The Fantasy Ideation in the practice of Dream Yoga

  • 2017
Table of contents hide 1 weaken our personal importance . 2 attachment to dream images . 3 practice of sustained attention

Of course, this obstacle in meditative practices seems too much if in some way as practitioners of this instruction we know that by itself it is highly demanding.

The reality is that like everything in the contemplative sphere, patience and joyful effort are required, since the results of it are not always so visible and immediate.

weaken our personal importance ...

Among the most tangible results we find to weaken our personal importance, since in the advancement of the practice it happens, for example, that we stop being so worried about being the most important in everything, having power and proven reputation leads to a background and this is because in the end our life in the waking state and in the dream state is full of perceptions and mental projections at all alien to ourselves, this is a sign of the weakening of our fantasy identity that we manufacture in both state.

It is important to understand that this practice is of the contemplative order like that of meditation in its different modalities.

For the above reason, the obstacles and poisons in Dream Yoga are practically the same.

The first is that of the fantasy Ideation, that is, in the context of sleep, we divert our attention from learning to sleep as a dream towards wandering prey to the sensory stimuli that surround us.

attachment to dream images ...

For example, if a scary person appears in our dream we get hooked, we lose lucidity and we wake up ... in the same way if we are dreaming of a comfortable loved one and enjoying ourselves we can lose lucidity in the desire to prolong that feeling of joy.

It is then that we can ask ourselves : Why is this an obstacle if I am really enjoying the dream? … The answer is that the objective of the practice is not only to be lucid and conscious in the dream… in reality it is also a platform of internal contemplative development that at the moment of understanding the dream as a dream should lead us to liberation and enlightenment and not only to hedonic pleasure as such.

This is how the themes, narratives and events in our dreams serve us in a therapeutic way to possibly understand emotions or internal conflicts that have not been resolved and require our attention.

In the same way, interpreting dreams is not the ultimate goal of practice, because dreams are only creation of our mind and if we understand their nature, what is certain is that we will not get carried away by what happens in the dream environment.

The antidote to this obstacle of fantasy ideation is basically to strengthen our motivation and determination to learn the dream as a dream, lacking intrinsic identity and objective reality.

practice of sustained attention ...

Another antidote is that of the practice of meditation in sustained attention or shamata whose objective is to focus unipunctually on the object of observation that in this case is the dream.

A more elaborate but no less effective one is the visualization of a tingle or red sphere in the chakra or center of the throat that is where the energy charge that allows us to stay l acidic and not unconscious in sleep.

Like all the most important thing is to fix our point of view and behavior in the practice that is to learn to dream like a dream, because although it is not affirmed that things and events do not exist, what is true is that they are not outside, they are produced by the mind of the reverie, and in life, this is how we live interpreting the world as a collective dream without understanding that in reality each person has their own perceptions that we cannot guess.This is another great benefit of the practice especially when we understand that the world works in relation to the set of personal interpretations that we call realities.

projections of our mind ..

A great step at least is to understand that the only thing we can work on is our mind for the benefit of others because trying to manipulate all those around us will unfortunately lead us to the painful and non-productive frustration…. .Just because it is.

AUTHOR: Pilar Vázquez, collaborator of the great family of the White Brotherhood

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