Presentations on Lucid Dreaming Available

To my dream-interested friends, I've just posted my three presentations that I gave at IASD at Berkeley in early June:

• “The Phenomenon of Light and Darkness on the Lucid Dream Journey," 
• “Underhill’s Three Stages of the Mystic’s Journey as Reflected in My Lucid Dreams" 
• “A New Method of Dream Analysis Congruent with Contemporary Counseling Approaches.

These postings include links to the audio, powerpoints, and text support.

http://www.dreamanalysistraining.com/styled-28/page9.html

Two visions in meditation

Being in the woods here in northern Pennsylvania has really deepened my meditations. I go home in two days, but in the last couple of days, I have had two visions in meditation that were not only beautiful, but deeply meaningful. In the first, I am with a woman from a different realm, or a different world. She is here in this world, but in order to enter this plane more fully, she lies down and places her feet against a beautiful young tree, with delicate limbs that make a symmetrical canopy. By touching the tree, she can have a greater influence in this world.

In the second, which occurred in this morning's meditation, I see a large wooden water wheel. Water pours into the top of it from an aqueduct that runs from right to left. As the water flows downward onto the wheel, it turns counterclockwise slowly. Then the water runs off the wheel into the ocean's edge.

These visions capture something true and objective, and "arrive" fully formed and with all of the awarenesses and feelings available without reflecting on them. They are precious gifts, even though, frankly, when I'm that deep in meditation, I usually don't pay much attention to them, and often forget them before the end of my period of silence.

Deep Immersion and A Vision in Meditation

People often ask me about my approach to meditation. It has evolved over the years, and is currently hard to describe. Suffice to say that my goal is to get beyond thinking, and to experience an immersion. At that point, my ego is "gone," and I lose my awareness of the here and now. I think this resembles what the Tibetans refer to as "chopping down the tree," in which the meditator endeavors to defeat each thought until thought ceases altogether. It comes fairly easily to me, and I'm not sure why. I know that's very different from mindfulness, in which one focuses on the breath and maintains an awareness of the here and now. But my problem is thinking and worrying about things that don't really matter, or over which I have no control. Also, if I can reach the state of immersion in spirit, I am immediately recharged and less attached to whatever is on my list of anxious worries.

Also, I often experience visions in the state of immersion that inform me of the "deeper track" of my life. For instance, this morning, I reached the state of alert immersion, and experienced this vivid, spontaneous "dream":

I am standing with a woman between two causeways, one old and one new (like to two joining Port Isabel to Padre Island in south Texas). The old one is broken, and no longer used for cars, and the new one is fully functional. I hear the phrase, "They are peers." When I came out of meditation and shared this with Julie, I realized that "peers" could be "piers." I then though of how the old causeway is used as a pier, and has become useful again.

There was a lot in the short experience, but I realized as I emerged from the experience that the dynamic or active work we do will come to a halt due to aging or natural cycles, but can then provide a "passive" and supportive foundation for others. It is so easy to value the current, dynamic work more highly than the past efforts, but as aging sets in, it's important to be able to shift to a sense of gratitude for the enduring contributions of one's life rather than the new efforts, which of course, in time, will also come to quiescence. At this stage in my life, both are quite evident--three presentations well received last week attest to the fully functional causeway, but that, too, must pass in time. It's always good to have a metaphor that compensates for the sense of decline. I am always impressed by the genius and generosity of the deeper self. Who could have rationally constructed such an experience that said so much in the span of mere seconds? Not my conscious mind, that's for sure.

Using lucidity to learn a language

A woman wrote me this morning and asked the following question:

For many years, I have been successfully dreaming with lucidity, which is joyous and life changing. I am able to focus enough to fall in and out of the same dream, creating my own canvas. I recently tried to learn words with a dictionary during sleep, but wasn't quite able to. Got the book off the shelf and opened it, but then woke up. Is it possible to utilize this ability to learn another language, in your experience?

My response was as follows:

An intriguing idea, but in my experience I have not found the lucid state to be a place where I try to learn new things that are immediately available to me in the waking state. I tend to approach it as a frontier, where I can become available to higher power and deep healing, and then have more energy and clarity for doing the hard work in my waking life. I think trying to learn a language there is like trying to learn to ride a bicycle by going swimming. You might feel more like riding that bicycle once you swim, but you'd be using the wrong context for learning the right thing.