The Spiritual Practice of Dreaming

Have you ever experienced a lucid dream? A dream where you felt alive and it was so real to you it was hard to believe it wasn't your waking reality?

Dreams can be a useful guide in our life. They can help us to have insight, guide us in the right direction. Even if we don't remember dreaming anything, we are still dreaming. So what is happening when we dream? Are these dreams meaningful or useless?

There are 4 types of dreams:

1. Subconscious

2. Lucid

3. Conscious

4. Astral

The first type is the one we are not aware of and it is based on our subconscious processes. When we start to understand what our subconscious is telling us, we step into the early stages of conscious dreaming. Lucid dreaming is when we learn to control our dreams. The last category is when we travel outside of our body and we do work on a different plane of consciousness and then we have a recall of that work.

Dreams that are purely subconscious are the most common type. They usually relate to something that we experienced during our day or something we have been exposed to, or even related to something that has been suppressed. Usually these dreams tend to be nightmares. These dreams have the potential to transform as we become more aware of our waking reality.

Let's look at conscious dreaming. We are usually able to contemplate these dreams. Often times they may be represented to us through symbols. Sometimes a character in our dreams symbolizes someone in your waking life. Can you make the connection to who that person may be? The character could also represent an aspect of you. Like your intellectual or intuitive side. This is usually something you cannot find in a dream dictionary, because these are specifically connected to you.

Our conscious mind needs to learn the language of our dreams. When we do this, we can use this to communicate to our subconscious mind. We can use these symbols to set intentions or to understand ourselves deeper. The bottom line is that we want to become more aware, so that we can progress in life.

Are there any tricks we can use to better remember our dreams?

Lifestyle practices and intentions are the main things that can affect our dream state. Consuming substances before sleep can hinder the bridge between the conscious mind and the dream state. What can we do to have a productive dream time? Meditation is a great place to start. Transitioning to deeper brainwave state can help us to quiet our mind and set our intentions for the dream time. This can also strengthen our bridge.

The next goal is to become conscious within our dream. How does lucid dreaming differ from conscious dreaming? It is basically when you are aware of the dream and everything happening in it, and you are able to interact in that dream, changing it or affecting it in some way. To be able to do this, we have to program ourselves to know the difference and we aware of when we are dreaming or awake. You can do this first by looking at your palms and asking am I dreaming or am I awake? If your hands stay normal that means you are awake, and if they change in some way that means you are dreaming. This way we can develop the subconscious programming to check-in with ourselves when we are in the lucid dream. In lucid dreaming we are becoming more aware of what was previously a subconscious type of dream. If we decide to change the dream, we are applying our will. We have to be careful to put our ego aside when we do this, however. That way we don't manipulate reality and our dreams can become higher in consciousness. This way, we work in coherence with the universal energy and not manipulate to our desire. It can help us evolve, learn and grow.

Finally we look at astral dreaming. How is this different from the other types? This happens usually during our deepest part of the sleep cycle and we usually aren't aware of it. When we do become aware, it can feel so real like it really happened in reality. Sometimes these dreams can reflect a deja-vu feeling or experience. Astral dreams always follow a clear sequence, and don't change randomly like other types. In these dreams we usually travel to the Akashic realms and receive assignments or training of some kind, perhaps from a council we belong to. Here we meet our spiritual masters. It is possible to become lucid during these types of dreams and it can feel like a really jaw dropping experience.

What is real then?

Is reality just what's happening in the physical? Or is reality what's happening in our mind? So what is real and what is a dream? Science shows us that our brain does make the difference between a dream and waking reality...

Stages of Sleep

First we have alpha wave state where we begin to deeply relax. We aren't really asleep yet and we can easily be woken up. Then we move to theta wave, and here we are asleep. Following this is delta wave sleep, where we astral travel commonly. There is not much brain activity happening in this state. The final stage is the REM sleep. This is a state that is very similar to wakefulness. This is when we can become aware during our dream.

Whenever we see ourselves in a mirror while dreaming. It is very accurate representation of our energetic form. This is something you should pay attention to if you see this in your dream.

Best way to recall your dreams:

1. Prepare your body: avoid substances, or any violent entertainment just before bed, and try not to eat after 8pm. Throughout the night we usually experience 2-3 sleep cycles.

2. Drinking a full glass of water before bed. This can help you to wake up to journal any dreams even in the middle of the night.

3. Meditate. What questions would you like answered? Set your intention. Draw the symbol of Neptune. Neptune governs the dream time and subconscious. Energy that supports our process will be invited into the dream time. Bring yourself to inner stillness and inner peace.

4. Visualize a dot on the wall. After about 5 minutes of focusing on the dot, expand it, and allow it to become a tunnel and visualize walking through it. Use the tunnel to bridge your mind with your conscious mind and your dream time. Allow yourself to drift into sleep. When you wake up, try to stay still and ask yourself what did I dream of? Take a moment to remember where you were and what was happening. Hold still and let it come to you. Then write it down. As soon as you begin to move around, it becomes more difficult to hold the memory of the dream. So stay still until you remember something. Anything you remember counts. The more you journal, the easier it will become for you to remember. It is an active process to build this bridge to conscious dreaming.

If we are aware of our dream are we going to manipulate? Or will we become more of an observer interacting with this new reality? Does this help your progression? Knowledge that leads towards progression, helps us to transform ourselves and helps us to grow into higher consciousness. Knowledge just for the sake of knowledge may not help us grow. So it is important to recognize when something is supporting your evolutionary process or not, and if it's not there is not need to keep it up.