Question

Do you see any benefit in looking at dreams and then trying to reflect appropriately as to what the theme was? For example I had a dream about a situation which went out of my control so I reflected on situations which I can't control and don't like, and asked myself "Can I control this?" If you do think there could be some benefit, what type of reflection would you recommend for anxiety dreams, that is, having to catch a plane and not being able to get there on time?

Answer

Concerning dreaming, generally, the importance that we give to dreams is only if it shows some positive growth in our practice. To give an example is when a nightmare changes, what should have been a nightmare, but you are able to change your reaction in it and dispel the nightmare. I've had quite a few, one example for me was sitting in a room very similar to this, and seeing out the window that an airplane was shooting rockets coming straight towards the building. We were very soon going to be blown apart. I sat down and started meditating. Getting ready to die, I was able to change the reaction that for other people would have been that they wake up screaming. We feel those sorts of dreams are showing that the practice is going down deeper. It's becoming more of our personality that we are able to bring up something like that in a dream.

As to reflection, if you have a dream in which something was totally out of control, you wake up and so on, you can use it for reflection in any way that you normally use reflection meditation, just put it into one of the types of reflection practice, and the dream is just another type of imagined experience, so for that matter, any experience can be used for reflection.

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.