Dream, dream when I want you in my arms, when I want you and all your charms whenever I want you. All I have to do is dream, dream, dream, when I feel blue in the night and I need you to omit light whenever I want you, all I have to do is dream. I can make you, Mia, taste your lips of wine anytime, night or day. Only trouble is, gee whiz, I'm dreaming my life away. I need you so. You so that I could die. I Love You So, and that is why, whenever I want you, all I have to do is Dream, Dream, Dream Dream Dream, I can make you Mia, taste your lips of wine anytime, night or Day. Only trouble is gee whiz, I'm dreaming my life away. I need you so that I could die. I Love You So, and that is why, whenever I want you, all I have to do is dream, dream, dream.
Ah, big, welcome. Hello, beautiful people. So nice to see familiar faces. I'm really going to see you guys. Theo, Barry, Hamish, Beth, Lisa Cynthia Adele, Barney, Louisa Marie, Nancy, Nelson, John, it says one of the one things I love about these containers is having the opportunity to get to know you guys, not just in this kind of learning call, but then often in the WhatsApp groups, and just a big thank you for all your contributions and sharing. This week, I'm so moved and inspired by the different insights and the various sort of progress and commitments you've all made. Some people who've hadn't remembered dreams in years, remembering multiple dreams a night, others having their first lucid dreams. Others remembering having lucid dreams after not having them for years. So it's really inspiring me, and I've definitely found this contain has boosted my lucidity too. So a big thank you. And today, you know, aware that we have really put in some hard, sexy yards into building the first foundations. We're going to start this class with a little bit of self reflection. We're just going to take some time to digest some of the experiences you may have had in the last couple of weeks, to digest and recap some of the practices that we've gone over, so that when we start today's session on integrating the day practices. You're feeling really confident about what we've already covered. So just to start with, be great. Get a nice, comfy position. We're going to do a little close eyed reflection just to begin, and then we'll move into a little bit of writing. But just for now, I know lots of us are coming off hot, off our big day, and just taking a moment to breathe and get it into our space and get into the collective container, get into our hearts. So if you'd like to close your eyes, you're welcome to or you can just lower your gaze, but it'd be good to just kind of like bring, bring your perspective in your gaze, inward for a moment. So just starting with just finding your breath, wherever you find your breath, whether that's deep, relaxed breathing already, or if it's shallow breathing you've just rushed in from dinner or from a class, just finding it where it is. Starting with the physical sensations, just finding the breath coming in and out of the nostril, finding the breath moving into the chest, expanding the rib cage, if you can, bringing that breath down into the belly, letting it breathe into your abdomen. Little bit deeper breathing.
And as you find your breath here, find a little bit of sweetness with the breath, a little
this is life giving breath, even if the breath that you're breathing brings some pain with it, or worry or any kind of discomfort, even with that, still with it, this is the breath is giving you life, and to just bring a little appreciation for the incredible apparatus of your breathing body that lets you being to be here and have this conscious experience savoring this precious breath,
and then on the next exhale, just see if you can find the ground beneath you. Just wherever your body makes contact with the ground, the seat on the floor, and just notice if there's any kind of tension or holding your body that you could just relax, just like let go of into the sensation of the floor beneath you, feeling that press, that sensation of stability and constancy beneath you, safety beneath you, as you breathe out next just letting go into that a little bit more relaxing between the eyes, a little bit more relaxing the jaw, a little bit More just letting it all go into the ground.
You feel that little bit of softening. Then when you feel that softening on the next breath in, I just want you to breathe up into your heart space. Lucid Dreaming has so many strategies and things we have to learn, but let's stay really connected to our hearts as we implement these practices. So as you're breathing in, just feel the powerful beating of your own heart, and put your hand on your heart. If you're a fire person like me, you need to connect a little bit more. And just letting that breath into your heart lift you up a little the courage of your heart, the inspiration of your heart, the compassion of your heart, and it in bringing your awareness so that this is where it's resting, that this is where tonight you're going to reflect from, learn from, and share from, and then just in this place, I want you to think a little bit About this slogan we worked with this week, I awaken to this moment just thinking of the last two hours, wherever you came from before you came to jump into this call and just without judgment, just an honest, compassionate observation, just see, ah, how awake to the moments of my day was I in the last couple hours?
Maybe there were a few moments of connected lucidity with someone you loved. Maybe there was some rushing home and traffic, no judgment, just just noticing how much awareness, how much presence, how much awakeness you experienced in the last two hours,
and now expanding that to the last day, in the last 24 hours. So maybe going back to last night. How did you enter sleep last night? Were you able to do your pre sleep routine? Did you come off a long day and maybe do a short version or even skip it again? No judgment, just observing. How was your sleep last night? How was your awareness of your sleep last night, when you awoke into waking state this morning? How do you spend those first 510 minutes
and then just feeling into during the day, were you able to work with this idea of bringing awakening to your moment, where there's some beautiful moments where you were present and grounded, connected, or was today? Maybe a day where you were caught up in the dream of life? Maybe not so lucid today, again, no judgment with this, just watching, observing, noticing, and now extend this to the last weekend to the last week since you last did this class, when we were learning all about reactivating your dream recall. How has this last week been for you? Were you able to carve out some moments of lucidity where maybe did you lose your lucidity during the daytime?
I know as I get older, whole weeks of my life go by sometimes and I look up and I go, I don't even remember what happened. I was completely unaware and non lucid for the entire week. Sometimes have great streaks of connectedness, but just noticing for yourself, and then just affirming to yourself like, wow, even if it was a week of non lucidity, you're here now. And for those of you had great moments of awakening, just appreciating and affirming those and just appreciating all of us that we are here practicing tonight, you have chosen to give yourself another profound opportunity to reflect on your life and to build in tools that are going to support you to be free and so opening your eyes and just taking a piece of paper, or if you're going to write on a computer, just choosing what you want to write on, I just want to start with a self reward. Outcome. Dependence is the greatest killer of lucidity, and it can be so easy because, you know, lucid dreaming, the outcome is in the name. And so we want to get lucid, and we can feel, want, and one of the antidotes for this is to really notice where we're doing well. And so I want you just to think for a second and to find at least three things in the last two weeks. So since you started this course, doing this together, and just notice something that you're proud of, maybe it's that you stayed committed to the process agreements you did seven out of seven of your dream journals. Maybe it's that even when you were feeling that you're challenging dreams, you stayed with those dreams. You were willing to write them out and be honest about them. Maybe it's that you're having dreams for the first time, remembering more dreams, or maybe it was an amazing lucid dream you had, but find at least three things that you feel proud of and that you can appreciate in yourself and write those down. Let's give you a couple minutes to write those down. You
and as you're writing those down just to reflect on and let yourself feel that sense of reward, these practices are a long, lifelong practice and learning how to appreciate ourselves for the progress we've made, for the commitments we stick to is one of the ways we keep our lucidity live and fun and and something that we want to keep practicing. And when you're done writing those three, I'd love you to choose one that you're really proud of, because another gift we have here in this container. I mean, we have 1400 people registered for this course every week. We have between, you know, two to 400 people the calls, and we have about 1000 people watching the replays every week. I mean, that's an incredible co created field of support, and I feel it. And so one of the things we can do for each other is to witness and to celebrate each other's milestones and commitments. And so I'd love to just take a moment to celebrate each other. So choose something that you're really proud of, even if it's just a commitment, to be here and have shown up every week and share it in the chat, and let's and I'd love you as you share also to look at other people's and let's celebrate each other for a few moments. Carolyn, remembering more than one dream a night. Excellent, fantastic. Five dreams in a single night, exactly. It's a record. Anton, I'm curious if you use the dream tagging for that Marion journaled seven out of seven days. That's fantastic. Yep, watching the podcast interview with Andrew, which is a treasure trove. It's like his content Treasure Trove is out of this control. State checks, excellent. You're jumping a gun. I love it. Watch the two recorded and you're live here tonight. Welcome first live one, journaling the dreams. Karen, doing your Sleep Induction every night. That's fantastic. Kathleen, first lucid dream, amazing. And John, suddenly having memorable dreams. Finally, isn't it a great feeling like, ah, there's the juice. Beautiful, sticking to the morning and night routines. Maria Excellent. Marguerite, had a lucid dream. Excellent, exactly. Beautiful. The pre induction, that's Stefan, being more nice to your girlfriend. Good. I hope that's part of the translation of these practices. Carolyn, congratulations, remembering the first dream, which is your first in many months. Wow. Michael, seven, playing the tags, 707. Having a first lucid dream. Incredible. Look at this. I mean, I just, I can't even keep up with this, but what I want you to see here is like, wow. Like every single person, no matter where you've entered, whether you're remembering dreams or you're practicing lucidity, even just within a couple weeks, by staying committed, you're showing yourself that you are serious for your practice. You're showing your unconscious mind that dreaming matters. You're showing you know that you're that you're able to make progress and trust yourself in these practices. I always say with lucid dreaming, that you know these practices are between us and God, no one else will ever really know if you have a lucid dream, I mean, I'm gonna go to a sleep lab actually, and they're gonna put an EEG on me, and so I guess then they'll know, like, I'll have, like, one officially recorded dream. But these practices are so personal, and there's no applause for them, right? Because this is just us working with our minds, working with spirit. And so it's up to us, and up to us as a community to cheer for each other and support each other. So I love this, remembering dreams. Yes, Jenny, using dream tagging. Fantastic, beautiful. Good job. Guys, really. And so then basking in all that celebration and holding the field of possibility that we have as a group, I want you next for the last part of this reflection exercise to get really curious about where in your practice, where in the execution of your practice. You might want to do some tweaking right the beginning of this course, and called one, I said to you that you know you you're the Explorer. I can give you the tools. I can give you the map, but what I really want you to learn is how to adjust so that over your long life as a lucid dreamer, if you come up against obstacles, you understand how lucidity works, and you're able to make the adaptations and tweaks to your practice to overcome those obstacles. Or if you're wanting a certain kind of experience, you know how to get there. So just taking a second to reflect on the last two weeks, thinking again of the heartfelt motivation that you came up with in week one. So just checking in like, Have you been staying connected to your heartfelt motivation? Have you been using that perspective to fuel your practice, or maybe, has it kind of dropped off? Or maybe your heart felt motivation isn't that inspiring. It should feel really fun, edgy and inspiring. So if you're like, I read my heart motivation and it's like, maybe you need to rewrite it. Or, what about your pre sleep? You know, routine? Have you been able to effectively do that? Has it been working? Do you want to adapt it? How has your dream tagging been going? Have you tried that? Or your dream journaling? So just wanted to take a couple minutes to reflect on your practice so far, and maybe just identify one or two areas where you could think about making a tweak, and you don't need to know what the Tweak is yet, but just just identify, like, oh, like, maybe this area could do with a little
once you've got that area in mind, I just want you to Throw your mind back to when we talked about the heart and the fire motivation. So the fire motivation being like this small, structured, disciplined, sort of mental focus, like strong intentionality. But the downside can be that, you know, if we're super, super intense and like, putting in so much effort, sometimes we get outcome dependent, or, like, if you're waking up and you feel disappointed, you're like, Oh, I didn't get lucid, or I didn't remember my dreams. That usually means there's like, a little too much fire, right? Or heart motivation, where you're like, in the feeling of it, you're connected in a kind of more expansive, emotional way. But maybe you only did three out of seven journals because you were kind of in the flow, and maybe a little more fire and discipline is needed. So just use your own self assessment tool to look at they go, huh? Maybe I could tweak this with a little more fire or a little more heart. A little more fire might be like more discipline, more commitment, connecting back into why this is really important, and why you want to do it more heart might be like just bringing a little easiness to it, easing up a little bit, making it more joyful, bringing in more play, just giving giving it a little bit more spaciousness, a little more lovingness to Breathe, versus like squeezing it's squeezing it too tightly. Yeah. And I know it's like it can be with loose dreaming. It can be we can get so into it that we can chase the news away. So you guys are going to find this balance, but just taking this moment to reflect on that so beautiful. You.
All right, so today we are going to be exploring how to work skillfully with the day practices of lucid dreaming. And if you think about this, is like connecting all the dots. We have focused on the night practices and the morning practices and really nailing that kind of book end, but now we get to explore how the daytime and the nighttime relate to each other, and how we can use our daytime experiences practices and consciousness to massively impact and cultivate lucidity at night time. And you know, this is a picture that I feel like capsulates like this. Idea of these, almost like these two interesting states that we experience, but our mind and our consciousness running the whole way through it. So I'm going to quickly jump into the map. I don't think let me see over here, yep. So if you guys remember this map, we brought up the beginning of class just to give you a little signpost of where we are. We laid the foundation with correct motivation. This is your heartfelt motivation. We went into the reactivation of your dream, recall through the night practices. So this is your effective entry into sleep, with your sleep induction, and then having a dream journal in the morning. And then the last of these kind of foundational pillars is the day practice, which we're going to work on strengthening the meta cognitive capacities that actually have us get lucid at night time. And you can see here, like these, honestly, that bucket of skills is so powerful, and if you stay with and nurture and master those first lucidity will naturally arise out of it. Next week, we're going to work with purpose amplification. So it's like, internal and external stimulation for lucidity, but they're like, they're like, bonus. They're like, they're just like, cranking up the heat a little bit. What we're working with here is truly the bread and butter of it. So this kind of will complete that set. So a reminder here like what we worked with is the pre Sleep Induction, the dream tagging at night time to capture more dreams in the dream journaling in the morning, this book ends, and today we're going to work with this. So again, I'm a very visual person, so I hope you just bear with my poorly made diagrams. But thinking about the daytime practice as being the thing that kind of like helps to weave it all together. So we're here. We have our dream journaling, we have pre sleep routine, we have our sleeping and then in the daytime, we're going to start learning how to do state checks and mindful moments. Because you can see here the continuity of your awareness, your presence and your awareness is always there through all of these different states. And it's not just about okay at night, I'm going to get lucid. It's also about daytime practice, and so being skillful in how you work in your lucid dreams, to help your daytime work in your daytime to help your lucid dreams. It's this beautiful kind of like infinity curve of inter realm relationship. And I love it. It was, I think it's, I think it's Andrew, maybe it's Charlie who talks about creating this strong interstate highway, right? So the connection between dreaming state and waking state, and starting to reconceptualize the artificial delineations we've made between these two states, because ultimately, as we'll explore, they have more in in common than we might initially think. And there's actually, there's an amazing, yeah, this amazing poem I want to read to you guys quickly. I'll take you back to this picture. So thinking about, thinking about the waking state. So here this chap with the sun, the feminine lover of the night of dream of unconscious. On the right, there's a really beautiful it's, I guess it's like a written piece by uh Mia Rinpoche, who it's called the an illusionary symphony, a song or debate between waking and dream states. And this is written, I guess, like over 100 years ago. And it's this gorgeous piece where dream and waking have a debate about who is real. And so before we enter into the practical practices, I invite you just to relax for a moment. It's going to take a few minutes to read it and to really listen to this, to really listen to what each state is saying and the ultimate conclusion they come to. And I want to thank also Alan. I'm not sure if he's here, but Alan very kindly shared this with me when we did the one off class a few months ago, and I'd only said it once before, and I'd lost it, and so very grateful that it came back into my foray. And this is just This is an excerpt from it, but you can even close your eyes and go into story time with me, an illusory symphony, a song of debate between waking and dream states. When it comes to the appearance of last night's good dream and the direct experience of today's waking state, they are similar, and they both can produce attachment and similar in that both come to an end. The dream state holds that what appears in the dream truly exist. The waking state holds that what appears while awake right now truly exists. Now awake and dreaming shall debate on who is right? The overly exaggerated daytime state awake declares last night's dream, you are the appearance of delusion, to which the magically displaying dream state dreaming replies, ah, not only I, but you too are. The appearance of delusion awake continues right now. Is not a delusion, but truly exists. The proof itself is that objects of perception actually appear to which dreaming replies, Well, but at night they actually appear too. So that's not conclusive. Awake says, well, but right now they are not here to which dreaming replies or today's appearances are not here tomorrow. Awake says, Well, I directly perceive with the senses to which dreaming replies, but I too directly perceive awake says, When you dream about rock mountains, you can walk unimpededly right through them, I will accept that you are true. If this can be done while awake, dreaming replies, Well, this could be done while awake under the right conditions as well, and while even while asleep without conditions, it isn't possible. Awake says, but this can happen without conditions in a dream, to which dreaming replies, Well, if that were the case, why is it not always possible? And for those of you who've done the stage two of Dream Yoga, you know that even if you lucid, sometimes it's not always possible to walk through a wall. So good point dreaming. Awake says, although you enjoyed a feast of delicious food and drink last night, it doesn't ease your hunger or quench your thirst in the morning, to which dreaming replies, during the day, you may nap in a mansion, but this does not protect you from the rain and the following Night's Dream, awake says, during the day. You know that nighttime dreams are false. How could dreaming establish that what is seen in the daytime is false? Dreaming replies, nighttime experiences expose the falsehoods of the waking state. How could waking experiences ever disprove dream experiences? At this point, the Chief Justice intervened, commissioning profound wisdom to arbitrate this topic of knowledge, both of you are true and both false. If left unexamined, you each appear as if you truly exist, but when investigated the hidden floor of one exposes that of the other. In reality, you are the same. Both of you lack true existence. However, the dreamer admits that it's delusion is delusion. So dreaming is genuinely honest, whereas you awake are also delusional, but you deny being so the difference of constancy and inconstancy is due to habituation. Further, there is no difference between your two results from then onward, both awake and dreaming understood that there was no difference between them, no one versus the other, treating everything that is seen and everything that is encountered equally. Their dispute was resolved and their perceptions became the same. Together, awaking and dreaming. Said to those who say we are dissimilar and different, you are mistaken. We are similar and the same. As few speak of this likeness, even fewer actually understand it. But if during the day you know the waking state to be similar and equal to a dream, and if during the night you do not mistake the dream to be a dream. It will serve a very important purpose. It's a really beautiful piece of writing. Yeah, let me I'll put in the notes here for you guys, if you want to. Here's the original. It's a little longer as well, beautiful and just what a beautiful piece of writing to speak to this idea that waking and dreaming are not these separate, compartmentalized experiences that I think so many of us thought or grew up thinking they were. And so what we're going to dive into and explore right now is, is exploring not just the relationship between them and the overlap between them, but really how our work now relates to then and then to now. And the first question to really reflect on when it comes to this is really simple. It's just, why are we not more lucid at night? Think
about it, right? We go into these dream states, and sometimes crazy stuff happens in our dreams, like we're in different countries. Sometimes we're different people. Sometimes there's like outrageous elements, or people from the past, or people who are dead, like things that are so unreal but we never like most of the time we're not aware or talking into the fact that it's a dream. And so reflecting on the fact that the habit of our mind is to be completely asleep and unquestioning. And if you think about it, like during the day, for most people, very, very, I mean, very, very few people go through their day critically engaging with their reality. And how often do you walk around and really let the reality of your situation sink? And how often do you go, Wow, I'm in waking state, cool. I'm a soul in a body having this crazy, co created experience that looks like it's real, but it's mostly just made of energy. I mean, because we're operating, you know, we've got things to do, people and responsibilities, mostly we're just like operating that kind of unquestioning, non lucid state. So the reason we're mostly not lucid in our dreams at night is because we're mostly not lucid in our waking state, holding, lucid dreaming, lucid living, lucid living, lucid dreaming. And so understanding that one of the keys to or opportunities with today practice is to start activating lucidity here and now. And one of the ways to do this is with illus reform practice. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with that. That poem, that story, speaks beautifully to it, illusion, reform practice essentially invites us to consider, experiment with, explore and perceive our waking state as Dream like, to see if we can soften our kind of automatic reification of everything outside of us, including tables, including emotions, egoic perception, self structure, identities, to actually go gosh, like, what if waking state and dreaming state are very similar? What if this waking state is an incredible co created dream that we are all sharing and that we are all points of consciousness and that we're co creating, but that the apparent solidity of this world is just a habit of mind? And so illus reform would have you, for instance, during the day, go around and say, well, wow, like, this is a dream. And to really look around you and to consider and to question, like, this could be a dream. I could be in a dream right now, and just just try that for a second, like, just, just take a second to, like, lean back and and really ask yourself, like, how do you know this isn't a dream right now. How do you know your life is in a dream? I've had dreams where I lived almost a whole life, and then I woke up the next morning, and I had a cry to mourn it, because I felt like I'd lived a whole lot. I was married, I was a man who was married to a woman, and I woke up and I just had a whole life go by. I mean, we, we might be in a version of that. And then just to consider, like, ah, there are dream like qualities to waking state, and I can relate to that a little more openly. And I guess, like, openness is the key here, openness of perception. And so instead of being like, I am Mia, I'm doing a thing. I'm working on an email in my habit, habit, habit, habit, habit, can't see, can't see, not even looking this illusion form goes wow, like let's feel and to explore and test the reality around us in an open hearted way. So illusion form you can, from a practical level, you can take some time in your meditation, or take some time during the day, or if you're walking somewhere in a car, just sit there and take the perspective, life is a dream. This is I am in an incredible dream right now. And when you do that, just I'm curious, you know, notice what changes in you as well, right? These perceptions are really powerful. So that's the illusory form component of it. What we're going to teach next is, is the more practical, tangible ways to scaffold this perspective into a habit and then into the night. Because conceptually, I know we all get this. Every single person here gets it. Like, if I said to you, hey, like, can you explain to me, like, wow, we're all in a dream, or what it looks like. We all have an intellectual understanding. What we need to do to translate this into dreams is to take from an intellectual understanding into a felt experience, into a habit of mind, into a habit of being, so that when you go to sleep at night and you dream, that habit flows into your dream state and lucidity naturally arises, which is beautiful for those of you who have jumped ahead and done, wake back to bed. I just want to I just want to note, wake back to bed is a super powerful technique, and like I don't use wake back to bed in my practice, just because I love sleeping and I have lots of lucidity. And so if you take the time to build these foundations first, you won't have to necessarily use those kind of, like, more active interventions to catalyze lucidity. So just taking some time and like, like massaging these areas first and strengthening that means that a either you don't have to use that, or when you do, it's super effective. So just a little note for those of you who've been messaging me about that. Yeah. So then, oh, and just by the way, in terms of inter realm, interstate connection, this book, this is my favorite, this book about living, dreaming, dying, where it's by Rob Nan, who's an incredible author, and, you know, teacher around Dream Yoga and Tibetan practice, and this, so if you can see it, this one here he he does a beautiful kind of, I guess, write up, drawing from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, just exploring how the realms of living and dreaming and dying connect together, and how our practices in each realm feed each other, and how important they are. So if you're curious, like to dive more into that. This one I love. I reread it regularly for that reason. It's really inspiring. It's a good lucidity booster. But the way to translate this is, is to use state checks. Now I like to teach state checks in a particular way, because what I noticed when I've been coaching people is that often, like most people I coach have, they're either like, complete beginners or they're people who've been at this for a while, but they just like, they haven't quite got the foundations right. And often the people who've been practicing lucid dreaming, and they think they know what they're doing, and they teach, they show me how they do their state checks. And I just know there's a lot of incorrect technique, and there's a really second important piece that most people miss. So I'm going to teach this with the two the two important things, which is correct technique and correct state. First of all, just for those who were like, What is a state check? If you watched inception, you'll remember older Leonardo DiCaprio, had a spinning top, and the theory in that movie was that he used the spinning top to tell whether he was in waking state or dreaming state. If the spitting top fell over, it was subject to the laws of waking state gravity, but if it kept going, he knew he knew he was in a dream, so he used that as a state check which which wouldn't actually work in a dream, but there are things that work. And so a state check is exactly that you can check what state you're in. And this is the the next slogan we're going to work with is going to be this one right here, which is, where am I? Where am I? And this week, you're going to be working with this self reflect, bringing the self reflective capacity online, and asking yourself, What state are you in right now? At nighttime, most of our dreams, we fail to recognize that we are in the dreaming state. And honestly, during the day, we mostly fail to recognize that we're in the waking state. We're just automatic mode. And so today, we're gonna, this weekend, work with like, where am I? And when you ask this question, Where am I? The state check is going to help you answer it. So when you are going to do this practice, we'll get into the practical strategy for
this. You are going to do the self reflective exercise, where you ask yourself where you are, and then you're going to check. The cool thing is that because the dreaming state and the waking state have neurological differences, right? Like the brain states are different. Half of your brain is kind of dormant when you're asleep versus certain parts that are awakened. You can kind of use this to to do a check. I'm going to go through the correct technique of them, the main state checks you can use. It's important you understand how they work and why they work, and that's how you'll know how to do them, right? So starting with, like, the most obvious and easy one, which is the checking of your hands. This one is still, for me, my favorite, because it's an easy go to it doesn't require anything except hands, which we which we usually have, and how this works is like the hands are so detailed, like, take your hands right now, and just just take a moment to appreciate all the fine lines I can see, every little crack of skin and pore, like there's so much detail, plus the movement right so just like aI really struggled to replicate your hands, your unconscious mind, the left part of the brain is mostly dormant. That's the part that that processes patterns and details. And so when that's sleeping, during dream time, processing hands is really hard. So the first reality check is to take your hands and look at them and just put them out in front of you. Pick a spot that has like a detail, maybe like a little mole, or if you have a ring, a ring, and really look at it like, take if I if I said to you, I'm going to let you look at it for 30 seconds, and then you have to draw every wrinkle like, really look. And then you're going to flip it over, and you're going to flip it back, and you're going to check, is everything exactly the same? You're going to play a very serious spot the difference. Turn it over again, check again. Did anything change? Now, the trick with this, because you're using the detail oriented glitch, right? So you know that half of your brain is kind of dormant, the part that processes detail. The trick here is to focus on detail. If you do this reality kind of state check, and you're just like, Oh yeah, I'm looking at my hands. If you do that, you won't observe in the dream, and you might not get lucid. So whenever you're doing anything that has to do with detail text time, like the clocks, anything that's like detailed oriented processing, the trick is really focusing on the detail. So let's talk about the text. If you're someone who likes to check if you are in waking state or dreaming state by reading something. See if you can find something nearby, even if it's the screen. What you want to do is like, really look at the word and look at it from the perspective of reading it, but also, like, capture it as an image in your mind. Look away and look back and exactly like the hands you're going to see. Did anything change in a dream, because it's really hard for a non lucid mind to replicate text and hold it. It can wiggle. It can change. It'll turn into symbols right the hands. It can morph. You might lose a finger. You might have a claw hand. I'm curious. Everyone has different experiences of what happens with your hands, but the change is quite dramatic, because the brain simply can't make it identical. So you won't be you won't have to, like, find a subtle difference. It's going to be really, really obvious when it happens. So understanding, like any state, check which uses detail, really focus. Take a screenshot in your mind. Look away. Look back. If it changes, you're in the dreaming state. If it stays the same you're probably in the waking state. So that's the first one. Now another one that's really helpful, especially if it's dark, is nose breathing. So this one works on the fact that you know when you're in REM every part of your body is paralyzed, except for your breathing system and your eyes and like some very subtle finger stuff, but mostly your breathing. So you can have, you have a sort of, like, automated breathing system, as well as, like, some control. So this, these are the two areas, like, especially, we do lucid dream studies. If you're getting lucid and you're in a study, you send signals through your eye movements or through your breaths. So when you're in lucid dream, or when you're in a dream, and you're not sure if you're in a dream or you're practicing this during the day, what you can do is, you're gonna do is you're gonna pinch your nose. You can do this now you pinch your nose, and then you're going to keep your mouth shut, and you're going to try and breathe through your nose so and really try, like, really see if you can get it through while blocking it. Now in waking state, nothing's going to happen. You just get a run out of breath pretty quick. But in the dreaming state, what will happen is, at first your body will hold its breath, but then once it sort of hits a point of discomfort, the automatic breathing will kick in. And so in a dream, if you do this, you will be holding your nose, closing your mouth, and then suddenly you'll have the feeling of air coming through. I don't know if you've had that dream where, like, you go underwater, you're like, Oh no, I'm underwater. I can't breathe. And suddenly you're like, oh, I can breathe underwater. That's because you dove under, and your body held its breath in response to it. But then automatic breathing kicks in and suddenly you can breathe out underwater. It's the same thing now, because you're relying on the body's automatic breathing kicking in. The trick with something like this is time, if you just go, No, it didn't work, you're not going to get lucid. So if you're using this one, you need to give your body time for that breathing to kick in. So I always say three breaths, like, three tries, like, breathe in, breathe in, breathe in, like, and that'll give your body the chance to do that when you're first starting out and you're and you're playing with state checks. I really advise using the hand one, either this one, or you can try one where you push your hand through your finger through your hand. And if you again in the waking state, probably going to stay like this in a dream, because your propository sort of systems are a little bit misaligned, a little bit like more, I guess, like they're not run with the same degree of accuracy. Often the finger will just go right through the hand. But choosing something simple and working with that and then having it almost like a double. When I when someone's working with something for the first time, I say, try your hands first, and then add this on top of it. That way. You know you're you've got a double back up if you're doing the the waking state track in the dream. Sometimes people, as you're learning, maybe don't get one right. And you go, I woke up. I did. I did the hand thing in my dream, but I didn't really look and I thought I was in waking state. So the note the nose hold was really great, too. It really it is, especially if you're if you're in a dark situation, or you just can't quite seem to get a grip on the detail. Sometimes you require, like, a little bit more lucidity to do that. Now I know Andrew's favorite state check is to jump. So that one's really fun too. Where, if you're just standing and you do a little hop, but you expect to float up. And so if you do that in a dream, often you'll find like, oh, suddenly you're shooting up into the air. The trouble with that is, like, if you're someone who is like, wanting to do state checks while you're on the subway or at work, it's a little more conspicuous, whereas, like, handshake is really easy to do no matter where you are, that's a really, really, really easy one. So that's the kind of the technique behind the state checks, and really, I guess, you know, making sure that you understand the functions of how they're doing it, so you don't just kind of like do them poorly, but the most important piece of this is the state in which you do it. Because I think it's really helpful to think of reality checks and state checks as a scaffold. So we're trying to retrain our minds to a type of awareness and lucidity, and the state checks can help us do that. And what you'll notice is that, at first, they're incredibly helpful. Like state checks are amazing for getting us lucid. They're amazing for confirming lucidity and stabilizing the dream. But for a lot of experienced dreamers, what you'll start to notice is that over time, you will start getting lucid spontaneously. You won't even necessarily have done a state check or anything like that, because the momentum of what you've built in your practice has has really flourished. And so don't be overwhelmed by thinking like, Ah, how am I supposed to do all these things like this is a really cool training wheel that we use that's going to start building this into a natural way of being. But in this as a as your beginning, or as you're really like building your lucid dream amount, if you, if you're not having, like, a few lucid dreams a week, keep using state checks. It's super, super helpful. Now to do them right, you need to really understand that doing it from the correct state is everything thinking back to awakening to this moment. If I'm like, let's say I'm during the day, and I'm like, Okay, I've decided that in order to get lucid, I'm going to do 10 state checks a day. Because if I do 10 of these a day, I know that some point it's I'm going to start doing it in my dreams, just like if you were working all day in office filing things. Soon enough, you'll start having dreams about filing things. Same with this, we're going to carry over. But if I do my state checks like this, I'm like in between the email, okay, cool. Quick text, Okay, quick state check, okay, cool. Now on this, it's a quick state check. It's not going to be nearly as effective as if you marry this practice with the correct perspective of presence, and so why don't you think for a second back to a time in your life where
you felt like fully present, like maybe you were skydiving about to jump out of A plane. Maybe it was like the first time you held your child. Maybe it was, you know, this just after an amazing meditation session. Or, you know, for those who have done psychedelics, like just thinking about a moment in your life where you felt presence, and
as you think about it like, see if you can feel it in your body. Like, what did it feel like when you were fully present?
Do you notice, like, anything different, as you like, imagine, like, the sensations again, like, I, for me personally, I'll just like, I always feel like my vision, like, I like, widens. I'm like, wow. Like, suddenly everything's brighter. I can see more. I go from being like this to expansive view. I can feel my body more. I can, like, have all my senses get heightened. I have this sense of like, awe and amazement and joy. So I just want you to see if you can feel and tap back into that experience of presence you've had. And if you're not feeling that, that's fine, like you can take this, like, work with us and see if you can, like activate it. But learning to like bring that state into our bodies is really helpful. The way that I like to do this, from a practical perspective, is like, instead of like, being on my phone and then doing a quick check, I like to decide when I'm gonna do my state checks, or when I remember to do it before I do the state check, I work with that question, Where am I? I go? Where am I? I'll say it out loud, where am I? My cats are like now, where am I? And then, in answer to that question, I will do the things that help me get present so I will feel the ground beneath my body. Okay, I'm in space. I could feel okay, gravity time. Here we go. I widen my visual preceptory feels. I'll open my eyes a little wider, a little more light, and I'll try look at the peripheries of my view. I'll listen more. I bring in some like mindfulness, and then I'll just take a few breaths there and just let myself start to feel more present. And for those who've had a lucid dream, you know what this feeling is? Right? When you get lucid, you're like, Whoa, like, this is like, whoa, here I am. So activating that same sense of here I am. So where am I here? Okay, wow, I'm in this cool room with all this stuff. And then you do a state check from that place. So now that you're grounded, now you're feeling more present. You check where you are, hands out. Okay, nothing's changing. I'm in way kick state, cool. Okay. And then I get on with my day, and that can be just 20 or 30 seconds. This isn't a long time. It's the quality of the sort of perspective that you're holding when you do the state check. That's what really, really, really matters. So what I would encourage you to think about now is really remembering and accessing those moments of presence. If you feel unsure about that, then do the process I described. You're just going to literally, like, sit, get your bearings, like, find a way to come back into your body. You can take a few breaths into your heart, like whatever works for you, get into your body, look around, write in your vision, open your ears, listen to the sounds. Like, really, open yourself back up to being present, and then do the state check from there. So that's the mindful moment tethered to a state check. Mindful moment state check happens within that that is a game changer, just a total game changer. So then, in terms of when should you do state checks? Right? Like this is where you're going to make a state check strategy together. So there are different ways to essentially accept scaffolding, remind yourself to do state checks to start with, it can be as simple as sometimes people will set a couple alarms on their phone. That's okay at the very beginning. What I want you to aim for here is, like, eight, six to eight, really high quality state checks a day. And you can do this a few ways. First of all, you can do what I call, like, external reminders. So actually, I'll show you. Let's see if I got the little sheet here. I I'll show you one of the ways that I do it, which is I found really helpful without being interruptive. This is a workshop you guys will get here. I have literally see here I have the sticky notes. And what I do is I take sticky notes with things like, where are you, or just funny little pictures, and I stick them in different places around my house, in cupboards or places that I'm not going to think and then, like, when I open it, I'm like, Whoa, there's a note. It breaks my pattern, and I know, okay, state check, mindful moment, state check. Then I take the sticky note and I move it somewhere else. If you have kids or a spouse or whatever, it's even more fun. If the game is you do it together, and whoever sees it has to move it. So you're playing this kind of like hide and seek with yourself doing just that. I often end up, you know, getting like, six state checks a day just from those little sticky notes. So that's one way to do it. Another way is to tether this to experiences that are tagged into your dreams. So if you remember, we talked about the dream tone, so as you've been doing your dream journaling, you've been writing down like, what was the emotional tone of the stream? The reason we do that is because now what we want to do is, if you have, like, your top three tones, you want to make a commitment that anytime you feel that type of a feeling in waking state. So let's say that you have dreams where, like, one of my one of my tones, is problem solving. I have dreams where I'm like, I'm problem solving like, I'm doing like, I don't know it could be, I could be in space, and there's a problem, and I have to figure it out, and I'm like, working on it. And I have these problem solving dreams all the time, because during my waking state, I'm very often problem solving. So what I try to do is that every time I'm in waking state, and I'm in a moment where I'm like, having to figure stuff out and problem solving. Ah, problem solving, tone, and I do a state check. What that means is that in my dreams, when I start to have that feeling of problem solving, I've tethered it, I've trained myself. Ah, problem solving. Check my state, and I get lucid. The reason why dream tones are so effective is because more than like a dream sign, which is kind of like the wrapping of the dream, you'll often dream your dream tones multiple times a night, because we tend to kind of like repeat our same kind of emotional tones. So you give yourself so many opportunities. If you work with the tones, you can, of course, work with dream signs. So if you have a repeated place, like a maybe your childhood home, or a certain country, or your work, or a repeated person, anything that pops up in your dreams over and over again, let's say it's you find yourself I don't like with your sister a lot. Then when you hang out with your sister in waking state, just make sure you do a mindful moment and a state check. So you try to tether things that you notice in your dreams to your waking state, so that crossover happens really effectively. But another way to do it, of course, is what they call, like the weird technique, which is that just anytime something weird happens, like, if you're, if you're, if you're hanging out and like some crazy clown car with Wild Music drives by. It's kind of dream like do a state check, mindful moment state check. This way we're starting to bring online that critical engagement and questioning with reality. So when you're in your dreams and weird stuff is happening, you're not just like, okay, you've built this practice and this habit of your mind where you're like, that's weird, mindful moment. Stay check. I'm in a dream. And the coolest thing is, I mean, I mean, for those of you who've had this experience, isn't it just the best feeling when you're in a dream and you kind of start to, Am I dreaming? I don't. Maybe I just check. I'll just check. And you do a state check, and lo and behold, boom, you suddenly get lucid. It's, it's remarkable. So I'm going to give us now 10 minutes to No, probably be five minutes, five minutes to to create and your own state check strategy. I've got the prompts here for you one moment,
so that you kind of have a clear action plan of how you want to integrate this into into your week coming up. So getting a pen and paper or writing on your computer, four questions you're going to answer, what state check are you going to work with? And so this is where you choose. Like, okay, I'm going to work with the hands. I'm going to work with the nose. Like, choose specifically which one you want to work with. If you're new to this, work with the hands. Do the hand flip? Just start there and you're finding that's not working. You can adapt, but like that, to me, has been the most successful for people who are learning. So give that one a go, and then what's going to be your reminder protocol? So are you going to put some sticky notes up? Maybe set two alarms on your phone where you commit to doing it with the emotional tone, or when something weird happens. And I'd say, like, here, like three maximum. Try, try simple to start, just so that you're not, like, overloaded with, like, trying to figure stuff out. Just try think of like, two or three ways you're going to remind yourself to do those state checks, mindful moment and a state check, and then kind of to add in here, what are your lucidity? Colors thinking back on the reflection we did the beginning of this. What do you know kind of kills your lucidity, like for me, I mean, like scrolling Instagram that makes me so unconscious, puts me right into a non lucid state, right? Being really stressed out, like, not taking care of my stress levels and just being a little stress bunny, like, I'm completely non lucid. So just maybe noting down. Like, are there any habits alcohol can be a real lucidity color, right? Like, just, are there any things that are lucidity colors? Just so that you're aware. So if you're like tonight, I want to do a dream date and get lucid. You're not going to you're not going to let any of those lucidity killers get in the way. And then what are your lucidity boosts thinking of ways that you can get more present, bring more awakening into your into your state, meditation, right? I mean, the meditation literally activates the the prefrontal cortex, which is the bit that comes online when you get lucid, this meta cognitive capacity, it's working out the same part of the brain, which is why meditators are better at lucid dreaming. So meditation, journaling, reading, inspiring things, walking in nature, being with your pets, being fully attuned and present with your pets. So just thinking, if you could write out a few little lists there, and this will give you an opportunity just to have a strategy for this week. So I'm gonna give us five minutes to just work on that together. Give you some music as Well to Go with It.
Another possibility is to tether your estate checks to something you do during the day. And Julie reminded me about that. Thank you. So for instance, if you're like, ah, every time I'm on the toilet, I'm going to do a state check, or every time I'm waiting to pick my kids up from school in the car, I'm going to do a state check, or every time before I eat, I'm going to do a state check. And again, it's really helpful to try tether to things that you do with a dream. So if you are someone who has delicious dream feasts, tether it to food, right? And just try to strengthen that relationship. But You can do it that way too. You
okay, just one more minute, and don't worry too much if you can't finish it, something you can complete after the class. Long as you get your First few ideas down. You
okay, awesome. So an example with this would be, and it's a if I said, Okay, I'm going to commit to doing eight state checks a day, and I'm going to remind myself by I'm going to put up five sticky notes around the house, and I'm also going to do it every time before I eat. It's okay cool before I eat. And then I'm going to put my little protocol in place. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to do my mindful moment, and I'm going to use my hands, and then the trick is, like, don't be too this is where we have to be careful with the fire. Don't beat yourself up if you're like, Ah, I only did two today. Focus instead on the quality of what you're doing, even if you just do a few quality ones. That's better than kind of like, absent mindedly getting your state checks at right? So thinking again, of like this quality of presence, and then, where am I? Where am I you're gonna be working with us this week. Where am I? Am I in waking state? Am I in dreaming state? Ah, I can check. Let me see. Cool. So really working more intentionally. I was joking with one of the WhatsApp groups, the amount of times I've got lucid because I'm teaching lucid dreaming, I'm completely oblivious, and then teaching state checks, I'm like, oh, and then I get lucid, right? So it's just that you as you're learning this, and you're like, tell your friends, tell your family, like, talk about it, because it's going to start flowing into your dreams. And then the joy of like accidental lucidity, as this habit goes over, is priceless, beautiful. Okay, so then, in terms of just before we jump into questions, a little reminder, like, this is what we're going to be working with this week. Our practice this week is going to be finish your state check strategy. So feel really clear about it. Simple is better than complicated. We want to go for powerful, completable steps Second, make a commitment. Say, Okay, I'm going to go seven out of seven for this. Every day I'm going to be making an effort towards my state checks, even if that just means you get one or two in. But, you know, really committing to this idea of like, we have to rebuild the momentum of our minds, and this is a powerful scaffold for doing it. The more you commit to that high quality, consistent practice, the quicker the habit of your mind will shift to, of course, continue your your pre sleep routine and dream journal, and make any tweaks that you need to if you feel like it has been working for you, adjust it. If you find that, for instance, you haven't been doing it. Add a little more fire, right? Make a little more commitment. Like, really, double down. Maybe I use star charts, like, little bit embarrassing, like, you know, like a kid, like, you have a and you put stars like, sometimes, when I'm trying to do a new habit, I will have a star chart, and that means, every single day I'm like, but I'm going to get my star, whatever it is that's going to work for you. Just build a little scaffolding to actually get that, that commitment, if you're committed, but it has been working more heart, more fun, more play, instead of, like, doing a really intense pre sleep ritual, listen to beautiful music if you want to have a dream about a certain kind of thing, like, look at a beautiful picture. Use symbolic language. Use art. Use movement, more heart. And then this week, we're working with the slogan, where am I and how I'd love for you guys to use this is just whenever you can remember, really, just stop and check, wow, which state Am I in right now? And and see if you can start bringing that self reflective awareness online automatically, using the where am I? Not just when you're doing state checks, but again, just like if you're in a conversation, and, let's say you find yourself, like annoyed with somebody, or you're bored, or hang on here, I'm too invested in the dream. Let me just check where am I? Why am I so unconscious? Ah, my waking state. Cool. If you're in waking state, what an amazing opportunity. If you're in the dreaming state, cool. You're lucid, right? Like, it's a win either way, but know where you are moment to moment. There's one of the most powerful things that comes out of this practice. If you are lucid, you know where you are, moment to moment to moment to moment. You're no longer trapped in the confusion of the the illusion of a phenomena around you, right? Some very deep practice over time. So that's going to be practiced this week. So I'm really excited for this. I think this is, this is where you have your you have your bookends going really well, and this is really going to crank the practice up. So questions, yeah, questions about the reality, state checks, illusory form, inter realm, connection. I think Maria, you have had your hand up first, so I'm going to bring you up. I can't seem to add a spotlight. There we go. Perfect. Hi,
hi. Thank you so much. I'm so enjoying this. Course, I love it. Of course, my question is, there is a person who is very recurrent in my dreams, but this person is no longer present in my waking life. So if I do a reality check, when that person appears in a dream. I think would be pretty cool, because I would have pretty good chances, I think. But my question is, how do I reinforce during my waking life, making that check during my excellent
question? Yeah, so and you can so there's something we call prospective memory, which is when we go, okay, I know that I see my someone who's passed away. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to train my mind by going the next time I see David, I am going to do a state check. I know that I'm dreaming the next time I see them. And so you repeat this kind of like we do with the induction mantras. You might just spend a few minutes before bedtime going, the next time I see them, I know that I'm dreaming. The next time I see them, I know that I'm dreaming. You can also work with a photo of them. So have bring up a photograph of them and like, see them, but hey and they go, Wait a second and do a state check, so you can kind of simulate it in that way. Because remember, what we're doing here is we're just, we're just tagging things together in your mind. You want your mind to be like, there's David, ah, stay check, and then you're gonna and so you can do that either through the prospective memory, the next time I see them I know that I'm dreaming, or through kind of doing a almost like a constructed stimulus with the photo.
Okay, so and if I do it before bedtime, would I do that before I say my my statement? I know I'm dreaming as I'm dreaming.
You can choose. So thinking about proximate karma, kind of like a good rule of thumb is whatever you think is the most important thing you want to work with for that night. Do it last. So if you're like, Oh, I've been dreaming of them every night for last five nights, then you go, Okay, I'm going to do that last, because that's my, probably my strongest chance of getting lucid tonight. So you could do it last, if you're just, like, playing with it as a state check, maybe do it beforehand or even during the day.
Okay, sounds good. Thank you so much. Tell
me how it goes. That sounds good. I'm excited to hear that one. All right, speaking of a David, I'm just, I'm just talking about David over here.
Hi, Mia, yeah, when you said that, I was like, did she see my name, or is this? Yeah,
so just in the field, my friend, yes, I
love that. I love that. That actually gets to my question. You've talked a lot today about, and maybe you can go into it in terms of checking, checking to see if we're dreaming or awake. You know, a lot of my my meditation practice and Dream Yoga practice is about that very question. So did you say more about how this would develop awakening, so to speak, but in a more Buddhist sense of the term awakening, as we are awake,
sure. So if we think about, I mean, we think about what it means to be an awakened being, it's having the correct relationship and understanding of the nature of reality, no longer being fooled by the delusion of the samsaric displays, right? So no longer, as you know, being tricked into feeling, thinking and identifying with our any of our states, our waking states, our dreaming states, our dying states, as being as real as we think they are. So this habit of making real, of reifying everything around us, like everything looks and feels solid, I'm going to send you guys, in the email an amazing podcast interview with a mathematician who talks about simulator theory, who's done that like essentially the maths on how everything in waking state is completely a projection, and you start to get like, Whoa, hang on a second like, this isn't like cute theory. This isn't a philosophical exercise. The waking state that we take to be real is as illusionary in form as the dream state. Now, anyone who's done these practices like the stage two practices of walking through walls, transforming objects, any of this stuff, you start to understand, like, whoa, dreams are not dreaming in a dream, at first, everything feels real, smell, touch, taste, and you start to understand your mind has an unbelievable capacity to project and create a fully sensorial reality. And if you can do that in the dreaming state, you can do that a waking state. Now I think the parameters are different, but we understand here, like, oh, okay, we're kind of playing by similar rules here. So in the waking state, what we're trying to do is to break or soften that habit of taking for real and solid everything around us and falling into that trap of delusion. Now these lucidity practices, where, and this is gentle, like we start with this, like the harder work of this is like going more into, like the emptiness practices, which is an advanced training, but this, this is the softer introversion, where we're just going to start opening ourselves to the perspective that, just like in a dream, you can pick up an object, you can look at your hands, but there are no hands. There is no object. The same with this simulator here, we're like, well, maybe waking state also isn't as real as it seems. And if that is true, if we are in this dream, what is possible, and who are you, and what would you choose, and and what that calls us into being as a point of consciousness interacting kind of changes, right? It's like it allows us to step out of some of the sort of traps and selfishness and structures that we have and gives us a greater perspective. So this is the very baby tip of it, but it's the beginning of that, of that seeing through what seems so solid and real and penetrating into the ultimate truth behind it, that's where stuff gets super cool. Does that help? Does that answer is that it's kind of, yeah, beautiful. Thank you, David. All right, that's just, I mean that, by the way, that's the stuff that I mean. Like, I'm excited I'm gonna do, I'm gonna teach a small, advanced course in January. I'm really excited to do some of the more advanced practices. It's, it's deep work. Hi, hi.
Me. All right, yes, you Hello. Oh,
sorry, I didn't hear my name. I saw unmute, but I didn't hear Theo, so Paul,
Thank you. Bless you. Thank you. Thank everybody. I'm just so touched, grateful for every moment that we're all together. So I just want to start with that. I have to say that I don't think I've yet had a lucid dream. I've had an owl hop onto my chimney, which has done this several times. Hoots. I hear it come through the chimney. I do. I I believe I'm dreaming, and then something will wake me up, and the owl is actually there. And then I'll go outside and commune with the owl, and I know that's probably not what I should have done. I should have gone, now that I know differently, I would have entered back into my dream. But so I'm
curious. I would have also gone out to the owl, to be fair. Thank you.
What I'm curious about is, and I understand the whole area, arena reification and so on and so forth. But what I not yet connecting in my cognitive mind is, how does the state check now support building my lucidity practice when I haven't yet had one? Or at least don't think so
for sure, that's a beautiful question. And the way to think of it, like we kind of touched on the beginning of this class, is your non lucid dreams are non lucid because of a habit of mind, and that habit is to just kind of go through life, not questioning, not really engaging. Like, it's, it's, it's almost like a way of being that all of us, I mean, gosh, it's just, it's a, it's just a habit we've been we're in a soup of it to break that habit is a radical act of rebellion, right? Like, radical, it's not like a so it's not a small thing. And so this, these state checks are part of beginning to move the momentum in the opposite direction. So instead of just being like, going with our day, not thinking about it, not questioning, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, and then we're dreaming, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, waking, okay, we just, we're actually starting to use the waking state where we have more volition and more control and more kind of, I guess, like the ability to do these practices more constant to go, Okay, I'm going to deliberately start activating a sense of presence, a sense of lucidity in my waking state. I'm going to start retraining my mind to wake up now and here, so that instead of just being asleep in our day, we start to have moments of like, wow. Okay, I can I'm really present to my life. And you'll find that when you start to do this, that quality of presence is what creates spontaneous lucidity. My husband, who is the best human ever, and love him so much. But he hasn't done a single piece of dream work training. He's he's got a different path, but because of how much meditation he does, he's so he's with clients all day, being super present. And because now, you know, being married to me, he's kind of picked a few things up. He gets spontaneously lucid all the time, because he'll be in a dream, and something terrible we will be happening. And his instinct is to become present and calm, and because of that, he gets lucid. So you're retraining your state of being in this waking state where you have control, and it's going to naturally flow over. Now the state checks just help as a boost, because when you start to have that feeling of like, Am I dreaming? Am I dreaming? You can do something that uses the brain differences to prove it to yourself. So you're like, Am I dreaming? Am I dreaming? Let me check, and then you'll see a finger go missing, and you go, boom, I know that I'm dreaming so and but of course, to do the state checks, we have to practice in the day state. So this is the preparatory work that's going to naturally flow over.
I now understand more thoroughly, beautiful. I do want to say that you inspired me because I write once a month to my community on well being essentials. I wrote a blog for November on this moment matters in a distracted world, and I thank you for being the catalyst to that. Oh, please. I
mean, if you'd share with it and you were in the bot set, I'd love to read that, you know. Okay, beautiful. Thank you so much. Thank you all right. Okay. Susan
unmuting,
there we go. Hi, hi.
Okay, thank you. Thanks. Thanks for this class. It's been very good, very helpful. It's very interesting that what I was going to ask about is that I've been working with the dream journal. I've been remembering dreams to some extent, and putting writing them down, but the motion, except when it was one time really intense that I remembered. But otherwise, I don't get the mood like I'm thinking, what is the mood of this? And I, I can't pin it down. And there's all these different things. I write them down, but you know, no, I can't attach a real mood to it. Except sometimes you experience was very angry and whatever emotional that I was clear, but it's hard to get that. And then the other question,
do you experience? Wait, wait, let's start with that one first. So just one question for you, when you're dreaming, do you then, is it because you tend to experience it more like an observer versus someone who's emotionally invested in the dream?
Um, maybe more observer for the one. And there's ones, you know, where I'm really in it, and then I'm absorbed in it, the emotion, yeah, so. But the other thing is very interesting about what you were talking about. I've done solitary retreats. And, you know, in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and very vivid, powerful, waking up during the day, practicing a lot at night. I have a really hard time falling asleep, and I do practices as part of doing that, but then I always fall into, it's like, I'm there's some fear from being in the song, and then I I sort of shut down in the dream. I think I've had very vivid dreams, but I'm not loosen it, which is just interesting in terms of intense awareness that I have during the day, you know. So I'm just wondering about, well,
I mean, a way to think about this which is really helpful. This is, again, like, for sure, and this is why, for context, like Dream Yoga is taught as one of the part of the completion practices. Because when you're working with the unconscious, the unconscious, as Andrew alluded to right beginning, is it plays by different rules, and it stores more, right? So our conscious minds can be incredibly good. And like I also, I train in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. I'm in a four year mentorship with John Churchill. Like this is, it's very much the practices I do, too. And I noticed in our Sangha that, like for a lot of people, they've got excellent control during the day, excellent practices with their meditation and terrible nightmares at night and the frustration around that. And I mean, this is where, like real Shadow Work comes in, because the conscious mind does not necessarily want to go to or address the scary stuff in the basement. It's like it we don't want to. We would prefer to do like the emptiness practices and that actually create like. So what I would suggest to you is like a gentle way to start bridging. That would be knowing that your unconscious mind is actually listing the whole time. Is you can use the waking state to start dialoguing with it and sharing your fears and sharing like a sincere wanting to build a relationship. Because what can happen is, if there's, if there's stuff there that's compartmentalized, you've got, sounds to me like you're a really committed practitioner who's done amazing work. It sounds like you might need to spread the butter of that into more of these kind of like unconscious practices. And a gentle way to start would be just to actually talk, to write to your unconscious during the day after a meditation session, even just speaking to out loud or speaking in your head to that dreaming mind, say, hey, dreaming mind, I notice I have fears, because when I let myself dream fully, The experiences are so strong I just can't handle them. I would love to build this relationship. Can we begin our dreams more gently? I'm asking for some more gentle dreams so I can come in and do the work properly. You are in relationship with this part of yourself. And the cool thing when you when you're a practice practice, you realize like it loves you, your unconscious mind actually deeply loves you and wants to help. And so you can kind of proactively see if you can set the bar with it. Or the other thing to do was to work like whatever those fears are that come up, work with them in daytime practices. When I was having, you know, I had a really, you know, had a really intense period of 18 months when I was doing my PTSD therapy and and had I was unlocking all these compartmentalized memories that were coming. It was terrible nightmares and sleep paralysis, and I mean, just the worst I'd ever experienced. And even with my lucidity, was pushing my edges of what I felt I could hold. And so I started to work with those fears and waking state, with other practices, with belief work, with other types of therapeutic models, and I found that when I addressed them specifically, head on during the day, it translated into the night. And so again, just like we do our state checks if there's something in your dreams, this is for anybody. If there's anything in your dream space that freaks you out, that you're afraid of, that's putting you off your dream work. Be really intentional about saying, You know what? I'm going to work with this in the day. I'm going to work with this. I'm going to tell you I'm listening unconscious, I hear you, and then that'll help kind of shift it so that it might feel a little safer to step into your dream world. Okay, thank you to feel the feelings. Yeah.
Thank you,
beautiful.
Thank you. So we're going to end with John. John will be our last question, and I noticed a lot of you said, Jump off. Those who have to jump off, please go. But I'm going to try do my best to get through to John tonight, because I just love chatting with you guys, and you ask the best questions, and you're so incredibly experienced. I just I just a moment to just so much gratitude for the quality and love of this group. You're an amazing field. Which Nelson is part? Hi, Nelson, hi. You're now the representative for the goodness of this group.
Well, I'll do my best. So my dreams are the the predominant themes are problem solving and escaping, either for myself or for others. But when I think about the hand practice, I don't I have a felt sense in my dream, but I don't see my body that much. I'm not sure for you how to work with that. So you're not
sure if you would be able to find your hands.
I'm not sure it would occur to me to look for my hands.
So this is so this is why the state checks are going to be super helpful. Because one of the reasons it wouldn't occur to you is because, like, yeah. Like, why would it? But if, during the day you're doing these state checks and you're using your hands, you're now building a habit too. And so the idea is here, like, so let's take problem solving or even the escaping for the Dream tones, they're always going to show way more subtly in your life. So like, let's say escaping. And I don't know if this is true for you, but like, I could imagine, for instance, if I had a feeling of escaping my dreams in my waking life, it might just show up as like being stuck in an uncomfortable conversation and wanting to run away. So it might be a really subtle expression, which then as a nightmare or as a dream, might be like me literally trying to escape from a house so we can look for the seed. It's like, it's like, like, how a a note can be played loud and soft. You're looking for the resonance of the notes, and then you're tethering these checks and so that way, as you start to experience it, or when something weird happens, because you've got this practice using your hands, you will find your hands in the dream. The reason why you have this cool three dimensional reality is just because all day long, you're used to having a three dimensional reality with gravity and sunshine. You know, I had this amazing lucid dream last night, and before I did my dream mission, I was stabilizing the dream. And it was an evening, and there was a there was like a street light, and the glare of the street light hit my eye just perfectly to create a lens flare. And I walked forward and walked back and did the same thing. How incredible, like, that's how accurate our mind can replicate physics. So if you practice with this hands during the day, you will find that when you start to go, Am I dreaming? Am I dreaming? Your mind will automatically go hands, and it will create hands for you, the imaginary hands of the imaginary body.
Okay,
thank you. Chris,
so again. Diana, hi,
hi, thank you. Quickly, because I have to go, I have a hard time falling asleep. I'm not a very visual person. I remember from the first week that you said the induction phrases that we're saying should be when we're in that sinking stage, and I recognize that when I finally start to get visual images, but that could be 2025, minutes after I've gotten into bed. And so if I say the phrases when I'm not in that state, mostly I just I've had a problem with insomnia lately, either falling asleep or waking up. And so how should I say those phrases just when I get into bed? Or how can I
have you tried? Have you tried working with yoga nidra, both for the insomnia, both falling asleep and staying asleep. Have you? Have you worked with that? I
have, but not, you know, I don't sleep alone, and I so I can't have sound going on, you know, when gotcha out of town, I can do it, and I don't want to sleep with air, but so
no registered, yeah. I mean, I think think of this as more just like a state of relaxation. And so don't, don't put too much pressure on yourself, even just lying like it doesn't have to be in the hypnagogic if you just take a few deep breaths and let your body just relax a little bit. So do a little bit of what I mean. I like the 478, breathing, where you breathe in for four, hold for seven, breathe out for eight, like that for me, helps me to relax. And then in that relaxed state, I'll do the induction and then even if it means that after that, you've got a period of fall asleep, that's fine. It's almost like just just creating some type of restedness before you do the inductions. And just in terms of insomnia, like for anyone who's struggling with sleep, I highly, highly recommend Charlie Morley's latest book, wake up to sleep. He has worked with so many people with insomnia, and he obviously, he's trained from the Dream Yoga and lucid dreaming traditions, but this book specifically is about sleeping and help helping people, because he's worked with veterans who just have terrible PTSD and insomnia and people with sleep disorders. So I recommend that if you're if you're struggling, he's got really great practical suggestions there. And everything I've used from that book so far has been super helpful. It's called wake up to sleep. Yeah, I put it in here. Yeah. Thank you, Alyssa.
What's the name of the author?
Charlie Morley. Thank you. Charlie Morley, he sounds like a cute pirate.
Thank you very much.
Good luck. I hope you get some hope. I hope you have some miracle sleep this week. All right, Glenda,
Mia, you are amazing. Oh, my goodness.
Well, thank you.
Right after you said, I forget if it was in Andrew's book, but about sticky notes, I immediately started sticky notes in my draw in drawers on the mirror. Hey, this is a dream. Am I dreaming? And of course, I'm incorporating the other but what I want to get to is and see I teach a zoom group on A Course in Miracles and XO chin, and I am really about Dream Yoga and and I've signed up for your Costa Rica. I'm I'm all in. I'm in. But the thing is, about those notes made me become more lucid, more lucid during the day. And, hey, this is a dream. And then I'm looking around, you know what you're talking about, and and then what happened in a dream last night? Oh, because see, of course, miracles in this is an illusion. These are false images projected on the clear light mind. And that's what I teach, and I want to be awake to that. But in this dream, my brother in law and sister were there, and they had their little like a two year old baby, and it was just starting to walk with little bare feet. It was walking in front of me and I was coming behind it. It knew. I was told it I'm going to pick you up. And I picked it up and laid it in my as I turned and laid it in my arms, I looked at it, and it was a doll. It became a doll, a plastic, thick skin, plastic doll with one eye open and one eye closed, and see, that's the gist of this whole thing. These are false images that blown up children's toys, right?
Did you? Did you clock that you were dreaming? Did you? Were you able to get it?
Wow, my dream. My mind is helping me. I'm my this is unconscious, so my unconscious mind must be really getting this. What do you take from that I'm I'm wanting, and it's seeing it doesn't matter that I don't have a lucid dream. Is that a problem? It should matter to me?
No, no, it doesn't. No. And like you, what you're sharing is bang on, which is, like in this, when you're in the process of this practices. And I love, I mean, any lucid dreaming Dream Yoga teacher worth your sol will tell you, even if you've been doing this for years, you will go through periods without lucid dreams. That's totally cool if you're beginning. For some people, they get lucid within a week. For others, it's months of practice. But the process, this is the process of of untangling our confusion and misconceptions. So every piece of this process is valuable. And even like this insight that you're having like I can imagine from what you teach like, you have a really strong understanding and practice and waking state now you're getting to have these visceral insights through the unconscious mind. So celebrate it and but you don't have to get too hung up on it. Like, don't have to, like, unpack every meaning for it, but just just notice where you're having these, like, ahas and like, let that soak in as, like, incredible reward for the path.
Yes, and I've not had a lucid dream, so I'm yeah, all of this yet, right? It's amazing. Thank you. You're effective.
So nice to meet you. My daytime good, yes, exactly. Listen, it's daydreams, night dreams. Daydreams, night dreams. Yes,
it's all dreaming, seriously, unceasing
awareness of consciousness. It's no joke.
Thank you, all right, thank
you and Jon, no need to rush. Does doesn't have to be a short question. You've been very patient. Thank you.
Hi, firstly, inspiring lesson and group, and it's just as fantastic to be involved in it. But I was thinking about, you know, the state checks I bought. I actually ordered some sticky notes today of different sizes and colors to stick around and add a couple of ideas I thought. One of the way I'm assuming the sticky notes work is it introduces a random element to the state check. Because when I've done reality checks, I'm guilty of doing the whole Yeah, I'll try and put my finger through and not focus in my attention on it. And it becomes a habit, but not a not a habit.
That's not a good one, an unconscious habit. Yeah, yeah.
So first idea, I thought, with the sticky notes is, if you stick them in lots of random places, and you have people you're living with, if you can get them to change them around, put them in different locations, so when you open a different draw, you're surprised by it, and that's going to force that exactly. So that's one idea. And then I thought I put it in the chat as well. Could we use the WhatsApp groups to remind ourselves to do the reality state checks? Or just, if you're posting something on there, just put, you know, PS, do your reality check to the point where angle off. It's a kickstart.
I don't want to really, a really good rule we can do together with this is like, if you, let's say you check the WhatsApp group a few times a day before you open the message. So like, really, use that dopamine system so that you're incentivized before you're allowed to read the message. Mindful, check in, stay a check, and then and then, that way you're going to get a few great checks every day. I love this. This is really good ideas, really, really great. And this is, this is a be creative. Tether it in the way that makes sense for you. And to your point, like the quality. If you notice yourself being bored, if you notice yourself doing like, I'm doing my state check because I'm doing my homework, kill it. Do something different, like this is about getting present and connected to life, and we're supporting ourselves by creating some structures to do that beautiful, awesome. Jon, thank you so much, and thank you everyone so much. And Heather, thanks for coming to your first live session, and I really look forward to doing this week's work with you. Where am I? Where am I? Where am I? And I will send out the replay and, of course, all the resources as well. In the meantime, have a beautiful week of practice. Next week, we are going to be working on creating a dream mission and working with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. So ways to like now put a little extra fire on the foundation to be fun. So all right, everyone. Thank you so much. You
