The Emotions And Dreaming

One of the great insights of ancient practitioners was the fact that, if a daily regimen of energy practices is maintained-specially refining the emotions-the quality and quantity of dreams changes. If a person goes to bed after having cleared the vital organs from unresolved emotions the amount of emotional dreams and nightmares dramatically decreases, sometimes to the point that they disappear completely. This does not mean that the person ceases to have dreams, but rather that the quality of the dream shifts from restless to harmonious and pleasant.

One of the greatest insights gained exploring the connection between dreams and energy practices was that dreams are experiences taking place at the level of the subtle bodies. In other words, as a person begins to fall asleep and the senses gradually disconnect from the physical world, they turn inward. A process akin to having a good meditation. As the senses turn inward, the consciousness which was focused on the physical world through the senses also turns inward-in the direction of the subtle energy body.

The Taoists consider falling asleep as a process no different from entering into a meditative state. Just as in deep states of meditation if the body is fatigued the practitioner may fall asleep and go unconscious, so going to sleep has to take place, paradoxically, when one is not fatigued. For the Taoists falling asleep is an open door for playing fully conscious with the subtle energy body and carrying out energy practices without the limitations of the physical body.

Every time we let go into sleep our consciousness shifts its focus from the physical dense body to the subtle energy body at the other end of the spectrum. If we speak of sleep then it is of the physical body, since the subtle aspects never falls asleep. The subtle energy aspect operates 24 hours through our lives. We may not be consciously aware when we shift our conscious focus to the subtle body, however we all do that many times during our waking hours. For example we all had the experience when we were children in school of sitting bored through an uninteresting class. Then as the teacher continued talking we gradually began to go with our minds somewhere else. We began to dream with the eyes open about doing something far more enjoyable at that moment. Our conscious focus was far away from the classroom and the teacher. If this day dreaming went on for a long time, and all of a sudden the teacher asked us a question, we had to forcefully bring back our mental focus to the teacher, with predictable inability to answer the question properly. Ordinarily we say we were fantasizing at that moment, doing something which was not real in a physical sense. The Taoist would not call it fantasizing but rather shifting attention from the physical to the subtle, just as when we are dreaming in bed.

Dreaming is not an action which is confined to falling asleep. We dream 24 hours a day. A part of our consciousness which is not fully engaged in the physical plane dealing with day to day problems is focused on the subtle aspects of the body. Many times a day we shift conscious focus from physical reality to subtle reality. Our awareness at that moment may be focused on a friend that is at the other side of the planet. Sometimes if our focusing is intense enough something unexpected may happen: the phone rings! It is our friend calling from the other side of the planet to tell us they were thinking of us just at that moment. Has this happened to you? Ordinarily we call these happenings `coincidence'. A word for labeling the unexplainable. For the Taoists familiar with the full spectrum of the life force this is not something unexplainable. When we shift our mental focus onto someone far away at that instant we are in direct contact with the subtle body of that person. The geographical distance is irrelevant.

One of the insights which opens as one begins to consciously shift mental focus from the physical to the subtle is that the life force is not limited by physical reality. It could not be because the physical is just one aspect of the energy spectrum. There is the rest of the spectrum operating simultaneously beyond the physical. So energy is not limited by space, nor time which is also a function of space.

Every time we place the head on the pillow and fall asleep our consciousness focuses its gaze upon a dimension which is not limited by time or space. A dimension which is extremely fluid and efficient because it is not limited by time or the constraints of distance. In dream we have all experienced how in the fraction of an instant we can change from walking to flying across the landscape or being here and then on the other side of the moon.

The practices developed by the ancient Taoists around dream state were designed to tap into the inexhaustible reservoir of possibilities that transcending time and space offers. One essential notion they got rid of was the ordinary belief that dreams are fantasies with no basis on reality. A dream may not have any basis on physical reality, but then physical existence is not the only realm of experience there is. What we ordinarily call reality is limited to physical experience and is just a fragment of the totality of being. Dreams, intuitions, feelings we dismiss into the dust bin of the not-real. The Taoists would call that a fragmented vision.

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