Hello fellow dreamers! My name is Celeste and I live in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains in northwestern North Carolina. I’ve been interested in dreams and kept a dream journal for most of my life. I had regular lucid dreams as a child but eventually lost the ability as an adult. About 12 years ago I began actively working to bring lucidity back into my dreams after reading about the practice in the Seth books. I have since studied a variety of dream and lucidity teachings through books, online workshops, and dream groups.
A few years ago a friend gave me the book “Dreaming Yourself Awake” by B. Alan Wallace. This was my first introduction to Dream Yoga and it was a practice that seemed made for me. I’ve been studying Buddhism for 25 years (primarily the Zen tradition) and was not familiar with Dream Yoga until I read this book. It is the perfect synthesis of my interest in dreams and in meditation and awareness.
From there I found Andrew’s work, and have read all his books and taken the courses from MindValley and Tricycle. I love his combination of Eastern and Western teachings, along with the blend of spiritual and scientific aspects of dreaming. I am most interested in the daytime practices of meditation and illusory form, along with the dream yoga “track.” In time I hope to evolve to the point where I can add sleep yoga to my practice. The idea of ever-expanding awareness is my primary goal and I am open to following it as far as it will take me.
I would like to give a big thumbs up to the folks who developed the website. I’m a web developer by day and know how much work it takes to set up a subscription-based website. It looks beautiful and everything is working great, congratulations! Ironically, I don’t spend much time online when I’m not working (my brain needs plenty of “analog” time away from screens), so my interactions in the forum here may be sporadic. I will plan to drop by periodically and read everyone’s discussions and perhaps add a comment here and there.
Hi all,
My name is Lisa and I have just recently joined Night Club thanks to a birthday gift from a very kind friend. I live in Massachusetts and I am an elementary school teacher. I love basketball, reading and the Red Sox.
I have been interested in lucid dreaming for a couple of years. I have had a couple of short LDs, but none during the past year. I have taken two lucid dreaming courses in the past few months. I am hopeful that more consistently implementing practices learned in those courses and the ongoing support and sharing in the Night Club will be the springboard to lots of nighttime adventures!
I’ve been registered on this site for a little while, and haven’t introduced myself until now, because I’ve been attending Alan Wallace’s 8 week Dzogchen retreat via audio stream, so there wasn’t much time for anything else. Towards the end, he delved into dream yoga a bit. I live in San Francisco, CA, and just began attending a short course with Anam Thubten on the bardos. At the end of the first day, he gave some instructions and “homework” for dream yoga. I’m really happy to have the Night Club as ongoing part of this yogic basket.
I’ve always had strong dream recall. My dad was a surrealist and asked me about my dreams almost every morning, and as a child I often wondered why the dream world was so fluid in terms of environment and identity and yet I’d awaken to the same story every morning. I didn’t think of the “day world” as inherently more real, just perplexingly different. I’ve had lucid dreams from time to time as a feature of the dream, but not intentionally as a yogic practice. Because of my background, I thought that lucid dreaming would come easily to me, but no. I felt relieved to hear Andrew say that it can take time.
I have a lifelong love of dreams, along with the mystery of consciousness altogether, and just finished attending the wake-centricity webinar (thanks! you’re talking my language! and so eloquently! ) which reminded me it was time to introduce myself.
I feel very fortunate to be here among you, and look forward to spending some time participating in this site and community.
I’m so appreciative of all the work that has clearly gone into crafting such a beautiful container. Gratitude to Andrew and to all involved.
Welcome @niki! So good to have you here.
I especially love that your dad asked about your dreams so often as a child. I’d love to see more of this in our culture.
thank you Andrew, Team and Friends
I am so excited to be here
though I have loved interacting with my dreams all my life, I’m kind of new to lucid dreaming.
it’s difficult to express how grateful I am to have access to these wonderful teachings and to the posts you share. I feel truly fortunate to be in your company.
Hello Everyone! It is exciting reading through everyone’s introduction! I made mine in a separate thread before I read this one. Oups! Everyone’s journey is so unique, but it is nice that we all have many parts in common. I see that a lot of people have attended seminars or courses; I hope to be able to do this. I live in Atlanta, GA and don’t see many seminars, classes etc. on LDing or Dream Yoga. I have mostly studied from books. One of Andrew’s students is a friend of mine and introduced me to Night Club! I am glad to be here!
I’m Tash, a 32 year old from Bournemouth, UK. When I was 17 I had many weird sleep paralysis and LD experiences, managing to test all my senses. It made me question my views on reality and perception. However, after that year I had no more LD’s and carried on with life.
About a year ago I had an anxiety breakdown and honestly thought I’d broken my mind. I’ve slowly clawed my way back but it’s now made me slightly obsessed with mental health and consciousness in general. Psychologist Fritz Perls used to say, “Lose your mind and come to your senses.” and for me, I couldn’t agree more! Seeing the darker, mind frazzling anxious side has nudged me towards exploring mental well being, buddhism, dream yoga, lucid dreaming, meditation and mindfulness and I’m so thankful.
I’m now reading lots of fascinating books, meditating daily, trying to be mindful and dipping my toes back into the world of lucid dreaming. I’ve made massive improvements but feel tapping into lucid dreams could be extremely transformative. I’m excited for all our journeys.
My name is Mark and I’m a mathematician and computer scientist currently living in southern Vermont. My philosophical influences are primarily Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, and Husserlian phenomenology.
About five years ago I was heavily interested in lucid dreaming and dream yoga and had some success with lucid dream induction. Throughout my life I’ve had problems with insomnia and so I had to pause my practice because waking my mind at night disrupted my sleep too much. I recently heard Andrew on the “Deconstructing Yourself” podcast where he mentioned using lucid hypnogogic imagery during meditation as an alternative to traditional lucidity induction and I was intrigued. So here I am.
I’m also interested in using technology to advance meditation and contemplation, including virtual reality, psychedelics, and data analysis.
It’s good to meet you. As a retired electrical engineer, I too am interested in using technology to assist with meditation. Presently I’m looking at the possibility of a NovaDreamer redo, using the Raspberry Pi Zero W and its associated infrared camera. Might be possible to detect REM with image processing, as is done for motion detection. Just ordered the IR camera yesterday, a Black Friday purchase. Will let you and others know if I have any success.
Hi Mark! I think it is so cool that you are interested in LD and Buddhism while also being a mathematician. Do you make any connections between math and these other areas of thought? I have a mathematician friend who does not make any connections between these things. He thinks of mathematics as its own separate thing with its own special language that cannot be talked about out of its own specialized context. Anyways, I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
The question about the relationship between mathematics and Advaita and/or Buddhism is difficult.
Franklin Merrell-Wolff, the 20th century mystic who wrote “The Philosophy of Consciousness-Without-An-Object”, was convinced that modern mathematics could be turned into a spiritual yoga or path. Edmund Husserl, the father of the school of philosophy called “Phenonemology” which, in my opinion, is truly a contemplative discipline and a fantastic “gateway philosophy” to the East, hinted that a future mathematics of consciousness was waiting to be discovered.
With regard to lucid dreaming, I feel that the truths of mathematics remain valid under any type of simulation (of which dreaming is one example) unlike the truths of the other sciences (e.g. physics) which are contingent and relative to THIS reality (where “THIS” refers to whichever reality in which you happen to be immersed at the moment).
Spider, I hope I’ve addressed your question and given you something interesting to consider. But I only hold these ideas provisionally. The more I contemplate any of this stuff, the less certain I become about any of it.
Hi Mark, welcome to the club! I relate with what you say about sleeping issues leading you to suspend your practice; this has been true for me at various times as well (including recently). Especially after reading the wonderful book Why We Sleep. These days getting higher quality and sufficient sleep is a high priority; only if I am doing really well in that regard do I sometimes bring nocturnal practices into play.
That said, one night not too long ago when my sleep was horrible, I was able to go right into REM sleep towards the end of the night and have a WILD.
Interest in dreams… well, before recently, not at all.
Recently I was on a retreat and saw the power of dreams.
During the retreat I fell asleep while meditating yet I maintained awareness while still meditating. Then, I woke up while meditating too, all while maintaining awareness. I realized that maybe I could do this same thing while falling asleep. So that night I was able to immediately enter that state and fall asleep while being aware. What appeared was disturbing violent and sexual dreams but also the Flinstones. I could see the mind and dreams as separate objects. Was able to sustain that for 20-30 mins before actually falling asleep. This happened during the rest of the retreat too. Was able to observe which breath I fell asleep on.
A few days following the retreat while deep in a meditation I investigated the context surrounding the disturbing violent dream and had a massive cry-my-eyes-out session after unearthing 20 year old sadness.
I’m still able to fall asleep while being aware given the right conditions. I write down a 10 min review of my day noting any situations I reacted to anything, then meditate for 10 mins before going to bed. Then it is like I decide to fall asleep then am aware. I’ve had purifications during the night too as am able to guide the mind to forgotten memories that contain the unpleasant stuff.
I like what Andrew says in his book: follow the fear.
Everything he said about being a spiritual warrior sang to my heart too. Thank you, Andrew
For now I’m now just using this practice as a tool to investigate memories and understanding my own mind better to be both more aware and skillful.
About me more generally:
Grew up in NY, Canada and MN and have lived many other places since then.
Currently living in the Bay Area and moving into the Nyingma Institute (Berkeley, CA) in January.
Meditator 6+ years although within the last year going full speed following The Mind Illuminated with guidance of my amazing friend Tucker Peck who coincidentally is on one of the podcasts here. I have a very dedicated and determined practice.
I work in tech although I have a feeling my life will go in an even more spiritual way of life after living at the Nyingma Institute. I’m pretty interested in just living a simple life, honestly.
Cool, thanks you’ve given me a few interesting ideas to chew on. My background is in philosophy of science and logic. We did not touch upon “continental” philosophy so we neglected husserl. I am just learning more about advaita vedanta but have found Shinzen Young’s work to segue quite nicely into that. He’s also really into math stuff but I have yet to see anyone make a clear connection between meditation and mathematics. Perhaps I will stumble across some of that in Franklin Merrell Wolff’s work.
As for the LD stuff and its relation to mathematical truths, are you referring to a sort of a priori platonic concept of number? I get that certain things, by definition will always be true regardless of which reality we examine them from but have also started to suspect that even those truths are mere conceptual fabrications (artifacts of our in-built language processing) which we may be able to doubt further. Anyways, thanks for the engagement, it’s refreshing
Hey all! Name’s Peter-Brandon and I live in Utah. I am studying public health and I’m a certified QPR suicide prevention instructor. I love dream yoga and the insight I’ve been able to gain in just the daytime practices. I’ve had a little success in lucid dreaming and dream yoga but I have plenty of room to grow. That’s why I’m here! Thank you so much for bring together a much needed community!
Shinzen Young is indeed interested in mathematics, especially category theory. I once asked him if he sees category theory only as a source of useful metaphor or as something that has more direct contemplative application. I never received a response.
Merrell-Wolff’s comments on mathematics as a spiritual discipline are, admittedly, vague. At the very least, he seems to regard math as useful metaphor and also extremely suggestive of deeper insight. However mathematics has developed enormously since his training and so he limits himself to discussions on what is now considered rather elementary mathematics.
Regarding philosophy of mathematics, I adhere to “phenomenological realism”. This is quite different from anything “Platonic”. A book I recommend is “Husserl and Realism in Logic and Mathematics” by Tragesser.
Hi Peter, welcome to the club. Has your work in suicide prevention informed your meditation/spiritual practice (or vice-versa)? Do you work directly with suicidal people?
Sorry to hear about your anxiety breakdown. I think you’ve found a good place here, and I hope you enjoy it