← Jung On Purpose Podcast by CreativeMind
Jung On Purpose Podcast by CreativeMind
Lucid Dreaming vs. Dream Yoga: What's the Difference? (And Why It Matters)
00:31:30
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- [00:04]
Narrator
Welcome to Jung on purpose with CreativeMind hosted by Deborah and Dr. Rob Maldonado, creators of the NeuroMindra coaching method based on Jungian psychology, non dual spirituality and social neuroscience. Join us each week as we explore personal growth for purpose seekers and the incredible inner journey of becoming your true self. Let's get started.
- [00:34]
Deborah Maldonado
Hello, welcome to another episode of Jung on Purpose. My name is Deborah Maldonado.
- [00:39]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
I'm Dr. Rob. Welcome to the program and we're so glad you're here.
- [00:44]
Deborah Maldonado
And today we're going to be talking about dream yoga, completing our series on dreams or some people may be familiar with the term lucid dreaming. So we'll talk about that as well. But before we begin, do want to request do us a favor and subscribe to our podcast. If you're listening to us on one of those podcast services, it really helps us out. Also if you are watching us on YouTube, click the subscribe button and the notification button so you can receive notifications of every new episode that comes live. Oh Rob, Dream yoga, I always love that term and I think of maybe going to a dream retreat and maybe the, you know, some tropical island and have a do yoga on the beach. Is that what we're talking about?
- [01:29]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Kind of. Why not?
- [01:30]
Deborah Maldonado
Kind of in our minds, right?
- [01:33]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, but yeah, traditionally of course yoga is the mind body discipline that is really aimed at self realization. In other words, so it's not just
- [01:44]
Deborah Maldonado
the yoga classes we take in.
- [01:46]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. It's not just to get the yoga butt or the, the yoga bud for a health spa life experience, but to discipline the mind body so that it's ready to receive higher knowledge.
- [02:00]
Deborah Maldonado
So the body is the body work with the yoga is just one aspect of yoga.
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Dr. Rob Maldonado
Absolutely. And dream yoga of course includes this practice of looking at the dream world and the dream experience as a vehicle. In other words, we're the yogi is recruiting the body and the philosophy of yoga for self realization and actively cultivating consciousness in the dream state.
- [02:30]
Deborah Maldonado
And so our logo, actually the icon is based on the om symbol which has four parts, the waking, dreaming, deep sleep and pure consciousness. The little dot, if anyone wondered what that represented, it's actually a modernized version of the om symbol. So let's talk about eastern philosophy in those four areas a little bit.
- [02:51]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, yeah. So this is called turiya, it's kind of a very Sanskrit word, but it simply means the fourth. So that if we, we look at our states of mind within a 24 hour period, all human beings go through a waking state, a dreaming state, a deep Sleep state. And then turiya is the one that, where these states of mind arise.
- [03:18]
Deborah Maldonado
So it's the, so it's basically the foundation, right?
- [03:20]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Foundation, Pure consciousness. So we can think of these three states of mind not as separate. Right? Or completely separate. They all have in common this consciousness, this turiya, the fourth state, which is pure awareness.
- [03:36]
Deborah Maldonado
And so it's not just like, okay, I'm in dreaming now, I'm awake now, I'm deep sleep now. There, there is kind of a gradation of levels of consciousness and even waking life. We daydream or we're caught up in a, in the world of life and we're not really fully conscious. We're caught up in the news or social media or watching a movie. It's kind of a dreaming state. We're not really fully awake. So, so the, what is the goal of Dream Yoga? What is, I mean pure consciousness. But in like, explain it to me like I'm a nine year old, Rob. What is, what is.
- [04:12]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, when you're already 10, right?
- [04:15]
Deborah Maldonado
Yeah, I'm 10 now. So imagine I'm nine.
- [04:18]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
So let's, let's define it this way. Dream Yoga trains us to become aware within the dreaming and sleeping states so that we begin to recognize that awareness is present across these changing states of mind. It's always there. It's the ever present awareness. Now how do we do that? Of course it requires us to really discipline our mind and our awareness so that it can take us there. And one of the.
- [04:50]
Deborah Maldonado
So what's the benefit of that though? Like why, why should I want to be in pure awareness?
- [04:55]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah.
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Deborah Maldonado
And also I think in that second part of that question is many people think it's about escaping or withdrawing or being disassociated. Why do we need to be like the witness, be aware of this other part of ourselves?
- [05:12]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, so in the Jungian model, which is a depth psychology model, gives us a good basis to understand that. Because the idea in the Jungian model is that the more you integrate consciousness, in other words, the, the more you, you, you're able to connect the, your conscious mind, meaning your everyday waking conscious mind with the unconscious mind. Deeper layers of the unconscious mind, including dreaming and deep sleep, the more you're able to do that, the more holistic your experience of your human life becomes. In other words, you're no longer relegated to only experiencing your ego state of mind in the waking state and you're, you're believing that that's all there is to my life. This, this sliver of Awakeness that I have every 24 hours which is only about 12 hours. No, I don't know. Depending on how much you sleep. Yeah, 18 hours or so. The dream yoga then gives us a discipline to follow that helps us integrate consciousness, conscious and unconscious mind together.
- [06:28]
Deborah Maldonado
Well let me try this on for the nine year old mind. I see the real benefit is that we are so when we're in ego and we're unintegrated, we do not know who we are and we live in the world we're very, we're focused on the external so we focus on material things. We see ourself as separate from everything we. Things become really urgent like finding a partner or making money. Those become really tangible fears. People like us, physical safety, all those things. Political upheaval and the environment and all this stuff we get, we can get very externalized and then also projecting our power onto others and feeling powerless. So Jung's work first is like integration of what we're not conscious of like on a personal level. But when with dream yoga we enter a bigger picture because Jung also talked about the collective unconscious that we're the 2 million year old man inside of us or woman, whatever you want to be or whatever non binary person human in us is. There's so much richness inside that we're not tapping into because our mind is facing outward. So dream yoga think it first. The first step would be to look at our dreams and start to see that what the messages are from those dreams and the personal unconscious. And then eventually the more advanced youngins like in our trainings they go to that mastery level where they're really seeing that everything is a part of them, everything is symbolic. So it's more that instead of giving all the power to the external, we're turning the light inward and seeing like all the. We're not rejecting the external but we're seeing we're a part of it. And that we, it's a dance and that we're also. There's another part of us that's untouched by it. So that's my, my, you know maybe a 9 year old wouldn't understand that. I don't know. But just trying to keep it real.
- [08:24]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
We'll have to try it and see, keep it practical.
- [08:26]
Deborah Maldonado
Let me know in the comments if you find my interpretation. So yeah, that like you we say the powerful part of this is that we, we all believe that we're the ego. That's the biggest problem that we have to solve in the world. And dream yoga gives us a chance to transcend that ego. And it doesn't mean get rid of it, doesn't mean that you don't cultivate an ego and have a healthy ego, but it means that that's not the whole picture, and that's. It's expanding our awareness beyond just the ego consciousness. Not rejecting it, but expands.
- [08:59]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. So in the west, in recent years, there's been an understanding and an appreciation of lucid dreaming. So lucid dreaming, we can think of it as being subsumed under the dream yoga term. Right. In other words, dream yoga includes the understanding of lucidity within dreams, which means this is a paradoxical state because it is a combination of both our ego waking state of mind and the dream state. So in other words, it's. It's beginning to merge there. And, and people. Many people have experienced, according to research, they've done kind of population research, and they. They find that, oh, yeah, I had that as a kid and. Or, you know, I. I had that experience, but I don't know how to reproduce it. Or some people even say, yeah, I have lucid dreams all the time.
- [09:54]
Deborah Maldonado
Would that be like a dream of, like. I know a lot of people tell me, oh, I had to dream of flying a lot when I was a kid. Would that be a lucid dream? You're kind of awake and you're. You're like, having those flying dreams?
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Dr. Rob Maldonado
It could be, yes, could be. It could be any kind of dream. It might be just a simple dream of being at work, like, you know, do every day, but you wake up within the dream. It's almost like you become aware that you're in a dream landscape. So that that experience is very disconcerting because we're not used to it. And we often wake up when we hit lucidity. And so it, you know, we're not able to. To stay in that lucid state, which is an amazing state of mind, because then you can. You can work with the dream content. In other words, whatever you think in the dre, it becomes reality. So a lot of people use it, indeed, as an escape or as a. An amusement park within the mind where they can experience all kinds of things that they usually don't, like flying or creating sensual experiences that.
- [11:02]
Deborah Maldonado
Or ma. Manifesting things in the. And I've had, you know, I've had lots of lucid dreams. I have dreams of beauty, like flying through space and going to another planet and, like, in midair and being awake. And then I've had dreams. I think when I first met you, I had a dream. I left our bedroom and I went down the stairs. And I remember being very conscious that I couldn't touch the material. Like, it was just made of air. And I was like, ooh, this is curious. And I was just kind of exploring. And then the next stage that I had a lucid dream where it was all black, and I was in this, like, almost like theater. Like, almost like I felt like the theater of the mind, and everything was black. And I said, I want to. I want to. I said, oh, my God, I'm awake and I'm in this place. I want to create a tree. And so the tree appeared, and I was so excited that I was awake and created the dream that I started, like, kind of like getting excited and going, oh, my God, I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming. And then I woke up. I'm like, oh, I couldn't hang on to it. So it's like a cultivation of that skill. And I want to ask you this. This is what I would think the benefit of lucid dreaming is, is that we want to eventually be in the waking life, bringing in dreamlike experience. So we're like, in the dream, we're waking up in the dream. And it's almost like when we're awake, we want to bring the dream, like, experience into our waking life. So we're. We want to merge those two because that's really like a kind of a higher level of consciousness that we're interacting with a material world that's not as solid as we think. So is that what the goal is
- [12:34]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
really in dream yoga? Yes, the goal is to understand the inner. The inner experience of our consciousness. Right. Not just the content. In other words, the content. In the west and Western psychology in general, we're very focused on the dream content. In other words, we want to interpret what do these symbols that appear in the dream mean. And so that's one of the. The uses of lucid dreaming in dream yoga that we can. For example, if I want to work with the mother archetype or the father archetype or any archetypes, I can call up those images as correspond to the archetypes in the dreaming state and actually interact with them and ask them questions very much like we do in our active imagination practices.
- [13:24]
Deborah Maldonado
I was thinking that sound. So let me ask this then. If someone practices active imagination, like we teach in our programs, this really deep practice of interacting with archetypes and understanding our shadow selves, and someone who's actively doing that, they could probably be priming themselves for a lucid experience because you're training your mind to think in that spontaneity and interacting with this kind of false or mythological world or this kind of imaginary world and stimulating the imagination. I would think that imagination and cultivating that would be a key to lucid dreaming, to be able to cultivate that. Is that something neurologically from the neuroscience perspective, that when we are more imaginative, does something change in our brains? Is this a way we can help our brains be more attuned to this type of dreaming?
- [14:16]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, absolutely. Because if we think about our waking state, what is active is our rationality. Right. And that understanding of space time. Very logical. The past is in the past. The present is right now and something's going to happen, which is the future. So it's linear. Linear understanding of space time. The unconscious doesn't care about that. It doesn't. It. It doesn't read space time is that way. It reads it as everything is happening right now and anything is possible.
- [14:49]
Deborah Maldonado
Oh, I love that.
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Dr. Rob Maldonado
So the merging of these two states is what feels so special to us when we become Luc In. In dreaming is that now both elements coexist. I am thinking in rational terms, but I am in a landscape, a dream landscape that does not follow those rules. Anything is possible. Therefore my thoughts can immediately materialize and I can direct this dreaming state in unique creative ways.
- [15:22]
Deborah Maldonado
There's. There's a movie back in probably the 90s called what Dreams May Come With Now. I can't think of his name. I know who he is, Robin Williams. And I found that so fascinating when I watched that movie of. Because I was like starting to explore my own spiritual understanding of consciousness. And I thought, well, that's kind of how it should be. You're in this space where you think of something and it creates itself. And, and. And it was such a cool way, exploration of. Of even the darkness and how you can get caught up in the darkness and then also the light and the happ you carry with you and the perspective that you create around you. And, you know, he. His wife had committed suicide and she had. He had to go and find her in this dark place. And really, you know, so it's not just all the happy, dappy like we're. Our state of mind is very important to explore this. So we could be in a lucid dream and it could be very scary, couldn't it? In a way, if we're. If our mind is like in a fearful state and we have these. We talked about nightmares in our last episode. So just wondering how that works. In that way, yeah, it can be.
- [16:28]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
But the, the more practice and perhaps, maybe, maybe even with guides, maybe, you know, like a Jungian coach that kind
- [16:38]
Deborah Maldonado
of working with your shadow, right, you're dreaming, you're kind of doing your shadow work and, and kind of on that
- [16:43]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
journey you can use the, this blending, this state of mind, of being conscious, of your unconscious mind. Like Jung says, making the unconscious conscious is one of the aims of individuation to further that state. In other words, to understand the contents of your shadow or your unconscious mind, your personal unconscious in a better way, in a more practical way. Because we dream every night. Imagine having the ability to interact with your dreams in a conscious way where you're asking questions and you're able to receive those messages directly from the unconscious.
- [17:24]
Narrator
You've spent years building success and achieving what others would only imagine. But yet something deeper is calling. A desire for work that's meaningful, transformative and rooted in who you really are. At CreativeMind, we train professionals to guide others through real psychological transformation using Jungian principles, Eastern spirituality and social neuroscience. No cliches, no surface level tools, just depth, structure and purpose. Our ICF accredited Jungian life coach training program provides a profound professional training in small cohorts that includes personal transformation with a dedicated coach and powerful tools to help you guide, guide others in a deep, lasting transformation. Step into that next chapter of your personal and professional evolution. Join us by visiting creativemindlife.com and speak to an admission specialist today. That's creativemindlife.com.
- [18:38]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Now of course, in dream yoga, what the monks or the people that practice dream yoga are doing is working on at a much higher level now they're integrating higher knowledge in this lucid state of mind, they're able to generate dream states that are spiritual.
- [18:55]
Deborah Maldonado
So instead of like being in a playground and maybe having a sexual experience and you know, I've read books or people, they're like, oh, and we went and we had sex with each other in a mutual dream. Like, oh, that's great. But what is that really helping me? Like you said, it's not a playground for wish fulfillment. You know, it can be, but, but there's a, like you can meet guides in the dreams that lucid dreaming state and like not guides but like wise archetypes and the deeper, the deeper collective unconscious in those states as well. Is that what you're saying?
- [19:29]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, it involves some of that. Because think about it, if anything is possible, the people that have passed are, can be present and you can have conversations with them. Also some practices Involve like generating a state of mind, of pure light within the lucid state or dream yoga.
- [19:50]
Deborah Maldonado
I just know after lucid dreaming, even if it was like a brief moment, there's some. The next day I felt this high that I'd never felt, didn't feel before. And I wonder if in deep sleep and then you're awake and within that deep sleep there's like you kind of bring some of that numinous energy with you in the waking life. I don't know, like it absorbs more into your physical body. But I, I don't know what that is, but it felt like the most high I've ever felt. This the next day, just this openness and space and joy, like I was floating on a cloud.
- [20:22]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
That's another aspect of dream yoga is that you get to experience states of mind and states of mind, body, of course, because you're activating the whole system that are, we could say, transcendental, aesthetic, pure bliss. All these states of mind that we don't experience in our waking life because we're, we're focused on the rationality of space, time, when in our waking state, in the dream state, like I said, those, those do not apply. And therefore we have a lot more access to mental states.
- [20:58]
Deborah Maldonado
Well, in deep sleep we are entering the bliss state, but we don't remember it. And so that's what I was thinking, that when you have a lo. Lucid dream, you're kind of bringing, you're kind of more aware of that bliss state that the depth deep sleep can go to, which is like extraordinarily powerful. It's not an ordinary. Just meditating and going to a beautiful place. Yeah.
- [21:19]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
And those states of mind most likely have therapeutic healing effects on our mind, body. Therefore, a lot of the shamanistic traditions, for example, talk about using the dream state as, As a healing practice. And you can see why, because these states of mind then allow the, both the shaman and their clients or their patients to tap into these resources in the.
- [21:48]
Deborah Maldonado
And so what would be like, the possibility for like the conscious personality to use lucid dreaming? Like what, what would be possible for someone, let's say you're kind of working on breaking free of a pattern of like, say, relationships and you wanted to find the love of your life. Which is one of our first clients that we've worked with. And, and they're, they're developing themselves spiritually. They want a spiritual partner. How can dream yoga help them, you know, kind of integrate this into their conscious personality? For them to have a, you know, physical Experience of true love in their life.
- [22:23]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Well, one of the, One of the points that we make in helping people realize their potential, whether it be in relationships or abundance, is that the answer's within them. And so facing those elements that are in the unconscious, like shadow work, is one of the prerequisites for being able to. To manifest the whole potential, the total potential in your being so lucid. Dreaming. Dream yoga can help an individual kind of encounter those things in a more realistic way that. That the dream will help them because it'll present the images that they need to come to terms with in a very friendly way. Our dreams are very supportive. They're usually trying to help us become ourselves, realize our true potential. And therefore we're simply going to the next level. That instead of just waiting for us to remember a dream clearly and to work with it and symbolically that it can show up to for us, almost like being present because we're. We're awake in the dream and we're able to call in these figures which will help us integrate those aspects of ourselves.
- [23:42]
Deborah Maldonado
I've noticed when I was single, I had a lot of dreams when a relationship was about to end. You know, not as serious, but like, you know, you're dating. And I would have a dream that that person was saying goodbye. And it was almost like the dream world was saying, this is over, this is done. And then it would end in real life. And I was almost like preparing me for the next stage. And so I find that sometimes they're. They're intuitive. I mean, definitely intuitive, but almost like I said this before, in our other episodes, it feels like you have a ally inside of you that's like walking with you through life. And it's this wisdom that we have access to through dreams. So when we think about dream yoga, how can someone prepare spiritually for this journey of like, really understanding the. The dream work in less than a. Oh, I just want to find out what my issues are and my shadow. I want to really have a spiritual evolution with dreams. What would be some things that people can do waking to be aware of, like in their waking life? What kind of practices really help?
- [24:43]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, so because reality, we can say is. Is a symbolic experience very similar to dreams. And this is, this is actually the neuroscientific perspective of many neuroscientists. Now. It used to be right that we thought of dreams as they're just this electrical activity that's going on during the night and they're. The brain is simply making. Trying to make sense of these Chaotic firings? No. We're starting to understand that our very waking life is dreamlike. It's simply like a controlled hallucination. And. And so if our waking life is symbolic and pretty much is appearing in our mind as an internal dream, then that means that we can. We can start to understand our life very much the way we understand our dreams, that they. That everything contains a message for us, but we need to interpret it that way instead of just thinking of our. Our. The things that we experience in our waking life as separate from us. The. In Eastern philosophy, they say most people experience their external life as is. As if it has an independent existence in our mind that's a total illusion. The external that you are perceiving is not independent of your mind. On the contrary, it is very dependent on your perception. In other words, it appears to you, particularly designed and packaged for your consumption so that it appears to you to make sense to have meaning, to have order.
- [26:23]
Deborah Maldonado
And it's like our own individual world, because no two people look at the world the same. And so we. We always joke with our clients that when something happens in life, what does that say about your mind? What is. What does this say about my mind when you have something happen? I had some kind of a dispute on my credit card, and I said, what does this say about my mind? Like, why did this weird thing happen, this charge happen? And I wasn't super triggered, but I was kind of annoyed. And I was like, hmm, I wonder what. What message this is. Life stops becoming so serious and so a battle between the other and you. And you say, like, why is it. Just get curious, really, about. Be curious and nonjudgmental, as Walt Whitman said, we. We get curious about life and the conflicts that show up and the obst. That show up and even, you know, in disagreements with people. And we start to think, there's something here. For me, there's some message or some. This is symbolic in a way also just events that happen. How can we see it in like a. Almost like a metaphor for something that's going on internally? Really, really powerful.
- [27:24]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah.
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Deborah Maldonado
A lot of people talk about the body. You know, my throat. I have a sore throat. I haven't been speaking up for myself lately. Or some other kind of, you know, problems in the body, the knees, humility. You know, there are different areas I know Louise Hay talked about, but kind of seeing everything connected. And when we start to see that, we start to claim, reclaim our power versus everything's externalized.
- [27:47]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
That's perfect, right? Because then we start to See, okay, what, what effects does this have of seeing, as Jung calls it, entering the symbolic life? What is the benefit of that? One of the great benefits is that you start to accept responsibility for your life because you're. If you. If the external appearance of our personal lives is really a reflection of our psyche, well, that means that it's me that I'm seeing in these external events. If we see them as external to me, then I'm not really accepting responsibility. I'm saying things are happening to me and I have nothing to do with it. Not through you, but we're absolving ourselves of any responsibility. And that's a very disempowering state of mind.
- [28:34]
Deborah Maldonado
In other words, it's sort of like a primal, primordial way of being, like a primitive way of seeing the world is this very things that outside of you and outside of your control. And it can feel that way with our lives when we see the world and things that are happening and we feel like the world's out of control. And how can we use this? How can I grow? How can I look withinward? Where's the storm within myself? Where's the battle within myself? So, yeah, I mean, I really loved this dream series. We did it to introduce our new dream app, Youngin Dream Oracle, that's available on both Google and Apple Mobile. It's. And tablets. If you have a tablet, you type in your dream. It gives you a beautiful Jungian interpretation, Jungian coaching, very positive, non, non diagnostic. It's. It's really about empowerment and, and then if you upgrade to the, the premium, you can actually interact with the AI and put. Give it more data and say, this is what I'm challenged with and it will come back to you and give you some framework around it to help you. We always suggest you get a coach, but if you're just intrigued by Jung's philosophy and you want to test it out and see if it's right for you, it's a great starting point. And it's absolutely free. The premium is of only $59 a year, but you can just do the free one as long as you like. And there's some meditations in there that are really cool. And our podcast is in there too, so you can do it all together. And what I love about it too, Rob, is that people can put their things that happen in their life as if it was a dream. We had one of our students do that. He had a very tough experience happen in his life and one of the other students said, why don't you put it in the dream app and he did and it had all this symbolic meaning. So if you are interested in exploring dream yoga, that would be a really great place to start.
- [30:22]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Absolutely. So stay tuned.
- [30:25]
Deborah Maldonado
Yes. So thank you again for joining us. We are going to introduce our next series next week and we have some guests showing up on our podcast that we are going to interview. So we're excited for that and have a great rest of your day and hope you enjoy today's dream yoga class. And as always, if you need us, ask questions, post them below and we'd love to answer them.
- [30:48]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
See you soon.
- [30:49]
Deborah Maldonado
Take care. Bye Bye.
- [30:52]
Narrator
Thank you for joining us for Jung On Purpose with Deborah Maldonado and Dr. Rob Maldonado of Creative Mind. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast before you leave and join us each week.
- [31:04]
Deborah Maldonado
We'll see you soon. Sat.