Page 17 - NAMAH-Oct-2024

Namah Dreams and Sadhana

experiences” for they were not just images and dreams become clearer; they start helping us.
sensations, but journeys into non-physical This opens up a channel of communication
realms. Many instances of her dreams can with the subliminal world. It is as though
be found in her Agenda volumes (2). In a a personal guardian starts talking with us
conversation about night-time experiences using dream language. Tibetan Buddhism
she said: has an esoteric teaching of dream yoga that
was passed down orally from master to
“Sleep is a school, an excellent school for pupil from before the eighth century. Tenzin
something other than the school of waking Wangyal Rinpoche wrote a book about this
hours. It is another school for another purpose… dream yoga for English readers, where he says
If one wants to make the maximum progress that, “The goal of dream practice is liberation
possible, one must know how to use one’s nights (5)”. He follows it up by stating that dreams
as one uses one’s days….. (3).” are useful even before they can be used as
liberation aids:
Dreams fulfil many functions such as problem-
solving and wish-fulfilment, but the Mother “We can heal wounds in the psyche, emotional
emphasises the function that can help the difficulties that we have not been able to
dreamer progress in the inner journey. overcome. We can remove energetic blocks that
may be inhibiting the free circulation of energy
The dreams that open up a new door in our in the body. And we can pierce obscurations in
psyche and gift us a new insight are called, the mind by taking experience beyond conceptual
‘big dreams’. Kelly Bulkeley in her book, Big boundaries and limitations (6).”
Dreams: The Science of Dreaming and the Origins
of Religion, puns on the word ‘dream’ when
describing big dreams:

“The influence of these dreams is more a matter
of stimulating people’s capacities for hope and
imagination, envisioning possibilities beyond
the limits of present reality… Being able to dream
the impossible is what makes humans human
(4).”

In this article, I shall concentrate on numinous The Symbolic language of dreams
dreams; the dreams that take us closer to our
Self. They play the role of soul-guides; they A Jungian analyst, Robert Johnson, writes,
light our way to the wholeness of our being. “All of human life is nourished by the flow
Paying attention to one’s dreams; journaling of symbolic imagery from the wellsprings in
them; interpreting them; bringing out meaning the unconscious (7)”. Dreams that spring
from them; and finally honouring them, such from the vast space behind and beyond the
as in rituals, work as a feedback mechanism conscious realm, speak to us in symbolic
on dreams. Our dream-recall increases; our language. Symbols are holograms. Every

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