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.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

Recognize value in spirituality

Notice true and real progress in this realm involves recognition of spiritual dimensions. Developing mind-body awareness alone is missing an integral part of the whole. Ego-driven pursuits also tend to overlook value of and influence of the unseen. This is about deepening awareness of what hijacks our attention in physical, energetic and external worlds and learning to use that insight to catapult us inward in new ways. Its about shifting from mind into the heart centre. This is not something new that suddenly comes. The heart centre is eternally-present, but it is covered by so much. It has to be rediscovered. As one grows conscious of the workings of our inner world and perception, one is capable of navigating timelines and versions of ourselves that we prefer. We’re always shifting, whether we’re conscious of it or not. We grow invisible to some people, disappear from certain situations as part of an energetic shift to reappear in other places, relationships and conditions. Self-awareness induces a lot of lucidity and fluidity to help us guide our shifting to the reality we prefer. Some people link Ego and the Law of Attraction. Yet, in Truth, we do not attract anything–we simply shift to the reality compatible with our frequency that contains the fulfilment of what is often goes unrecognized. These realities already exist. How can you create something that already exists? You cannot. All things exist in the eternal Now. All potentials you could experience exist frozen in the fabric of space-time, waiting for your choices to bring them unto life. We must get a handle on our distorted functionning, manipulated energies and what keeps us unconscious before shifts into new realities are conscious and not undermined by our own ignorance or misunderstandings.

Pristine clarity is

It is said all learning is ignorance unless the knower is not known. Unlearning is about letting go of what is not. Truth does not invite more.  That which is known cannot be owned or possessed.  It is not pursued.  It is not what people tell you to do.  It is not about intellect, about clinging to or removing conditioning.  It is not a thought or series of thoughts that spin endlessly  through the mind. 

By divine grace, the unchanging reveals itself. Nothing fazes authentic being.  Nothing has any effect on what is unchanging bliss. There is no wavering or unwavering.  One is not moving or still. One is nothing and everything without trying.  One is not the knower or ignorance. One is beyond wholeness and division. The ultimate reality is not created or destroyed.  It is beyond words, time and space.  Beyond light and intention, pristine clarity is what is is, only that.

Living by divine truth, you know;

1) your power exists in this moment

2) you are born with power to create your reality & shape the course of your destiny (you consciously create your reality or subconsciously allow events to unfold in your world)

3) what you create in your physical world reflects your beliefs

4) to experience love and freedom, you must willingly let go of control

5) you have choices (free will is what we live following the will of the universe)

6) you are complete (there is nothing missing)

7) Your world is love, abundance & joy.  How you perceive shapes your experience.

8) What you receive is based on what you are willing to have not onl what you deserve

9) Life is a gift and you are here to learn to receive

10) This world is an illusion & you experience to the degree you allow

11) You own who you are becoming not just who you have been

12) You can do anything, be anyone and have anything and do anything with harm to none

13) Peace and harmony prevail in your natural state.

14) Victims do not exist, only poor and limiting choices.

15) To contribute to or serve others heals you from denial of love

Re-examine ignorance

Many people define ignorance differently if they are speaking about themselves or someone else.  You may view your own ignorance as innocent yet someone else is guilty of their own ignorance. Notice a difference. How do you judge or reprimand? Some people are harder on self than they are on others. What are some possible reasons for your choices?

Consider why people focus on things they believe they cannot do.  In some cases, they even fight about it. You may view this as selective ignorance of potential or, you may simply notice discordant energy. Different levels of awareness affect perception of what you choose to see and feel right now.

Ask yourself how you avoid being present in the moment and what you are becoming in future.  To be present is to have a mind which is empty of thought, fear, judgment, everything. Some people are convinced they are complacent if they do not find reason to feel anxious. What brings you inner peace?

Susan Boyle & 7 Echoes of self-acceptance

Susan Boyle is a Scottish woman who is experiencing unprecedented attention after singing a song on Britain's Got Talent.  Her unfolding dream reveals how the world is awakening to new levels of core consciousness. Consider these messages her behaviour reveals about self-acceptance;

1) Recognize how you think. As self-defeating assumptions take hold, you forget who you are and talents you have.  Learn to discern the process. Core motivation is conditioned to be pleasure. To detach from ego helps end self-deception.

2) Be yourself. Regardless how other people view or describe you, its how you view yourself that matters. To feel at ease and confident means you experience heart and soul as they are. You sense energy and instinctively listen to a loving, inner voice. You forgive people for critics are unaware what they say.

3) Filter distorted information. The senses and faculties shape beliefs and how you respond to trends in pop culture. An unquestioning mind accepts incoming messages and believes the self must conform to images that appear. To doubt your instincts reinforces attachment to what is not really you.

4) Awaken to ignorance.  To be a dispassionate observer of your own life enables awareness of false appearances and choices made as the result of influences that are not you.  Expanding limited ideas of beauty and talent teaches you to appreciate timeless, core qualities in every human being.

5) Overcome afflictive emotions. To allow yourself to generate painful, distressing or fearful emotions arises from basic misunderstanding. As you evolve to sense they do not exist, you no longer anticipate or feel them. You dissolve them and return to vibration of unconditional love. Its all there is.

6) Tackle misperceptions.  When a person removes the mind from considering certain ideas, or distracts mind from what it thinks it wants, this does not get to the core stumbling block. You have to experience things that prompt you to realize the world does not exist in ways ignorance makes it seem. If the physical world exists how people are led to believe, then nothing would ever shift your perspective or values.

7) See the bigger picture. What you do at any given moment is never really about you. It is about engaging a process. Mental and physical notions of happiness and suffering are influential at different stages of one's life. When a person is at a loss to solve a problem, that person is often unaware of a cause or, does not understand universal energy.  As you cease to judge, a gap between perception and thought remains.