Dreams, Part Four: Working with Dreams

This is Part Four of a four-part series on dreams. Part One looks at the meaning of dreams, and dream interpretation. Part Two explores how Buddhism uses dreaming as a metaphor for life itself. Part Three describes several types of spiritually significant dreams. Part Four offers practical methods for working with dreams and the sleeping state.


Here are a few practical ways to work with your dreams, and with the sleeping state:


Keep a dream journal.
Many people have difficulty remembering their dreams. Although it might sound paradoxical, keeping a dream journal is one way to overcome this. It is also an essential step in unlocking the richness of your dream life and beginning to interpret your dreams.

Julia Cameron's "morning pages" practice (from her book The Artist's Way), although she doesn't teach it specifically as a method for working with dreams, is useful here; it offers a way of opening the door to pay more attention and remember more of your dreams. The practice is simple: every morning when you wake up, before you do anything else, sit down (or sit up) and write three pages of whatever comes into your head. Don't get up and brush your teeth or make the coffee, just write first and do those things afterwards. It doesn't matter what it's about or how dumb it sounds, just fill up three pages.



When I did the morning pages practice for several months, I found that what most often came to mind and emerged onto my three pages were the dreams from which I had just awakened. As I wrote about my dreams in those pages, I was constantly amazed to discover how much detail and depth I could recall through the act of writing. While writing, I would often remember significant aspects, and even entire dreams, that had been forgotten the instant I woke up -- and would be forgotten permanently if I did not evoke them through writing and put them on paper.

Often the only thing that would be left of a dream in my memory, by the time I sat up and grabbed my pen and notebook and started writing, would be an isolated fragment, or even a single image. But sometimes, as I held that fragment in my mind and wrote it down in my notebook, it would trigger other associated memories and more of the dream would reveal itself spontaneously.

A dream journal does not have to be a permanent undertaking. Try it for a few months, and see what happens. If your dreams continue to evade your recollection, be patient and write about whatever comes into your head -- that's the point of the "morning pages" exercise anyway. Eventually, your daily practice of paying attention to -- and writing down -- what is in your mind in those first few minutes after waking up should begin to unlock the door of memory, and you will develop a richer relationship to your dream life.


Set your intentions.
Regard your dreams as a potential vehicle for significant communication and a potential tool for spiritual awakening. Before you fall asleep at night, set your intentions. Make the aspiration that your dreams will communicate your own deepest wisdom, and that when you awaken you will remember your dreams and understand them. Invite your dreams to teach you; let your subconscious mind know that you are paying attention. It might be helpful to create a little ritual for this. You can be personal and creative about it; the point is to make it meaningful to you. It might be some particular words that you say each night, which help you articulate your intention; or it might be some action you perform to symbolize your intention, such as offering a stick of incense, or asking for guidance in your dreams from a higher power (inner or outer).


Nightmares.
Nightmares can occur for different reasons, but in my experience they most often indicate a troubled conscience. When you have a nightmare, use it as an opportunity to contemplate what you are doing in your life that might not be sitting well with your own conscience. If you have frequent nightmares, it might be your subconscious mind's way of asking you to perform a complete ethics review of your life. What practical changes could you make in the way you conduct your waking life in order to put your conscience at ease, which would allow you to sleep more peacefully at night? When your conscience is at ease in waking life, then you are able to dwell at peace, and the monsters that appear in your dreams -- if they appear at all -- will not be nearly as frightening.


Lucid dreams.
Lucid dreaming can occur spontaneously, but it also can be developed and practiced intentionally. If this practice interests you, there are many books and teachings that provide specific methods for cultivating and working with lucid dreams, including a few books that teach techniques from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Most of these methods work, as described above, with some way of setting your intentions before falling asleep. They require consistent practice, and it may take some time before the practice bears fruit. So be patient, and keep at it. Your habits of being "asleep" in your dreams are ancient, and not easily undone -- unless you're like my friend Susan and you've been having lucid dreams all your life.

For pure inspiration I recommend Richard Linklater's entertaining and thought-provoking film, Waking Life (2001) which is entirely about lucid dreams.




Pay attention to the liminal moments.
We focus most of our attention on the waking state, and on what we can remember of our dreams. But we can also learn about our minds from paying attention to the liminal moments, the in-between states. In Tibetan Buddhism the moment of transitioning from being awake to being asleep is said to be a "bardo," a liminal moment of high potential for glimpsing and recognizing the true nature of mind. See if you can maintain awareness as you approach and cross over that line (if you can find it).

Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold" ) 1. Pertaining to a threshold or entrance; relating to a beginning or first stage of a process; inceptive; inchoative; marginal; insignificant. 2. A state characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. 3. liminal space - A blurry boundary zone between two established and clear spatial areas. 4. The condition of being on a threshold or in a 'betwixt and between space'.

Similarly, the moment of transitioning from being asleep to being awake -- if we can be aware of it -- is highly charged with potential for recognizing mind's luminous nature. Daytime naps can be particularly good for working with this, because in naps we do not descend very deeply into the REM state; there is, so to speak, less distance to cover between being asleep and being awake. If we can be aware during that brief moment of transition, we can catch the waking state red-handed; we can observe it in the very act of returning to its full luminosity. It is as if a dimmer switch that had been turned down to a dim setting were suddenly turned back up to a bright setting: we can observe, in real-time, the different shades of luminosity mind goes through as it returns to waking consciousness.

Dreams, Part Three: Significant Dreams

This is Part Three of a four-part series on dreams. Part One looks at the meaning of dreams, and dream interpretation. Part Two explores how Buddhism uses dreaming as a metaphor for life itself. Part Three describes several types of spiritually significant dreams. Part Four offers practical methods for working with dreams and the sleeping state.


For the most part, Buddhism doesn't dwell much on the content of dreams, and it doesn't pursue a methodology for interpreting them. The focus in Buddhism is more on the act of dreaming itself, and on recognizing the nature of dreams as a vehicle for realizing the nature of mind. Dream content is regarded as being somewhat like the thoughts we experience in meditation: it's neither good nor bad, but the bulk of it is imaginary, and in most cases no particular importance is to be attached to it. However, there are exceptions to every rule, and several types of dreams are considered to be potentially significant.


"Lucid Dream E," Parke Harrison


Precognitive Dreams

In Tibetan Buddhism -- the most mystical of the Buddhist traditions -- some dreams are considered to be prophetic or revelatory. This is particularly common among highly realized meditation practitioners. The Dalai Lama, for example, has spoken about having dreams that helped him locate or confirm the identity of reincarnate lamas. But even at a more mundane level, ordinary people sometimes experience dreams that seem to have a precognitive aspect.

I once dreamed of an old friend I hadn't seen in years, someone I had lost touch with and rarely even thought about. The very next morning after I had that dream, I had an appointment with a doctor, and was waiting in a subway station on the Upper East Side, a part of New York City where I did not usually go. The subway car doors opened, and it so happened that the old friend I had dreamed about the night before was standing right there in front of me. In a city that holds 12 million people on a typical day, he just happened to be riding the same subway, at the same time, in the same car, at the same door, and I happened to be waiting to step through that door, and I happened to have dreamed about him the previous night after not having thought of him in a very long time.

A nihilist would scoff at the suggestion that there was any connection between the previous night's dream and that chance encounter in the subway; he would argue that it was mere coincidence. A New Ager might make too much of the whole thing, and perhaps suggest that we were meant to be soul mates, or that we have unfinished karmic business whose nature can be revealed in the Akashic records or the Enochian scrolls for a low fee of just $100. A Freudian would probably brush off the coincidence and focus on the friend's appearance, with the goal of suggesting that I subconsciously equate this friend with my mother or father. A Jungian, at least, would allow space to contemplate the mystery -- the astronomically unlikely synchronicity -- of the convergence between that dream and the following morning's chance encounter in an out-of-the-way part of town.


Lucid Dreams

Among the most advanced meditation techniques taught in the Tantric Buddhism practiced in Tibet is dream yoga, or lucid dreaming. In the Kagyu lineage, dream yoga is usually introduced as part of the Six Yogas of Naropa, a set of esoteric teachings that are practiced extensively during the traditional three-year retreat. Dream yoga, therefore, is regarded as a practice for a few highly trained individuals. Through lucid dreaming, the meditation practitioner is able to train in recognizing and resting in the nature of mind right within their dreams. It is said that very advanced practitioners of dream yoga are able to maintain the same unbroken level of awareness and lucidity 24 hours a day, through all stages of waking and sleeping.

But again, on a more mundane level, many ordinary people also experience lucid dreaming -- either occasionally, or cultivated through regular practice. My friend Susan has been a frequent lucid dreamer since childhood, and says that her dreams are more often lucid than not. When she was a child, her grandmother, also a frequent lucid dreamer, used to teach her methods for working with her dreams; after her grandmother died when Susan was 15, Susan continued for years to meet up with her in lucid dreams, in the old Penn Station, whenever she needed guidance.



Sometimes lucid dreams, even if they don't occur frequently, can happen spontaneously. I recall once having a nightmare, and becoming aware -- within the dream itself -- that it was a dream. With that awareness, I made a conscious decision to wake myself up in order to put an end to the nightmare. And it worked -- I woke up.


Teaching Dreams

Another kind of dream that many Buddhists regard as potentially significant is when one dreams of being visited by, or receiving a message from, teachers or gurus or other enlightened spiritual beings. These kinds of dreams usually take place at the end of the sleep cycle, shortly before the dreamer wakes up. Tibetan Buddhism is full of legends about advanced meditation practitioners being visited in their dreams by great masters, and receiving significant teachings or guidance. The nagging (and probably unanswerable) scientific question of whether these dream experiences originate from beyond the dreamer's individual consciousness is somewhat beside the point; in either case, such dreams can be surprising, provoking, and enlightening. Jungian analysts would say such dreams reflect an encounter with the esoteric archetype of the Magus, the guru or wisdom principle that is embedded within the collective and individual unconscious.

Again, even ordinary people sometimes experience this phenomenon. Long before she became a Buddhist, my friend Susan says she repeatedly encountered in her lucid dreams -- often accompanying her grandmother -- a mysterious, large, shirtless Asian man with a kind face, wearing the dark red skirt that forms the lower half of a Tibetan monk's robes. She says it was only years later when she saw a photograph of the Tibetan master Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche that she recognized him as the man in her dreams. Dilgo Khyentse often appeared in public -- in real life, not only in Susan's dreams -- shirtless. Susan says she found his recurrent presence in her dreams annoying, for he was one of the few dream figures that she was unable to manipulate -- and whenever he was around, her grandmother seemed too busy with him to pay any attention to her.

The first time I ever gave meditation instruction was at a weekend spiritual retreat in the Catskill mountains. I had been invited to lead a meditation workshop -- or I had volunteered to do so -- because it was a much-needed part of the retreat, and I seemed to be the person in that particular group who knew the most about meditation. Still, I had never actually given meditation instruction before, and had no formal training in how to do so. Suddenly I was about to lead not one but two full-blown meditation workshops -- of one hour and fifteen minutes each -- for a group of about 75 people.

We arrived at the retreat center on Friday afternoon and settled in. I was to lead the first workshop the next morning. As I went to bed that night, I was petrified -- not only with the usual fear of public speaking, but with disbelief at my own audacity. Who did I think I was, leading these workshops with no formal training or experience? I feared the weekend would be a disaster. I slept restlessly that night. But right before I woke up, I had a dream that radically transformed the entire situation.

In the dream (as in waking life) I was at a retreat center with a group of people. But this was a retreat being led by Chogyam Trungpa, the Tibetan teacher and meditation master who died in 1987, and who founded the Shambhala Center where I had been studying meditation at that time. Chogyam Trungpa sent us all off to bed, and he stayed up late into the night preparing a huge, elaborate Mexican feast. When the feast was ready and he had laid it out on picnic tables on the front lawn, he began to beat a drum to wake us up and call us outside, in the middle of the night, to enjoy the feast.

I emerged -- easily and pleasantly -- directly from that dream into the waking state, seemingly with no interval of unconsciousness in-between. As I lay there in bed with the dream still washing over me, I realized I had a huge smile on my face. And I realized, too, that something in me had fundamentally changed: with that dream, my massive anxiety over the workshops had mysteriously vanished, blown away like dust, and in its place was a quiet but very tangible feeling of complete confidence and joy. I felt empowered, and totally -- unbelievably -- relaxed. I went into the workshops with that relaxed, confident and joyful mind, and I never questioned it. And those workshops turned out to be quite beneficial. A few people made their first genuine connection to meditation that Saturday morning, and continued to practice what they learned there in the years that followed.

It would be grandiose to say, and impossible to defend in a rational debate, that I was actually visited in my dream by Chogyam Trungpa, or affected in some way by some energy outside myself. And yet I cannot deny that my unusual dream that night took me utterly by surprise and caused a dramatic shift of energy inside me. Where did that inexplicable charge of confidence and relaxation come from, when I had gone to bed the previous night almost trembling with anxiety and neurotic worry? Call it Chogyam Trungpa, or call it my own deepest self, or call it Jung's Magus archetype -- it makes no difference in the end. It was, for me, a significant teaching dream, one that directly and profoundly altered my experience and indirectly touched the lives of 75 other people who were there that morning.

That is the power of our dreams, or at least some of them. Through dreams, we can -- if the conditions are right, and if we are open -- receive guidance and inspiration; we can connect with a part of ourselves that is deeper and wiser than our rational, neurotic little conscious minds. But dreams, like intuition, creativity and everything else that springs from the unconscious, speak obliquely, and mysteriously, in ways that defy logic. To comprehend their communications, we must look and listen with an open mind, and learn to sense when something significant is being communicated. Not every dream is worth dwelling upon, but every now and then a dream can change our lives.