My dream life is quite active, I have spent a lot of time writing and making images about it during my lifetime. So it is always a relief when I get some confirmation that what I am doing is contributing in some way to my evolution.I found this article on the DreamCurrents site of my Alaskan cyber-friend Steve Parker. Steve, who I have mentioned before, is a Jungian and is collecting healing dreams in the name of healing research. I have had quite a lot of these dreams, have shared a few and some of the accompanying images with him, one at least will be appearing on his website. I have mainly paraphrased this article on lucid dreaming (it originally appeared in a Yoga website which I have referenced below):
Lucid dreaming has been refined over the centuries by Tibetan Buddhists and Taoists, who use it as a tool for reaching enlightenment because they believe 'that the "dream body" is better able to feel subtle channels and chakra'. They use lucid dreaming for yoga and meditation and to communicate with spiritual teachers. Their premise is that the "reality" we inhabit is really just a dream - if you can see through the 'illusion of your dreams, you can more easily see through the illusion of reality, too'. Scientists in the West have begun to study dream yoga and (typically) finding ‘practical applications’ for it (like how to perform better at sport etc) ‘Sleep researchers say the method probably works something like creative visualization does - only more powerfully’.
It was LaBerge (a psychophysiologist) who ‘discovered’ lucid dreaming in the late 1970s, his research at Stanford University showed that it is a common phenomenon and can be learnt. "Yogis never needed any knowledge about neurology to do this," he says. "But it's important that we do the scientific research so we can talk to Westerners about it in their own language."
I am familiar with the experience of being in a dream that was too difficult to resolve and waking up, and also being 'awake' in the dream and being able to make conscious choices, changing the course of the dream - which I recognise as lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming can be used to break through negative emotions but ‘when you escape from a nightmare by waking up, you haven't dealt with the problem....staying with the nightmare and accepting its challenge allows you to resolve the dream problem’. I have learnt a lot from my dreams.
image: Frantom, Alchemical Twins (recent dream), directly drawn digital image on my scanned background
Jaimal Yogis, http://www.yogajournal.com/health/2026
