Dream practice is not just for personal growth or to generate interesting experiences. It is part of the spiritual path and its results should affect all aspects of life by changing the practitioner’s identity and the relationship between the practitioner and the world. Most of what is included in this section on integrating the dream practice with the life of the practitioner has already been mentioned, but here it is summarized.
There are two general stages of dream practice: the conventional and the non-conventional, or the dualistic and non-dual. We have primarily focused on the first, which is connected with working with dream images and stories, with our responses to experience and our emotions, with dream’s effects in us and the effects of our practice in dream, and with developing greater awareness and control.
The non-conventional level of practice involves neither the content of dreams nor our experiences of them, but rather the non-dual clear light. This is the final goal of dream practice and of sleep practice.
We should never disparage the dualistic use of dream yoga. After all, for most of us, and most of the time, we live in the world of duality and it is in our ordinary life that we must travel our spiritual path. Working with dream practices, we transform anger to love, hopelessness to hopefulness, what is wounded in us to what is healed and strong. We develop the ability to work skillfully with the situations in life and to be of aid to others. We gain these skills when we begin to truly understand that life is dreamlike and flexible. Then we can change ordinary life into experiences of great beauty and meaningfulness, incorporating everything into the path.
It is only when our conventional selves dissolve into rigpa that we truly move beyond the need for hope and meaning, beyond the discriminations of positive and negative. The non-conventional truth is beyond healing and the need for healing. To assume this perspective while we are not actually living in the non-dual view leads to a kind of muddled spirituality in which we exercise our negative conditioning and think that we are exercising freedom. When we abide fully in the clear light, negativities no longer rule us, so it is easy to test ourselves and see if we are there or not.
There are four successive domains of integration related to dream practice: vision, dream, bardo, and clear light. Vision here means all experiences of waking life, including all that is encountered with the senses and all internal events. Vision is integrated into dream when all experience and phenomena are understood to be dream. This should not be just an intellectual understanding, but a vivid and lucid experience. Otherwise it is just a game of the imagination and no real change is effected. Genuine integration of this point produces a profound change in the individual’s response to the world. Grasping and aversion is greatly diminished, and the emotional tangles that once seemed so compelling are experienced as the tug of dream stories, and no more.
As the practice changes the experiences of the visions of the day, the change is integrated into dream. Lucidity arises in the dream state. There are successive levels of lucidity, from the first experiences of being aware that the dream is a dream while still directed by the logic of the dream, to a powerful lucidity in which one is totally free in the dream and dream itself becomes an experience of almost shocking vividness and clarity.
The lucidity and flexibility of mind developed in dream is then to be integrated into the intermediate state after death. Experiencing death is very similar to entering dream. The possibility of remaining present during the intermediate bardo after death, of staying aware and undistracted as the after-death visions arise, depends on the capacities developed in dream yoga. We say that dream is a test for the bardo. This is the integration of the dream state with the intermediate state, understanding that reactions to the phenomena of dream will be the same as reactions to the phenomena of the bardo. The accomplishment at this point depends on the development of lucidity and non-grasping in dream.
The bardo is to be integrated with the clear light. This is the means of achieving enlightenment. During the bardo, it is best not to engage dualistically with the phenomena that arise, but instead remain in non-dual presence, in full awareness without distraction. This is remaining in the clear light, the union of emptiness and pure awareness. The ability to do this is also the final stage of dream practice prior to death: when the practitioner fully integrates with the clear light, dreaming stops.
When waking experience is directly seen to be a dream, grasping ceases. The greater lucidity that has to have been developed to progress to this point is naturally brought into the dreams of night. When lucidity is developed and stabilized in dream, it later manifests in the bardo. When one is completely and non-dualistically aware in the bardo, liberation is attained.
Apply dream practice without interruption and the results will manifest in every dimension of life. The result of the full accomplishment of the practice is liberation. If the practice is not resulting in changed experiences of life, if one is not more relaxed with less tension and less distraction, then the obstacles must be investigated and overcome and the teacher should be consulted. If there is no experience of progression on the path, then the intent is best strengthened. When signs of progress do arise, greet them with joy and let them reinforce your intent. With understanding and practice, progress will surely come.