Preparing for Dreaming
 When I first started working with Orlando on Dreaming, one of the things he really stresed to me was that Dreaming is like any other pursuit - if we want to do it right, it is going to require certain commitments & certain skills. Just a few things he made me aware of in my own life...

1. If you're someone who watches television right up until the time you're getting ready to go to bed, chances are your dreaming is going to reflect that. (I fought this one, 'cuz I was a tv junkie at the time). The reason is that our brains can only process maybe 1/1000th of the images which come at us through the tube, and because we are creatures who crave "order-from-chaos", what occurs is that even while we are sleeping, we may still be attempting to "decipher" that data from hours ago. This is also obviously true of our daily-life stuff - the argument we had with the boss, the conversation with the mother-in-law, all of that tonal clutter - but Orlando's point was that if we wanted to do successful dreaming, it was going to mean reorganizing our priorities.

For me personally, that meant no longer watching television after 6 pm. Then, eventually, I simply gave it up altogether. I'm not suggesting anyone else needs to do this, but what I found is that I needed to "clear the cache" before going to bed, and that took at least 2-3 hours of relative silence to allow the brain/mind to find its natural balance again. Let's face it - we live in a world of sensory overload - and that can have a damaging effect on our dreaming if we don't take measures to figure out what our own "tolerance" levels may be.

[NOTE: If the idea of walking away from the tube at night causes you grief, join the club. *LOL* I cannot stress how "addicted" to the damn thing I had become, so I argued with Orlando for quite some time about this before I finally just surrendered to the fact that I wanted to do Dreaming more than I wanted to watch yet one more inane sitcom. For me, it was/is a mindset. But - hey - I'm an extremist. Find your own comfort zone, but be honest with yourself. And if you are waking up in the middle of the night with the plot of some tv show going through your head... well... that is probably a good sign as to where reorganization of priorities might begin... *LOL*]

2. When preparing for bed, at least an hour before retiring, begin to increase your awareness of common activities. One of my favorites is that when I go into the bathroom to wash face, brush teeth, etc., I intentionally become acutely aware of turning on the light, and then turning it off. Reason being - light switches that don't work are USUALLY a good clue that we're dreaming. Most appliances & electronic gazurkises don't work in dreaming, so if we go to bed with awareness of turning on a lightswitch, for example, it can give our dreaming midn the clue to do that in Dreaming. If the light or the telephone or the computer doesn't work, the failure can be a good clue to go lucid. Ahah! Light switch no workie and there are two jackrabbits playing poker on the ceiling. I just MIGHT be dreaming!

3. Throughout the day, stop and ask yourself, "Am I dreaming?" Have awareness present when you do this - look at a clock or read a line of text on the computer or a book. Do some reality checks throughout the day - because this programs the mind to do the SAME checks when you really ARE dreaming, and the hope is that when you look at a clock in dreaming and the digital numbers melt into chocolate syrup, another good clue that you just MIGHT be dreaming, so a step toward lucidity.

4. Once you're in bed, set aside AT LEAST 20 minutes for whatever you do that passes for meditation or silent contemplation. I usually try to do this sitting up in the semi-lotus position in bed, with my arms resting on a pillow on my lap, head lowered, chin to chest. Reason being - if you do fall asleep or into an alpha state, the position of your body is usually such that you may experience dual awareness - i.e., the awareness that you are falling asleep. This in itself can be a good trigger for dreaming - allowing your body to straddle the proverbial fence between the tonal & the nagual. This also works well for working with visions.

The main point of this is that those 20 minutes are crucial for your brain/mind to adjust - to make the transition between sleep & dreaming. This doesn't mean lying in bed fretting about unpaid bills or unfaithful lovers. It means literally ALLOWING time for the tonal self and the nagual self to shake hands and hopefully strike up a conversation - for in doing so, it will increase our dreaming recall by at least 50%.

Part of the "problem" with dreaming that I have observed is that real dreaming occurs in second attention - but if our brain/mind is rooted wholly in the tonal (first attention), what happens is that our dream-memories are actually STORED in second attention, and so we will have virtually no recall even if we have been having grand adventures with our doubles all night! So the trick here is becoming aware of that bridge between first & second attention - for that is the bridge where memories have to be carried from the nagual to the tonal, if we ever hope to have any significant dream recall. In essence, sorcerers learn to "trick" the natural order of things - what happens in second attention doesn't have to STAY in second attention - but it will require commitment & discipline to break old habits and establish new patterns of awareness.

5. Keep a dream journal by the bed. I don't need to tell you that, eh? Of course, if you're like me, you wake up from a dream and say to yourself, "Wow! That was so incredible, there's no WAY I'm going to forget it!" Yeah... sure. *LOL* Even if you can only manage to jot down the most vague notes... "Jackrabbit #1 had an ace up his sleeve," it will help with recalling the rest come morning.

6. Allow at least an extra 20 minutes in the morning for dream recall. Okay, you're busy. So try for 10 minutes. Set your alarm for a few minutes earlier than usual so you can lie there in bed, not moving, and allow your mind to open the door onto that bridge between first & second attention. Part of my greatest problem with dreaming has always been my tendency to leap out of bed in the morning and head off to do my daily chores, and if we're going to be serious about dreaming, that approach is seldom if ever effective. Dreaming is a movement of the AP within the subtle body. Subtle. Our tonal awareness is more like a bull in a china shoppe, and so again it's a matter of allowing some transition time between the tonal & the nagual levels of awareness.

If you do pick up fragments of dreams, don't make an immediate rush to write them down. Try to follow the thread, see where it leads, and usually it will begin to unfold into something you will be able to recall. Again, allow yourself to simply lie there and just "be-with-dreaming" when you first awaken.

Like everything else on the sorcerer's path, dreaming takes work & practice - and for me, it meant making some choices with regard to my lifestyle. The main thing for me is allowing myself that transition time - both in the evening and again in the morning. That seems to be the absolute key for remembering my dreams.

As for DIRECTING dreaming and moving into lucid experiences, conversations with the double, encounters with allies, and the like... that's another story for another day.

      
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