Greetings from a conscious agent in Colorado, USA

Introduce Yourself
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Hi all!

Wonderful to find this community. I’m resuming dream practice after a long period of not doing so; currently re-reading B. Alan Wallace’s great book, Dreaming Yourself Awake.

I’m a long-time meditation practitioner, and a developing meditation teacher, currently wrapping up a 2-year teacher certification program with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach which some might be familiar with, called MMTCP (mindfulness meditation teacher certification program). I’m also certified to teach an organizational mindfulness and EI program called SIY/Search Inside Yourself, which was originally created for employees at Google.

For some time now, my base practices have been vipassana, satipatthana and the brahmaviharas, studying primarily with teachers in the IMS world (coming largely out of the Theravada tradition), so I am greatly enjoying Wallace’s emphasis in this book on using the stages of shamatha as foundational for dream practice, with its emphasis on relaxation, stability and vividness of attention - using breath in the early stages, then mind objects and awareness itself in the later stages.

I typically recall dream fragments quite easily and frequently, and will begin with a dream journal in order to increase dream recall and identify dream signs.

Detail-oriented question for any of you dream journalers who wear eye contacts: do you attempt to journal immediately upon waking, prior to inserting your contacts, or put them in first? It seems to me that the latter would adversely affect dream recall. Wondering what practices/hacks others with vision issues are using. Perhaps a voice recorder app on your phone, or some such?

Thanks and looking forward to practicing and discussing together.

Much metta,
Lewis

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Hey Lewis,

Welcome to the Club!

Would love to hear techniques you found helpful in deepening your meditation practice.

Have not heard of these 2 types before.

Great question. I have found that even the movement of reaching for a pen and paper, and turning on the light, blinds, or flashlight can eat away at slippery dreams.

To combat this, the first thing I do before moving after waking up is immediately replay as many of the dreams from the night in my mind, like a movie, over and over again, so they imprint on my memory. Then I figure out which ones were the most meaningful, which are to be written first. The act of replaying the dreams in your mind will sometimes brimg up the memories of earlier dreams from the night too. Then once I have a firm grasp of them I go for the pen, paper, and lights.

There are memory techniques for remembering lists of 10 items or less, I will sometimes use this to remember the dreams, associating a number with an prominent image or symbol from each of the dreams.

Have you thought about investing in a pair of reading glasses? This might help with the hassle and dream loss of contacts. Or possibly even buying a big hand held magnifying glass, like Sherlock Holmes?

Glad to hear you are journaling, it helped me out tremendously (and continues to do so) and I think it is one of the most important practices you can do.

How long have you been doing lucid dreaming and Dream yoga for?

You are the second person in less than a week to mention this book here in the forums, and I found it reccomended in a list of 9 most influential lucid dreaming books! I am going to take this as a sign, and order it from Amazon.

Looking forward to hearing about your nocturnal adventures :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hi NightHawk999,

Thanks for your friendly and helpful reply. I’m going to need to spend a little time when possible to refresh on some of the cool html tricks to include snippets in replies like you did. :slight_smile:

It’s been many years since I gave serious, regular attention to dream practice. I’m 52 years old, and my discovery of lucid dreaming came through the spontaneous experience of them when I was 19 or 20 years old. That was before the hyper-availability of information about everything via the internet, and it was not something I’d heard of or read about yet, so I didn’t even know lucid dreaming was “a thing”. In a sense, I think experiencing it that way heightened the fundamental spiritual nature and flavor of this amazing capacity of consciousness. After beginning to have these experiences, I then went looking for information about it and discovered the work of Stephen LaBerge.

However, I did not at that time approach it as a practice, and after some time (maybe 3 to 6 months), that initial period of incredibly vivid spontaneous lucid dreaming waned. But what that period left me with was a passion for the possibility of lucid living, through the intuitive knowing born from that initial experience, that lucidity is the same quality of awareness in dreams and the waking state.

Lucid dreams have spontaneously occurred at intermittent times over the years since then, but not with the same degree of lucidity as I experienced in that initial period. That in itself has also been a teaching, though, about what I call the “spectrum of lucidity”. That is, it’s not a binary (on or off) phenomenon; it’s a spectrum or continuum, and we are somewhere along that continuum in every mind moment.

I established a regular meditation practice 10 years ago. I live near Boulder, Colorado, where there is a thriving community of meditation practitioners and teachers; including, as some may be aware, Andrew Holocek. Maybe a year or so into my meditation practice, I’d begun to recognize mindful presence as the very same quality of awareness that occurs in lucid dreams, and began to wonder if there were any Buddhist or other meditative traditions that incorporate dream practice. Then one day around that time I walked into Boulder Bookstore, and in my favorite section, my eyes and attention immediately fell on Alan Wallace’s book, Dreaming Yourself Awake: Lucid Dreaming and Tibetan Dream Yoga. I was not totally new to Tibetan Buddhism, but I had not previously realized that Dream Yoga was an integral practice in some schools.

Shortly after that, I attended a fascinating talk by Andrew H at the Boulder Shambhala Center. Long story short, fast forwarding to today, I’ve had this book for probably 8 years now, but have not regularly invested time or energy in dream practice, despite profound interest and both experiential and intuitive recognition of its transformational power. Now is the time; and again, I’m thrilled to connect with this community.

Regarding the Satipatthana and Brahmavihara practices that I mentioned, I’ll elaborate just a bit here, since you mentioned not having previously heard about them.

Satipatthana practice refers to study and practice of the Four Foundations (or Establishments) of Mindfulness, a teaching of the Buddha documented in the Satipatthana Sutta, one of the many discourses in the Majjhima Nikaya (which is one of the major volumes in the Pali canon). The four foundations/establishments are:

  • Body (including breath, posture, elements, activities, death contemplations)
  • Feelings (not in the sense of emotions, but vedana - the basic pleasant/unpleasant/neutral affective tone we feel in response to all physical and mental experience/phenomena)
  • Mind states (craving, aversion, delusion, contraction, distraction, others)
  • Mind objects (variously referred to as dhammas/dharmas/categories of experience, and includes such lists from classical Buddhadharma as the Five Hindrances, the Five Aggregates of Clinging, the Six Sense Spheres, the Seven Factors of Awakening, and the Four Noble Truths).

The Brahmaviras (Brahma or Divine Dwellings) are the same heart qualities that many know as The Four Immeasurables: lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. The former term is typically used in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, and the latter is common in the Mahayana traditions.

A few reference links for those:

The Brahmaviharas or Four Immeasurables

Satipatthana

A wonderful book on Satipatthana, by the Theravada Buddhist scholar-monk Bhikkhu Analayo (it’s essentially his PhD thesis on the Satipatthana Sutta):

Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization

And here is a wonderful guided Satipatthana practice, also by Analayo:

Exploring the Four Satipatthanas

Warmly,
Lewis

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Im not very tech savy, the website does the picture embedding for you when you copy and paste the link, and then hit return.

Andrew had this experience as well, I have also heard of other members having this experience too. That is very cool it happened to you too. I believe it is a very big gift from God/the Universe.

Very wise words and a very wise teaching.

Love this story, and I dont think it is a coincidence that you found that book at that time in your life.( I ordered his book, should arrive on wednesday). I had something similar happen, after a few years of practicing meditation, mostly on my own and with very limited guidance and instruction, I had an impactful dream that caused me dive deeper into researching dreams. I knew I was on to somethiing when a text said that luicd dreaming was an ancient practice, and was practiced by the Tibetan Monks. That was about 3 years ago. I then read as many luicd dreaming books as I could, but didnt do the practices with enough intention and seriousness. 7 months ago I found Andrews site, and since then I have started having success.

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This was very helpful, appreciate you taking the time to explain it.

Appreciate you posting those resources. Will add the book to my reding list, but it may take me a while to consume.

Really liked the guided mediation, thank you :slightly_smiling_face:

A tip I forgot to write about earlier for journaling that might be helful is to summarize your dreams. I like to review them in my mind as soon as I wake, without moving the body at all. Then once I have them replayed, reviewed, and memorized, when I go to write them down, if there are many 5-6+, I will number a small list of numbers 1-6, and then next to each number write a word, or short sentence summary that is the essence of the given dream clip.

Then once the summary list is down, I will get to work writing out all the details of the dream. I find this method helpful, becuase sometimes, the act of writting down can get tedious, and while writing I lose a few of the dream memories. The plus side is, in the physical act of writing, I often will have new dreams I forgot about pop back into my head and memory and be able to write them down.

Consistency was the key. When I first started I could only do 1-2 dreams per night. Now I average remembering 5-6+.

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Great tips, thanks! I forgot to reply to one of your questions about my vision. You’d asked if use glasses. Due to my particular occular issues (I have something called keratoconus), glasses do nothing for me, so I wear some pretty heavy duty contacts. Without them my vision is really bad. I got a notebook with very white paper, and starting tomorrow morning, I’m going to try journaling using a black felt tipped pin. I’m going for maximum contrast, which should help some. I’ll try writing brief summaries of the dreams I can recall this way, and then put in my contacts and try to elaborate further on them.

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Hello!!
My name is Alyssa and I help moderate the community page and host all the zoom meetings. We’re so glad you found us! Please let me know if I can help in anyway. You are going to be SO happy here.

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Smart idea. I dont use a voice recorder, but have been tempted to buy one, might be a good christmas prensent to yourself if the journaling doesnt work out. Lots of apps on the phone for this too, but I feel like phones can be really distracting with the messages and notifications from the night before, which may derail the memories of dreams.

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I use my Apple Watch to record the gist of the dream, so I don’t have to get out of bed or turn on a light.

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Hi Alyssa, thanks for your message and nice to meet you. Could you tell me a little more about the zoom meetings, or point me to info about them?

Thanks,
Lewis

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Absolutely!
Every Monday at 8pm Eastern we have meditation group where Andrew or one of our other meditation teachers host a talk and/or meditation session.

We have Ask the Sleep Dr with Dr Ed on the second Tuesday of the month at 7pm Eastern. This is where we discuss the science of sleep and then have the opportunity to ask any questions or talk with a sleep specialist.

Thursdays alternate between Q&A with Andrew (4pm eastern) and book study group (8pm eastern). Q&A is a wonderful opportunity to submit questions for Andrew to answer or just hang out! And book study group is currently reading Dream Yoga and discussing it with Andrew.

We have Dream Sangha on the first and third Saturday of the month. Where members get together to share their dreams with one another.

Here’s a link to the events calendar. I hope this helped!
https://nightclub.andrewholecek.com/e/

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Would also recommend him Book Club meetings. If you cant make a particular meeting you can always submit a question in advance (and he will usually answer it) and then watch the recorded meeting later.

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Great, a lot going on - thanks!