Describe the role of the Dream Time in Australian religion as it is currently understood.?
117596
Dream Time is part of the Aboriginal system of beliefs that is still practiced by many today, still living in the Australian bush and desert.  It is, put simply, a colourful narrative of their ancestors and how their lands were formed and shaped.  Although the majority of Australian religion is now part of what would be considered "mainstream" religions (Christianity, Judaism, etc...), there still are groups of Aborigines that hold true to this system, which is also one of Australia's richest cultural heritages.
1016
It's somebody which you can conjur up in a dream to help you on your way. Maybe via meditation one could train themselves to imagine somebody that they trust appearing and offering advice - then maybe by reciting some phrase at the same time as when they appear one could learn to invoke the dream guide dude during real dreams
34844
'Intertestamental' time
55279
Annoying when responders can be too bloody literal, wouldn't you agree?\n\nI was walking last night looking up at the stars and wondering almost the same question, "Is this life a very long very detailed dream we'll someday wake out of?"\nI myself have incredibly vivid, sometimes wild and unbelievable dreams, and sometimes so real that it's a distinct relief when I wake from it. \nA friend and I have thought that some of the more fantastic "almost another world" sort of dreams are just that, our celestial bodies mingling with other realities and possibly other parallel planes of existance. \nOf course I can't prove any of that, it's my own personal experience, but it's real for me and therefore valid.\n\nI myself have experienced what Prof Beatz mentioned about not being able to make lights come on, and not being able to read things written on paper (though I have sometimes and I get the feeling if I could just remember what it said it would be very revealing).\n\nMatrix really spooked me because of my open-mindedness, but if it turns out I'm on some feeding tube of the worst stuff possible and still able to be this real in my mind, then I'll take contentment for the moment. \n\nKeep seeking your own answers....
972134
I've got all kinds of theories on the nature of reality myself and this fits in well...you're really talking about dieing in your sleep and living the life of an angle...\nThe things is though you need to take these highly creative ideas and actualize them in your life to whatever extent they can be useful - like conceptual tools.\nWe must see that God is many many dimensions and that we are creatures in flight across his metaphysical sky as it were.\nThe nature of revelation as I have found it is that for every light revelation their is a dark twist. This idea you have may have been communicated to you by the soul of a dead relative - highly likely given that it is the Month of the Holy Souls in the Catholic Church calendar. You're being told the things you are saying; that it is true that there is this spiritual comfort zone surrounding you like a buffer and that you can be an effective spiritual force to those around you - just as you are being right now.\nHowever the dark twist follows. Seeing that you have been given this insight a counter-force emerges turning it into a subliminal instruction to die in your sleep..be careful, don't act on this intentionally.. Although if it should happen - and sleep apnea is something I suffer from myself - then the vision you paint is a great vision of playing an effective role in the life of God after death.\nSometimes I think all we really want to do is express our creativity and love into life so the life of an angle must be fantastic and there's so many people who need help in very practical ways.\nAnyway thanks for that it's a comfort; waking up from the dead a few times a year is a nasty feeling; maybe one day I'll wake into a heavenly life......praise the Lord
1020950
"Look at the dream visions of hell and chaos that appear in your subjective world. Look at the news today, buy a magazine today, and you will see a picture of the world in chaos, a world in which the Divine is not the universally acknowledged Principle of existence. Clearly, our world is not being transformed into a pattern of Divine laws! The men who function as leaders in the world today do not know how to Enlighten anybody. None of them is Awake as the Divine Conscious Being. None is an Enlightened man. Our world must be transformed into a culture in which every individual being is aligned to God and, therefore, likewise all the functions of human beings, including world order and politics. The Law of Divine Association must be fulfilled first, and than all the laws of action, cause and effect, association, or relationship may be ordered on the basis of that Divine Association.\n\nBut where is the Divine Being, apart from the beings somehow acknowledged in our religious sentiment? Where is the Spiritual Master who can liberate us from the words, the language, the traditions, the memories, the chaos of piecemeal religion? The Bhagavad Gita says that "whenever the paths of life are corrupt, and whenever the Law of Association with God has been forgotten, I come." The Divine Consciousness appears in the form of the Spiritual Master who accomplishes the righteous realignment of the Earth and all humanity with God.\n\nMy birth and the creation of this Communion are instruments of this same process, which has also been generated in times past. The Divine is always doing this kind of work in all the moments of history. The Revelation of God to Man is a process that goes on and on and on. Ultimately, you see, its function is to realign the entire world of Man to God, but the process will not come to an end just because some sort of sacred order has been established on Earth. Everything that exists in all the universes is being brought into alignment with God. The transforming process is a struggle, and until it is ultimately accomplished, the experience of beings is chaotic. Men and women may come to the point of yearning for the Divine Principle, but until the Divine Principle is fully established everywhere, we will not see an order of life based on the salvation of all beings.\n\nEvery human being must be made sensitive to the chaos in which he or she is living at the present time. People are tormented and confused, and most people can acknowledge the confusion of their lives. To such people, who are therefore sensitive to the quality of ordinary experience, the message of the Way that I Teach, the message of this Communion, is salvatory and liberating. But people who have not also coincidentally been made sensitive to the hellish chaos of egoic experience cannot respond to the saving message of this Teaching. We cannot just go into the world with a smiling, middle-class message that you can be consoled by mere belief. Our Communion must establish in people a feeling that the usual life is suffering. On the basis of that realization, men and women can respond to what is liberating."
403744
Follow this link there is alot of info about the separation of church and state. http://www.au.org/site/PageServer \nGood Luck
11019
That's actually an interesting question.\n\nOneriology, the scientific study of dreams, has revealed much about these mysterious experiences full of imagery.\n\nOne theory of dreams (the activation synthesis theory) states that dreams are the brain's attempt to interpret random impulses from the brain region known as the pons (which produces REM sleep). "Memory, attention and the other features lacking in a dream state depend on the lack of norepinephrine and serotonin, producing a psychotic state, as well as a lack of orientation to time, place and person."\n\nIf we could accurately measure these random impulses and the brain's reaction to them, we might be able to construct a probablistic (or, though unlikely, a deterministic) model of dreaming. This may vary greatly among individuals, though. If we could do that, along with being able convert the imagery into a visual format (definitely not trivial), we might be able to record our dreams.
970856
The collective unconscious (as coined by Jung) would most certainly explain common elements in world mythology.  Many cultures have a flood story (the original one from the Middle East was found in the Epic of Gilgamesh, I believe).  The sun is worshipped in ancient Middle Eastern cultures, ancient Britain (as hinted by the Stonehenge monument) and in the Americas.  The rituals are different (culturally motivated), but the symbols and their meaning are similar, if not identical.\n\nSo yes, you're right!
666357
Lucid dreaming is the conscious perception of one's state while dreaming, resulting in a much clearer ("lucid") experience and usually enabling direct control over the content of the dream. The complete experience from start to finish is called a lucid dream. Stephen LaBerge, a popular author and experimenter on the subject, has defined it as "dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming." \n\nThere are many unanswered questions about lucid dreaming, and about dreaming itself. LaBerge and his associates have called people who purposely explore the possibilities of lucid dreaming oneironauts (literally from the Greek meaning "dream explorers"). The topic attracts the attention of a diverse and eclectic group, namely psychologists, self-help authors, New Age groups, mystics, occultists, and artists. This list is by no means exhaustive nor does interest in lucid dreaming apply necessarily to each group. Clear and consistent knowledge about lucid dreaming is difficult to find amongst the many interpretations of the experience, especially considering its highly subjective nature. It may be classified as a protoscience, pending an increase in scientific knowledge about the subject. Researchers such as Allan Hobson with his neurophysiological approach to dreaming have helped to push the understanding of lucid dreaming into a less speculative realm.\n\nLucid dreamers regularly describe their dreams as exciting, colourful, and fantastic. Many compare it to a spiritual experience and say that it changed their lives or their perception of the world. Some have even reported lucid dreams that take on a hyperreality, seemingly "more real than real", where all the elements of reality are amplified. Lucid dreams are prodigiously more memorable than other kinds of dreaming, even nightmares, which may be why they are often prescribed as a means of ridding one's self of troubling dreams.\n\nThere is a substantial cottage industry based around the technique of lucid dreaming, with an array of induction devices (usually based around flickering light arrays) commercially available to allegedly allow induction of lucid dreams. Their proponents also sometimes claim that these devices help achieve a higher level of spiritual consciousness, and associate it with other New Age concepts such as astral travel or dream sharing. Some proponents of the technique claim they can use symbolic methods to research, program, and modify their nervous system itself. Memory management, creative solution generation, accelerated healing, autoinduced priapism, and ecstatic envelopment of one's body are among the various claimed techniques[citation needed]. Regardless of these claims' validity, lucid dreaming as a scientifically verified phenomenon is well-established.
65829
Dreams. Its a word to be understood properly. Dreams are generated from us, it uses the information which we have some where deep in our minds, it uses all that what we know and make a new kind of event in our unconcious mind.\nSign and Signals are alwyas floting around us, and they are not send by any divine power, as the power is right inside our own self. To understand the sign and act on it depends on how we manage to understand our own self our own power.\nEvery living being is connected with an invisible network and communication between each other is always happening, its our recevier which is capable to filter the signals or no.\nTHIS IS JUST 1% OF WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO SAY... WOULD LIKE TO SHARE MORE IF IT INTRESTS ANYBODY...
577826
One of my students is doing his research project on this issue, and though I have not read the paper yet, as he is not finished, I have talked with him and consulted his early sources.  He has found some interesting preliminary results.  \n\nIt seems that Sigmeund Freud, a Viennese doctor in the late 18th century studied dreams of his psychiatric patients, and through this research, he decided dreams could be interpreted as our subconscious minds' desires.  The implications for the Victorians of that era were great because overall Freud's theory of man's essential nature was that he is a selfish being whose basic motivations for life are about fulfilling those selfish needs and desires.  \n\nYet, much research has been done since that era.  A Dr. Karl(?) Jung, another later psychiatrist, has revamped Freud's original research, and even as late as the late 1980's, new research has connected dreams to chemical reactions in the brain occurring in the neurons along which all the electical impulses of the brain run, like electric circuitry, and this research says they are just random electrical discharges that have no meaning, like shadows of memories carried by the impulses, bits and pieces of images generated by earlier thoughts.  Yet, for me, this still leaves open the question.  Even if dreams are shadows of thoughts, one must ask if shadows of bits and pieces of memory would be purposeful for we humans.  I mean, why would our minds generate the shadow?  I think that is just as powerful a question as:  Why do our brains produce the chemical reactions carrying images of memories anyway?\n\nI think it is easy to see that there is much work to do yet in discovering the real essence of dreams before one can decide if there are more than random meanings to be taken from them.  And, that is basically what I am hearing from this student about his struggle with the research process so far.\n\nHope this is helpful.\n\nCC Ryder
583546
The Rainbow Serpent belief not only is widely sparse through the Aboriginal Australia, but it does also appear to exist in other societies and cultures (in this instance it suffices to narrow the definition to belief, whilst I shall demonstrate in the following discussion, the complexity of the ideological system enclosed in the terminology). By means of discussing the origins of the Rainbow Serpent belief, through analysing a version of a Northern Australian myth, and by discussing an Aboriginal ritual, I shall analyse the results of my research in light of 'matriarchal' perspectives and attempt to demonstrate that, being the Rainbow Serpent one of the oldest "religious belief documented in the world" (Flood, J. 1983. page 150), embodies important elements useful to formulate a valid theory for the origin of symbolic culture.\n\nWhat exactly is the Rainbow Snake? Is it possible to lessen its complex features into formal description? An attempt to describe its constantly evolving features would be useful; moreover, given the fact that the Serpent symbology is present almost in any continent, culture and religion (African, Amerindian, Australian, Aztec, Chinese, Christian et cetera) and its features are somehow similar to each other, I will limit the description to a general overview of the serpents' characteristics. Consequently, I shall draw the most relevant attributes and analyse them in light of Aboriginal traditions.\n\nThe existence of a 'divine' Serpent is testable in countless cultures and, it must be pointed out, it embodies various and complex symbols. It is possible to come across male serpents as well as female serpents; moreover, the Rainbow Snake represents a self-generating creature since snakes' skin is seasonally shed. The skin, seasonally shed symbolises a ritualised temporary death, which is followed by rebirth: hence, being the mythical Serpent an essence that has the capacity to die and live again, represent Death itself and Life.\nIconographies of snakes are often characterised by 2 creatures biting each other's tail, or only one serpent, again, in the act of chasing its tail in a perpetual circular motion. Cyclical and seasonal recurrences are in this manner represented. Accepting the fact that the snake is a widespread element in a great number of regions of the world, it is necessary to narrow the argument and focus the attention on the Aboriginal version of the ideology: the Rainbow Snake.\nThe greatest difficulty in attempting to decode the implicit meanings embodied in the Rainbow Serpent "religious structure" (Eliade, in Maddock, K. 1978: 4) is suddenly encountered when we try to translate the various features into language. Because of its nature and its multifaceted meanings we shall indicate, at this moment, the Rainbow Snake (bolung, in Northern Aboriginal Australia's language) as "a being or a class of beings as well as an attribute of certain beings" (Maddock, K. 1978: 117). Moreover, underling the complexity of the terms by which Aboriginals refer to the Rainbow Serpent, Maddock argues that bolung "not only […] refers to a semantic configuration unlike any to which any of our words refers, but is perhaps a result also of its special symbolic function in verbal (and visual) communication" (ibid.). The concept of bolung / Rainbow Snake encloses the maleness symbolism, as it is associated to a phallus (a non-transcendent explanation for the phallic symbolism attributed to bolung, can be seen in the cobra snake, for instance, when it raises its head before attacking); by opposite, the Rainbow Serpent corresponds to femaleness and the whole, wide symbolism circulating around the fertility and life-giving domains. This 'being', does not symbolise snakes in their physical attributes, but contains metaphysical snakes' attributes: the Rainbow Serpent is not a serpent but behaves like other reptiles since it lives in
1090331
i'm not christian i'm pagan. i don't call it sixth sense though. ever since i was little i would have dreams that would come true all the time. that diminished somewhat as i grew older but i still get them occasionally. i can also tell when people are behind me and if i stood on a street with my back to every one i can tell how many people are behind me. i can also read playing cards, although i've never been able to read tarot. and i can tell what's going on with people, like if some one is far away i can think of them and know how they are doing. that's really helpful right now cuz my friend is in iraq.
1169271
Its an interesting thought.\nMost popular religions are 2000+ years old and althought many of the basic principles are applicable today, a lot of the dogma isn't.\nWould a modern day religion have a flood story, a 7 day creation story or would the Big Bang be the creation story? Would it be based on science and evolution?\nLooking forward to reading the answers...
81028
I am Christian and I don't practice magic, but am interested. I do know that this is the holiday which follows the Roman celebration of Winter Solstice, where the days are getting longer and the sun is returning from battle with darkness (so goes the mythology). I have not read much about Imbolgc, though, except that is something about the celebration of the recovery of the Goddess after giving birth to the God. I'll read up more on it. I have a question for you. Have you ever been able to achieve anything with your practice? I've never run into anyone who actually practiced anything other than Wicca, and I'm curious. I'm not actually interested in learning it, just in learning about it and what you've actually been able to do. And is this more than just a fun thing for you. Is it a spirituality of sorts for you? I'm learning about several belief backgrounds and I'd like to learn something from you. I do know a little about alot of religions, but not pagan traditions.
122492
Many people believe that a snake represents the devil or evil in a dream. It goes back to the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis.