In the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali lists seven different practices that “settle” consciousness. One of them is reflecting on insights culled from sleep and dreaming. (I:33, 38)
I’d have to be pretty oblivious not to note the trend in my dreams the past couple of weeks:
- Driving into the wilderness on a familiar road, I find the way getting unexpectedly steeper and steeper. Finally, I have to stop and retreat to keep the SUV from toppling backwards and down.
- Practicing yoga, my poses are disrupted by some thing’s fingers and then hands pressing up, through the floor and the carpet, like weeds. As I continue, the weed-hands continue to emerge – arms, obstructing the poses, entangling my limbs.
-
Searching in the basement of a building for a way into the inner-most part. When I finally find the way, it is doll-house-sized, and absurdly smaller and more narrow than I could possibly fit. Nonetheless, I start trying to puzzle out how I can get in.
* * *
Yesterday, I read this, from a dharma talk by Adyashanti:
Ego is a movement. It’s a verb. It is not something static. It’s the after-the-fact movement of mind that’s always becoming. In other words, egos are always on the path. They are on the psychology path, the spiritual path, the path to get more money or a better car. That sense of “me” is always becoming, always moving, always achieving. Or else it is doing just the opposite – moving backward, rejecting, denying. So in order for this verb to keep going, there has to be movement. We have to be going forward or backward, toward or away from. … As soon as a verb stops, it’s not a verb anymore. As soon as you stop running, there is no such thing as running – it’s gone; nothing is happening. The ego sense has to keep moving because, as soon as it stops, it disappears, just like when your feet stop, running disappears.
When we really let it in and start to see that there is no ego, only egoing, then we start to see ego for what it really is. This produces a natural stopping of a pursuit toward or a running away from something. This stopping needs to happen gently and very naturally because, if we are trying to stop, then that is movement again. As long as we try to do what we think is the right spiritual thing by getting rid of ego, we perpetuate it. Seeing that this is more of the same egoing will allow stopping without trying.
Emptiness Dancing: Selected Dharma Talks of Adyashanti, Open Gate Publishing: Los Gatos, CA, 2004, p. 106
And last night I dreamt this: Driving through the red-rock deserts of western Colorado and eastern Utah, I’m trying to get to a destination, and my car breaks down at sunset. I decide to proceed on foot, but it’s moonless and dark. I go to store after store, looking for one that has flashlights for sale. I can’t find one. As I’m walking from one store to another, I catch sight of a man with a twisted, spastic body, lurching inch-by-inch across a parking lot on the knee of one leg, the heel of the other foot, the elbow of one arm, the hand of the other. He’s glistening with sweat. I don’t stop to help because, I think to myself, “he seems to be making decent progress.”
* * *
The truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing.
–Tao Te Ching
ScottyDoo on Fri, 10th Oct 2008 7:13 pm
I tend to have very vivid and repeating dreams. There are even a few that have been nearly identical for the last 15 years maybe. I’ve always been curious as to why that may be, but never did any analyzing or investigation.
There must be something I need to learn from them.
I do know however that I often “dream up obstacles” and not just when I’m sleeping =)
Sattva on Sat, 11th Oct 2008 11:22 pm
That’s a great description of the ego by Adyashanti. It’s giving me clarity on some other reading I’ve been doing. Greenfrog – you’re a great dreamer! The two perspectives, lack of progress, and the ability to see somebody else’s struggle as progress are fascinating. I can’t help but wonder what’s going on in your life right now!
It’s interesting because I never used to give dreams any consideration. I rarely remember mine. But – everybody seems to be talking about dreams lately. I decided that I would give mine more respect and attention – and of course, now I’m having some vivid ones!
greenfrog on Sun, 12th Oct 2008 9:36 am
In my life, the vividness of dreams is a reliable indicator of transition in my waking life.
More from Adyashanti:
You know how it is if you are having a pleasant dream and you kind of wake up but not entirely, and then go back to sleep because you want to dream? So after you roll over and go back to sleep, you then wake again and realize you were dreaming, but you are groggy and do not even know if you want to be awake. Later in the day, it is more clear, and you are much more awake. Most spiritual seekers, even after a big spiritual awakening, are almost always still groggy. They go back and forth and are not sure they want to be awake because they perceive a whole different world out there. They want to wake up from the bad stuff but continue dreaming about the good stuff. They literally want to go back into sleep in their personal relationship because they know if they really wake up, things might change in unexpected ways.
p. 210
And from a Vedanta lecture, this concept: when we dream, we dream about a person, our self, who is separate and apart and different from all the other people and creatures who appear in the dream. And even though in the dream, we identify with only that perspective, we are, in fact, all of the persons and creatures in the dream. None of them is outside of the dreaming self. None of them is other than the dreaming self.