Quote:
Originally Posted by
nautilus
"Many Westerners who approach the teachings do so with ideas about dream based in psychological theory; subsequently, when they become more interested in using dream in their spiritual life, they usually focus on the content and meaning of dreams. Rarely is the nature of dreaming itself investigated."
I have to admit I'm personally drawn to both topics, the content/meaning and the process of dreaming as well. Really curious about how the two concepts might overlap, actually. But point taken, I do see the common emphasis on content. Especially when I first got into lucid dreaming, while a certain amount of attention to the nature of dreaming was necessary in order to achieve lucidity, most of my plans for the dream revolved around filling it with different types of content or exploring the landscape. It'll be interesting to go more in depth on how to use lucidity to explore dreaming itself.
I think the answer is here in Part 1 (How experience arises):
Quote:
"Even the teachings must work with dualism - by
encouraging attachment to virtue, for example, and aversion to non-virtue
paradoxically using the dualism of ignorance to overcome ignorance. How
subtle our understanding must become and how easily we can get lost! This is
why practice is necessary, in order to have direct experience rather than just
developing another conceptual system to elaborate and defend. When things are
seen from a higher perspective they tend to level out. From the perspective of
non-dual wisdom there is no important and unimportant."
Finding answers to questions about the nature of dreaming (main inquiry of dream yogis) is descriptive, not ethical. Do you know about Hume's is/ought gap? Well, the nature of dreaming and the nature of experience, these things are descriptive, what is. Dream yogis are the scientists of the conscious experience. They scrutinize the illusion until it fades out. They find what is, what you can observe. In other words, dream yogi find what is most persistent about conscious experience: all consciousness content is transient and without essence.
That said, it doesn't answer questions about what has value, what is virtuous. Indeed, nothing is made important or unimportant from knowledge of nondualism. That's why, if we want to value anything, if we want to be virtuous, we have to form our own values and virtues and use our knowledge of nondualism to help us.
An analogy is that knowing medicine (descriptive), you can use it to poison someone or to heal someone. If you value the health and well-being of others (ethical), you will use your knowledge of medicine to heal people.
I think the westerner approach to meaning and content indulges dualism and explores what is important to us. By observing our dream content, as the author says, we can observe our "karmic traces" and use antidotes and self-liberation to nurture more positive karmic traces (those we value and and find virtuous, which we want to nurture).
I think that is the overlap you were looking for? Well, not an overlap, but a gap between is/ought; they are simply complementary.