being get through life a little bit easier is the coolest feeling in the entire realm of experience.

Find out for yourself - I challenge you.

Not only poor people need help. I’m not talking just about monetary help. Helping others can be ANYTHING that helps them get through life easier.

Can you make someone smile?

Can you give someone an alternative view that might get them unstuck from a downward spiral of negative thinking?

Can you offer some words of encouragement?

Can you share a story about your life that mirrored an experience someone you know is having and how you pulled yourself out of it?

Can you help someone get somewhere? Offer a lift to somewhere? Can you offer a smoke to someone? Can you offer 10 minutes to help someone do something? Can you teach someone a new skill with your free time that might help them take care of themselves better later on as they learn?

For myself I really enjoy doing things in secret… I like to give someone something without them knowing where it came from. That to me is a real rush… I’ll share something with you that I was keeping for myself but it will show you how easy it is to do something cool for others without them knowing about it.

I was at a local Buddhist temple and I walked into the convenience store to get something to drink. Two little girls came in after me - maybe 7 years old, both of them. They were in dirty shirt and shorts and their clothing was really simple. They were skinny as rails and they had 20 baht with them clenched tightly in one hand.

Some rubber springy balls almost like yo-yos but made entirely of grippy flourescent yellow and green rubber with tentacles caught their eyes as they came in - they both walked quickly to them. They talked excitedly about them and played with them before looking at the price. 20 baht each. They played a little more and then resigned themselves to looking all over the store for something they could afford for both of them.

I quickly chose a drink from the cooler and went to the cashier, a Buddhist nun  I’ve known for a year now… when the little girls were behind one of the rows of goods I grabbed two of the springy balls - a yellow one and a green one and paid for them. I gave them to the clerk and asked her to give them to the girls. She started to call the girls and I asked her to do it when I was gone. Secret. Kwam Lahp!- in Thai.

I walked away from the store and watched from a distance as they came out playing with the balls - so excited and looking for the foreigner which gave them their secret gifts.

The smiles and the excitement on their faces made me smile inside. For 40 baht, about $1.33 I was able to give them something fun to do for a few minutes… maybe an hour. Maybe they have brothers and sisters that will play with them too? Maybe they’ll tell their parents the story. Maybe their parents will have a better view of foreigners in their country. Maybe…

What could be better than helping others become a little bit happier? What could be better than making life a little bit easier for someone?

Is there anyone you know that you can help get through life a little bit easier today?

Your action need not be life changing. It need not be dramatic. You don’t have to give someone $100 to help. But, you might give $3. You might contribute to someone’s plugin you used to power your FireFox browser. You might offer to carry something for someone. You might offer a ride to someone or share a book you are finished with and that will sit on your bookshelf for 19 years before someone decides to throw it away or donate it to the library.

You might do…

A n y t h i n g.

Look for opportunities… they’re all around you if you look for them.

In the last post we looked at using dream interpretation as a tool for looking at the subconscious mind using a conscious effort.

In this article I’ll talk about using meditation as a tool to reduce the subconscious popcorn flying around in your head, reducing the amount that can affect your consciousness.

Meditation is an absolutely amazing tool and one that can give you the greatest results if you’re one of those people that can do a few things consistently. Meditation at it’s simplest consists of sitting in one place, closing your eyes, and focusing on the spot where your inhalations and exhalations are felt in your nose or on your upper lip.

Seems pretty simple I know, but that’s all you need to do in order to have the most profound experiences available to you as a human being on this spinning blue ball. Can you handle something like this? Sure you can. If I can do it with attention deficit disorder (ADD) you can do it, I’m sure of it.

Some people tire of meditation. Yes, believe it or not - some have a lot of expectations about where their meditative sessions will lead them - and they become disappointed with the length of time it takes things to happen. Paradoxically, if you are really wanting something to happen - it won’t. Meditation itself is like a zen koan.

One meditates to get somewhere in their mind… to advance through the stages of meditation leading to jhana or other absorption experiences.

However, if one desires overtly to get somewhere. He or she will go nowhere really. Meditation is catch-22 like that. It doesn’t seem like it should make sense, but it does. Just not sense that we can rationalize using our minds. The book, Zen in the Art of Archery teaches how in order to let the perfect arrow fly from your bow you cannot make a conscious decision to let the arrow go. It must just go. If you focus too much on trying not to focus too much - you are focusing too much and the arrow will be off course. Likewise if you focus too much on meditating to reach high levels of meditation and you’re excited about getting there and anxious - you go nowhere.

Meditation takes persistence, I will say that. Though you’re only sitting for 15-30 minutes at a time you would be amazed how difficult it is to focus on the feeling of your breath in the nose for even 1 complete inhale and exhale. Then, once you’re able to do that you’ll be amazed how difficult it is to focus for 2 breaths. And so on… Yet, this is all that’s really required in order to send yourself down the path toward the most exhilarating experiences.

The mind has a natural tendency to produce thoughts. We all know that. However, you’ve likely not really seen thought for what it is. You’ve likely not watched it consciously for any period of time. As you sit and attempt to focus your entire mind on the feeling of the breath you’ll undoubtedly be taken away from that focus toward whatever the mind wants to churn up in the way of thoughts.

Are thoughts conscious or unconscious? You might question that for yourself as you begin meditating. You’ve probably never watched a thought form in your head and followed it to see what it does. As you meditate you will. Your attention will be pulled away from focusing on the breath to something more interesting that the mind cooks up. You might follow that thought as it builds adding more thoughts around the original focus of the thought. Or, you might follow it as it branches off 16 different ways into different thoughts entirely that are all linked loosely to the first thought. The thought-chains that are created can be brought to conscious awareness if you look at them - apply attention to them. Otherwise they are in the background… in the space between conscious and subconscious. They are being fueled by the unconscious during meditation but you could choose to ‘think’ about something and the thoughts become conscious and focused around whatever subject you chose.

The simple act of meditation does a couple things initially:

1. Focuses the mind on a small task with a tiny sensory footprint.
2. Relaxes the body completely so there is no bodily stress or concerns.
3. Trains the mind to re-focus on the area of attention repeatedly so that it becomes second nature after a while.
4. Slows down the barrage of thoughts that are being churned out.

As the number of thoughts becomes lessened the mind starts to achieve a strength that maybe you haven’t known before. It’s a kind of power that enables you to focus for progressively longer periods of time on one very small sensory input - the feeling of your breath coming in and out at some tiny spot around the nose and upper lip.

Eventually the mind-candy slows waaaay down and you’re able to experience brief moments without thought. Eventually these moments get longer. Absorption experiences start. Jhana starts. Eventually this process transforms the mind into something amazing. The mind becomes strong and unaffected by things that used to cause it discomfort… neurosis. You’ll notice that you’re relatively unaffected by things that used to bother you.

Why is that - are you a zombie now?

No! Meditation makes you much more alive than you ever were before. It gives you a new perspective on life as you realize how much time, energy, and efforts were wasted on things that really don’t matter. You’ll begin to experience life in the present moment as you never could have understood before. You may have read books on the present moment, Thich Nhat Hanh - a Vietnamese Buddhist monk has an amazing series of books you can find on mindfulness and the present moment. You might want to read those as you get started, they are a wonderful aid to help you practice getting into the present moment.

One benefit of meditation is that your subconscious that’s filled with fear, anger, and sadness churns out less dysfunctional material over time. See, when you’re sitting there quiet and watching the breath your subconscious will continually throw up a lot of information from the past that it wants you to look at. If you choose to you can look at it.

Everyone has painful memories of experiences from the past. Sitting quietly helps to bring those up. Occasionally you might cry during meditation because all the sudden sad thoughts overwhelm you and your eyes flood with tears. That’s a good thing. For major things like this it’s good to put meditation on hold and really think about the issue that brought tears to your eyes.

What is the reality of the situation? Can you change something? Often times you can change something about it… you can make a phone call, write a letter or even role-play out some interaction from the past with a friend you have now. You can change what happened in the past with the new role play situation and it can change your life from that time forward.

Nothing from the past has the power to affect you once you decide to eliminate it. It can’t. It’s finished. Done with. There is far too much present and future available to continue your life in a different way, a more functional and better way.

In fact, the only thing about the past that is still there - are the memories in your head about it. That’s IT. The action doesn’t exist anymore. It existed at one time and then it disappeared. Nobody in the world can bring it back. The memories you have about the issue are the only thing that exists - and you know - memories are only tiny electrical impulses… Change them by facing them and then doing things differently from today forward.

My father left my mother, me and my brother and sister when I was five or six years old. He did his part to come see us once a week usually and I can’t blame him for leaving as it was the right thing to do. For a long time I had memories of him and they made me feel sad. Sometime about my mid-teens I remember my girlfriend asking me if I missed my dad and if I had sad thoughts all the time about him. I told her, “Sure, I still think about him occasionally.”

But you know what? I spent the next couple days looking at the reality of the situation. He had left nearly 10 years before. He wasn’t mean to me or abusive to me in any way. He was just not there. Society was telling me that he should be there but when I thought about it myself… it didn’t really matter that he wasn’t there. I didn’t really need him close by and part of my life I realized. I got along fine from the time he left and I didn’t really know him.

Why would I want someone I didn’t know to interact with me more? The reality was, overall it really made no difference at all whether he was there or not. At that point I let go whatever dysfunction my memories and my subconscious were churning out. I moved forward. I don’t dislike my father. I just don’t know him. Should I know him? Society would answer - YES, you must know your father. You must care about him. You must do whatever you can to get close and remain close to him.

I think, what for? I’ve known lots of other people… To me it’s neither here nor there now and I’m happy in my own mind not thinking about him on a daily or weekly basis. Since my mid teens I can’t remember a time when I missed him or thought that I was missing out on a part of life for not having him as a close friend.

Even major things like this can be quickly gotten over if you just analyze the reality of the situation and realize that the only thing that exists are your memories. Question them. Question your beliefs. Question what society is telling you. You’re your own person. Nobody else is looking out for you like YOU are. Change you memories or change your present life such that the old memories don’t matter that much or have less power and you change your life.

So, if you’re crying as you sit and meditate that’s a great thing because you’ve just found something from the past that you can look at and eventually rid yourself of. There’s nothing too great, nothing too powerful to screw up the rest of your life. You gave it the power to affect you up until now - and now you can get rid of it. Don’t ignore it. Now’s the perfect opportunity to destroy it.

And so meditation provides this opportunity to quell the craziness in your mind that surely exists to some degree like it does in all of us. In fact, if you had no craziness you wouldn’t dream at all.

After a year of meditation you know what?

I didn’t dream at all for the next five or so years (I didn’t count, I’m using five as a minimum though). It was amazing to realize that the subconscious had no reason to create dreams anymore. Just outrageous really. My mind was so calm and at peace with the past, present and future that it didn’t create dreams for a long time.

Gradually after 5+ years the dreams slowly started again about events that I was stressing out over. I had stopped meditating after a year and I’ve no doubt that if I would have continued the dreamless state would have also.

Today I still have dreams, but they seem to be related to not achieving goals that I have fast enough. I don’t dreams about fear, anxiety or sadness about past events. I have dreams about the future and not being where I want to be. I think this gives me the motivation on a daily level I need to sustain over time so I reach all those goals.

I’ve started meditating again recently and already I’ve noticed that my mind is quiet and balanced when I shut my eyes and focus on my breath. I have little thought - little extraneous material popping into the conscious from that nether region between sub and conscious awareness.

Meditation is an incredible tool and one that is available to you:

1. Today
2. For free.
3. As much as you want.

Mind-blowing benefits are waiting for you with practice of as little as 30 minutes a day.

I think meditation is the most important thing you can possibly do for 30 minutes. I can’t name anything that even approaches it as a close 2nd. Nothing. Nothing has the power to change your life so completely.

I’ve created a 22-Day meditation e-book course on PDF (right click, choose “save target or file as…”) if you’re interested in downloading it:

22-Day Meditation Course, Meditation without Religion >

I’ve considered revising it to add a lot of information but if I do that I’ll likely turn it into a publishable book instead. For now - grab it for free and get started!

If you have any questions about meditation as you begin feel free to write me and I’ll help however I can. I’m not a Buddhist teacher or any other kind of teacher. I follow no religion about meditation myself and I can offer nothing but the reality of how I did it and the truth of what it did for me.

It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced and I know it would be for you too!

Here are some links to videos I did about my experiences with meditation. These are in no particular order, they are just numbered as a series.

Experience 1: Body relaxed, mind starts to follow

Exp 2:  Breath slows, body starts disappearing

Exp 3:  Fatness

Exp 4:  Consciousness expands

Exp 5:  Denseness of body

Exp 6:  Bliss & Joy

Exp 7:  Highly concentrated mind

Exp 8:  One pointedness of mind

Exp 9:  Dying - no breath

Exp 10:  Interconnected cosmos, at “one with all”

Exp 11:  Just as it is…

Exp 12:  Visualizations

Here are two audio links for mp3 files (best to right click and “save target (file) as…”) of me talking about my experience with meditation and what occurred:

Meditation History, Pt. 1 >

Meditation History, Pt. 2 >

Good luck on your path to a higher consciousness through eliminating dysfunctional material in your subconscious!

Best of Life!

Vern

As I was going through my undergrad psychology program I got really interested in finding out about myself. I wanted to know everything I could about me. Why am I like this? Who am I? Why is this group of things important to me but not to other people? Why are some things of great importance to other people not important to me at all? What is my intelligence? What is the ultimate goal of life? Why are we here as human beings?

I began devouring books on western philosophy, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Hare Krishna movement, transcendental meditation, Vipassana meditation, Hatha Yoga, Chakras, hypnotism and many other subjects. I also began meditating at this time which I’ve talked about a little bit in my posts here but that’s covered more in-depth in my bio.

I knew some of the “why” questions about life were unanswerable but I wanted to find the answers I could about me. That was the most important thing I thought - figure myself out. In a short time it became apparent that I had to do whatever was possible to eliminate the negatives I was carrying around as baggage. If I got rid of my baggage I could begin to fully optimize my consciousness. Apparently there was negative material in the conscious and the unconscious (subconscious) and it was apparent that the subconscious was the place to start, it being the more primary level.

In the psych program I was learning a lot about the mind and Freud’s interpretation of how the subconscious (unconscious) affects our lives.

Freud said, “Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.”

We had some classes about dream interpretation and I realized I really needed to start looking closely at my dreams to find some of the answers I was looking for. In particular, the dysfunctions show up rather overtly in dreams. I knew from my studies that dreams were really important as indicators of what’s going on underneath the conscious mind and that they could help me become a better person. Less stressed. Less dysfunctional.

Dreams happen while parts of our brain are active during sleep. Dreams are both psychological and physiologically based.

Physiologically, states of sleep are measured using an electroencephalograph (EEG) attached to the scalp by small electricity sensing electrodes. Using the EEG tiny amounts of brain activity called “waves” are recorded. There are two distinct types of brain wave activity during sleep: Non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and Rapid eye movement (REM).

NREM sleep consists of four stages the sleeper enters progressively, passing deeper states as larger and slower brain waves prevail. Stage 1 marks the transition between being awake and Stage 1 sleep. In this stage brain wave activity goes from beta waves indicating wakefulness, to alpha waves. Stage 2 is light sleep. The body prepares for deep sleep by moving through theta waves to delta waves. Stages 3 and 4 are deep sleep stages characterized by prominent delta waves with Stage 4 being the most intense.

In REM sleep, brain activity is heightened, similar to the awakened stage 1 state with some differences. The eyes remain closed, but move back and forth from left to right, sometimes rapidly. The muscles of the body are usually paralyzed during REM sleep. This is a good thing because during a bad dream the dreamer is prevented from harming himself or others. Heart rate and respiration increase. Dreams are most easily recalled while woken up in this state of REM sleep.

I noticed I remembered my dreams the most clearly on nights when I woke up around 5am for a restroom trip. When I awoke again later after falling asleep again I had a lot of trouble recalling the details of my dreams. It seemed that 5am was about the best time for me to recall them.

I bought a mini-digital voice recorder so I could record my dreams as soon as I woke up, enabling a much better recall and in-depth analysis later that same day.

Your subconscious mind is incessantly throwing dysfunctional thoughts around like a hurricane full of popcorn. Occasionally some of that popcorn blows up out of the subconscious and into the conscious mind where you might think about it or ignore it all within a fraction of a second. If your subconscious is filled with fear about different issues, then the “fear popcorn” flies up into your conscious mind often and is able to influence your thoughts and decisions there. This fear popcorn can then influence your present actions, plans, future actions and your entire life really. It’s nothing to ignore, you need to take strong action to resolve whatever dysfunctional popcorn your brain is continually cooking up.

I’m a strong believer in removing all the major types of popcorn flying around in your subconscious so you can have a conscious life that is almost entirely uninterrupted by negative subconscious influences.

Subconscious material is usually based around fear, anger and sadness. In graduate study my practicum professor, Dr. Barry Naster (Hamid) shared with me his theory about treating people with mental disability. He used the acronym, “FLASH” to designate the 5 basic feelings every person has. Fear. Love. Anger. Sadness. Happiness. Notice there are 3 negative and 2 positive emotions?

Of these, fear, love and sadness tend to really influence our dreams. Our dreams arise from material in the subconscious that hasn’t been dealt with adequately in the conscious mind. The subconscious will cook up popcorn around this material for 72 years until you die if you never deal with it.

“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives,” said William Demen. This view comes from the idea that dreams are formed as a way for us to deal with unresolved issues in our minds. Things that we’d dare not do socially in front of people can be acted out in the safe environment of dreams. Those with a lot of these socially unacceptable desires will have more dreams of this nature.

I think most of my dreams are of the fear, sadness and anger variety. But I can see that some of them had unresolved desire components that couldn’t be acted out socially too. Dreams appear to offer a safe place to let your mind question everything and do everything that it needs to do to resolve the desires and questions it has. If the dream is especially emotional it will push that content to the conscious mind in the form of memory when you wake up or it might even wake you up as you’re dreaming about it.

For many years I had dreams about walking through the woods and seeing bears unexpectedly. In this case, it was actually BEARS that I was afraid of due to some horror stories I was told while camping by my uncles and my mom’s friend. Alligators were a big thing too, though that was based on something else. Then there were the tornado dreams. Of course I had the common falling off a cliff dream occasionally too.

I began interpreting each dream so I could rid myself of the subconscious popcorn and live a more free, balanced life that was uninfluenced by fears, sadness and anger from the past. Here’s how.

If you are currently able to remember your dreams when first waking up then you’re ready to go. Or maybe you are like me and the early morning restroom trip is an almost nightly occurrence and you remember your dreams then. Great. If you don’t remember your dreams when you wake up, no matter because you’re probably having them, you just need to change when you wake up. Try setting your alarm to wake earlier, don’t worry you’ll probably be able to return to sleep after dictating your dreams - if not, no harm done because you’re awake at an early hour when everyone is sleeping! It can be a very productive time of day! What you’re doing is important enough that you must make yourself wake up. Think like that. Act like that. Make it happen.

If you normally wake at 7am, set your alarm for 6am. Do you remember your dreams when you wake up? If not, try 5am. If not, try 4am. If not - and so on. People dream most heavily during the last stages of sleep so you shouldn’t have to wake up much before 4am! I notice If I wake at 5:30am I’m able to remember the most clearly. Usually I’m sleeping by 10:30 - 11pm at night.

Before you sleep set your alarm and put the recorder close to your bed and within a short reach. If you’re using your phone to record, as I did for a while, make sure you find the voice recording program in your list of applications and set it up before you sleep. In the early hours you don’t want to be fumbling around clicking 16 buttons to get started recording. You should be able to roll over, grab the recorder and click once or twice to start recording.

You may notice during recording that you’re making NO sense at all. That’s OK. Sometimes that happens and it will be even more bizarre later when you listen to it awake, believe me. It’s hilarious actually.

After you wake up and you have some time to begin analyzing your dream(s) get a pad of paper and pen and make sure you’ll be free of distractions. Start playing the first bit from your recorder. When one sentence has passed STOP the recorder and write it down. Leave a few spaces and play and stop again after one sentence, writing it down exactly as you said it into the recorder.

Once you’ve copied down the entire dream you shouldn’t go on to the next one which might be influenced by what you just heard and wrote down from the first dream.

Start reading over your first sentence. Look at the words you used. Bear? Dog? Honolulu? I always look at the nouns first and as I say them I might realize the word means something more than what it does at face value. Dreams are made of symbols. The word is a symbol for something else. Dreams are built on these symbols. The mind puts together a story based on symbols and what words really mean - to create the dream. It’s what the word means to you that’s important, not the face value of the word. However, some words might mean exactly what they are - you know? Sometimes certain symbols in your dream mean the same as they do for other people. Sometimes your symbols are unique. Don’t let someone tell you what your symbols mean. Dream interpretation should be phenomenologically based (specific to each person).

So, I do a quick free-association for each noun and see what else comes up as a possible meaning. For ‘bear’ maybe “Professor Sanocki” comes to mind. For ‘dog’ maybe “taking care of” comes to mind. For ‘Honolulu’ - maybe it means “home” to me. And so on. Write down what each noun means to you - really means to you in your mind.

Once you go through the sentence for nouns, check the other words and phrases. See if they might mean something other than what they appear to be. Maybe they won’t. Finish one sentence before going to the next. When the dream interpretation is finished then read over it and try to get the overall feeling about the dream. Was it fear about something? Anger? Sadness?

Then, define more clearly what fear, sadness, anger or combination of these the dream was really about. What is the issue that needs dealt with about these feelings? Can you name it? That’s the goal, name exactly the situation, the memory, the ongoing problem that is going to keep making subconscious popcorn until you address it.

Different problems in the subconscious require more or less thought about them before they disappear. If the major feeling in your dream was fear that you’d forget your combination lock at school - then it wouldn’t take much more than writing it down on the side of your rubber soled shoe in order to stop that dream. For me in high school this was one of my fears. I refused to write down the combination and I had many locks. One for my bike, one for my soccer locker, and one for my regular school locker. I had the dream all through high school and even into college about forgetting the combination to my locks. I could have taken care of it back then and it would have vanished if I’d just given it some thought and created a solution.

Freud’s idea was that the meaning of all dreams was about unfulfilled sexual desire and impulses. He might interpret my dream about failing to remember my locker combination as really meaning I was impotent. You might guess that I don’t put much credence in that line of thinking. Freud had some incredible ideas and much of it is still in use today. However, his head seemed to be planted firmly in his crotch as he attributed the meaning of everything to be of a sexual nature.

Your dream might be as simple to resolve as my combination lock dream. Even as simple as it was, it caused me bad dreams and stress for a long time. The feeling of dread as I went up to my soccer locker and tried many number combinations that didn’t work, and the soccer bus was leaving without me because I couldn’t get my uniform was a really sick feeling. Something so simple created so much negative energy over years of time.

So even the small issues are worth fixing quickly. If you have some major issue that you need to resolve you might need to spend a lot of time thinking about it consciously and working out the reality of it. Reality kills the power that fear, anger and sadness have. You might have had a bad experience years ago and you dream about it. Getting over it so it doesn’t have the power to affect your life anymore might take a couple days. It might take a week or month of counseling. It might take refocusing your mind on other areas. It might take talking to the person you had the bad experience with - or role playing talking to the person and getting it out out of your system. It might take hypnosis, aversive therapy, or behavior modification.

Whatever it takes - get it the hell out of your system and stop letting it affect your life. If you don’t, the most ridiculous and the most devastating experiences will have the power to be relived over and over as the subconscious pops the corn day after day and night after night.

Dream interpretation can help you resolve nearly every issue in your life because dreams are like a peek into your own private world of dysfunction - and all of us have one.

Once you can interpret the real meaning to the symbols in the dream and get at the feelings, eventually being able to define the exact problem that’s causing the bad dreams you’re on your way to a much more fulfilling, stress free, happy life!

USE your bad dreams to fix you. It’s not brain surgery and you probably don’t need to see a psychologist. Put the time in to do some dream work and get to know all your dysfunctions and go about systematically resolving them through dream interpretation one by one.

Though I don’t believe in the Scientologists’ game plan for living their lives or that the e-meters they use have any credence at all, I do believe that they’re on the right track with attempting to become free of subconscious and conscious garbage that stays in the mind until we do something about it.

Ideally we need to identify all our conscious and subconscious dysfunctional thoughts, memories, habits, superstitions,  and then work on getting rid of every one of them.

So, you can go about things this way as one method to become self actualized or move to a higher consciousness that is less affected by the subconscious… or there’s another way. I don’t know if I’d call it easier for everyone, but for me it was much easier.

That will be the next article…

Quieting Recurring Subconscious Popcorn Through Meditation

Best of Life!

Vern

The problem with competitive sports…

As you get into your thirties and forties you might reach a point like I did where you realize that competition is stressing you out more than it’s enriching your life. What I mean is…

When I was in my twenties I did a lot of running races, bicycle racing and some biathlons and triathlons. I did pretty well considering I was studying full time at the university and doing practicums and working part to full time during those years. I would typically come in the top group of amateur finishers. On occasion I’d get 1st or 2nd in my age-group which was nice. I considered trying to make the transition into full-time triathlete but I really didn’t have the resources in place to do it. I really wanted to finish my degrees as I thought they were the most important thing to accomplish in my life. If you ask me now, were they? I’d have to say, no - there were many other things I could have done instead. Such is hindsight.

During my twenties I played competitive racquetball, tennis, basketball, volleyball, ran, swam, and biked. I enjoyed some success and competition was always fun to me. I’d not win everything - my younger brother would delight in telling you that. He’d destroy me in tennis and to help me get through a match he’d let me get a few points here and there. How sick is that for a brother to do?

I’ve always felt the need to punish myself during exercise. While running or biking for instance, if I had the smallest, flitting thought that it might be difficult to run up the hill in front of me instead of go the other way around it - I’d make myself run up it, and fast too. I always force myself to do what the mind doesn’t want to do. I enjoy that for some twisted reason - forcing the body to do what the mind doesn’t want to do.

During competition it’s easy to push yourself because there are others you can measure yourself against and set goals during the race to beat them. Competition drives us to excel from outside ourselves.

When I got into my thirties I ran less. Biked less. I competed much less. When I did compete I’d notice that occasionally there was a teenager blowing by me on the run. Perhaps a woman that passed me during the first couple miles of a run. Sometimes it was an older guy. Sure, these people were in amazing shape and had worked their ass off to get there. But in my mind I had no right competing at all if I was going to be bested by teens, ladies and old men. It just wasn’t my idea of competition. Instead of feeling good about a race I started to think - what’s the point? I could run 6 miles anywhere I chose - why do it here in front of all these people that could see a 14 year old run faster over 6 miles than me?

So began a foray into the non-competitive sports. I took up mountain biking instead of road racing. I ran through the woods instead of at the track or at races or with groups of people. I began hiking up some of the more difficult ridge hikes on Oahu. I didn’t crave competition as much - except in beach volleyball where I persisted for a number of years before finally dropping out of the competitive two on two tournaments and settling for pick-up games of 6 players at the beach with anyone that wanted to play. Volleyball became a way to pass the time, recreation instead of a serious competition. Running, cycling, swimming, all sports became the same thing - recreation.

The thing about competition is, there’s always a loser. Frequently there are two losers. For me, it wasn’t just about being able to beat someone in a game or a race, it was as much about being able to pull out the absolute peak performance from me while doing it. If I raced badly and still won - what was I going to celebrate? Beating a bunch of people that couldn’t beat me on a bad day? If I played racquetball 70% great and 30% slop and beat my opponent (friend), then I may feel good, I may not. In my mind the 30% slop would haunt me because I’d know I needed to eliminate that part of my game in order to be a perfect player.

Competition while you’re very young - under 30 seems like a good thing. At least the losing doesn’t bother you much when it happens.

After virtually stopping competitive activities there was always this nagging need inside to punish my body with strenuous effort. Since I wasn’t competing with anyone else I competed with myself. I made myself the ultimate opponent.

Competition in later years is best done with yourself. Against the clock and against your mind. Why? You’re always a winner.

The exercise I do now is mostly walking and running up some steps. I don’t do it against a group of people, but recently the few guys I know that go up often started comparing times. I got sucked in. The top guy, Sven, a 32 year old from Switzerland was getting to the top in 12:15. I seemed to be stuck at 12:30. Another friend, Jim (49 yrs?) from England was at 14:30 and Joe from England, 31 years old was at 13:30. It took me a few tries, but finally I beat Sven at the time of 12:01. It damn near killed me too!

Out of the blue I get an email from my French friend, Charles. He claims he has a friend from France here in Thailand on vacation in his early 30’s that’s doing it in 10:45. I was amazed. I’d been up and down that mountain 280 times as of yesterday, and I can’t see how I could possibly take another second off my time. I demanded to see photos of the guy. Charles sent back photos of the new champion - a 30 year old that weighed about 50Kg (122lbs) in a racing singlet. I felt better about losing the championship status to someone that was 40+ pounds lighter than me, but still it hurt. Competition hurts.

For a few minutes after hearing about the new record I thought the time was impossible. Then I accepted it. Then I resigned to beat that time. Then I came back to reality. How was I going to shave 75 seconds off my time? Lose 40 pounds? Nah. I decided to counter this recent threat by creating new categories for the competition.

Categories:

• Best time from each country.
• Best time for age groups
• Best time wearing a backpack with 10 lbs (I usually have my computer, camera and other equipment with me)
• Best time up AND down
• Best time up and down and up and down (twice).
• Best time up and down thrice.
• Best time up during a rainstorm.
• Best time up before 11 am (hottest time, most sun directly on steps).
• Best time by weight class. Super flyweight 120lbs and less. Thin folks 121-160lbs. Normal folks 161-181. Large folks 182-202. Clydesdales, 203+.

See - now I’m a winner any of nine ways.

Competition as a loser generally sucks, even for a winner it’s often not all that great an experience. As much as you want to say, “It wasn’t the game, it was the playing that I enjoyed….” It’s much more fun over time NOT to compete and just push yourself to be all you can be. At least for me it’s becoming that way as I head toward mid-forties. More about how I push myself while exercising coming soon.

Best of Life!

Vern