6 Benefits of Lucid Dreaming & Dream Yoga

To be exploring your dreams is to be working with your mind. Lucid dreaming happens when you realize that you’re dreaming as it’s happening. You may reall films like Dream yoga occurs when you use this lucidity for your own practice. Dream Yoga, rooted in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, allows us to “hack into the previously unconscious” and use our dreams to transform our waking lives. Wonder if this is worth exploring further?  Consider 6 benefits of lucid dreaming and dream yoga;

1. Extend our meditation practice into our sleeping hours

Buddhist teachings on emptiness and the alleviation of suffering, offer clues. We suffer because we take things to be real.  We suffer in direct proportion to how solid or unchanging we take the contents of our mind to be.  Dream yoga teachings gets to the heart of the matter. This can be confrontational yet, it shows us how we create our own suffering based on our beliefs in solid and heavy, and what is real. The removal of suffering is a direct effect of seeing the world as dreamlike. We use our study of night-time dreams to understand the mechanics of our suffering and happiness in the so-called daytime dream.

2.  Help manage nightmares

If we’re freaking out in the middle of a nightmare and we can wake up to the fact that we’re dreaming, then we can relieve suffering. We realize it isn’t real. That is being lucid. If we wake up to the fact that the contents of our mind are not as solid as we make them to be, then we see them as illusory. This is a process of awakening.

3. Better understand nightmares

To know nightmares on a mental level differs from the feeling and visceral level. Nightmares echo fragmented or disowned aspects of ourselves.  We’ve refused part of our experience. During a nightmare, these rejected aspects of our being are calling back for attention and reintegration. That’s why they’re chasing us. When we run away from them, we continue to keep them alive. That’s why people have recurring nightmares. The nightmare arises, and instead of relating to it, seeing it as it is, we run.  Instead of running, we can stop, turn around, and look directly at the monster. When we do, several things can happen. The monster may disappear, or it will stop and dissolve into us. By facing the monster, or by facing our demons, we can reintegrate these fragmented aspects of ourselves and absorb the nightmare.  This has big impact in our waking lives.

4. Uncover deeper Truth

There are relative truths to many of our dreams. Freud once said “an uninterpreted dream is like an unopened letter.” The unconscious mind is frequently sending us teachings and messages in dreams and nightmares.  Lucid dreaming can transform sleep into a window to the deeper realities. Yet, we often experience dreams as unreal. We can do things in dreams we do not in waking reality, like fly. 

One of the reasons we don’t seem to have the same capabilities in waking reality as in dreams is because we take waking reality to be real. When you truly wake up, the waking world is just as real (or just as unreal) as the dream world. You start to see that the waking state is basically no different from the dream state. It’s the mind expressing itself in two different mediums.  We make this so-called waking reality more real than our dreaming reality. When the world is seen as illusory, the ego freaks out. It has nothing to stand on. Therefore it sees waking reality as real and the dream world as unreal.  The basic charter of these practices is to see the one taste of all these different dimensions of the mind so we’re no longer privileging one state over another. We have a very powerful prejudice toward waking consciousness. This is the source of lots of problems.

5. Explore the relevance of spiritual bypassing 

Spiritual bypassing here refers to nihilism.  This frequently arises as the near enemy when one asserts that reality is just a dream. Saying reality is just a dream is very dismissive. On one level, that level of dismissiveness is what we’re after. We’re trying to dismiss the imputed validity of reified waking reality. In that regard, dismissal is appropriate. An erroneous interpretation of this is a thought that sounds like, “If it’s all just a dream, who cares what I do?” With that mentality, you do not choose to be a conscious creator. There’s no compassion or social activism. There’s just apathy. You must realize it’s a subtle trap, and ego can default into that. When we’re working with these practices, there are all these subtle traps that ego will find. The proof you may be seeking is found through your own diligence and what is revealed through your direct experience.

6.  Prepare us to experience a lucid death

According to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, dream yoga came about largely as a preparation for death. Padmasambhava [the 8th century Indian teacher who brought Buddhism to Tibet] once allegedly said that if we can maintain lucidity in our dream state seven times—in other words, if we can maintain lucidity with some constancy in the dream state—we can have a lucid death experience.

What the traditions put forth is that when we die, our lucidity or "bardo" awareness  (the in-between state after death and before rebirth] will be directly proportional to our lucidity in the dream state. This, in turn, is directly proportional to our lucidity in the meditative state.  Dream yoga is important because it empowers not only our dream practice, but also our meditation practice. The biggest reason we’re not lucid in our dreams is that we’re not lucid to contents of our mind during the day. That is incredibly important. So many studies have shown that meditators have more lucid dreams. If you practice meditation during the day and develop lucidity or awareness of the contents of your mind, that naturally expresses itself as increased lucidity in the dream state. The tradition then goes one step further to say that type of lucidity also transfers to a lucid bardo experience.

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It is important to recognize that huge resistance can come up for people when attempting lucid dreaming and dream yoga practices. Why?

The ego has a bias toward its version of awake reality. People fear some of these nocturnal practices as they’re afraid of the dark. Ego is simply keeping up its defences. Darkness is a code word for ignorance. Nighttime is an archetype of that ignorance for many people who prefer to stay in the dark.  Every time we go to sleep or get lost in monkey mind, ego is recharging its samsaric batteries. Not everybody wants to engage in dream yoga, because it will show us just how far we’re willing to go to wake up. Ego exists in the darkness of ignorance.  When we try to penetrate it with nocturnal dream practices, part of us that just doesn’t want to go there. 

In conclusion, lucid dreaming and dream yoga practices are not designed for everybody. They’re a little more advanced and require discipline. They are subtle and deep. People may wonder, why bother? While these practices are not all that easy, they are potentially more transformative, aswe are dealing more directly with the very roots of our ignorance. When we engage in these practices, it concerns the very tectonic plates of our existence.

 Our Astral, Lucid and Dream Yoga Course begins November 3rd.  Contact us for further information.

Journey of an Alchemist

Notice in hidden underground caves of dreams, most precious gems and insights emerge crystal clear. And in waking life, its only by descending into the abyss that we recall what it is to trust and surrender, rewire the brain, activate dormant systems, shift from fear to love. The sheer magnitude of what must be faced is reminds us anything dark or negative is a call to rise. Our innate capacity to reframe challenges builds character, resilience, births the alchemist or opens the golden flower within. As we forge a unique path through darkness, create lines of wisdom in our skin to mirror life's eroded walls, others also find their inner light

Recall what aliveness feels like

Notice to begin to feel more alive is to recall what happiness truly feels like. Its a deep visceral journey. Living from or being guided by 'Soul' implies total aliveness, not with or due to someone else, or some situation, but with yourself. This version of absolute aliveness has no outward causes. It is ever-present and also inalterable. Free will simply implies one can tune into/ out of any vibration.

To lose touch with Soul, is to lose touch with the basic source of core vitality, aliveness, and creative inspiration. Coming back to listen differently, coming full circle, is about surrendering to wholeness, tuning into self-love and appreciation in unforeseen ways. Divine guidance is everywhere. True love is the way of no expectation. Love exists only in total acceptance where there is no desire to change anything. Anything else is not unconditional love, but desire or judgment.

This journey of existence offers endless insight into freedom of mind and the truth of suffering. Find courage to be real. Listen to the heart rather than mind. Be satisfied with life in the present. Explore the unknown. The journey of facing oneself can be very painful, yet what is revealed is beyond mind's imagination.

Sense of Love is Changing

Notice we cannot simply show up half-heartedly and expect the world to show up, and reveal itself completely in all dimensions. The universe always has our back, yet what appears in our scope of awareness mirrors how truthful we are with ourselves.  That is, we cannot see what is vibrationally out-of-sync with us. When we do not fully accept all of self, we do not accept parts of reality, keep them from entering our perception and experience, postpone wholeness.

The depth of insight we have into self (why we do the things we do or not) shapes soul's evolution. If we only share glimpses of truth, do not validate all parts of ourself, stay ignorant of our dishonesty, we simply catch glimpses of wider realities. All feelings are essential to growth and any we avoid, suppress as shadows, limit our reality. We only experience wider realities to the degree we are willing to face and explore deeper parts of ourselves. This takes courage.

When unconscious, we do not change because we do not recognize anything needs to change. Until we bring light to our unconscious wounds and patterns, grow in our discernment, develop discipline and patience, we are not ready to accept responsibility for our own joy, happiness, peace and serenity. Thus, this cannot emerge in our direct experience. "Ah-ha" moments change everything.

To connect with something beyond ourselves allows everything to be as is, suddenly know nothing interferes with our happiness. It is everywhere, whether we experience it or not. By letting go of control, learning to trust and surrender, we recall what it is to love all parts of self, transmute energies other than love and integrate aspects of self we resist. Our sense of what love is, calls for love and messages about love, change as a reflection of expanding consciousness. It dawns as we change, the world around us changes. Wider realities emerge.

5 Tips to Induce Lucid Dreams

Many people ask about Lucid dreaming techniques.  As 5 is a luck ynumner, here are 5 tips tp induce lucidity:

1) Perception

Act as if everything you are expeirencing is a dream.  As you listen and respond to the external world, allow yourself to relax, settle down deep into your body.  Open up, look, listen and hear as if whatever you perceive through your senses and mind, tell yourself its a dream.  Exercise this many times thoughout the day.  Everytime you contract or resist, react, remind yourself this is a dream.  

2) Reaction

Tell yourself that every moment you are creating energetic files like a computer.  You are asked to title the files: urgent, serious, secret, personal, taboos, Many of these are causes of your suffering and pain because its how you see them. Continually remind yourself its a dream.  If you can save a file as a serious dream where you feel threatened, challenged, scared, these files are dream files.  You are bridging information consciously into the night.  Those situations that show up in dreams echo we are not free from it.  Emotion-related or negative thought-related.  if we are not aware in those moment, you are less likely to be awake in dreams that evoke the same emotions.

3) Processing

Take 5 minutes before going to sleep.  Rewind the day's events until you see something is not processed, integrated accepted in peace.  Contemplate on them. Tune into stillness in the body, feel the silence in your speech, feel spaciousness in the heart-mind.  Breathe deeply.  If you still react something strongly, see it as a dream. See what you learned from it.  From a deeper place, process it and hcreate a positive relationship with it. Every moment, we aim to clear ourselves of illusions are we look at things from a deeper place, from a calm place.  Best thing would be to delete the file. Alternatively, rename it.

4) Reflection

Journal or share your dream.  You may experience 'sleep of ignorance'. This implies you recall nothing until you awaken.   Building trust is part of developing confidence and more consistent remembering.

5) Integration

Once you begin lucid dreaming, you can exercise your imagination in new directions.  This takes practice to be able to transform situations, make smoother transitions transitions.  How do you make life decisions? Do you feel forced to make decision because of fear? Because of being hopeful? or hopeless? Why?  The best decisions are made when we are fully aware of the situation.  In the daytime, this is called awareness.  During the night, this is lucid dreaming. If we are aware of things, we can change them. This is about reclaiming power.  The same thing can happen to 10 different people and they can respond differently. Our level of consciousness during daytime helps us have more lucid dreams in the night and vice versa.