I am in a garden looking at three large white stones.  I am lucid, meaning that I know that I am dreaming.  I watch as the stones stand up on “legs” and sing, to the tune of “Shine on, Harvest Moon,” “Sign on, Sign on the bottom line…”

I knew they were encouraging me to go with the fellow that I had interviewed the day before, but I didn’t want to be misled and have my financial life built around say, a bit of undigested tofu.  So I did something I never realized was possible before I took Dr. Dillard’s course: I asked the stones questions.  I asked the first stone, “Who are you?”  It answered, “I represent your parents.”  I then asked the same question of the second stone.  It said, “I represent your grandparents.”  Then I asked the third stone the same question.  It said, “I am your friends and mentors.”  In the dream I thought, “If the three cornerstones of my life are telling me I have to do this, then I need to do it.”

In the following days I handed my money over to this fellow, feeling a strange sense of ease and acceptance about it, something that is unusual for me around letting go of money and control over it.

Four months later I was starting to get a divorce.  It would have been a disaster for me to have been trying to manage my money and to also go through the emotional turmoil of that time.

That year ended up being the second best financial year I had.  This fellow turned my five million into six.

This dreamer did not simply go lucid.  He used his lucidity not to change the dream but to have the presence of mind to ask characters in the dream about issues of concern to him.  The results were transformative for him. Not only did he know the “meaning” of the dream, but it resulted in a course of action that had huge repercussions for his financial security for the rest of his life.

This is not a dream about going lucid; it’s a dream about the motivations to go lucid – why a person may want to and what benefits they might receive from doing so.

What are three fundamental life issues that you are dealing with now in your life?

1. How to deal with frustration and turn it into a useful tool.

2. Dealing with Annie.

3. Lucid dreaming more.

Tell me a dream you remember.  It can be an old one, a repetitive dream, a nightmare, or one that you’re sure you understand.

I was in a university setting attending a conference about medical businesses.  After a long conference of sophisticated people from academia and business we decided to go for a ride along a beautiful mountain ridge with spectacular views like the Blue Ridge Parkway.  We had some difficulty getting up tot he road because there was a rough patch and the car was not made for it.  I was a good enough driver to get us around the rough patch.  We were congratulating ourselves for our ability to understand what was going on in tis medical conference because we could disseminate the information to less sophisticated people with a great deal of ease. When we got to the top of the ridge the road was completely blocked by six large tree stumps.  There are no roots on them.  They are like a six foot tall tree wall. They have been transported there and pt there to block the road. They are very uniform.   It’s quite vivid.  The scenery was all green and then these brown tree stumps straddle the two-lane road.  There is no possibility to go around them. Behind the tree stumps are three older American cars – Pontiacs, Oldmobiles, Mercury types from the late 70’s.  One’s red, one’s white, and one is blue.  I got really frustrated and then I woke up.

Why do you think that you had this dream?

Alan Wallace (Tibetan monk lecturer on lucid dreaming) had said in his lecture to become aware of your location, what you’re doing, who you are (role), and how you are feeling.  I meditated on frustration for the next half hour. Everything that’s frustration in my life came up.  How do I get my relationship with Annie on track?  She lives on a Ridge and works in a university setting.  I talked to her last night.  I have everything available to me to start dealing with my frustration and learn to be more lucid in my dreams and make my life more magical, to see that everything is a dream.  At that point I can start manipulating the dream.

If it were playing at a theater, what name would be on the marquee?

Stumped Again!

These are the characters in the dream…

If one character had something especially important to tell you, what would it be?

The tree stumps.

Now remember how as a child you liked to pretend you were a teacher or a doctor?  It’s easy and fun for you to imagine that you are this or that character in your dream and answer some questions I ask, saying the first thing that comes to your mind.  If you wait too long to answer, that’s not the character answering – that’s YOU trying to figure out the right thing to say!

Tree Stumps, would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?

There are six of us. We are wood. We were uprooted.  As we were laying on our sides our root structure was cut off at what would be two feet underground, so it’s flat.  Our tops are about six feet tall and very thick. We are cut off again at the top.  It looks like a crew cut.  We are uniformly lined up so we occupy the width of entire street so no one can get by.  Felix tried to move us and got to the third one, in the middle after he had successfully moved two, that he couldn’t move me.  He tried to physically move me, like the first two.  Then he got a crow bar and tried to leverage me but I wasn’t moving.  He thought about using dynamite but he didn’t know where he could get any.  He tried to move me by pushing me with the car but that didn’t work, so that thoroughly frustrated him.

What do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?

We are good-looking, we are strong, we don’t move. When we are put somewhere we stay, like we’re supposed to.

What do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses?  What are they?

No flexibility.  No give.  No nothing.  We are just here, like government regulations.  Termites, wood rot, old age, death, death, disease. But at this point we are good and solid.

(Character), you are in this person’s life experience, correct?  They created you, right?_____  Tree stumps, what aspect of this person do you represent or most closely personify?

The part of him that puts up blocks when he allows himself to get frustrated.

Tree stumps, if you could be anywhere you wanted to be and take any form you desired, would you change?  If so, how?

As part of Felix, we wish we could be supportive instead of obstacles.  But we are fairly impersonal.  We do what we do because we are what we are.

Why is this road blocked in the first place?

The people up the road don’t want to share.  There is another way out.  They don’t want through traffic.

(Continue, answering as the transformed object, if it chose to change.)

(Character), how would you score yourself 0-10, in confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, peace of mind, and witnessing?  Why?

Confidence: 10 We know what we’re doing.

Compassion:   5 We don’t care one way or the other.  We’re just here.

Wisdom:   8

Acceptance:   9 We’re here just because we’re here.  Our self-acceptance is high.

Inner Peace:   9

Witnessing: 10 We can sit and watch it all go by all the time!

Tree stumps, if you scored tens in all six of these qualities, would you be different?  If so, how?

Compassion was low. We don’t care much about anything.  If we were a ten we would be more flexible, more able to move and creative. We could become an arch or bridge or gateway or the interior of something.  We could become whatever form we wanted to be really compassionately helpful. We could turn ourselves into wings the one could put on the side of the car so they could fly.  We could help Felix.

Weren’t you put there because you weren’t compassionate and because you had a firm structure?

Yes.  We were put there as an obstacle.   We were put there because of our lack of compassion.  When we think about it, our acceptance is very low because of what we are doing.  It’s not true that we were high in acceptance. We are at 2’s or 1’s.

How would the life of the person who created you be different if he naturally scored high in all six of these qualities all the time?

He could do lucid dreaming.  That would propel him down the road of understanding what he wants to do really quickly.  It’s a very creative way of dealing with what is in front of him.  He would know the illusory nature of existence and could experiment with it on all forms and levels.  It would all be play, like being surrounded by fifth graders.  (I used to teach fifth grade.)  He’d have so much fun!

If you could live the life of the person who created you for him, how would you live it differently?

I would encourage him to become more and more creative in everything he does.  That is the hallmark of being alive and staying alive.  That helps others to do the same – to stay alive.  When it comes time for them to die it helps them to do so with constant awareness and to go into their next life with love and compassion.

If you could live this person’s waking life for him today, would you handle his three life issues differently?  If so, how?

Frustration: With awareness!  With lucidity!  He would be able to be highly creative very quickly now, in real time.  The frustrations would be tools to help him become more creative rather than be perceived as obstacles.

2. Annie: by doing the above – it’s the nature of what she does – if Felix is creative she will be more drawn to him.

3. More lucid dreaming: As he becomes more lucid the access to creativity becomes more pronounced and becomes a circle that feeds on itself.

What three life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of his life?

They would stay the same.

In what life situations would it be most beneficial for this person to imagine that they are you and act as you would?

Whenever he’s dreaming to recognize that frustration is a key to creativity.  Also when he’s awake.  Things then change!  His perspective changes, that of those who he is talking to changes. Then he can help people more!

Why do you think that you are in this person’s life?

Because we represent those frustrations he hasn’t figured out how to deal with. We are an opportunity for him to address these issues.

How is this person most likely to ignore what you are saying to them?

Fall asleep! Forget that everything is a dream!  When he gets frustrated, angry, and hurt to draw back in, pull back in, when the opposite is what he needs to do.

What would you recommend that they do about that?

He should instead take several deep breaths, relax as much as possible, and let us clear the road by ourselves. We’ll move out of the way.

What about those red, white, and blue cars, tree stumps?

They have their keys in the ignition!  They won’t be that much of an obstacle. They are vehicles!  They will carry him where he needs to go!  He needs to go to a patriotic place.  He needs a larger vision of what it means to be an American.  It’s been built too much around economics.  It’s a further barrier that he needs to address.  The medical conference was about sophistication of finance and how Felix was self-congratulatory about how much he knows.  It’s where Felix was most comfortable with his expertise.

I think this person had this dream because

he is in the position of opening up relatively quickly to new ideas and more aware of blocks to awareness.  We are just another thing in the road that needs to be addressed.

I think this dream event happened or (some character) was in the dream because…

The residents down the road remind Felix of Jupiter Island, Florida, an enclave of very rich people who don’t want a road running all the way through it.  It’s well guarded.  You only see vegetation or a driveway or mailbox.  You rarely see a house.  We are tools of the people down the road. They represent a part of Felix that has used his awareness of economics to defend the system.  That lets him live on “Jupiter Island.”  But now that doesn’t seem to be working for him.  It’s now blocking him toward more creativity.

What have you heard yourself say?

It rings very true.  I have used my economic knowledge as a tool to think like these people to hang out here.  But once you’ve gotten there, so what?  It’s not creative.  You can just get more stuff.  And stuff is stuff. Whereas the real creativity is within.  The real healing of oneself and others is within and doesn’t have much to do with that stuff.  I’ve got to unblock myself and that can help others as well.  It has to do with becoming more aware. Then things emerge.  People tell me I’m an inspiration.  I have more support than I realize.  I am just not aware of it.  It’s pretty humbling (cries). I just overlooked this.

Tree stumps, what are Felix’s humble feelings and his tears about?

Recognition that he’s just ignored and not appreciated and not taken into account how much love and kindness there has been in his life.

If he had, what difference would that have made?

He would have had a much richer interior life and been much more aware of what was going on around him.

If this experience were a wake-up call from the most central part of who you are, what do you think it would be saying to you?

Tree Stump: Treat Felix with loving kindness.  He responds to that so very, very strongly.  He needs to treat himself that way much more than he does.  He tends to be much harder on himself than he needs to.  Just to treat himself as a human being.  It’s something he has to work on a lot.

Do you have anything else you want to say to Felix right now, Tree Stump?

Remember you’re loved!

I was in some sort of building where a lot of people were sleeping.  I would say it might be something like a hostel.  Then I was riding with someone – a woman? There were others in the car, I think.  She took it straight up the top of a tall building.  At the top I knew it was too vertical to land on top of the building. Instead it arced over and was headed back toward the ground.  I was thinking, “Thanks for a great life” when I woke up.

So Car, how do you feel about how this dream went?

Car: Terrible!

I suppose you would change it so that you didn’t get driven up the building.

Car: Definitely!

Well then, I guess I need to talk to the lady that was driving… Lady, why did you drive the car up the side of the building?

Lady: Why not?  It’s a dream, isn’t it?

So are you saying that in the dream you knew it was a dream and you weren’t afraid because you knew no one would die?

Lady: Yes!

So what do you think Joseph should have done about you driving the car up the side of the building?

Lady: Relax and enjoy the ride!  Instead of waking up he could have used it to go lucid, for instance!!!

Any recommendations about waking life?

Lady: Just the same:  Relax and enjoy the ride.  Don’t get stressed out or worried about anything.  Who you really are can’t die.  Use everything to help you wake up more!

Good advice.  OK.  Thank you, Lady!

From the point of view of this self-aspect, rather than emphasizing dream lucidity per se, lucid dreaming is about learning to wake up in whatever state we are in.  While our waking identity clearly differentiates between dreaming and waking states most of the time, that distinction seems less important to many self-aspects.

Surfing Your Way Out of Your Life Nightmare

I am in a jail.  I have to take care of people on death row.  I’m not a prisoner but I’m not a caretaker.  I’m something in-between.  I am taking care of people in the last hours before they go to the electric chair.  One of them is a former male friend.  He knows that he will die in a few hours.  I have to cheer him up.  (Crying).  It’s not a good time for me.  It’s dark with all the fear of losing him.  I have to tell him that I love him and that he’s a good guy.  I have to cheer him up for his last hours.    It’s awful.  Then they take him out of the room and take him to kill him.  I have to stay there until they bring him back dead.  I try to wake up because I realize it’s a nightmare, but I can’t stop dreaming.  I knew I was dreaming but I couldn’t wake up; I couldn’t stop it. The next person is my grandmother.  I have to take care of her.  They take her and kill her and I have to wait for the body to come back on a stretcher.  Then I woke up, went back to sleep and the same thing was happening to other people. Even with waking up I couldn’t stop this nightmare.

Notice that going lucid accomplishes nothing for this dreamer.  There is no freedom, no control, no autonomy, no ability to change anything.  Instead, what is experienced is that the nightmare embraces everyday consciousness, as is the case with post-traumatic stress disorders.  Also, notice that going lucid is a failed attempt by the dreamer to rescue herself from the drama triangle by waking up.  Instead of avoiding persecution and victimization by waking up, it is merely extended to other examples in other parts of her life, stressing the pervasive nature of the nightmare.

While lucidity is often an attempt at self-rescue which succeeds in keeping one stuck in the drama triangle while exerting the worldview of a stuck waking identity into the dream state, deep listening honors the nightmare of your life by giving it the respect of suspending judgment, listening, and applying what makes sense.  Instead of changing the nightmare to conform to your assumptions of happiness, both the nightmare and your waking identity learn to conform to the culture of a transcending and inclusive intrasocial reality.

For more, see lucid dreaming and Some Challenges to Some Assumptions About Lucid Dreaming.

(From Integral Deep Listening and Meditation)

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x

Mark had just begun studying to become a Practitioner of Integral Deep Listening.  He shared the following life issues.  “No matter how much I work I break even every month!” “I’m going to be a father!”  “I’m going to be a single parent!”

These issues do not, on the surface, look like they have anything to do with meditation.  However, on closer examination, that conclusion seems to be more a result of limits in our understanding of meditation than it has to do with meditation itself.  Consider Mark’s dream:

I am sitting on a hard wood floor.  All around me in this room are cold stone walls going up about thirty feet.  There is no visible light source.  It’s dim.  I am sitting in a meditation posture, meditating.  I see the figure of a man, sinewy, dark face, with pointed, very defined features.  It’s not the face of a man; more the face of a monster!  It scares me!  Then all of a sudden he’s levitating in front of me and he communicates with me!  I instantly realize that this is my guru, my spiritual teacher!  I realize I have nothing to fear!  I realize this entity is going to take me to the ever-loving bliss of God! Slowly I start to levitate with him, but not with my body.  It’s almost as if my essence is coming up!  As it does, I feel this raw ecstatic joy, love, and bliss.  I can’t even describe how it felt!  A feeling of oneness with the universe!  I know I am stepping out of dualism and that my time is up in material creation and that I am starting to merge with the infinite!

Most meditators would like to have an experience like Mark had in this dream.  Many people would like to find the right spiritual teacher or Guru to teach them how to be one with the divine.  Why don’t they?  Well, the fact is, they probably already do; they just don’t know it.

I am referring to the community of self-aspects that are called internal Sangha members in Integral Deep Listening.  A “sangha” is a Pali Buddhist word that refers to a spiritual community.  In Integral Deep Listening, students learn to work with an internal sangha of self-aspects that are advisors in all areas of personal development.  As you learn to do so, you receive the guidance that you need to meditate effectively.

The very fact that this powerfully transformative experience came in a dream tells us that dreams can and do teach us about meditation.  If Mark had not remembered this dream he still would have had it.  That implies that you are most likely having dreams that can and do help you with your spiritual development every night that you do not remember.  How might your life be different if you not only remembered such dream experiences but used Integral Deep Listening to listen to them, understand them, heal your blockages, and identify with those aspects of yourself, like Mark’s Guru, that already are where you want to be in your development?

When Mark imagined that he was the Guru it said,  

I like my face.  I dislike that my face scares him, but he needs to see that which is beneath appearances.  I could have come as anything.  I chose this persona to teach.  I’m here to help Mark reconnect with the infinite.  Self-realization. Mark has desire in his heart and his soul to find the truth.  He has desire to escape limitations that he places on himself.  In his heart he called to me so I have come to him.  I go about levitating because I am one with the universe.  I can be anywhere, anything, at any time.  I can be a man floating in the air!

Notice that spirit was not afraid to scare Mark, if that is what it took to wake him up. Mark might have wanted to change this dream so that say, the Guru wouldn’t scare him or so that he became the Guru or so that all his waking problems were solved.  But this is not what the Guru said when asked.  Instead, he said,

If I could change this dream I would leave it as it is.

I most closely personify Mark’s higher self.  He needs to see his higher self as a monster because that’s how he wants to see me in the moment.  He’s still afraid of the future, he’s still afraid of letting go.  So in his fear he creates a monster!  My greatest strengths are my oneness with everything, my total realization and understanding of the universe.  The reason why I am in this dream is to show Mark that there is hope, that his spiritual development does not have to be done alone and that he is always loved, forever, and that connection is never broken.

Notice that this Guru, which says that it personifies Mark’s potential identity, does not tell Mark things that he does not already know.  Instead, he places emphasis on attitudes, perspectives, and behaviors that represent different priorities.  The shifts can be subtle, but they make all the difference in the world for the speed of Mark’s spiritual development and his future success learning to meditate.

If I were in charge of Mark’s life I wouldn’t change it. He’s doing what he needs to do right now.  He changed some things recently and it was exactly what he needed to do.   Regarding money, his faith in spirit is strong but his patience is weak.  He has little patience.  He is learning to experience and have patience and realize that what he desires will come to him when he needs it to.  He must continue to do what he is doing, having faith and being patient, not letting anxiety overcome his reason.  Let it out, let it go, and give it away! He is going to be a good father, but he knows that.  Regarding being a single father, this situation will take care of itself.  Nothing is needed to do, just to be and to go with it. Mark and Julia learned what they needed to learn.  Now they need to be separate to learn what they need to learn.  Mark already knows that the child is Indigo and that the most important thing he can do is show unconditional love.  He doesn’t yet know how to show it but he’s getting it.

You may be thinking, “But isn’t this just Mark imagining things?  Isn’t this just Mark just telling himself things that he already knows?  What’s so special about that?  Isn’t he just reassuring himself with comfortable expressions that validate who he already thinks that he is?”

Such skepticism is healthy, natural, and necessary.  It is to be encouraged.  That is because Integral Deep Listening as a psychospiritual methodology.  The statements of interviewed self-aspects must be put to the test within the test tube of your own life.  Integral Deep Listening is the catalyst; when the experiment is performed, healing, balancing, and transformation are likely to be the result.

Mark will benefit from identifying with me by realizing that I am always here, that he will grow into me, and we will be one. He just needs to keep smiling and laughing.  Play a little more!  His lower self has been neglected a little.  Follow his heart.   Regarding Integral Deep Listening, it’s a wonderful thing for him to learn.  He will learn higher forms of meditation and self-realization.  His desire to help others will lead him into teaching things that will help them know themselves.

This interview did not solve all of Mark’s problems.  It was not a magic cure.  He still had to do all the heavy lifting and to make the hard decisions of his life.  But it did powerfully influence Mark.  He went forward with his life knowing that he was not alone and that he had powerful sources of inner support and direction that he could access anytime that were natural meditators, even if he was not.  He now knew there were parts of himself that wanted to help him to learn to meditate and to bring spirit more fully into his everyday experience.

Integral Deep Listening teaches you to look at your life from the perspective of your innermost, most sacred potentials.  This is meditative consciousness, and it evolves as you learn to practice deep listening to aspects of yourself, particularly those which score high in six core qualities that personify our highest potentials as humans.  From this experience, Mark learned a number of truths that helped him to understand how to meditate more successfully.  He learned that the Guru he was seeking is within himself, that he avoids spiritual awakening because the seeming unattainability of that state intimidates him.  This is personified by the scary face of the Guru.  Part of Mark intuitively knows that to transform, he must die, and death scares the limited waking self whom we normally think that we are. Mark received a powerful message of love and support and understood better that he needs to look beneath the surface of how things seem to him.

Acceptance is another key message from the Guru: “Let it out, let it go, and give it away!”  Mark gained a deep inner sense that his life is on the right track, that he is headed in the right direction despite his worries about his impending parenthood and financial struggles.