How many times have you done the dream yoga practice of becoming luicd and summoning things in the dream that terrify you?
What were the scary situtations and things that arose then?
How many times have you done the dream yoga practice of becoming luicd and summoning things in the dream that terrify you?
What were the scary situtations and things that arose then?
@_Barry Thanks for educating me on how this works.
@mbready It’s unusual to have access to ayahuasca outside of ceremonies run by trained shamans, so I’m a bit surprised. Good that you have an experienced sitter. With any new psychedelic medicine, especially outside of ceremonies with experienced shamans or facilitators, it’s good to start with smaller doses and gradually work up to larger doses. Also, I hope I’m not getting too personal but I believe that you’ve shared elsewhere on this site that you’ve had a psychiatric episode of some type? If this was for a psychotic or manic episode, then psychedelics are strongly contra-indicated as they can trigger such episodes. If it was for depression, then ayahuasca (or other psychedelics) can be a very good medicine.
Also thanks for clarifying your practice of inducing scary dreams. That helps me understand more why you are doing it. One thing to keep in mind is that if you have a jolt of fear, your body will release adrenaline and cortisol which are very stimulating and this may explain why you have trouble getting back to sleep. If this happens, try taking long slow breaths into the belly and just meditate for a while, either sitting up or lying down. I don’t have insomnia very often but if I do, my mantra is “If I can’t sleep, then meditate.” Meditation can be about as restorative as sleep in my opinion.
Reflecting on my dream yoga practice, I’ve encountered several memorable and frightening situations. Here are some of the most standout experiences:
In one particularly intense dream, I came across an intricately carved armoire. As I touched it, the wood my hand touched would transformed into an aged, distressed texture. There was an orb around my hand that would reveal the old texture that moved as my hand moved. Turning around, I met a being with colorful makeup grinning at me. Approaching them in admiration, I was taken aback when they revealed a an extremely wide, toothy smile, their mouth expanding unnaturally revealed dozens of extremely sharp sharp teeth that continuously grew. This vivid scene stayed with me, and later in the dream, I found myself wanting to confront this being again. Upon thinking about wanting to revisit the being I saw them in a procession of dream characters, I stood by them calmly, transmuting the previous intense fear to calm indifference.
Two more dreams that would qualify as lucid nightmares involved a ghastly wraith and the other a being with a face resembling red, black, and white reflective plastic and the texture of aged leather.
First dream, confronted by the wraith, I listened as it taunted me about my weakness. Initially intimidating because the being was chaining me up and talking down to me, the scenario gradually turned comical as the dream progressed and I saw through the illusory nature of the threat and recognized the words only held the power I gave them. I also recognized in this dream the being was attempting to gain power by presenting an intimidating appearance to invoke fear which is when the dream turned into a comical experience.
In a separate dream, I said I wanted to enter my hall of infinite mirrors. Turning around I saw rows of mirrors, each of a different design. Walking up to each one my reflection differed slightly until I saw one that was entirely alien – my reflection looked nothing like me and I had black and white face paint on. My reflection followed me perfectly as I moved. Curiosity struck and I dove through the mirror. I found myself in a bar with the plastic/leather-faced being. We had a conversation then he asked me what I was. At this stage the dream took a sinister turn when a monstrous beast appeared, aggressively attacking me. After a period of intense observation the being said biological and I withdrew from the dream thinking I wasn’t welcome where ever that was.
A particularly eerie experience involved a mirror in which I had no reflection. This immediately triggered what I had learned about Buddhist’s belief that when your dead you have no reflections in mirrors. Despite attempts to see my reflection, nothing showed up. I dove into the mirror and was transported to a maze with mirrors where I still didnt have any reflections. After calling out to an Ancient Egyptian deity, a dismissive voice laughed at me and began undermining the power of my invoked gods. Overwhelmed with emotion, I erupted in an explosive release of energy, shattering the maze around me and the dream continued. This dream became more interesting when I read a similar experience that Robert Monroe had described in his book ‘Journeys Out of the Body.’ He said he was trapped by a wall he could not pass and upon calling out to his God he was completely abandoned and a being similarly made fun of him. He thought he would never make it back to his body, but eventually by the end of his dream he did.
Additionally, I recall guiding two people in a dream where we encountered a series of challenging situations, the dream came to a loop and upon recognizing it was a loop I created a door for us to escape into. We were placed in a semi-truck trailer and a fluid began filling it and even though I was lucid I was so engrossed in the dream I felt like I was drowning. When I accepted dieing and took a breath in of the fluid an escape hatch appeared and we escaped the trailer. The dream on the other side of the trailer was pretty amazing!
There are many more I cannot remember at the moment, but through these experiences I’ve learned to let fear unfold naturally. It seems to uncover valuable lessons.
Exploring fear in the unconscious realms of dreams has a distinct difference. Unconscious fears begin in the dreamstate, then after awaking the fear remains unconsciously and I think the work is not completed until one can release in the unconscious dream state and the conscious waking world. Even though I’ve only successfully induced this experience once, I think it yields invaluable insights and lessons.
Thank you for this. So easy to forget how important it is. I once began snoring while I was meditating trying to fall back asleep. That’s when I realized what sleep yoga was .
Yes especially now. Back in the day it was much easier to have access to it.
My episode was 5 years after the last psychedelic experience I had. Took what Ricardo Amaringo said to me to heart his lineage and experience with ayahuasca is one I 100% trust.
My wife shares the same concerns about psychedelics and these episodes. I’ve promised to hold off on these experiences for many years and plan to keep my word.
Have you done this successfully before? How many times?
Yes, I explained some of the scarier ones above and one in which I resummoned the thing that I feared the most in my dreams.
If your talking about creating scary illusions I’ve made spiders, robotic, human sized and various other things.
When you create illusions within a lucid dream I have found they do not carry the same fear as what I shared in the post above .
It wasnt clear in the post that those examples were conjured up specifically to dea with fear.
If you have exhaustve experience with this, meanignhave done it hundreds of times before, and you have mastered fear in the lucid dream state, perhaps it would be more productive, (or complementary to what you are currently doing) to start confronting fears in the wake state.
I understand the point of confronting fears in non lucid dream state, and think it is creative.
I wonder if your time and energy would yield better return on investment, if you made a long list of fears, organized them on a spectrum from least to greatest, and then talked them as best you could in the waking state.
No expert here, but making a habit of confronting the fears in wake life, and navigating the intense situations with awareness, might eventaully lead you to the point where any non-lucid nightmare has you not only confronting it, but seeing its true nature.
Maybe vist your local (exotic) pet store, and ask to hold the tarantulas or scorpions, or snakes, or any other fear invoking creature. If handling is against store policy, buying the being, and then donating it back (or returning it) to the store might be an option. You are very creative, I am sure you can come up with some spine tinggling senarios.
If how we live, is how we die, then doing this consistently in wake life, unitl it becomes habit, may show big results in the dreams, and barsos to come.
The other reason I asked approximately how many times you had done fear dream yoga, was to see if you had come up with a complete list of fears, or if that list was still a work in progress.
Once the dream list is complete, seems like you would be able to look for common themes (like being chained down, or mocked), and then try to find similar situations in the wake state.
If lucid dream fear has lost its edge and bite, trying to maintain full awareness in waking life fear, and not letting your mind go ‘unconscious’ to it, seems like a very powerful practice.
Asking Andrew for advice on this might be hugely beneficial as well.
What practices if any are you doing in the daytime to integrate these experiences into your being?
The concept of cultivating fear through animals in our waking reality to influence our dream state is interesting also. It seems like a thrill oriented method to forge a new relationship with fear. Over time, this approach could retrain subconscious habits (karma), potentially transforming our response when facing fear, ultimately in the bardo. I see this as a valuable avenue too.
If I were to delve into this, I would reflect on my years in Arizona, where common fears like encountering rattlesnakes and finding scorpions in shoes were a part of everyday life (the rattlesnakes loved the bushes around our house for some reason). Additionally, my fear of spiders, shared by many would be a focus. This fear is probably what led to them becoming a focal point in my lucid dream explorations.
The fears I am currently introducing into non-lucid dreams would be difficult to replicate in the real world. By embedding these fears into the subconscious terrain of dreams, I aim to add a supernatural quality, making the fear my mind experiences even more intense. I hold the belief that fully embracing and surrendering to these intensified dream experiences could lead to the natural dissipation of lesser fears.
While the suggestion to work with creatures and fears like this while awake might not align directly with the supernatural intense fears I am trying to work with, I could see using it later as an additional step to confronting a broader spectrum of fears present in waking reality.
In my daily practice, I began by acknowledging the unique state brought by the dream, adopting a ‘fake it till I make it’ mindset to release the fears.
A key part of my most recent practice is introspection, particularly around mortality. I contemplate whether I could accept death in any form.
I remember a retreat teaching about accepting any form of death as simply a transition, even going as far as welcoming harsh deaths because the manner of death in question may result in a new, perhaps shinier model.
Meditation is central too, allowing fear related thoughts to surface and pass.
Also, listening to chants like ‘Om Namah Shiva’ and ‘Om’ on a nice quality set of headphones brongs a feeling of comfort and even empowerment when facing these fears directly.
Mostly though, my practice is about being present and accepting and maintaining neutrality through what ever experience arises. While I sometimes struggle, I’m always aiming to improve.
@mbready. With that background, I would strongly recommend that you listen to your wife and not do it. There are a small but significant number of people who get triggered into psychosis by psychedelics. One of the controversies in the ayahuasca scene is that there are a small number of people that this happens to, even with experienced shamans presiding. I had an experience in the 90’s where a guy had persistent problems after a ceremony that I attended. It was just a group of friends doing a “mushroom ayahuasca” ceremony together. “Mushroom ayahuasca” is kind of an ayahuasca analog, where mushrooms are combined with a plant medicine called Syrian Rue, that has similar alkaloids to the ayahuasca vine. Unfortunately the guy who prepared the tea used a much higher dose of shrooms than we had agreed upon and we were all tripping much stronger than any of us expected. One guy, who was less experienced, was not prepared for this, and he ended up feeling like he was tripping for months afterwards. Needless to say, he was pretty pissed at the recklessness of our ceremony, and for good reason. There is even an official diagnosis for this problem: “Persistent Hallucinogen Perception Disorder.” With the history you describe, caution is advised. You may want to stick with meditation and lucid dreaming. You can go a long ways with just those practices.
I agree with this, meditation, lucid and non-lucid dreams are my primary practice. Lately I’ve valued non-lucid dreams quite a bit.
My wife holds a very similar belief about psychedelics and my psychiatrist that I was seeing (regularly) at the time of the issue I had could not understand what caused the issue.
During this period I was working 3rd shift and when I got home every time I would start to fall asleep I’d have hypnic jerks which would cause me to become wide awake. It’d usually take hours to fall back asleep only to be interrupted another hypnic jerk.
This went on for a couple weeks and I’m pretty positive 3rd shift and weeks worth of poor sleep had played a large part of the episode I experienced.
Yeah chronic sleep deprivation can definitely cause hallucinations. I read an article a while back about marathon bicycle racers who were riding across the U.S. without stopping and without sleeping. By the end of the race they were having full blown hallucinations, some of which were terrifying! But this will quickly go away after catching a snooze. Not so with the persistent hallucinogen disorder. Proceed with caution.
By the way, the last time I did more than a micodose of psychedelics was around a year and a half ago when I took a small amount of a type of mushroom that was a different and stronger species than I was used to. They kicked my butt and told me that I should not depend on using these kinds of medicines so much and get more serious about my meditation practice! So since that time, that’s what I’ve been doing.
Lived in the southwest (Tucson, Albuquerque, San Antonio) for almost a decade so I can relate, and who doesn’t know "Red and Yellow . . . . " In my experience fears can and did spread to other areas of my life that I have been able to slowly dismantle and dissipate as I’ve grown older and had several second—twenty fifth chances to work through them. It helps to have a great partner and support because life will always send those things we fear our way, eh? For me Dharma has been the key, though I have used some of the aids you have mentioned in this thread. Just my experience.
Had to hop back on the forums for a brief second tonight.
Sat down to relax and watch some TV when I got home. Was pleasantly surprised to see there was a new Percy Jackson series that came out on Hulu.
This is pretty much my life in a nutshell. It also shows first hand how I have to face my fears better than any text I could write would.
Took awhile for the wraith to manifest within the 3rd dimension but as predictable and pathetic as ever:
@mbready So the wraith taunts you about your weakness! I’m seeing now why you need to confront this in a lucid conscious way. Seems to be an inner critic or negative parental complex. Does that resonate with you? Sorry, I don’t mean to play armchair psychoanalyst if that doesn’t feel right. But if it were me, I would have it out with this wraith/critic!
… lucid and conscious… that seems to be the most important point.
Embracing and Transcending Fear: A Journey Through Mind and Meditation
Join me on a unique journey dedicated to confronting and understanding the nature of fear through mindfulness and introspective practices.
A song lyric has struck a deep chord with me: ‘Lay your burdens on me… We’re climbing until we transcend, Higher, higher to where the skies end.’ This line eloquently expresses the concept of transcending our personal limitations and fears, uncovering the hidden strength and wisdom that lies within.
My exploration into the realms of fear began unexpectedly at the young age of 6, when I was exposed to the ‘Faces of Death’ series. This series, known for its graphic depiction of executions, torture, fatal accidents, animal slaughter, suicide and murders, had a profound impact on my early understanding of fear.
Ever thought about some really out-there fears, like the idea of selling your soul? Or maybe you have fears that seem less intense but are just as real to you. I’m up for exploring all of it – the big, the small, and everything in between. Using practices like meditation and reflection, along with some help from AI, I’m ready to dive deep into these fears. My goal is to understand them better and share ways to tackle the feelings and thoughts they stir up. No fear is too extreme or too trivial for us to explore together.
I encourage you to share your fears with me (privately or publicly, here), whether they are deeply personal or existential in nature. My objective is to navigate these fears in a mental and introspective manner, applying diverse philosophical and introspective teachings to gain and share insights.
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(Please excuse the use of AI to help express clearly what I intended - I know sometimes the text seems somewhat robotic.)