Dream Yoga and the Wisdom of the Dark

In this video, Andrew offers some observations on why one should engage in lucid dreaming and dream yoga. He suggests that not only does lucid dreaming increase awareness, but that cultivating the nighttime practices enhances problem solving during the day and heightens perception overall.

Why Not Use the Third of Our Lives Spent Sleeping to Deepen Our Awareness?

Some spiritual traditions, including Tibetan Buddhism, maintain that if we’re lucid to it we are more in contact with reality in deep dreamless sleep than we are in waking reality. Through the practice of lucid dreaming, dream yoga, and then even deeper with sleep yoga, we have a precious opportunity to understand the deeper strata of the mind.

Wake-Centric Bias

Andrew also discusses how the nighttime practices reveal our blindspots. One such blindspot is our wake-centric bias. Few of us have a genuine relationship to darkness, where “darkness” is a codeword for the unconscious. When we fall asleep, the ego falls out of its operative domain. So ego dismisses other states that it can’t fully experience, like sleep and dream. Wake-centricity is therefore a form of ego-centricity.

Lucid Dreaming Induction Techniques

Acknowledging that having lucid dreams, which are necessary for the deeper practice of dream yoga, is not easy for most people,  Andrew shows that there are a number of effective induction techniques that are easy to implement.

Lucid Dreaming as an Integral Life Practice

This presentation was given at the “What Now Conference”,  a large gathering of the Integral Life community. Integral Life is a personal development community based on the teachings of Ken Wilber, the co-founder of Integral Life. Ken is an internationally known philosopher, author of over 25 books, and a preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development.

Andrew has been a longtime fan of Integral Theory, which offers one of the most comprehensive maps of reality. A recent emphasis with the community has been on Integral practice, which is where the nocturnal meditations come into play.

To read more about lucid dreaming and dream yoga, see Andrew’s book, “Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep.”