I was about to spend my first night in an idyllic holiday cottage by the sea. I had arrived weary after two hundred miles of roaring roads, with broken air-con and in a steam-heat that had sucked the energy from my bones. But as I took a brief stroll around my new home for the week I knew I was in for a treat: a quaint old harbour, a clean sea, a good weather forecast and porpoises leaping in the bay. What more could one ask?
I went to bed early, looking forward to a refreshing night’s sleep, but I found it hard to drift off. This sometimes happens after a long journey and a strange bed, but when I did finally eventually slip away, I was assailed by horrific dreams of violence, torture and mutilation. This was not normal, my dreams being for the most part benign and enigmatic. I wondered then where such powerfully gruesome imagery might have come from. Dreams borrow from waking life, but I don’t watch that type of movie or play the computer games that might contain it, and my actual waking life is as tame as it gets.
It was a mystery, then.
According to one theory I was sleeping in a psychical space still contaminated by the previous guest, that I had literally laid my head upon the same pillow and immersed myself in a persisting cloud of fear and knife-slashing violence. The more rational modes of thinking will not allow such ideas of course, and mostly I resist them, but the more mystical forms will and since I was desperate for sleep, I was prepared to entertain them. For help in such situations, we do no better than turn to Tibetan Buddhism, and the yoga of dreams and sleep.
These teachings are concerned with cultivating a lucid awareness during the dream; effectively waking up in the dream, and becoming consciously aware of ourselves within it. This is not something I’m capable of, but the subject interests me as do all studies on dreams and dreaming. Lucidity has been verified by experiment in sleep laboratories, and it seems many of us are indeed capable of it spontaneously. What we do with it varies. In Western culture, according to the books I’ve read by self styled oneironauts, it boils down to wanting to fly, or having sex with strangers and other fantastical, escapist adventures, in other words to use the dream-space as a kind of narcissistic playground. In Tibetan Buddhism however, the goal is to achieve a state of meditation, in the dream. Also, if we are able to become fully aware of ourselves in the dream space, the Buddhists say we are more likely to become fully awake in the awakened state as well. This is something that takes a great deal of discipline and training, but other aspects of the technique are more accessible to the lay person, such as how we prepare the ground for lucid awareness in the first place.
Obviously if we are to meditate in the dream, we need a clean psychical space, untroubled by demons and their drama. So, as we seek sleep, the yogis teach the cultivation of personal, protective archetypes. For a man these are most easily imagined as female warriors of extraordinary beauty and prowess. We conjure them up by a process of active imagination as we seek sleep, then deploy them around our sleep-space to watch over us. We station them in doorways, around the bed or patrolling the garden, wherever we feel a vulnerability. They are infinitely patient and devoted to our protection and by their mere presence they chase away the troublesome demons as sunlight dissolves shadows, or as the presence of a cat will deter mice.
Fanciful as all this sounds, I do find the technique effective and have deployed my personal “Amazons” on many an occasion when unsettled and struggling for sleep. Sure enough, on this occasion too, my later dreams found a more even keel; the gore dissolved to something more wholesome as I sailed through into a placid space and woke refreshed, ready to begin my holiday.
I was not troubled again.
Sweet dreams.
How very interesting. When I was in my twenties, I had a number of lucid dreams (or at least short lucid intervals in dreams). I never managed to stay conscious for very long. I do remember trying to telephone a mate to see what would happen, but I lost lucidity before I got through. I never managed to fly or have sex with a stranger. Perhaps, if I’d gone to sleep imagine Amazonian warriors of infinite beauty (though I have a sneaking suspicion I wouldn’t have got to sleep).
Thanks George, Like you I’ve managed a few brief experiences, but the surprise woke me up at once- obviously takes more self control than I can muster. Now, as for those Amazons,…well,…
I have a secret garden
where I lay me down to sleep.
Surrounded by a red brick wall,
glass topped, too high to leap.
No matter what vicissitudes
beleague my waking life
Inside my magic garden
there is no pain or strife.
My childhood monsters, demons, ghosts
were banned beyond the walls
I’m safe amongst my flowers, and trees
my sparkling waterfalls.
I spend my whole night wandering there,
awake? asleep? who knows.
the morning comes, I rise afreshed
re-energised, up on my toes.
Capabilty Brown and Repton
spent fortunes laying sod
My garden doesn’t cost one ‘p’
as off to sleep I nod.
With toil and sweat they built their dreams
asked friends, consulted the wise.
Moved mountains, had to ‘scape the land
Whilst I just close my eyes.
No Amazons or warlike types
No princesses or dowry’s
My garden is a paradise
Ooops
I forgot to mention the houris.
Ah,…
A garden of delight so sweet,
It’s plain for all to see,
Your safe retreat for seeking sleep
Sounds like the perfect place to me.
I enjoyed that, Michael. I’ve never done any dream-work like that, so I’ve ordered the book you lined to. Thank you.
Thank you Steven. I hope you find the book interesting. It certainly gave me an insight into an aspect of Tibetan Buddhist practice I was unaware of, and the tremendous discipline involved. And as I mentioned in the blog, that guidance on clearing the dream-space after a bumpy day certainly comes in handy now and then.