Here we go. Hello, everybody. Welcome to our ongoing webinar series, I don't remember what number we're at, we've been cranking these puppies out for a while. So what we do on these sessions is just, as you know, continuing ongoing exploration of things related to the nightclub charter practices discussion and like, and so we got a couple questions that were piped in, may have a chance to talk about stuff. And also for those of you who were attending the last one, we had a little homework assignment, so to speak, to explore. Changing, you know, what's it like to actually change the contents of your dream? And so I got one response, it was pretty cool. So if you want to, at the end share, like, how was this time between this session and the last Did it work? That did not work? If it did work, I'm curious what you did experience and what you were able to actually accomplish. And remember, the really cool thing about these practices with the right view is that everything is revelatory. So even so called failures can be seen as successes, because they will show you where you might have some blind spots, some places where you might be stuck. So that's why are under the right view, we shouldn't become discouraged if we come across some hurdles hassles along the way, because that's part and parcel for what the exploration is all about. And so I always start these things with the title, a little bit of a promo rough kind of thing. Just to show you what's coming up. I interview Charlie Morley, some of you might know this already last week. We're trying to process and get that out. As soon as tomorrow, a really rich interview with my dear friend who just published a new book on using dreams and other modalities, actually to work with things like PTSD and trauma, he started doing some really interesting work with veterans, which was awesome. And somewhat along those lines, we talked a lot about the power of breath, could first part of our session together was talking about breathing. And so the next guest that I think could be undocked for the interview series is Amanda Morley, she, she's done a lot of work on breathing. And it's amazing, actually, it's a little bit like the whole sleep thing. We take things like sleep for granted, we don't perhaps explore it with the nuance that we could. And somewhat similarly with breath, there's so much that we can learn about breathing properly, and the deleterious effects of not doing so. And so Charlie and I talk a lot about that, and I'm interested in my upcoming interview with Amanda because we're gonna get into that even more. It's a huge part of the whole spiritual thing. Lots of yoga is you know, if you're a yoga practitioner, really, any honest yoga practitioner will tell you that most of yoga is really just learning how to work with breath, right. also have this as my busy season in terms of activities. So Alyssa is very kind to post a link up in the chat column. For the nightclubbers premium members, the free nightclub deep dive event starts first, actually second weekend in October, two, three day weekends, one in October, one in November, always one of my favorite programs of the year even though I haven't done it in this format before. So I'm quite excited to jump back into that with you all. Sedona program ended the month in October. Also very excited about that brand new program I haven't done before. And post meditation practices post mindfulness meditation practices, and then two sets of retreats and there's absolutely drop a drop dead gorgeous retreat center in north of Cabo San Lucas in the Baja called planet Omar, this place is off the charts beautiful. The minute I saw it a couple of years ago, I said we have to do something here. So anyway, all kinds of cool stuff coming up. But what I was going to talk about today is a stage four is really starting to enter one of the pivot point practices. This is a really big deal practice. stage four is learning how to work with fear. And those of you who know a little bit about what I've been doing for the last couple of years, I've been reading a lot about this thing called fear. And so some of those wouldn't say tangential but some of those supplementary bits of information I will hang in my in my little riff with you today. But this is a definitely a little bit more advanced stage of dream yoga. Why? Well who wants to work with fear, right? Who Who in the right mind wants to do that.
So it takes a little bit more intrepid net a little bit more fearfulness born from right view to work with fear properly. But it's absolutely integral is is we'll see to the natural trajectory as it is to the whole spiritual path trajectory. And this is definitely something that separates dream yoga, from lucid dreaming, because even though lucid dreaming can help you work with fear, in fact, my friend Charlie Morley did a TED talk, I think 11 years ago or so, where he talks about how he used lucidity, to work with his nightmares. So even though fear has brought it into the lucid dreaming curricula in that level, there is no overt stage of working with fear in the lucid dreaming world that I am aware of. And that's one of the things that is central to what takes place in the Buddhist approach to working with our dreams. And so the German researcher Palais, who made some really major contributions. So that if we really want to grow as a psychologist and a very deep dream worker, if we really want to grow, we should seek out threatening situations in our dreams, and in our lucid dreams, and work with them. And so this is also parent theoretically, central Charter of the work of my dear friend Pema children, she has written a ton on this topic, right? The places this scare you all these really marvelous books about how to work with fear. So it's a really big deal. And it also ties into just to give you an idea of how this contextualize is within a larger set of practices that I've been writing about more lately, these days of these reverse meditations. They're called reverse for a number of reasons. But one of the reasons reverse meditations are called that is what you do with these practices. And this is one of the stages This is a reverse meditation stage, you reverse your normal relationship to unwanted experiences. In this case, you work directly with your fear by going directly into it instead of running away from it. And so this is subsumed under yet another set of practices, these reverse meditation, so I'll be paying you a little bit more about that as well. These are not easy to do these practices, because again, they go so against our grain of what we normally do with unwanted fearful states of mind, especially dreams. And also because if you've had nightmares and been able to bring them onto the path of lucidity, they're harder, they're more resistive to change, because there's more emotional energy, negative emotional energy involved here, they're more overwhelming. And because of that, that tends to make these dreams a little bit more resistive, resistant to change, which is why again, it's a little bit more advanced. But if we have that right view, and we realize that the obstacle is directly proportional to the opportunity, that we may take it upon ourselves to work most explicitly with these stages. And interestingly enough, if you pay close attention to what kicks you out, and wakes you up from a nightmare, so let's just say you're having a normal non lucid nightmare. What is it that kicks you out of it? That's a moment of lucidity, whether you know or not, there'll be something in the dream is it? There's something in the dream that will just say, Hey, wait a second. This is just a really bad dream. And what do we usually do? FedEx, I'm out of here, wake up. You know, your heart pounding. You're sweating or whatever. But that instance, that's a moment of lucidity. And so very often right there, you can start to use nightmares as a way to bring about lucidity. If you have the wherewithal to recognize that as a dream sign. And then of course, then to stay with that. So what you do with a with a lucid nightmare, instead of hitting the eject button.
You say, Hey, wait a second, wait a second. This is a lucid, this is a lucid nightmare. What am I What can I do here? What are my options? Some of the options are what we're going to be talking about. And so then what do you do you stay in the dream takes a little bit of guts at first. But the more powerful you lucidity the less fearful the dream state actually becomes right and so armed with the protection or the armor of lucidity, you stay in the dream, you go back into it. And then you can do all kinds of things. lucid dream nightmare therapy, you can rescript the ending. You can change it you can alter it. You can work very powerfully to resolve the issues and I have to I don't know if I shared this story with you all yet. But Dr. NIDA shared this story with me, actually not with me with a group. He's a wonderful guy who teaches one of the rare people that teaches with some regularity and dream yoga. And I can't remember if he if this was born from his experience, or whether somebody in one of his programs shared the story with him. I don't remember the genesis of the story. But he shared that. Let's say it was him. That, you know, he kept having this kind of recurrent nightmare where this monster kept chasing him. And finally, he had enough lucidity to just stop that in his tracks, like he's being chased by this thing. And he goes, Hey, wait a second, this is a dream. So he stops, he turns around. He turns around, and he faced this monster. And, and he says, he says to this guy, this monster, he says, Why do you keep chasing me? Why are you chasing me? And the monster says, I don't know, man, this is your dream. What? What a great, what a great response. Hackman, I don't know. This is this is your dream. And so right then and there. Even an instance you start to see what's really happening here. You are working with your own fearful situations, you're working with your own mind. And so that's that's absolutely key, it's absolutely integral to this is understanding that what's actually taking place is the display of your own mind. So to return to something about the degree of lucidity and our ability or lack thereof to work with these, Steve on the very says that, really, and I completely agree with him. That our inability to work with altering the contents of a lucid nightmare is really directly proportional to our degree of lucidity. In other words, if you're not that lucid, then you're not going to be able to do a whole lot, right. But if you have a fair degree of lucidity, and again, that's why this is more advanced stage brought about by higher degrees of lucidity, clarity, stability, then you can stay with it, then you can really start to work on it. And therefore the the promise the opportunity is directly proportional to the peril to the obstacle. And that's what makes it worth the trouble. Because if you can work you know, this hybrid state where the conscious mind can face the unconscious mind directly resolve some of these undigested unprocessed experiences. While you are do something here real quick, while you are in that arena, you have the opportunity to metabolize digest process this energetic, so therefore it doesn't have that kind of power, it doesn't have that kind of control over you again. And so I wanted to share a couple really, I think powerful quotes. One of them is from a dreamy researcher, I love this one from Judith Malamud. I share this one a lot, because it's so compelling. Because what this does, what she's talking about here is something that goes even deeper than nightmares. Which is really nightmare principle, nightmare principle. This is what she says it is not the events in our nightmares that horrify us. It is our attitude of taking these events literally, that scares the Wits out of us. Once one realizes I am having a nightmare. One is no longer having a nightmare. lucidity calms the mind and body and makes dreams safe.
learning that dreams are safe involves in effect, learning not to fear one's own mental activity. Let me say that again. Learning the dreams are safe involves in effect, learning not to fear one's own mental activity. When students learn that the mind is a free, safe and private space, permitting many options, they may use dreams to generate new ideas and solutions to problems and quote. And so this is a such a critically important point. That fundamentally, when you become familiar with your mind during meditation, when you work with your mind in the electronic arena, you will eventually come to discover this radical proclamation of the wisdom traditions. That the nature of the mind is basically good that there is an inherent goodness in whatever display of the mind there is. And so therefore, this view is super important. Because therefore, it means no matter how terrifying the scenario, no matter what the display is, like, if you have the right view, you can stay in that adverse negative display. Knowing through the force of the view that fundamentally Your mind is good. It's just like, no, I often say that, these days that the thoughts and dreams really aren't there, the children of your mind, they're products of your mind and we should relate to them as such. So sometimes your children throw tantrums some times your children are misfits. They don't behave very properly. And so in a very similar way, sometimes your mind doesn't behave in what you might deem are proper way. And so if we have the right view, we have space for that we can accommodate that. And we can therefore relate to it. And so therefore, just like everything else, right do, understanding the power of this transformative aspects the tour, understanding that the nature of mind is, is basically good. In fact, even further, it's fundamentally pure, it's divine, then that allows you to work with these more wrathful aspects of your being there not dissimilar to what in the Bardo literature were called the wrathful deities that you're going to meet. If you're lucky, if you have the recognition after death, you will meet these 52 wrathful deities, what are these? Well, one of the things they are is just raffle aspects energetic aspects of your own mind. And that Bardo state being completely released without any type of filtration, or mediation. But even in conventional life, when we have nightmares, these are just raffle aspects or in a more psychological arena, have rejected aspects aspects of your own psyche, heart mind, that you haven't established a relationship to. And largely what they're doing is really calling out for integration and wholeness. And so the idea here is that whenever we reject a part of ourselves, right, it's like throwing a boomerang, it's going to come back, it's going to come back symptomatically either in your life or in these types of dreams. And so if we have this type of attitude and understanding we can realize that the opportunity is one of as you would call it, Carl Jung, individuation integration, allowing these energetics to become a healed hole because that's what they're doing when you're being chased. That rejected refuse aspect of you in this dream image is really coming back for reintegration for healing holding. And if you keep running, but it keeps chasing you because it's not a net. It's just this aspect of yourself that you thrown away. That's returning like a boomerang to be reintegrated and so armed with the you do you do exactly what Dr. NIDA did with his book, I mean with his story, and what Charlie also shares about quite sure, in his TED talk, you know, you can stop, right? I'm lucid, anybody's lucid, this is a lucid dream. This is just my mind in here, my mind is basically good, stop, turn around, directly face that fearful expression, and then allow it to integrate.
And so this is so so important here, this unbelievably critically important step of learning not to fear your own mind. Learning not to fear your own mental activity, no matter how adverse it may be. So armed with these frameworks, with this context, with this crucible, that's where transformation really takes place. basically learn that all your dreams are fundamentally safe. And really basically good, because your mind is fundamentally safe, and basically good. You've made friends. This is the type of metta practice, actually my treaty, in the Sanskrit, that the in Pali, you're making friends with yourself at this foundational level. And so in the classic texts there, there, I remember when I did this in my retreat, I'm going to read you an excerpt from one of the meditation texts that this is what you actually do, when you have these types of dreams. So this comes from tsongkhapa, who is the great actually founder, pretty much of the gelukpa tradition, the tradition that the Dalai Lama is a member of you could say. And so sankalpa was a master logician, a really wizard, intellectual, and also very, very deep spiritual practitioner. And so he that he engaged in this practice, is really any practitioner from any of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism does, but this is what he says, what to do. whenever anything about threatening or traumatic nature occurs in a dream, or this is my insertion or you generate it. So I'm going to toss this into the mix right now. So two ways to work with these nightmares. One is you already have a nightmare. You work with it in this new lucid way. Second thing you can do is you can actually generate nightmarish situation so similar to what the stage three was about learning to chart transform things. At this level, if you have the wherewithal, you're you're having a normal, lucid dream that isn't nightmarish, transform it into scary experiences, and then nightmarish contents, again, who wants to do that? Like, are you kidding me? Well, if you really want to explore Are these deeper dimensions? You are the one that wants to do this. So whenever anything of a traumatic or threatening nature occurs in a dream, such as drowning and water being burned by fire, recognize the dream as a dream. In other words, become lucid. And ask yourself how can dream water a dream fire possibly harm me, right? Make yourself jump or fall into the water or fire in the dream. Easier said than done? Yeah, I've done these things. Right. So I've conjured up a clarifier, I've been at a cliff. And I'm looking over the damn thing. And I'm going I know this is a dream. And I know what I should be doing so to speak, are invited to do at this age is like jump off this dream cliff. And once again, is regulatory of our degrees of reifying. The Dream thinking that's what's actually happening is truly real. So eventually, armed to our stability, realizing, Hey, wait a second, this is just a dream, then you will equip yourself to do that, you will jump off and go for the joy, right, so to speak, make yourself jump off, make yourself jump or fall into the water or fire in the dream, examine the water stones or fire in remind yourself of how even though that phenomena appears to the mind, it does not exist and the nature of its appearance. In other words, in my languaging appearance is not in harmony with reality, appears to be threatening, but it's illusory, it's just the dream back to him.
Similarly, all dream phenomena appear to the mind but are empty of an inherent existence, self nature, meditate on all dream objects in this way. And quote, in here at the very end, we see yet again, that everyone at the stages of dream yoga, is about exploring these teachings on emptiness, as in fact is everything in Buddhism, everything circumambulate these teachings on emptiness. And so he's making it very explicit here that what you're working with in this level is seeing through the reified status that you impute. And so this is what I was mentioning earlier about nightmare principle. The real essence of nightmare is taking whatever appears to be real. That's what makes a nightmare so scary. You mistake that to be real, that's what freaks you out. But with lucidity, with awareness with cutting through into that true nature. You realize fundamentally that what is appearing there is in fact illusory, it is just the kind of display the imagination of your mind at that level. And that completely flips the tables. Then you realize a parent's now it is in harmony with reality, and then all fear is gone. And so then this immediately, once you start talking about emptiness, we go from the relative immediately into the absolute. And so what's really being invited here is that on an absolute level, you really have nothing to fear, as they say again, tying it back into the Bartos over and over in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. emptiness cannot harm emptiness. emptiness, cannot harm emptiness. So the nightmare principle is reification. That's what creates fear at any level. And this ties in again, all the stuff we've been talking about over the last couple months. You know, there's there's really I think, very helpful, adage, the how this now I'm extrapolating this to life. How it is that? Yes, indeed, We absolutely, positively do need to take things seriously. And even in the nightmare, we can still take things seriously, we can learn from the dream. But it does not follow logically whatsoever that you have to take it literally that's a mistake. So let me say that again. take it seriously, but don't take it literally. If you don't take it literally you're cutting through into the 3d appearance cutting through appearance and into the empty nature what's actually arising. So this is you can see how this builds on stages, especially two and three, right? This is yet another instance, are working with the empty display of appearances. So a brief kind of interjection again, how central and how important all this is. When we're working with fear at this stage, we're not getting down to the primordial archetype of fear that is actually the bedrock of all of samsara. We're not quite getting down to that, but we're working our way into it. This is an expression this is uh, you know, the word is epiphenomenal expression. This is an echo of this primordial archetype of fear of which any other level of colloquial fear is just secondary, tertiary quaternary expressions. And so this is so key because everything we do in this life is really an avoidance strategy to stay away from this kind of bright light to stay away from this fundamental truth.
That Is this fear that underlies virtually everything we do. If we look very deeply, I think Ken Wilber came up with his jingle fear is the mood of the self contraction. So it's a very sense, quality of fear, the contracts and even then generates the sense of self. So the sense of self is actually constructed out of this fabric of fear. And so I riff on this a little bit. In the dream Yoga Book, when I was thinking about this very famous line in the Upanishads, I'm sure many of you have heard it, where it says where there is other there is fear, right? Where there is other, there is fear. So that's, that has several expressions, one is in the dream, you think that thing is other than you. And so therefore, that generates a quality of fear, especially if you reify it that makes it really fearful. But on a, I think even a more subtle level is you can't have other without self. In other words, self and other common words, they co define each other. So the implications here, I think, are really compelling. What it means here is that where there is self, there is fear. Where there is self, there is fear, because it is in fact that contraction, born of fear that generates the very illusion that there is a self. And so that's one reason the stuff that we're doing here. And the further you go into it, especially in the highest stages, stage eight, nine, Dream yoga, and then going to sleep yoga, you're going to be working more and more directly with this foundational matrix of the bedrock of relative reality, this fundamental self generating fear, that really take a deep look, it underlies everything, most of our life is this tremendous avoidance strategy. And so in this level, in the safety and sanctuary of your mind, knowing it is a dream, this kind of laboratory, you can work with this fundamental, emotional energy at its very root. And so another reason again, this is so helpful, is that what we're fundamentally trying to do with all the stages of dream yoga, and really all the aspects of this spiritual path, as I've come to understand it, is they're trying to unearth, we're trying to bring to light ignorance, we're trying to bring ignorance into light of consciousness and transform it into wisdom. This is not so easy to do, because ignorance is so constant. It's so ubiquitous, it's so unconscious, we don't see that we don't actually see. In other words, one of the reasons we don't see ignorance is because it's so constant. So subliminal, but what we can do, what we can see what we can work with, therefore is in fact the effect of expression of that ignorance which is what fear. Fear is the effect of emotional expression of ignorance. Even colloquially, we say, just look at your own experience fear and ignorance are virtually synonymous. I mean, we're afraid of what we don't know, even on really over the counter levels, anxious of a blind date anxious of a draw a job interview, anxious of a move, nervous about a surgery, you don't know how it's gonna go nervous about a speech, you don't know how it's gonna go. Scared, nervous about getting sick and dying. Why? Because you don't know what's going to happen. So ignorance and fear, you know, fear is the minions to act as effective and active expression of ignorance. And so therefore, this is why Padma has written so much about this, you know, the places that scare you. If we have the wherewithal to go directly into that from which we would normally flee. Then we have this really precious profound opportunity to take this fear and become fearless. You don't get do it by getting rid of fear. You do it by going through the fear, the gauntlet of fear. And so yes, there again, this is such a colossal, a huge topic. I received a ton about it. I have other resources, I can paint you. Dreams of light. There's an entire chapter in that book about an integral approach to fear, which is super helpful. We did a course last year shamala Mountain center that? No, actually I'm sorry. I can't remember where he did this one. Maybe it was an s&c
class on working with fear and anxiety and an uncertain world. Because I think this is such an integral, critical, important aspect of waking up. And so if we can do that, within the dream arena, we have a unique opportunity because like means your average day says, working with emptiness in the daytime, little bit more difficult because habitual patterns are fully operational and online. As his ego. The nighttime or a mind is actually a more fortuitous classroom, as he puts it, for working with these principles. So one last little set of tips here, and then I'll share some of the questions that came in, and we can discuss this stuff. Because this is something we could talk about for a really long time. But I want to make sure I'm getting the sweet spots that you all are interested in here. One of the most important things in terms of working with this, at any level, whether it's in the dream, or in the waking state is simply being with it. So the first step in transforming fear is just having the courage to stay with it. And if we understand this, the nature of it will be more inclined to actually do that. But fundamentally, What is this thing? What is this thing called fear? So number one, we stay with it, do the opposite of what you would normally do, which would be to run and then feel into it. Do what what security talks about is handshake, practice. I love his languaging handshake, practice. Oh, Hello, Mr. Fear. Nice to see you again. How are you today? Right? This is a way to essentially actually articulate and establish your relationship to it. So shake hands with your fear, welcome it, explore it. This is where this joins in with a type of analytic meditation. Really take a look whether in the dream state or in waking life. What is this thing called fear? Where's it coming from? Where is it going? Where does it abide? Where do I feel it in my body? What's it made of? Who is it that's feeling this here? You started to ask these questions, you're going to start to transform this fundamental energetic transform fear into fearlessness. And so fundamentally, it's like, the image like the Wizard of Oz, this great archetypal film, right? At the end, the or the dog pulls back the curtain, and realizes that there's just this guy running all these maneuvers back there, these these leavers that creates this terrifying appearance. And so fundamentally, we're trying to pull the curtain back, we're trying to look behind the scenes behind the curtains to see what is it that drives this extraordinary powerful energetic that we spend so much of our lives running away from. And in so doing, we look deeply with an informed integral approach and relationship, we fundamentally will start to realize that this fear is born of not knowing it's born of ignorance. It's just a very intense energy that's designed on a samsaric way to keep us away from the truth. Let me say that again, fear at the deepest levels is designed to keep us away from the truth. And we'll talk more about this when we get to the very highest stages of dream yoga. What's that fundamental truth? Well, the truth of emptiness altogether. The truth that fundamentally, even right now the very center of yourself, there is no center. So I'm going to leave that for a future conversation, because that's hopscotching into the higher levels even further. And for now, before I open it up to everybody, perfect timing. I want to take some of the questions in there on my other computer. And then I think there's one or two live ones that we can address. So I wanted to shoot so one, this one came in, and this is actually an offering. This is from Karen, where she says, remember we had a little homework assignment from last time to
work with changing things. And before I forget, this will be our invitation as our homework between now the next time we go to stage five is if you have a lot of nightmare. Use your nightmare use that that moment of recognition that the dream is in fact a nightmare. Recognize that as a dream sign. Notice the the immediate tendency to hit the eject button and fly out of the dream. Stay in it, stay in it. Simply at first if you want one of the best things to do is just really stop turn around and just witness the display. At first you don't have to do anything, just simply witness it with this level of awareness slash lucidity. And notice how that strips the dream of its power. Then if you if you feel even more comfortable than that, if there are fearful aspects of the dream, second step would be to actually go directly into that face them, face them, walk into them. Eventually you will actually penetrate through their lucid character in a little bit more challenging. I find it a little bit more challenging. Third step is completely following up on stage three is if you wake up in a normal lucid dream and want to work with stage four dream remember you can incubate say, Okay, this month, I'm gonna have a lucid dream and tonight I'm going to have a lucid dream so that I can work with fear, work with fear. You can do it you can plant these secondary intentions. You can also then if you don't have if you wake up in the dream and it's not us Writing one, create a frightful situation I do this all the time. Crum, crank up a bonfire and then jump into the sucker. Like a marshmallow. Jump into the fire and see what happens. I mean, I've done this, it's in the classic texts, I've done it or conjure up a cliff, jump off of it conjure up Grand Canyon, you know, huge whatever lagger faults, jump into that. And then just notice simply just noticed, pay attention witness, your reactivity, how you can relate to it in this perhaps more elevated sense. And then see if it starts to soften your relationship to this, and now we have a lifetime partner. Okay. So that's our homework assignment between now and next time we do our stage five. So this is from Karen, since I probably can't be there, I would like to report on a lucid dream in which I change things. See she did her homework. I wanted to turn a dish brush, for whatever reason, into a comb. Okay, very cool. The first thing I did was create a table, which in itself is not bad. Y'all say it's not bad. That's pretty good. Then I covered the dish brush with my hand and imagine that if I took my hand away, there was a comb there. But that was not the case. But then I could actually materialize it by willpower until it was fully formed a real while moment. That's just awesome. Karen, thanks for sharing that that's truly a wild moment. And again, like why are we doing this right? This is just like some nocturnal video game. No. Why do we want to change the contents of our dreams in this way, so that we can change the contents of our mind during the day. So that the next time you're completely swept away with anger or fill in the blank or even fear you can change it and I've done this stuff long enough I can't tell you how often this has happened. Where or something like that will be arising some emotional energy will be coming up. I feel myself going non lucid during the day, in some silly pop up from a dream whoever, however many nights ago or even sometimes even years ago will pop up. Were like here You know, I've changed the dish brush into a comb. It's like hey, I can change this fear this anger into compassion into kindness. in exactly the same way. I changed this brush into a comb. So that's why we do this. It's much more than just a video game. Okay, so here's another question that I'll open it up to the live ones. Could you say a little bit about the nocturnal meditations such as for example, sleeping while imagining a white light at your forehead and some of the chakra meditations do these types of meditations also open these energy centers and in that way lead to increased lucidity. I experienced a fantastic lucid dream doing the above and it was my first using visualization
I was skeptical about this thinking it's a bit advanced for me but was surprised by the result a fantastic lucid dream that involves seeing my teacher and getting a message oh this is great I love this stuff so cool. So cool. And another one just like Karen's where you realize hey, I got a little bit more power than I thought I could really start to do these things. They're not too advanced for us. Don't be intimidated by these things. So the first part Can you say a little bit about the electron meditations while imagining a visualized lady forehead and some of the other chakra centers do these meditations open these energetic centers and in that way lead to increase in acidity. Yes. And yes. So remember, lucidity is codeword for awareness. So anything that opens the chakra centers, the energy centers tends to open allow these energies to flow increases greater awareness, which is usually trapped in these centers. And therefore brings about lucidity, both nocturnally and diurnally. Day or night. And so this is an inner yogic way to work with my favorite definition of meditation, which is what habituation to openness, openness. So in this case, is opening the subtle energy Central's centers, the channels and the chakras themselves. So Exactly. Do these meditations open these energy centers? Absolutely, absolutely, positively. And so, to say more about this, you know, that's what the inner Yoga is do like when we're working with dream yoga. That's why we visualize things in the throat. Because according to this tradition, and also by the way, Jewish mysticism and Islam, that energetic when we're in the dream state, the Hindus the chakra is the winds here. So Mowgli chakra in the throat center. And so both with Sleep yoga at the heart center dream yoga in the throat and then other chakras depending on which practice you're doing. That's the way it works. When you visualize a light depending on this, the chakra in the center, each one of these chakras has a color slice frequency. You can bring about heightened kind of penetration, literally yoga says called penetrating the vital points were through universalization and breath control, you direct your mind like she's suggesting here, whether it's white, or your forehead Center, which by the way, is the correct color, red in the throat blue in the heart center, you can penetrate the vital point, which means penetrating these chakras that serves to open them. Since they're free, the energy serves to bring about increased heightened lucidity. And so there's just a more to say about this. I believe I have at least one or two chapters in the dream yoga book that we're going to start by the way, that book study group starting October 14. You should have got a newsletter about that. In that book, there are two chapters where I talk about the Lotus visualization. I talked about visualization first than the Lotus visualization. And so I'm going to put a little bit of hold on completely unpacking those because that when we discuss those chapters in the book study group, we're going to go into this in a ton of detail. Okay, so in the meantime, I think I see a couple of hands raised. I'm happy to take questions both in the chat column, or alive, so fire away. Awesome. Let me get you unmuted care. Hi, hello.
Hi, Andrew. Um, so yeah, I'm actually I've been rereading Carlos caston. Eight is the art of dreaming, which I read many times with my husband, and he read many times in his life. And you know, how you talk about the map is not the territory. This is making absolute and direct correlative sense to me now what made some sense, I'm like, Oh, that's what that is. Oh, that's what that is. So, um, you know, and I and early on, I had some physical visitations from my husband in dreams that woke me up like the bed, you know, on his side of the bed, like things that weren't in the dream, but were coming into the dream. And then in a, in a semi lucid dream, I had an entity, take me into the dark and show me this incredible scene, which I bumped myself out of by saying, wait, I've got to go get my iPad so I can take a picture. But I never have nightmares, right? Like, almost never. But three nights ago, I was happily maybe not happily but sort of skipping or hopping up my husband's back steps to his office, where some interesting things have happened energetically, and out of the dark below me underneath the plants. A hand grabbed my wrist. Now, what I've been saying, what I said that night before I went to sleep, and I did my five syllable, mantra, seven, seven. I said, Come on, Nick. Because his ashes were coming home the next day, I said, Come on, Nick, come get me in my dream. And not only did he used to do this in life to make me squeal, or hide around corners to just saw that I would scream I never understood it. But um, so I let out this when this hand had a hold of me, I pulled on it. And it was obviously entering my dream from another dream or something. And I yanked so hard and I propelled myself up with this yell like, but I got so excited because I was like, oh, contact. Now he grabbed me too hard, and I reacted too strongly. But that didn't like as soon as I woke up in the dark. I knew I had been afraid. But I was excited because I'm like, Oh, I can't wait till the next time and maybe I can just stop. And so so here's what I'm also saying at night, as per cast inator He says, to say I don't fear you come to see me. If you do I'll welcome you if you don't want to come, I'll miss you. So that's what I'm doing at night now but but that kind of fear which is like immediate like I liked how you were also saying that this this this what I would call more anxiety that lies at the base of like this. This existential stuff is very different. threat from this reactive fear which is like, you know, like a punch or something so yeah,
yeah. Wow, what a terrific story. Thank you so much for sharing that. That's that's, that's awesome. And I mean a couple things came to mind one is a slightly augmented playful usage of this idea of handshake practice, right? It adds a whole new dimension to handshake practice, right? And in reaching out that way, I mean, that's really pretty awesome. Something was definitely cooking there. I don't really have a lot of commentary outside of just fantastic. The only thing is what what you said at the very outset is you don't have very many nightmares anymore. There's something worth saying a little bit about that, is that you know, Dream states are revelatory, right? Dreams are truth tellers psychologically and spiritual, spiritually and so one of the things that you will in fact discover as you start to clean up your unconscious act and digest metabolize process release these repressed elements you'll notice that bad dreams decrease nightmares, decrease and eventually they stopped. And so it's very common for people who've been doing inner work for a while it's like hey man, I have no bad dream and 20 years I haven't had a nightmare in decades. That's that's a reflective of what's actually taking place and so on one level for you to share that kudos for you that there's you're obviously doing the inner work and things are being transformed. And so therefore then for people like you, if this practice working with fear is of interest, then you have to kind of crank it up, then you wake up and then you do something fearful like perhaps some of that I can do what happened but even more directly, but in short, outside of just smiling and bowing to your experience, I mean, thank you so much for sharing it that's really pretty solid.
Yeah, and the thing I guess that's most scary is that it's it's entering the dark, which is where I say I want to go, but in that moment, it is a very, like a Dark Void is really, that's hard to access. You know,
right in the dark, you know, darkness is a symbol for ignorance right in, in some liturgies they talk about in the darkness of rightful existence. So darkness itself is codeword for ignorance. And so that in itself is interesting. The fact that we're afraid of the dark Well, why are we afraid of the dark, because it's representative of our inability to see and our lack of knowing and Barbara Don Taylor in her beautiful book, learning to walk in the dark says, darkness is not dark to God, the dark The night is of the brightest of the day. And Chris Wallace, you know, there is no darkness within just lightened scene. And so therefore, it's very interesting. I like to think of things archetypically. And in terms of principle, so I talked about nightmare principle, which what we know as nightmares is an iteration. I also talked about darkness principle, the darkness is what it's it's symbolic is representative of refuse the experience of the unknown, the unconscious of ignorance. And so therefore, by establishing our relationship to psychological darkness, we may in fact finding ourselves altering our relationship to physical darkness. So it's very interesting to work. Again, very often outer darkness, not the same as inner darkness, but also not different. Outer light, not the same as inner light, but not different. Outer Space, not the same as inner space, but not different. So therefore, our relationships to outer phenomenon this case, darkness can be really interesting to explore. It's one reason I do things literally like dark retreat, I voluntarily go into dark cabins for extended periods of time. Like, like, why would you do that? Well, because of that stuff. Because I want to transform darkness into light because I want to get rid of all my fear. And so I go to the things that really freaked me out. With the right view, I go to the places that scare me. And one of the things is doing these kind of dark practices so so much to say on that, but thank you, thank you for a beautiful story. Thanks. All right. Let's see. Hello. Did it Yes, I got it. Thanks. Um, how are you? endre I'm good, how are you?
I am good. I'm so many things. First, though, for your workshop coming for doing yoga with those three weekends. In just to tell people I do not know how many people listening to this or later I go into attend but usually what I do every time that I'm going to take one of your courses that I really get into apply whatever I thought I learned and I'm just a chair and I would like to know for others to have the same experience it's almost like the dreamlike intensifies just with the intention to prepare for your workshops and it just it becomes like a roller coaster but I'm so looking at your book and I wonder you want a group of us can even just spontaneously preview your book regarding lucid dreaming and the exercises because I think we would have a very good battery of a lot of experiences because I'm sure my experience is not unique and we've been listening to you so I wonder if while we do some one more exercise even the for this for seminar severity in three yoga so it's almost like an experiment to see if we do that what kind of experiences we would be able to share during your workshop. So just a suggestion Okay, so
be asking before you go on so how would you recommend initiating something like this just starting I mean, we could we could put it up in discourse with some kind of a linker Yeah, I
can I asked you know, maybe I asked permission I don't know maybe you don't remember I facilitated reading the book in the chapters lucid dreaming box and exercises to a group of people and I was just surprised some people that never had experiences. And everybody had maybe a moment of lucidity maybe just during the day maybe realize and maybe an obstacle maybe remembering it people loved the Lotus in the mantra in he was such an ex spontaneous way. But it's, it's just sharing books and comments and exercises from the book following your own directions. So that's, that's a thought, okay, totally. Even if I mean I don't have to do it, I'm just suggesting to people by my experiences, this is like their fifth year doing it. And it's like, no, no fail method. So the second thing is I was looking at the
fear
and things that I think it's almost like my lucidity go to so when I see it, I say oh, this cannot be possible because this is a dream. blump and listen. So listening to you regarding obstacles and lucidity. My question to you is almost I'm almost like dismissive. Oh, this is just an I move on into something else really, really fast the same way that I talk, instead of going deeper, maybe Am I missing the opportunity of facing the obstacle or maybe the images. So if I have this tsunami that is going to cover me or something like that, which is common for many people, for me, well, there it comes again, I wonder what has happened. And this is a dream, oh, nothing is going to happen to me covered your nose and everything is going to be fine. Or if it's an animal that is chasing me, or Georgios a dream and an animal disappears. Yeah. So am I missing the opportunity to do something else?
Maybe it's that's hard to say? Maybe? Yeah, I think the opportunity, you know, there's, there's two ways to work with this one is a more, you know, kind of overtly psychological way and not not a criticism for that approach whatsoever. In other words, there's two ways to work with it. One would be literally in classic dream interpretation terms. What does this tsunami represent? For me, what is this thing chasing me representing me, do some dream interpretation, see what in fact, that might be trying to communicate at that more kind of psychological level. So that can be done. Even post dream, right? Doesn't have to be done. That's a great gift, you can write it down. log it. dream interpretation. Again, I don't criticize this at all. It's super important. It's super powerful. The only reason that I somewhat I wouldn't say criticize it, but I just contextualize it. Not the same as dream yoga, Dream Yoga is different, deeper, but that doesn't dismiss this other stuff at all. So on one level, even post dream, you can do that. Like what is what is really being communicated here. What is the message? How can I interpret it? How can I resolve it? The other one would be the more dream yoga poses and I'm talking about then in that case, then maybe you are missing an opportunity, but it's hard to say my right you know, I mean, you have to just look within and see the Yes, whenever we have, you know, they talk about golden gates. That's one term I've used. There's other other traditions have different languaging for when certain situations arise. You You have to be somewhat ready to accept what arises, open the doors, enter that Golden Gate, walk through it and then accept because otherwise what happens is the door will close. And I never Yeah, and then that particular opportunity is over. Now it doesn't mean it won't arise again in some other form. But one of the things that makes the opportunity and opportunity is you have to be there to take advantage of it. And there are instances where Yes, I looked at From my own life Now, sometimes with some regret where it's like, well, there's an opportunity, I just completely missed it. I didn't have the guts, I blew it or whatever. And instead of beating myself up, it was like, Okay, next time that happens, I'm going to have the courage to go into it. So I think somewhere between those two are relatively conventional way with interpretation, writing it down working with it, you can even do that post dream, the other in the dream, staying with it. Do you miss an opportunity? Maybe, maybe. But can I say for sure, you know, I'm pretty cautious about making that kind of carte blanche statement. But
last night was the night that I have one of those. But then this today, I had a one of those days that I don't decide to anybody have been beginning with a lot of rain. And anyway, it was one thing after the other every half hour, so every half hour, we look up and say, Okay, this is an obstacle, this is the moment that I have to apply it. But it was to the point that I am exhausted. But it's almost like the dream was like that last night, and everything actually worked out. And it worked out. Well. But he was almost like a comedy of I mean, it could. It was almost like he was really laughing at me that I can have this under control. So you have it under control. Yes. There you go. Good luck. But anyway, that was my two questions. Thank you.
Beautiful, beautiful as usual, you you have the most wonderful things to share why I really appreciate it such a rich, you know, life and so terrific. Thank you. And to whatever extent you're inspired to do the first thing, the discourse or whatever, I think that's a fantastic idea. Totally. Yeah,
I would put it in nightclub maybe in the general discussion to see if there is there are so few people, just those comments. But I think that if three to five of us at the same time, right about doing the same thing, it will be kind of interesting.
Exactly. And I also want to put an exclamation point on what you said that that I definitely noticed this myself as well that sometimes even setting my mind that I'm going to take particular Van Gogh see particular teacher, even then even when I make that decision, things start to change, I start to notice whatever. And so it was so nice for you to say that because that's definitely been my experience as well that sometimes even making the decision electing to go towards whatever, all of a sudden there's some kind of current that starts to be catalyzed and invited. So thanks for sharing that. Always great to hear from you, Myra. Okay, thank you. Okay. Anybody else?
Yes, that two more. Okay. I just there we go. Did that work? quilly? Yes. Oh, perfect.
Hi, Andrew. Hello. So I came into the nightclub, when you were sending out those illusory form exercises, and we were staring at objects and every week you'd send something and site kind of simultaneously you had suggested we have signs around the house that write their dream. And I have had emptiness, the Abyss experiences on the cushion experiences of emptiness and unity, or non duality. I have also done dark retreat. And out of that I say it's clearly all in the mind because it's not an senses, right? And even knowing what's dreaming, and what's awake, right? kind of confusing. So my question is around back in the six, seven days, when psychedelics were kind of coming around, you know, they were always offered as safe. But then every once in a while somebody would try to fly. And that thing that would be you know, it would be presented in a very negative way of, but to me, I didn't know very much about non duality at that time or emptiness. But it's always been curious to me like it seems like those people were experiencing non duality or you know, the what is the difference between that
realized that's not realized that's a really that's it's a really great point. They were experiencing it but it's not realized. So in other words, that therefore the when they did jump out the window, it didn't turn out so great, right? Your net well, right, because it's an experience, it's not realization, and so it's not stable. So it hasn't actually transformed ability. Exactly. Exactly so you know, milarepa did that he would fly? Yes. Right one of the great sages that he would fly Why? Because they realized beings they're not experienced beings. So this is what a great comment from your part and that's the difference you can have. It's a it's a non dual experience. It's not stable. So it hasn't done the fundamental transformation. Right, but jobs he flies because he's realized that's the difference. Well,
I mean, is that difference between dreams and dreaming reality and waking reality and cushion reality and dark reality means that what because I can identify those as four different places,
but they're not there. They're only four different states. See their their states and that's the difference and that's why when they talk about even I like the Hindu languaging here clearly where they talk about before you know, the first three waking, dreaming dreamless sleep. And then they talk about the fourth Turia. And the fourth is is actually not a state, it's not a fourth state. It's the quality of mind that subsumes all the other states. So when when you're talking about all these experiences, you're talking about state experiences. And so underlying it all is a common denominator beforethe what they call Turia. And so that that's where that whole thing comes in. And then eventually, when it's all brought to fruition, there's no difference there's no difference between waking dreaming sleeping die none I mean mill speaking of milarepa he's he's saying right not seeing day and dream as deferring. This is as meditation as it can be not seeing the here and hereafter as deferring. That is, instruction is masters it can be and so in this particular song, the ultimate equivalences at the fully awakened state when I choose the state dimension, then there is no difference within with any of them. This is classic Advaita Vedanta classic contract approaches it's only when we're still thinking that these states are different that we then reify and experience them as different but fundamentally the one taste quality that's what is revealed ultimate awakening whether you see basically there's there's fundamentally no difference it's all becomes dream at that point remember, my languaging of dream is code word for manifestation of mine so it's all just dream one different dream superimposed on the other one one iteration of mind playing out after another and so that's that's the fruition but we don't we're not there yet. We don't see up that's why when we jump we still get hurt. But eventually we reached her Yeah, and then even blog beyond Tria Tita. And then fundamentally that that's a complete total game changer. So, but
almost, okay, always a little bit of difference in the level of experience or realization or whatever it is in the different places. Maybe I can fly at night, or on the cushion or, but don't try this at home. Yeah.
Well, that's why we have the boonies. Right. So again, a great question. So in the Mahayana approach, they talked about the 10 boonies 10 grounds or 10 levels of In fact, these regressive degrees of heightened experience that eventually transformed was a full blown realization. So yeah, there there are nuances, there's granularity, there are gradations. And as we become as we become more and more awake, the states turn into traits, the experiences turn into realizations. And then you start to see more and more of these for additional domains. But even at the level of experience, there are gradations in that arena as well. And that's why you have the 10 movies or 12, yogas, whatever mapping system you want to talk about to talk about that level of granularity.
How do you spell Bumi? bhcu? EMI
Bhumi? Yeah, there's an entire there's an entire sutras on this this is a big deal teaching in the Mahayana. is if for you, I think you will find it extremely interesting. Thank you. Check it out. Good questions and comments is always appreciated. Wonderful. All right. Maybe one more? Yep, we have windy now. Oh, good. One more. Hey, Wendy.
Hey, thank you so much, Andrew, for this welcome, because it catalyzes lucid dreaming for me, which I don't have that. I would like to have them, Laura. But two nights after the last class. I was like, Oh, I'm dreaming. And I told everybody in the dream. We can do whatever we want. We're dreaming and I got very excited. And then I remembered Oh, we're supposed to duplicate something. And so there was a doctor in the dream and I made three doctors out of Ah, that's awesome. Oh, that's awesome, which was, and then the dream one went on, but I want, but then two nights, two nights ago, knowing this classes coming up, I think it really activates things, I had another dream in which there are beginning parts. But the interesting part was I was with a teacher and that teacher had these black blocks, some black, they didn't reflect light, I have to say, and he had them on the floor, and that he would meld them into a single block, and then split them into many blocks. And he was showing us that you know, form isn't solid here, we can change it. And then he threw them at us, the whole group, and they all turned into different food for each of us. He said, Hold out your hand. And so we all have this food. And then he said, Okay, now go through that wall. And this is when I realized, Oh, I'm dreaming. Hold on a second.
Hold on. I didn't turn my phone off. Hold on.
Sorry, my bad. I usually mute my phone. But I forgot I apologize.
So I sat down through the wall. In the beginning of the dream, we were in a single storey place where we knew we removed the teacher and everything he said, goes through the walls, and went through the wall. And all of a sudden, I was in a very high place, like at the top of a many, many story building, looking down into the darkness. But there were some clouds there. Well, I dove off headfirst. And I turned into raindrops. Then I turned into molecule then I turned to Adam. And then I dissolved into nothing. And then I reconstituted and started changing forms. Like I can only say like mercury moves or so I was changing form changing form. And I knew I was dreaming and I was just like oh I want to keep doing this feels so good to change to just be fluid and change form. And yeah, that's sort of where it completed. But But I loved it. It was wonderful and and Myra, I would love to do do a study group with you. Because I really think joining with people or the class or whatever really helps to to catalyze the whole process.
Yeah, I love these stories. I mean, these are just fantastic. I mean, it just makes me smile, right? Because it's just it really just continues to show how magically rich this arena of experience and practices and how how transformative it can be right? I mean, these these types of dreams. I mean, they stick with you. Yeah, I mean, these are the things that just shape shift you because there's they're so radically outrageous. They're so true. They're so foundational, that they're non trivial events. And so I just love hearing this kind of stuff. It really makes me happy. Thank you so much for sharing. I'm not even sure I have any even anything to say or add outside of just Bravo. Well, well, I
I woke feeling like that was way more real than this.
Isn't it, isn't it, then this appears to be the foggy dream, isn't it? Right? Absolutely. Yeah. And again, connected to this question earlier. Fundamentally, you will in fact, see that equivalence you will, there will be no difference. And you'll start to realize why you reify and impute the sense of stability here, based on a consensual reality, consensual hallucination was done, eventually you will break through that consensus reality and discover the ultimate equivalence of all those states. And when you have these, this is like a borderline hyper lucid dream. Those are the real celebratory ones, because they stay with you, they will alter the way you sleep dream and also for me, they just continue to just fuel the fires for I you know, I want more of this, I want to stabilize this I want to go deeper, I want to go farther. And so then you then you start to develop this really positive virtuous circle feedback loop you know, where you use these experiences to bring even more energy and credibility to the dream arena that results in more positive dreams that spins back and you get this wonderful positive feedback loop that they just spirals that out of control the spirals into control, right? spirals into control. Because now you have the ability to really work with your mind in control under all circumstances with lucidity. So high five, I just love it.
Thank you so much. So awesome, everybody.
Cool that makes my whole day. So thank you everybody. So we got our assignment. So this is a This is the spooky month right? It's just a way to work with this to whatever extent plant the seeds right? I'm gonna have a lucid dream. Now not just so I can change things like we did in stages two and three principally but now to work with these states. If alignment nightmare arises lucidity triggers, stay in the dream, don't run from it, stay in it, realizing, Hey, wait a second. All the stuff we talked about. This is a dream. This is my mind. I'm cool. I'm going to work with this. If you wake up and you don't have a new nightmare situation, create one, create something spooky and just sometimes the improv is half the final like, you might come up with some amazing things. And then next week, next month when we come back together we can share these stories because these things just awesomely cool. So thank you, everybody. I'm Charlie Morley released tomorrow or Friday and you know other stuff, really cool things coming coming up down the pike. So thank you, everybody, for taking time out of your life to join us. I really enjoy these types of activities myself. Until next time, wasn't dreams. Everybody turns on their Goofy, geeky, turn off your mutes. Turn on your camera. We all do this love fest by thing right. Hey, see you next time. Bye bye. You saw me sneeze