What is networking? Why do I need it? Why should I go somewhere I don’t want to go to meet people I don’t want to meet?

With the exception of working with adults and teens with schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder and traumatic brain injury (TBI) for six years during undergrad and graduate study I wouldn’t consider myself a “people person” at the workplace. When I’m working I do it best alone, working on my projects… optimizing them so I get the highest number of visitors to the websites of those I”m working for - or for my own sites as half the time I am self-employed and have numerous websites and blogs going.

In 2002 I thought I wanted to make the transition from Internet Marketing Consultant, working on my own and doing short 2-6 month contracts with companies that needed help with their online efforts to “Marketing Manager” with a resort management company on the Island of Maui in Hawaii.

It seemed like a perfect match at first. I was well-versed in everything they needed to get cranking online and they had done virtually nothing over the years to keep up with other major resorts on Maui like Hilton and Sheraton. I knew I could help them a LOT. That was exciting for me because if I take a project on I want to be able to help a lot. To be a token player isn’t what gets me excited about going to work everyday, it’s all about how much success I can bring to the company with my efforts.

Part of the job involved meeting people in the community that my employer already had established relationships with. I was invited for cruises and helicopter rides gratis in the hopes that I would influence visitors to our resorts when it came time for them to choose fun things to do on Maui.

I realized after a short time of meeting people in the course of my work that I really didn’t enjoy most of them that much. There we were on Maui, one of the most naturally breathtaking and relaxation inducing islands in the world and these people were like amped up real estate agents. They were there on Maui to make cash and climb the corporate ladder in whatever organization they belonged to. There were attempts by some to be manipulative and domineering… there was backstabbing by some. In general I found it be a very strange experience. I thought I was going to be surrounded by ‘real people’ that genuinely cared about each other and were wrapped up in living an awesome lifestyle on Maui. What I found was quite a different reality, one that sucked quite frankly.

The sales director had asked me to create an online marketing plan so they could get an idea what needed done in order to remain competitive in their market online. I focused more on that - on the numbers, on the possibilities and I really enjoyed that. I realized - I’m NOT a Marketing Manager at a resort management firm - it’s just not me. I’m a geek on the computer - that’s what I love. That’s what I do best. I manipulate pluses and minuses, Google Search and sales flow… not people. I don’t have an interest in people games. I am too genuine a person to play games in my own personal life and I’d never think of doing it and getting paid for it either. It just isn’t enjoyable. My life has been focused on the “enjoyable” for as long as I can remember. It wasn’t going to change with this plush position.

I created the plan and gave it to the sales director. Her face dropped as she read through it. After review by the three owners of the company she told me that it was quite an extensive plan that they would get started on - but that there was no way they would be spending anything close to the $150,000 USD on internet marketing I recommended for the coming year. I explained that this was the minimum they needed to begin to make back some ground the competitors were already running all over. I tried to get them to understand the urgency of it - and they couldn’t grasp the concept. I quickly handed in my resignation. This was only a couple months after joining them.

I must be successful if I’m staying in a job. Especially a job I don’t really care for. How can I stay and pretend to be marketing manager if the company doesn’t believe in the reality of their online situation? I need to shine like a supernova - not a star in the Little Dipper. They weren’t taking online marketing seriously and to me it was everything.

It was good that at that same time I realized I wasn’t cut out for a job that involved serious networking with people I didn’t like while working as an employee.

I’ve never particularly enjoyed it while working for myself either but recently it’s taken a new turn.

When I arrived in Thailand I thought I’d find lots of go-getters from countries all over the world looking to make their mark in a place that afforded them a lot of free time to do as they wished. That was me anyway. I was looking forward to relaxing for a year, erasing decades of stress, and then getting started in earnest on the focus of the rest of my life - writing online.

What I found here in Thailand was a lot of people that also came to relax and erase the stress of living back in their home countries. They wanted to really relax. And relax. And take it easy. Relax some more. Have a beer. Smoke some pot. Relax a bit. Take it easy some more…

There are not that many motivated people or people concerned about their own personal development in this country at all - least of all the Thais! I think most expats living in Thailand consider it a life-long Spring Break. They’re living a never-ending party that their $1200-3000 checks every month afford them. You can live like royalty on $1200 per month in Thailand. You can have a car, house, and drink every night and watch soccer on TV. You can eat out at restaurants everyday - enjoying some of the most amazing Thai food you’ve ever had! If you’re sixty years old you can have a 20 year old girlfriend - it’s become the norm here. One never really gets comfortable seeing it this way. It’s almost like Walt Disney World for old men.

In almost four years here I’ve met a small group of expats and visitors I’d consider friends. I’ve met about four people I’d consider motivated to achieve something more in their lives.

I realized that I needed to start networking with other people online or I was going to be resource bankrupt by the time I got back to the USA. I’d not kept in touch with many people I formerly had business or professional relationships with. I could name 100 people right now that I should have stayed in contact with at least a few times a year.

Enter Facebook.com. Originally I thought it was a dating site and ignored it. Then I got a request from a male friend to join it. I thought - hmm… OK, maybe it’s not a dating site. I joined. I was overwhelmed with the nonsensical outlay of it all. What to do with it? I think it’s pretty unintuitive - and only recently have I found out how to add photos that didn’t change my avatar to whatever photo I uploaded.

Now I’ve been on there for maybe 6 months. Only recently have I really started to take a look at what I can do with it. I’ve found some old friends and contacts. There’s a lot more people to contact, but I’m actually enjoying finding these people that used to be close friends - even family. It’s amazing to me that finally we’ve reached a place in the online development of things where we can add friends and business contacts to a group online and it’s not a business environment at all. It’s friendly.

If you’re one of my Facebook.com friends you’ll see that I share blog posts from Aim for Awesome on there regularly. I’ve already had comments from friends about videos and articles I’ve posted. My mom even found one of my posts and wrote a very long comment about her own experience with life that I’d never have known had I not written about it on AfA.

At least once a week I’m blown away by a friend request from someone I haven’t heard from in decades. Recently it was a girl I met in Hawaii when I was 19! Wow, she remembered my last name? Unbelievable. Then there are the photos that are easily shared. Facebook updates your own page when one of your friends updates with photos or writes on their own wall - like a status update. I’m constantly reminded that my friend is there and living life like I am here. I learn new things about them as I sign in and see what they’re up to. It’s non-intrusive because you could choose to cancel notices if you wanted - but what for? Might as well see what everyone is up to.

So - why do you need this?

The other day I found a friend on Facebook - I had sold him a couple online businesses years before and I was just trying to add him to my friends group.

We’ve been talking through email and as it turns out he really needs a lot of help to get one of the sites back up in Google. He tried some other companies for SEO and found success for a while but realized another major effort was needed.

I haven’t done much optimization for other people over the last year because I choose who I do it for now. I only really do it for past clients and friends that I want to help. If you get to know me as a friend and need something in this area - I will probably offer to do it for you. Maybe. Lol.

If I wasn’t available to do something for my friend I know other people that could do it for him that I trust - that I could refer him to.

Networking is a MUST because of this one idea… you need to TRUST someone to do important things for you - whenever possible. Use someone that you know or that knows someone that they trust to do something for you.

In a business you need to do MANY things. Those things that you do with others that you trust are no-brainers. They don’t stress you out and you can leave them go with the person you trust and the piece of the puzzle gets done correctly and you don’t give 2 thoughts to it.

It’s the pieces of the puzzle you leave to people you don’t know (or trust) that cause the most brain aneurysms, anxiety and lead to the most problems.

What if you knew personally every person you needed to know to be a success at your business?

That’s the power of networking. Even if you only know 75% of the people you need to accomplish pieces of the puzzle that make your business enterprise work. Grow. Thrive. Those 75% probably know the other 25% you need and can refer you to them.

Networks of good people that know each other and that wouldn’t think of using dishonest tactics in a business or personal transaction is the ultimate!

If you started writing out all the people you know, you could come up with 100 people. I KNOW you could. Think about it…  You could come up with 100 people probably as a minimum from your high school graduation class. You could probably come up with another 10 that lived on your street. From there you could come up with another 30 you’ve worked with. 10 you’ve dated. 10 relatives.

That’s 160 people minimum you probably know and can try to find in Facebook or other social networking platform. Facebook is kind of like the MySpace for adults. There are other sites coming out almost weekly… I tried LinkedIn - but I don’t enjoy it nearly as much because it seems to be all business… I do business with friends. I want to know - what their kids are doing, what they look like, what their hobbies are - where they’ve traveled. Facebook gives me all that.

Networking need not be a chore. As I said, I do networking online only a few places and never really in person here in Thailand in person because it’s tough to meet like-minded people. Online can be where you do all your networking. Start with Facebook and see who you’re able to re-establish ties with. You may find friends of friends that can do pieces of the puzzle for you. You might find strangers and then realize you’re connected by one friend in common - you write that friend and get an assessment of the person. “Could I trust Joe Schmo with a $15,000 SEO campaign? No? Ok, thanks a lot I appreciate it.” This thanks was worth $15,000.

Networking need not be work and it need not be uninteresting. You need not put yourself in places you don’t want to be. There is a critical mass of people online - your friends are there. If they’re not - they probably can’t do anything for your business, your aspirations. Not that they aren’t worth having as friends - but I’m just saying…. Those that can help are out there somewhere online - they can help and you can help some of them too. USE YOUR FRIENDS. Your network IS your group of friends. Use your friends to make more friends you trust. There’s no better way to do business than with people you trust.

Look at the alternative… Going to a company that does SEO or whatever, cold - without them knowing you or you knowing them. They use black hat SEO techniques, charge you a lot of money and you’re happy for a few months until Google penalizes your site and you lose more than you gained. You also lose what you paid the strangers to optimize your site.

Don’t do business with companies. Do business with people that know you and that have a vested interest in keeping you happy.

Give your money repeatedly to those that care what’s happening with that money. Don’t trust strangers to do the right thing…

:)

Best of Life!

Vern

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While it’s true I’ve had a hell of an amazing life so far and had plenty of success at things I’ve done - plenty of failure too, I’m not where I thought I’d be back then.

Dont’ misunderstand… I’m quite happy where I am right now. Quite comfortable with how little I have and want. I literally don’t want anything else but what I have now… but still comes this question out of the recesses of my twisting blob of cerebellum.

What can I do for the world?

While Bill Gates created Windows and Microsoft that wasn’t near his greatest feat. I count giving away billions of dollars to humanitarian causes as much more important. Nothing is more disgusting than those with uber-cash keeping for themselves or using it in nefarious ways to make more uber-cash. That’s gotta be wrong. Doesn’t it?

People are decoding the human genome. I read recently about a guy that was no kind of student in high school and college… served in the Vietnam war… and then went back to college in his 30’s or 40’s. He’s now one of the top genetic researchers on the planet.

What happened?

A: He ran with the ball.

Am I going to run with the ball and contribute to a few million people’s lives? BILLIONS of lives? I have that deep drive to do so… but I haven’t really given myself the challenge. It’s been there… hovering around back there - occasionally popping into the conscious. But, I never really LOOKED at the question before.

I want to look at it now for myself. I want to ask myself all the questions that need asked about this. I’m intrigued by it. My curiosity is running willy-nilly (as mom used to say).

There are some ultra-smart people reading this blog. People that have godlike IQ’s, straight A degrees at Harvard, Yale, MIT, and 100 other awesome schools.

There are those of you with drive and ambition that put you in the top 1% on the planet of people with such traits.

Some of you have ten hours a day to do whatever you choose. I fall in this category. I’ve chosen to write, produce videos, books, e-books and help people online with whatever they need done.

Are we all living up to our potential?

Why not ask yourself the BIG question - What can I do for the whole world?

I challenge all of you reading this blog to face this bigger than life question.

Yesterday when I began thinking about this topic in earnest I asked myself another question that seemed natural…

“What was the best idea you ever had?”

What the #*$@!!?

The lights flickered when I asked myself that question. I’m an idea machine. I think you could pit me against a think-tank of 5 people and give us a topic to brainstorm ideas about over one hour and I would come up with more. Not at all joking. For some reason I’m able to look at a question from many angles and come up with ideas about it - possible solutions, outcomes, challenges.

I wrote here before that I’m a big picture kind of person. That is true… and the main reason is that I can think of a huge variety of material related to a question, a project, or a hypothetical. I haven’t always been like this - early on in my teens and early twenties I couldn’t put together a line of thought to save my life. Attention Deficit Disorder ruled my life at that time. From mid-twenties on I’ve been able to churn out ideas by the hundreds whenever I choose.

So - I began going through ideas I could remember. Mostly that included the ones that left an impression on me or that I wrote down in some of my journal entries. The rest have been lost as the neural network couldn’t possibly store them all.

I opened Excel and started on a list of past ideas… Of course just this exercise prompted new ideas so I had to make another column for new ideas…

I got to 87 ideas I’ve remembered from the past and thought - it must be here already. If it was really the best idea I’d have remembered it and put it in the first 87 I thought of. Wouldn’t I?

Not necessarily.

I kept thinking… I got to 130 and stopped again. I looked back at the last 43 I’d written after I almost stopped and realized there were some damn good ideas in that group.

When should I stop?

I decided I’d make it a few day exercise and call it a game on Sunday (tomorrow).

I’ll go back to it after I write this post because I’ve already remembered a couple things I don’t think I’ve added to the list yet.

As I look over the list there are a lot of ideas that wouldn’t make a bit of difference to the whole world. There are ideas for video games. I’ve drawn maps and planned in detail a really fun video game for smart people that I thought at one time would be a blast to do, but never did. I have viral e-card ideas. I have book ideas. Movie ideas. Movie scripts outlined. I’ve had negative ideas about creating sites that today I’d never go forward with. Back then it was anything goes. I’ve mellowed quite a bit. I’ve embraced a real karma type outlook with life recently. Not that I believe in the idea of getting something back, but just DOING the right thing seems to be a great idea that I can’t make myself go against if I wanted to. It’s like a new morality - maybe it started about 7 years ago. In the present it’s really taken hold and it’s a great feeling.

Maybe it was some of the impetus behind the question…

What can I do for the world?

There must be something. I’m fairly intelligent. I have time. If I don’t find the idea among those I’ve already had then surely I can think of one. I must be able to think of something. It should be as big an idea as possible.

You should take yourself through this process too.

Why be average?
Why be great just in your own little world?

I’ve always been happy with what I’ve achieved… not really satisfied, but you know… I’ve only been looking at being the best in my little niche of the world.

There’s a HUGE world out there that is struggling with many problems that perhaps I could contribute some solution or work toward solving. Maybe I have something inside I can share and help a huge group of people. Maybe mankind. I’d never know unless I asked myself the question and got moving toward making it a reality.

Some people KNOW they need to ask themselves that question. You might know someone like that. Some people just fall into it, challenging themselves to be great in their small world which leads to greatness for the entire world.

I think every person reading this blog has it within them to do something that affects the entire world in a positive way.

What is it?

Best of Life!

Vern

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• The big, BIg, BIG, BIG PICTURE! (1)
• Seeing the “Big Picture”, a very useful Lifehack! (3)
• PUSHING Yourself During Exercise: Positive Self Talk (0)

1. Google (Email; Analytics; Webmaster Tools; Custom Search; GTalk; Reader; Adsense; Alerts; Sites)
If you use the tools above Google will index your site more thoroughly and learn a lot about it. The more it knows, the more it feels comfortable using it in search results. These tools take your productivity level to new heights if you’re not currently using them or currently using a mish-mash of systems to do the same things. To me this is the most important group of tools.

2. Personal Blog (WordPress.com; WordPress.org; or Blogger.com.)
You need a blog about your business whether you think it applies or not. A blog doesn’t have to be filled with your personal observations - it can bring news, photos, ideas, links, videos, audio, quotes, and other things to your customers but also - linking generously to your main website(s).

3. Facebook.com
Don’t think of it as a dating site, it’s a networking site that is even more friendly than a dating site. Use this social networking tool to find everyone you possibly can and then find out what they can do for your business and tell them what you can do for them. My Facebook profle >

4. LinkedIn.com
This is a business networking site that has the top level people in all fields registered. It can be a major source of connections between high-level people. A great business tool.

5. Del.Icio.Us (http://del.icio.us)
This is a “social bookmarking” tool that allows you to take your bookmarks on the road. You can have access to them from any online computer. A bonus is that Google appears to pay attention to sites listed here.

6. Technorati.com
It started as a technology site bookmarker but since Google lists sites found here it has been filling up with sites of all niches. Good to be here, no matter what the focus of your online site. Add Aim for Awesome to your Technorati favorites >

7. Feedburner.com
Recently bought by Google and being upgraded all the time. Awesome site which manages your RSS feeds in a nicely designed format for all RSS readers. Can also give your feed a subscription by email service for those that don’t like/use readers. FB is really adding some great features, and I’m sure it will continue. Grab the Aim for Awesome feed with your reader or by email >

8. Tumblr.com
A recent find. A very nice GUI setup that can be programmed to automatically list the most recent blog articles you post as well as be open to posting any other information you want others to see. I really like this online tool and will be researching it more in-depth to see what I can do with it. My Tumblr account >

9. Flickr.com
The ultimate image publication tool. If you have any awesome photos that relate to your industry, or really - anything else… stick your url on a corner of each photo here and label it “creative commons” license so people can use it for free at their websites. You’ll get exposure you couldn’t have guessed about before. Label images carefully and extensively for best results. Use it to find creative commons images you can use on your own site, legally. See my Flickr photos >

10. YouTube.com
In your business there must be some process you can video tape and put online at YouTube to share with others. Recently I started creating video podcasts here at Aim for Awesome. I’ll put them on YouTube to share with the millions of viewers. Link to your web site in your profile and description and include titles and credits on the video telling viewers about your website. YouTube is a Google property and they list videos as results in search!

11. Craigslist.com
Try ads to test if there’s any interest here, it’s world-wide and though full of spam filled nonsense there are people that use it to find nearly everything they need. Maybe they need what you’ve got?

12. PayPal.com
Paypal is great to run small product tests to see if people will buy them - without setting it all up as part of your shopping cart. You dont’ need much programming to create an e-commerce page someone could buy your product with - just copy and paste some code. Good for international orders too.

13. Gravatar (en.gravatar.com)
If you comment regularly on WordPress blogs - and you should, you need to have a nice gravatar (avatar) set up so people can see who you are and get to know you if you comment a lot in your niche. Anytime you see other people with photos by their comments and you don’t have a photo - figure out how to get it! There are numerous sites you’ll need to join. Join them, they’re free.

14. Alexa
Alexa is a traffic estimation tool that is taken into account by a number of search engines. Register your site with them to be included in their directory. They also have a toolbar plugin for Firefox that is handy so you can know what the Alexa rank is for any page you visit.

15. Godaddy
I recommend Godaddy.com for all shared hosting needs. I’ve used it for 9 years I think. I’ve had some problems, but overall it’s intuitive and cheap hosting that is reliable. Aim for Awesome runs for $45 a year in hosting. I think I have a Terabyte of bandwidth a month available for each of my sites. Do I use it? Heck no! But, it’s there if I need it someday!

Best of Life!

Vern

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Video 3, Meditation: Two Types >

This is a .wmv file and plays with Windows Media Player. The file is about 41MB in size and runs for 37 minutes. This is the largest video - and they likely won’t be this large again. I wish someone could invent the magic video compression codec that gives me 30 minutes at just 1MB.

If you want your audio to sound better, try to copy the settings (in general) from the equalizer image below for Windows Media Player. Vern sounds best at these settings or raising the left side up just a little overall.

Here is a short video about the temple I filmed the video above at. It’s called, “Wat Tum Sang Phet” and is located in Krabi, Thailand. They are developing it to include a road around the limestone karst lined with fruit trees and vegetables. They’ll likely have cave tours. It’s a really quiet Buddhist temple and the abbot there is very kind - always inviting me in for tea and fruit when he sees me.

Wat Tum Sang Phet, Krabi, Thailand >

This video is 9MB and about 8:40 in length.

Enjoy!

Best of Life!

Vern

A cave at the Buddhist temple “Wat Tum Sang Phet”

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Just like you I’ve lost sentences, paragraphs, comments and whole emails due to technological glitches that seem to know when the most important thing I’ve done all day is hanging in the balance waiting for the success message to pop up telling me my work has been sent or saved.

Two years ago I decided I needed to stop losing ANYTHING I’ve already written. I researched keyloggers online. A keylogger is a program that runs in the background on your computer and saves everything you write… Literally anytime your finger hits a key - it’s saved. If you type a comment- it saves it. If you type an entire email - it’s saved. It doesn’t get lost. A good keylogger has a very large log file that doesn’t get corrupted and that you can rely on to SYA (save your ass) whenever you need it. It saves everything in a text file so you can copy it and paste it into whatever application you lost it from. Instant solution!

I’ve been using Perfect Keylogger Lite and found it to be the perfect solution. No I don’t know the builders, I’m just recommending it out of positive personal experience.

You can choose to have it run on Windows startup and record everything that gets typed. It can run in stealth mode - if you want to monitor what your kids are typing to people they meet in chat. You can set a password for viewing the logfile so nobody can see it except you. You can choose to have the program record only 2 words or more, 3 words or more or whatever number you choose. I let it grab everything. You can choose to monitor every application that opens in Windows or only specific apps. Up to you.

Perfect Keylogger Lite will trigger your antivirus software, as it should. If you didn’t know you had it on your computer it would be a serious security compromise! But, you KNOW since you put it there. Allow your anti-virus to ignore it. You should have a firewall on your system along with your anti-virus program. If for any reason your keylogger program tries to dial out and get online - and your firewall asks you what to do - BLOCK it. Don’t allow your keylogger to get online and send your data somewhere. Don’t allow it to look for updates. Block it.

I’ve used this keylogger for over two years now. It has saved me countless times as I don’t always remember to CTRL+a and CTRL+c to copy blocks of text I’ve created before sending them in a form or email. Many times here in Thailand the power will die and if I just happened to have not put my battery in the notebook I’d lose everything I was working on. With the keylogger I still have it (I think. Need to check on this I can’t remember using it. The log may not save in the event of a power outage.)

Whether you use this keylogger or another one - no matter, up to you. Just use one.

Please follow these tips:

1.) Use Tucows.com or Download.com to find one.
2.) After you download it - check it with your anti-virus software that is up-to-date before you unzip it and after. Do a complete system scan after installing the program.
3.) Research the keylogger you do chose on Google.com. Anyone having security issues with it?
4.) Use a firewall that blocks all programs from using your internet connection until you give approval. I use the free Sygate Personal Firewall as well as the built-in Windows XP Pro firewall. They work well together.
5.) Tell your spouse, friends, co-workers you have the software installed so they don’t feel like you’re spying on them when they find the program!

Keyloggers can be an excellent tool for recovering lost data and creative writing. Some keyloggers can record screenshots so you can see if your kids are looking at porn or something else they shouldn’t be. Some keyloggers can email you at your work the files it has saved while your kids are home typing on the computer. Keyloggers are excellent tools when used safely. PLEASE research the one you choose in-depth and ensure you’re not compromising your personal data.

I feel good with the setup I have… but maybe I’ll check Google after I post this to see if there have been any complaints about this keylogger recently!

Best of Life!

Vern

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I became interested in Buddhism in about 1995 I think it was. I’ve read a lot about Buddhism over the past 10+ years and I have come to see that there are really 2 types or lines of thought about what Buddhism is. Even here in Thailand there are two camps so to speak.

2. The second type are those that believe in the whole -ism. The whole ball of wax including the hundreds of rules for monks and everything that Buddha and all the important meditators and Buddhists after him said and did. The Buddhist machine here in Thailand is huge and very rich. Superstition plays a large part in Buddhism here and most Buddhists believe that if they give money to the local temple they will earn karma points and go on to better things in this life and in the next life.

Westerners tend to be of this variety. Well heck, the majority of people tend to be of this variety. People love to follow a system and to compare their system to others. They love to talk about their religion and debate all the little points in it. It gives them something to do that they think is worthy of their time and effort.

Buddhadassa Bhikkhu called this type of Buddhism the “tumor” that has distracted us from what Buddhism truly is.

1. The first type of Buddhism is the simple, believe nothing until you try it for yourself line of thinking. I really like this style of Buddhism. Buddha said, believe nothing you hear if it doesn’t jive with your experience. He cautioned people not to believe what HE said without trying it out and finding the truth in it. This means we’re free to experiment with meditation and about anything in the realm of Buddhism on our own. It means we need not follow the entire game of Buddhism and all that has been built up around it to call ourselves ‘Buddhist’.

Buddhadassa Bhikku, founder of Suan Mokkh Buddhist temple in Chaiya, Thailand was someone that believed Buddhism was vastly different from the other religions of the world. He even wrote a book, “No Religion” which details his view on the subject. It’s a very small book and given away freely here in Thailand. Occasionally you can find it at Buddhist temples in the USA. Another of his books which illustrates his ideas about the right kind of Buddhism is, “Handbook for Mankind.” You can download the free PDF version of this book at Buddhanet’s page here. Scroll down to find it. This is a quote from that book…

“The real Buddhism is not books, not manuals, not word for word repetition from the Tipitaka, nor is it rites and rituals. These are not the real Buddhism. The real Buddhism is the practice, by way of body, speech and mind that will destroy the defilements, in part or completely. One need not have anything to do with books or manuals. One ought not to rely on rites and rituals, or anything else external, including spirits and celestial beings. “

And another…

“Buddhism does not demand conjecture or supposition; it demands that we act in accordance with what our own insight reveals and not take anyone elses word for anything. If someone comes and tells us something, we must not believe him without question. We must listen to his statement and examine it. Then if we find it reasonable, we may accept it provisionally and set about trying to verify it for ourselves. This is a key feature of Buddhism, which distinguishes it sharply from other world religions.”

In this video I talk more about Buddhism and the two lines of thought about what Buddhism really is, and what I believe in personally.

Video 2, Buddhism… Two Basic Lines of Belief >

This is a .wmv file and plays with Windows Media Player. The file is about 9MB in size and runs for 22 minutes. This was an experiment at the smaller resolution - 176×144. Future videos will be at 320×240 which will be much bigger!

If you want your audio to sound better, try to copy the settings (in general) from the equalizer image below for Windows Media Player. Vern sounds best at these settings… though in this particular video - the sound from the first 4 minutes is not good. It gets better. I’ve learned something about compressing the video that small!

Enjoy!

Best of Life!

Vern

Psst: I almost forgot, below is a photo of where I shot the video today - awesome place!

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This is my first attempt at video for the Aim for Awesome site. I know what I want, but I don’t know how to get there yet. I noticed in this first video I’m too mellow for the first part, I’d like to get more energized like around the 9:30 minute mark you’ll see that I’ve changed delivery quite a bit. I know how to fix that for the future - shoot a few takes first and get comfortable with talking to the camera.

Talking to a video camera is not an easy thing. It’s not easy to pretend it’s a friend you’re talking to at Barnes & Noble… but eventually it feels comfortable enough at some point and the video starts to work.

Questioning your religious beliefs is something I feel very strongly about. I went from Catholic to Christian to Buddhist to nothing and maybe swinging back around toward Buddhism at the present. But a basic form of Buddhism that pretty much consists of: Try it. If it works, use it. If it doesn’t work, toss it.

At some point the Buddha said:

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

So many times I see people go through life playing the game of whatever religion they were indoctrinated into without questioning it.

They never ask themselves…  Where did it come from? Is it the perfect truth?

A serious effort, a no holds-barred questioning and critique of your religious beliefs is called for. It’s a must. Your religion is the ultimate guide for your life. The one that holds the keystone to your beliefs, thoughts, decisions, actions, how you treat others and yourself… your career… and the meaning you derive from life. Your religion better be up to the challenge. It better be PURE truth or it’s not good enough.

In this questioning your religion video I cover:

• My experience with religion and how I went about questioning and challenging my religious beliefs over the years.
• A shot of southern Thailand from almost 1000 feet up a limestone mountain as a storm comes in.
• What I consider the 3 levels of truth or knowledge.
• Why questioning your religion is so important!

Questioning Your Religion, Video 1 >

Best to right click the video and choose “Save target as…” if you’re using FireFox browser or “Save file as” if you’re using IE browser. This video file is .wmv and opens with WIndows Media Player, is about 12 minutes long and about 13Mb in size.

Enjoy it! Comments welcome. Feel free to criticize.  I aim to improve on this first video greatly!

Best of Life!

Vern

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I’ve been wanting to create some videos here for a number of weeks now. I’ve kept it in the back of my mind and gave it some serious thought a few times. I just couldn’t nail it down…

What should I do video about that I couldn’t write about?
What would be better on video than writing?
What kind of format for the video?
Where to shoot?
Shoot what? Me?  Scenery?  Screenshots?

Then, this morning it all came to me…

When ideas are flowing you gotta get up and record them or they’re lost. At 5:30am after 5 great ideas for videos and books I got up, grabbed the notebook (computer) and went into the back part of the apartment and sat on the floor so I could type without waking my sleeping beauty (wife).

I quickly typed up over 50 topics I could shoot video on and added some of the content areas I thought I might talk about during each video.

I’ve become bored of the typical online video casts I see online - even from the top level bloggers. Darren Rowse at Problogger.net posted a question the other day asking readers about the benefits of using video on their blogs and he got a lot of comments. I left a comment too. I’m don’t like 99% of the videos I see at other personal development sites.

Darren does video on his site and he’s just so knowledgeable that you have to watch out of fear that he’ll say something you’ll miss if you don’t watch it. I’m not particularly excited by his videos - but, no matter. He’s an expert - I watch the experts’ videos whether I like them or not.

Even if you’re not an expert adding video to your blog occasionally can be a positive improvement to your site. For myself I have pretty strong ideas about how to make video look good. Not sure if I can put them into action, but these are some things I want to keep in mind as I shoot my videos here at Aim for Awesome:

1. No hats. Seems that a lot of top bloggers wear baseball caps during their videos and have the wrong exposure on their faces. The face is the most important part of the video - unless you’re shooting at some worldwide tourist destination. Hats block what little light is coming from above to light your face. I want the lighting on my face to be bright and happy, not drab. Lighitng is a major issue for most bloggers as they don’t understand that they need to increase the exposure if they’re sitting in front of a brightly colored wall as video cameras aren’t smart enough to know your face is more important than a wall.

2. I’m not a newscaster. I don’t want to sit in one place and talk. I can’t get myself excited about that kind of video. How are you going to be excited or motivated? You’re not. I just don’t have it in me to sit there with proper clothes on in front of a wall with a photo of a fish and get you excited about some topic - even if the topic is exciting. I like walking around and talking to the camera. I prefer shooting here inside the apartment and walking around in my room - but there’s no excuse not to get outside and show you something as I walk around and talk about whatever subject is the topic of the day. Thai people see a lot of wacky foreigners walking around here, what’s one more talking to himself going to hurt?

I’ll make the effort to get out to somewhere scenic most times so at least you’re looking at palm trees, islands, mountains or beaches behind me and not white wall and my ceiling! I promise, no newscasts at AFA Video.

3. I’m not an actor. I couldn’t read a script and make it seem unscripted if my life depended on it. I can’t act like I’m not regurgitating a written or memorized script. I can’t read it off a wall or have it playing in my earphone as I talk to you about it on video. It’s gotta be unscripted. It will take multiple shoots to do that because I say uhm, and uhhh too much. But, much better to do it that way - more spontaneous and I can get excited about the video which in turn might get you psyched about it.

So, assuming I can follow the guidelines above I’ll be churning out some video over the next few days and posting them along with a written post to go along with them. I’ll post the videos at YouTube I think, maybe the first couple here on site until I get the hang of it. For YouTube you probably know the trick you can use to get the uncompressed version of the videos - but I’ll post it below.

Youtube trick to get the uncompressed video which is higher resolution and nicer to look at:

Add this to the end of the url of the video - no spaces just add:       &fmt=18

Now, I need to say something about the quality level of the videos I’ll be posting here. I have a rather slow connection to the internet from my apartment and I’m using my mobile phone to connect. I can do about 1Mb upload per 2 or sometimes 4 minutes. In order to give you even a 150kbps quality video at 320×240 resolution that’s a roughly 13Mb file. At that size the video is NOT high rez and is NOT the clearest video out there. I have the nice 640×480 version that maybe I’ll offer on DVD’s each month or something - but for now I hope you can get accustomed to the small videos at limited kbps.

Video 1: Questioning Your Religion >
Length: 12 minutes. 13MB. .wmv file played with Windows Media Player. Hosted on-site, not at YouTube.

Enjoy them and be sure to comment - positively or negatively, I’d like to know what you think is good or not so good.

Best of Life!

Vern

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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

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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 inter