Even upon a superficial examination, it should be obvious that seriously (without pretense) maintaining a mindset of a dreamer during waking is basically insanity. For this reason I believe contemplating insanity becomes essential on this path.

Even some people I consider very spiritually advanced are to a large degree conventional beings, including myself. If I weren’t a conventional being to a large degree, I wouldn’t be here on Earth, writing these silly posts. I’d have better things to do in much better, more flexible, more interesting realms, with oodles more personal power at my ready disposal. I probably wouldn’t be challenged by pain at all, and going without food for 1 year would be a joke for me. Physics wouldn’t be a law, but more like a recommended guideline that I would ignore at my leisure any time it suited my fancy.

Convention can be thought of in two ways. In one way, convention is an established and widely shared agreement. This is the interpersonal or intersubjective definition. In another way, convention is that which is customary, it is that which has been done before many times over. This is the subjective angle.

So for example, we all agree to use the English language to communicate. That’s an intersubjective example of convention. We all agree that we live on Earth. That’s another example of the same.

But. Supposing I routinely dreamed in a disembodied form, that would be my personal dreaming convention. This wouldn’t necessarily be agreed upon or shared, but it could still be a very stable pattern for me. Or to give another example, maintaining the view of oneirosophy during waking, when stabilized, would become a personal convention, but not necessarily a shared convention.

I think personal convention is a deeper, more fundamental convention in which the intersubjective convention takes root. Before you begin taking the views of others seriously, you first have to preemptively believe that the others truly exist. The other people can’t force you to take them seriously no matter what they do or say. It’s completely up to you.

So any time we deviate from convention, it feels like we are going insane. And this can be challenging. Because insanity is a deviation from convention, understanding what convention is in the first place, how it manifests in the space of your own mind, and what your role is in maintaining convention, all such knowledge and intimate familiarity is very helpful.

Generally I think a break with convention which feels like insanity can happen due to one or more of the four causes:

1. You started making different assumptions about reality.

2. You are abnormally less concerned than is customary.

3. You are abnormally more concerned than is customary.

1-3 are voluntarily inducible insanity types.

There is also 4:

4. Your experiences often do not match your expectations/assumptions about reality.

Unlike with #1, where your assumptions change, and then your experience changes to match your assumptions, with #4 it might seem like your experience has gone bonkers for no apparent reason (but usually there is a subconscious reason!).

So for example, most people assume that life is not a dream. So if you decide your waking consciousness is just a different kind of dream, the more seriously you take this attitude, the more committed you are to this attitude, and the more you allow this idea to affect your thoughts, expectations and behaviors, the more insane you may feel, at least initially. Eventually this could become customary, and the feeling of insanity would begin to wear off.

An example of #2 is not being concerned about bodily survival. This can feel insane, even if peaceful, somewhat paradoxically.

An example of #3 is being so concerned about the danger of bacteria, that you wash your hands 10 times every time you visit the bathroom, and you visit the bathroom to wash your hands 20 times during any day. Another example of #3 is thinking that your person is so socially important, that everyone is watching your every move. This is generated by a concern for oneself. You can also think you’re the most important being in the universe, but if you don’t worry about yourself, then you may not even care if everyone is watching you or not, or even, you might derive pleasure from the thought of being watched. That’s because there is no threat perception in the second case.

Normally all healthy human beings have some threat perception. That’s why they do wash their hands, but only once. That’s why people do lock their doors, but only once. If you lock your door 10 times to make sure it’s really locked, and/or if you also have 5 separate locks on the same door, then you have an elevated sense of threat. But if you never lock any door, never wash your hands, etc., that may indicate an abnormally low sense of threat.

Concerns are like hot coals. And then thoughts which concerns generate can be compared to smoke rising from the coals. You know how people talk about slowing down or even stopping their thoughts? Here’s one secret. The reason most of them can’t succeed is because you can’t get rid of the smoke while the coal is burning. If you have concerns, then associated thought activity will manifest in the mind. As each concern dissolves for whatever reason, its associated thought activity also dissolves. And to have no thoughts easily and reliably you literally need to have no concerns about anything. You need to be certifiably insane. And which meditation teacher openly teaches about insanity? None that I know of. Not in a million years. Insanity is not exactly marketable. That’s why most meditation teachings that focus on thought reduction are fraudulent. I’ve known many ignorant meditators who wasted decades on trying to slow down or stop their thoughts. One of these morons was actually a “Zen master” with inka from Japan. Please don’t fall into this trap.

People who achieve extraordinary results have extraordinary psychology that goes along with it. Normal people get normal results. Sane people get sane results. This I think is true at least in general.

However, insanity of the type #3 is something I consider undesirable. So even though I think insanity should be embraced voluntarily, I also think it’s wise to be picky about what it is you are embracing specifically. Getting uncontrollable nervous ticks caused by paranoia, thinking that the aliens or the government are watching your every breath and thought when you’re using a toilet, that’s no fun at all!

Once when I was starting experimenting with alternative ways of being, I learned to externalize my thoughts. First I learned to pronounce my own thoughts in different voices. So I could say my thoughts in Bugs Bunny voice, or in my friend’s voice and so on. Eventually I got into a habit of always using voices that didn’t sound like mine to pronounce my thoughts. And then eventually I started perceiving these voices as though external. And from there it started to get out of control. There was a time when I could have like 5 or more voices chattering in my mind simultaneously, all saying some kind of garbage that I didn’t want to hear. At first I thought that maybe I am hearing the thoughts of other people. I started thinking that maybe I am telepathic. Then I realized, wait, even if this was telepathy, I don’t want to live like that. I like peace and quiet in my mind. So I promptly dissolved all the voices and I returned to only using my own voice in my own mind. I was probably able to stop this habit quickly and easily because I didn’t let it gain too much steam. From my perspective this is a perfect example of an insanity that is not so good. It definitely wasn’t for me.

And there was another time when a huge portion of my concern for bodily survival dropped out (there were inner causes leading up to it, so please don’t think this happened for no reason at all). Along with it all thoughts related to career and job security dropped out. And this was a huge amount of thought! Suddenly I felt so much open space in my mind and so much peace, but I was also scared because I felt insane. I thought my state of mind wasn’t rational, because surely I should be concerned for my bodily survival chances a bit more. Surely I should give my career some thought, and so on. I definitely felt very abnormal precisely because I was “too” peaceful. So it’s funny how threatened one can be by peace, if one is not used to it. But this I decided was a good kind of insanity that I decided to adopt for the long haul.

So be careful with insanity. All insanity is potentially dangerous, but some is pleasant and/or liberating, while other makes life even worse than average.