I have to admit I found Andrew only yesterday, but have been an avid lucid dreamer for seventeen years.
In an interview he said to envisiok a red lotus on your throat and to outline the petals with your mind, this is to stay connected as long as possible while making your descent.
To my surprise this morning I had an extremely lucid dream, many of the details have been lost because it seemed to go on for hours. But at one point in the dream my cousin locked us in this attic bathroom because there were demonic snarling monsters outside the door, and I had the quick sense to say “Theyre not real. This isn’t real.” So I barged out of the room and started screaming at them that I knew they weren’t real, at which point it transformed into Will Smith and sat down at a table to play chess. I calmly walked over and asked “Well. What am I suppose to learn from this?” And he said “The president is trying to kill you.”
Regardless of the truth or lack of of that statement, perhaps metaphorically my mind is translating the grief of the current world into a compartmentalized, digestible message that as human beings we feel spiritually repressed to the point of regression.
I have no idea.
All I know is the red lotus meditation before bed definitely not only induced lucidity, but a quite long lucid experience as well.
I will definitely start making this part of my practice.
I have recently read that even greater success can be had if you can accurately and precisely envision the central channel and envision a very small red lotus actually in the channel rather than just in the throat.
Tenzin Wangyal speaks of the central channel as being the size of a cane.
I think the views are compatible since the throat chakra is inside the central channel at the level of the throat acc. to the Bön tradition. The pedals „pierce“ the side walls of the central channels.
I was thinking about this last night while reading Tsongkhapa’s “Book Of Three Inspirations”. This is the first written document of Tilopa’s Six Yogas after Tilopa’s declaration that they remain secret for thirteen generations. Tsongkhapa was the fourteenth generation.
He spends quite a bit of time on Dream Yoga and I have come to think of those passages in The Six Yogas as the prototypes for modern day dream yoga and lucid dreaming protocols.
Anyway…Tsongkhapa does speak of the small red lotus at the throat chakra as instrumental when first going to sleep. But then he also introduces another lotus in these interesting passages:
"Retaining the clear light of sleep is the supreme method for working in the dream state"
He goes on to say that:
One visualizes oneself as the mandala deity, and envisions a blue four-petalled lotus at one’s heart chakra, the central channel running through it, a blue mantric syllable HUM at its center.
I have used this successfully after a WBTB period or after waking from a deep sleep with a dream fragment and then using the heart lotus protocol, before fully waking up, to get back into a dream.
Steve, how about the initial transition from waking to sleeping? Do you use the red petal lotus then, or some other protocol or mantra when first entering the dream state?
Oh, yeah, that is a keyboard with a german letter set. In german the quotation mark at the start of a word is set low and the second one is high.
By the way, here is a picture from the Tsa Lung practice of the Magyü mother tantra depicting the blue central channel and the pedals „piercing“ it. (light piercing light). For dream yoga, the picture is replaced by the red lotos with pedals and the transparent A.
When first falling asleep at night I have a kind of personalized protocol that is aimed at opening the central channel and the chakras.
I start at the navel chakra with three vase-type breaths (laying in bed) and work my way to the heart chakra, the throat chakra and the head chakra, each with three held breaths…imagining a bit of Tummo fire and heat flowing up the central channel. Then I settle in to the throat chakra and visualize the red lotus back at the throat.
Honestly, though, quite often I fall asleep before I get to the lotus…so the red lotus/throat chakra doesn’t have as primary a part in my full night protocols.
At first waking 2 or 3 hours later I go to the head chakra and that’s where things usually begin to happen.
One other thing about that…I am not trying hard for the dream state in the early sleep cycles these days. Instead I am looking for a deep sleep and maybe even a little clear light sleep.
When I am successful at that the later sleep cycles produce stronger lucidity. Each chakra seems to produce subtly different dreams, depending upon how well I have slept early on.
Je Tsongkhapa addresses this in his manuscript entitled “A Book of Three Inspirations” in a section entitled “Learning to [retain conscious presence during] dreams”. I’ll quote some of that passage:
"Conscious presence can be retained during dreams by either of two methods.
In the first of these, which involves working with the vital energies, one gathers the vital energies into the central channel and dissolves them, inducing the experience of the four emptinesses."
Here he is referring to The Yoga of Inner Heat (Tummo) which does rely heavily upon visualization techniques. Throughout the manuscript Tsongkhapa repeatedly comes back to this as the foundational method of the Six Yogas of Naropa, which includes dream yoga.
He then goes on to say:
“The second method involves conscious resolution. If one is not able to succeed in the above method [of controlling the subtle energies as a means of working with the dream state], then during the waking state one should cultivate a strong resolution to retain conscious awareness in the dream state. In addition, one meditates on the chakras, especially that at the throat.”
He concludes this passage by saying:
“The first of the above two techniques is the principle method of retaining dreams as taught exclusively in the highest yoga tantra”
So…if one is not able at first to successfully visualize the red lotus etc. then intention setting will still yield results while they work on their visualization skills.
As I mentioned in another thread, I am coming to see the passages on dream yoga in this 14th century manuscript from Je Tsongkhapa as the blueprint for modern day lucid dreaming and dream yoga.
As for how this all really works…I am pondering a science based theory about how Tummo influences dream lucidity whereby biophoton release in the brain is enhanced when the “bodhimind substance” in the crown of the head is melted by the rising inner heat.
Just a short additional comment: Although I do believe that there is great benefit of some form of transmission from a teacher, it is still possible to practice by learning from a book.
Personally I am currently working with this one:
The visualisation gets better and better the more time I put into the practice.
One more point, the way I have been instructed was that the visualisations do vary according to which practice one does even when you are working with the same chakra and even when doing different practices of the same tradition/system. E.g. when doing Guru yoga, in the Yungdrung Bön tradition the red Om is at the throat chakra. When doing dream yoga, a red lotus with a transparent A is visualized, in yet a different cycle it is rather a multicolored sphere made of light; and when doing Tsa Lung, it depends on which system is being practiced: it could be either either just the golden nectar, or the image I posted above, which includes the petals representing the energetic channels connecting the chakra with the rest of the energetic body and the symbol above the petals with its own color and shape correlating with distinct energetic qualities (to be personally explored).
I found that voluntarily reeifying the images during visualisation works best when I relax slowly into the initial mental tension of concentration which is necessary to manifest the image at all.
Finally, in this visualization there is a strong aspect of feeling the image, it is not just sterile, visual manifestation.
If one chooses to visualize a lemon, one can almost taste the sourness, smell its scent and feel the uneven skin. And all of a sudden there is a stronger mental image of the lemon…
So why is it easy with a lemon?
Because we have had already many instances in our life experiencing lemons.
According to tibetan view, consciousness consists of drops (thigles) which can be directed by winds/energy (lung) moving through channels (tsa) and be brought to rest in chakras. If consciousness is gathered and focused in the central channel, either at the level of the throat chakra or heart chakra, rough lung is minimized and consciousness settles into a stable, lucid quality.
? what do you mean? 
