Embracing Shadows In Lucid Dreams

TEDx SanDiego
x=independently organized TED event

snapdragon by Qualcomm

[TEDtalk speaker: Charlie Morley]
[Dec 2011 San Diego, California]

I was on a Buddhist retreat, once, and somebody at breakfast asked the teacher how he slept, to which he replied, "Very well! I had some wonderful nightmares!" At the time, I thought he was crazy-- but years later, when I became a teacher of lucid dreaming, I discovered what he meant. Because to face both our personal, and collective cultural nightmares, with lucid awareness, can be an amazing route towards self-discovery, insight, and healing.

A lucid dream is a dream in which you know you're dreaming, as you're dreaming. Scientifically speaking, it is a "hybrid state of consciousness" and although it's only been a scientifically verified phenomenon for the past thirty years, within Tibetan Buddhism, it's been a verified mind-training method for over a thousand.

Once you know you're dreaming, there's a whole range of psycho-therapeutic benefits you can choose to carry out, but one of the most powerful (and one of my favorites) is that within the lucid dream, you can intentionally engage the source of your nightmares.

I taught myself how to lucid dream at sixteen years old. And, although my lucid dreams had occasionally presented me with nightmarish aspects, it wasn't until much later that I discovered the true potential of how lucid dreaming can transform these nightmares into spiritual, and psychological, growth.

A few years ago, I was instructed to start teaching lucid dreaming, by a meditation master called Lama Yeshe Rinpoche. Although Buddhism and lucid dreaming had been a big part of my life for many years, they were definitely never a career option. And, in fact, at the time, I was actually making my living as a hip-hop rapper working with disadvantaged kids. So, as you can imagine, going from that, to the world of lucid dreaming came as quite a surprise. And in response to that surprise, I found I became quite serious and kind of Puritannical with my own lucid dreaming practice.

I tried to banish any and all dark or nightmarish aspects fro my lucid dreams, in the mistaken belief that a proper lucid dreaming teacher must have full control over his lucid dreams.

Yeah, right.

Of course. Any attempt to sanitize, or to control your dreams, only represses the material. And so, the more I tried, the more these nightmarish elements would re-appear. So, in the end, I went to see one of my Buddhist teachers about this: a brilliant man by the name of Rob Nairn, incidentally the same guy who thinks a good night's sleep is one full of "wonderful nightmares".

So, I sat him down and I told him all about this. He waited until I was done, and then, he gave me a look that only really your mum or your meditation teacher would ever give you. It's the kind of look that says, [sighs] "Charlie, I love you, but you're an idiot."

I was like, "What's that?" He says, "I advise you to do precisely the opposite of what you have been doing. These nightmarish elements that you refer to, may well be Shadow aspects. You must embrace the Shadow. You must integrate the Shadow."

"Right!" I thought. "But, what is the Shadow? And how do we integrate it?"

The Shadow is a concept pioneered by Carl Jung, used to describe the parts of the unconscious mind, made up of all the undesirable aspects of our psyches, which we have projected, denied, or disowned. The Shadow is our dark side. But the side of ourselves, which Jung himself commented that, in spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness, or perhaps because of this, the Shadow is the seat of all human creativity.

So, the Shadow is not bad. The Shadow is a potential wellspring of creative energy. But, because it's the parts of ourselves which is incompatible with who we think we are... most of us go through life denying its existence. And so, we go through life denying and rejecting a large part of ourselves. But, Jung believed that until we recognize and acknowledge the Shadow as part of us? We will never be healthy.

So, a few weeks after this meeting with Rob Nair, and I'm having a lucid dream. And the Shadow turns up again, and this time it means business. The Shadow had manifested as a full-on three headed demon, radiating pure darkness. There I am, face-to-face with this thing. Now, before we move on, it's worth nothing that a fully lucid dream is often not very dreamlike at all. A fully lucid dream can be so hyper-realistic, that many people believe they've entered another dimension of reality. In fact, they have, but that dimension is not "out there" somewhere. [Morley points to his own head] It's in here.

So, there I am, face-to-face with this demon, fully lucid, so I know I'm in my own head and I know there's no real threat, but it's still pretty scary. So, instinctively, I get ready to fight. And then it hits me: "Hang on! This must be an aspect of my Shadow! This must be what Rob was talking about! Right! Um, uh, I've got to integrate this thing! I've got to embrace this thing!"

"How do I do that, exactly?" [pauses, decisively] "I will give it a hug!"

So, I run up to this thing in the lucid dream, and I bear hug it. This dream was so realistic, I could feel it struggling against my embrace, I could feel its breath breathing down my neck. You know, the Shadow is the sum total of all your repressed capacity for violence and aggression, so, as you can imagine, it's not much of a hugger.

[audience laughter]

But, there I am, and I'm hugging this thing that does not want to be hugged and it's struggling to get away and I'm clinging on for dear life and then-- it does something really unexpected: It starts to shrink. Within my embrace, this big, three-headed Shadow monster starts to shrink. And I keep holding on, and it keeps shrinking, and then-- it stops. And there's a moment of stillness.

I release my embrace... and I realize I'm hugging myself. This three-headed demon has transformed into me, a direct carbon copy of me. And there I am, face to face with myself, maybe for the first time in my life.

We shared a smile.

And I woke up, in floods of tears.

Not only am I in tears, but I've got this weird feeling in my belly, like as if a knot has been untied. Some deep, emotional knot that had been there for so long I'd forgotten it was there at all. I don't know what part of my psyche that Shadow aspect represented. Maybe some denied childhood trauma, maybe some disowned emotional complex-- who knows? But what I do know, is that when I was embracing that demon, I was embracing some deeper part of myself, and I was engaging the innate healing potential which resides within us all. In a lucid dream, you have the opportunity to engage psychological concepts immediately, in a seemingly physicalized form. This is a unique opportunity to directly apply healing intent to mental embodiments and personificiations of your own psychology. This is deep healing territory! This is what thousands of people are paying thousands of therapists thousands of dollars to do!

Now, I'm not saying you should all go and sack your therapists. But, what I am saying is: If you can learn to lucid dream, not all of the time, but just some of the time, you can make their jobs a heck of a lot easier. If you can learn to dream lucidly-- and it is a learnable skill-- you can begin to integrate your Shadow and finally reclaim, as Jung said, the seat of all human creativity.

So, learn how to lucid dream. Give it a shot. It takes sustained practice, but anyone can do it. Go to a workshop, buy a book, get downloads from the net, just do it.

Although there are thousands of techniques out there, a prerequisite for most of them is dream recall. So, if you guys really want to get into this stuff tonight, you need to start remembering and recording your dreams in a dream diary. That's enough to start you off with, at least.

You know, we sleep for a third of our lives. Lucid dreaming allows us to make some use of that time, and give us the tools we need to heal ourselves, to get to know ourselves, and to enter into a friendship, not just with our Shadows but with every aspect of our psyches. All while we're sound asleep. That is some pretty effective time management! There's no club to join, there's no equipment to be bought. All you need are your dreams.

Now, before I go, I want to leave you with my big idea. I believe that the concept of waking up to the illusion of the dream and becoming lucid, goes way beyond our personal dreams.

As a global society, there are cultural collective Shadow aspects that we refuse to integrate. Elements of our humanity, which are too dark and too nightmarish to face-- but until we face them, until we get lucid collectively, we will never be whole. Lucid dreaming can lead to lucid living.

Now is the time to wake up, together.

Now is the time to get lucid in this dream of life that we've been sleepwalking through.

Now is the time to embrace the Shadow of the world, because it is in our grasp, but we've got to be awake to grasp it.

Value your dreams, and especially value your nightmares. You are sleeping on a gold mine of potential wisdom and insight. So, be lucid while you dream, and those insights can be yours.

Sweet dreams. Or should I say, sweet nightmares.

Thank you.

[audience applause]