welcome everyone. Welcome back. Yeah, okay, well, Fall is here. Hopefully you're seeing the change, change of weather and where you're at. We are seeing it here, beautiful. And if you're in Florida, hopefully you're safe. Oh, so thank you all for returning. And just to recap, last month, we talked about mantra, if you weren't available to to be at that or see that it is recorded with nightclub. So we would encourage you to sign up for nightclub, and you can see that recording where we discussed mantras. So we will now move on to taking a poll. So we usually do this right up front to see, has anyone had any lucid dreams or where? What's your status? So Chelsea, can we bring up the poll.
What's up? We're getting answers.
We are okay, there I see it now. Okay, fantastic. Okay, so, yeah, these are just a few questions that, if you can see which one maybe fits you, we'd love to hear. We always love hearing, if somebody had their first lucid dream. That is really exciting. You.
Okay,
been about a minute. We have 27 out of 35 people, so we'll wait about maybe 10 more seconds. So if you want to get in your answer quickly, yeah, all right, I'm ending the poll. Okay, a couple more people came in.
Thank you, everyone.
Okay, so the question was, have you had a lucid dream? Five out of 29 people have never had a lucid dream. Five out of 29 people are unsure possibly have had a lucid dream. So we really encourage you to come online during the Q A to if you want to like suss out whether or not it was a lucid dream, we'd be happy to talk about that with you. We love that. Um, one person out of 29 had their first lucid dream in the past month. Attitude, good job. Um, and then zero out of 29 unsure, possibly had my first lucid dream in the past month. Nine out of 29 have been lucid dreaming for a while and did not have a lucid dream in the past month. And then also, nine out of 29 have been lucid dreaming for a while and did have a lucid dream in the last month. Awesome. Great job. Everybody. Thank you for
good. Thanks. Thank you so much everybody. Oh, we love doing those polls, and it really helps us out, figure out what's going on and and so, yeah, there's something that you're not sure of. We'll have Q and A towards the end of this session, so we'll be able to hopefully help you out there. And so now for this month's content, Katie,
thank you Bodhi and thank you everyone for being here. It's nice to see so many familiar faces and some new faces so can you all hear me? Okay, great, so our theme for this month is nightmares and working with fear, and we chose this theme particularly for October, since we. Are now in the fall season, and we are in the time of year when the veils are the thinnest, and it just felt like it fit with what's going on in the world around at this time as well. So I'm going to begin with a couple of definitions about nightmares. I looked up the etymology of the word nightmare and found a definition from 1300 which is an evil spirit afflicting men or horses in their sleep with a feeling of suffocation. So I love that nightmare. It's about men or horses, and a more present day definition, is a frightening dream that usually awakens the sleeper. So typically we think about nightmares in association with fear, and they often are. But nightmares can also have other strong emotional associations, such as sadness or shame or anger. Any strong negative or challenging emotion can induce a nightmare, the most common nightmares that people have these days are being chased, which is associated with a flight response, being physically attacked, associated with a fight response, becoming frozen with fright, which is associated with a freeze response,
also falling,
losing control in some way. So this would be not being able to move in the dream, or perhaps losing control of a vehicle, feelings of inadequacy, public humiliation, natural disasters and dying, those are the current most common nightmares that people are having. The most classic causes of nightmares are stress in our waking state, strong emotions in our waking life and past difficulties or traumas, particularly those which are unprocessed or that we haven't been able to face. So for this reason, it can be helpful if you have a nightmare that you're working with, especially if it is affecting you deeply, or it is a recurring nightmare. It can be helpful to work with a qualified therapist, someone who specializes in working with dreams or with nightmares, simply because they could be coming from a past trauma, and so to not face that alone can be a supportive way of going about dealing with that. Nightmares actually have a function of releasing some of our energy for stress, for emotions, for traumas. So actually, from a biological perspective, nightmares can lead us to a greater state of health, even if they're terrifying and challenging in the moment when they're happening. So I'm going to share a beneficial way of viewing nightmares that may open our minds to shifting or viewing how we are with nightmares and how we relate to them. Firstly, the reason nightmares are nightmares, or are scary or terrifying is because we take them to be real, we reify them, we make them as if they are something tangible, something solid, something lasting, something independent. If we can relate to nightmares as gifts, we can use them to support our personal growth, our self awareness and our spiritual awakening, nightmares show us what we haven't dealt with yet. They show us our blind spots. They show us our deepest fears. John Quincy Adam said, the greater the obstacle, the greater the opportunity. And it's the same with nightmares, the stronger the nightmare the greater the transformative potential. Becoming lucid in nightmares is a powerful way to transform them. Firstly, because when we become lucid, we automatically know, oh, this is a. Dream, therefore it's not real. It's less real than I may have previously perceived it to be. So simply that act of lucidity is transformative in itself. But then we can take it even further by working with applying different methods, different solutions in order to transform the nightmare, and Chelsea is going to go into some more detail about some of those particular transformative solutions in working with nightmares a little later. So when we work with our nightmares actively, rather than avoiding or being frightened by the negative emotions or fears that arise in the nightmares, we have the opportunity to transform them, and lucidity is a really powerful way of doing this. Also, you may have noticed fear can be a really powerful lucidity trigger. So I noticed Tom said some or not. So Tom Tim said something earlier in the chat, if you've had a nightmare from which you knew you must awake, is that counted as a lucid dream? If so, we've all had lucid dreams, right? So yeah, if you be, if you know this is a dream, I have to wake up. That's a lucid dream. And if you can stay, if you can say this is a lucid dream and it's a nightmare, but I'm going to stay and I'm going to work with it. That's powerful. So quote from Claire Johnson, when we shine a light on our nightmares, we gain insight, wholeness, healing, empathy, spiritual growth and compassion, and these are all things we need to live a happier, more fulfilled life and be of service to others. So now working with fear. Nightmares are, of course, one way of working with fear and other powerful emotions. But we can also work with fear in an intentional way, where we bring our waking fears into the dream arena to actively work with them and transform them at the deeper levels of mind. The root the etymology of the word fear comes from the word Fair, which means toll or price we have to pay. So our fears are the fair that we have to pay to access the deeper levels of our subconscious mind, often to get to deeper, more profound levels of our minds, of our hearts, our connection to spirit, we have to go through the fear to get there. And so this work is not about overcoming fear at a biological level. Fear has a very relevant purpose in our biology. It kept us alive. It's why we're all here today. But it's about transcending fear on a spiritual level, so letting go of that egoic fear. And sometimes it's hard to differentiate those, the biological fear, from the spiritual fear, but I think it's helpful to have that mindset of that's what we're doing. We're not necessarily trying to transcend the biological fear that has a purpose. It's a primordial emotion designed to keep us alive, but we are trying to transcend fear on the spiritual level. And as Alan Watts said, ego can't attend its own funeral. So this is why we have fear. As we're trying to descend into the deeper levels of our mind, we have fear because ego knows it can't go there, so it throws up all kinds of fearful situations to try to prevent us from going there. So this is another interesting thing we can notice and work with. What is Trixie ego trying to do to prevent a larger me, a higher self, from going to the deeper levels of of mind and ultimately transcending self. So just as in nightmares, when we face our fears, we have the potential to transform them, and the stronger the fear, the greater the transformative potential. So it's beneficial to have that view. Our fears are arising for a reason. They're helping us access the deeper levels of our hearts, of our minds, and a deeper connection to spirit. So there are a few layers, a few ways that we can work with nightmares and fear. One is we can work with spontaneously arising nightmares we go. To sleep we have a nightmare. We can either work with it in the moment by becoming lucid in the nightmare and then transforming it, or we can also work with the nightmare upon awakening with practices like Claire Johnson's lucid writing practice, which is where we write out the nightmare, but we change the nightmare into a positive experience. We see ourselves transforming the nightmare into a positive dream in some way, and then we rehearse that new storyline in a way. We're reprogramming the neuronal pathways in our brain to choose that positive storyline rather than continuing to play the negative one. We can also incubate a dream about a fear that we have. So we can plant a seed to have a dream about something that we're afraid of. For example, I've had a fear. I've worked with a fear of intruders at night so I could plant a seed, and I've done this many times, to have a dream about that so that I can actually work with it in the dream space and transform it. And this is it tends to be more powerful if you can then become lucid and work with it, but it can still actually be powerful, and it can still have an effect working with non lucid dreams in this way. So if we incubate a dream, maybe it's lucid, maybe it's non lucid, that's a great way to transform nightmares and fears. And then the third layer, the third way, is we can actually spontaneously become lucid in a dream and conjure up fearful situations in the moment in the dream, and then work with them right then and there.
So this is pretty classic stage four Dream Yoga, and it's considered advanced because it requires a certain degree of courage. Most of us don't want to conjure up fearful situations, we want to avoid them, and it also requires a certain degree of stability of mind and a strong amount of lucidity. So just a few cautions about working with nightmares and fears if you are suffering from any of the following conditions, anxiety, depression, psychosis, personality disorder, or if you have recently experienced trauma or death, bereavement, use caution when you work with nightmares and fears. Don't feel like you have to do it alone. You can reach out to therapists. You can reach out to friends to really support you in that process, because this is it's pretty deep work. So for me in my own journey, when I was younger, I used to have more nightmares, and I would actually try to ignore and forget the nightmares when I would wake up, because I didn't want to remember them, I wanted to just focus on the positive dreams. And I actually think that that was supportive, because I think when I was younger, I didn't necessarily have the degree of awareness or the capacity to work with my nightmares in a deeper way. But then at a certain point, I got to a place where I was like, Okay, I want to actually start being present to my nightmares. And so I started listening to them and trying to remember them and writing down, writing them down, and working with them. And then eventually I shifted into actively trying to bring forth my fears and scary situations in the dream in order to work with it. So I'm sharing this because I just want to invite everyone here on the call to be really honest with yourself about where you are in your own process with this, and to only go to the level of depth that feels accessible and healthy for you. Wherever you are in the process is perfect. And I just want to invite a deep self awareness of that. So with that being said, if you want to leave the call now, we invite that. We're not going to do anything like too in depth or scary, but we're we are going to be thinking about fears and thinking about nightmares and exploring kind of solutions for them. So anyone is welcome to leave if you want to work with just like a lighter fear, something that doesn't feel too scary or too deep or like an easier nightmare, first, that's totally great. And if you want to and feel ready to work with a deeper fear or recurring nightmare, we welcome that too. This is all welcome in the space. And we're going to have some practices from Chelsea, and then some time to discuss in the Q and A afterwards as well. So wonderful. With that being said, I will pass the baton to Chelsea.
Katie, Thank you, Katie. And I just want to reiterate, like, if this is bringing up, like, anxiety for you or anything like that, to to be with it, to sit with it, to see if it's right for you to be here. And like Katie said, if it's not feeling right for you at any point during the call, we will not take it personally if you need to leave. So just really listen to yourself around this. So we're going to do some journal prompts. So I'm going to invite you to either use your computer or to get a pen and paper, whatever you prefer. I'm going to share my screen right now. I'm
so
this first journaling prompt is write about a nightmare or fear that is alive for you right now, and maybe there isn't one alive for you right now. So I thought about that afterwards, I was like, this could be a past nightmare fear, you know, that maybe you you had in like, childhood, and it kind of disappeared, and you still feel kind of curious about it. You can do that as well. But it's also interesting to think about like, maybe, what are some of these things that show up in waking life if you can't, as far as fears, you know that could show up in a dream if you don't have something as a nightmare. So that could be a fear, right? So some common ones are being chased, being physically attacked, becoming frozen with fear, with fright,
falling,
losing control, inadequacy, public humiliation, ooh, can't say that word right now. This is a dream. Natural disasters, dying, and then I also wanted to add phobias, um, and other. So we're going to have about seven minutes for this. I am going to start a timer on my end. Um, I'll let you know when we have about a minute left, or, let's say, two minutes left, just so you don't feel rushed. So I will start The timer right now. You
Two more minutes You
All right, so that first question or inquiry is complete. So what we'll do? I hope that you found something interesting for yourself while you were writing that out, maybe something you hadn't noticed before about that nightmare. Fear. And so we're going to elaborate on that a little bit, and I'm going to, before we go into these next journaling prompts, I'm going to talk a little bit about solutions to transform this nightmare or fear. And so Katie and I have really been reading a lot from Claire Johnson's book, a comprehensive guide to promote creativity, overcome sleep disturbances and enhance health and wellness. Katie has the book. She's holding it up right now, and I'll also put the link to the book book in the chat as soon as I'm done sharing my screen. So what we're specifically going to talk about is a practice that she created called the lucid imaging nightmare solution. So we're not going to do a deep dive into that practice, but we're going to use a part of it, which is, how can we transform this nightmare by using some solutions, and so instead of it Just playing out as it would, we can kind of, we can see how we can creatively transform this nightmare and use it as a tool for healing. So instead of really succumbing to the dreams terror and making it more reified while we're in it, which can really lead to more intensity as we become more contracted, we can imagine that we become lucid, and really, we recognize, oh, this is a night, this is a dream. I'm in a nightmare, okay? Or I'm, I'm in a fearful place. And you can do this in waking life too. Like, if a fear comes up, you're starting to feel, feel fear as you're, you know, walking down the street somewhere, becoming curious about it, opening instead of contracting. So you recognize that it's a dream state, and this can free you of your fear in that moment, allowing you to transform the nightmare or fear. So recognition and liberation are simultaneous once again that shows up in this practice. So once you become aware that it's a dream, you may still feel certain aspects of the dream. It may still feel really real to you, but really feel into okay, this is, this is a dream. It may be more difficult to really see that it's a dream, because you know you're you are getting more contracted around the fear, but try to open and recognize that it's all a projection of your mind. It's a dream. It's all the play of your mind. So these creative solutions are an opportunity to transform the dream. And when you recognize become lucid, these become within reach. So these practices become within reach, these solutions. So some of the things you can do is ask a question. So if there's a creature or a person or somebody coming after you, you could ask them a question. You could just surrender, see what happens. You can do some magic. You could send them love and light. You can run you can escape annihilation. That could be really cool to play with, right? Like, what does annihilation look like to you? Um, protective shield, like you could ask them, like, for a message, do you message for me? Um, you can call for help, which is, like, so important. It's like, calling for help is such a skill, and who knows who's going to show up for you, you can offer a gift. So those are just some options, and I invite you to be playful with them. See what really feels true for you, what goes with you, your fear or your nightmare, and what kind of brings you joy when you think about doing it, because that's going to counteract the fear that feeling of joy. And then the next question that we have is, what could be the lesson or gift of this nightmare fear? So we'll have about seven minutes to to talk about that. Yes, you could ask your protector. Do. To come and protect you as well. For your guardian, we're going to talk about that a little bit at the next gathering. So, all right, I will start a timer for seven minutes again, and I'll let you know when we Have two minutes remaining. You
Two minutes remaining. You
all right, thank you, everybody for taking part in that. I hope that it was fruitful for you. We'd love to hear about your experience, your nightmares, if you want to share your solutions, your process with that. So please feel free to share in the Q A which Katie is now going to facilitate. And before I get off really quick, I want to say that's a really awesome background, very, it's very like dream light when I saw a pop up of this, like wrathful deity, so thank you for that.
Yeah, and that's also a good reminder that sometimes becoming a wrathful deity or a wrathful being can be a way of working with fear in our dreams, sometimes it's about having stronger fearlessness, stronger emotionality to deter whatever that fear that is arising is cool. So I also want to invite as we go into Q and A which we're in now, so raise your hand if you have a question or type it in the chat. But I also want to invite if you came up with a solution that was different than what was listed on our slide, please share it in the chat so that we can work with our collective creative fields and have as many solutions as possible to work with our fears and nightmares. So I'm just going to check and see if any questions came up in the chat. Tim said you could hug the monster, as Charlie Morley suggests, totally that's definitely a version of sending love and light in a certain way, like being loving, being compassionate towards your dream. All right? And Chelsea put the Claire Johnson link in there. So now, yeah, if anyone has questions or comments or shares, if you just want to share what your fears are, share what you're working with, we would love that. We invite that.
Yeah, well, I can start actually, I had this, oh, Stephanie has her hand up career. Great, let's go to Stephanie, and then I can fill in if needed.
Hey, Stephanie,
hi, hi, hi. This just this topic I get. I do have a lot of, I mean, I nightmares intermittently, and I have a history of lots of just terrorizing nightmares. And the one I identified within this particular exercise was more inadequacy or being unprepared, and these kind of nightmares where I'm running late and I'm not ready, or I've got to teach them I'm not ready anyway, what I would like to share about actually, it's not a question, it's an experience. I had a nightmare I had. It was very succinct and and because you were asking about different solutions and what solutions help and stuff. So it was just a funny experience, which is, it was I fell asleep. It was a nap and and in my dream, these two, two females, were coming towards me. I mostly seen their faces dark hair. They didn't look exactly like me, but they were dark haired women, whatever that, and they're coming towards me. And it they were just, there was a clear malevolence about them, like they they wished me Ill Will they it was they were coming to do me harm in some way, and so and for somehow I became lucid. I don't know how I became lucid, but I just recognized, oh, I'm dreaming, and then I'm like, so I started using what I thought would work based on things I learned. This is maybe pre Andrew, or somewhere around where in the beginning. But I'd learned other things before. But I was like, my first thing was, I was asking them a question. I was like, Is there any way I can help you? You know, what do you need? What do you what is your wish? You know, what do you need? What can I how can I help you? How can I help you? And they were just stone cold, silent, and just like stone cold, silent malevolence. And it did nothing. It broke through nothing. And then I'm like, Well, you know, and then I was saying, Well, you know, I bless you. And I was trying this. And I was, oh, money coming home, you know? I was like, I tried, like, anything I had learned to to help that. And it was weird, because I was lucid, but it was like, my lucidity did not take away their power over me, which was kind of interesting, was like my unconscious mind, or whatever had more power than my lucidity or conscious mind in that time, which was kind of interesting, but I could not and in and I got so exasperated that Basically I just with trying every sort of like kind gentle thing I'd been taught to do, in and out of exasperation and frustration and anger or something. I finally, when you were mentioning about wrathful that I I just yelled at them. I just said, you have no power over me. You are not real. You have no power over me. I was just so pissed off at this that they wouldn't just go away. And that was the thing. Then they just, like, dissolved into space, and I woke up after that, like, just, sort of like opened my eyes. I'm like, Whoa. That was interesting. So that's all. I kind of just wanted to share that because, you know, it brings in a lot of what you're talking about, but also how sometimes what your practice or think will work doesn't work. And it was just the basic, it was like my basic will to not be ruined by these creatures. Anyway, it was, it was, I just thought I'd share that. So that's
that's so cool. Stephanie, thank you for sharing that. That really beautifully illustrates that whatever the solution is that will work is the thing that we really need to transform in our own minds. So like, yeah,
that's a good Very well put I hadn't ever, like, really put it that way though. I think intuitively I knew this was like, meant, yeah,
yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting because I had a similar dream where I tried all these different methods of fighting against this evil person. I tried to fly away, and I tried to fight them, and I tried to meditate, and none of it worked. I stayed connected and tied to that person, that dream, the dream kept dropping me right back in front of them. But then eventually. Actually what came was this wave of compassion that came through my heart and towards this evil entity in my dream, and then, like the sun rose over the scene, and this giant book closed, and the celebratory song played, and it was like, and I woke up and it was like, That's it. That's what you needed compassion. So, yeah, it's different for each of us. I think that's that's a really good point. There is no right, one way to do it. It's just whatever we're looking whatever we're working on, whatever is our need of what we do transform in our own subconscious minds. Beautiful share. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Yeah,
great.
All right, I'm just checking the chat. Marion says tips for getting back into a scary dream you woke from, especially for a frightening dream.
Okay, great.
Elsie, do you want to take this one?
Yeah, I will.
So this is a really great time to mention again the lucid imaging nightmare solution from Claire's book. So she actually, like, combines like four different techniques into this one. And it's really about if you wake up and then you can kind of use the mild technique of thinking about your nightmare after you've woken up, really like replaying it and then setting the intention to go back into the dream. But before you go back into the dream, what you're going to want to do is replay it and then imagine yourself maybe doing that solution, changing the dream, changing the nightmare in some way, and then going back into the dream. So you can read more about it in her book. It's page 203, but that can be a really helpful practice. And then I think also, let me see if there's anything else coming up. Is there anything else coming up for you? Katie, I um,
no, not at this time. That's, that's typically what I try to do, is the mild technique, if I want to go back and do a dream. Sometimes there's also, this is more subtle, but it's almost like tuning into the wave or the energy of the dream, like you can kind of feel the feeling, tone of it, the energy of it, and then you just sort of get back on that track and slide down. And that's the best way to describe it, that I know, but that's, it's, it's quite a subtle technique, and I think the the mild technique is a little bit more tangible.
Yeah, I that brought up something for me, Katie, that I've done so, um, around my body, because I like notice with nightmares, it can be a really visceral response when I wake up. Um, that sometimes I'll lay there and I'll be doing the mild technique, but I'll also search my body to see where I'm really feeling it in my body, to see if maybe I can, kind of, it's subtle, like Katie said, but kind of like re enter the dream through that place in my body. So if I'm like feeling it in my heart, really like focusing on my heart, and it's a little it's a way of bringing in, like a somatic approach, because you're focusing on where maybe, like a memory is stored, or something like this, to kind of like, get back into the dream.
Yeah, and also being getting back into the same position that you were in when you had it can be helpful to actually rolling over to whatever side you relying on, or if you are on your back being there.
Okay, great. So
yeah, and Lily Ann says, go back into the dream, even after waking up with a solution, yeah, bringing the solution in. That's great. Barry says, I think we could differentiate between recurrent nightmares and a single one. Definitely, yeah, definitely, oftentimes, recurrent nightmares are linked to some past, unprocessed situation, such as difficult situation in our lives, or a strong trauma or a strong fear response that we had so so yes, and a lot of the techniques that we mentioned, such as like the lucid writing technique, we can do that with either we can do it with a recurrent nightmare. We can do it with a single one. Sometimes Recurrent Dreams or recurrent nightmares are also a little bit tricky to find, because they might not necessarily be the exact same thing happening over and over again. There might be slight differences, or it might even be completely different scene. But if we look deeper, we can see the common theme, the common emotion, or the common feeling of like being trapped or stuck, for example. Okay. L says, I find waking life incidents and cognitions more fearsome than most of my night dream material. Me, too. L, it is helpful to me to remember that I am dreaming in waking life too, that, having been said, I found that exercise helpful for processing a category of waking life nightmares in which I didn't feel like I met others expectations, could see and feel the primal need to not lose caregivers, protection and then spontaneous self compassion and compassion for others. Beautiful. L, yeah, this. This is a great example of how we can apply these practices to waking life fears too. Waking consciousness is not the same as dreaming consciousness, but the way that our fears behave is similar, so we can absolutely apply this to no matter what state we're in. And Marianne says, I learned from my young daughter who kept dreaming about a monster. I asked her to draw a picture of the monster and give it a name, Michelle. She wrote be my friend on the drawing, and we taped it to her window, and she didn't have the dream anymore. Awesome. That's so creative, so creative, and also speaking to how often if we just bring our fears into the light and we change our relationship to them, they shift. There's the in the Harry Potter movies, they have the ridiculous curse, which is where you have to make the monster or the thing that scares you funny in some way, if to make it laugh, or you have to turn it into like a funny creature and bring humor into it. So that's that's another powerful approach, bringing humor, bringing playfulness to these dream figures.
Okay?
And Gilda says, work on parts through inquiry, like, if I limit my identity to a part like the judge or the victim, etc, Yeah, beautiful. That's a beautiful approach. Great. So Marianne or Marion,
I would just say that following up on the description about what how I worked with my daughter, I had a traumatic experience as a child and had repetitive dreams afterward, and this was 70 years ago, so there wasn't any brilliance in the ethers about how to deal with children and nightmares and what have you, and the feel good end of the story is the dream was about a near death experience I had, and because of the dream. I came to understand the near death experience as an adult, and so it really speaks to the power of talking to your children about their dreams. Because it was finally my father who at age four, when I was age 14, said to me, do you ever dream about this? And I said, all the time. And that's when I began to develop a relationship with dreaming, which you could definitely say leads me to this moment, and that Deepak Chopra says about fear, probably the worst thing has already happened and and that gave me tremendous comfort and encouragement as I sorted through all this so and I think my own playfulness comes from my childhood approach, because I kind of had to figure it out on my own, which I think was what helped me relate to my child. Which, that's 40 years ago, and she still talks about it, and I still am playful.
Yeah, that's beautiful. Mary and Bodie. Do you have any words on that?
I love that. Yeah, thank you for sharing that story and and, yeah, beautiful, yeah, nothing to share right now.
Great,
wonderful. Also want to invite whenever we do these Q and A's at the end, you can also bring up just general questions about lucid dreaming, or if you had a lucid dream that you want to share like especially the people who have had their first lucid dream, we almost always have at least one or two or three people who have their first lucid dream in the poll, but we rarely hear from those people directly, so we would love to and we invite that. And if you're shy to share in the group, we also invite you to share with us privately via email or in the chat or through our website as well. So yeah, just, we'll just give a couple more moments to see if there's any final questions. Cool. Lillian,
yeah, I did have a first very short lucid dream last week, and very short, but it came from a nightmare. Actually, in that nightmare, I had put my little dog in a box to make him comfortable and put the box in I did. I could not remember where in the in the fridge or in a cupboard, and so there was a sense of panic that he was going to be very uncomfortable and could possibly die and and so then in the middle of the dream, I thought, Oh, this can be true. I would never do that in waking life. So this is a dream. And the funny thing is, my little dog died about a year ago, and I've been wanting to connect with him for all that time without any success. And as soon as I saw that in the dream, my little dog jumped out of the box and was all frolicky and happy and running around me. And then I woke up. So it was very, very short. So that twisted that
is so amazing. What? What an incredible gift from your little dog from the other side, helping become lucid, yeah, and also sharing, you know, showing you that your own love for the little dog that you would never trap it in that way was what allowed you to become lucid. So there was this self awareness piece about who you are and your qualities that helped you to become lucid as well.
Oh, thank you. Thank you for saying that. I did not think of that, but that's sweet to hear.
Yeah, that's so beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing. And Chelsea or Bodhi, do you have anything you want
to add? Wonderful job, and thank you so much for sharing about your first lucid dream,
especially since I've been unsuccessful for poof, I don't know, 18 months to two years, I've been trying without any success, and cherry on the cake, it happened on the the anniversary of my little dog's death.
Oh, I mean, I think that really speaks to the power of intention and love and just feeling that, really wanting that in your heart, wanting that connection and so and thank you so much for sharing. I think it's so important for people to share with the group and with others when they become lucid and have their first lucid dream, because it can really inspire other people in this group. So thank you so much.
Thank you. Yeah, thank you.
Wonderful. Okay, Gilda,
hello, everyone. I'll share an aspect of of it may be of lucid dreaming. Since I work with dreams every day. It's like the nightmarish dream, or there was extreme Sad Dream. The sadness was just all over my body. I off sometimes no other time can can move. The consciousness will move. Right through from dream to waking state, just without any interference. It goes in and out like if you're just walking through your living room. And so it's seamless. So and I am awake, noticing the same listen and I am suddenly become I am in my room, but the experience in the body was exactly as I had, had just had it. But upon waking state, within a few seconds, it lessens because of the all the sensors that go on during waking state and but in reality, since I work with dreams every day, it's relatable to what's going on in my life. It's not something the metaphor is not so transformed into something I did not recognize, or a monster or anything. And so I worked that when I worked with inquiry, as I mentioned, if I limit the identity to the person who is a victim, I as a victim in that, the reality is it's seamless into waking state reality. So in that vein, I used inquiry, and it's very powerful, like with parts, is it the judge? Is it the victim? Is it the you know, I've studied with parts, a lot of a lot of the powerlessness that cause anxiety. A lot of anxiety is called caused by powerlessness. So by introducing, not giving identity to whatever, part erodes in the dream, it then it's another way of being lucid. What while one is also awake,
that's what I want to share.
That's That's really beautiful, Gilda. What it's bringing up for me, is Dream initiated lucid wakefulness. So the opposite of Wake initiated lucid dreaming, you're going in the opposite direction, bringing that lucidity and that wakefulness and the lessons from the dream up into the waking state in a seamless way, and keeping your awareness with you that whole time,
exactly so. So it's living the dream and you are aware of it, the distinction begins to disappear. Yeah? And a lot of things can happen.
Yeah, yeah, that's really beautiful. And I wonder, could you share about a little bit more about what you what you experience in terms of qualities, densities, energies, as you're transitioning between the dream and the waking state.
Okay, so at the latter part before I transferred my consciousness into waking state seamlessly, the sadness was so intense it was in the heart, and it moved up to the head and lesser so to the end of my limbs, okay, that was lesser so it since I moved seamlessly, that my whole body, and I am awake now, still carried was inside that same sad and energetic intensity that it that my was all over my body. It's the same as bliss. But instead of bliss, it was sadness. Let's put it that way. Okay, so the sadness is so as an energy field in cruising and streaming all over my body. But as I woke up, as I trans as I walked into this reality, it lessened, because I can imagine that is due to the sensors that we have to Oh no, and I went about doing my business, but it's, it's Slowly weaned, but I'm aware of it because I transfer my consciousness was awake at both levels. So I applied then I since I write down my dreams and I work with them, then I applied method. It's a method by Sanchez. It is similar to internal family systems. They work with parts. So whether it's the victim in this case, and it's powerlessness, and so by working the identity of allowing any giving identity to any to that sadness. It was in my body as an energy field, completely not transferred into a being or anything. It was in my body as an energy field, then by using inquiry, then suddenly it starts the identity that that one gives, get that I gave, starts I understand. So by having that innate, truthful understanding, then it, then it starts shifting because it is truth. It is one's own truth. It's not about a meta system or a method or anything, but it is an embodied truth. So the energy begins to shift. So that's how I worked it. So since it's seamless in in dream and daylight, then one begins to constellate once, what I call the inner guru. And in that is a sense of truth. And when one always looks at one's own truth, the blame, or whatever else is extended out of that. You know that it's that first you have, that one has to mirror one's own truth in order to for anything to happen and not allow our projection to escape into an object, yeah,
yeah. Thank you, Gilda, that's beautiful. Chelsea, did you have something on?
Yeah, I really appreciated what you shared. Gilda, there are a couple things that were coming up for me. So when we're in a nightmare or a fearful situation, we're usually projecting onto that. And so a common one I have, for example, and I'm currently working with and I work with a therapist on parts work specifically is when I'm in a nightmare, or when I'm in a dream, sometimes I'll become lucid, and then I feel this energy somewhere in the space with me. And what I noticed very recently after working with a micro phenomenologist, which is somebody who kind of goes very deeply into your experience with a microscope to look at every little piece of how you're feeling, what the experience is like, why you think it feels that way. It's It's fantastic. But what I noticed from that experience was before I there was this, there's a split second where I'm already projecting onto the energy, the presence, like it's so small, it's so subtle. And when I do that, it reifies the whole thing dramatically. And then I'm deeply in the experience. I am no longer witnessing the experience or lucid I am, then the fear I am, then the night bear, and it just takes place, and there's no it's difficult to kind of remove myself again, like you were kind of speaking to like subtly remove myself from that feeling of fear, that feeling of sadness, or anything that's kind of going on in my body. And so listening to Andrew and the teaching that he does about somatic meta meditation, and he says, feel it, don't feed it. And you know you put your hand over your heart, you're not creating stories around what this entity is, what this experience is. Even in waking life, you know you're just you're feeling whatever it is in your body, somatically, but not creating any kind of attachment, any kind of story, and just letting it be and witnessing and so that's what I was really connecting to
from what Thank you. That's wonderfully said, feel it, but don't feed it. So yes, that's what I was doing with inquiry. But I allowed it to remain. I allowed it to be seamlessly from dream to waking state, and it's an energy, and I was watching it. So I would say that the witness was also there, looking, watching it and observing it, but the body as. I would observe my body. It had the feeling, and the sensation was there, but I was observing it. So it's very, very well. Thank you. That was a nicely said, feel it, but don't feel it.
You're welcome. It's been a gift for me. Too.
Great. Thank you. So we'll take one more question and then we'll complete for the day. So is it Hamish?
Thank you. Wow. You pronounce my name correctly.
Great.
Okay, so I don't have a question, but it's very interesting, because I've also had a couple of dreams where I tend to be awake and asleep at the same time, and one just happened the other day. And I've had so many dreams of living in different centuries. And this last stream, which happened two nights ago. I was at an archeological dig in this desert, and we were unearthing an ancient society, and they were all giants. So I was examining these huge skulls that were the size of elephant skulls, but they were humans. So then, then I slowly started to wake up, and that that disappeared or faded away. And all of a sudden I could hear tinkling in my ears, and I was aware at that moment of transitioning, maybe going to the hypnopompic. And was transitioning, and I was aware of the fact that I was still lying in bed with my wife, but at the same time, the tinkling in my ears also went visual. So I was seeing all these pink and red fairy lights dancing around, and then I came awake. So it's very interesting, because I have only been lucid very briefly twice in the last two or three years. I'm working toward full lucidity. But, you know, I wonder, because my dreams are so vivid, and also I intuitively interpret my dreams, and so they speak to me. I get messages and to know that I'm I'm doing the right thing. When I was a child, I was a morbid little boy, and I was taught to read very young before I even went into grade one. So by the time I was like eight, 910, years old, I was reading Edgar, Allan, Poe, HP, Lovecraft, and, of course, Bram Stoker, right? So I was having constant nightmares, and my father comes to me finally, right? And he says, Hamish, I think you need a little bit of a break. And I said to him, Well, Dad, yes, sure, where, where would we? Where are we going to go? He took me to the hospital where he was the he was an ophthalmologist, an eye surgeon, and he checked me into the children's psychiatric ward because of all my nightmares, right? So it was, it was interesting, because I made fun of it, you know, and with the other kids, we just had a jolly time. I don't remember talking to a psychiatrist at all, right, but within a couple of weeks, I was back home and I was okay. So now I am used that, and I'm an actor and a writer. So I wrote my own one, one man show. And it's called My autopsy, because in the late 70s, I was, I was taught how to perform autopsies up in Yellowknife. So it's a, so it's a sort of a through line, key through line in my solo show. But the nightmares, of course, I reenact the nightmares, and I do a dance, a song and a dance about it on stage, right? And people have found it fascinating, because I make light of it, and I love the monster movies, right? I saw, I saw all the monster all the horror movies from, you know, Christopher Lee playing, playing Dracula and Bela Lugosi playing Dracula. So in the end, especially, it's when I started to meditate, in the early 80s, I began to love the monsters, because they are the ones that are the odd ones out of normal society. Society. And actually Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein because she was not a very attractive woman. So she was she was shoved off by all of Percy Bysshe Shelley's friends, and she was ostracized. So she wrote Frankenstein, and it's about not being accepted in society. So I don't know where I'm going with this, but it's just, it's just very interesting. And even though I've not been lucid that much, I am becoming aware of the fact, yes, of course, there's, there's there, there's levels of lucidity. Even though I'm not aware, I have never actually gotten to the point where in the dream, I'm saying, Oh, I'm dreaming, even though I recognize dream signs or anomalies or things that are not possible in in real life, I don't become aware of them until I write them down in my dream church. Right? Oh right. That's an anomaly. That's a dream sign. Why? Why can't I recognize that in the moment of the dream and wake up? Well, maybe I'm getting to it. I don't know. I have to be patient. I've been I've been working at it for like, four years now. But had I read in the lucid dreaming experience in magazine, one guy has been doing it for 40 years. He's been keeping journal for 40 years, and he's not lucid yet. Wow. Talk about patience, right? So there we have it. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you so much. Amish, Chelsea,
yeah, there were a couple things that came up for me, like Tim said earlier, hugging the monster right, hugging hugging those that are the oddballs out. And I think somebody else put in the maybe it was Tim again and wrote how he nightmares are really an opportunity to heal. And even when we're practicing, you know, we're we're wanting to lucid dream, working with our dreams, just even working with our dreams, and really prioritizing them, like lucid dreaming could be the North Star. But look at all of the progress that you've made, probably in the last four years, and remembering your dreams like what you've you know, the gifts that you've found by having a relationship with them, and so that's important to remember, too. And you also brought up a reverse meditation for me that I wanted to bring up with the group. Since it's October, it's not something that I do, but I've heard it from Andrew before. I'm just not a scary movie person, but if you want to do a reverse meditation, you can watch a scary movie, a horror movie, and just see how you feel, and then try to also make a distance between, you know the scary movie, and yourself that there, that there can be a distance in between, that there can be a space you know, and work with that and see how you feel. And if it's getting way too intense, try turning off the sound and just watching it and see how even that can create space between you and the imagery that's unfolding before you.
I don't, yeah, that's, that's great. I don't find scary movies scary anymore, actually. And I don't get nightmares, right? I mean, I, you know, I think about a year ago, I watched the original Phantom of the Opera, I turned off the sound. Well, there's no sound in it anyway, because it's a silent film, but I put on Led Zeppelin, and I listened to Led Zeppelin as I was watching The Phantom of the Opera like, that's perfect, right? Yeah. So I don't I don't have nightmares anymore. I do now and then I've had a couple of chasing nightmares, but that's it. Fortunately, the only recurring nightmare night, not nightmares, but the only recurring dreams I have are with my root meditation teacher, who was a Rinpoche, and he passed away a few years ago, and when I see him, I know when I'm with him in a dream, I know I'm blessed so I have the opposite.
Yeah? Well, I'm
so glad to hear that. It sounds like you've really worked with it since being a smile child and starting to read all those different books like HP Lovecraft. And, you know, yeah, yeah.
His, his, his writings are from his nightmares. HB, Lovecraft, right? He had these horrible dreams, so
I actually didn't know that. So thank you for sharing that with me. Okay, all right. Katie, do you want to sign us off?
Yeah, thank you so much, everybody. We are going to close shortly with the blessing and the day. Vacation, and I'm dropping a couple of links in the chat in which you can sign up for a free nightclub account or a paid membership, whatever you prefer, if you choose, this group is going to remain open, but we like to encourage people to sign up for nightclub because there's so many resources in this community. And then we also have a link to give us feedback, positive, negative, neutral, whatever we love, feedback. So we can continue to curate this group to support the participants. So with that being said, I will pass it to Bodhi to give us a blessing.
Okay, so as we're wrapping it up, just a reminder that the our ancestors and the indigenous wisdom that has been brought down says that in the next two weeks. This is the time of year when the veil is thin between this world and the other world. So I would encourage you, in the next two weeks, maybe put a little extra effort into your practices, your state checks, whatever it is that you can this is a great time of year to to connect with loved ones who have passed spirit guides. So, so, yeah, really, I really would like to hear how. How was it in the last two weeks and in the coming weeks, may we all have deep, restorative sleep, May we all be blessed with more recall of our dreams and more lucid dream
we dedicate the merit of this gathering to all beings. May all beings recognize their true nature of loving, loving awareness, and however it speaks to you, you can take your arms and spread that love out to the world from your heart. Really feel that. Take that with you throughout the day, and we'll see you in two weeks.