Tao Dream Practice: Managing Your Dark Side

Inside Chi Flows Naturally:

1. Essay on Dreaming and Tao and its relation to our dark side.

2. TAO DREAM PRACTICE workshop – only a few spaces left, Fri. 7 pm June 3 to
Sun 1 pm June 5. Location is on remote mountain top near Asheville, email
for directions. Please email immediately to register, or notify me if a
deposit is already in transit.

3. DIGITAL Audio CD’s now available for all Qigong/Chi Kung Fundamentals
1-4, Fusion 1-3, and shortly Dream Practice. They are one hour longer than
the cassette tape versions and cost $10. extra. Upgrades are half price.
Website is not yet updated for most of these, so call 888-999-0555 or email
info@healingdao.com to order.

4. HEALING LOVE for Women, taught by Joyce Gayheart at our home in
Asheville. Limited to ten.
Still some space left for June 18-19. Contact: Joyce@healingdao.com. She is
a wonderful teacher, don’t miss this opportunity!

5. Make your travel plans for your favorite “spiritual vacation” amongst 30
summer retreats at Healing Tao University in New York lovely Catskills. Plus
Mantak Chia workshops in San Francisco. Full details on
http://www.HealingTaoRetreats.com or call 888-999-0555.

Dear Dreamers of the Natural Way,

“Once upon a time, Chuang Tzu dreamed that he was a butterfly, a butterfly
fluttering about, enjoying itself. It did not know that it was Chuang Tzu.
Suddenly he awoke with a start and he was Chuang Tzu again. But he did not
know whether he was Chuang Tzu who had dreamed that he was a butterfly, or whether he was a butterfly dreaming that he was Chuang Tzu. Between Chuang Tzu and the butterfly there must be some distinction. This is what is called the transformation of things”.
– Readings from World Scriptures – trans. by Andrew Wilson

The question of whether our life is being dreamed for us by some Cosmic
Dreamer or we are dreaming our body and our life has long been discussed in
spiritual circles. For most people, the dream world is considered unreal, a
byproduct or hallucination of some physical brain process. Its essentially
the modern scientific world view – only the physical brain/world is defined
as real. Its really just a statement that because the scientists can
manipulate it, matter is real to them.
But what would happen if you could intervene in the dream world, and
express your will in the nether world? What if you could shape it as
definitively as the multitudes of choices in daily life shape your physical
world experience? This is what spiritual scientists/alchemical meditators
do: they lawfully manipulate the life force to achieve greater harmony and
balance. This is a very different process than dream interpretation, of
which there are many schools and systems that analyze dreams after the dream is over.
Taoist dream practice is about present moment interaction with the
forces that control the dream plane. Since those forces appear to gain
control while we are sleeping, they are traditionally called the forces of
the “night side” or the “dark side”. Does this make the dark side evil?
Well, ask yourself – is sleep evil? It is, after all, the realm labeled
by modern psychology as the “subconscious” in which many evil things might
appear to happen – you might find yourself killing or being killed. But if
you love to sleep, and consider yourself a good (at least non-evil) person,
what does it mean to be daily refreshed by the dark side?
Is the violence and sexuality that many experience in dreams a form of
“necessary evil”, needed to balance out what is repressed by daylight? Have
we made some kind of unconscious pact with the Devil – s/he will recharge
our body batteries to let us live on earth another day, but only if we
surrender our consciousness to Him/Her for eight hours?
Most people never consider these questions deeply, because they are
afraid of things that go bump in the dark. They don’t want to know the
answer, they only want to wake up refreshed, and pretend that the waking
self is the only real self. The truth underlying this denial of the dark
side is that the need to sleep – to go unconscious – is the single most
powerful thought form on planet earth! Stronger than sex, hunger, religion,
political power, etc.
This may be why Taoist dream practice is considered to be the most
advanced form of meditation – its very easy to fall asleep during the
process, to succumb to the thought form that “I must go unconscious now”.
Meditators of all traditions commonly think of their practice as a way of
merging with their spiritual self or the Divine Spirit. But think about it –
does Spirit go to sleep?
If you think Divine Spirit, the “All-that-Is” or total all-embracing
consciousness of Nature also needs to sleeps eight hours a night, and that
like humans, it is subject to cycles of night and day, then you need not
bother studying Taoist dream practice. Likewise, if you believe that there
is a Light Side that will someday vanquish the Dark Side, that whatever
refreshes us during sleep needs to be killed, then you should not explore
Tao Dream Practice.
Only if you are willing to explore and embrace the dark side as an
equally important aspect of the whole should you attempt to manage your
dream state. Tao Dream Practice is a method for managing sleep and the dark
side as if it were an equally ordinary part of life as the day/Light side.
Because it effectively doubles the amount of time available to cultivate
yourself, it is considered a shortcut. But the extra time available is the
least important aspect.
The truth is, everyone has dreams about what they want in their life, and
its ordinary to hope that they can manifest these dreams. This Day
dreaming-manifesting process is no different in principle than the night
dreaming-manifesting process. But there is a difference in effectiveness –
at night, there is no resistance from the dark side, because you have become
the dark side.
So you can manifest what you truly need for spiritual development without
struggle. That’s the shortcut: no resistance. That is why we love to sleep –
its the only time we are living without resistance. So sleep is an
unconscious form of “wu wei” –
living without coercive action, without trying to push the river. So during
sleep, we can get profound answers to what we need from life. The “genies”
of the night side can become our “genius” by day. Many of mankind’s
greatest breakthroughs have thus been dreamed at night by artists,
inventors, scientists or others struggling with seemingly unsolvable
problems.
I used to run a “Night School” in the dream plane, where all my friends
would come and I would teach them to fly. It was just a gift I had. Flying
dreams are one of the most tangible signs of achieving conscious state of
non-resistance. In the astral plane its easy to defy gravity, but its still
quite a thrill if your mind is awake, simultaneously aware of the force of
gravity pulling on your physical body laying on the bed fast asleep.
Anyway, I finally closed that Night School, and decided it was time to
open a Day School for living without resistance. That is really what all my
ten qigong (chi kung) and inner alchemy Tao Home Study courses are about. So eventually conscious movement, breath, and inner mind meditation cultivates an energy body that is equally comfortable functioning in the Day or Night modes.
What happens when you manage dream states is ultimately no different
than managing what we call physical states and their underlying energetic
structure. They are both part of the same chi field. But if you can’t come
to my Day School – live or on audio – you can still contact me – or anyone
else who is willing to assist you – at night. But it helps to know the
method.

Dreaming the Inner Smile with you,

Michael Winn

“Who takes Heaven as his ancestor, Virtue as his home,
the Tao as his door, and who becomes change – is a Sage.”

– Chuang Tzu, Inner Chapters

“The Tao is very close, but everyone looks far away.
Life is very simple, but everyone seeks difficulty.”

— Taoist Sage, 200 B.C