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Interview with David Jay Brown
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Excellent interview. Been reading his latest book in preparation for this one and I was particularly interested in Chapter 5 where he goes through various supplements to stimulate LD and dream recall. In the dialogue I was hoping for more discussion about the self-healing aspects of lucid dreaming but the medical potential for that has yet to be scientifically studied and then offered in a breakthrough book. However, the work being done with psychedelics and PTSD is likely an early step in this direction.
What shape would an experiment about lucid dreaming and healing take? Thoughts?
Hi @Barry,
(grab some cookies and get comfi, yikes I’m chatty tonight. The full moon + time change messed me up!!!)
I haven’t listened to this yet, but your question resonates with where I’m at right now. And although the boss tells us there’s ultimately nothing to heal and no one that needs healing, I’m light-years from that realization and moving backwards.
I wanted to share another SoundsTrue program eye opener. (yep, confessin of a compelling addiction to their sales back in the day
I needed to hoard more audios in the event I ever made it through my current yet-listened-to accumulation)
I did make it through Holecek’s program fyi!
As proof, he talks about imagining a referenced lotus image that was not provided with the audio download, just the physical CD packaging.
Here is an exercise from Robert Augustus Masters, in “Knowing Your Shadow” (who has since come out with 2 books on the theme).
You know those dreams where you’re running from someone/something?
For me, I must be subtly aware of the paralysis phenomenon because I’m running for my life in the dream, but it’s as if I’m running through thick syrup in winter to get away from whatever/whoever is chasing me. It’s an emotionally loaded fear dream because I’m almost doing “the running man” in bed while asleep. Sometimes I did end up running out of the bed. Falling out, actually. These dreams weren’t too frequent, were vivid that I still remember them today, and all occurred pre-high-school.
Back to the audio program - the author asks us to engage in some visualization exercises. This example, he said to recall a dream where you’re running from someone. “Pause until you have a dream in mind” sort of thing. Then you close your eyes and he guides you in recalling and re-embodying that dream. As it’s a visualization/shadow/healing practice, he’s talking slowly, reminding you to keep feeling your breath (to get ‘mental space’ around potential overwhelm). All calm, soothing, etc.
Then he pops the surprise question: “Now turn around and look at who you are running from.”
It only works once per conscious dream recall. First thought best thought.
I can offer that as a technique to use dream recall for healing.
Something that occurred to me listening to the Morley/Holecek interview a few days ago… Both pondered times when they were lucid in a dream, but the dream didn’t make sense. And then said to use that as a seed to “pre-load” your next night/dream. (newbie alert: not keen on the lingo yet!)
I took the conversation to mean we would set an intention to ask/learn from our unconscious what it meant when it showed us that which didn’t make sense. Then “do what works for you” within the next lucid dream to work out the meaning.
Pretty sure there is awareness and/or healing there.
I do know that healing happens by working with the unconscious, or we wouldn’t have a desire to heal. The unconscious can only talk in symbols: imagery and emotions. It’s also ROM. As Bruce Lipton says, changing our unconscious is like yelling into an 8-track tape player to play a new song. Yelling, because it didn’t play a new song when we just asked it nicely.
It has to come to us when some aspect of our ego relaxes, and it will be in the format of images/emotions that were frozen in our fascia at some point.
Healing used to come “in everyday life” for me also, when I had a strong meditation practice. Those situations where something in the realm of ignorance “pops” while interacting with another human, and I finally “see” my unconscious shit running. It feels like I’m slowly easing down into the hottub of humiliation, aaahhhhhhhhh. I became a ‘masochist’ of sorts, seeking out those interactions and edges. The shame felt oh so good, much like the anticipation and initial poke of dry-needling. I knew it always free’d up mental RAM that was previously locked up with the unconscious ROM processor. The resulting space, for me, is the ‘healing’ aspect. A shadow is integrated, I somehow gained a touch of confidence in myself grain by tiny grain.
Which life promptly ripped away, plus. Now I face a deeper, harder level of healing at the somatic level, somehow. Momentum of karma baby! “Your biography becomes your biology” indeed.
(another Bruce Lipton quote)
** you have a Daoist symbol as your picture so I’m just ASSuming you have some sort of Eastern practice. I’m not at all trying to be preachy. This “healing” stuff is a very real struggle for me right now. One teacher kindly laid it out for me: “if it worked before, that means it probably won’t work again.”
Strategy: de-activate!
I have a book by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse I bought around that time, titled: “Not for Happiness: A Guide to the So-Called Preliminary Practices”
Truth.
Have another listen to the Moreley interview, the part where he describes a lady who attended his retreat and never had a lucid dream. Ever. But she “had a driving, salivating intention to find out what happened to her when she was a young child” - misquote. Seems we need to muster up a salivation for our intentions to where we can’t wait for bedtime so we can ‘get to work’. That’s how the advice it landed for me, at least.
p.s. - when I turned around to see what I was running from in my dream recall, all I saw was an empty parking lot at night with some street lights.
I was running from nothing? (second thought) Oh, I screwed up the visualization, typical, what a freaking failure (third thought).
I went back to the “first thought best thought” - the ‘intuitive hit’ of just seeing an empty parking lot - and realized I was running from myself.
Great to read your thoughts. I’ve been engaged in shadow work for a short time and have often turned around to see what I was running from. Once I was on an island that was being "eaten’ by a giant octopus or squid and as we headed to the beach I turned around and the octo-squid turned into a bunch of tiny worms who dissolved into the sand. My focus these days is getting my body to accept sleep because of some physical problems that make getting to sleep a chore. Still, I’m having an average of one totally lucid dream a month, sometimes two or three.
I’ve been interested in Eastern philosophy since the 1960s with some experiences using consciousness-raising drugs and other similar activities in the mix. Andrew’s online Dream Yoga course helped me to tie a lifetime of experiences together into an sensible integrated perspective.
I am very interested in the Tibetan Yogi Milarepa having experienced his influence for a very long time. Andrew quotes him from time to time and I understand why. It’s really all there in one lifetime. Are you familiar with The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa: A New Translation I’ve read this a couple of times and it provides a tremendous foundation for lucid dream work and dream yoga.
My avatar is the symbol of the “Swan Station” from the “Lost” TV show.
Interesting - you faced your (dream) fear and it dissolved.
Andrew did say fear was actually the pointer, not the detour sign, so to speak.
I was at the height of my crazy (living in a mold-mine) when I listened to his audio program. Not sure if it’s the same as the course, he’s all over
I bought the supplements referenced but was really confused so didn’t go any further with it.
That gives me hope that you have actually had a lucid dream, and many, in the face of adversity. I have the opposite affliction - I’m out as soon as my eyes shut. 12 hours/night on average, and adding two 2-3 hour naps each day is the only way I can start to remember my dreams. A question on exhaustion is brewing. I’m tired and wired right now, and it’s almost 1am.
Which means a ‘crash’ is setting up.
(edit: it’s now 1:20a - yes, it takes me an entire day to compose one email)
I had the $50 tome of Milarepa’s poems, but had to let that go in one of a few great book purges. Yours looks like it’s 800 pages too. Not sure if I could commit to that length right now. Tho I’m hankering for Milarepa: Lessons from the Life and Songs of Tibet’s Great Yogi as I’m a huge fan of Chogyam Trungpa’s talks/books. I’m waiting to see if I can finish any book right now and still have quite a few to get through.
You said it provided a good foundation for dream work, I might pick up your version. The seed has been planted.
My bad on the avatar! Not watching TV has sadly driven a wedge between the my ability to connect with people (granted not on a deep level) and getting their jokes.
I’ve pretty much isolated on more levels than I realize. I haven’t killed a ton of people like Milarepa to spur my practice, but I certainly live like him! Well, a bit warmer and a lot more comfortable, but quite solitary! Maybe I should get the book!
Take care.
I’ve taken a couple of workshops with Andrew and one with Charlie Morley and they have helped me to focus on lucid dreaming/lucid living and preparing for what Andrew calls, “The dream at the end of time.” However, given the current climate, attending a workshop may not be possible for several months, or maybe longer. Andrew’s online course on Dream Yoga is either 6 or 8 weeks and I found it excellent over the first half and very promising over the second half, particularly for a total newbie. Now, after a couple of years, it makes a lot more sense.
I’ve read Milarepa: Lessons from the Life and Songs of Tibet’s Great Yogi and it is a good compliment to The BIG Book, but a totally different focus. I found by reading the Stagg book (a chapter a night) I developed—and enhanced—a personal relationship with Milarepa. Strange to say in Buddhism where personal relationships for me have always seemed to be distant with such far-off luminaries. However, about 6 years ago my wife and I watched the weekly Buddha series on Indian TV (ZeeTV) for a year and when it was finished I felt as though I “knew” The Buddha in a more personal way than just from the statues or even through his teachings. In many ways I could see where his teachings came from and they made a lot more sense. I’ve lived in India and Nepal and I have some affinity for the cultures. That same series is available on Netflix (50+) episodes, where I’ve watched it twice. While it’s a different experience to binge versus spacing one’s viewing over a full year, the lessons are timeless.
Before I started my readings I had a lucid dream where Milarepa told me to practice “Openess,” which can also be interpreted as “Emptiness,” and practice “Forbearance,” which I had not really heard before as a Buddhist term. Later, he told me to" Have gratitude for every living thing," and then added “and every non-living thing.” I had a couple of dreams the same night after that one, but I kept holding onto his words till I woke up and wrote them down. I immediately forgot them till I read what I wrote and it took a couple of days to actually get them to stick through my thick skull.
I hadn’t remembered a dream in years till I started listening to Andrew’s course, so I feel that these days anything that I can remember from a nocturnal journey is a victory and I try to concentrate on the lucid living component for now and enjoy those little victories as well.
Good interview indeed!
The concept of speaking to the dream really resonates with me. Every so often I find myself in a dream where I am totally alone…no dream characters, just an outdoor scene…a mountain top or a country road.
These dreams are my most lucid and my “conversation” with the dream is more mental than vocal. I always wake from these dreams with an answer to a question that I had not even thought to pose.
Is it a dialogue with the dream or a clarity of thought?
Wow…pondering that. It feels like a dialogue with the dream. It feels like a communicative connection occurs on a level that is deeper than a verbal question. I ask questions a lot as I go through my daytime practices and my nocturnal meditations. Things like:
What am I really doing here?
Who am I and who are we as a species?
Where did we come from and where are we going?
These questions are there, I think, during these certain dreams. Moments of extreme clarity will often blossom in an otherwise non-lucid or barely lucid dream and in these moments I can feel a connection to the dream, a connection that sometimes doesn’t really manifest itself in my conscious mind until I wake up. It is at those awakenings that the real weight of these kinds of dreams settles on me.
Just last night, for instance, during a long but less than truly lucid dream I found myself in a place where a group of people were approaching me. They were smiling and three of them called out to me by name. I was very lucid for a brief period and it struck me that they were using my full name…they called me Steven. Nobody ever calls me Steven. I did not engage with them verbally…we just kind of looked at each other.
I woke soon after that and knew immediately that something was there for me…a clue to an answer to a question that had not quiet really been asked.
As I get better at this I will learn how to engage these dreams more intimately. I’m working on that.