Tibetan dream yoga

[Jenn Lynn]

Thanks for your response and i do agree with your philosophy. something related to this that i find interesting is that in some cultures, lucid dreams are used for tackling issues and obstacles that folks run into in their waking life. any problem that arises, you simply recreate in a lucid dream (or perhaps several dreams) and the situation eventually works itself out. im sure this isnt new news to anyone here, but what i am beginning to see is what happens when you take it a step further. one can also take the conundrum of this physical existence and address it in the lucid dream. all the aspects of this waking life that i feel currently trap me i can recreate in the dream and dissect them or tear them down. by no means am i any expert on this (just a common garden variety experimenter) but i do feel that this is beginning to loosen the 4 dimensional environment hold on my mind.

i had a lucid dream a month ago where the realization hit me as i was facing one of my teachers that this waking life is no more real or false than my waking dream life, and i felt this was a significant realization for me.

so, this is the long winded way of saying that maybe one way of coming to an understanding of the impact (or lack of) our physical bodies have on our higher selves can be found through investigation in conscious dreams.

i think maybe ill post the question about meditation in a lucid dream\OBE in the OBE forum...id really like to know if anyone has tried this...

[Beekeeper]

The thing that is interesting is that people are said to bring wounds, afflictions and scars over from past lives. I wonder if this is related to how time actually occurs (as in every moment possibly being simultaneous) or if it is because these people never fully left behind the reality of a past life.

(I'm always fascinated by this beautiful looking boy at my son's school who has a bullet hole birthmark just above and right between his eyebrows.)

[Jenn Lynn]

i'm beginning to think that we bring several things with us from our past lives, and its funny, ive actually been having a discussion with a friend of mine over the past few months concerning time...he subscribes to the "eternal recurrence" idea, which i cannot wrap my head around no matter how hard i try. both this concept and the simultaneity of events seem so counterintuitive to me, and im sure its only because of where my personal understanding is at this point.

in this life so far i am discovering that i have many capabilities that i HAD to have learned somewhere, and i didnt learn them in this life. i dont believe that people are "naturals" or chosen by god to have special gifts that others dont, i think we all have the same capabilities but we are at different points on the path on the way to realizing them. so i the only conclusion i can draw thus far is that ive already learned how to activate these abilities in a previous life which in turn gives me access to them now. i feel that we do bring scars as well as lessons with us. i have yet to account for the intense irrational fear ive had as a small child of the sound of a gun or fireworks or any loud abrupt noise.

this presents to me a very linear view of time.

jennifer

[Freawaru]

Hi Jenn,

I try to practice it. When I am fully lucid - and that does not happen all that often. Most times I am kinda semi-lucid, it is as if a part of me is lucid and indeed controls the dream, trying all kinds of techniques but I am not identified with this part of me. At least, afterwards I don't remember the dream from that perspective.

Tarab Tulku RInpoche taught that letting yourself being killed in a lucid dream is a real chance. It seems to me that when we let ourselves being killed in a lucid dream the energy leaves the off-central channels and enter the central channel.

A few weeks ago I ALMOST succeded... sniff. I was fully lucid and there were several dream people around me, I asked them what they wanted and all that, trying to get a communication with myself. But they didn't answer. Then someone came at me and I thought he wanted to kill me. You know, this threatening feeling, a sensing of a weapon. As I was lucid I recalled Tarab Tulku's teaching and thought about just letting it happen. Unfortionately, I was also still in the "communication program" and couldn't quite decide what I prefered. So, alas, I woke up.

In my experience when I am (successfully) attacked physically in a dream (lucid or not) I usually end up with either ecstasy or a healing experience. I don't know if this is so for everybody, though.

[Jenn Lynn]

In my experience when I am (successfully) attacked physically in a dream (lucid or not) I usually end up with either ecstasy or a healing experience. I don't know if this is so for everybody, though.

wow thats really interesting, i have not had this experience before, but it doesn't surprise me. this realm is such a purely subjective area for us when we first start gaining awareness there that its sometimes difficult to find many common experiences or events. all the times i have been attacked i have felt the need to fight back, survival instincts seem to take over. i suppose it could really depend on what you're fighting...many times im trying to change some aspect of myself that i don't like, and this can manifest as a battle in the dream world. but i suppose if your mind is in a place where you're learning to accept certain things in life instead of fighting them (which can be SO HARD), i can see how allowing those things to overtake you in a dream could possibly provide a healing and enlightened experience. good things to think about

jennifer

[Freawaru]

all the times i have been attacked i have felt the need to fight back, survival instincts seem to take over.

Yes, usually it is for me like this, too. I end up becoming Buffy the vampire slayer or some other fictional character or flying or doing supernatural stuff. They are actually favorite dreams of mine.

i suppose it could really depend on what you're fighting...many times im trying to change some aspect of myself that i don't like, and this can manifest as a battle in the dream world.

I think this is probably how it works, yes. We cling to our self, even if we actually want to change some aspects of it. In dream, this wanting to change is percieved as an attack. Strange, how we end up fighting ourselves

Do you practice dream yoga? If yes, what techniques do you use and what did you experience?

[Jenn Lynn]

sorry for the delay in reply, i do practice some aspects of dream yoga. i actually kind of skipped right to the sleep yoga since im able to achieve the conscious dream state with relative ease. in tenzin wangyal rinpoche's book on dream yoga, he lists 11 categories of experience in which the mind tends to get tied up. these categories are size, quantity, quality, speed, accomplishment, transformation, emanation, journey, seeing, encounter, and experiences. sometimes when i am lucid in a dream, i'll pick one of these categories and work with them in order to loosen the hold that the constraints have on my mind. one time i was in a room and i took off a silver ring i wear and i practiced shrinking it down and expanding it to a large size, other times i have practiced teleportation, transformation, things like that.

what i find interesting is that i am aware of both minds that i have during these times, my waking conscious mind and the sleeping conscious mind, and i perceive the struggle taking place as i work towards breaking through the boundaries. it feels like progress to me, although to what degree i have no idea

as it turns out, over the past year, i have had to engage myself in battle many times (im in the middle of one right now) in order to change aspects of myself that no longer serve. it seems that these final few elements are proving to be incredibly difficult to overcome, but somehow i persevere...
i have in fact fought a battle with knives against a person that looked exactly like me in an unconscious dream, and i still have no idea what that was about




also, i do find that the preliminary techniques for encouraging the lucid dream state in tibetan dream yoga are incredibly effective, so if you are working with this, keep it up, you wont be disappointed


jennifer

[Korpo]

Jenn Lynn, why are you fighting against yourself? This somehow seems wrong. Declaring parts of yourself as enemy and unwanted might actually waste subsconscious powers you have and create the struggles you experience instead of solving them effectively.

I liked the idea from "Core Transformation" - each part of you has a positive purpose, sometimes they are just bad at following through or not effective in pursuing it. Realigning the part might be way more effective than fighting it.

http://forums.astraldynamics.com/viewtopic.php?t=10302

Oliver

[Jenn Lynn]

great question. i'll need to think about this for a bit, but to sum up my experiences over the past year, there is one particular aspect of my personality that i want to change, all it has done is cause me harm. so i began focusing and meditating on a way to accomplish this change earlier in the year, which is the method that has successfully brought me through previous trials, and eventually i began witnessing the struggle from a more objective standpoint, and this would on occasion manifest in my unconscious dreams as a fight against something or someone. i didnt consciously choose to take this route, it just kind of happened. so i just accepted it as part of what the universe intended in guiding me towards my goal. maybe for me, this is the best way to visualize the situation in order to overcome it.

i have tried in the past to redirect, remap, and realign this aspect of myself, but i continue to struggle. during the times that i am in the midst of this mind-state, it is incredibly difficult to focus and control my mind, at times i almost feel like something else is controlling me. during these episodes it does in fact feel as though i am at battle with something to regain control of myself, if i relinquish control and let it take me, harm is caused, but if i try to put up a good fight, i can gain some ground, and this always feels to me like a small victory which is empowering and gives me hope for the next encounter. maybe you can identify with this, maybe not.

you make some very good points, both in this thread and the one you provided, im going to think this over and do some reading and come back to it

jennifer

[Korpo]

I find your answer intriguing. I did not know you were guided so strongly in this! I thought it would be more part of the basic ideas of that kind of Dream Yoga.

Even sabotaging parts of you might have good intents. Good intentions do not however always make good results, far from that. Maybe the part can be convinced that the intent is good and can be fulfilled without sabotaging and harming you? Within the subsconscious logic sometimes takes some very odd twists...

I admit however not to know what is really going on. If you feel like making progress, perhaps fighting is really what works best for you? In the end, you'll see.

Take good care,
Oliver