The Second Oneironauticum is Saturday, March 1

In the second Oneironauticum session, we will explore Tibetan Buddhist Dream Yoga. Shakyamuni Buddha taught his followers to consider reality a dream. All phenomena, in waking and dreaming states alike, arises and dissolves around our own impermanent subjectivity. The pracitioner learns to lucid dream and thereby carries waking subjectivity into the dream world, the first step toward understanding that waking and dreaming worlds are merely different states of being in a world forged from thoughtform.

Namkhai Norbu, a Rinpoche in the Dzogchen school, introduced Dream Yoga to the West in the early nineties. We'll work with a form of the practice taught by Norbu's student, Tenzin Wangal Ripoche. The practice consists of contemplating experiences as dream phenomena. Throughout the day, consider the way in which you dream your existence. Apply this principle to actions, objects, perceptions: the screen you're reading is a dream screen, the sounds you hear are dream sounds, you're angry, but it's a dream. When you lie down to go to sleep at night, review your day as if remembering a dream. Then, as you drift off, set the intention to become lucid. In the morning, review your dreams with the same sense of reality as you think about waking experiences.

Through this practice, we'll investigate the nature of dreaming and the reality, or lack of reality, inherent in the relationship between subjective experience of objective phenomena.

We urge remote participation in the Oneironauticum. To participate remotely, follow the practice as described above throughout the day of Saturday March first. That night, when you set your intention to become lucid, add the intention to join us in the dream realm. All dream participants, those who attend the Oneironauticum and those who join remotely, are welcome to post to this blog. Contact us if you’re interested.

Sweet dreams!

Vivid Galantamine Dreaming, by Geneva

I was in the same room in which we all went to sleep, as if the rewind button had been pressed and playback was with different characters in the room. In this version I lay cuddling with a past love; his presence so real that I could literally smell, taste and feel the softness of his skin. There was no difference of dimensions, states of mind, lucidity; if all my past experiences of lucid dreaming hadn't been enough to prove to me that my dream life is just as real as my waking life, this certainly did. I stayed in my love's arms for what seemed like the rest of the night, and set to my lucid dreaming from there. I then faded to being in front of our group's collaborative art piece - a revolving mural that wrapped around and entire city neighborhood block. The neighborhood where our collaborative art project was supposed to be a San Francisco neighborhood, while at the same time it had a feeling of an old New York brownstone neighborhood from the movies. One of our members (who was a boy from my childhood, and whom I haven't thought of in years) was very upset about some aspect of how the piece was being exhibited, to the point of a rash emotional outburst, yelling and pointing incoherently. As I walked around the block, in the opposite direction that our mural was rotating, there was one particular scene that kept repeating - looking up at an inordinately tall chain link fence that had panels of blue vinyl material connected on the edges and corners with steel loops. Not all of the loops were linked in, so when the wind was still, different corners would fall open - and when the wind would blow, all of the panels would flap closed in a very fluid motion, from one corner to the other with a eerie flapping sound.

I am not sure whether it was the Galantamine or the intentional space of group dreaming which had such a profound impact on the intensity and vividness of my dreams, but they were pronouncedly more enhanced than my usual experiences.

Dream Images, by lissa ivy

our dream altar

dream hand