Dream Yoga: More Than Lucid Dreaming

so let me share with you one of my real passions which is the world of sleep and dream and I think this is really our first exploration into a topic that can intimated when he said you know we're going to show you some practices that will introduce you to states of consciousness yes so this may be one that surprises you and I think it's a fantastic way to look at dark retreat look at the eve the evening the night in an entirely new way and to bring this otherwise unconscious state of existence into conscious awareness so what I want to do tonight is contextualize to practice a little bit to give you some idea of its importance in Buddhism and I will share a little bit about nighttime techniques things that you can do tonight and then maybe tomorrow in my afternoon presentation I'll give you some daytime techniques because the daytime techniques are just as important is the nighttime ones so each and every night when we go to sleep whether we know it or not we take a tour through the trachea we descend whatever metaphor you want to use we descend from the gross realm gross level of consciousness and through the subtle level of consciousness very subtle levels of because they even causal now dual and then of course every morning we kind of recapitulate that we reverse that and rise to so-called waking consciousness so every night when we go to sleep we have the opportunity to explore these levels of extraordinarily subtle levels of heart in mind which by the way parenthetically will be of enormous benefit to us when we die according to the Buddhist tradition because dream yoga in Buddhism came about as a way to prepare for death so every night when we go to sleep and ken talks about this this idea of recapitulation of the three theory of recapitulation every night when we go to sleep it's a concordant experience of what's referred to as the Bardo dying when we descended the deep dreamless sleep that's a concordant experience of what's called the luminous part of da matta which in fact is the enlightened state so whether we know it or not we descend into that every night when we fall asleep and if we're very between each the rising a cessation of each and every thought morpheus the god of sleep I miss I'm sorry the guarded dream Thanatos the god of death are twins their twin brothers and who is the father who's Papa Hypnose the god of sleep sleep is just a code word for ignorance so it is ignorant that gives birth to both dream and death and by transcending ignorance we transcend both of these or at least bring both of them onto the path so according to both Vajrayana Buddhism which I'm a student of and invited Vedanta we actually have it all backwards this so-called waking state because it's the most dualistic is actually this is the state where we are most asleep and if we become aware of it as we descend into subtle and extremely subtle levels of mind every night we're descending into greater and greater levels of now into awareness so in deep dreamless sleep where for most of us and I'll talk maybe just a little bit about what's called sleep yoga there is a practice first deep sleep we're actually in the most non-dual elevated state if we're aware of it and then when we wake up into this so-called waking reality we're actually the most asleep we actually have it backwards and these practices allow us to see that and then bring the insight from the deep dreamless state into waking consciousness so dream yoga together is part of the vagina teachings but by the way Vajrayana is not part of the three turning schema it's outside of it the three turning schema is still held within Mahayana doctrine just so you know and one of the really interesting things about Audriana that really resonates with integral theory altogether is vouching honor really is integral Buddhism in the sense that integral in a sense of integrated it brings absolutely everything onto the path a synonym for Vajrayana is upaya jana the vehicle of skillful means and what this means is there is literally no state that is not brought to bear on to the path of awakening sleep dream death sex there are yoga's and practices associated with each and every one of these so that we can basically if we so decide practice 24/7 and the practices I'll give to you tonight I mean think about it we spend about a third of our lives in sleep a state of awareness consciousness that we know very little about so theoretically if you live to be 90 years old and you could bring you know a level of practice to a third of your life think of what you could do with 30 x2 years but this is very tricky because you know in a very deep sense sleep ie ignorance is egos ultimate refuge so eco doesn't want to go here and there'll be a very deep part of you every night if you engage in this practice it will sooner or later say and this is why dream yoga the moniker for dream yoga is called the measure of the path and this regard is resonant with even psychological flawed dreams and dream Yoga are truth tellers and I promise you and this is a very important thing to know is that dream Yoga will reveal your passion for ignorance it will show you that at a certain point I don't want to go this far in waking up is my teacher pendo Papa J says I would prefer to be stupid thank you so it's helpful to know that so that when we feel resistance to this practice we bring a sense of humor to it a sense of levity otherwise if the practice becomes too heavy-handed we simply won't do it there has to be a light touch to this particular practice so dream Yoga itself is not the same as lucid dreaming do you know what lucid dreaming is I'm a quick poll I always do this great how many people here have had a lucid dream yeah it was fantastic and how many people here have meditated yeah so there's no my studies have shown in informal polls like this show me that there's a direct proportion direct proportionality between meditators and those who have increased likelihood of lucidity and dreams because really you're working with the same type of phenomenology and we'll talk about this tomorrow every time we're distracted with a thought it's the same expression of ignorance happening in a micro genetic form so by becoming lucid to the contents of our own mind now which by the way well at least one neuroscientist has said that we are aware most people untrained we are aware of less than 99 99 percent of what takes place in our mind in other words we're only aware we're only lucid to about 1% of the contents of our own mind in this Kabir set of death we can say of dream what is found then is found now so as we become lucid to our states of consciousness now and tomorrow I'll talk about this in terms of the daily practice is we wake up to the contents of our mind now we will naturally wake up to the contents of our my dream so with that said let me give you some tips nighttime practices what we're going to be doing with with dream yoga's we're working with several laws of karma and the first of these laws is is referred to as a law of proximate Karma which is the second of four laws pardon the introduction but I want to give some substantiation to this where this comes from at any moment of transition there are four laws of karma and operation this means you know moment to moment life to life sleep to dream to waking and of these four laws of transitional karma the one that we have the most control over which is utilized in dream yoga's using Bardo Yoga is used in Pure Land teachings is what's called a law of proximate Karma and the way I like to think of this is the play on Allen Ginsberg's idea you may have heard of it first thought best thought which refers to kind of the freshness of the present moment before a second thought comes in but law of proximate Karma is really last thought best thought and what this means is that the last thought you have on your mind in a preceding succeeding moment of consciousness is a direct and immediate impact on the succeeding moment of consciousness we know this - associative processes so this is something that we have direct control over so what we do here we take advantage of it so what this means is when you're going to sleep and this also involves the use of another very very powerful law of karma which is the law of intention what you want to do is you want to really feel it don't just flap your lips really feel it with your heart tonight I will have many dreams tonight I will have good dreams tonight I will become lucid in my dreams and if you do that it's almost like gift wrapping of a package for you so that when you descend through the membrane of sleep this last thought can actually seed your dream state and then lucidity becomes really kind of instantaneous as a consequence of that so this is something that we can do very very easily so what I do when I go to sleep very simple I lie down on my back I settle myself I breathe 21 times I count because you want to settle I want to settle your breathing and then what I'll do is I'll roll over on the right side this is called the sleeping ma a lyin mudra sleeping lying posture this is considered the best posture in which to sleep dream and die this is the posture the Buddha took when he died and it's very interesting because what it does it employs the subtle body which is where subtle states of consciousness are supported and by lying down on the right side what you're doing is you're blocking off the channels that are associated with masculine outgoing kind of waking consciousness it's called Sun poison prana and if you're really into it if you really want to do this what you do also is then you place your thumb on your right nostril and actually block that nostril off and it serves to pinch off this particular channel it then opens the channel of the feminine channel on the left side is called moon nectar prana and this is the type of mode the feminine mode that you want to have your mind and heart bathed then as you sleep dream and die because really in a very deep sense when you enter these very subtle states of consciousness you're returning to the primordial mother you're returning to the great mother progeny parameter which is feminine quality of awareness so then the second thing you want to do is again this employs kind of subtle body anatomy and physiology which again is the substrate this is what supports subtle states of mind you want to bring your awareness to your throat and the reason you want to do this this is very interesting because according to the inner yoga systems consciousness is dictated by where these um they're called mind drops or binge ooze according to the inner contours Kalachakra Tantra and others is that consciousness is dictated physiologically where these Bindu is a creech so right now most of us are awake I know some people are dozing off but most of us our vendors are gathered in our head center that constitutes waking consciousness when we fall into deep dreamless sleep these mind drops go to the heart when we wake up some I wake up in the dream they arise in the throat so we can take advantage of this process by bringing our awareness consciously to our throat because as it says is where the mine goes the winds go where the winds go the Prada the bin dews go the mine drops where the bin dues go consciousness goes so you can become so facile in this process Stephen Laberge talks about it he's probably the preeminent academic writer on lucidity in the Western world and he talks about a very interesting process the acronym of which is compelling is called waking induced lucid dreaming the acronym of which is wild and it really is wild but so very advanced dream yoga practitioners can literally through the power of the subtle body practices the inner yoga's which constitute one third of Audrianna practice you can so powerfully direct your mind essence to your throat that you can go into into a dreaming consciousness within a matter of seconds almost and if you can do that you're instantly lucid so this is a very interesting thing to do and one way to play with this that's very fun is imagine and this is the classic dream yoga instruction is visualize a red for pelted Lotus because this is the heart chakra the sambhoga chakra this is where consciousness goes when we sleep and what you do here is you simply go to sleep bring your awareness to this red chakra and as you are going to sleep you can just kind of trace out the chakra at your throat level and what this does is it serves as a kind of dimmer because most of the time when we go to sleep we're kind of aware you know semi where we're dropping down you know the light is still more or less on and also boom it's off we've lost it so by working with this subtle Lotus visualization at the throat it's like a light dimmer you're actually dimming your consciousness volitionally as you step it down into deep dreamless sleep and you can become so facile with this it's almost like a type of self-hypnosis that you can literally as I alluded to earlier step your consciousness down from waking consciousness to dreaming consciousness and if you doubt if you do that you've automatically mastered the art of dream yoga so there's so many things to say I'll say a little bit more about it tomorrow well here's something parenthetically one of the things that we're doing here is we're again in addition to bringing the windows down is where we're in the double sense of this phrase we're unwinding we're unwinding right now when we're awake and if we're if we're to start you know the winds and everything are concentrated here we're all wound up and when you sit in meditation your mind is going ballistic it's too windy that's the basis of insomnia so when you go to sleep we unwind we Unwin and by again dropping down into our bodies the winds drop down this is a very powerful way to work with insomnia by the way in the middle of the night you can transform an otherwise unwanted experience and bring it onto your own path so there's so much more to say I'll say a little bit more about tomorrow the last thing I want to say in the event that you have a lucid dream tonight what do you do when you loose it because lucid lucidity in itself will not lead you to a spiritual awakening in fact lucidity can lead to super samsara so dream Yoga is where you engage your mind in the dream state and a very simple thing you can do it's very easy the first thing I do is just go for a flight just check out Boulder five rounds very easy to do the next thing that I do then this is the very revealing thing and it's also another instance of truth-telling is try to walk through a wall a dream all has anybody tried to do this in a lucid dream or try to put your hand through a wall this is the kind of the second second stage of dream yoga practice this is extraordinarily revealing truth-telling because very often even though you're fully lucid and you know you're lucid you will come up to the wall and you still will not be able to walk to or to put your hand through it it reveals your propensity for reification it reveals that even in this state where you know it's an illusion you still by the power of habit think it to be real but if you stay with it you will eventually walk through it in a very fun trick here is if you're going to walk through the wall you can't go through a forward turn around and walk backwards because you don't know when you're going to hit it so then what you do is you walk through the dream wall and you can see it coming forward one very brief comment about sleep yoga just to kind of complete the cycle and Ken talks about it in his book one taste you can develop a 24/7 type of awareness where your constant consciousness you actually never fall asleep Buddha's historical Buddha is by definition Shakyamuni Buddha all the awakened ones they literally their bodies may rest in order to kind of integrate the elements but their consciousness never turns that kind of awareness never turns off so deep sleep practice is where you come to rest in the center of the heart and the best analogy I've come up with here and then I will stop is this light of awareness is on all the time the best analogy I come up with is if you could somehow be like the movie gravity if you could somehow be thrown into outer space whether we know it or not in outer deep space the light of a trillion Suns is streaming through that space think of the light of awareness within our heart this is always there but unless an object is placed in that light no thing is sane so even though awareness is that which sees you can't see awareness so this is why we don't see joomla sleep this light of consciousness this light of awareness is always on but unless become familiar we become familiar with our nature as formless awareness as the Dharmakaya when consciousness turns off and wisdom turns on if we're not familiar with it what does consciousness do it blacks out so by becoming familiar with this really formless indestructible dharmakaya nature of our own heart mind this is when you start having success in sleep yoga and at that point you literally every night you literally stay completely awake and then from there there's all kinds of wonderful magical things you can do maybe we can discuss that a little bit tomorrow but I think that's probably enough for now I'm sorry if I went a little bit numb but I get excited about this so pleasant dreams

Channel: Andrew Holecek

Views: 68,576

Rating: 4.9299474 out of 5

Keywords: lucid dreaming, lucid dreams, lucid dream, dream yoga, fly in dreams, Dreams, buddhism

Id: grlnGklIgMk

Length: 17min 8sec (1028 seconds)

Published: Thu May 08 2014

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[u/mindfulluciddreaming]

Has anyone joined Andrew’s night club yet? Been great to have a connection to his teachings no matter where you are in the world. Http://nightclub.andrewholecek.com[Http://nightclub.andrewholecek.com](Http://nightclub.andrewholecek.com) Check it out if you haven’t yet. He has a program with Stephen LaBerge coming up this month in Sedona AZ too.