Lucid Dreaming and "Five Ways" Mindfulness Meditation ~ Shinzen Young

Shinzen answers the question from a student about lucid dreaming and his Five Ways approach to mindfulness meditation. He shares how he's used the mindfulness techniques giving examples from his own dreams, including how he uses the labeling system and working with flow. He then shares that the point of meditating during dreams contributes to making optimal use of this time. Filmed in Nov. 2009 at Mt. Carmel Spiritual Centre in Niagara Falls.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Shinzen Young
• enlightenment
• vipassana
• zen
• Lucid Dreaming
• Mindfulness
• Meditation
• liberation

[IteMaledicti]

The latter portion of this video is a prime example of why I love to hear successful lucid dreamers speak. They have such JOY at what they're able to manifest! Lucid dreaming is, seriously, one of the skills a person should master in their lifetimes. There is NOTHING equatable to the freedom it offers.

[daronlarson]

This all makes sense. It's great to have another situation to experiment with these strategies. I like this quote from Stephen LaBerge "Whether awake or asleep, the brain constructs a model of reality—consciousness from the best available sources of information....dreaming is perception free from external sensory constraint, while perception is dreaming constrained by sensory input—hallucinations that happen to be true."

[Zombait360]

Have you ever herd of astral projection? It's basically lucid dreaming but you achieve it through deep meditation. You go from an awakened state directly to an OBE.

[pointatthemoon]

I practice lucid dreaming. What I have found is that getting lost in the dream--losing mindfulness--causes the dream to either vanish entirely, or for lucidity to be loss. It is not a useful plaything, you'll end up frustrated. But maybe I am only limited in my abilities. Find out for yourself!

[oozecandy]

Nicely explained and I appreciated hearing "the point is not to play games...". Seems like so many sites which explain how to have lucid dreams are all about 'playing games' instead of probing yourself and feelings. However, when you think about it, if someone in a dream is trying to explain something important to you a moment before you become lucid and you interrupt that conversation to wish for 10 girls in bikinis, you are losing out on that info.