Hi everyone,

it can be a long story so I will make an introduction of myself brief:
- recently I took the 3 refuges and officially became a Buddhist
-My special interest is in Dream Yoga because I think I could use it as expedient means to Enlightenment as I am able to have lucid dreams quite often, and these experiences happened naturally. I believe there is a positive correspondence to the frequency of my lucid dreams and how much time I spend on meditation.

I would like to very briefly share some details of this dream I had recently. There's more, but it would be very tedious for me to write it out in a greater level of detail.

Here goes:

Basically, I somehow became aware that I was dreaming in the dreaming state and decided to look for Guan Yin. While trying to look for her, if I remember correctly, as I was passing through the walls of a house, on the way out, I appeared in a dark place.

This dark place is a paradox. It is a place of darkness without dimension, yet it has some form of structure. I was being tossed about as if by winds. Normally I could control my flight in dreams, but this time I couldn't. At one time I thought I would crash onto the 'ground', but I didn't, and was tossed up in the air again just before I hit the 'ground'.

This dark place is a paradox. The darkness is infinite, and yet, it is like a wall of darkness. Or to put it another way, it is like a wall of darkness, and yet it is as if one can see the darkness extends to infinity.

When I described my dream to my friend Wayne later, he said that what I had described sounds very much like the Bardo state in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. For those unfamiliar with this, the Bardo state can be thought of as a place one goes to before one is reborn into the next life (whether it is a heavenly realm, titan realm, animal realm, hell, or reborn as a human being again and so on; one could also gain Enlightenment in the Bardo state if one knows how). The winds that were tossing me about, according to my friend, are my Karmic Winds.

In any case, this dark place is a paradox, for even in the darkness I could see rays of golden light, shaped vaguely like a house.

I tried to escape from this place but could not. It is difficult to explain the difficulty of me 'physically' trying to get out of that pocket dimension of darkness. It is easier to explain this verbally with illustration (drawings).

I was also reciting my Guan Yin mantra ("Namo Guan Yin Pusa") again and again. But it appeared not to work. Then I felt my LP Thuad amulet (the one I wear often which I had got from Johnson in the waking world) to get reassurance. Yes, this is a dream, but I was lucid and thought that my amulet would be in my dream too. I was right. I could feel my amulet in my dream. It felt no different from my sense of touch in the waking world.

Then I recited my LP Thuad mantra. After the 3rd time of recitation, the darkness dissolved into a portal and I finally escaped.

I escaped into a housing estate of terrace houses (I was flying with full sense of control, powerfully). It was night time and the night sky was pitch black. I then decided to resume my search for Guan Yin. There's more but I will stop here. This is one of my longest lucid dream to date (perhaps the longest) in terms of dream time. (For those unfamiliar, based on my experiences, I infer that dream time need not be the same as time in the waking world. It can be slower or faster)

Very brief summary of interpretation:
After I had woken up from my dream, I asked myself: why did my Guan Yin mantra not work? How is it my LP Thuad mantra worked but not my Guan Yin mantra? Was it because I wasn't sincere, or my spiritual level not high enough, or I wasn't pure/holy enough, or I had somehow displeased Guan Yin?

I have a theory to explain what happened. Actually, it is not that the mantra didn't work. It is that I had failed to recognized a manifestation of Guan Yin. The entire pocket dimension of darkness was a manifestation (or vision sent by Guan Yin, if it is not her manifestation) of Guan Yin herself!

I had failed to see through the illusion. So I had in fact succeeded in finding Guan Yin, but failed to recognize her.

My desire in the lucid dream was to find Guan Yin. The mantra was meant to help me get out of the dimension, and also, I would think, to help me find Guan Yin. As Guan Yin was actually there, though not in a form I could recognize, it is incorrect to say that my Guan Yin mantra didn't work!

The dark pocket dimension vaguely resembled the concrete area in front of my grandparents' house in Bedok. I had spent a significant part of my growing up years there. The golden ray of light outlining a house is a symbol of my Original Mind/Buddha Nature (the Buddha Nature, symbolically is the Source of my Being, and hence Original Home. Original Home=Original Mind).

The paradox of this dark pocket dimension exist because paradox is closer to explaining concepts of Ultimate Truth such as the Original Mind, Emptiness and so on, than any logical worldly explanation.

The entire experience was Guan Yin's message to me. I will benefit much if I could fully understand what she's trying to tell me.

Any comments would be appreciated. Please feel free to comment or offer your view.

I hope this posting would help someone in his or her own path.

Karuna (Compassion),
Stanley Ong
(PS: Have a Merry Christmas or whatever religious or non-religious holiday you wish to call it, and a Happy New Year&#33