Lucid Dreaming Intensive at The Monroe Institute

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

This account is the shadow of a shadow of the experience, of course, but perhaps it will give an idea of how it was. These programs are always a blend of the techniques and exercises, the interaction with the trainers and other participants, and the group energy that builds when people spend time in a common endeavor. I know of nothing like it.

Lucid Dreaming intensive, April 12-18, 2014

Overview

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. We’ll learn the value of this course (one way or the other) by how it changes or doesn’t change our lives – or rather, how we use it or don’t use it. But here is my interim record of how it went from the inside.

Omitted here (mostly) are the stimulating conversations at mealtimes, the jokes, the personal stories, the addressing of each other’s puzzlements that took place here as in all TMI programs. Omitted are our enjoyment of the warm Sunday and Monday, and our dis-enjoyment of the rapid cooling that began Tuesday and persisted into Thursday. Omitted are the chats by the snack counter, and the endlessly available coffee, tea, and fruit juice, and the meals prepared by others and cleaned up by others, that freed so much energy to do the things we were there to do. Omitted, too, is the healing work participants did for each other. All these things contribute to making TMI programs so warm as memories, but you can’t go repeating it all the time. Just be aware that it is the vital and (usually) unmentioned background to everything else. My notes unfortunately do not include the jokes and the general fooling around that always accompanies not only the gathering of participants but the light-hearted approach of the trainers:

Continue reading Lucid Dreaming Intensive at The Monroe Institute

How We Got Here

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

For the past few months, I have been writing a series of mini-essays, say a thousand words per topic, on American history beginning at the year 2000 and working my way back. This, in response to my friend Charles Sides, who used to say he didn’t like history, but found that he liked hearing stories i told about it.

Today i decided i might as well share the stories with a wider audience, so i brought my other blog back from the dead and made my first entry.

If you take a look and are interested in seeing more as i put it up (i intend to do so pretty regularly, though we all know what good intentions are worth), i suggest that you subscribe to the blog so that you get notified automatically when i put up a new post. (You can always unsubscribe if you decide you don’t like it.) Saves wear and tear on the neurons, trying to remember to check for it.

http://thehistoricalcontext.wordpress.com/2014/05/18/back-from-the-dead/

 

Living in the future

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Always fun — like going home again, only without the home-cooked meals. Spoke to the current Guidelines group last night, and as always I enjoyed that sense of community that is so difficult to describe, and even more difficult to explain. I think it’s why sometimes people who haven’t been there worry …. I remember one of my friends returned home and his wife was positive he had joined a cult.

So how to explain the allure?

Sometimes i say it’s like living in the future. So what do i mean by that?

Some day, in the future, if we’re fortunate, the culture at large will learn first-hand that what it presently thinks is reality is really only a stripped-down, mechanized version of reality that leaves out the best parts. It will learn that the magic of life is still there, underneath all the false values that have obscured it. And it will learn that we have more abilities, more access to guidance, more genuine promise, than anything our contemporary society suspects.

Well, at TMI the participants already know it.  They can talk, from personal experience, to others who have had the same kind of experience, who share a common language, who actually understand the things unsaid. Not, at all, that they share all the same opinions or attitudes; not that they all instantly bond as friends; not, even, that they necessarily stay in touch with each other afterward, though some do.  Nonetheless, for the time that they are at TMI together, they are citizens of a common republic that doesn’t necessarily exist where they live the rest of their lives.

Always nice to return for a visit, and to meet more old friends….

How religions die

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Very interesting little piece, found via SchwartzReport, nicely beyond the sterile believer/atheist dichotomy. I believe that religions change because the represent the interface between a culture and the nonmaterial world. Given that cultures change, the nature of the relationship has to change, and therefore the interface has to change or cease to perform its function.

How do religions die?

Do they waste away, or get conquered by something better? Perhaps it is easier to think in terms of gods dying, rather than religions

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/30/how-do-religions-die

If religions are born, they must also be able to die. How does this happen? I think we can discount at once the idea that it happens because people realise that science is better. It’s obvious that the more people try to replace religion with science, the more they reproduce the worst features of organised religion. Continue reading How religions die

The practical use of energies

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Always interesting how quickly i can forget what i know, and then unexpectedly remember it.

Today I had two teeth extracted, and implants put in. They came out easily, as i expected, even though one had broken off at the gum line and the other, a bicuspid, had split down its length. I asked the teeth to come out nicely and they did.

After this kind of work, dentists (oral surgeons, actually) expect you to have swelling, severe pain, perhaps some bleeding), the swelling for at least three days, the pain for an indeterminate amount of time. They prescribe ibuprophen and a heavy-duty one the name of which i have forgotten (and have no intention of taking).

The work was finished at 11:40 a.m., and within an hour (while i was waiting at the drug store for the prescriptions to be made up) the anesthetic wore off and the pain started getting pretty bad. I wasn’t enjoying it.  

Then – (voila, also duh!) – i remembered and did some energy work on it. I talked to the tissues, said i understood, said it was under control and we were into healing mode, and it became (and remains, at least for the moment) just a background annoyance. I’d be surprised if i have any trouble tonight. Granted, i had taken an ibuprofen, but the pain level dropped like a stone in an instant, rather than gradually. And the swelling, which is supposed to last three days, appears to be almost entirely gone.

Amazing, this energy-medicine stuff.

KZUM radio interview online

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Had a nice mid-day chat with Scott Colborn of KZUM radio, Lincoln, Nebraska (www.kzum.org) about Afterlife Conversations with Hemingway. Always good when the interviewer knows the subject and asks good questions — makes the guest look intelligent! We talked last year about my book The Cosmic Internet, and I enjoyed that one too. This program will be available free of charge worldwide by Sunday 1/20/13, at 12 noon Central (1 p.m. God’s time :-)) at http://www.eupradio.net/.