Dream Yoga (Part 2): Lucid Dreaming for Lucid Living.

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”

(Carl Jung)

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("SRI YANTRA, FLOWERING of LIVES”: For centuries now, this technological invention has been tested and proven over and over again empowering the ones meditating on its form which hold the innate powers to liberate the mind. Photography by: @eric-boucher.)

INTRODUCTION

To this classic quote from Carl Jung, I can hear, screaming in the back of my head the one coming out of Dune: “The sleeper must awaken!”

Some readers might ask, what’s the point? What is it about or how to get there, maybe even dare to ask why one would try to awake???

This series underlines the potency and potential this door available to you in your every night dreaming as one of the fastest path to your own awakening. From lucid dreaming to lucid living, the path toward the within first opens up on the realities of what we are as a human being, as a person and, eventually, as the retreat within goes deeper and the waters of your mind settle, not only can you reflect with great clarity, but from this stand point, you can see deeper, much deeper in to the nature of what you are.

The light of understanding finds itself reflected and, more importantly, the depths where shines knowledge from there depends on that process. It is, mathematically speaking, a function of it.

For instance, the science of Tibetan buddhism and its yogic practices have been systematically used for centuries and are ingrained in my being deeper than any of my words can express. The fundamentals of this movement of the mind and awakening of consciousness through awareness arousing have been discussed in this latest series of mine discussing the power of imagination, the process toward recognizing that one is dreaming and, ultimately, the awakening within the dreaming. From here, I started discussing dream yogas, exercises a dreamer does while being aware, fully conscious that one is dreaming, and exemplified through personal stories occurring during practices while sleeping. Eventually, this series is going to be moving toward the same regimen in both realms of the sleeping nights and so-called awaken days allowing, thus, the subject of consciousness to rise to the surface of this matter like a crown on the majesty of your being.

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("Conscious Awareness Emerging” as a radiant light beyond the realms of shadows. Photography by: @eric-boucher.)

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As years passed by, I quickly realized that the nature of my experiences, or at least the perspectives where I live them from, hardly related to the ones experienced by the people I shared life with. I first tried to find points of connections with members of my family, then my friends and community, and, to my great surprise, they had no clue what I was talking about! Meanwhile, I totally understood where they came from… Since then, I took the vow to help people reunite with all, all of us as one with reality, back with the oneness where we come from. The nature of my mindset being settled into oneness understood the realities of duality, as well as pluralist realities, but I had not yet discovered to what extent the people surrounding my every day life were disconnected from themselves and this non-dualistic reality I feel from and understand from, a space from which every single one of us have access to, especially in the arms of Morpheus while we are aware of our dreaming.

It is only by the time I came to college that I realized that my experiences as a human being had more in common with what people referred to as mystical experiences. Einstein referred to this experience as “the root of all true science” while being “the most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience”. Since I had came across what people called mystics when I was in grade 6, a subject which quickly became a focal point for the spiritual path I just pointed at, I understood what the people referred to. This being said, it dawned on me that most other people around me weren’t aware or didn’t feel or acknowledged their connections to experiences they, themselves, have which allows one to realize their oneness with the web of consciousness, embracing all of our cosmic realities and beyond…

Back when quantum physicist Max Planck said “all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration”, I wonder maybe if he didn’t yet fully comprehend then, too, that the nature of the universe he spoke of is in essence holographic and to what extent it can be understood as a reality we are all partaking in the co-creation of, living with and within in constant infinite interactions emerging from a non-localized energy field that includes all times past, present and future… Meanwhile, this monumental grand-father of quantum physics strongly believed of matter as being a “derivative from consciousness”. In his words, again, “we cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness”. In fact, as every scientist having delved deeply into its subject would admit, the deeper you search into the mechanics of nature, the Universe (or Polyverse for that matter), life, reality, the more it starts to look like a great thought rather than a great machine…

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("Shadows of the Great Machine of Time”: “The deeper one delves into the mechanics of nature, life and reality, the more it starts to look like a great thought rather than a great machine…” Photography by @eric-boucher.)

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DREAM YOGAS (Part 2)

We have now finally reach a point where we are going to emancipate on what we have learned and where to go from there.

I will propose you a few exercises to delve into while exemplifying them with experiences of my own. Sharing some of these stories relating to many aspects of what we have discussed already might help you shed light on questions you might have been asking yourselves about the techniques used, maybe it will raise questions you had not yet foreseen…

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of the mystery everyday.”
_{Albert Einstein}

As soon as you awake in your dream, you start talking to people, animals, plants, rocks, the sky whatever. The surprising thing is that some, if not all of the above, will potentially be willing to exchange with you. Asking them targeted questions will allow you to expand on the energies you are embodying within the dream thus allowing you to form a much more concrete idea of what you are experiencing.

I thought I’d present you a few of the classical questions I have played with over the years to which answers beyond me keep on surprising my awareness. So, here are a few question exercises to get creative with and learn from:

1- What am I? Who am I? What is my name?
2- Where am I?
3- When are we or what time is it, if there is time or time markers such as seasons in the dream you are in?
4- Why am I here? Or, what is my purpose for being here?
5- Where is home for me?
6- If you are human, who are my parents or sister and brother?

I’m pretty sure this is plenty to fiddle around with and enjoy an array of answers that will blow your mind. Remember to keep a record of your findings in order to place them into proper categories!

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(“Once in a Blue Moon” we experience a phenomena that blows our mind right out of the water’s of what we perceive as possible, getting us outside of the realms of our habituated awareness… As the movie Dune says, “Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.” Photography by @eric-boucher.)

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I remember, once, when I was told about this trick. I went to bed, started dreaming and almost automatically became aware that I was dreaming. I reminded myself that I was going to try to ask a specific question as to who I was to the people or characters I’d come across, a couple of by-passers who were walking in the wide open spaces of a beautiful park filled with leafy trees, a few laughing children and me, seemingly to my senses, standing there just watching them come by…

Their answer, to this day, is still one of my favourite example of unexpected answer. They first looked at each other wondering why on Earth, if it was Earth, I was asking them such a trivial question. You know, when one eye brow goes up and the other is going down as if you were almost winking: Looking back at me as if I was a total fool, they answered in unison “You’re a flower, of course!?!” Before I could even ask more question, the comical situation sent me right out of my dream, sleep, and back behind my eyes into my bed, laughing out loud.

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("The truth in the Eye of the Beholder”, photography by @eric-boucher.)

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Sometimes, just wondering about the question will actually give you answers too!

During the day, I had read through the articles in the SARSHOG (“NEWS” in Tibetan), a Tibetan newspaper I used to get through mail and posted directly to my home, in Terrace, Northern British Columbia. That night, before going to bed I was still thinking about the plight of the Tibetan people that followed the Chinese invasion in 1950 and started meditating on their people and, especially, the nuns and monks that are still out in there in the territories occupied today by China.

Moving from my usual daily awakened state in complete awareness through the intermediary state all the way into sleep, I woke up in a dream floating above a large forest of stunted evergreens. It also almost looked like a planted forest because it was so even as seen from above like this, but it wasn’t! It was a very old forest in a cold climate and/or a high altitude location through which a straight double-lane highway was cutting through. No traffic what so ever and, among the vastness of these particularly empty spaces, only one thing stuck out: A strange looking gas station with an eery feel to it.

Automatically wondering to myself where I was, two phenomena happened simultaneously: While I could feel that I was in China, I didn’t know why I was finding myself there. Right away, as if attracted by my wonderings, the mind’s eye moved into a small building that looked like a shed from the outside but, inside, were two Tibetan monks in a really rough shape, battered really… I asked them their names and, as soon as I was told, I flew out of the shed quite spontaneously and found myself returning to the enclosure of my body, in bed, in my bedroom. I slowly got up, went to the living room and wrote their names as to make sure that I wouldn’t forget…

Recounting the dream to Toby, my wife then, she asked me what I made of it, if I believed it to be relating to a past life or something like this. I told her I didn’t think so but maybe?!? Meanwhile, there were no signs telling me it was the future or the past, was it the present somewhere else, China for instance? I left the note in my drawer and never looked into it any more up until we received the latest Sarshog a month or two later: As I flipped through the news, I suddenly came across the name of two Tibetan monks who had been executed after months of imprisonment! I have to admit, my jaw dropped on the spot and as abruptly as the joy I had transformed into deep sadness and grief arising to the surface of my soul.

We never really know what is going to be coming our way on this journey of inquiry and one thing almost for certain, it will challenge you to keep an open mind. I can easily imagine what René Descartes would have said in relation to the answer(s) given to any questions you will be asking, “put that knowledge between parenthesis” and question it, inquire as to what this answer is about, what does it relate to, where does it fit in the paradigms of your experiences and, if it doesn’t fit anything, it doesn’t mean that it is meaningless. You simply haven’t came across its meaning yet. Put it in a special category of unknowns. As time goes by, more experiences will come by in the form of dreams, thoughts, visions that may or may not allow you to realize parallels maybe even points of connections between these newly acquired realities and the ones experienced in the realms of what one would call dreams.

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("Out of Life's Realms into day Dreaming”, photography by @eric-boucher, on North Beach, Haida Gwaii. This is the sunset’s reflection on the watery mirror of Naikoon Park’s revolving sands. As the angle of the sun meets the Earth’s curvature over Dixon entrance, at the exact point where the Prince of Wales and Dall Islands intersects the sun’s beams, the rays dissect into multiple flares over the southern Alaskan Pan Handle skyline…)

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“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of the mystery everyday.”
_{Albert Einstein}

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Well, it had been a slice since I had produced another chapter of the “Dream Series” and I hope you will enjoy the results of your inquiries among our oneiric journeys. Again, I will encourage you all to share the results of your discoveries either right here in the replies and/or in the form of posting to which you can link us to. I would LOVE to read what you are discovering and how these exercises are affecting your every night life as well as your day life because the end game of dream yoga is lucid dreaming for lucid living.