By Bill on October 6, 2011 http://www.shamanswell.org/shaman/3-plant-medicines-help-you-lucid-dreaming
For those new to lucid dreaming, here's a quick description from AuraThirdEyePsychic.com:
http://aurathirdeyepsychic.com/exploring-the-world-of-lucid-dreaming
Lucid dream, also called conscious dream, is a state of mind where a person is dreaming but is also aware of his/her dreams and can actually sense the progress of the dream. When a dreamer is in a state of lucidity, he can as well participate in the dream sequences as well as manipulate all the fantasies that they're experiencing. A lucid dream is often real and dramatic and is highly dependent on one's self-awareness while dreaming lucid.
Below we list out 3 plant medicines that can help with a link on where you can find some.
Guayusa
From Ayahuasca Shamanism:
http://ayahuascashamanism.wordpress.com/2008/02/17/plant-spirit-shamanism-teacher-plants-1
GUAYUSA: FOR LUCID DREAMS
This is a good plant for people who suffer from excessive acidity, digestive, or other problems of the stomach and bile. It also develops mental strength and is paradoxical in the sense that, just as chiric sanango is cooling and warming at the same time, guayusa is both energizing and relaxing.
Guayusa also has the effect of giving lucid dreams (i.e. when you are aware that you are dreaming and can direct your dreams). For this reason it is also known as the ‘night watchman’s plant’, as even when you are sleeping you have an awareness of your outer physical surroundings. The boundary between sleeping and wakefulness becomes more fluid and dreams become more colourful, richer, and more potent than before. For those interested in dreams or ‘shamanic dreaming’, this is the plant to explore.
In the Western world, bracken, jasmine, marigold, rose, mugwort, and poplar, will produce the same affect of lucid or prophetic dreams. The leaves and buds of the latter were often a key ingredient in the ‘flying ointments’ of European witches, who used it for what we would call astral projection. A mixture of these plants can be used to produce a liquid (either fresh or in alcohol) that can be taken in the same way as the examples above. It is also possible to prepare them in a way that practitioners of Haitian Vodou use for working with their native ‘dreaming plants’, by making a bila, or dreaming pillow, by taking small handfuls of mugwort and poplar and blend them together. Sprinkle the mix with neroli, orange or patchouli oils (aromatherapy oils are fine) as well if you wish and, as they do in Haiti, a little rum and water to bind the mix together. Put your intention into this as well – that these herbs will help you to dream more lucidly and gather information from the spirit world – then allow the mixture to dry for a few days. When it is ready, crumble it into a cloth pouch and place it beneath your pillow. Keep a dream journal next to your bed and, as soon as you wake up next morning, immediately note down your dreams and your first waking sensations.
Here's a web site (StashTea) that sells the Guayasa tea if you are interested in trying it out. I've never used the site, so I can't vouch for its quality, but a few reviews I've seen out there say its pretty good:
http://www.stashtea.com/Pure-Guayusa-Tea/dp/B005DM5GJA
Calea Zacatehichi
IAmShaman likes Calea zacatehichi (also known as Dream Herb):
http://www.iamshaman.com/blog/?p=102
When I’m looking for a good tool to help with dreams and dream recall, I look no further than cultures who revere dreams as a way to speak to ancestors or for divination. Several cultures come to mind; African, Mesoamerican, and American Indian. Each culture, especially the African culture, believes that dreams are the gateways to the realm where our ancestors speak to us. So naturally, these cultures are going to seek out and eventually cultivate the plants that help them achieve this goal.
And this is where a foul-tasting, but highly effective plant comes in; Calea zacatechichi or Dream Herb, as most know it. Calea has been used by one of my favorite peoples; the Chontal Indians in Oaxaca, Mexico (which also happens to be the home of my most revered Plant Teacher; Salvia divinorum) for thousands of years to both help aid in dream recall and to help induce lucid dreaming. Recent scientific research has backed up what the natives have known for many, many years; that Calea zacatachichi actually works.
IAmShaman has some Dream Herb for sale here:
http://www.iamshaman.com/eshop/10Browse.asp?Search=Dream%20Herb
Silene Capensis
World-of-lucid-dreaming suggests Silene Capensis:
http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/silene-capensis.html
Silene Capensis has been used for millennia by shamans of the river valleys of the eastern cape province of South Africa. They say this sacred dream herb induces spectacularly vivid dreams, calling it Undela Ziimhlophe or "white paths".
Also known as African Dream Root or Ubulawu, Silene is lesser known than its Mexican cousin Calea Zacatechichi - and yet it more potent.
Scientists say that the dream inducing ingredient in Silene Capensis is contained within the roots. While this dream herb has barely any effect on waking consciousness, the effects within the dream state are profound - and that includes producing lucid dreams.
While sleeping, your dreams will become exceptionally colorful, and you will remember them vividly on awakening. Shamans use Silene Capensis to access the Dreamtime and communicate with lost ancestors. If you focus on a question you want answered first, the answer will come to you in your dreams.
IAmShaman has Silene Capensis on sale here and includes instructions on how to prepare a tea from it:
http://www.iamshaman.com/eshop/10Expand.asp?ProductUID=1672&ProductCode=SWR-1OZ&A=1158
Showing posts with label Dream. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dream. Show all posts
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Dream
http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/687
Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy (Paperback)
Stephen Duncombe
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
"A twenty-first-century manifesto for the left—how we can draw upon popular fantasies to create an alternative politics through imagination and spectacle."
BuzzFlash found "Dream" one of those indispensible "overview" books that progressives who are interested in strategies to achieve political power and goals must read.
In a nutshell, "Dream" argues that we avoid popular culture, fantasy and dreams at our peril. Liberals tend to believe that reason and persuasive argument will carry the day. But, the Republicans have been appealing to emotion and cultural archetypes, all along packaging themselves as the "common American."
Furthermore, the Republicans embrace their energized base, while the DLC types try to keep their energized base -- us -- at arm's length. This is because, the DLC believes in some mythical "rational, moderate" appeal to a centrist America that doesn't exist, as the Republicans seduce a lot of the working class white vote through the exploitation of cultural symbolism.
Television, in particular, conveys symbolism more effectively than public policy debates, and the Republicans understand this in a profound way.
From the Introduction to "Dreams":
The problem comes down to reality. Progressives believe in it, Bush’s people believe in creating it. The ideological inheritors of the May ’68 protest slogan “Take your desires for reality” are now counseling its reversal: take reality for your desires. Conservatives are the ones proclaiming “I have a dream.”
From a profile of Duncombe in the Village Voice:
"The idea, which Duncombe dubs "dreampolitik," is that progressives, armed with strategies derived from sources as vast as advertisements, celebrity-gossip magazines, and the casinos on the Las Vegas strip, would then be able to enact a politics that enthralls a broader sweep of Americans. The left needs to start appealing to people's hunger for hope and attraction to fantasy life. What's more, Duncombe said, they have to let go of the belief—"naive at best, arrogant at worst"—that intellectual arguments should be enough to win people over, and that spectacle, as the Bush administration employs it, is something to which they shouldn't have to resort, a tawdry means to an end. "It's a pathos of the left," he said. "We're worried about selling out, but no one's buying." Besides, the point isn't that liberals move towards conservatism; it's that they become savvier and, ironically, more realistic about what it takes to win.
Though midterm elections have restored the Democrats to congressional power in the months since Duncombe completed Dream, its argument remains potent. After all, the Democrats didn't win because they presented a well-articulated narrative or identity—they won because they were able to position themselves as anti-Bush. They should stand for something, Duncombe said, and that something should provide people with a blockbuster sense of hope. (It's no accident that Barack Obama's book, number one on this week's New York Times nonfiction best-seller list, is called The Audacity of Hope.) "The Democrats are going to lose unless they figure out a way of imagining the world," Duncombe concluded. "They need to figure out what utopia they want to sell.""
From the publisher, the New Press:
"What practical political lessons can we learn from corporate theme parks, ad campaigns, video games like Grand Theft Auto, celebrity culture, and Las Vegas? Stephen Duncombe proposes that such examples of popular fantasy can help us define and make possible a new political future.
Dream makes the case for a progressive political strategy that embraces a new set of tools. Although fantasy and spectacle have become the lingua franca of our time, Duncombe points out that liberals continue to depend upon sober reason to guide them. Instead, they need to learn how to communicate in today’s spectacular vernacular—not merely as a tactic but as a new way of thinking about and acting out politics. Learning from Las Vegas, however, does not mean adopting its values, as Duncombe demonstrates in laying out plans for what he calls “ethical spectacle.”
An electrifying new vision of progressive politics by a lifelong political activist and thinker, Dream is a twenty-first-century manifesto for the left, reclaiming the tools of hidden persuaders in the name of spectacular change."
Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy (Paperback)
Stephen Duncombe
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
"A twenty-first-century manifesto for the left—how we can draw upon popular fantasies to create an alternative politics through imagination and spectacle."
BuzzFlash found "Dream" one of those indispensible "overview" books that progressives who are interested in strategies to achieve political power and goals must read.
In a nutshell, "Dream" argues that we avoid popular culture, fantasy and dreams at our peril. Liberals tend to believe that reason and persuasive argument will carry the day. But, the Republicans have been appealing to emotion and cultural archetypes, all along packaging themselves as the "common American."
Furthermore, the Republicans embrace their energized base, while the DLC types try to keep their energized base -- us -- at arm's length. This is because, the DLC believes in some mythical "rational, moderate" appeal to a centrist America that doesn't exist, as the Republicans seduce a lot of the working class white vote through the exploitation of cultural symbolism.
Television, in particular, conveys symbolism more effectively than public policy debates, and the Republicans understand this in a profound way.
From the Introduction to "Dreams":
The problem comes down to reality. Progressives believe in it, Bush’s people believe in creating it. The ideological inheritors of the May ’68 protest slogan “Take your desires for reality” are now counseling its reversal: take reality for your desires. Conservatives are the ones proclaiming “I have a dream.”
From a profile of Duncombe in the Village Voice:
"The idea, which Duncombe dubs "dreampolitik," is that progressives, armed with strategies derived from sources as vast as advertisements, celebrity-gossip magazines, and the casinos on the Las Vegas strip, would then be able to enact a politics that enthralls a broader sweep of Americans. The left needs to start appealing to people's hunger for hope and attraction to fantasy life. What's more, Duncombe said, they have to let go of the belief—"naive at best, arrogant at worst"—that intellectual arguments should be enough to win people over, and that spectacle, as the Bush administration employs it, is something to which they shouldn't have to resort, a tawdry means to an end. "It's a pathos of the left," he said. "We're worried about selling out, but no one's buying." Besides, the point isn't that liberals move towards conservatism; it's that they become savvier and, ironically, more realistic about what it takes to win.
Though midterm elections have restored the Democrats to congressional power in the months since Duncombe completed Dream, its argument remains potent. After all, the Democrats didn't win because they presented a well-articulated narrative or identity—they won because they were able to position themselves as anti-Bush. They should stand for something, Duncombe said, and that something should provide people with a blockbuster sense of hope. (It's no accident that Barack Obama's book, number one on this week's New York Times nonfiction best-seller list, is called The Audacity of Hope.) "The Democrats are going to lose unless they figure out a way of imagining the world," Duncombe concluded. "They need to figure out what utopia they want to sell.""
From the publisher, the New Press:
"What practical political lessons can we learn from corporate theme parks, ad campaigns, video games like Grand Theft Auto, celebrity culture, and Las Vegas? Stephen Duncombe proposes that such examples of popular fantasy can help us define and make possible a new political future.
Dream makes the case for a progressive political strategy that embraces a new set of tools. Although fantasy and spectacle have become the lingua franca of our time, Duncombe points out that liberals continue to depend upon sober reason to guide them. Instead, they need to learn how to communicate in today’s spectacular vernacular—not merely as a tactic but as a new way of thinking about and acting out politics. Learning from Las Vegas, however, does not mean adopting its values, as Duncombe demonstrates in laying out plans for what he calls “ethical spectacle.”
An electrifying new vision of progressive politics by a lifelong political activist and thinker, Dream is a twenty-first-century manifesto for the left, reclaiming the tools of hidden persuaders in the name of spectacular change."
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