Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche:
Tibetan Dream Yoga

For Beyond 50's "Spirituality" talk, listen to an interview with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. He is the preserver of the Bon Buddhist Wisdom in the world.  He'll talk about the ancient, Tibetan Buddhist practice of Dream Yoga that can be done in the dream state to encourage lucid dreaming.  He will offer an exercise that you can try to have your own inner experience.  If we cannot carry our practice into sleep, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche explains, if we lose ourselves every night, what chance do we have to be aware when death comes?  Look to your experience in dreams to know how you will fare in death. Look to your experience of sleep to discover whether or not you are truly awake. 

Lucid Dreaming

Yoga as a spiritual practice is commonly understood to mean physical movement, such as yogic postures.  It is much more than that to encompass meditative and breathing exercises as a means to achieve Oneness.

Tibetan Dream Yoga allows you to achieve a lucid state of "waking up" in your dream to achieve enlightenment and a greater sense of inner freedom from self-created delusions.

Through lucidity, you can be flexible enough to change the dream at will for personal growth so you're not feeling stuck in life.  You can be free of blockages in the lucid dream state to positively impact your outer circumstances so your dream and waking life can both be lived with ease, clarity, comfort and appreciation, explained Tenzin.

Lucid dreaming can empower you with the freedom to have fantastical experiences that are possible, like heal wounds, visit different worlds of time and space, fly, shapeshift into a creature, receive spiritual teachings, communicate with sentient beings, and so much more.

Ultimately, through Tibetan Dream Yoga, you can become conscious within the dream to dissolve the dream state - a pure form of conscious awareness.

Dreaming Awake and Asleep 

Dream life in Buddhism is considered the "real" one, which is the complete opposite to what is understood by Westerners.

The practice of Tibetan Dream Yoga encourages you to reflect throughout your day on the dreamlike quality of reality in order to "wake up" from it because we are still asleep and dreaming with our eyes open.  By becoming lucid when awake, you can more easily achieve lucidity at night.  We can then experience inner freedom in the form of True Enlightenment that comes from dropping the illusions created by the mind and ego to discover our true nature, which is vast, still, blissful and timeless. 

"Just as the lucidity and presence cultivated in waking life is carried into the dream, the lucidity and presence cultivated in dream is carried into death.  If one fully accomplishes dream yoga, one is prepared to enter the intermediate state after death with the correct view and the stability in non-dual presence needed to attain liberation," wrote Tenzin in "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep."

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