Did you ever have a nightmare so real that you actually felt rescued upon awakening? You felt a deep sense of joy and liberation when you realized it was “only a dream”?
A secret truth is that such bad dream experiences very much parallel the experience of obstacles and fears in waking life too.
This realization will empower you. Direct your life so that rather than being overwhelmed by obstacles and fears, you can operate from the liberating realization that the root source of your perceptions is your own mind.
Almost everything we think and feel, and all our interpretations of what we encounter, are rooted in hope and fear, which in turn, bind our minds to turbulent emotions. This constrains our thoughts to the point where we no longer have any control over them. That is why, according to the shravaka teachings, we need to tame the mind. Or from the bodhisattva point of view, train it to become useful. Or from the vajrayana perspective recognize how the mind works.
Where do you fit in the process?
Jim McFarland says:
Wow! Just “happened” upon this post after a few nights several months ago where I had some disturbing and turbulent dreams, and then later found and applied teachings on Tibetan dream work.
Waited to answer.
These turbulent dreams came after an experience of awareness/lucidity in another dream, days before, where I felt very empowered and later had a wonderful, confident day.
The teachings say all were projections of my mind. Like the 6 Projected Realms or Rokudai. So fascinating how in one dream I felt so empowered and aware of dreaming, which carried over positively into waking consciousness, and in another so buffeted by fears that also carried over into that day!
As I look back now, many months later, both the turbulent dreams, and the realization dreams foreshadowed important inner change happening. I’ve actually experienced a prolonged period of new freedom from old fears and habits. Refreshing!
I am practicing all 3 “yana’s”: taming the mind by renouncing the triple poisoning energies of needy attachment, aversive resistance and confusing ignorance; training the mind to be useful to others and further working on extending that truth by moving through life with 6 Heroic parameters; and finally increasing understanding of how we project realities unconsciously from deeply held, habitual stories…Thank you, sir!