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.

7 Reasons we dream of home

Many people share they dream about different houses. Sometimes it involves their own house or an unfamilliar house under construction, or even part of familliar or unknown homes, even dream homes.  Consider 7 reasons you might be dreaming of a version of a home:

1. Ready to integrate early memories.

Recurrent dreams of familiar places imply the dreamer is working through old memories. What is unfolding in your life right now of relevance? Imagine visiting the attic, going through old photos, a process of letting go.

2. Expanding our sense of who we are

Often, when we dream of a previous place we have lived, we may notice something different, but really, it is us who has changed or evolved. You may be in the process of creating a new sense of "home".  If certain house rooms change, or renovations are ongoing in a dream home, that is a mirror of our ongoing growth and expansion on many levels.  Some people also come to feel home is not a physical place, rather, it is where the heart is, and they take it with them wherever they roam.  A feeling of home may be felt outside any structure. 

3. Reclaiming Soul fragments

Dreams of our old home can remind us of lost parts of our soul that are ready to be retrieved and reclaimed. If we find ourselves in a playroom, we may be growing too serious in life and yearn to for more  chill time. Maybe trauma happened in this home, and the subconscious urges us to recognize it as part of our healing journey? 

4.  Representing your body

Houses can also be a metaphor for the body, pointing to an area that might need attention. For example, dirty windows are like eyes that are not seeing clearly. Would you benefit from an optometrist visit? Electrical wiring points to the state of the nervous system.  Plumbing echoes state of ingestion, digestion, and elimination (How is your own inner plumbing?).  Basement invites swimming deeper into our ocean of emotions.

5. Children are on the brain

Dreaming of a childhood home may echo visions of security, fulfillment, success that involve children. As we parent, care for kids, or contemplate having our own, many childhood memories, and even wounds, are bound to come up, may even be modelled by the behaviour of children in our midst.  The subconscious echoes what it was like when we were kids so that we come to see beyond our beliefs and behaviours. It can also help deepen existing relationships we develop with kids.

6. Nostalgia

On a basic level, childhood home dreams can also mean we wish some aspects of our lives were like they used to be, especially amidst adult challenges.  Adult responsibilities, relationship/marital issues, bills, laws and regulation, time constraints, sometimes trigger people to wish everything was always taken care of for them like when they were kids.  

7.  Refers to level of maturity

Childish or immature behaviour could also present in our reality. Whether it's you who is behaving childishly or someone you know, it can remind us of our youth, and subsequently, the house in which we lived as kids.  This could also signal the end of an earlier version of ourselves we have outgrown or a nudge to "grow up." Fire, death, and destruction of buildings  and how we respond to house-related crises may seem drastic in a dream, but they are not always so negative.  They can also be symbols of transformation. We are who we are because of all our expeirences and are invited to learn to accept and integrate the lessons in it all. 

Accept the initiations

Notice as it dawns that everything and everyone is a mirror, we can no longer selectively share love. Our sense of love expands. Its no longer a choice. We do not choose what we are. Rather, we accept, reject or forget temporarily. Turns out, love is something we are taught to do yet who we are interconnects everything. We no longer contemplate whether we are responding to "our stuff" or taking on "someone else's stuff". On this level, imaginaing separation between 'us and them' keeps us in the realm of experience and the experiencer, memories and past identity. This is necessary to grow. Meditation is a path beyond duality.

Unconditional love is what it is: Source energy shines everywhere, beyond time and space. It pours unconditional love into everything, the seen and unseen. Awareness is essential to healing energetic bubbles that arise and get pushed down, forgotten. These old and new ideas can get trapped in our energy system.

Through meditation, it dawns all energetic release occurs in the present moment. As we alllow ourselves to uncover and explore our shadows, and we stop rejecting parts of ourself, then healing can occur without us. This all happens now where wellness is and healthy expansion occurs to catch up with the truth.

Old bubbles are like emotional energies we have ignored from the past. Those which are big or small may be out of sight yet still influence the law of attraction. They alter our vibrational state of being and undermine conscious initiatives. If we do not get a message from true Self, then it will gather momentum through the law of attraction and reveal itself so we shift into harmony and focus differently. The life we create and steps we take to get back to love are unique to each of us. Regardless of any chosen resistance, the view, path is perfect for us right now.  Accept the initiations you create for yourself to guide you home.

Dream Analysis of the Week- Wounded Healer

"Wounded Healer" Painting by Tino Rodriguez

Dream: I saw big transparent pages of a holographic book, and imagined a large, blank canvas. I focused the power of conscious thought to open the book. In this version of reality, a woman had hemmaroids (piles) and was clearly distracted from attempts to sleep in a bed. She itched her butt furiously, asked herself aloud if it might be worms? She went downstairs, ate something in the kitchen then applied apple cider vinegar with q-tip to the sensitive area.  Just as the discomfort would fade, it would come back. She then realized her head was itchy and wondered if she had nits. As she allowed herself to laugh loudly and spontaneously at the disturbances rather than get annoyed, the itches went away. She was able to fall asleep, exit her body in an OBE and the page turned.  In another version of reality, a woman was getting a sri yantra tattoo on her lower back and a stellated dodecahedron on the back of her neck.  Her eyes were closed. When the tattoos were completed, a multidimensional version of each levitated above her, rotated quickly and re-integrated into her body which illuminated in light.  After, another book page turned. In the third version of reality, the woman is sitting beside a crackling fire and surrounded by animals, communicating to each one though the heart. She plays a drum and sings and engages in euphoric dance under the light of the moon. As the fire burns out, the page of the book turns to a blank page.  It remains open.

Insights: 

An itch, as a dream symbol, echoes something is bothering you that you cannot escape or get out of your mind.  It may to refer to conscious or unconscious attachment to something that will not go away. You may know its not good for you yet hesitate or resist letting go. The dream is a warning let go or purify the mind.

Sacred geometry in dreams echoes ancient symbolism. It is known to guide humans toward inner completion,  enlightenment or self-realisation.  Specific geometric shapes in our dreams may emerge during periods in our lives when we have gone off the beaten path on our life’s journey, only to guide us back on track. The Creator metaphorically uses these shapes in hopes we become closer with the divine energy that will lead us toward the best course at this stage in our lives.  These shapes are found throughout the Universe. Sacred geometric objects exist in our everyday life – patterns that can be broken-down into a language of math that rules our visible and invisible world.

Three versions of dream reality shared echo a trilogy.  What happens for you in threes? Is this a good omen?  Turning pages is like moving through chapters of change and transformation in your life. Meditate on what you resist, what you let go and what you allow to emerge to replace old or outgrown versions of you. This is a healing process, a process of emergence of a shaman regrounding and reconnecting with true divine nature.

in dreams, animals often represent emotions, expression and the response of your more 'wild,' uncivilized, yet natural self. This part of your nature can be in conflict with the inner critic that urges you toward conformity.  The drum symbolizes the heartbeat of the spirit, the leader of the people.  Its vibrations connect people to each other and to every living thing, backward and forward and in all directions in time, and out into the universe.

We offer Dream Consultations and dreamwork as part of coaching packagea. We also offer an Astral, Lucid and Dream Yoga Course.  Contact us.

Shift from Belief to Awareness

Notice many people talk about what they want and wonder why it all does not simply show up. Turns out, if we are not in vibrational alignment with what we are requesting, it cannot show up. This is the Universal Law of Energy in motion.

Truth is, as our vibration increases, we start to achieve and experience harmony with the universe on many levels. Some remain unseen. For those we do see, this has nothing to do with random occurrences, "getting lucky" or stumbling on the right people or opportunities. The higher or more expansive our vibration, the more we consciously control our reality, align with what resonates in our Soul.

Many ways exist to sustain a higher vibration. In essence, its about creating body-mind coherence, so the body and mind work in perfect synchrony, like an orchestra with many instruments. To align with core vibration stabilizes us on a frequency much like each of us can tune into a preferred station on a radio dial.

Come what may, attitude and consistent practices are important. This is how we rewire the brain, create new connections and simultaneously raise our energy. All this has huge consequences in the external physical world. Of course, its one thing to read about a concept. Its quite another to put it into practice and manifest directly for ourselves in real time experience. This is the path of the alchemist, the Hero's journey. That is, an energetic shift occurs from belief in heresay to awareness of what is always here and allowing it to enter our field.