On Meditation

I often define meditation as an experience of being in a state of mind that does not require any thinking to be aware of the experience. In most cases, if you think that you are meditating, by default, you are not really meditating, because your mind is busy thinking. On the other hand, meditation is quite distinct from a deep sleep where you are completely unconscious of your experience. To the contrary, when meditating, you may experience much greater degrees of consciousness than the habitual level of awareness in your daily life. This is not unlike becoming lucid in a night-dream and realizing that you have never been so awake… even in your daily life.

Think about it: whatever you know about your life is based on your recollection of the facts and events of your life. You knowledge about life relies on the same mechanism of memory that allows you to remember your dreams. That is why the fine line between the dreaming and waking life quickly disappears under scrutiny. Moreover, few people would doubt nowadays that everything in this world is made of energy, just like everything in your dreams is made of nothing other than the energy of consciousness.

The true nature of reality is one and the same in both of these worlds – the dream world and the world of daily life – because they actually are not two separate realities but one mystical universe, however strange or even weird things may appear in different parts of it. You might even say that the only distinction between the daily world and your dream world is in being able to tell that you were dreaming once you wake up, but you may not have such wherewithal in your daily life… perhaps, until the dream called life is over and you wake up from it.

By following my teachings of Dream Yoga and regularly practicing these Qi Dao meditations, you will learn to recognize that you are dreaming during your dreams, which is called lucidity or lucid dreaming. Being lucid literally means knowing that you are dreaming while having a dream (it applies to both day- and night dreams). It has many profound implications that directly link it to enlightenment. Indeed, being awake in the dream allows you to:

• Recognize that each and every one of the dream characters, objects and experiences in your dreams are products of your own dreaming consciousness

• Realize that all the qualities of your dream characters and the whole dream world reflect back to you those aspects of your consciousness that you don’t identify with

• Learn to identify not only with your own persona, but also with any other dream characters, since they are all parts of the same Dream Being, which will lead you to a deep understanding of everything and everyone, as well as developing compassio

• Heal whatever ails you as well as any ailments of your dream characters by connecting to the unmanifest dreams hidden beneath the ailments and enabling those dormant aspects of your dreaming to manifest in the most harmonious fashio

• Demonstrate that your physical abilities, mental capacities and creativity are limited only by your own inhibitions, ignorance or self-limiting beliefs

• Know that fighting against the flow of dreaming is a sure way to transform any dream into a nightmare and promote further suffering

• Comprehend that being creative does not need to translate into manipulating anything in your dream, but rather into finding more creative ways to be in the flow of your dreaming

• Trust that the flow of your dreaming, however mysterious and unpredictable, comes from the source within you – the dreamer

• Expand your sense of identity from merely one of the dream characters to identifying with the dreamer, also referred to as Dream Being, because on the grand scale, the creator and the creation are one – the entire universe is dreaming itself into existence.

Imagine now that you can translate all these qualities of consciousness into your daily life. That would be bona-fide enlightenment, would it not? As I wrote in my recently published book entitled Qi Dao – Tibetan Shamanic Qigong: The Art of Being in the Flow, “What I call enlightenment is being completely lucid and awake to the reality of the dream called life… realizing that the source of your individual dreams is the same as the mystical source of the big dream called life.” This source is what I refer to as Dream Being, which is also the totality of existence.

What this means to you is becoming an enlightened being – a fully awake Dream Being – which is the greatest manifestation of Qi Dao meditation. You may not only dissolve the boundary between the worlds of dreaming and daily life but even your dream body may be able to merge with or separate from your physical body at will, which is the most guarded secret behind Qigong mastery and most of the psychic phenomena. This can be considered to be the fourth and final juncture of the Qi Dao journey of self-realization.

To make the point of the most basic meditative practices totally clear to you, I am presenting the four stages of our practice in a reverse order now. Of course, after the most profound awakenings, we all tend to fall asleep again; hence enlightenment shouldn’t be viewed as a destination, but rather a process of becoming more and more awake all the time.

In order to be able to translate this kind of lucidity into your daily life, you are going to develop your awareness through the practice of lucid dreaming, which is the third stage of our Shamanic practice, also known as Dream Yoga. Being lucid in your night dreams will empower you to discover the most extraordinary abilities: essentially, you will be able to experience anything you want, since you will be dreaming everything up.

Do you feel like flying tonight? How about being able to visit the most exotic places on Earth or even other planets? Would you like to be able to communicate with animals, plants or some otherworldly energy beings? And, of course, things like walking on water or shape-shifting could easily become common place frolics in your dreams.

As a spiritual explorer, you will learn experientially what psychologists talk about theoretically: that most of your dreams symbolically reflect your daily life.

Now let me ask you this. If you never question your reality during the day as to whether you are dreaming, how often do you think you will question the reality of your dreams at night?

That’s right; most likely never! So, if you want to be lucid in your dreams, you’ve got to start asking yourself this question during the day, “Am I dreaming now?”

Remember to give yourself regular affirmations that you are, indeed, dreaming. If you keep answering this question affirmatively during the day, you are most likely going to do the same in your dreams, which will help you become and stay lucid. This constant practice of remembrance constitutes the second step of Qi Dao practice.

During this stage, you can learn how to relate to everyone and everything as dream characters made of pure energy fields and creating energy projections and turbulences. Just like your night dreams have certain ebb and flow to them, you can learn to notice the same ebb and flow of energy in your daily life. You can also develop an attitude of being in the flow of energy by finding harmony with it, without judging or manipulating it.

Obviously, not every beginner is immediately ready to surrender to the flow right away, that is why we have the first, preliminary step that will prepare you for the rest of your extraordinary journey, which I will share about in my next article. As it were, the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.n