Translator: Tanya Cushman
Reviewer: Peter van de Ven I was on a Buddhist retreat once
when somebody at breakfast asked the teacher how he slept, to which he replied, "Very well,
I had some wonderful nightmares." At the time I thought he was crazy. But years later, when I became
a teacher of lucid dreaming, I discovered what he meant. Because to face both our personal
and collective cultural nightmares with lucid awareness can be an amazing route
to self-discovery, insight and healing. A lucid dream is a dream in which you know
you are dreaming, as you are dreaming. Scientifically speaking,
it is a hybrid state of consciousness. And although it's only been
a scientifically verified phenomenon for the past 30 years, within Tibetan Buddhism,
it's been a verified mind-training method for over a thousand. Once you know you're dreaming, there's a whole range
of psychotherapeutic benefits you can choose to carry out. One of the most powerful,
and one of my favorites, is that within the lucid dream, you can intentionally engage
the source of your nightmares. I taught myself how to
lucid dream at 16 years old. And although my lucid dreams had occasionally presented me
with nightmarish aspects, it was not until much later
that I discovered the true potential of how lucid dreaming can
transform these nightmares into spiritual and psychological growth. A few years ago, I was instructed
to start teaching lucid dreaming by a meditation master called
Lama Yeshe Rinpoche. Although Buddhism and lucid dreaming
had been a big part of my life, they were never a career option. And in fact, at the time,
I was actually making my living as a hip-hop rapper
working with disadvantaged kids. So, as you can imagine, going from that
to the world of lucid dreaming came as quite a surprise. And in response to that surprise, I found I became
quite serious and kind of puritanical with my own lucid dreaming practice. I tried to banish all dark
or nightmarish aspects from my lucid dreams, in the mistaken belief
that a proper lucid dreaming teacher must have full control
of his lucid dreams. Yeah, right, of course - any attempt to sanitize
or to control your dreams only represses the material. And so the more I tried, the more these nightmarish
elements would reappear. So in the end, I went to see
one of my Buddhist teachers about this. A brilliant man named Rob Nairn. Incidentally, the same guy that thinks that a good night's sleep
is one full of wonderful nightmares. So I sat him down
and told him all about this. He waited until I was done and then
he gave me the kind of look that only really a monk
or your meditation teacher would give you, the kind of look that says, (Sighs) "Charlie, I love you,
but you're an idiot." I was like, "What's up?" He says, "I advise you to do precisely
the opposite of what you've been doing - these nightmarish elements you refer to,
may well be shadow aspects. You must embrace the shadow! You must integrate the shadow!" "Right," I thought. But what is the shadow?
And how do we integrate it? The shadow is a concept
pioneered by Carl Jung, used to describe the parts
of the unconscious mind made up of all the undesirable
aspects of our psyches which we have rejected,
denied or disowned. The shadow is our dark side, but a side of ourselves
which Jung himself commented that, in spite of its function as a reservoir
for human darkness, or perhaps because of this, the shadow is the seat
of all human creativity. So the shadow is not bad. The shadow is a potential wellspring
of creative energy. But because it is the part of ourselves which is incompatible
with who we think we are, most of us go through life
denying its existence. And so we go through life denying and rejecting
a large part of ourselves. But Jung believed that until we recognize
and acknowledge the shadow as part of us, we will never be whole. So, a few weeks after this meeting
with Rob Nairn, I am having a lucid dream, and the shadow turns up again. And this time it means business! The shadow had manifested
as a full-on three-headed demon, radiating pure darkness. There I am, face-to-face with this thing. Now, before we move on, it's worth noting that a fully lucid dream
is often not very dream-like at all. A fully lucid dream
can be so hyper-realistic that many people believe they have entered
another dimension of reality. In fact, they have. But that dimension is not
out there somewhere, it's in here. There I am, face-to-face
with this demon, fully lucid - so I know I am in my own head
and I know there's no real threat. But, it's still pretty scary. So, instinctively, I get ready to fight. And then it hits me: hang on,
this must be an aspect of my shadow; this must be what Rob was talking about. Right, um, uh, I've gotta integrate
this thing; I've gotta embrace this thing. How do I do that, exactly? I will give it a hug. So, I run up to this thing
in the lucid dream, and I bear hug it. This dream was so realistic, I could feel it struggling
against my embrace, I could feel its breath
breathing down my neck. You know, the shadow is the sum total of all your repressed capacity
for violence and aggression. So, as you can imagine,
it's not much of a hugger. But there I am, hugging this thing
that does not want to be hugged and it's struggling to get away
and I'm holding on for dear life. And then ... it does something really unexpected. It starts to shriek. Within my embrace, this big three-headed
shadow monster started to shriek. And I keep holding on,
and it keeps shrieking, and then ... it stops. And there is a moment of stillness. I release my embrace. And I realize I am hugging myself. This three-headed demon
is transformed into me. A carbon-copy of me. And there I am,
face-to-face with myself, maybe for the first time in my life. We shared a smile. And I woke up. In floods of tears. Not only am I in tears, but I've got this weird
feeling in my belly, like as if a knot has been untied - some deep emotional knot
that has been there so long I'd forgotten it was there at all. I don't know what part of my psyche
that shadow aspect represented. Maybe some denied childhood trauma,
maybe some disowned emotional complex. Who knows? But what I do know,
when I was embracing that demon, I was embracing
some deeper part of myself. And I was engaging
the innate healing potential which resides within us all. In a lucid dream, you have the opportunity to engage
psychological concepts, immediately, in a seemingly physicalized form. This is a unique opportunity
to directly apply healing intent to mental embodiments and
personfications of your own psychology. This is deep healing territory. This is what thousands of people
pay thousands of therapists thousands of dollars to do. Now, I'm not saying you should all go
and sack your therapists, but what I am saying is
if you can learn to lucid dream, not all of the time
but just some of the time, you can make their jobs
a heck of a lot easier. If you can learn to dream lucidly,
and it is a learnable skill, you can begin to integrate your shadow and reclaim, as Jung said,
the seat of all human creativity. So learn how to lucid dream. Give it a shot. It takes sustained practice,
but anyone can do it. Go to a workshop, buy a book,
get downloads from the net - just do it. Although there are thousands
of techniques out there, a prerequisite for most of them
is dream recall. So, if you want to get into this stuff, you need to remember and record
your dreams in a dream diary. That's enough to start you off, at least. You know, we sleep
for a third of our lives. Lucid dreaming allows us
to make some use of that time and gives us the tools we need
to heal ourselves - to get to know ourselves. And to enter into a friendship, not just with our shadows,
but with every aspect of our psyches. All while we are sound asleep. That is effective time-management. There's no club to join;
there's no equipment to be bought. All you need is your dreams. Now, before I go, I want
to leave you with my big idea. I believe that the concept
of waking up to the illusion of the dream and becoming lucid,
goes way beyond our personal dreams. As a global society, there are cultural,
collective shadow aspects that we refuse to integrate: elements of our humanity which are too dark
and too nightmarish to face. But until we face them,
until we get lucid collectively, we'll never be home. Lucid dreaming can lead to lucid living. Now is the time to wake up, together. Now is the time to get lucid in this dream of life
that we've been sleep-walking through. Now is the time to embrace
the shadow of the world. Because it is in our grasp. But we have to be awake to grasp it. Value your dreams. And especially value your nightmares. You are sleeping on a gold mine
of potential wisdom and insight. So be lucid when you dream. And those insights can be yours. Sweet dreams. Or should I say, sweet nightmares. Thank you. (Applause)
