Science of Reality: Dream Practice

One part of the previous lesson that Deepak Chopra went into a lot of detail on was explaining his personal practice of awareness in sleep. This is something I have not done quite as explicitly as he describes it, though the outcomes he ascribes to it are things I definitely experience on pretty much a daily basis. My dreams are so vivid and real that I can’t tell dream reality as being different from waking reality except that other people don’t remember aspects of my dream reality. Then again, lots of people don’t remember things I would have considered important from waking reality, so who’s to really say one is more real than the other?

Sometimes there will be conversations or experiences in my dream reality that come to pass later in my waking reality. For some reason, the conversational ones (where I dream an exact conversation including exactly what words the other person uses in the conversation) most often come into my waking reality later with my mom. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been confused by a conversation with my mom because I thought we already had the conversation because, in my mind, we had actually already had the conversation. It’s seriously freaky and confusing to be able to tell my mom what her next sentence is going to be because I’ve already heard the entire conversation before.

I dreamed several months’ worth of experiences between the hours of 3AM and 7:30AM this morning. The context was woven into a different path my life would probably be on if I had not been disabled by chemo-induced neuropathy making it impossible for me to walk or touch things like a normal person. In the dream reality this morning, I was the age I am now but I was still in the career path of a professional Argentine Tango dancer and coach. The dream was basically about six months of a year-long program we were involved in, doing shows six nights a week and teaching workshops five days a week in a big resort complex similar to one I’ve stayed at on Maui with waterfalls and caves and water slides throughout the long hill of garden area down to the ocean. I remember what rooms things occurred in, I remember the classes we taught and the individual students we worked with and what their different challenges and strengths were, I remember having to learn where everything was in the first week we were there. I remember exactly what my husband looked like, and it was not Artie. His name was Nick (have I ever known someone named Nick? Probably, but I’m not sure). I woke up several times during the night because Beethoviana, my cat, has a new doormat doorbell at his cat window so I know when he wants to come back in for the night, and I had to get up to let him in around 3AM (and back out 30 minutes later) and I woke up a little before 5AM because that’s when I usually have to get up for something, then Beto’s cat doorbell work me again at 5:30AM. From 5AM on, I was dozing in and out of this huge dream. I knew I was in my bed here in this reality, and I intentionally kept returning to the dream reality to live more of that life instead of staying awake in this one.

I’m telling you, we could talk for days about all the lives I’ve experienced in my dream reality. Sometimes I’m Cynthia, sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I’m not female. I’ve even had a dream life as a rabbit, learning from my mama-rabbbit what to watch out for to avoid hawks and how to find the best greens, and tasting the multiple delicious tastes in the flower, stem, and roots of what humans call dandelions. Flying is fun, but I’ve only had a bird experience once or twice, for some reason when I wake up from that it’s hard to get back to the flying bird dream state.

Anyway, that’s me dreaming.

Awareness in Sleep

This last bit of lesson notes are from Deepak Chopra talking about how he practices Awareness in Sleep:

To practice awareness in sleep, when you go to sleep at night, recapitulate the whole day.

1. Observe yourself on a screen in which everything that happened during the day is a passing show. Observe yourself waking up, going to the bathroom, doing your daily rituals, shower, etc., and observe how the day went. Observe it without judgment on the screen of your consciousness. Realize that everything that happened today is already a dream, and let it go.
2. Then, in your bed, look at everything that you see as form, as the practice of seeing. Look at the objects around you in the dark—just shapes, forms, and colors—as the act of seeing. Know that seeing is an activity in that which is your silent being.
3. Close your eyes and shut off the visual world so that part of existence is not available to you. With your eyes closed, listen to all the sounds that you are aware of. Again, non-judgmentally. Trace them back to the silent witness who is the observer of the sounds, and recognize this as an activity in your own awareness where you are the silent witness. Slowly detach from the experience of sound.
4. In order to detach from the experience of sound, you have to replace it with another experience: that of sensation. Observe sensations in your body and, probably randomly, the interpretation of those sensations—heartbeat, gas in the stomach—and remind yourself that these are sensations that you are interpreting as thought.
5. Slowly, withdraw your attention from the sensations and into just the breath, knowing that the breath is just another sensation. Withdraw from that sensation and settle into the infinite being of infinite awareness as you are going to sleep. But have a subtle intention: just as your day was a dream, know that you will witness your dreams as well. Then in the morning when you wake you, try and remember the dreams just as at night you remembered the day. And you realize: it is all a dream.

It is all a dream. The only thing that is permanent is the witnessing awareness in which this dream happened, that which we call “I.” Even your body, mind, and world are all part of the dream.

Doing this practice enhances your experience of your fundamental being as reality. Soon this awareness wakes up so that it is there whether you are sleeping, dreaming, or in activity. The seer is never overshadowed by the scenery. The observer is never overshadowed by the observation. With this practice, you become a very centered being. You realize that you are never the same person but that you are the same being. The same being is endless/eternal and you can access this being through just being a silent witness, even being a silent witness of your dream state and your deep sleep state. A time will come when the awareness will be fully awake and when dreaming and sleeping. It is the automatic realization that I am not the body-mind but that I am the awareness in which the body-mind is an activity.