Sleep meditation, dream yoga and astral playdates

So, I’m reading The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep.  Slowly. Cos every time I read a page I fall asleep. J

Why? Cos I wanna be able to meditate when I’m asleep. Seriously, how cool would that be? The idea is that, eventually, you learn to remain aware at all times, even during deep sleep.  Why? Um, cos it’s possible I suppose. Because I love meditating while awake so figure more of a good thing is great. Because sleep seems like such a huge waste of time. And also because I’ve had a glimpse, just the tiniest glimpse, of what maintaining consciousness during sleep can do.

When I was younger, I used to be able to lucid dream really well, quite easily. At first I used it just for fun. I'd go eavesdrop on friends or I’d head off travelling.  It was awesome – shooting over huge waterfalls in Brazil or scooting over the desert in Arizona. Or flying up and up and up, through the atmosphere and out into space. 

But then, after I did art therapy and  read a lot of Jung, I started using lucid dreaming in a more serious way.  I trained myself to ‘go lucid’ whenever I had a nightmare – and I would confront the monster or whatever and find out what it really was, underneath its scary skin, beyond its sharp teeth.  And, once the skin was removed, the teeth had stopped tearing and biting, once the bright light of consciousness had shone on it, had brought it out from the shadows, the monster stopped being fearsome – and that particular nightmare would cease.  

If you stay lucid in a dream, you can ask anything – and receive answers that just aren’t possible in the waking state.  

But now? Oh who am I kidding?  I can’t even keep control of my mind during daytime consciousness. I really am like Dory in Finding Nemo – a two minute, nay two second, memory span. And I have lost the ability to lucid dream entirely.  But I'm not giving up.  Nobody said it was easy but if I’ve done it before, I can do it again, right?  Because really, it shouldn't be hard.  After all, everything is a dream anyhow.  We dream our world, our experiences, each and every one of them.

Whether we’re awake or asleep aren’t we just experiencing our mind’s projections?  Of course there are logical limitations – if we jump off a building we won’t tend to fly (in waking life); if we walk into a fire we will get burned (ditto) and so on.  Though humans can do extraordinary things under certain circumstances - I've had a few strange experiences myself.  And bear in mind that there are yogis who think nothing of flying or walking through (not just over) fire or translocating. But I think I’ll have to save that training for another lifetime. Unless, of course, I take a quantum leap. J

But the dream training is actually quite helpful, particularly when it comes to emotions, desires – even if it doesn’t result in lucid dreaming.  When a reaction arises, you simply remind yourself that you, the object or person and your reaction to said object/person are all dream. Your reaction to anything and anyone does not originate ‘out there’ but 'in here'. Your reaction is entirely down to you, your thoughts, your mind.  Your choice. 

Easy huh?  I wish. Maybe I’ll start by going back to astral touristry, or astral playdates.  Y’know…baby steps. J

Can you catch a nightmare?

Every so often an image stops me in my tracks. A few weeks back a friend gave me a pile of old magazines.  A few days ago I was flicking through one and this image just smacked me in the face.

It’s huge apparently – 8ft by 11ft – a watercolour entitled The Island by the American painter Walton Ford.  No, he’s not some nineteenth century botanist – the painting is recent – 2009.

I just keep staring at it. At this seething writhing knot of creatures.  It’s painfully graphic – the thylacines (as I found out they were) are ripping and biting, not only the lambs but one another.  And yet somehow it’s not a frenzy. The lambs seem resigned somehow; the thylacines equally uninvolved somehow. And, aside from one creature in the background, the predators are not eating their prey.  In fact, one lamb floats, forgotten in the water, as the two nearest thylacines sink their teeth into one another.  So it is not hunger?  They bite out of habit; out of boredom; out of nature; from enforced captivity? Yet nobody forces them to stay - there is no enclosure, no fence. They are their own prison guards. 

The more I looked, the more I saw.  The one lamb, quietly swimming away, blood on its coat.  The thylacine seeing it (surely?) and looking as though it will pounce. But will it, can it, leave its knot, its island of flesh?

The lamb at the top of the pile stands, almost stoically, the sacrifice, as jaws clamp around its back. Another is, somehow, miraculously, blood-free – right in the centre of the mass.  It jumps. Can it escape? Or will it land straight in the maw of the spectator creature, shoulder-deep in the water.  The water is curiously calm, blue-green, not stained with blood and gore.

What does it mean?  I’m still thinking about what it means to me – which is, ultimately, the bottom line, eh? 

The artist called it ‘a sort of fever dream’ and questioned the role of predator and prey.  For, see, the thylacine was also called the Tasmanian Wolf or Tiger yet it was neither wolf nor tiger but actually a marsupial (yes, a cousin to kangaroo and wallaby).  It was native to Australia and New Guinea and, over several million years apparently it evolved itself into a mean-ass predator, an antipodean velociraptor.  It was extincted (yeah I know it’s not really a verb but why not?) on the mainland way back but the thyracine survived on Tasmania until the early twentieth century.  As Walton Ford said, in an interview in the New Yorker:

‘The animal scared the hell out of the settlers. It looked like a wolf but with stripes, like a tiger, and they could get up on their hind legs, which made them even scarier. The settlers were sheepherders, and they built up this myth of a huge bipedal nocturnal vampire beast that sucked the blood of sheep.  The settlers put a bounty on these animals and began killing them off in every possible way – poison, traps, snares, guns. The last known one died in captivity in the nineteen-thirties, but they lived on in people’s imagination.’

They do. They certainly live on in my imagination.  And maybe in others too.  This morning, at 5am, I was woken suddenly from a dream by a piercing scream.  James. 

‘I had a nightmare,’ he said. 

‘Tell me,’ I said.

‘There was this creature. Like a wolf or a dog but it stood on its hind legs.  There was a light over its head. It was coming for me.’

Had he seen the image?  Yet how would he know the thylacine could stand on its hind legs?  There was no mention of that in the magazine.  Had he read anything about werewolves or anything lately?  No, he insisted (and it’s true, he avoids that kind of thing like the plague).  

Maybe it was another beast?  I’ve been reading lately about familiars, about creatures that can do the bidding of their masters and mistresses.  About one, in particular, from Scotland, that appeared like a wolf, standing on two legs, rapacious, blood-thirsty.  And I wondered, given we are all connected by subtle energy, can you catch a nightmare?  Can you pick up a thought-form, a beast, a fetch, a familiar, by telepathic connection.  Had the visions in my head seeped into James’?  Yes, that sounds far-fetched (sorry for the pun) but is it, really? 

We are careful about what our children read and watch but should we also be careful about our own thoughts and feelings?  I do believe that moods can be contagious (if you don't know how to protect yourself from them), that we can (whether consciously or unconsciously) project feelings onto others. Children are particularly impressionable.  Sobering thought, huh? 

Anyhow, what images have jumped at you lately?    

What should you teach your child?

And my third (or is it fourth?) night without sleep. It’s getting insane, it really is. But I realised I couldn’t do anything about it so I meditated (which some say is equivalent to sleep) and worked on fixing my back. When 6am came round, I wouldn’t say I bounced out of bed but the stabbing pains in my back had vanished and I felt a curious clarity.

There’s a different dynamic in the house when Adrian’s away. James came into my room and said he had a suggestion for the problem of the Arctic Cryochamber Breakfast Room.

‘Wear your dressing gown,’ he opined. ‘Over your clothes.’

I had to laugh. He was standing, in school uniform with a long dressing gown knotted round his waist; trousers tucked into thick socks and a pair of ankle-high furry slippers.
So I followed suit and we had breakfast looking like a rum old pair of Noel Cowards.
James switched the radio from Adrian’s beloved Radio 4 to Radio One and we danced with the dogs to the Black Eyed Peas and shook with laughter and lost track of time and nearly missed the bus.

Once again, the SP and I went over the bridge and up the hill. Shrouded in mist; fine soft kisses of moisture on the air. But the path was slick and I felt my feet slide under me. So I followed the SP up the steep rocky path, through the trees, up, up, up, feeling lighter with every step. No wulfas; no beasts at all; just bird song, rustle and footfall. To the hill fort, the fastness, surrounded by ancient ghosts and then down the steep passage known as the Chimney.

Careful walking. Walking as thoughtfulness. Thinking, thinking. Mainly about my son, my lovely son – and the man he will become. It made me ponder the principles I hope I have offered him.

I don’t believe we should inflict our ideas, our beliefs on our children. But I do think we can offer up suggestions, thoughts, possibilities. When I thought about what I would like James to take through life with him, I came down to these...

1. To your own self be true. The stormy search for the self starts young and it can be a hard path. I like to think James has enough self-esteem and self-belief that he does not need to follow the herd. That he can make his own decisions; be his own person; be happy in his skin.

2. Be independent. It’s not just practical, this one (although James is learning to cook, to clean, to wash clothes and iron them; to have responsibility for animals and his own stuff – why, oh why, do people not teach their boys this stuff?). It’s about being self-sufficient; about taking responsibility for oneself.

3. Be honest but also kind. This is about discrimination and it’s a fine line for children to learn. If your self-esteem is strong enough, there is no need to put other people down. Yes, some people are hugely irritating; bombastic; stupid; plain revolting. But hey...who are we to tell them? And that leads on to...

4. Stand up to bullies and stick up for the underdog. People who bully do so from fear, from lack of self-esteem. This chimed with James and now he stands his ground. He also stands between the bully and the bullied, even when it means going against the crowd – and for that, I am so proud of my young knight.

5. Communicate. Honestly, this is so fundamental – not just to children but to everyone. Nearly every question I answer (in my dubious role of agony aunt) comes down to this. Talk. Say what you mean. Don’t expect another person to intuit your meaning. I go over this time and again with James. He – like so many of us - imagines slights that probably aren’t there; is over-sensitive; gets the wrong end of the stick.

6. Confront your fears. Fear is the biggie; the one thing that so often stops us from achieving our potential; from being who we want to be. But, once you confront a fear, stare it straight in the eye, it often backs right down. James learned his lesson on this a few years back when he was picked for a county cricket training. Nobody he knew was there and he baulked. He’s regretted it ever since. It’s not just the physical fear either (though I must say jumping off a mountain blows away a bit of that) but psychic fear too. I have taught James how to confront his nightmares; to stand up to the monsters and ask them what they have to show him (monster comes from the Latin verb, monstrare – to show, reveal).

7. Question your thoughts. Thought can deceive. Thought can lie. Thought jumps to conclusions; turns simple dilemmas into catastrophe. ‘I got a C for English. I’m rubbish.’ ‘He looked at me funny; he hates me.’ Negative thoughts are your ego acting out of fear. Okay, so you don't need to go into that with your child but, well, you get my drift...

8. Open your heart. Ah, this is a tough one to teach a child on the verge of teenagedom as you know it will bring heartache as well as joy. But, truly, hearts are made to love. I have no doubt James’s will be broken, probably many times. But, the heart is a muscle, a spiritual as well as a physical muscle – and without breaking, it does not grow. There is huge healing and transformation in unconditional love - yes, even to those you consider enemies.  I would point out that James isn’t totally convinced on this one yet

9. Have a sense of humour. Truly, the world hates a sourpuss.

10. Know when to shut up. :-)


Sorry. Longer post than intended.
What have I missed?
What do you hope to impart to your children?
How much should we impose our thoughts and beliefs on our children?



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