Dream yoga: A ripple in the moon
My teacher came back from his extended trip through Asia. I was hoping that in the time he was gone I’d have accomplished reaching Oddiyana but that was not in the cards.
I took the opportunity to tell him about my attempts, hoping that maybe he would point out an approach I haven’t yet tried. Which he did but, expectedly, with a twist.
I thought I was being clever with all my different approaches and techniques for changing dreams. I tried various sources from writers to friends to my own devices… I’m positive it would have worked sooner or later but my Guru found it amusing.
“You are being too rigid,” he told me. “Even in your dreams you are being rigid, trying different techniques and skills. It doesn’t have to be so complicated.”
He pointed to the drawing on the board from that day’s class. It was a moon reflected in the water with ripples going across. The Moon was symbolic of the mind, and the ripples are any occurrence (whether seemingly outer or seemingly inner). All occurrences are just changes in the mind. When we “see” something move, it is in fact just a change in our mind that we perceive rather than an objective occurence. But the ripples originate in the greater whole rather than within the boundaries of the reflected moon. The ripples come from outside the imagined boundary of self.
As he pointed he continued, “your dreams are also just ripples in the water moon. You don’t need to try so hard, you just need to realize that the dream is only a ripple. When you fully realize this something will click, you will feel something special. At that point…” He made a throwing gesture, “you just throw a pebble in the lake and watch the ripples change.”
I thanked him for his wisdom and walked away thinking about how the advice was much less practical than I had expected, yet much more profound.
It seems that lucidity is only the first step, but there is a deeper level of awareness to be gained in dreams. Rather than simply being aware that it is a dream, to be fully aware of your mind creating the dream.
