Reviving a Dreaming Practice

 I’ve decided to get back into dreaming. It is part of my new attempt at hacking my life, biologically and consciously. I’ve arrived in my early forties realizing that I need to dig a little deeper into my issues and reclaim what I could have had if I hadn’t been so distracted with Maya (illusion). I’m surrounded my dementia, close to home and, well, have a look around you, it’s a mad world out there. And, possibly, in here too. It is time to hack consciousness.

 I used to dream a lot. I’d wake up and sit for about half an hour writing down all my dreams and then maybe later interpret them. It started taking way too much time for my lifestyle which evolved through writing, girlfriend(s), drugs and, thankfully, yoga. I managed some success in lucid dreaming then, inspired by Carlos Casteneda’s writings and Robert Moss’s ‘Conscious Dreaming’: frantically looking for my hands, but mostly flying and occasionally asking dream characters life questions.   

 How cool is it that you can be your own psychologist?! You don’t have to rely on some mental theory that is currently trending at tertiary level (although breathing and meditation have yielded great results). Interact with yourself, or as I like to call it, hacking your consciousness. Everything in your dream is your self (I’m open to the possibility that this is not entirely true, depending on your definition of self). Every aspect is some nuance in your thinking and perception of reality. On a conscious/lucid dreaming level you talk to your mind and get feedback in a clear language.

 My true aim in lucid dreaming, though, is to do my spiritual practice in the dreamstate, as inspired by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche’s ‘The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep’. I’m managed to sit in meditation for a few seconds before being shunted out into wakefulness. But that was a while ago. Time to return to Consciousness.

 Charlie Morley has written a book, ‘Dreams of Awakening’ on all aspects of lucid dreaming, an excellent book for the beginner. He discusses many different methods to induce lucid dreaming and the power within the dreamstate. The methods that have worked for me are, firstly, creating the right dreaming atmosphere by going to bed when you’re not quite tired, and reading about dreaming or doing your spiritual practice. Secondly, getting in touch with dreaming by keeping a dream journal and writing down whatever fragments you can remember upon waking. These will immediately increase your dream recall. And, thirdly, I walk around in my daily life, questioning my reality: Am I dreaming? Pretend for a moment that I’m in a dream looking for clues of something outlandish, impossible in the waking state: a pink elephant, a flying ear or a staircase into the sky.