Dreaming

Dreaming

Dreaming is a gateway to infinity…the sophisticated art of displacing perception from its habitual position in order to enhance and enlarge the scope of what can be perceived.

- Don Juan Matus

Don Juan Matus was the Yaqui Indian, and leader of a lineage of seers from ancient Mexico, who taught Carlos Castaneda, Florinda Donner-Grau, Taisha Abelar and Carol Tiggs his lineage’s arts – dreaming was among them.

Dreaming – the act of shifting perception awake or in sleep – is honed and perfected by living impeccably with self-responsibility, ethical treatment of self and others, the keeping of our commitments, and the following of our life’s purpose.

According to the seers of our line, dreaming is not enhanced by simple technique or scientific measurement, but rather by the accrual of a particular type of energy – dreaming attention energy – the energy that accompanies our energetic twin or double, called in our tradition, our energy body.

The gathering of this special type of energy is a daily affair. Since most of our attention resides in our waking state, the honing of this particular type of energy body attention in daily life nearly guarantees a transfer of it to our dreaming sleep.

For example, persons complaining of unwanted sensations or visitations in their nightly dream need look no further than similar situations in their waking state. If you are oppressed in your sleeping dream, for sure you feel oppressed in your daily life. And the redirection of your attention in your waking state from overwhelmed to conscious action with your energy body, gives you not only the best opportunity to create and live your best life, but also the dreaming attention, strength and courage to amend your dreaming sleep.

Florinda Donner-Grau best illustrates the reaching of her energy body while waking as she describes her letting go of her usual habits of judgment and criticism to let infinity help her write her college entrance paper. She called this phenomenon, ‘dreaming awake,’ and says:

I sat at the table and spread out the pages all around me. Right under my watchful eyes the entire structure of my paper emerged, superimposing itself on my original draft like a double exposure on a frame of film.

And Carlos Castaneda similarly describes how redeploying his attention away from himself, his self-importance in daily life, gave him the energy to make the journey from normal sleeping dream awareness, sueno, to heightened sleeping dream awareness, ensueno.

So the tools to dream – awake and in sleep – lie right in our very hands, in normal awareness, on this side of the veil that often separates us from heightened awareness.