// THIS THREAD WILL BE UPDATED It's Day 8 of my 60-Days Shamanic Breathing challenge.  Things are steep. A few nights ago during the practice, I got up from the floor and tried to drink from a water bottle. I barely remember how I grabbed it. Apparently, I was holding it upside down and all the water spilled out. How or even why that was happening my brain couldn't process. The water was gone. I also experienced a primordial form of mysticism. During one breathing, I had metaphysically gone back to a prehistoric age to fully appreciate the raw sense of taste and the power of hunger and thirst. I still vaguely remember sitting on the floor in the dark, astounded by the Beige era of living. It was so profound and mystical. In your ordinary state of mind, you sort of reduce and generalize what seems to be the lowest stage of living on the Spiral, when in fact it is utterly thoughtful, genius, intelligent beyond understanding. When you're in a different state, the whole model breaks and loops back around. During that night, I also got to satisfy the sense of hunger. My body got up and rushed to the closest source of food and water. It came back from the kitchen. It sat down in the middle of the dark. A totally fascinating process. When I'm breathing, the 10-15 minute mark is usually when things like this start happening - one of them being the utterly pure drive for food and exceptionally elevated appetite. I could literally be eating grass and be wonder-struck by it.  The realization I had on day 8, today, is that a certain need exists within me. This need is to balance whatever I'm doing - or will or could be doing in the future - with adventurous mind-trips. What I mean is that once I disconnect - for a longer period of time - with lucid dreams, or vivid dreams for the sake of it, or spiritual awakenings, or other forms of letting go, I start to feel detached, depressed and emotionally dull. All life abandons me as if I've gone astray. These things mentioned put me in a state of flow, though in a way for which I do not have the correct words. Especially the dreams part is valuable for me. For a while, I forget who I am - who I think I am during ordinary waking hours - and get to play along the scenario. Yesterday's night I got to experience vividly a bomb explosion. It was ghostly terrific, yet gloriously attractive to experience. First arrived a blast wave that stroke my skin like a light breeze - and then, as I laid on the ground - eyes closed, head down, hands on the neck, came a second form of heat wave that burned my atoms down to crisp. Marvelous. 10/10 death. The dream's scenario that preceded - and one that followed - were both unlike one another, so diverse, engaging. Sometimes I get to be the leader of a crew facing a war of five nations, in which we either love each other and unite, or die; a delegate, sometimes I get to experience my nervous system being burned down to fiery remnants. I don't know if I'm like any of you regarding the river of flow, but this is what truly pulls me into life; forgetting the ordinary me and taking on identities without remembering. Godly, huh. The dreams are then appreciated only when they are over. A couple of personal side-note facts about dreams are that (1) reality awakenings are possible within what we ordinarily portrait as night dreams, though this realization in a dream doesn't imply, nor isn't tied to remembering your normal waking identity. This is a nuanced and possibly valuable observation for those trying to reach awakenings during a night sleep: You may experience profound awakenings in a dream, though such a dream wouldn't be standardly conveyed as lucid, and (2) is that 10-15 minutes of shamanic breathing before bed drastically increase the vividness and wildness of my dreams. Proceed and test.  At last, I'm going insane. The definition of insanity is relative, useless and false in truth, but nevertheless... I laugh at it, but I also wonder. Sometimes when I wake up from an engaging, adventurous experience, I'm like fuck - I'm back here in the mundane. Sometimes I wish to throw it all away and stay in a vivid dream forever. (oh wait, it's happening, but you get what I mean.) Being ignorant of who I am and the purpose of the goals I have given myself is bliss. I'm not sure I'd be capable of killing myself in the ordinary sense, but if pulling a trigger inside a dream and staying there on an endless journey forever would be an option, I'd go for it. People would find me on a bed with my eyes closed, while I'd be dreaming away... dreaming and dreaming until I would - as I realize only now, right at this sentence - dream back to this exact moment. Such a complex issue that I don't even know where to begin to ask. It's like I'm stuck in an Earthly limbo of melancholic boredom and profound, interactive, enjoyable metaphysical journeys. Right now, I'm inhabiting the first. Three hours from now, this could change. I feel like an advice from a wolf that's taken 50 arrows in the back isn't enough to give me an insight anymore.