In my last post, In search of lost dreams, I resolved to end the insubstantial, trivial dreams I have been having - which I call ‘the silence of the night’ - and replace them with majestic, profound, and holy ones.
If my dreams reveal little to me, it is troubling. To be clear, I am not asking for divination: demon-given views into the future. I ask only for reflections of the beauty of a life well-lived, for holy images and great adventures. And I suspect I am not the only one who wakes unsated.
Over the last few months, I have researched various teachings on the subject: liminal dreaming techniques, Tibetan Dream Yoga, and relevant traditional Christian thought. I have been experimenting and iterating on the recommended approaches, and have settled on a strategy which I have found to be powerful in producing the desired effects.
This strategy is a fairly original blend, because none of the above schools of thought entirely satisfies what I’m attempting. I am not interested in having ‘trippy dreams’ for the sake of it, nor am I interested in becoming a Buddhist or a Yogi. Serious Christian teaching on the subject is quite limited, which is interesting, because Scripture tells of many striking and important dreams.
I am also not interested in a bio-hacking approach to inducing intense dreams, because this would ignore the fundamentally spiritual nature of this quest, which is to use the quality and intensity of dreams as a measure of the quality and intensity of the waking life and spirit.
In dreams, we experience emanations of the self - of our own minds - but it must be recognized that our experience of waking reality is also conditioned by the contours of the self: by our preoccupations, interpretations, and instincts. To resacralize one reality may necessitate resacralizing the other.
There will be no shortcuts. I do not wish to have artificially satisfying dreams: I desire dreams which are the natural continuation of a life rich in meaning, experience, and the numinous - the sense of the nearness of God and the sanctity of life.
I believe I have found a way: my dreams have come rushing back.
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