Nourishing Our Spiritual Life through Sleep and Dreams
There is no magic formula to living a genuine spiritual life. No adequate map that charts the exact terrain–we each walk into the mystery of our lives–blind, unable to see the future that will unfold.
We don’t know what we will encounter when we turn our attention inward during meditation (especially long periods of meditation like retreat). We don’t know what is waiting in the unconscious to rise up into awareness–what parts of ourselves, our family karma or the world’s–that is looking to be healed and integrated in our growing heart.
Nor do we know what aspect of our true nature is waiting to reveal itself to us.
And we certainly don’t know what we will be asked to carry into the surface world and offer others.
I just finished leading a retreat entitled–This is a Dream. This is a theme we have explored during residential practice periods + creative practice periods when I lived as a monastic at Great Vow.
In the Buddhist tradition, one of the eight analogies used to convey the nature of experience is that it is a dream. This teaching is used to guide us into the realization of the non-fixed, mercurial nature of ourselves and the world. It is also used to point to our innate wholeness–this unified field of awakened nature, that all arises in and all is a part of.
I find this dream analogy fascinating. Long before I started Buddhism I had an interest in the stuff of dreams and sleep. Like how every night we surrender our egoic lives, our plans, our hopes, our fears, our roles and responsibilities–to the great mystery of sleep. Who are we when awareness of our bodies, thinking minds, senses, and what we ordinarily call the world disappear?
Is deep dreamless sleep a kind of samadhi? Do we enter a realm where all is OK, all is at peace? Do we return to our original home?
In Zen we have a koan : Darkness is the home from which you come.
Every night or every sleep we surrender to the darkness–that place of pure potential energy–awake silence and then, from that deep state of letting go–images, landscapes and beings emerge –what we call the content of our dreams.
The creativity of mind’s nature displays itself, to itself.
Usually we take a position in the dream, this position is known as the dream-ego, for we feel that things happen to us–we do things, have experiences and feelings in the dream. Dream researchers note that our body responds to the nighttime visitors in the same way it responds to day time stimuli. Which is why sometimes we wake with anxiety or rage, bliss or wonderment depending on the dream scenes. Other times we may wake feeling as though we had just been running, screaming, gasping for air or some other physical sense linking back to the dream.
Dreamworkers note that dreams often happen as a series of images not as a narrative. It is our waking minds that reconstruct the dream, telling it in a story that makes sense to our egoic sensibilities. The dream itself is often pure sensation, pure emotion, pure experience.
Waking up from a nightmare or painful dream can be relieving, we use the phrase–that was just a dream. Just a dream. Here I am, in my bed, it's not flooding, there is no evil force out to get me, I am safe. We recognize that the dream images arose in our minds. That whole scene happened in our minds.
This is profound and deeply liberating. One question that may arise next is, well where is this so called waking reality happening? Is it too, the stuff of mind? Can any moment of experience be separated from our awareness of it? Is this not also happening, in your mind? See how your body, these words, the sounds you hear, the objects, people, space around you also arise in your awareness, in your mind.
This intimacy is celebrated in the Zen tradition. Ancient teacher’s declared: Mind is Buddha! And then Mind is NOT Buddha! Which opens to the insight, that all is sacred, all is blessed. And simultaneously all is vanishing before it even appears.
As I get more intimate with sleep and dreams, and bring the eye of practice to them. I feel like sleep and dreams are sacred practices. For they invite a deep curiosity into the nature of Mind.
If dreams happen in our minds. And are made of mind. First, it is deliciously intimate. How creative “mind” is when I am not controlling it, how beautiful, nightmarish, insightful, clever and sweet. And then, what is Mind?
I have experienced the bluest waters in dreams, the clearest sense of purpose, the deepest of fears, the most intimate encounters with the more than human-world or even non-human intelligences. Friends tell me of the love they are able to receive in dreams, when self-consciousness is absent or the spiritual insights they receive when the doubting mind is at rest. Or the beautiful landscapes they visit, more beautiful than any they have ever seen (perhaps because the thinking mind isn’t overlaying itself onto the landscape).
Nightmares too, as dharma practitioners can be such potent teachings of where fear is leading our lives. Or a piece of our lives that needs our care, attention and grace. Something in us that is tired of being exiled and wants to be integrated or healed.
In a culture where the ego is a cultural meme. I-phone, I-pad, I-centered living– it makes sense that sleep (the relinquishing of egoic control) is undervalued and dreams are considered the processing of the day.
Yet this hasn’t been the case throughout human history. In Aboriginal Australia–dreams are considered of collective importance, one is given a dream and it is meant to be shared. It is also believed that the landscape dreams and that shamans are able to travel during dreamtime doing important spiritual + healing work in other realms.
In Buddhism we have a long history of premonitory dreams–including the Buddha’s mother’s dream of being pierced by the tusks of a white elephant, and she knew she was pregnant. And the Buddha’s wife Yasodhara had eight dreams depicting the stages of the Buddha’s awakening before he left their home, giving her reassurance that he must go and pursue this vow that was rising up in him. We also have examples of teachers who listened to their dreams like Keizan Zenji and Priest Myo-e.
Dreams invite the mysterious workings of the universe a place in our lives. A reminder that we aren’t in control in the ways the ego wants to be. Attending to them and bringing awareness to the process of sleep can bring healing to the parts of us who are tired of playing ego’s self-improvement game.
They can invite us into the deep inquiry and intimate exploration of the mystics. What is Mind? What are dreams made of, where do they go?
What if we honored the mysteries of sleep and dream with the same importance (or even half as much importance) as we give our day-lit selves? We do sleep for about a third of our lives. Could we be returning home, to a deeper state of knowing, to a place of peace + connection, free of egoic control?
A few months ago, my partner told me that he accidentally woke me up in the middle of the night and I shared a spiritual teaching I was receiving from my teacher. I started chanting a mantra he had never heard before. I have no memory of this deep dreaming middle of the night state. But I was practicing. It made me wonder, do I do that every night–at least for part of the night?
What do we do, or not do, in those deep dreaming and deep sleep states? What happens if you allow sleep to be a place of practice? A sacred time?
Here are a few small things you can do to honor the wisdom and healing of dreams and sleep:
Begin winding down at least an hour before going to sleep. Stop using screens. And shift into being, reading, light conversation or meditation.
Bring ritual into your night life. Say a prayer before bed for protection, insight, healing. Open to your interconnection with wise ones, ancestors, beneficent beings of compassion. Sip some relaxing tea or a dream tea blend.
Meditate as you are falling asleep. Set intentions. Or recall the simple bodhisattva prayer, may all beings realize the deep peace that is their nature.
Keep a dream journal or record your dreams.
Honor the beings who appear to you through poetry, art, creative writing, sitting with them, talking to them through active imagination or sharing a dream with a loved one or in a dream group.
Want support in working with your dreams as part of your healing or spiritual journey? Check-out my dream-work offerings to learn more.
