Nightmares - Do nightmares lead to spiritual experience? Dying in dreams. Freezing time. Stories from a meditation teacher and her nightmares. & How I reframed a recent nightmare into a sense of self discovery.

Ancient Egyptian myth & blue lotus for dream enhancement spotlight - just because it’s cool.

Living the Dream meditation - What would it feel like in your body if your dream life was already true?

Have you ever died in a dream?

Sometimes we wake up the moment we fall off the cliff, or the monster catches us, or thing of night grabs us. Sometimes we don’t.

Sometimes we hit the ground, get eaten, or die.

In the dead of night lurks any number of monsters to hunt us. Pieces of our mind, our subconscious, with a message to deliver. Anything from daily stress to underlying anxiety, or something we’re avoiding. Or maybe something deeper. A teaching from the dream realm or a being or a version of ourselves with an unexpected but resonant twist.

I’ve been in plenty of fights in the night. I’ve been on the run, terrified, and out of control.

I have also frozen time. Prayed to Jesus. Left my dream body and entered 3rd-person mode. Jumped from body to body and story to story. And slammed back from the dream, back into my waking body in stark fear of some being, one too vivid to feel like the rest of the dream (we’ll explore what a dream body is soon, there’s too much to do it now, but soon).

So what do we do about nightmares? Is there really some magical piece of wisdom in them? Can we stop them altogether? Do we want to?

My meditation teacher struggled with nightmares of witches early in her life. Her mother told her she has the power to direct her dreams. She realizes this in the dream, climbs to the top of a tree and tells the witch chasing her. Then she flies away, the witch too heavy to follow her.

She goes on to cultivate the power to fly in her dreams over the years. Sometimes soaring over cities. Sometimes clumsily bumping into things and falling.

I’ve heard this story from her directly. And I also read it in her book Luminous: The Psychology of Enlightenment where she writes about finding a Tibetan teacher of dream yoga.

She’s told by the Lama that this is part of the siddhis - or powers - one develops on the spiritual path.

She tells me stories not in her book too. Stories of premonition dreams. Stories of soul travel (beyond lucid dreaming). Stories of her teacher visiting her in the dream state (alongside other students), and about people who are dream senders and dream receivers. Stories I’d love to share over time.

For now, a quick story on a nightmare-turned-to-peace.

In a square, Japanese-style house underground, I travel to the attic where a friend left treasures for me to find. I climb through another hole, and into a second secret attic in a small cave. Here, I rip parts of the wall off, discovering trinkets he’d left behind and an illustration of a smiling buddha on the ceiling. I take off another part of the ceiling and a woman’s face peers through. Bright. More luminous than the rest of the dream. Startled, I jump back and throw whatever I can at her. She disappears. I wake, stressed.

In a session with my meditation teacher, we dive back into the dream. She has me breathe, and calm down. I do. Then I channel the dream, speaking to it and whoever might be around. So far, so good. Treasures for me to find. Awesome. And then we get to the point when the woman once again appears.

But we pause together. In this guided session, I am asked to speak to her before I throw the objects. I ask her questions. Who are you? Where do you come from? And more.

Then I’m told to channel her response, as if I am her. I get the sense of laughter, that “I am not from here”, and “I am checking on you and may come peer again”.

I get this sense that, she’s here to watch my spiritual progress, whatever that means, and suddenly I feel free to find the treasures in my own storehouse left for me. So the dream goes on, she leaves, and we end the session with nurturing this sense that self-discovery is coming. It was a very powerful way I’ve experienced reframing a freaky dream.

If you’re good at lucid dreaming and have a nightmare to try this on, set this intention: pause the dream. Ask what the dream itself, or the monster, etc. is trying to tell you.

And tell me, I want to know, have you died in your nightmares? What happened? Did you wake up? If not, what happened next? (I mean it, please reply and tell me your stories. I WANT your stories).

And what do you do to enhance your dreams? I’ve tried a few things myself. And I’m honing in on a little something the ancient Egyptians were into - blue lotus.

Out of the chaos-waters of Nu, a pyramid arose. And then a lotus. The petals unfurled at the dawn of creation, revealing light.

This light was Ra, the sun god.

But in some versions of the story, it is not Ra, but Nefertem, god of the blue lotus.

As the blue lotus closes with the night and blooms with the day, Nefertem symbolized rebirth, and the wonderful smell of the blue lotus (an Egyptian water lily).

Heavily entwined with healing and magic, Egyptians would travel to sleep temples, hoping to receive the blessings of this patron.

Dreams for the Egyptians, were not only the connection to subconscious, but a sacred place to experience divine presence and communication with the dead.

Perhaps this is why Joseph of the Bible, a slave gifted in the way of dreams (sometimes called oneiromancy), was honored by the pharaoh of his time.

And why the pharaoh Thutmose IV erected the Dream Stela, his recounting of falling asleep under the Sphinx and being visited by Ra himself to be blessed with prophecy of his reign.

Ancient Egypt is steeped in dream lore. More than will fit here and worthy to be revisited in more depth. So is the real-life blue lotus from the story.

Blue lotus is a water lily (Nymphaea caerulea), and “when extracted, dosed, or infused properly”, delivers apomorphine, nuciferine, & nornuciferine.

These three compounds are linked to:

Elevated mood, euphoria, dream-like states, mood regulation, calmness and stress reduction.

I think I’ve been looking for that lately.

And since I like Egyptian, Greek, and Indian myths, this seemed like a natural fit to explore (yes, the blue lotus is the logo for the newsletter).

I read that “a lot of what gets sold online now as “mystical blue lotus” is watered-down marketing compared to what it meant in the old temples”.

I don’t care if that’s an exaggeration. It gets me excited to try it out in stronger doses. But safe doses.

A responsibly-sourced & positive-intentioned blue lotus product popped up in a podcast I was watching. They have dosing guides, info on proper preparation (which they do on their end), and some more info on the effects and compounds that lead to them.

That company goes by Amentara (their cool logo below), and I placed my first order of blue lotus and a small bag of amanita gummies. It’s reasonably priced, and they have positive intentions in every part of the process. And reviews are positive, which matters to me. They have other intriguing products, but I’m starting here. (I have an affiliate link but I’m leaving it out for now to focus on my own experiment first).

What would it feel like, right now in your body and in your life, if that was already true?

What would it feel like to carry that feeling into the rest of the day?

Some people say dreams are escape, that they aren’t real or worthwhile spiritually. But has a dream ever affected your mood after you woke up? Nightmares, for example. Pleasant dreams that lead to a cozy morning? Dreams of work that put you in a rush right away? What if, instead, we use this pleasant image of our dream life, to bring more awareness of the energy we carry during the day?

Here’s a 5-12min practice:

Start with a bit of calming breathing.

3 breaths. Big inhale. Long exhale or sigh (“ahhhhhhh”).

Pause. Close your eyes. Tune into your body.

Continue breathing in slowly. Breathing in the space 2 feet in front of you. And releasing it back out.

Slowly, let yourself return to normal breathing.

Now imagine your dream life. What images appear? What does it feel like?

How would you feel if that dream life were suddenly true?

Notice what happens in your body, how you respond. Exaggerate that feeling. Accept it into your body.

Now keep the feeling, and let go of the image.

Feel that. Exaggerate the feeling again.

And when you’re ready, open your eyes and notice the space in the room. Do you feel lighter? Say (out loud) I am lighter. Do you feel spacious or expanded or cool? Say that.

Then bring that positive vibe into your day.

What do you want to hear about next? (improving sleep quality, dream bodies, premonition dreams, more myths & stories, personal experiences, lucid dreaming practices, the “so what” in waking life, etc.)

There is so much to explore together, and your voice matters.

Thank you all,

Alex