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Hi, everybody. Big, big welcome on a big, big day for those of us who are US citizens and not my US brethren, and actually for the world. So, so grateful for the opportunity to be here together tonight. And I was chatting with uh Alyssa, who, by the way, is from Andrew's team. She's amazing. She's been here with us every call, setting this up, helping to make this happen. And just chatting about, you know, in these moments, how to how to best direct our energy without disconnecting or or not wanting to engage with difficult things, but also not indulging in samsaric nightmare. And I think being here tonight directing our energy to where we have a pocket of agency, I really love like, where do we have pockets of agency? And we have pockets of agency for ourselves, in our minds, in our state and our lucidity. So just grateful that we can all be here together tonight for learning and enjoying beautiful and tonight we're going to be working on activating our lucidity, which is really exciting the internal and the external stimulation we can use to do that. But just before we begin just I mean, I'm kind of coming off a pretty hot day. Maybe some of you are feeling the same. I'd just like to take us for five minutes into a quick grounding meditation to activate every aspect of our heart. I'm in a four year meditation apprenticeship with Dr John Churchill, who's him and his wife, Nicole, are amazing. They're in Colorado. I know some of you know them, and one of my favorite parts of that training has been learning to work with what he calls the five dimensions of the heart, and getting to know our hearts really intimately, getting to know the power of our hearts really intimately, so that we can call on any of the qualities that we need in any given moment. So just for a few minutes, I'd love to get us connected into that heart space, and so we can find, connect to and draw on any of the qualities that we might need in this moment. So just getting into a comfortable seated position and either lowering your gaze, closing your eyes, just directing your awareness back inside for a moment. Start just with finding a breath, just finding a breath, wherever you find it. No need to force it or change it. Just bring sort of compassionate, equanimous attention to the movement of your breath in and out, and just taking a minute to notice where you find yourself. Are you already connected? Lucid, aware. Or do you find yourself, ah, I kind of forgot myself again for a second perfect. That's where I find myself so perfect. And then now, bringing a little intentionality to your breath and just taking a big, deep belly breath in, just holding for three seconds, 321, and letting it go. And as you get to the bottom of your breaths, just finding the ground, just finding where your body makes contact with your seat, where your feet make contact with the ground, and just letting yourself sink a little bit into that stable, consistent ground beneath you with every breath out, just releasing any holding, any tension, any constriction, letting it all go into the stable ground beneath you, in that stability of the ground, finding the quality of safety, safe stable ground beneath you,
just releasing into that safe stable ground moment to moment.
You and then, just as you take your next breath in breathing up into your heart space and put a hand there, you can start with connecting with the physical sensations of your breath, the physical sensations of your heart, feeling with every breath in, the expansion, with every breath out, the release, letting your awareness drop into the heart space, breathing into the heart Space,
feeling from the heart space, sensing from the heart space. And we're going to start with the width of the heart.
So as you're breathing in, I just want you to feel and sense the expansion of the width of your heart. And as you're breathing in, imagining your heart, connecting to all the beautiful souls who are in this group tonight, and as you breathing out, receiving that connection from everyone else in the circle, breathing in, connecting to our circle, to our Sangha, Breathing out, letting that connection come into our hearts. We are not alone. We are all in solidarity in this human experience, anywhere where you might feel some loneliness, some isolation, some disconnection, as you're breathing in and out in this width of the heart, giving connection, receiving connection, just taking a couple breaths. Here you
and this is just the next breath finding the back dimension of your heart. This one's a interesting one. You might not have breathed into this part of your heart before, but as you're breathing in just imagine you're kind of gently dropping back into a cool place of peace, an infinite well of replenishment, truth, recuperation, peacefulness. This is the place in your heart you can go to when the turmoil of the world feels too much, too confusing, too unfair, and this is where you go to remember who you truly are, why you came here, and to step back into the correct view of what you as a little point of consciousness, is doing in this life, breathing into that infinite peace, infinite knowing, ultimate truth. But no matter what happens in the absolute level, everything is good. And knowing that connected to this group, knowing you can access that peace now, daring to breathe fully into the depth of your own heart, the well of your compassion, this can feel like such a tender, bitter, sweet place our compassion that connects us to the suffering of ourselves and of all beings in this world, but allowing yourself to breathe deeply into that depth, to feel it, feeling it for yourself and feeling it for all sentient beings, powerful compassion, breathing In, into the depths, breathing out, receiving the compassion,
you might find that the more you breathe into it, the deeper it goes, as infinite well of Your compassion, the greater your capacity to feel it. And now as you're breathing in next just notice the rising aspect of your heart breathing all the way from the depths of your compassion, up up through the chest, through the throat, even up through the head and breathing in the hearts, qualities of inspiration, breathing in the qualities of hopefulness, breathing in your visionary Nature, breathing in your hope and vision for humanity, and allowing yourself to feel that too, in the same way that compassion can stretch us, inspiration can stretch us too, just letting yourself breathe in the inspiration that your heart Naturally feels, breathing in the hopefulness your heart naturally feels, and just sensing and receiving the inspiration and the hopefulness from all the hearts in the circle.
And finally, to the fifth dimension of the heart. With your next breath in want you to feel and sense the forward dimension of your heart. Courage. This is your hutzpah. This is the part of your heart that is always a yes. This is the part of your heart that gets up again and again. This is the part of the heart that says it's not too hard. This brave, bold, fearless part of your heart and feeling that energy with every breath you breathe in, expanding, emanating forward from your heart, sharing your courage with all of us in this moment and as you breathe out, receiving the courage of this group,
knowing that no matter where we find ourselves, No matter what the day is, no matter what we've encountered, overcome all of these dimensions of our heart, the width of connectivity, the backwards dimension of deep peace, your deep compassionate heart, the rising inspiration and the forward courage, These are always available to you to draw on whatever you need, so maybe for the last couple breaths, just feeling into which dimension of the heart you could really do with right now. Do you need a little peace? Do you need a little inspiration, a little courage, a little compassion, a little connection, and just taking in three beautiful deep breaths into the dimension of the heart that is your medicine tonight, you
and on the next exhale, just letting the last little bits go into the ground and just returning to normal breathing. Hmm. I'm curious those who'd love to share in the chat who open to sharing, what dimension of the heart did you need tonight? What do you need tonight? Can you stay connected to tonight? For me, it's courage. It's been a hard day, which makes me want to retreat. But no one I feel that. Dora, you too. Courage, huh? Beautiful, courage, yeah, compassion for all beings. Vera, inspiration and courage, yeah, with this meditation, you can actually, you can combine them, you know, you can breathe into both at the same time and compassion and courage. Beautiful, yeah, courage and peace. Peace, yeah, trust. Ooh. Tell me about it beautiful. Okay, well, now we're in space together before we jump into today's very exciting work. This is, by the way, this is like the icing on the cake stuff. So I get super excited about it. But I just wanted to share, you know, Andrew and I were talking, and actually, I'm curious how many of you have attended one of Andrew's retreats in person? Got some hands going up? Yep, alien. I see you. Yeah. So, I mean, one of Andrew's superpowers is he does these in person retreats where, for seven days, you sit and just receive transmission. And it's super, super powerful. And next year, he's only doing one retreat around lucid dreaming, which is going to be, I think it's here, yeah, and blue spirit, and he has very kindly invited me to join him, to to teach some pieces of that retreat. My goal will be to help create some practical applications for his transmissions. So as you're learning from him, with his incredible knowledge and the depth of his wisdom, that we're then able to take that into practical workshops. So during that seven days of lucid dreaming, you're able to really fine tune, experiment and push your practice. So it's like an immersive learning environment. And I said this is the only lucid dreaming retreat he's doing next year, so I wanted to share it with this group first. Actually, let me just give you guys a link, because we only have a certain amount of rooms, and it sells out every single year. And I was chatting to him and saying that it would be, I think, a good kind thing to share to this group first. I think we're, we're the we're the front end. Lucid Dream is in this community, so I'll send it out tomorrow in the replay link too. But if you wanted to come out to Costa Rica for that experience, I would highly recommend getting organized around that now so that we you don't end up on the wait list, which is, unfortunately always the case with a bunch of people. So just sharing that now and yeah, so then let's, let's, before we jump into the into the stuff here too, I wanted to, let's do a quick recap of where we found ourselves last week you were working with the slogan, where am I? And this slogan, I'm curious how you guys found it, but I love it because it's such a lucidity activator. One of the reasons we're not lucid at night is we just never critically question where we are and what we're doing. So we don't know that we're in waking state when we're in waking state. We do not know that we're dreaming when we're dreaming. But working with this, this slogan, and working with the mindful moments and the state checks, this is how we start to really spin the wheel of habit. The other way, we start to wake ourselves up, we start to create more of a default pattern of knowing the texture of our reality, moment to moment to moment, and who am I? Yes, maybe that should be week seven. We'll do a where am I? Who am I? What am I doing? So here you remember this we it's really this idea of working with the continuity of awareness. So where we've got to now is, you guys have your dream journal down. You have your pre sleep routine, doing your nighttime inductions, and then during the day, these mindful moments and state checks. So just remembering, for those who are still kind of getting the hand, the handle of hang the hand hang of state checks really important that when you're doing a state check, it's from the right perspective. So not being unconscious and being like, Okay, I'm just checking my hands, but instead creating that mindful moment by getting super present, bringing in the quality of awareness, really looking around, really feeling into the moment you're in, then asking, Where am I, and then doing the state check, it's really important when you're first doing this practice, it's going to accelerate your practice and your process. So those are the foundations. And if you remember my, my fav, my favorite, little map here, to keep circling back to, we've set the correct motivation. We've been working on your dream recall. We've got that night practice with the inductions, the dream tagging. We have the day practice, which is the state checks. And now I'm going to be working on the intrinsic and the external stimulation for lucidity. But I really want you guys to think of the foundations as the most important piece. What we're going to learn tonight will be things that you do as like complementing aspects to this, but without these foundations in place, you know they can work, but it's it's less likely. And whenever I have an issue with my practice, if I'm having a drought of lucidity, I will always come back down and check, how is my motivation doing? Like, have I disconnected from my heart and I'm just doing this because I think I should, or I think it's cool. How's my dream recall? Have I dropped my dream journaling practice? Am I doing my inductions? What's my state check practice like? And normally it's something in these foundations that's actually wobbled. And so there's no point, for instance, like doing more wake back to beds or taking Galantamine if those foundations are wobbling. That's usually why. So as you guys are learning this and going off to do your own practices. Don't forget to kind of come back to the map, and you can troubleshoot your own practices, really, by using this system, which can be, you know, really, really helpful. So with that in mind, I think the one of the ways I'd like to do because we've gone through so much, is to start with a little bit of questions. We're going to do some questions now, and also some questions at the end. Questions at the end. But if anybody has questions about the experiences you had this week, if you had, let me just find this. If you were working with state checks and you're trying to figure that out, or anything that we've worked on previously, we can take a few questions now, and I'd love to be able to help you sort of troubleshoot those foundations first. So if anyone has a question about any of that, Oh, you guys got it, huh? Gilda, fabulous. Let's see Hi. You're dialing in from outer space, I see,
yes, where I live. Well, my motivation is fine, my dream recall. I've been doing it for 10 years straight, seven days a week. So I was observing that I'm kind of like a tracker. I track, and sometimes I can be the observer, plus three other versions at the same time in the dream. But so in firstly, I said, Okay, I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming. And then in the dream, I said, Oh, I'm dreaming. And then I just wake up, oh. So as I say I'm dreaming, I realize I'm dreaming, and then I wake up. Oh, I'm dreaming. And when I I'm doing the hand, just because you suggested it. And it seems to me that if I stare at it too long in real life, in daylight, it starts shape shifting. So if it's shape shifts during the daylight, it's going to shape shift during the night time as well. And when I read the protocols, it says that one is intending for it to shape shift. So I don't, I am not clear on that.
Well, I guess the question is, is, how dramatic is the shape shift? So for instance, so for instance, in waking state, if you are someone who's, for instance, done a lot of emptiness practice, you will experience visual alterations. Right when we do these kinds of more advanced mutations, I'm not sure if you've done them. You might just have a natural propensity for it. We will have the experience of reality jittering, but they tend to be more subtle alterations, versus in a lucid dream, you like, lose a finger, or it'll become a crab claw. Like, the transformations in a dream are super dramatic. It's not like, oh, like, a slight change to the texture. It's like, that is not my hand. Like, okay, it's very it's, it's very dramatic, but also just reflecting back, like, I think, really beautiful. Because ultimately, this work we're doing is to start to see, as Andrew says, like the flicker fusion of reality. When you slow down enough and waking state too, you'll start to see the visual phenomena change. So that's encouraging, just for your waking state practice, but yeah, in your dreams, it'll it's a dramatic change.
Okay, thank you for the clarification. Of course. Yeah,
thank you so much. Joel, hi,
hi. Got a question about stabilization. Is that an okay question right now?
Yes, I will. It's, we're going to jump ahead to that next week, but it's best. Let's, let's plant it. Yeah, it's a big it's a big topic. It's
relevant now. So last week, had a great dream. Lucid started to collapse, and then I just remembered the one, the one line that I'd read from Robert Wagner at the time was, and I think he was quoting Don Juan. Was like, put your hands up to your face and and then it would, like, it was like a tunnel, like collapsing in that. I do that, and then it would brighten back up, and I'd be in a completely different dreaming landscape in it. I probably did it six or seven times in this one dream. It just kept going. It was unbelievable this week. Couldn't, couldn't get it. It would collapse, and it would collapse in and be darkness. And I was like, still in the dream, but also of being like, aware of my body in the bed. Whenever I feel my body in the bed, that usually was it. But this time it like i i, and I was like, in the dream. I was like, Why isn't this working like it worked so well last time? And I don't know, just, is it, yeah? Maybe some other tips was, because that's, that
was the remember staples. Well, first of all, awesome, yeah, like, I like, like, let's, let's, like, celebrate those epic moments of lucidity. Yes, delicious, juicy. And this is where we could remember, like, oh yeah, the unconscious mind is a moving, responsive, adaptive, yeah. And so this is why we learn the dials of lucid dreaming, because it changes so first of all, like, what will help here is to understand the principles when it comes to this. And just for anyone who's listening, who's like, what are they talking about? When you get lucid in a dream, often the first challenges are to keep the dream stable, and to stay in the dreams, which is what we're going to focus on next week, is all about stability. I'm going to talk here about dream surfing, which is something it's a more advanced tactic. Well, tactic sounds terrible. It's an advanced sort of skill, but if you're already doing this, it's going to it's going to work. And for anyone else there who's dying to get lucid, this is going to be helpful. So when you are experiencing the end of a dream like that, and you end up in that kind of dark space, and you may be even starting to feel your body, what you want to do is to get your mind to lean back into the dream. The reason why your hands work is because you're creating like a visual phenomena that has your kind of focus. Yeah, this is where I am. This. Those are my hands. Those are my hands. Yeah, getting
like, stimulates too much dream senses, yeah, but
you can do that even without hands. So if you find yourself there, what you want to do is you want to it's not physical leaning in, but imagine like you're focusing all your attention into the dream, and you're going to focus on something. I call this, like a dream seed. And so, like, I have a go to dream seed, which I always joke about, but it's kittens, yeah. So like, my dream seed is kittens. And so I go, kittens, kittens. And I imagine kittens coming towards me. And what it does is, again, like it, kittens will start to emerge from the darkness. Here comes the dream. And then I'm like, focusing into the dream. Focusing, focusing, focusing. It's coming closer, closer, closer. And then pop them back into a dream. And you can dream surf like this between every time you go into a dark space, planting a dream seed, cultivating it and popping back in. Okay,
so this is just to be clear. You've you've been lucid, you've got visuals, and then the visuals closed in, in darkness, correct? But you're, are you like? Do you feel that, like the physical leg, like the Do you feel the physical body in your bed? Or, have you not, is it not, not there yet?
I So ideally, ideally, you want to catch it as quickly as possible, okay, but even if you start to feel your body, this is where, like, in, this is sort of, imagine it almost like the letting go feeling as you start to go back to sleep, yeah, instead of paying attention to the feeling of the body, you're gonna, like, get so curious about, like, dark space you were just in and you because you were just asleep, it's pretty easy for the mind to pop back in, yeah.
Now I'm realizing the importance of, you know, morally says to really focus on those, those two periods, uh, Hypno, Hypno something and Hypno something.
Okay, can have the pump again, yeah? Hypnose,
because he says that if you get skillful at those, you could do what you just said. So that's, that's good information. Okay, thank you. Yeah,
beautiful. And next and just so next week, we'll do the specific stabilization practices to keep the dream together, to minimize the ending. We'll get there. Okay, awesome. Thanks. Joel, all right, we'll take up to Lori Ann, and then we'll, um, jump back into class. All right. Paulo, hi. I think we were chatting. We were emailing, really, yeah, hi,
yeah. Thank you so much for these you. It's been so pleasure, blessing, yeah. And so my question was, you gave us this homework to come up with exact experiences. And my big thing, you were saying that it's not too ambitious to understand the true nature of reality, but then I couldn't come up with exact experiences. I was like, It's too broad. I don't even know where to start. So I thought if you would have some suggestions on what could that be?
Absolutely, that's what we're going to be working on today. So I can give you, I'll plant a few seeds. Like today, you guys are going to have the chance to build an exact streaming mission. So you're going to walk away from today's session with it written up and ready to go and understanding how to use it. But it's a great question, like, how do you take these massive aspirations of like, expressing yourself, healing, working on spirituality, understanding the true nature of reality. Start with where you are. So if I so, like, for instance, when I, when I started the the latest stages of Dream Yoga. So like, let's say stage five, stage six, stage seven. Like, when I started doing those practices, I would look at where I am, confused about reality, and I go, huh? One area where I'm confused is that I look in the mirror and I see my perfection, and I really think that's me. I go, that's me. And I think that's me. And I know, like, okay, conceptually I understand that if I want to understand the nature of reality, I need to soften my identification with this construct. So then in a dream, I will do body transformation. I'll get lucid, and I'll turn myself into different things. I will start to sort of disidentify with just this physical body being what I am. And that's one of the ways I'll work with that. So what you can think about before we start doing the dream mission is choose a place where you're still stuck in ignorance. Do you think you're separate from everybody? Do you like, you know, like, explore that, and then you can design a dream mission which is going to give you the experience of like, so, deconstructing that.
Okay, and you mentioned the stages of doing yoga, and I'm, I have no clue. Are we going to touch on that, or should I get a book?
Yeah. I mean, I'm going to rock you guys through that today as well. Just just as a as a map for some inspiration.
Uh huh, that really helps. Thank you, Mia, of course,
of course. Let me just plug my computer in. I don't want to lose you guys. That would be terrible. Okay, no,
all right. Angel, hi, Angel. I know you from the WhatsApp groups. How you doing
good? So, Dream stabilization. So I realized I'm lucid, and it's interesting. The way I'm realizing is because my reality checks aren't working. Like usually I would look at my hands and I can't, and there's, like, no reason I shouldn't be able to see my hands. So I'm dreaming. So So then I'm lucid, and I'm like, trying to stabilize. But it's not like I'm slipping in and out. I'm just trying to stabilize where I'm at. The spinning kind of works, not really. I say my name, my location, all that stuff, but I feel like I'm starting to slip, like all the stabilization things don't feel like they're stabilizing me. And I'm wondering if I should just forget that and try and stick with where I'm at in the lucidity. Are
you? Are you? Are you? Are you losing lucidity? Or is the dream ending?
Neither I just all of a sudden realize I'm lucid, so I try to stabilize it,
just to make sure, how do you how? How do your dreams normally? How do your lucid dreams? Do you have long lucid dreams do? Or how do they normally end? How does that go in
the past? Yeah, I would have them until I found the solution, or whatever I was trying to gain. I would just, but I haven't had lucid dreams in so long. I guess I'm just trying to follow the formula, because I've never had a formula to follow before.
So see at least as a formula, and see this is more like a toolkit, because your mind and my mind are different, right? So, for instance, I have a client as we working with today, and he doesn't use state checks because he is so attuned to this, the texture of his reality. During the day, he gets lucid by realizing that the texture of the dream is different, right? Cool for you. It might be that once you get lucid, you're just super lucid, and you don't need to stabilize that's totally fine. What you want is to have the tools. So if you get lucid, but you're not super lucid, you're like, I think I'm in a dream, and you notice, maybe, like, you're getting sucked back into the story of the dream. Then you go, hang on, hang on. I'm losing lucidity. I know what I should do here. Is this and this? Or you get lucid, but you're so excited, the dream starts to wobble. It starts to collapse. Okay, cool. I know what to do now, so I think less of a formula. Know your tools, and know why you use them. And then when you're in the dream space, if you're if you're familiar enough with them, you can start to play with it. And you can tweak a little bit here, tweak a little bit here. I mean, I've had my longest Lux dream was long, and I sustained it by proactively tweaking it every like three five minutes. I would do some stabilizations, and I was able to keep going. So you just, you like, learn the tools and then experiment, okay?
And then just the last is, so I was lucid all night, in and out of my dreams, but I could not have any kind of influence on what was happening. I've never had that before. Then
you're not truly lucid. You're lucid ish, but you're you're not super lucid, because you're what you have is an awareness you're dreaming super lucidity, like, if you're truly lucid, you it's like you have full conscious, collaborative capacities, online. And so it's good to see lucidity as a spectrum, right? Because if we think it's just binary, like, lucid, not lucid, lucid, not lucid, we can lose the nuance that, like, it's a spectrum of awareness, where you go, Ah, I'm aware that I'm dreaming. And you could be watching a dream going, I'm aware that I'm dreaming. Why can't I change it? You're not fully, fully lucid. So this is where we can, like, this is where you try some stabilizations. Or if you're finding it's a pattern, you would do some daytime practice to explore any unconscious blocks you have around it. Some of us have, like, really bad limiting beliefs. I had plenty. I had to get off. We're like, I can't do this, or my mind doesn't allow me to do this. And anything you believe about your dream space will be true, because your dream space is, like, cool. That's what you believe. Got it. You know, totally
get that because I think I have a fear of getting that cozy with my unconscious. That's where I'm at and
and a lot of us, a lot of us do. I'm going to share a I'm recording a new meditation tomorrow. I'll send it to you guys. It's a meditation which is based on creating a really strong sense of safety in relationship with the unconscious, trusting that you can trust your unconscious. You can be safe and lucid dreams that your lucid dream will never show you something that you're not ready for, and like having some daytime practice to build that faith, because I've noticed for a lot of people, there's a little bit of fear, like, what will I find, or what might happen? So I'll share that with you guys as well. Thank you amazing. Thank you so much. All right, Lorraine, okay,
I think I'm okay.
I got you, yeah, we got you.
Thank you, yeah. So I don't want to get discouraged. I'm new to all of this. I used to write down my dreams a long time ago, and so now this, course, is getting me back to writing my dreams and doing this process. But what happened? What has happened is the first week of the course, I was remembering all my dreams. I was writing them in the morning. I had my tablet there. And then, as we got more into the process of writing down all the things to do in the pre dream, police priestly process, I would, you know, I'd go to bed when I'm feeling oh, I'm really tired, and then I would go through my pre sleep thing, do all the steps, and it would wake me up. And so then I was having, I'm having trouble going to sleep, and then I'm so tired by the time I fall asleep that it's like, oh my gosh, I just want to sleep. Forget about 100% 100% and then I do have Dream like, I'll wake up to go to the bathroom, and I'll say, I know I was dreaming. I kind of remember the dream, but I'm too tired now to write down the stream and do that dream tagging thing. It doesn't work. I don't remember in the morning, so I'm just struggling. And I'm I don't want I'm not just, I'm not discouraged. No, this is
great. No, no, I love this. And like remembering Lorraine that your experience is other people's experience. It's been my experience. Like this is awesome. So what I'm hearing here is something I deeply relate to, which is, when we get we talk like fire, and heart like little too much fire. The fire will keep us up at night. The fire is like, I gotta do my things and make it happen. Because it's I'm doing. I'm being a great student. I'm committed. And then, of course, it's like, it's like tricks our butt. And so what I would do here is just like, just ease up a little. So instead of doing, I mean, you can look what your pre sleep routine is. Instead of like, let's say you're doing, like, Okay, I'm doing the three minute induction. Instead of that, just say yourself, okay, before I go to sleep, I'm just like, oh, wait, do you sleep on your side? On your back. What's
your position on my side? Usually? But okay, switch. Yeah.
No, no. Great, me too. So if, and this is good for side sleepers, you can, instead of just like, conking out straight to sleep on your side, just like, lie on your back, hands on your heart for like, 20 seconds, take some intentional breaths and then just, gosh, like, Wouldn't it be beautiful if tonight I dreamed about something, and like, connect to your heart. This is where we want more heart motivation and just like, give yourself like a wouldn't it be nice if? And like, feeling like, if I had dreams of like, Oh, when I went to that amazing hotel in in tigua. I love that hotel. I'd love to have a dream of being back there and then roll into your sleeping position and let it go. So whenever you're feeling like something is over activating like this, and this could be any of the practices we learn create a like, a softer version, that instead of being like, discipline is heart, play, joy, creativity, wonder. Instead of listening to the meditation, listen to a song that puts you to sleep like, really, know your dials. If there's too much fire, don't like, keep firing it, dropping into heart. And then, because you don't want to end up in a situation where we start going, Oh, lucid. Dreaming practice makes me tired because we tell ourselves that, and then we're, like, even more resistant to it. So find a way to make it feel really yummy. They climb into bed and like, like, sometimes like, you want to feel like a like a fun, little naughty fantasy before you go to sleep. Like a moment of like, true pleasure. It could be gratitude, anything like that, but play with the playfulness and see what see what happens. Thank you, of course. Thank you so much. Excellent. I saw a great question here. Just want to address, oh yeah, here we go about the Oh, nice answers, is it? Shant? I like this question. How does the experience of lucidity feel in the body? For those of you who have not yet had, like, a full on lucid dream, I think this is a really fun question to note, because even just thinking about that question, how does it feel in the body? What body right? I think this is super important, because you start to realize, like the lucid dream, it's so intensely sensorial, like it will feel like you have a body. For many people, when they get lucid, there's a really strong rush of energy. For a lot of people. Some people say, like it like, kind of goes up the chakras. There can be, like, quite an intense feeling to it as if your body, your dream body, is a real body, right? And coming out of lucid dreams, like, especially if you've had, like a big integration, like the first time, the first time I did, like a daily yoga practice in the dream, I summoned Aguilar kita shavara, and merged with the being, and it was an explosion of energy, and I woke up, and my body was, like, strong, right? It's like my physical body was impacted. So there is, there are, like, quite strong feelings and experiences with this, and so this is why we work on the stabilization. Because imagine, like, when you're getting lucid, your brain is adjusting to a completely unique brain state. Normally, that little piece of brain is asleep, and this piece is rocking and rolling during the day, this is awake, this is dormant. So now you have these two pieces of the brain that aren't normally, like living and active together, which coming online. And so stabilization helps us to have a bit of a grace period for our minds to adjust to that so that we can be in the dream. The dream stays nice and stable, and we're able to stay in the dream, we stay lucid, so we can be effective in the dream. That's the stabilization practices that we'll
work on. Excellent.
But in order to do stabilization, we need lucidity, and as mentioned today is about the activation. So I just want to quickly address the external stimulation. We talked about this a bit with the sleep hygiene, really, in terms of, like supplements and things. That's what I would recommend you go back to in terms of teas and supplements. And then we will do a quick piece tonight on wake back to bed. I'm going to walk you through the protocol, what I call like the first dream date, and I'll walk you through that. And that's what we do for our external, external stimulation. But even more important than that is the intrinsic motivation. So you have your kind of like, your your big holding correct motivation, the heart felt motivation for why you practice. And now we're going to take a little bit of fire and we're going to create a dream mission, which is a clarity of purpose and intention of what you are getting lucid for. When I'm working with like, a compelling dream mission, my lucidity rates are massively higher because I'm kind of, I have something to look forward to. My brain's like, Oh, when I next get lucid, I have a date with other lucid amazing and so my brain like, I'm like, I want to get lucid. So it helps by kind of creating a little more fire with our motivation. But it it also really makes sure that when we do have moments of lucidity, we don't end up in the awkward situation, which happens a lot, where if you're new to lucid dreaming, and you're still learning this, you get lucid, and you're like, I don't know what to do. And then you like, do something that's just like, impulsive. And then you wake up and you're like, Oh my God. Like, why did I use my lucid dream for that? And so by having a clear idea of what you want to work with, something that matters to you, your motto when the moment comes, you're able to use your lucidity for something that feels meaningful and rewarding for you. Now, to help us do that, we are going to work with the slogan. This week, I know that I'm dreaming as I am dreaming. So last week we're like, where am I? We're checking in. We're and this week, I want to bring a sense of like conviction. I know that I'm dreaming as I'm dreaming, and that can apply to waking state too, like in the big dream, in this, in the practice dream, both of these states like, okay, good. I know where I am moment to moment. And here this, I know that I'm dreaming as I'm dreaming is going to help, help ground us into the fact that when we get lucid, we are lucid enough that we can be collaborative with our dream. I saw some questions and comments in the WhatsApp groups around like, you know, if I'm sort of have an intention or purpose, am I being egotistical? Am I hijacking the dream? Am I trying to control the dream? And just some questions around that. And what I would say is that, especially in the beginning, a strong intention with an open heart and a collaborative nature is so rewarded by the dream. The dream, like the dreaming mind, the unconscious mind, it loves to collaborate with you, and you are not controlling the dream, right? Like this, this not even you can't even control a dream if you wanted to. The Dreaming mind is so much bigger and more powerful than the conscious mind, and if you try to like I remember when I was misguidedly trying to do some I think I tried to have all my dream figures silence and do a certain I was trying to like control, and I got kicked out of the dream for a while, and I had to, I had to do a lucid dream where I apologized to the to the dreaming mind and reconciled before my lucid dreaming practice continued. So just for context, like I learned my lesson for sure, so you don't have to worry about that if you're approaching it with like an open, collaborative heart. What this will do is, like I said, it'll give you a little bit more structure and get you into the dreaming if you're a super experienced lucid dreamer, these are practices that you can start to let go of. You can just kind of enter into a lucid dream and go more with the flow. And by that stage, you've got the practices to stay lucid, to get lucid. But see this for if you're not someone who's getting lucid, like a couple times a week, this can be super helpful for, like, boosting lucidity and like keeping you in the go so that's kind of the trick here. So what I'd love to do is you're gonna do a little bit of dreaming with me right now. I sent you some questions. I know a lot of you had a chance to look through them if, even if you haven't, don't worry, we'll explore it a little bit now, but we're to go into what you actually want to do. So I'll walk you through the stages of Dream Yoga. And as we go through these different dream plans, you can kind of pitch where they are, but essentially, like when you get lucid, you have the possibility of interacting with your own mind and the dreaming world in a kind of infinite way. And so knowing what's important to you is going to matter. Stage one of Dream Yoga, by the way, these are Andrew's stages. He very, very intelligently, kind of mapped out nine stages from the traditional three. The traditional three were relatively short instructions, and he's given so much more flavor to them. So we're working with his nine stages. Stage one is getting lucid. These are, these are a short version stage two is like testing the nature of reality, walking through walls, putting your hand through tables, you know, really experiencing the illusory nature of form. Stage three is transformation of objects. So taking an apple and using your mind to multiply it, to make it bigger, to make it smaller, all this again, like retraining the brain to see the illusion nature of form. Stage four is transformation of fear, which is where you start to work with, like, in Union terms, your shadow aspects of your psyche. Or if you want to do deeper work, you can kind of go to the ontological fears. So really, exploring the fear the ego has of dissolution and non existence gets pretty interesting. I spent 18 months of my first couple of years of lucid dream training purely working with transformation of fear. And then stage five is generation practice, where it's like deity yoga, where you can summon something like, I mean, in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, yes, a deity, but anything that encapsulates your highest values, a Jesus, you know, a Buddha. And you can, like, essentially, internalize that like you would, by collapsing together and then practicing actually arising as that yourself. So imagine the power of this, right? If a lucid dream you your brain is experiencing what happens in a lucid dream as if it's real, it has the same impact on your brain as if you're doing in waking state. What is the impact of arising as the Buddha or as Jesus, and having that fully incorporate into your nervous system? Right? So generation stage stage six is learning to project your consciousness into another dream figure, very intense empathy, building practice. Stage seven is astral projection, where the Tibetan Buddhist learn to conjure a sort of like an energy body and leave the mind and explore astral realms. Stage eight is really this higher meditation practices which help lead into the non dual stages of stage nine, which is sleep yoga, which is where you're learning to continue your lucidity into non REM states. So not just being lucid of the dream, but being lucid and deep sleep. They say that the Tibetan monks never slept. It's because they were always conscious. It was their bodies went to sleep, but their consciousness stayed lucid. So that's a hell of a map. And what we're going to look at today is really going to go up to, like, stage four, stage five. But let's go on a little tour. And like, as I share these ideas, I want you to feel into what's exciting for you. The sweet spot here is your dream mission should feel exciting like, like, you have a really cool date with someone you want to hang out with, or just something exciting you looking forward to, but not overwhelming or scary. So maybe, like, if you haven't done shadow integration before, maybe don't go for, like, summoning your childhood trauma. Maybe start with something that's like, fun and interesting and practice the skill first. So, for instance, like, anything goes with this. Like, I really, and if you, if you haven't been lucid before, I really encourage you to do a little bit of wish performance first. Like, here, like flying. Flying never gets old. It's an incredible feeling. So I just want you to just close your eyes for a second imagine, like, what would it feel like if I got lucid in a dream and I just was able to just jump up into the sky, fully free, soar over the earth, like, wow, right? And so any kind of wish fulfillment stuff where you wanted to have an experience like that, if you haven't had that before, it's it's a beautiful place to start. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And it could be like food. I mean, the most delicious food I've ever tasted has been in lucid dreams, and it's a really cool way to play with like sensation and taste, music, dancing, like being able to do back slips and things I can't do in waking state, singing on stage, I can't sing to save my life, right? So just thinking about things that you're like, ah, if I had a magic wand, what would I do? And so that might be something that's fun, and that's and that's like a stage two, stage three practice.
Maybe for you, you want to kind of work more with your spiritual aspects. If you're someone who has a strong meditation practice, especially like an active meditation practice, like Tong Lin or data yoga, something which can be visual and somatic, then perhaps when you get lucid, you want to do that practice in a dream. Chi, Gong, tai chi, amazing in a dream, Qigong, you know, I love Qigong. When you do it in waking state, you know you're feeling the subtleties of the energy in a dream, when you summon light into your hands, there's light in your hands. I grew my feet into roots into the ground, right? Like it's not a visualization. It's happening to your sense of your body. So thinking into Do you want to have the high definition version of a spiritual practice that might be interesting, and that would be depends on the practice you're doing, but you know, stage four, stage five, stage eight, or maybe you want to do testing reality. So we're talking about, like, how do you explore understanding the true nature of reality? The Lucid Dream gives us the ability to do this in a non conceptual way. So no longer just intellectualizing it. You get to have the experience. So don't feel like you have to jump to, like, being Buddha. That's, I think that's a big mistake. I only started doing stage five practices in the sixth year of my training, just for context. So I really like, there's so much you can do in the first four stages. First two stages. Don't feel like you have to rush. So here is like, walking through walls. I know a lot of you have tried this as well, and it's like, it's a really interesting experience, because even when you're lucid, and you go to walk through a wall, like sometimes, because of the habit of the mind, you get stuck, or the wall is sludgy, but there is no wall. And so like the the mental discipline it requires to start realizing there is no wall and there should be no sensations. This is also where, like, part of what I would do is play with movement. So I would change gravity so that gravity is, like, two feet higher. So I'm walking two feet above the ground, or, you know, collapsing time and space. You don't have to walk in a dream. There's no space. So looking at a point and appearing there, so you can start to play with these rules of physics that we obey in waking state, and essentially do magic. That's what stage two and stage three is. It's like the magician's realm. And so if you're curious about understanding the nature of reality, then this is where you should be hanging out, making a dream around, doing impossible things that fascinates you. Could I do that? If I got could I have 360 vision? Could I get rid of gravity? Could I turn the world upside down, infinitely creative possibilities, and then, you know, transformation of fear. So I've hugged hundreds. I've hugged hundreds of monsters and zombies and skeletons and men with guns and nightmare figures of my dreams. And I love it because I think for me personally, I had such a challenging time with my psyche when I was younger, and I was so fragmented. I had so much compartmentalization and kind of trauma in my system that going through. That's why I spent 18 months on this, going into the dream and actively working with my fear, which would mean, let's say you have a lot of nightmares, training to get lucid in the nightmare, instead of running away from the nightmare, turning to the nightmare and saying, What do you represent? Hugging it, integrating it. Next week, I'm going to teach you guys the emergency compassion response, which is a really good way to work with this. But if you feel that you're up for that and ready for that, it's a really beautiful thing. If you get lucid and you're not in nightmare, you can summon something you're afraid of, or just summon a shadow, like I would work with something like, it doesn't even have to be scary, the shadow of money. My money shadow was like a nerdy little accountant lizard lady, right? So, like, they don't they're not always monsters. They're often just parts of ourselves that we've disowned. So you can kind of think about, like, ah, is there a part of my psyche, or even, like my inner child, for instance, or my golden shadow, something that I want to connect with, that I feel like has been pushed aside in my life. Maybe it's your creativity. Maybe you want to meet you know, the part of you that was told that they couldn't sing. You can summon those aspects and then talk to them and integrate them. So again, feeling into if that feels good, just being aware that, like if it's your first lucid dreaming kind of experiences, rather than going for, like the deepest, darkest shadow, thinking about something maybe exciting but not, but not like the craziest thing, because we want to practice this. We want to build our capacity for holding. So what we're going to do is we're going to explore this and for five minutes. I want you to actually answer these couple questions. If you prepped, you'll already have a better idea. But first of all, I just want you to write down what it is that you want to do. So first of all, you can be like, Okay, I'm going to summon the personification of my creativity, or I'm going to meet my higher self, or I'm gonna travel to outer space, or someone a centaur, which I love, because I love CentOS. And once you've written that down, I want you to take the rest of the five minutes to really visualize it and be like a kid here. Like, you can write it out, you can close your eyes, but really go, like, ah, like, if I could experience anything. What would happen if you summoned your personification of your creativity? What questions would you ask it? What would you want to know if you are going into outer space, is there something you want to see? Is it a planet you want to do? You want to make a world now I want you just like, to like, feel into the the magic and the importance of that dream. Let me see if I get a little music for us for this too. So we're gonna do that for five minutes. Just get your notebook, or, if not a notebook, then the computer. Like I Do, I'm
just one more minute, seeing if you can get a little color and shape to the daydream of your night dream. How does it feel? What questions do you ask? How do you feel when you wake up? Kind of crafting this like Your Own, limitless visualization. I
All right. So even if you haven't finished that, don't worry again. The worksheet for this will be sent out afterwards, so you can kind of come back to it, but I want to get to the next step of this so you can get really clear for what we call the San culpa. So a lot of you would have heard this word. It's used in all kinds of different yoga practices. Thinking of a San culpa as a heartfelt desire, you know, really a strong intention. And I love this word because it's really the idea of, like, something that's connected with highest truth and a vow. So it's this kind of, it's a more spiritual thing than just having an intention. Charlie Morley uses this, and it's one of my favorite kind of ways of languaging this. So your San culpa is going to be a short statement that captures the essence of the dream, and it's going to be essentially like, I don't know if anyone here uses chat GPT, I will time it's it's the input like the chat GPT prompt, but for your dream, and so you want something short and memorable that You're going to say out loud that's going to activate the dream mission. So, for instance, you know, if you're summoning something, you can whatever you're summoning, and then come to me, so my true Higher Self come to me, and it does two things. It takes that big dream that you have, like, oh, like, I want to be able to do this and ask the question. And you kind of like, bring all of that down into an easy to remember sentence. Because when you get lucid, if you're gonna have to be like, Oh, what was I gonna do again? I think I was gonna like my inner child when I was nine, and I was gonna like you to spend this confusion trying to figure it out. If you've got your San culpa, it's going to be easy to remember in the dream. You can say it out loud and then, like, it activates the whole process. If it's something fun, like space, space exploration, let's fly, or centaurs, let's go. So anything, any kind of languaging that works for you, that captures the essence of the dream, so short, memorable, and captures the essence of the dream, and that's the Sen culpa you're going to work with. So just taking a couple minutes to see if you can really nail nail the senkapo for this, and then,
as you've got your Sen culpa, if you want to share it in the chat as we're doing this, and if I need to tweak it, I'll do my best to To give you comments.
You and The nice thing about the Stan culpa is it doesn't need to make sense to anybody else. As long as you know what it means, your unconscious will know what it means, so you can speak in secret language to yourself. I love this one here. It's like the interior tree. I'm like, I don't know what that means, but you do so as all this is clear,
these are great.
All right, so then just a couple comments. So just as so we can kind of workshop these together to learn together. So Stefan, you're one. I'm meeting my dream guide. How you might improve that is by thinking of it almost like a not a command, but like a request. So like dream guide, come to me, or when I turn around, there is my dream guide. So thinking of this as being like having some strong energy to it, not like ra energy, but how you would plant a really strong seed of intention, because that's the dream responds so beautifully to that your clarity of intention, energetically and with your words, is really powerful. And so I really, I used to say things like, Oh, I'm going to explore and find my something, something. And those dreams were like, hit and miss. When I got super clear, like money, shadow would come to me, and I would turn around. There she is. And so that way you can spend the rest of the energy of the dream actually being in the interaction versus kind of creating a more difficult entry to finding what you're trying to experience beautiful these are great sleep guide. I'm ready for you great, true self, come to me. Yes, let's do Qigong. So good. Isn't this work just wild? Like, sometimes I stop, I'm like, This is so wild, this work that we do together, it is, it is truly the cutting edge of conscious exploration. Okay, beautiful. So what we are going to now do is you guys have the basics for your dream mission, you can complete that in your own time. What I would suggest, actually, me show you this if you if you want, like to really strengthen this, just knowing that you know the unconscious works in the symbolic register. And so images are really powerful. Doing something like all those images I use that I make in mid journey. Now, when I have a dream mission, I'll usually make an image in the journey that kind of captures the feeling. You can find a photograph online that kind of captures it. Or like, I'd really recommend, like here, this is I'm showing you like, one of my worst ones. So you know, it doesn't have to be good, but drawing it all in one go. So this one here was for like, a summoning of it in a child. Up here we see name, walk, slap, spin, that's my stabilization processes, which we'll learn next week. And then I'm like, mirror up here I summon my inner child. And then here I'm like, Ah, I'm going to do the whole point of prayer. I'm sorry, forgive me. Thank you. I love you. To my inner child, look at this boring heart in and then, ah, integrate. So I'm capturing that whole kind of visualization into a picture. This is the sankalpa mirror appear. I summon my inner child. That's the San culpa. But if you want, like, doing something like this is really, really powerful, and then rehearsing it in your mind, that's a way that you are. You're going to kind of practice it before the dream. So when you get lucid, you're completely prepared with your sankalpa. Really, it really, it really makes a difference. Yeah, definitely bonus points for for rehearsing it. They've been a couple times where I've been trying to do a a dream mission, and I haven't been successful. And so I will do an active rehearsal before bed. And it really, really helps. It like it puts it into your body memory. I'll say this in culpa out loud. I'll turn around and it just, it just helps so that in the moment you're really ready to go now, aware of time, keep talking this with you guys forever. Let's go through the wake back to bed. A lot of you would have heard about this technique. It is undoubtedly one of the most common and one of the most effective lucid dreaming induction techniques. I want to just give a little context before I walk you through the instructions. The instructions I'm going to share are in the folder. You have all of that. I'll send it out to but it's in the same place that all the other resources are. What I would say is that this is a sleep disruption process, which means that you will be waking up in the middle of the night and doing practice in the middle of the night, which is totally fine. It's one of the reasons why it's so effective. But in order for that to feel sustainable and not drive us crazy, I like to call I like to create what I call dream dates, so like a wake back to bed, it should be used and implemented where there is space and time and flexibility with your sleep, and to make it really fun, so that you feel like that night when you're going to do your wake back to bed, you have a date with your dreams. It's like you've dedicated that night and the morning after to a dreaming ritual. And so just creating that little bit of extra space and intentionality will mean that as you get the hang of these practices, if it doesn't quite go right, or you're kind of tweaking, there's no disappointment, because you've taken it as a learning experience, and your work the next day doesn't suffer. I'll also caveat this by saying, you know, like, I don't use wake back to bed anymore, and when I have a baby version that I'll teach you at the end too, which I do naturally without having to use sleep disruption, I think Wake back to bed is incredibly effective. It like this, say, 1000 times more likely to get you lucid, or whatever the study said. And I know that so many of you are already kind of a little fragile with your sleep, and so use this as feels right for you. And and know it's a skill, so you it might take you a couple times to get the hang of it. So with that disclaimer, said it is a really, it is a really great tool to understand, and I'll explain to you why it works. So I'm gonna walk it through you here. What are you guys seeing? I don't think that's the right one. Hang on. Let's see. And if you want to, if you want to read this in your like along with me, I'm going to bring it up on the screen. You can just go back to where the original resources are in week four. But I think, can you guys see this? Is this readable? Try to make it bigger. Okay, so let's go through this together again. Dream date. We're gonna like my version of wake back to bed has a little more frills. So the aim of this practice is to find your perfect balance point between being physically sleepy but mentally alert. So this is an art and a science. And to start, I would really recommend you er on the sleepy side. So when we do these sleep disruption practices, rather than staying up for the full hour. Start, start. Staying up 10 minutes, right? Er, towards, oh, no, I just fell asleep and nothing happened. Versus, ah, I stay up for four hours. So step number one, set up a sacred place, a comfortable space that's not your bed, that you can go when you wake up. So comfortable, inviting, inspiring, sacred. Think of it like a midnight picnic. Could be on the floor. It could be on a couch or a desk. It's not somewhere you have to sleep. It's somewhere you're just going to get up to go do your practices. But use the sensory things, Paola Santo, essential oils, flameless candles, meditation, objects, sacred imagery, anything that kind of makes it feel holy, comfy blankets. I mean, it should feel like something you want to do, because when you wake up at four in the morning, trust me, you'll be grateful, because sometimes it's hard to get out of bed. So number two, you're going to set an awakening alarm. So I mean, wake back to bed works, because remember the sleep cycles we talked about, you're going to use this system by getting all your deep sleep out the way so your body is rested, but then you're going to wake yourself up as you're doing these longer cycles. So instead of trying to, like, get lucid at the beginning of the night, when you're really just going to go into deep sleep, you're like, okay, cool. I'm going to wake up once that's done, and I'm going to work really strongly with my REM so that's what we're doing here. So allow yourself the first three cycles of sleep, which is about four and a half hours, set an alarm to disrupt the fourth cycle of sleep. Now this is key if you're going to do a wake back to bed. I really recommend don't set the alarm to wake you up when you would normally be waking up. It's sleep disruption because you want to be sleepy. So I always set the alarm to be like, yeah, like 4.35 to five hours because of my sleep cycles. So it's gonna, it's gonna wake me up when I've just kind of dropped back to sleep on that next cycle. So if you don't know what your cycles are, you can play with this with like an aura ring, or like any of those kind of body fit tracker things that people do just to get to sense of your your sleep cycles. But otherwise, try, try this kind of timing, and you'll start to see, take
into account how long it takes you fall asleep. If it takes you half an hour to fall asleep, do it from when you fall asleep. So if you go to bed 10 o'clock, but only fall asleep at 1030 set the alarm for three o'clock now number three pre sleep create a chill, sacred experience. So before you go to sleep at the end of the actual night, just take 30 minutes and do the pre sleep practices, right? We talked about this, like write down anything that's looping, do the body clearings. You want to make sure that as you enter into your dream date, you are like open, clear, relaxed, so you can do your physical releases, shaking, unwinding, the breaths, mind stretching, blue, lot of tea if you're in a relationship, make love. Chat dream, connect, read your lucid dreaming statement like anything that's going to make you feel open, connected and alive. This is really important. So don't like be on your phone before you start your dream date into presence, meditation, breathing. So after three minutes of like pre sleep chill time, you can go to bed and then start doing your lucidity induction mantra. And then this is really important too. So when you now have the alarm, you're gonna wake up, it's gonna be like, three to four o'clock in the morning. And you might be like, why am I doing this? This is where you're just gonna roll over and get to that sleep space, put the candle on and just sit and first, when you're doing these practices, I'm like, Just do 10 to 15 minutes. Don't feel like you have to stay up for an hour, like literally, just take 10 to 15 minutes and sit, do some meditation practice, review your mission statement, no screens, nothing stressful. Don't like, read very technical books or anything like that. I would, I would really sit in the kind of dreamy space. And when I say the sweet spot, this is where you want to feel like you should your body should feel tired. You want to be like, oh, I want to go back to bed like you should feel like your body wants to sleep, but you want to wait for that sweet spot where your mind starts to kind of like, be a little more active. Because what we're trying to do is take that active mind back into the sleep. So a little bit of activation, but like not enough that you're now stuck awake for four hours. So meditation practice, Mantra, chanting, drawing, writing, like by hand, right? So, yeah, sleepy body gently bringing your mind online. And then once you come back to bed, if you sleep on your back, lie on your side. If you sleep on your side, lie on your back, like take a posture that's not going to have you just conk out immediately, do a little bit of the induction phrases, and then roll back and go to sleep. So that's you've essentially given yourself the opportunity to have another entry. But instead of going into deep sleep, you're going right into REM so if you've got a little bit more mental activity going on, you've done your inductions, you're like, I'm going into the dream. That degree of awareness is what is so compelling and effective, and could really get you lucid. So adjustments to this are, you're going to have to figure out how awake or how sleepy you are. For some of you, staying up for 10 minutes and then going back to bed, you're just going to conk out and be like, Ah, nothing happened. For others, you stay up for 20 minutes, you go back to bed and you're like, ah, it took me, like, a bit longer to fall back asleep. So you need a spirit of curiosity, and a spirit of experimentation is really important with this. I know Andrew also says that you can take Galantamine in the period, so like when you wake up, taking Galantamine, or any of those kind of like REM supportive supplements that can also really help. So if you're really wanting to double dose it. You can do the induction plus the external stimulant for someone who's like, really wants to test it. But the adjustments here are, like, just what you would think. If you're falling asleep too quickly, stay up for longer if you're if you couldn't get to sleep, do it softer. The baby wake back to bed? That I use is not sleep disruption, but it gives you a similar opportunity. So if you listening to that, and you're like, ah, try this first. I get up every night after my deep sleep cycles, like I usually have, like, one of these big guys before bed, and so I need to wake up to go in the bathroom. And I've usually had my deep sleep out the way. I'll get up, I'll use the restroom. I'll do like, some kind of, like, meditation mantras when I'm in the restroom, I'll come back to my bed and I'll just like, turn my little flameless candle on, like, right next to my bed. And I'll just like, sit up in bed and just for like, three to five minutes, I'll just do some connective breathing, some meditating. I'll think about my dream mission. Ah yes, tonight I'm going to go in and I'm going to do this cool, cool, cool, and sometimes I'll even keep my eyes closed, and then I'll just turn it off and just go back to sleep. And it's really gentle, because you're not you're not disrupting your sleep pattern. You're working with like a natural wake up, the natural kind of biphasic sleep pattern, but you're still giving yourself an opportunity to kind of really intentionally re enter into REM again, play with this. If, for some of you just writing your dreams down the middle and it keeps you up, leave it alone. You do not need to do sleep disruptive practices to get lucid, but they can really help if you're wanting to induce a lucid dream. You really want to get lucid. You really want to figure it out. I think, with how much, how much galindomine Lorraine, so that's how much galactomy. So very good, famous question, if you've never taken it before, don't take a big dose. They say, I mean, if you look it up online, they'll say, like, between four to eight grams. It's quite a lot. Start with like three, two or three. So Linda, turn the flameless candle off if you want to. Yeah, I usually will. And by the way, the reason flameless candle with the with these practices, you don't want to be using real flames in case you do fall asleep and you forget. So just every these are super accessible. Buy yourself some famous candles. It's it's highly, highly worth it. Oh, yeah. Milligrams, sorry, John, thank you. Do not take eight grams of galindomine. I'm so glad that Lisa has you check that little box at the beginning of this. No. Milligrams, yeah for sure. And look, do your research and like, think about yourself. I'm a highly activated mind, so I know for me, I always err on the gentle side of any stimulation, any activating practices. I'm gentle, gentle, gentle, gentle. If you're someone who's like, I just conk out and I can I'm hard to get up and hard to wake up. You can go a little stronger, a little stay up a little later, take a little more glantamine. Play with it, right? But just, just know the dials. That's the trick. Amazing. Okay, so that's pretty exciting. Let's take a few questions. I know we're coming up to the end there, maybe, yeah, let's do 10 minutes of questions, maybe three people who would like to have their questions answered tonight.
Wendy, hi,
hi. I went through a lot of Andrew's classes and had amazing lucid dream stages. And then before this class, I probably went two months without a lucid dream. Long time. Now, during the class, I'm having little dreams where I'm not in control. But I used to be able to do all kinds of meditation practices in my dreams. But usually my meditation practices start with paying attention to my breath, and now I notice that puts me in my physical body, and I immediately wake up right? But I very much liked having those meditative experiences in a lucid dream, because they're really powerful. Suggests a different way to move into that that doesn't get me in my body? Also the question, Where am I? Puts me right in bed?
Oh, really, right.
Oh, yeah, I that doesn't work so well. The question I like is, how did I How did I get here, getting because I didn't ask that awake, and know how I got here, but if I do it in a dream,
you know how your mind is? Like your mind is literal. It's like you're in bed, girl, like, I just, I love how gorgeous it is, like how our minds are so different. Well, first of all, like beautifully, you've already had this momentum with the meditation practices. I hear you. It's a translating our waking state practices into the dream. Have some difficulties because of just the parameters. So close eyes, closed eyed practices more challenging the dreams. All that. What I would say is, look at whether you're you have some practices which work more with either like the sensation, like skin sensations. So this is why the physical movements, like chi, Gong, these kinds of practices are so great, because moving the body itself grounds you back in the dream, or something like tonglen, where you you're not so much focusing on the dress breath. You're keeping your eyes open and you're working with the dreamscape, which is a really powerful thing to do too. So I think look at which practices you have familiarity with, which would sort of like help de emphasize too much internal looking. But have you instead look into like, like, even like, open eye, emptiness practice, or things like that, working with keeping the your sort of mind engaged with the phenomenon of the dream, or alternatively, like a stage eight practice would be really to just go into witnessing awareness, so not even trying to do an active meditation, per se, but just really adopting that kind of open awareness approach and really just witnessing the phenomena of the dream like you would witness your thoughts and so kind of going to that level of practice would be possible to Oh, okay, let me unmute you,
most of the time, I don't seem to have a body in my dreams. I'm just a point of awareness. You're
already there. You're already there. Wendy,
nobody, well, that makes it hard to do any checks. Yeah.
Have you tried? I mean, have you ever tried summoning a body just for the curiosity of it?
No, I haven't, and that's an interesting
what could, what could be fun? Like, yeah, just, just to, like, experiment you could go, huh? Like, next time I'm lucid, I'm gonna summon hands. Like, if you, if you're able to con your hands, you normally, like, you'd be amazed how, like a body comes with it, like, so if you're able, you're like, you're like, I summon my own hands and like, you expect to see them. They come up, and then you move into some kind of more even, like a walking meditation practice, or like anything like that.
Yeah, I practice Tai Chi. So that sounds very interesting. Oh,
you should be doing Tai Chi in the dream. That's like, the coolest thing. Oh, my gosh, it's the coolest if you've got practice in the waking state. Go do that and then come tell me what you find beautiful. Thanks so much. Wendy, alright, we'll go to to John R and then that'll be us for tonight. I can't you know we nearly done this course, which is kind of mind boggling to me. Liliane,
hi, thank you. You said lots of helpful things tonight, and I'm thinking maybe there's some I can take, because I'm wondering if I've been possibly wanting too fast, too much. Basically, I haven't had a lucid dream. So I feel a bit like the bad student, you know, the one who has not I've, you know, I'm doing the practices, and like, I walk on the beach and look at my hands, and I've been very dedicated, I think, to the practice. But my dreams go all over the place in all kinds of directions, and I'm often disappointed in the morning, because I do have some intentions. I've worked with intentions, and I don't go any anywhere close to my intentions. There are all kinds very mundane at least, that's my judgment. And so I've had a without going too much into details, I've had a difficult year with lots of death, and one of my my desires is to come to some peace and meet people beyond the veil. And I've been wondering, especially with what you were saying to you know tonight about flying if possibly being too serious, too fast, or wanting too much, could be something that interferes.
Well, it sounds to me like you've done an incredible job already unpacking that. I'm going to reflect back to you what I hear, which is that, in the context especially, it sounds like of having had to deal with so much loss and grief, what initially drew you here was the idea of like, to see my loved ones, to have resolutions, right? A very strong, powerful motivation. But of course, within that can be a lot of like, expectation of outcome, disappointment when it doesn't happen, calling yourself a bad student. Now, for those of you who listening, what does she need more of heart motivation? Because it's exactly that your loved ones those experiences, they're all there waiting. And if we're approaching it like I have to get lucid, I need to do this, damn it. I didn't do it last night. That turns lucidity off for sure. And so I would do a couple things for the lucid dreaming. Part of it, I would try tap into your personal joy. So for this dream mission, like knowing that the first few lucid dreams you have are learning dreams, and once you develop the skill, you'll be able to work with like, I have a dear friend who committed suicide, and lucid dreams were an incredibly powerful way for me to reconcile, right? And I think, but you need a bit of practice first, and a bit of stability and so and a great thing just explore, like, where your joy is for this, for this beginning piece. But then the other thing is with lucid dream. You know, with dreaming, you can also do dream inductions which are not lucid dreams. If you want to have a dream of someone who's passed, or if you want to make your dreams less mundane, what I would advise doing is working with a picture, so if it's a person, or if it's like, you just want to make your dreams more interesting before you go to sleep. Have a beautiful, full color picture of them and like, sit with that. Feel it like, let the let the symbolic image driven register of the unconscious mind absorb it, and sit with that beautiful intention of, like, oh, wouldn't it be beautiful if I saw them tonight, or wouldn't it be beautiful if I went to Paris tonight, like you can do this with any kind of dream induction. So even before you start building lucidity, you can induce dreams. And you might not be lucid to them, but they can still be very beautiful and very powerful. So that way, you can kind of work with both connecting to your joy as you do your lucid dreaming training. And then, you know, maybe a few nights a week, like working with an image of either someone you want to connect with or a way that you want to spice up your dream life and just see what that brings in, but playfulness, pleasure, joy, like, that's what I want. Like, that's your homework. No, serious, beautiful. Thank you. Thank
you. Thank you.
All right, I think, did we lose our at the Chappies? We lost the Chappies. Okay, all right. Well, thank you all so much. That was a beautiful exploration into these kind of activating practices. And as I think next week is our last, like our last teaching class together, so next week, we're going to go into stabilizing the dream and what I call an emergency compassion response. So this is a tool you're going to develop which will really strengthen your ability to deal with any kind of nightmares, do any kinds of integrations. And once you've kind of got this in your tool belt, for anyone who has, like, maybe some fear or unconscious blocks towards lucid dreaming. This really helps, because you know you're prepared. And after that, the week after will be Andrew's class, where he's going to take us beyond the basics, which are very excited for us so and then, just a reminder, I'll send out the link again for for our upcoming retreat, which is going to be super exciting. But thank you all so much. I hope you have a beautiful night's sleep, beautiful dreams, lucid dreams, and don't forget as well, like heart connecting to the heart using the dimensions of the heart, that's really the core of this practice as well. Thank you all. You
