Milam Sleep Yoga: lucid dreaming can bring us closer to experiencing non-dualistic “reality” than waking meditation

“You should know all phenomena are like dreams.” — Shakyamuni Buddha

“It is easier to develop your practices in a dream than in the daytime. In the daytime, we are limited to our material body, but in a dream our function of mind and our consciousness of the senses are unhindered. We can have more clarity… If a person applies a practice within a dream, it is nine times more effective than when it is applied in waking life.” — Namkai Norbu Rinpoche

During REM brain activity increases

“The first step to dream practice is quite simple: one must recognize the great potential that dream holds for the spiritual journey. Normally, the dream is thought to be ‘unreal,’ as opposed to ‘real’ waking life.

But there is nothing more real than dream. This statement only makes sense once it is understood that normal waking life is as unreal as dream, and in exactly the same. way.” — Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep

“Form is Emptiness; Emptiness is Form”

Dream Yoga is a “pure state of mind”, where anything becomes possible. Thoughtforms appear real. As we master lucid dreaming, we begin to understand the Heart Sutra:

The other four aspects of human existence

feeling, thought, will, and consciousness —

are likewise nothing more than emptiness,

and emptiness nothing more than they.

“If we cannot carry our practice into sleep,” wrote Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, in The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, “if we lose ourselves every night, what chance do we have to be aware when death comes? Look to your experience in dreams to know how you will fare in death. Look to your experience of sleep to discover whether or not you are truly awake.”

Sleep Yoga: using “Theta” mind to advance

But, when we sleep, our minds create entire worlds within seconds, a century can pass in a relative minute, we can fly through the sky and meet Buddhas and stunningly beautiful Dakinis, we see monsters from the deepest fictional hells of our mind — and none of it is real. Yet, all of it is as real as we experience in our daily lives.

Lucid participation in your dreams can quickly help us develop insight into duality, into the true nature of phenomena, into the illusion of appearances in our dualistic “waking” world.

Dream Yoga: What Can We Achieve?

In a word — Anything. We can achieve anything in lucid dreaming — once we have mastered the method — because we control what we feel, see, do, and all phenomenon in the dream. If we have mastery, we can snap our fingers and create a wall of fire. It’s a fantasy dream.

But why do it? Firstly, as Andrew Holecek explains in his book Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dream, “We spend more time in bed than any other single place, dead to the outer world, but potentially alive to an exciting inner world.”

Lest we get lost in all the fantasy — or worry that it’s ruining our practice — it’s probably important to emphasise again: understanding that phenomena are ultimately illusory is the one of the main points.

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