Practice through dreams
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
Some years ago I came across a quote by Osho, which said “if you pay attention at the moment that you awaken from sleep, you can catch a glimpse of your inner being”. I took this to heart, and started paying attention and this practice is starting to pay off.
It’s really a form of mindfulness, a focus on dreams and sleeping and awakening that first brings you a greater awareness of your mornings and your post-sleep state. For me it brought me a deep awareness of the healing and regenerative properties of sleep. In the mornings I almost invariably feel rested, thinking wholesome thoughts and being re-energised. It’s as if sleep and dreams cleanse you of the poisons and stresses that accumulate during the day.
I’ve started paying attention to my dreams as well, and have come to the conclusion that dreams have two parts, the experience and a kind of energy transaction. The second is actually more important than the first, it frees us from the entanglements of daytime thinking and allows us to freewheel. You shouldn’t pay too much mind to the experience, just allow it to carry you away while you receive the energy with gratitude and friendliness.
But it’s that transition from sleep to wakefulness where the truly interesting things happen, I’ve found some intriguing things waiting for me there, little fragments of words, sometimes a thank-you.
Comments
Intriguing stuff. I used to be more interested in dreaming and tried to provoke lucid dreams on a number of occasions. It only worked once and then only for a few seconds. I’ve thought about it a bit recently, in reference to Buddhism.
Apparently there’s a Tantra that uses dreams, wherein the practitioner pays mindful attention to the transition from dreaming to wakefulness. They observe firsthand that both the sleeping and waking realities are constructs of consciousness. They’re both made of the same basic material.
This realisation allows them to see through the illusion of waking reality and attain Nirvana.
Or something like that...
I've had nightmares that were negative from the standpoint of being nightmares but that were positive energy residue (or transaction like you said) standpoint.
I don't think I've ever singled out dreaming for special attention in practice, but it, like everything else, gets folded into practice anyway.
There are certain dreams that have intrigued me greatly, most notably those that have seemed so vivid and so real that, decades later, I still remember them as sharply as anything that has happened to me in 'real' life. I think I have had two dreams that clearly fall into that category, so beautiful and so sad and so seemingly solid that I still don't really understand or know where to put them. One seemed to contain a pretty clear lesson in letting go, the other a prophesy as well as a lesson in the rare beauty of life. The prophecy seems to be unfolding in 'reality', but it's hard to be certain - the mind plays tricks, spinning things the way it wants to see them.
I’ve come across Dream Yoga before, and have heard a story about the founder of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, who supposedly realised enlightenment while he was practising Dream Yoga.
Consciousness does appear to have quite a special role in the universe. For example quantum particles have differently when they are being observed through the right equipment, it’s very interesting.
I've found lots of insight into my psychology through dream interpretation over the years.
I also like what you said about the moment from sleeping to waking. There does seem to be this brief gap before the mind turns fully on where insights or intuitions can pop up.