|
|
|||||||
 |
|
||||||
 |
|||||||
|
Workshops & Training
Regional
Dream Schools
ONLINE COMMUNITY
The
Workshop Experience
|
Tools & Techniques > Spend More Time in the Twilight Zone
The
easiest way to become a conscious dreamer is to spend more time in the twilight zone
between waking and sleep, or between sleep and waking. If you can develop the ability to
enter and remain in a state of relaxed, free-flowing awareness, images will come. You can
simply observe them as they rise and fall, or engage with one of these images or scenes
and enter into what may be a full-fledged dream journey. Experiences in this twilight zone
are very similar to those of psychics when they “open up” and let impressions
come, and of creative people when they enter a flow state. Indeed, both psychic
discoveries and creative breakthroughs come almost effortlessly in the half-dream state if
you are willing to let them come – and (of course) to catch them and use them.
A
word about words: the hypnagogic area is
literally the state leading “towards sleep”; the hypnopompic state leads “away from
sleep”. Researchers lump the two together and call them hypnagogia.
Andreas
Mavromatis cites impressive evidence that “hypnagogia is significantly conducive to
paranormal events”, including precognition. “Psi states and hypnagogia…are
related in their respective psychophysical induction and phenomenology…Hypnagogia is
indeed conducive in the production of psi states, and, vice versa, the
deliberate/experimental induction of psi states tends to render the latter
hypnagogic.” [Mavromatis, Hypnagogia, p.
131]
Go
to a psychic development class, and they will start by directing you to relax, drop your
awareness of your body and clear your mind. A well-known English psychic trainer
(H.A.Edwards) counselled would-be psychics to “place their minds into a condition of
receptive abandonment.” Reduced sensory distraction, inward focusing of attention
(either by single-pointed awareness, by clearing the mind, or by simply following the rise
and fall of images), emotional detachment, and the loosening of ego boundaries are all
crucial to entering a state of psychic awareness
The
process of drifting towards sleep (or back towards daylight consciousness) allows psychic
impressions and fresh visions to form, just as figures and landscapes subtly emerge from a
cloudy or watery void in Japanese screen paintings.
You’ll
do better by wishing than willing the impressions to come.
When
you let yourself slip into the twilight zone, you may have the impression that someone is
waiting for you or has something to tell you. When I lie down and close my eyes, I
sometimes have the impression of a whole cast of characters waiting for me to arrive.
Visitations
are common in the liminal state on the cusp of sleep.
As
you begin to surface from sleep, you may find you are still strongly connected with the
energy and imagery of sleep dreams. If you can allow yourself some undisturbed time to
stay in bed, you may be able to slip back into the dream space, fully conscious, and
develop the arts of dream reentry and astral travel through your personal dreamgates.
Robert
Monroe observed correctly in his seminal work Journeys
beyond the Body that the practice of holding the borderland state “indefinitely
without falling asleep” results in “consciousness deepening” and provides
the smoothest access to out-of-body experiences.
We
should all spend more time in the twilight zone. You’ll find many specific techniques
for experimenting in the twilight zone – and thrilling first-hand accounts of what is
possible from many active dreamers, as well as my own journals – in my book Dreamgates. |
MORE TOOLS... Lightning Dreamwork for Everyday Dream Sharing Nine Keys to Understanding Your Dreams Spend More Time in the Twilight Zone |
|||||
