Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light
Lucid Dreaming Used to Be Easy
Screen culture is dulling the luminosity of our minds
About twenty years ago, I began a Tibetan practice called Dream Yoga.
There are many levels of this practice, but the first is designed to give you some degree of awareness in your dream state — commonly known in our culture as ‘lucid dreaming’.
When I first started the practice, the average person did not own a computer, and mobile phones were limited to models such as my Erickson T10, an early flip phone with a tiny dull binary screen.
Every night I would go through the instructions, and it didn’t take long before I started ‘waking up’ in my dream.
Through repetition, I began to recognise the dream when certain things happened in the dream state that never happened in real life. For me, it was things like pulling non-stop money out of an ATM or finding endless gold coins on a casino floor.
Waking up in the dream state became effortless, but the recognition would quickly fade, and I would be back to delusional dreaming again.
I asked my teacher what I was doing wrong, and he, in turn, asked me what I was doing when I realised I was dreaming.
Embarrassingly I told him that I would usually do something crazy to check, like flapping my arms and trying to fly.
He said that my focus on trying to do dream activity was sucking me back into the dream and that instead, I needed to extend the awareness. So his instruction to me was this.
As soon as you realise you are dreaming, just maintain that recognition. Don’t do anything, don’t look around, don’t explore, practice holding onto knowing that it’s a dream for as long as you can.
Through this powerful instruction, I was able to expand my awareness of the dream until I gained some stability in holding that awareness. Once I could hold the awareness, I explored a couple of experiences available to the lucid dreamer.
One of my activities was passing through objects. This was tricky at first as the habit of solidity was still strong. But when I focused on the fact that my mind was creating everything, I found I could walk through walls or any solid structure.
As I developed, I found that I could go to any place I wanted, and while the place wasn’t quite the same as so-called real life, it was close.
I found that I could levitate and fly effortlessly and run at very high speeds.
At some point, I was so astonished that these objects and people in my dreams seemed so incredibly real and yet they were made by my mind.
It made me realise that ‘waking life’ could also very easily be another dream state.
I tried communicating this message to many people within my dream state on several occasions. I became like a preacher telling my dream citizens that they were projections of my mind and that none of it was real.
Not surprisingly, they were less than responsive, and often they just went utterly inert. Many times they burst into tears. I upset a lot of my mind citizens with my preaching.
The decline of my ability to dream lucidly started around the time I got my first PC and gradually got worse over time.
Regardless of the instructions, I cannot choose when to lucid dream anymore. It mostly comes to me spontaneously around the tenth lunar day or full moon or other intense moon days.
I correlate this change with my increased use of screens.
Sometimes I also wonder if it comes partially from my lack of reading fiction books which I believe may be an essential practice for a mind to create pictures. But it's mostly the screen thing.
Visualisation as a tool has undoubtedly become harder and harder for me, and this view is shared by meditation practitioners I know.
I would love to get back to those early days of dream freedom again since the possibilities are endless and the overflow of benefits into your real life is so strong.
The situation changes when you do retreat without a phone for a couple of weeks, and this further confirms my suspicions.
In the Tibetan tradition, people practising dream yoga do extended ‘dark retreat’ during which they stay in a fully pitch black room for the period of their retreat. This can span days, weeks, months or even years.
At least one Tibetan woman has spent the last forty-five years in dark retreat.
Imagine voluntarily not seeing daylight for forty-five years. If the practice didn’t work, don’t you think she would have given up earlier?
Mobile phones are the opposite of dark retreat. Instead of spending our lives in the dark to enhance our mind luminosity, we constantly stare at luminosity which dims our inner light.
I wonder how many people out there read about lucid dreaming, try its methods and just think it’s a load of hoo-hah.
I am here to confirm that it isn’t.
And it is not just you either. Mobile phones and screens are a problem for spiritual practitioners and lucid dreamers. Once upon a time, nurturing the inner light was effortless. Now, unless you are one of the fortunate few, it is becoming harder every day.
Therefore, I believe it is beneficial to take time out from screens, especially if you intend to do any spiritual practice or dream yoga.
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