Andrew Holecek (Part 3) - The Remarkable Practice of Dream Yoga: How Lucid Dreaming Makes Sleep Endlessly Fascinating and Leads to Lucid Living (and Lucid Dying)

Deep Transformation

Ep. 39 (Part 3 of 3) | Lucid dreaming expert, author, “curiouist,” and integralist Andrew Holecek explains how lucid dreaming opens the door to a greatly expanded understanding of our minds, our perception of reality, and human potential altogether. If we consciously explore our night lives practicing dream yoga, we can learn how to discard our habits, purify our karma, and discover beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are co-creators of our experience. What we do in dream yoga is not limited to nighttime action; it weaves back into our daytime lives, and ultimately our experience of dying.

Andrew describes how dreams are a powerful way to discover emptiness and openness, and fall into reality—like falling into love—our primordial contraction cast away. Besides being a life-changing discourse on the incredible potential of dream yoga, Andrew Holecek’s cheerful, well-informed, easy way of talking and teaching about lucid dreaming—relating it also to the wisdom traditions, our sense of identity, and human evolution—makes this a real pleasure to listen to. Recorded on April 13, 2022.

“Lucid dreaming is metacognitive dreaming: the next iteration of human evolution.”

(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)

Topics & Time Stamps - Part 3

• How can one begin? First, realize the potentiality of lucid dreaming and become an oneironaut (01:40)
• The importance of intentionality, and, installing pop-ups in your unconscious mind (04:19)
• Meditation practice is a super technique to help attain lucidity at night (and in the daytime) (07:18)
• How you can purify your karma and habits in your dreams (09:51)
• Transforming the mother of all our habits: reification (12:40)
• Purifying habits by night purifies habits by day (14:44)
• His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s teaching on dream yoga (19:09)
• Dream yoga is a powerful way to discover emptiness, emptiness = openness = love; meditation habituates us to openness, and when falling into reality, the primordial contraction is removed (22:00)
• How the self sense comes undone when we fall asleep, a concordant experience with dying (26:11)
• Andrew leads a short (game changing) dream yoga practice: 3-fold impurity—and, where is the dreamer? (29:55)

Resources & References - Part 3

• Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Tibetan Buddhist meditation master
• Milarepa, “phenomena are all the books one needs”
• Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, 2nd president of India, “Reality overflows our miserable concepts”
• Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell*
• Andrew Holecek, Dreams of Light: The Profound Daytime Practice of Lucid Dreaming*
• Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep*
• Andrew Holecek, The Power and the Pain: Transforming Spiritual Hardship into Joy
• Andrew Holecek, Preparing to Die: Practical Advice and Spiritual Wisdom from the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition*
• Andrew Holecek, The Lucid Dreaming Workbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Mastering Your Dream Life*
• Dream Yoga: The Tibetan Path of Awakening Through Lucid Dreaming (Sounds True audio learning course)
• Night Club: Where Meditators and Lucid Dreamers Meet, Andrew Holecek community

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.

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Andrew Holecek has completed the traditional three-year Buddhist meditation retreat and offers seminars internationally on lucid dreaming, the art of dying, and meditation. He is the author of many books, including The Lucid Dreaming Workbook, Preparing to Die, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep; Dreams of Light: The Profound Daytime Practice of Lucid Dreaming, and The Power and the Pain: Transforming Spiritual Hardship into Joy. Dr. Holecek is a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the author of scientific papers on lucid dreaming. His work has appeared in Parabola, Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, Utne Reader, Buddhadharma Magazine, Light of Consciousness, and many other periodicals. He holds degrees in classical music, biology, and a doctorate in dental surgery.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell