Dear traveler:

The wisdom that you keep searching for lies in a tiny and indivisible point within yourself heart.

Find inner silence and contemplate the eternal dream for your liberation.

 

 

The American Dream

Mucán and his sister attended, on a spring equinox sun, the first of many days of the calmécac. He was 13 and she was 9, they walked under the shade of the pine and ahuehuete trees that lead towards the main observatory building. She would take her first herbalist class, and he would take his own path to the professorship of mathematics. Just when Mucán was giving his sister the cocoa beans and guavas for nutrition and reciting the traditional prayers of his parents and grandparents, Yoltic passed by him.

- Mucan! Good Sun, dear friend. Have you heard that today, as the light of heaven fades, a man of knowledge from the South will give a speech? It is not official of the calmécac, but according to the tlatoani, it is something that we students cannot miss. It will be on the banks of the central square, in the house of the jaguar.

- Yoltic, friend of the heart. It's new news to me. I will be there to receive the knowledge of the man from the South, and incidentally, decorate the entrance to the sanctuary with owl feathers.

 

The Sun had already traveled a quarter of the sky, and Mucán could not stop thinking about the enigmatic man of knowledge from the South. Yoltic's face looked so lit that Mucán's hopes of finding an answer to his questions lit up the ink with which he wrote them. Hardly anyone in the city had seen anyone from the South this close. It was thought that most of the inhabitants of those areas could represent a danger to those of the central valley. If the tlatoani had allowed a man from the South to present his word in the house of the jaguar, it meant that he would certainly radiate light and truth.

 

As soon as the snail shell blew, Mucán took his belongings and ran out to pick up his sister Tlali from the calmécac garden. While they went home to receive food from their mother, Mucán told Tlali about the legends that spoke of the men of the South. Her sister, innocently fascinated, exclaimed how eager she was to meet the mysterious man. Back at home, Mucán talked to his mother about the urgency of finishing the corn broth to attend the speech that would be given in the house of the jaguar. His mother asserted that they should both listen with skeptical ears, attentive to what their hearts had to say about what the mysterious man would reveal.

- But mom, it was the tlatoani who said that it is worth the time to listen to the man. Why should we question their knowledge?

- You have heard the rumor from Yoltic, not from the tlatoani. Man's conditions and his mystery make him unknown. Go, listen and be silent before the man from the South, and let your heart be the final judge.

 

The first night star was peeking out from the East, when Mucán and Tlali requested access to the jaguar's house, but the man who was at the entrance responded with indifferent firmness:

- Only those sent by the tlatoani are accepted in this mitote.

- But my sister and I attend the calmécac, a friend of my heart told me that I am invited.

 

At that precise moment, Yoltic and his father had witnessed the scene from a few meters behind, so the warrior interceded:

- Let the young Mucán pass, beloved Cuautli. My son has invited him, and you know well that friends of my family are my family. He and his sister are wise ears to receive the words of the nahual.

- Coming from you, beloved Ocelotl, those you have invited are welcome.

 

After thanking them for such a generous gesture, Mucán took his little sister's hand and they walked to take a seat in the small temple. All the attendees brought splendid offerings which they left next to the platform where the man from the South would prostrate himself to share his word. Mucán did not miss the opportunity to leave the owl feathers that he had prepared the night before. Minutes passed, and silence slowly became present, until only the grasshoppers sang to the sound of the wind in the shadows. The guards lit the fires inside the temple, and a man with long white hair, dark clothes, slanted eyes and a short stature entered the room. He was not wearing any feather, nor was he wearing sandals, but he was carrying a small closed fabric sack. It seemed that even the flames of the torches and the echo of the temple ceased in the presence of that man. Without saying a single word, he sat down in the center of the platform, closed his eyes, and joined his palms at chest height, making a subtle bow forward. After a few moments of deep secrecy, the man began, in a slow and deep voice, to pronounce the first words:

 

- Where I come from, there is talk of a legend that resembles a particular one from your town. I speak of the return of Kukulkan, or Quetzalcoatl, to the navel of the Moon. This return will imply big, colossal, extraordinary, catastrophic changes for most of us. The legend speaks of his return to show us what he has found from the other world. Look, the people of the South know that the consciousness of the wise peoples will fall into a deep sleep. When Noh Ek ('great star') shines on the horizon marking the return of our teacher, it will happen that the men and women of the Anahuac lands will fall into amnesia for hundreds of years. There will be many men who will try to deceive them, saying that a messiah will return soon, but they will ignore that the messiah is oneself, and that it is not just one. These fakers will look different than us; they will have different height, skin color and language. Listen to me, they will do everything to make you believe the opposite of what for generations we have tried to consolidate as our lineage and legacy.

The dream to which Anahuac will be subjected is the following: the wealth will be the precious stones that we carry, the fabrics that we wear and the materials and jewels that we possess. Our fortune will now be the size of our homes and the rarity of the feathers, furs, and vases that decorate them. As if by magic, the men and women of Anahuac will adore figures that are made of clay, stone, and other unknown materials, thinking that the energy that gives us life comes from them. Everyone will believe that the elements that make up subsistence are in the matter of which the forests and waters are made, but not in their essence. Out of ignorance, we will consume everything, and when we least realize it, we will be on the verge of ending all resources. The towns will stop forging chinampas and will begin to carry stones to build new buildings, where the contribution of said false wealth will be required. Time will pass and the hand that gives us food will dissolve, and a type of currency will sprout for which everyone will fight. Worse yet, many of them don't even know where the fruits and grains that they put into their bodies every day come from.

Isn't this a dark dream for our people? How is it that we will allow our advances and discoveries to be replaced by what does not fill our spirit with joy? Isn't it a nightmare to hurt Mother Earth, forgetting that we are all feed from her breasts?

And the day will come when humanity, on the brink of the collapse of that false system that it has created, based on material power with no capacity to be renewed, will be forced to wake up. It will be the fear of illness, of losing everything they have obsessively accumulated, that will drive the men and women who inhabit this planet to look at each other and recognize that they have failed. They will have advanced in science, but they will have failed in spirit; in recognizing the Earth as a living being. Remember, colleagues from the central valley, that in the nahual there is already the place to protect our knowledge, and that guardians of all directions have already placed their attempts to preserve the Tonal of time there. It will only be a matter of fulfilling the cycles that mark our calendars to return to the world the order and light that it has always deserved. The day will come when, being on the edge of the obsidian arrow, entire families, surrounded by false wealth and hollow spirits, will see that the path to transcendence is to wake up from their dream.

Brothers and sisters, the dream of Anahuac will be to forget that there is no real progress without a spirit nourished by the purity of the waters of the mountain, the air that the trees offer us, the pure fire that warms us and the corn that we uproot from the earth. The dream will be believing that there is not enough of things and forgetting our true wealth. And friends, we will have to wake up from that funereal dream, when we open our hearts and look again at where the most valuable treasure that every living being, with a body of flesh and blood, can have is found. It will be the mission of the men and women of knowledge to remind their brothers and sisters of their wealth…

 

The man turned his torso and took the fabric sack he was carrying when he entered the temple. In an agile and unexpected movement, he opened the sack, put his hands in and slowly pulled out a handful of moist and fertile earth, which he carefully revealed to everyone.

 

- This, brothers and sisters, is our true wealth. Let us be those who manage, among those who sleep with their eyes open, to feel abundant and blessed to be surrounded by the forgotten element of the future.

 

Introduction

 

I have dedicated myself to traveling around the world looking for answers that since ancient times all human beings have asked ourselves. From a very young age, the desire to experience the common factor shared by the ancestral cultures of our sacred planet was born in me. I have the honor of being born in one of the cultural centers of greatest anthropological interest due to its enigmatic approach to the understanding of existence: Mexico City. Among all the bustle that the city manifests, such as the noise of the evening traffic jams, the news dressed in tabloids, the screams of merchants in every corner, and the thick layer of pollution that is inhaled day by day, one of the philosophies and thoughts with the greatest impact due to their simplicity stands out. the: the Toltec philosophy.

 

Certain events socially considered "tragic" led me to the very early exploration of what in metaphysical texts is called "The Spirit", which led to a journey of deep self-discovery without apparent end. It began with an extraordinary coincidental encounter with a Platonic text that described love and death from the perspective of Greek philosophy. Later, thanks to one of the most powerful tools my generation has, the internet, I exhaustively delved into everything related to the world of dreams. My exploration went through psychoanalyst approaches by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, until reaching Toltec Nahualism, where the author Carlos Castaneda stood out for his meticulous and eccentric work. I never imagined that this expedition through the intricate avenues of the unconscious would lead me to meet face to face what is apparently the "holy grail" of almost every culture that seeks transcendence: the experience of eternity. Only a close attempt at it led me to understand the inexhaustible potential that both hypnosis and shamanic practices have to regenerate and strengthen our systems of interpretation of reality, making our life experience a more pleasant journey with abundant diversity.

 

Personally, I consider myself an artist, a relentless seeker of truth and a contemplator of life. I only intend to share knowledge acquired from my own experience and the results I have obtained from it.

 

The term shamanism In this book is used it to refer to everything related to these traditions focused on transcending existence and the ordinary plane of consciousness to which the majority of human beings on the planet are conditioned, regardless of their ethnic or geographical origin.

 

Today's society suffers from a serious dissociation in the perception of the scientific advances that humanity has achieved during the last 12,000 years. It is precisely the technology based on electromagnetism applied in telecommunications that makes new generations believe that the intellectual gap between New York and Ancient Egypt is immensely wide. Without a doubt it is in what is visible and tangible, but it is not in the hard work of immaterial transcendence that these societies managed to harvest. Nowadays, the insatiable need to satisfy material needs in society must be compensated with medications and treatments for stress and other ailments, absurdly more psychological than physical.

 

In an attempt to return to ancestral wisdom, hundreds of researchers are trying to verify, through the scientific method, what has been taught and preserved orally for millennia in the East World and Pre-Hispanic America. These learnings were also manifested in Europe in past millennia, under the judicious label of “witchcraft”, which was misunderstood by political and religious institutions and ended up being disapproved through violence and defamation.

 

I understand that shamanism is not a philosophical current that promotes the excessive use of psychotropic plants for recreational purposes. The sociocultural events that occurred during the 60's, as publicized by the mass media, were only a distraction from the true purpose of these plants. For the Native American Indians, these plants induce non-ordinary states of consciousness in which it is possible to perceive the limits of material reality and perceive/construct a much more enriched reality for physical, mental and spiritual development. However, shamanism does not require the use of these plants to be fully practiced. In fact, plants are only one step on the path to follow, but not the path itself. They are not essential, but they become useful in extreme cases where the practitioner's rationality or destructive habits and thoughts are a barrier that prevents experiencing said non-ordinary reality fully.

 

I have personally confirmed that the shamanic practices with the greatest impact, both on me and on the people I have accompanied in recent years, are those that arise naturally and intuitively; those that are precisely applied practices; not stagnant knowledge. Shamanic practices seek liberation from what we experience as the “Me”; and thus find what lies beneath the masks of personality constructed by our family, society and religion; I will refer to it as the “Self”. I could personally describe it as an active and conscious entity that does not need the body to identify its individuality and its intimate relationship with the whole. In digestible words, the Self It is simply consciousness. I have learned that in order to experience the much-desired "Here and Now" it is necessary to find oneself in inner silence, and that it is this experience that allows us to live from the Being. However, this "Here and Now" or "Inner Silence" are the glueing material that joins the pieces of the puzzle, but it is not the puzzle itself. The concept of "Inner Silence" to which I refer in this book has its origin in toltequity but it can be, like other concepts present in this book, internalized as universal knowledge. It is also important to mention that the term "Toltec" is used to designate a philosophical current and not a religion, dogma or regional belonging. It is done specifically to honor that philosophy, whose origins can be traced throughout the Americas and which is influenced, inspired, and twinned by East Asian philosophy.

 

Toltec thought classifies the experience of reality into Tonal and Nagual. In extremely practical terms, the Tonal (which means “light” in Nahuatl) is everything that we can perceive with our senses, while the Nagual is total existence and includes what we are not able to perceive. The dream world is a bridge that connects us from our personal Tonal to the Nagual. The personal Tonal can be imagined as a bubble of individual perception, which is stimulated primarily through light. That bubble of perception encompasses everything we look at, what we hear, and even what we think and imagine. On the other hand, the Nagual is composed of pure potentiality. It could even be what modern physics proposes as “Multiverses”, ready to be explored and discovered. The Tonal is the physical and perceptible manifestation of the vast and infinite sea of the Nagual. The work of the Toltec (artist of life) is to expand the own's bubble of perception, gradually integrating with that which is outside the bubble: the Nagual. To expand the Tonal or our bubble of perception, techniques are required that balance reasoning and intuition.

 

Personally, I know this information because I am just an artist who believes he has fortunately met a shaman in the true sense of the word.. Our meetings inspired me to begin a path of perseverance and impeccability that affects my music and my art in general today. This person's name is "Pedro".

 

This work tries to bring the reader closer to an experience without limits, proposing dreams as a powerful tool for expansion and self-realization. For those who consider themselves objective and skeptical, my recommendation is to interpret the language of this book metaphorically and artistically. For those who live guided by intuition and believe in the magic of the heart, I invite you to contemplate objectively and invite reason for a sober reading. It is therefore invited to the precise practice of any suggested exercise to verify the results of greatest value. Likewise, I also invite you to take inspiration from what is written here to enrich any existing practice of your own and to lead you to transpersonal development. Let your own heart guide you along the wonderful path of existence itself.

 

That what is written and presented here manifests harmony, realization and transcendence on behalf of the peace, the life and the evolution.

 

Dreaming

 

I had the opportunity to experience my first lucid dream at the age of 14 and remember it vividly. I naturally understood that it had been a unique experience with great potential, so I obsessively sought to repeat it at will. I came across hundreds of videos and web pages that explained detailed processes for achieving lucid sleep, but very few warned of its possible consequences or offered pertinent precautions. Many of them even promised to experience the so-called "Detachment" or "Astral Travel", which consists of freeing our consciousness from the ties of the physical body without necessarily going through the state of deep sleep. I spent a lot of time educating myself on hypnosis and regressions to start that journey into the depths of my mind. I was seduced by the idea of controlling my dreams at will. If you have ever dreamed, you know that everything is possible in the dream world. The rules of physics dissolve, and yet it is possible to experience vivid physical sensations and emotions that occur while awake as well.

 

During the winter of 2016, in the town of Tulum, Mexico, I met a man of knowledge named Pedro. From the first moment, he inspired in me an indescribable confidence, which led me to spend time with him to obtain valuable information about toltequity and the power that dreaming has. After several nights of very interesting talk and exquisite laughter, he asked me a series of questions that I want to share with you today. Questions that defined a dramatic change of course in my thinking and feeling, and that I still find myself doing every day.

 

Have you thought about how much of your life you are really present, living in the here and now? What makes you think that, if you are not totally and fully aware of what you are doing, you are really living? Have you done the math of how long you really live if you die at 90? It seems like simple math, but the day I gave myself the opportunity to answer these questions, I was in for a tremendous surprise. I thought that if there were 24 hours in the days and I followed my doctor's recommendations, of those 24 hours I should sleep 8; That's already a third of my day! I then began to consider also those moments in which I find myself performing mechanical activities, such as driving the car or washing food dishes. Time seems to fly during such moments of wandering, which most of the time, just entangle me more than they free me. I ended up, again with simple math, discovering that at least 2/5 of my life is spent asleep or unconscious. At such moments it seems that I simply do not exist, as everything is replaced by almost total darkness and silence. So if my body survives the passage of 90 years, I can rightly say that I have only lived 54 years. That only if at every moment that I am with my eyes open, I am really awake, that is, here and now. Where do the other 36 years go?

 

This questioning set off an alarm in me, making me see that my passage through this life was much shorter than what I could have imagined up to now. In fact, it was very likely that because of the type of life I was leading at that time, I would find myself living much less than what my simple mathematics allowed me to enjoy. I realized that I was under the illusion of living the years that I am turning, when in reality I can only be living in the present moment. Pedro told me that this was the reason why our childhood seemed so long and our adulthood seems to vanish quickly and shamelessly. “Children live in the present, period. That gives them everything they need to feel already in eternity.”, he said with vehement and complete sobriety.

 

I then wanted to speak with total eloquence about the place after life that different cultures talk about, believing that this was my guarantee that my conscious experience did not end in death. I was trying to argue, through the experience of death recounted by a loved one, that there must be something after death. Thus, I justified my lack of fear of death.

 

“The lack of fear of death does not make you live more or less, you just do not fear it and that's it. A warrior does not make it so easy for death when it comes to take his life; although they are friends. But this friendship does not prevent death from fulfilling its work. For this reason, although death accompanies the warrior advising him throughout his life, the day they dance together, the warrior gives the best of himself and does not give himself up so easily. That is completely different from not being afraid of it just because we believe that there is something on the other side. The warrior does not surrender precisely because he is not guaranteed an "afterlife" after death; he only knows the "beyond" during his lifetime. That is living with honor for a Toltec, who makes use of his life to live it to the fullest, creating and building throughout it. That is something even death honors. If you want to learn to dance with death and honorably extend your life, learn to dream. Become aware of every moment of your life and you will experience eternity. That includes any experience you live with your eyes open or closed.

 

His words made sense as I myself practiced remembering my dreams and in the following years I began to show an interest specifically in Toltec philosophy, which addresses, among many profound concepts, the world of dreams, their interpretation and how to achieve lucidity.

 

In one of our conversations, Pedro soberly said: “We all dream, while being "awake" and while sleeping. We are dreaming when we feel that time is getting out of hand, because our attention is on the passing of time and not on life itself. We also dream when we allow the animal instinct to take action for us; when what we do is by mere impulse and not by will. We can even fool ourselves justifying why we do things, but only when we do them with full awareness can we describe the will. And just as you and I dream, entire societies and even the planet also dream. Your dream is to believe that the best thing that can happen to you is breathing the clean air of the luxurious Mexican Caribbean, and you will wake up when you realize that the best thing that can happen to you is breathing itself. In the same way, the Dream of the native-american indian, since it was colonized hundreds of years ago, is the illusion that wealth is in money. Society will wake up from that dream when it realizes that wealth is found in the land, the same one from which everything you want to acquire with said money comes from. If you learn to wake up in the dream, you will wake up asleep and "awake".”.

 

The experience

Peter was convinced that the experience of any event was itself reality. He said that for an experience to be truly an experience, it had to be lived with all our sensory systems well involved in the process. He gave as an example going to the toilet to satisfy our physiological needs. He said that using the toilet was not an experience, but simply a mechanized act repeated over and over again throughout our lives; but that the day a tremendous tarantula was found when lifting the toilet lid, that event would be closer to an experience. He asserted that the experience itself is an impression of images together with emotions, and that both must exist for the experience to be considered as such. He mentioned that, if an experience was powerful enough, it would become a memory capable of programming our mental interpretation machine. Of course, memory retention abilities play an important role depending on the person. He also said that it was not worth the effort to classify experiences as good or bad, but rather as tense or expansive.

 

Then the magic began to flow from his lips: “If for the Toltec to live is to experience, then we want to experience as much as possible. Imagine how much you can experience on a dream-like plane. That is why children do not need to go to sleep to dream, they have their imagination, and that is as powerful for them as dreaming is for us. The big difference between reverie and dreaming is the fine line that consciousness plays. The person who daydreams only lives the experience of his/her life like a spectator watching a movie. But the one who properly dreams is both the viewer of the film and the protagonist and director of it.

 

Pedro said that, according to the Toltec tradition, there were two access routes to the Nagual, and that each one should be used according to the abilities of the practitioner. The first was the Stalking (which has a different meaning than the popular use of the word), and the second the Dreaming. He said that stalking was for structured personalities with a deep contact with material things, while dreaming was for those who lacked more analytical solidity and had a greater facility for the arts and abstract expressiveness. He also shared that the naguals (more experienced Toltec spiritual guides) could reach the Nagual using both routes indifferently.

 

After the exhaustive and satisfactory practice of dreaming, I can assure you that the potential of the dream plane is infinite. Just dreaming is wandering, but "Dreaming" as toltecs, is allowing consciousness to interact on the dream plane. Thanks to the techniques that Pedro shared with me, I learned that Dreaming catapulted me into a prolonged experience of my life, as well as giving me the opportunity to extend each one of my experiences to continue working on them until reaching the harmony of each one of them. Once applied in my personal life, I began to share these techniques with practitioners who, like me, were seeking liberation.

 

I have met people, both independent practitioners and people I have had the opportunity to accompany, who have used the dream world to expand their experience of life. Athletes who use their dreams to continue their physical and mental practice and prepare for some future event. Scientists who manage to decipher transcendental formulas or experiments for humanity during a revealing dream. Artists who capture works, visual and sound, unique and with a deep emotional impact. A young man whom I had the opportunity to accompany used Dreaming to practice his Yoga routine. He had the ability to feel his limbs in the dream world, and despite being unable to visualize them fully lucidly, he was able to consciously repeat the routine that would give him the strength and coordination to reach a specific posture. A powerful Toltec practitioner that I had the opportunity to meet in Mexico used her dream when her husband died to share a little more time with him, and thus, say what she could not say in life. In this way, she healed this loss in less than a month, regaining her energy and vitality to open her holistic center and continue helping more people with her gentle and authentic personal power.

 

Like these situations, I could mention many more about learning related to courage, exploration, wonder, mystery, passion, power and magic. Each of them as vivid and significant as any experience originating in wakefulness. On the other hand, I have heard many people tell how perfect and pleasant their dreams are, and they lament when they wake up that they are not real. This includes being with the ideal person or a deceased loved one, developing any other superhuman abilities like flying or breathing underwater, and even seeing themselves in the house of their dreams, with the car and the family they so desire. If they only knew how powerful it is in themselves to have such experiences and allow our sensory systems to internalize it, they could take such experiences to strengthen any existing weaknesses in wakefulness. They could accept them as semi-real and take advantage of them to align themselves with certain attitudes or constructive habits that they wish to acquire.

 

In neurosciences there is a term called "imprint”. The imprint is a memory or memory of a person's life charged with emotions, which leaves a sensory impression and is related to the environment and its characteristics. The most significant imprints happen during the first 7 years of our life. To generate an imprint it is necessary for the brain to experience some strong emotion and for there to be some external element to refer to. If a 5-year-old boy pees his pants right in the middle of a karate class, there's a good chance that the kid will make a relevant imprint. He will begin by feeling shame or humiliation, and depending on the attitude of his teacher or classmates, the wound will be more or less deep. His entire body will bombard his brain with every bodily sensation you experience. At the same time, the brain will take visual "photographs" of the environment; in this case, the training room, the people around, and even the music or sounds that are being played at that moment. This photograph will be full of sensory and emotional information. The child may then develop a rejection of karate or any element that falls within that impression. The imprint (the union of sensory and emotional mental photograph) remains stored in the form of neuro-association and every time the child finds himself in an environment similar to that of the imprint, he will experience the emotions related to that moment again. He may even in the future be a man who feels tremendous discomfort or urges to go to the bathroom every time he enters a karate-like training room during his childhood.

 

It can then be said that a dream can contain any imprint that occurred while awake, covered with different elements. That is, the dream replicates in a more abstract way the imprints generated while awake. However, the practice of dreaming has led me to understand that, in the same way, it is possible to generate imprints in the dream world that are reflected in wakefulness. Imagine dreaming of seeing a person who has passed away and telling them what we could never say. Just experiencing the scene can be enough to accelerate any emotional healing process that must be worked on. Hypnosis has a very similar, almost identical, purpose to Dreaming. The difference is that hypnosis can be limited by the experience and understanding fo that who guides that experience, as well as their method and/or style of guiding the experience. In Dreaming, the limit is set by the imagination of the dreamer.

 

A parallel reality

Having mentioned the previous examples, it is not unreasonable to consider the dream plane as a parallel reality to the one we live in while awake. Take a minute to think how far your life experience could go if you had the power to access said limitless plane on a frequent basis in your life. A plane in which everything you do is virtually allowed and in which you have the opportunity to resolve unfinished situations or satisfy elementary needs of a complex scope. It may seem like fiction, but this is just a tiny vision of what the dream plane has to offer us. However, Toltec wisdom does not promote Dreaming as an escape from reality or an extension of unstoppable activity. In fact, to start the path through the Nagual it is necessary to order the Tonal. Ordering the Tonal is a fundamental practice to experience the Nagual (the expansion of the Tonal) with free and total fullness.

 

Pedro shared with me that Dreaming should not be considered as the consumption of a drug, which satisfies a need to disassociate from some ordinary sensation due to rejection or fear of it. Precisely, one must love the life that one leads while awake so that the dream experience is expansive and not chaotic. How you experience the potential of this parallel reality is conditioned by the precepts you already have of your waking life. Do not expect a pleasant dream experience if you are not content and grateful with your own life. The Dream is a tool for repairing and perfecting your Tonal, not for you to escape from it. It is the limitless expanse of what you already experience in your bubble of perception.

 

You can find references to all this in the film "Inception", starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which I recommend watching. In this film, a group of specialists operate as a team in the world of dreams trying to implant an idea in the unconscious mind of a person. The plot includes, in addition to the mission to be fulfilled, a drama in which the main character is involved; a parallel life within his dreams. In said parallel life, he meets his deceased wife, who years ago stopped recognizing the fine line between wakefulness and sleep, leading to her death. There they build together an ideal life that only includes them, where extraordinary landscapes decorate spaces that they consider private. Dreaming has much greater potential, as it allows us to explore the totality of ourselves and our imagination without the need for attachment and fear of letting go. It is very difficult for a practitioner to lose the notion of being able to differentiate the dream world from waking life when he has his Tonal ordered. That is why in later chapters emphasis will be placed on the preparation process to experience dreams, where ordering the bubble of self-perception is the main objective.

 

I invite you to consider dreaming as a powerful self-exploration technique. This book proposes the dream world as an unlimited platform for personal, physical, mental and spiritual development. In this book you will find suggestions to make dreams a tool that leads you to experience and manifest health, harmony and transcendence. I personally believe that the dream world is an endless space of scientific and intuitive practice. It is a unique laboratory in which neither physics nor ethics can interfere; a place where consciousness can manifest itself at its best. If you have ever experienced what it is like to have consciousness awakened during a dream, you will know how momentous the experience itself is. If you have never had the opportunity to live such an experience, rest assured that following the instructions in this book will lead you to achieve it. Shamans use dreaming as a vehicle for expanding consciousness because such practice extends perception beyond the limits of the ordinary, making living an endless exercise in creativity, power, and longevity.

 

Characteristics of the dream world

Everything that can only be conceived in the realm of fantasy already exists in the dream world. Every mystical and esoteric secret sees light when contemplated from the dream. There is no answer or riddle coming from waking life that cannot be solved in the dream world. Those who know what it is like to wake up in a dream could secure the limitless power that lies in that world. The reason is very simple, and it is that the nature of the dream world does not correspond to the physical laws that limit our world. It is a window to the creative potential of the spirit.

 

The dream world is immaterial, although it is possible to feel a certain density. It could be said that the dream world shows a liquid reality, where objects and situations flow and adapt to drastic changes, just like the water in the river. You can be in a certain place, and in the blink of an eye, appear in a completely different one. It is inconsistent, since time seems to run slowly, but at the same time, so coherent that we can recognize aromas and flavors that we associate with people and places. Gravity is changeable and unstable, at times you can feel your body in motion limited by a weight similar to that of water, as well as sometimes perceiving it as light as a feather that is capable of taking off from the ground and flying. One can find oneself in a place identical to any one in which one has been during childhood, as well as seeing oneself in the midst of unusual and unknown places with extravagant characteristics.

 

The characteristics of the dream world depend on many factors coming from wakefulness. One of them is the average emotional state with which one lives day by day. A person who lives with stress tends to dream about situations that have not been resolved and the sensory experiences are more solid and of narrow emotional diversity. On the other hand, an anxiety-free person tends to dream more fluently, and the situations in which they get involved in their dreams are more varied in plot and emotions. Another factor is the lifestyle and non-ordinary situations that may arise while awake. Someone with a mechanized life tends to forget their dreams more easily, as well as dreaming of situations almost identical to those they experience every day while awake. But someone who lives with a very loose routine is more open to change and tends to dream of scenarios that align with that lifestyle. Another factor is diet. For adults, sweet foods tend to reduce the chances of vivid dreams, while salty foods stimulate them. Despite every factor that can be mentioned, sleep itself is spontaneous and unpredictable as long as it does not become a conscious and disciplined exercise.

 

The advantage of the dream world being so fluid is that the power of manifestation is within the reach of a willing thought. You can make the car of your dreams or the person you most want to see appear just by trying. You can also recreate unfinished scenes from your past, as well as design your own games, free from any physical rules that might limit you. All the elements that inhabit the dream world, both objects and characters, can be considered as a reflection of yourself. For this reason, once the idea that every element of the dream is a manifestation of oneself is internalized, the interaction in the dream world becomes loose and daring for the benefit of self-liberation. You can do and undo as you please during reverie. You can create or destroy, love or hate, have fun or suffer. The only big difference is that nobody and nothing while awake will be affected more than yourself, and precisely for this reason it is important that you seriously and meticulously define the reasons why you want to dream. Everything you decide to do while dreaming will have direct and indirect repercussions on wakefulness, mainly on a psychic level. You should also know that the price to pay for waking up in the dream is in energetic value. You need enough energy to dream, and only acts that promote and stimulate the proper use of energy during wakefulness will gradually lead you to gather enough energy to dream.

 

Consciousness in the dream

Wake up is a term commonly used to define the act of opening the eyes after sleeping. For the Toltec, "awakening" means raising awareness in the present moment. This is, in a certain way, interrupting the dream, regardless of whether you are inside or outside the dream world. Someone awake can be with their eyes open or closed, static or moving, speaking or silent. For this reason, from now on I will use the term "awakening" between quotation marks to refer to it specifically in the Toltec context, and without quotation marks to refer to the act itself of leaving the dream world by physically opening one's eyes. Dreaming, on the other hand, is not only waking up from sleep, but manifesting the energy of the will through a process called "Intent". Pedro explained to me that the manifestation process of a Toltec goes through three steps. Start with the willpower, which is considered as a mysterious energy that is linked to our consciousness, and that comes from the very nature of the Universe and not from egocentric desire. He said that the will was the Universe itself setting the manifestation in motion. The second step is intent, which is a force located in our personal center capable of performing amazing feats. Pedro assured that if the attempt was carried out with the correct intent and focus, then the manifestation. The intent is therefore the midpoint between the will of the Universe and the manifestation.

 

In Pedro's exact words: “There is an abysmal difference between the Toltec intent and the intent of the common man. When the common man tries, he puts in an effort proportional to what his precepts tell him. In your attempt, there will always be the probability of hitting or failing. That's why you can spend your life trying things, and never achieve any of them. However, when the Toltec tries, his effort is already aligned with the force of the will (coming from the Universe), for which he does not doubt for any reason that the manifestation will come from his attempt. He also made an important difference between intent and intention: “Intent is not the same as intention. The world is full of people who have good intentions, but that is not enough for them to "try" and do something to manifest those intentions. Intent does not make the manifestation better or worse; otherwise the world would be full of millionaires with good hearts.”

 

If you've ever experienced lucid dreaming (becoming conscious during a dream) and tried to influence your environment, you most likely remember waking up feeling noticeably tired and physically exhausted. Becoming aware of the dream, regardless of whether it is asleep or awake, requires a type of energy that is rarely used with mere awareness: attention. The structure and consistency of a dream can be solidified when attention is paid to the environment. When you look at an object in the dream world, it will change shape or position when you take your attention away from it. That happens with watches, texts or even faces. Attention plays an important role in the consistency of the dream world, so it is necessary to develop punctual energy to exercise this practice. Detailed information on the energy and attention to sustain dreaming will be presented in this book in later chapters.

 

Consciousness has a fundamental role in existence. As Pedro told me, when a shaman uses consciousness, his bubble of perception expands. He mentioned that the longer the consciousness was active, the more the Tonal expanded. He shared with me dozens of exercises to activate consciousness. Once all the exercises were practiced, I was able to realize that the goal of all of them was the same, to achieve inner silence. “You and I have an internal dialogue every day of our lives. This voice is developed by the outer dream; it feeds on what happens outside, in the family and society. This internal dialogue is pure distraction, since it spends its time interpreting reality instead of experiencing it; it's part of the dream. In addition, he usually has the personality of a judge and a victim, and neither of these personalities serves to experience reality as it is. The worst thing is that this voice never seems to stop, and most people have to live with it being tormented or limited. This internal dialogue is what inhibits us from dreaming. You can't silence a voice that insists on bothering you when they are enemies. If you want to stop the internal dialogue, it is necessary that, first of all, you learn to speak with said internal voice and make it your ally. Only then can you make it stop recurringly and allow you to wake up from sleep”.

 

That conversation left an indelible mark on my heart, making me seek inner silence at every possible moment. Returning to my internal dialogue and making that voice "my ally" became an exciting task full of pleasant surprises. Thus, when I had the opportunity to enjoy the inner silence, even for a few seconds, I could appreciate and contemplate the details and the nature of the things that surrounded me. Little by little, this inner silence led me to hold the dream with greater focus and power. I understood that the consciousness that Pedro was talking about was capable of supporting not only the solidity of the dream world, but also the continuity of reality itself. I understood that every moment when consciousness is wandering and we act from the subconscious can be considered as a gap in the experience of life.

 

A clear example is when you drive the car to leave work and go back home. There is a moment in the journey in which he loses lucid awareness of the act of driving. He does everything perfectly, and yet from one moment to the next he is already at home and it is difficult for him to name how he did it in extreme detail. This is the subconscious taking charge of your life and doing, mechanically, what it has done a hundred times. For this reason, consciousness will find it difficult to differentiate that from all the previous occasions in which it has taken the same route, in the same car, at the same time and with the same purpose. This gap is lived by dreaming, and it is important that you begin to locate all the gaps that exist in your life where the subconscious mind takes control of you.

 

There is no reason to fear in the dream world once you become aware that you are in it. Knowing that you are dreaming gives you a power of omnipotence that is reflected in your environment. Although many dream sensations can feel extremely real, with the awareness that you are dreaming aches and worries fade away. The reason is that, despite the fact that the experience is integrated by our bubble of perception, the inconsistency of the dream world also represents plasticity and malleability. For example, someone may hurt you physically and emotionally during a dream, but if you are aware that you are in a dream, then simply because it is a dream, you know that nothing can happen to you. In the worst case, if you die in your dreams, you will only wake up in the waking world with some sensory aftershocks from the dream. The possibility of not returning from the dream world is almost nil.

 

The process of activating consciousness, or "awakening", can seem arduous and endless. However, I can guarantee that just trying it sets in motion the will of the Universe that is already in your favor. A conscious life has endless potential to be enjoyed in fullness, harmony and transcendence. This book has been written with the intent of providing you with a tool inspired by ancient traditions of the world. The techniques and suggestions written here are designed so that you can enjoy an enriching, empowering and even limitless experience of life. In the following chapters you will find techniques and advice to facilitate the experience of dreaming and to make this practice a constructive activity and of great contribution to your life. For no reason is a drastic change in habits or non-ordinary activities during wakefulness promoted without first consulting a doctor or therapist.

 

Before dreaming

 

"I am Light, consciousness and Willpower, than evolve and creates for the benefit of life.”

What do you understand by ordering the Tonal? Or put another way, what do you understand by ordering your bubble of perception? Ordering the Tonal means, for the practitioners of ancestral shamanism, getting rid of all the limits imposed by the dream of the planet and thus, through internal silence, expanding perception until experiencing reality in its different and unlimited levels of manifestation. It is to reestablish our belief system, restructuring everything that family, society and religion have instilled in us and that has never been questioned or put to the test in practice. This ranges from stopping using the hand you always use to brush your teeth, to stopping eating meat. From learning a new language to unlearning the meaning of some words in your mother tongue (especially those words that bring you nothing constructive in your life).

 

The potential of the dream world and the liberation that dreams offer is so immense that I consider it necessary to establish two fundamental objectives of the dream, which contribute to the Tonal of the planet continuing to expand. To myself, I propose two fundamental objectives to operate as anchors during your path of "awakening".

 

The first objective is the harmony. The harmony of which the Toltec speaks is based on the geometry of the Universe. One must see the unfolding of nature and understand its evolutionary flow to understand the shape of the path of existence. The Toltec thinks that his own actions are replicated by his environment in a harmonious way. Take a static musical note as an example. By itself, it is just a continuous sound with no apparent purpose. The moment you play a second note, say proportionally to 3/5 of its next octave, the magic happens; there are two different notes that when played together produce a satisfying sense of harmony. Or how about looking at the colors and gorgeous brushwork in a Vangoh painting? It is enough to imagine a green meadow full of colorful and vibrant flowers. If one of your objectives when dreaming is to achieve harmony, rest assured that your path will be full of prosperous and fruitful experiences that will make your consciousness expand radiantly.

 

The second objective is the realization. This value applies to both senses that the word has. On the one hand, the act of carrying out, represented for a Toltec as "creating", and on the other, the feeling of completing a particular purpose or mission. In toltequity, the art of living is expressed through creation and creativity; powers that human beings have and that bring them closer to what we ourselves consider as divinity. To be creative is to create looking for the authenticity of the creation. For the Toltec, the source of creativity is found in the creation of the Universe itself. If you lack creativity, you only need to look closely at the manifestations that the Universe is already putting in front of you. Bring your eyes closer to the ground to see the exhausting life led by insects day and night. Look at the thousands of shapes that occur when connecting the dots in a starry night sky. Watch the flow of water hitting the stones of a glen, or look at the hundreds of figures in the meticulous design of meadow flowers. Thus, creativity seeks to be culminated in an act of creation and realization happens. May fulfillment and harmony be the eyes that see you back during reverie.

 

Pedro shared with me three values that he considered essential for the healthy exercise of dreaming and any energy focus practice. I share with you the exact words he used with me: “Notice that any project in life without values is like a boat trip without someone directing the rudder. Three have worked for me, and together they make me feel that my freedom is lively and on track. Love, inside out, hardcore and in thousands of submissions. This is how the process itself is enjoyed. Discipline, which keeps the intent flawless and ready for anything. This is like the oil that keeps the parts of the machine lubricated. AND I respect, which is not only learning to accept in every way, but also knowing how to give space and time. Make these 3 values your guides along the way and you will see how much fun you will have”.

 

Lightening the body

After years of practice in reverie, I can assure you that there are habits and attitudes that can limit and/or enhance the integrity of reverie. The first and most important recommendation is to take responsibility for yourself about the results that the practices may cause you. If something suggested in this book threatens your health or is not aligned with what your current conditions (physical and psychological) allow, I recommend that you continue with the help of an expert in private. There are no serious side effects to dreaming, but it is not recommended to practice it if you suffer from insomnia or severe sleep disorders. Dreaming can take a considerable amount of energy, so your body may feel exhausted during the first few experiences. However, when you finish this book you will have exercises that will help you keep your energy vitalized and focused on the dream.

 

It is important to reduce stress levels to even consider dreaming. Therefore, basic recommendations such as keeping your body healthy with exercise and recurring breaks are necessary for a satisfactory experience during your time in the dream world. I can recommend not eating any type of food at least 2 hours before bedtime, as well as practicing fasting at least once a month. It is also advisable to comply with a maximum of 8 hours of sleep and a minimum of 5, unless your doctor tells you otherwise. Lower your expectations about the dream, as this can greatly limit the time it takes to experience your first lucid dream. In the same way, high expectations can easily cause attention to be lost when dreaming and, consequently, the dream to collapse easily when becoming conscious in it.

 

Make sure you sleep in a comfortable position, avoiding lying on your stomach with your neck bent. The most effective positions are on your back with your hands on any part of your chest, or in a fetal position (preferably with the left side of your body below). Avoid placing objects on your body, except for sheets or covers. Be sure to set the ideal conditions to avoid waking up during the night. This includes maintaining an ideal body temperature (depending on the temperature outside), as well as making sure that insects won't be a nuisance at night. Anything that causes you to move or wake up should be avoided.

 

There are various techniques on the web to induce lucid dreaming. Some of them suggest interrupting daily sleep cycles. These techniques offer a means of access to dreaming that is effective and without much complication. Personally, I do not fully agree with practices that interrupt sleep, since serious disorders can be caused that put your health at risk. The price to pay for these practices ends up being greater than that of disciplining yourself to the exercises that require more time. Patience is the primary ingredient on the path of dreaming, and I assure you that the exercises suggested in this book are effective if taken with perseverance and care.

 

Throughout this chapter, I will dedicate myself to sharing with you some essential elements that will make you internalize the practice of dreaming for the rest of your life. They are extremely important exercises that will bring you closer to understanding the essence of reverie. Thus, the ordinary world will cease to be a reason for escape, and the dream world will only be an extension to expand the totality of oneself. It seeks therefore to come into constant contact with the Being. The job is to wean the mind of all the useless repetitions that it continues to exercise daily. Little by little, your "awakening" will manifest itself in a forceful way and it will become something similar to a lifestyle that is difficult to abandon. I highly recommend that you take the time to practice each of the exercises after you finish the book. That is, read the complete work first and at the end, practice with dedication one of the exercises that have most attracted you. Move on to another exercise until you have practiced the first exercise at least 3 times, and continue through the rest of the piece. You will achieve the desired results only if you spend the necessary time in disciplined and patient training of the exercises.

 

Inner silence

“Inner Silence is the voice of the Universe. Silence the mind and you will realize that eternity is in the present moment. Your problems and worries are just dust. But your purest essence is there, always, in the present moment.

 

Those were the words that Pedro used to convince me that this was the way of living for a man/woman of knowledge. Like him, I can guarantee that your life will benefit immeasurably when you consult the practice of inner silence on a regular basis. Take just 10 minutes on the web to discover the benefits of meditation. For the Toltec, to meditate is to find oneself in internal silence. In fact, around the world, the practice of meditation is to calm the fluctuations of the mind itself, regardless of the techniques used to get there. The reason why internal silence plays an important role is because the internal dialogue is what keeps the consciousness asleep. One would think that the characters of the angel and the devil sitting on our shoulders are "the voice of conscience", but that is precisely the opposite. Consciousness is the contemplation of reality as it is, without labels, prejudices or interpretations involved. This internal dialogue, created mainly by family, society and religion, is an external construction that affects a person's interior and obstructs the natural flow of life experience, especially when born and raised in a big city.

 

During dreaming it is necessary to find yourself in internal silence in order to access it in the first place. Likewise, it is the element that will allow the attempt to create on the dream plane. If you achieve inner silence during sleep, you will "wake up" and have your intent to start manifesting what you want. As long as there is an internal dialogue, consider that you are dreaming. Stopping the internal dialogue is, in itself, "awakening". Do not forget at all times that when referring to the "dream", it is done from the Toltec point of view, where said "dream" happens asleep or awake. Therefore, any practice that you wish to experiment in dreaming must first be tried and mastered while awake.

 

Find the inner silence from this moment in your life and transform it into your next achievement. Ten seconds, a minute, an hour, or whenever it comes to you. The longer you practice it, the more time you'll spend awake and your life will lengthen based on your perception of it. The Toltec spiritual practice begins with the cessation of internal dialogue and continues with dreaming and stalking. The peace that is experienced during inner silence is like the anchor that allows you to hold onto the experience of reality itself. As I shared with you earlier, make sure the voice you want to silence becomes your ally first. Dare to have conversations with your inner voice, starring yourself through your own voice. Talk to the mirror and let the mental voice come through the spoken word. Until you become friends with your own internal dialogue, it will be an almost endless war to try to silence that voice. Convince your inner voice that together you can make room for silence more often. Speak what you have to speak to yourself to make the inner voice satisfied and itself begin to cease.

 

Now I want to share with you one of the simplest, yet powerful techniques that have led me to inner silence; ideal to go to him at any time. It is especially useful for situations in which the internal dialogue is extremely rowdy or scandalous. I call this technique "anchoring between the eyebrows," and I'd like to practice it with you right now. Begin by inhaling slowly and deeply. As you exhale, make the sound "Shhh" with your mouth, as if you wanted to silence someone. Make sure you do it without any embarrassment or worry; the more energy it puts in, the more effective it will be. If for some reason you must remain silent, pronounce it in your mind with even more substance. Finally, inhale again deeply, but this time, direct your gaze to the point located between the eyebrows, just between your eyes an inch or two above. Repeat each exhalation with the sound “Shhh” and each inhalation keeping your eyes between your eyebrows. After a few repetitions you can try it with your eyes closed. Don't let your mind wander; Your focus now should be on synchronizing inhalations with the look between your eyebrows and exhalations with the “Shhh” sound, produced by your lips or within your mind. When looking between the eyebrows becomes tiring on the inhalation, replace that action with listening to the sounds around you. You will end up breathing in and listening to the sounds around you, and breathing out with the sound “Shhh”. Each time you inhale, even try to name or visualize each of the sounds that reach your ears, no matter how small. Consider extending this practice for no less than 20 minutes.

1. Inhale slowly and deeply.
2. Breathe out making the sound “Shhh”.
3. Inhale and focus your gaze between your eyebrows.
4. Breathe out making the sound “Shhh”.
5. Repeat the inhalation looking between the eyebrows and the exhalation reciting the sound “Shhh” for as long as you like.
6. Inhale putting all your attention on the sounds coming from outside and try to visualize them
7. Breathe out making the sound “Shhh”.
8. Keep quiet and watch carefully.

 

Balancing sides

In the Toltec tradition the personal Tonal and Nagual manifest on two sides of the bubble of perception; left side and right side. The left side represents the Nagual, corresponding to the right hemisphere of the brain. The right side represents the Tonal, corresponding to the left hemisphere. To order the Tonal, it is necessary to balance both sides of the bubble of perception, which can be summarized in simple breathing and awareness exercises that, when practiced on a recurring basis, will lead to the balance of said sides.

 

if you are a person analytics and linear mental structure, should stimulate and exercise his side left to achieve a balance of nagual. if it is a person sensory and artistic mental structure, we will have to work on the side right of the bubble of perception corresponding to the Tonal. The technique to perform to work any side you want is very simple, and you only need to practice it daily at dawn and before going to sleep. Pedro shared it with me letting me know that it was inherited by many generations of men and women of knowledge around the world.

 

Adopt a comfortable position that allows you to turn your head 180º. Turn your head to the side you want to work on trying to get your nose in line with your shoulder. Empty your lungs and inhale deeply keeping your head turned to the selected side. As you exhale, slowly turn your head in a horizontal line, so that your gaze “scans the horizon”. Be sure to get all the air out of your lungs at the same time that your head is turned away from where you started. With no air in your lungs, turn your head back to the side you are working on and inhale again. The inhalation is not done in the form of a sweep as when exhaling, but is inhaled until the head is looking at the profile to work. Repeat the breath at least 5 times slowly and deeply. Throughout the exercise it is only necessary to move the neck, so the shoulders and chest must remain immobile. To stimulate sleep it is necessary to work specifically on the left side.

 

1. Take a comfortable position.
2. Turn your head to your left side and empty your lungs.
3. Inhale keeping your head still looking to the left side.
4. Exhale as you slowly turn your head “sweeping the horizon” until you are looking to the right side and running out of air.
5. With empty lungs, turn your neck back to the left side and inhale deeply keeping your neck pointed to the left.
6. Try to perform the exercise with your eyes open, closed and finally half open.

 

For more information on breathing techniques focused on balancing the sides of the bubble of perception, I recommend doing your own research on the art of Pranayama, ancient knowledge that Hindu culture gives to the world. In this practice, dozens of breathing techniques are used to achieve "energetic" cleansing and induce heightened states of consciousness. You now know which are the sides to work according to your need. be sure to practice Pranayama with the help of a specialist.

 

The "not doings"

I mentioned earlier that our life is full of "gaps" or mental blackouts in which, after repeating some recurring or mechanized activity, we lose track of time and it is difficult for us to give details about how we did said activity. It happens to us when we drive the car back home, when we wash dishes or go to sit on the toilet. It can even happen to us while we are working. These gaps are filled by the subconscious, so that we can attend to other matters in the mind related mainly to the problems or dilemmas in which we find ourselves. Any physical act in which the subconscious mind takes command can be considered as a subconscious mechanical act. The process of mechanization of the human being begins from his birth, when he begins to imitate what he sees and hears. This is how he learns to talk, walk and interact with the physical world. It is necessary to mechanize to learn certain tasks of basic need, such as bathing, brushing teeth or eating. In fact, thanks to mechanization, we become experts in any discipline that we are passionate about.

 

However, when an act itself is mechanical, it is considered as doing it in a dream. Every time you and I do something from the subconscious, we practically find ourselves submerged in sleep. Your consciousness trusts your subconscious mind so much that it allows you to take control of your body much longer than you imagine, entering an experience similar to the "autopilot" of airplanes. Most people, during "autopilot," spend their energy having endless arguments or regrets about life, fantasizing outside of the present moment. Ask yourself what you think about when you are dreaming. What kinds of thoughts come to you when you are on “autopilot”?

 

Unfortunately, city life fills us with mechanical processes that in the long run consume more energy than we can imagine. This includes everything from eating habits to phrases that our parents or our friends repeated when we were little. The brain works this way because it seeks to manage and save as much energy as possible. The problem is that this energy ends up being drained when an unpleasant or cumbersome internal dialogue appears. The reason why many people forget their dreams after sleeping is for the same reason that a normal day in the bathtub is forgotten. When you lead a mechanized life, night sleep tends to be just as mechanized, so it seems unimportant among many other experiences to the brain and is forgotten. That is why it is normal that, when leading a life of stress or anguish, you dream of situations that stress and anguish you. Sweeping breathing is one of several techniques that reduce stress and allow the left side of the bubble of perception (dedicated to dreaming) to open.

 

To practice dreaming it will be necessary to establish new habits through mechanization. The difference is that these habits must be completely different and radical to those that are already carried in vigil and that are part of your personal dream. Mechanization becomes a tool that gives us access to "wake up" from the dream. Therefore, it is necessary to understand that the mechanized acts that you currently carry out may be limiting you to experience the dream. It will be necessary to break with these mechanized acts and begin to replace them with new ones with a different intention. This process of de-mechanisation of patterns and habits is known in shamanism as the "do not do".

 

“In the same way that you learned to do things, you can unlearn and relearn them. If you have learned to count to ten with your fingers, you can relearn it by doing it with your toes. Or if you repeated the same sequence of actions hundreds of times when bathing, you can relearn to bathe in a different order. If you have been accustomed all your life to walking forward, relearn to walk backwards. That's more or less what the "don'ts" are. They are those things that you have done all your life in the same way done in a different way. Different enough that the brain has to work to do it. They are also things that you "have" to do because they told you that you had to do them, and from one moment to the next you just stop doing them. The "don'ts" are a fundamental tool to re-train the subconscious and train the consciousness.

 

When telling me about the “don'ts”, Pedro added that practicing them was almost always a completely personal and subjective job. He told me about some universal don'ts that help just about anyone, but emphasized the importance of creating our own don'ts. According to him, unaccustoming the body and the psyche required an energy that forged discipline and broke with the routine path of our mind. He mentioned that the only routines that mattered most were those that kept the body alive, and that even so, at some point the most advanced practitioners tried to undo them. He recommended some exercises that seemed crazy to me, such as learning to stand on my head, starting to draw with the opposite hand to the one I always did, and climbing the stairs in profile or backwards. He said that, despite being risky, almost anyone has the power and patience to try it. Of all the things he shared with me about the don'ts, what seemed most important to me was designing my own don'ts.

 

The procedure that I have developed with the help of Pedro and from personal experience requires only your attention and interested effort. Pay attention to the following activities that you usually do: clean up (bathing, brushing teeth and doing the bathroom), get dressed, eat and be transported. Take a few days to discover the details of these activities, especially identify: the hand you use to do them, the order or sequence you apply and the conditions in which you do it (time and place). Once the details are located, proceed to develop these activities in a different and creative way. The main advice is to change the hand with which you do such things. Then I can recommend changing the conditions, such as the time and place. Finally, use a completely different sequence. Start with just one of them, for example, bathing. If you start your bath every day by taking the soap with your left hand and rubbing it with the sponge, do it now with your left hand and do not use the sponge until you have soaped your body. If you start carving your neck all the way to your feet, start right at the feet and end at the belly button. And if you happen to end up washing your hair with both hands, try doing it from the start with just your forearms.

 

This last reasoning can be applied to any habit that comes to mind. The important thing is that you decide to start today with whoever you prefer. I'm sure you can find the "don'ts" challenging and fun exercises. Enjoy the "don'ts" as much as you can, as undoing such habits with humor optimizes the unfolding and expansion of your perception bubble, keeping you in the present moment and, possibly, internally silent.

 

Training memory

Another element that plays a leading role during dreams is memory. If upon awakening from the dream world you do not remember what you dreamed, then there is no consciously recorded experience. There is a very important Toltec practice called "recapitulation” in which the practitioner puts his memory to work and scrutinizes his own past as if watching a movie. The primary objective of the recapitulation is to access memories that prevent the expansion of our tonal and recover the stagnant or lost energy. The practice of recapitulation is extensive and even complex, since one must be able to place oneself at any moment in one's personal history without any problem. In shamanism, recapitulating is part of the process of releasing limiting imprints. It is necessary to recapitulate to know the origin of the barriers that prevent us from reaching our best version of ourselves; barriers that prevent us from accessing the dream.

 

In Toltec philosophy, the concept of "imprint" is addressed in a complementary way. For the Toltecs it is necessary that we accept our interpretations for the imprints to emerge. This means that in order for us to develop an imprint in our unconscious mind, we must accept whatever it is that we are interpreting as true. This is known as an agreement. It is the agreements that we establish throughout our lives that define the human interpretation system and, therefore, the reason why we suffer. A practical example to understand the relationship between imprints and agreements is the following: imagine a 7-year-old girl who maintains favorable grades in her school. Since she was little, she has been educated to give the best of herself and has been rewarded every time she gets the highest grade. In turn, she has also learned that “being the best” opens opportunities for her, and she is apparently more loved by her family and teachers. She then makes an agreement that getting good grades brings her closer to being loved and accepted by her family, and that not doing so leads her to be rejected for her stupidity or inadequacy. One day, for unfortunate reasons, he fails a subject. The agreement that she maintains will lead her to suffer when she sees her grade, as she will begin to feel the rejection of her parents and the humiliation of being insufficient. If when you get home and give your grades to Dad, he becomes a bully who physically or verbally abuses you for the grade, the girl will reinforce the initial agreement, and then an imprint will sprout. When she grows up and fails to fulfill a task at work or at home with her own family, she will re-experience the feeling of being insufficient and stupid. But she is shackled to said imprint for the simple fact that her agreement to be rejected existed from the beginning because of the education she received.

 

Recapitulating allows us to access the origin of our agreements. When we recap, we have the opportunity to contemplate our memories without judgment. Instead of reliving them as the victim or the judge, we can appreciate them objectively and without any interpretation. By doing this, it is possible to locate agreements that limit us and we can consciously proceed to break them. Thus, little by little we heal all those imprints that keep us in the endless drama of suffering and limitation.

 

After years of recapitulating, I can summarize the practice in two very powerful tips that will open the doors to dreaming. The first piece of advice is to recap your life with time and dedication. All you have to do is remember your past, either through conversations with yourself or by going to content (photos, recordings or videos) that bring back your memories. If you don't have the willpower, or rather enough intent, you can go to any relative or friend who will talk to you about your past. Any conversation is insufficient if it omits detailed information from memories. Therefore, it is important to consider seeing a professional therapist who has the ability to deal with possible traumas or memories of suffering impact. In fact, when recapitulating, it is sought that these types of painful memories come to light in order to release and recover said energy.

 

To be honest, the most powerful and momentous recaps I've ever had have been talking to trees about my past. Our Toltec grandparents hold the belief that plants are the best allies to remove our physical and mental illnesses, and that just as they transform CO2 into oxygen, they also purify our words and feelings. Choose any way that seems pertinent to recapitulate your life; this undoubtedly orders the Tonal and prepares you for the full experience of dreaming.

 

It is important for you to know that in the event that you decide to recap on your own, you should resort to a particular breathing technique called "sweep breathing." It is important that you practice the recap in a comfortable position and that you do not allow yourself to fall asleep; preferably sit in meditation position. When you are recapitulating and your mind begins to re-experience emotions and sensations from the memory, activate your breathing in the following way:

 

1. Turn only your head to your left side, as if trying to look over your shoulder. Just move your neck; avoid moving your torso.
2. Inhale deeply looking at the horizon of your left profile.
3. Breathe out slowly as you turn your head to your opposite (right) profile. Be sure to empty your lungs at the same time that your head turns all the way to the opposite side.
4. Inhale deeply returning to your left profile and repeat the process.

 

The second tip is to improve short-term memory by recapitulating your days and nights. For this you can purchase a specific journal or voice recorder for this particular exercise. The goal is that every day, just before going to sleep, recap your entire day, from getting out of bed to returning to it. Be sure to see the chain of events of your entire day and try to recognize the details of certain activities that you normally do not pay attention to. In the same way, every day when you wake up and open your eyes, you will recap what you have just experienced in the dream world. Don't worry if you don't remember it perfectly, just try to retain the experience and write or record the details that you can visualize, however simple or minimal they may seem. When you dream and remember it, write down the experience in as much detail as possible. This act, being habituated and mechanized, will reinforce your short-term memory, making you perceive the thread that gives continuity to your experience of reality. So you will be ready to start the four steps that will lead you to the dream.

 

Training the double

"Awakening" requires momentarily freeing yourself from the physical body that limits consciousness itself. When you go to sleep and dream, there are two entities manifesting simultaneously. The first is the dreamer, which is itself the physical body tied to the physical and material plane. The dreamer is then the body located in the bed (or whatever surface it sleeps on) that is dreaming. The second entity is the dreamed of, and is the one who experiences the dream in the dream world. being dreamed of it is known in shamanism as "the double". The terms dreamer and dreamed of They are extracted from the work of Victor Sánchez, respected practitioner of Toltec nagualism.

 

Taking into account the distinctions between the dreamer and the dreamed of, It is necessary to clarify that being on "autopilot", the dreamer is the one who takes control of the physical body, while the dreamed of He is the one who immerses himself in thoughts that are foreign to what the body is doing. But when we talk about "double" we refer to being dreamed of conscious of the dreamer and in turn of himself. We all have a "double", which in shamanism is disciplinedly trained and considered as an extension of ourselves. Our physical body and our double make up the totality of oneself. He dreamer cannot physically see its double, but the double can virtually see the dreamer.

 

Imagine for a moment that tonight as you lie in your bed and prepare to sleep, you begin to dream that you are in your room and that you can see your own body lying on your bed. When you see your body, you experience something similar to looking in a mirror, but with the difference that the reflection does not copy what you do. The reflection stays lying on the bed, while you are free to move around the room. Then he realizes that he is dreaming and that he does not need more of his body to go anywhere he wants. The consciousness that is experiencing reality at that moment is the consciousness of being. dreamed of or its double. The memories you have of your sleep at night are experienced by the consciousness of being dreamed of. But when he realizes that he is dreaming in the dream world and "wakes up", then it is his "double" who is working.

 

I would like to introduce you to your doppelganger right now so that through experience you can train him every day of your life. Look around you and fix your gaze on any object, regardless of whether it is in a room or outside. Take a deep breath and close your eyes. Imagine that the object you chose is able to look back at you, and do your best to see yourself through the object's eyes. Focus on the details, such as the clothes you are wearing, the things around you, and even the gestures you are likely to be making. The point is that you manage, with your eyes closed, to see yourself through the "eyes" of something outside of you. Do your best to retain such an image for at least one minute. Whatever happens, look at yourself and around you, as if you are something or someone else having the experience. you are looking at dreamer with the eyes of your "double", and just by practicing this exercise once a day you are already training your double to interact in the world of dreams consciously. You can try the same exercise with the awareness of the double in motion and at different distances from the body of the double. dreamer, but always keeping an eye on the dreamer.

 

The practices so far suggested as preparation to the dream are the following:

 

1. Lightening the body
2. internal silence.
3. Balance the sides.
4. The "don'ts".
5. Train memory (recapitulate).
6. Train double.

Once the process of practicing the exercises already described has begun, it is possible to start a process of four key steps that promise to stimulate your "awakening" and achieve dreaming.. These steps were inspired by the teachings that Pedro shared with me and that his teachers and several previous generations inherited from him. I have found this method to work for anyone who has at least tried to align with the 5 preparation practices above. After years of practicing dreaming, I discovered that the four steps are a common factor in leading to a healthy and fulfilling life experience, whether waking or in the dream world.

 

As I suggested earlier, do your best to start the practices in this book after you've finished reading it. That means first reading the complete work and, once finished, beginning to apply the exercises at your convenience. Remember that "Practice makes a master” and in the mastery of the dream the key is in the attempt.

 

First Step: Access

 

Accessing the dream can be for many the most difficult step to take, since it itself requires the will to "wake up" to be achieved. There are many people capable of remembering their dreams; however, accessing the dream does not mean remembering it, but realizing that one is dreaming itself. Specifically in the dream world, it is the moment in which you realize that you are dreaming and your consciousness takes control of the experience. This can be considered as the most complex step due to the simple fact that the will (from the Universe according to the Toltec tradition) is the force that allows the "awakening". However, through intent you will manage to align the conditions for the dream to happen itself. The more you focus on "awakening" from the dream, the easier it will be for you on future occasions..

 

You know when you are dreaming; It's a simply unmistakable feeling. The moment you "wake up" from the dream, an amazing sense of liberation manifests itself, and the boundaries of reality are dissolved. You are in command of the experience, and the power to make or break it is yours, not your environment. In the dream world, "awakening" requires an impulse orchestrated by will and intent. This impulse can be motivated by punctual mechanization processes that, if he manages to adopt it while awake, will lead him to repeat it in his sleep.

 

Just as your dream is a reflection of your waking life, whatever you manage to mechanize in it will lead you to the dream world sooner or later. What we are looking for then is to mechanize specific actions that will cause your "awakening", both in wakefulness and in the dream world, and that will keep you in the present moment for longer. Mechanized actions that force consciousness to activate and focus its attention on the "here and now".

 

I want to share with you 3 ways to access dreams, which can be practiced individually or together. These techniques have been inherited by millennial generations of knowledgeable men and women throughout the world. People who have unsheathed the mysteries of the Nagual and who share it for the liberation of humanity from the dream of the planet. These must be practiced in a mechanized way, once the preparation practices have been internalized, that is, with a previously ordered Tonal. Once mechanized while awake, it will be a matter of time before they are repeated in the dream world. Then he will "wake up" and know that he is dreaming.

 

The decree

The power of the spoken word is a fundamental tool of any ancient culture that seeks transcendence. There is a whole history of research, both esoteric and scientific, on the influence of words in our lives. I have devoted an entire book titled “decrees” in which he delves into the power that the word has to align and empower our lives. The decree itself is the spoken word used to manifest and perform. It is the ability to say something and transform it into reality. Thus, the decree can be used to stimulate the experience in the dream world, from remembering it to "awakening" in it.

 

If you have difficulty remembering your dreams, repeat the following prayer every day before going to sleep:

"I am able to remember my dreams. My dreams are surprising and pleasant”.

 

Likewise, if you are already able to remember your dreams with recurrence, proceed to repeat the following prayer every day before going to sleep:

"I am conscious in my dreams. I am creator and doer in my dreams.”

 

Each sentence must be repeated aloud enough times for any doubt to disappear. They must be repeated so many times as to make one or several words in the sentence begin to lose meaning to the mind. It is necessary to put intent when decreeing, like wanting to convince yourself about what you say. Practice the decree for at least 15 days until you see results or add the practice of it to any other of the suggested ways. It is not necessary for you to focus on a single access technique, but it may be the case that only with the decree can you access reverie.

 

Universal key

The ancient Toltec tradition recounts, through mythology and oral teaching, that the key to access the dream that the gods inherited from the human being are the hands. The story "the smoking mirror” from the renowned book “The Four Agreements” by Dr. Miguel Ruiz refers to said key as follows: “One day, while sleeping in a cave, he dreamed that he saw his own sleeping body. He left the cave to a full moon night. The sky was clear and he saw an infinity of stars. Then something happened inside her that changed her life forever. I look at my handsHe felt his body and heard his own voice saying: «I am made of light; I'm made of stars"”. This line hides what is considered the universal key to "awakening". Looking at your hands is by far the simplest and most powerful technique for dreaming.

 

As well mentioned, the important thing is to make looking at your hands a conscious and somewhat automatic act. Initially, the goal should be to look at the palms of your hands at least three times a day: at dawn, at any random time during the day, and during the night. The more disruptive the times during the day when you look at your hands, the easier it will be for you to do so in your dreams as well. By this I mean that the act of looking at your hands should be a factor of interference during any other common activity that is being carried out. Seeing your hands is an act of contemplation, so it is not necessary to just look with your eyes, but you must see with awareness and attention. Looking at one's hands while awake is an act that is not done normally, much less doing it with contemplation. Therefore, when it is repeated over and over again, it will eventually be done during sleep as well.

 

In the dream world, looking at your hands is a mysterious sensation and one of deep wonder. As the images of the dream world are often inconsistent, our hands always end up looking different from what they are when awake.

 

When looking at your hands in the dream world, you will be surprised to find something completely different from what you would normally see. You could see your hands with more than 5 fingers, or with some of them missing. You could see how they melt, as if they were exposed to extremely high temperatures, or you could even see amputated limbs. Perhaps he would see that his hands are made of sand, water, or light. Whatever you see in the dream world, you will find something different and unusual. It is very natural to feel fear when we look at our hands in the dream world. There is no reason to be afraid or scared, as this is the obvious sign that he is sleeping.

 

Over time, the technique of looking at hands had a practical effect on me and during a dream in which I was walking through the streets of an unknown city I looked at my hands spontaneously. However, some kind of uncontrollable excitement caused me to wake up unexpectedly with a start. Seeing my hands allowed me to realize that I was dreaming, but it did not allow me to sustain the dream.

 

There is actually a more advanced method of looking at your hands. This resource is essential to stimulate concentration and attention when you are in the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) state of sleep. The idea is to look at each hand with the eye that is on the opposite side. For this it will be necessary to look at the tip of our nose before looking at the hands. This will cause the right eye to look at the left hand, and the left eye to look at the right hand. If this is done correctly, you will be able to see how the images of your hands overlap each other, creating a third image of a hand built by superimposing the other two. This image must be held for at least 52 seconds. If possible, make this third image a sharp silhouette and try to count the resulting fingers. If successfully accomplished, you will be able to count 6 or 7 fingers.

 

 

 

Pedro had shared with me one more technique that I later added to the process of looking at my hands and that helped to conclude with the purpose of "awakening" from sleep efficiently. He told me that there were three questions that we could all ask ourselves that, when asked at the right time, the magic of "awakening" happened. The literal words he used to describe the technique were as follows: “If you, at any time during a dream, stop the scene you are in as if you were the director of a movie, you can give yourself the opportunity to ask yourself three questions and answer them calmly. The first iswho I am?, the second iswhere I am?... by this time the entire universe realizes that you are about to "wake up”. When you ask the third question is when the mighty miracle happens. It is the most important because it is where consciousness gives rise to itself. The question iswhat am I doing? At that moment words are superfluous... you just ask yourself "what am I doing?". For the first time in your entire life you allow your consciousness to intervene; because it has always been on the sidelines, there where you always listen to it, but you almost never pay attention to it. When you ask this question, there is an immense celebration in the higher spheres, because finally one more "awakened" their consciousness. Word gets out; living, dead, ancient and future appear with you and greet you welcoming you”.

 

Make sure that when you look at your palms you do so with such awareness that these three questions flood your attention:

1. Who I am?
2. Where I am?
3. What am I doing?

 

Adding these questions to the recurring act of looking at your hands will exercise the consciousness as much as Yoga exercises the body. If you can ask yourself the questions and answer them out loud, even better. In my personal experience, habituating these questions by looking at my hands, and doing so constantly throughout my day, guaranteed access to dreaming in a matter of a few days. Not only that, but it allowed me to sustain consciousness in the dream for a longer time.

 

The Totem

The meaning of the word totem is "to check”. In ancestral practices, this object has energetic characteristics that only its owner knows perfectly. This object must exist while awake, and its mechanized use will sooner or later be replicated in the dream. This object has specific features that make it easy to identify and take with you anywhere. This object is intended to make you recognize the reality in which you find yourself. The object will always behave in the same way while awake, but when you come to it in dreams, it will react completely different, letting you know that you are dreaming. A totem must meet three essential qualities in order for it to function as a key to dreaming, which it must recognize perfectly.

 

The first quality is that the totem should only be used for dreaming purposes.. This means that, if it's not an item you've recently acquired, you must have at least given it very little use. Avoid using charms or belongings that you already use regularly. The second quality is the material and practicality of the object. It is suggested that it be practical in size and weight, so that you can carry it anywhere. It does not matter if the material is flexible or solid, the important thing is that it is as resistant as possible and does not break easily. The third quality is the reacting of the object. This means that the second quality of the object must change only in the dream world. In fact, the reaction of the object can be defined by you consciously, because when it is in the plane of dreams, the object will react as you expect it to react there. It is very important that you mechanize the action of going to your totem during awaken state, so that you replicate this action when dreaming and it is the totem that tells you that you are not dreaming. We will call the action of using the totem to check if you are asleep "access movement”; same that can be popularly recognized as "verification" or "reality check".

 

I want to share with you some examples of people I have helped create their totem poles so that you can find inspiration in them. A young woman whom I had the opportunity to accompany during her dreaming process chose as a totem a bad or Hindu rosary. This was an item that he had just gotten on his last trip to India and had not had a chance to use. Said accessory could be used as a necklace and carried with him everywhere. He bad It contained several strands of red thread at one end, which measured about 5 centimeters long. After several proposals of ideas we were able to assign a reaction to the totem. The action to be machined daily would be to take the red lock of the bad while asking the 3 questions spontaneously during the day. Holding the lock, she would pull it each time she answered one of the questions, like combing the strands with the index finger and thumb of her right hand. She established as a reaction that, by pulling the lock of the bad during her dreams, the lock would come undone and the threads would remain between her fingers. During the vigil he only had to comb the lock of hair. bad while answering the 3 questions, while in the dream world, if she plucked the strands with her fingers (or anything else unexpected happened) it would mean she was dreaming. It was a matter of only two weeks for his totem to give him results.

 

Another case is that of a man who chose as a totem a hair tie that his daughter had recently given him. The gift seemed so sweet to him that he decided to keep it and make it his object of power to access the dream. The idea he had seemed simply brilliant to me. He decided to always carry the league inside his left rear pocket. Each time he “froze the scene” and answered the three questions, he would put his hand in his pocket and begin to stretch the rubber band with his thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers. The reaction in the vigil of the totem was that the league always returned to its natural state. But in the dream world, when he stretched the garter between his fingers, it did not return to its initial shape and remained stretched. The sensation that the garter did not oppose force when being stretched was a sign that he was dreaming.

 

One more example is that of a colleague who was just married. He had been ordering his Tonal for some time and felt that he needed a different access key to his hands that would allow him to dream more easily. So she chose her wedding ring as her totem. As it was a very good quality ring, its solidity and texture were very easy to recognize. His work of mechanization consisted of taking between his thumb and index finger of his right hand the ring that was on the ring finger of his left hand. While asking the 3 questions, he pressed hard on the ring, as if he wanted to bend or break it. He did it without concern, since the material of the ring guaranteed that he would not break it with the force of his fingers. Thus, he chose as a reaction of the totem that when exerting pressure on the ring during the plane of dreams, it would break, bend or vanish. This seemed to be his most effective method of accessing the dream, and he continued to use it for a long time.

 

You should know that the totem fulfills its function for a certain time and that it is advisable to change it when it no longer works for you. I know people who dreamed with their totem about 3-4 times before they had to change it. Likewise, I know of a few whom the totem has served for years. In my experience, I can tell you that the totem loses its power as an access to dreams when it has already been mechanized for a long period while awake. What I can advise you is to mechanize the act of activating your totem and once it works in the dream world, reduce the number of times you go to it while awake. Thus, you will determine for yourself a rhythmic and very conscious consultation of the totem, where you will not allow the obsession to go to it to end up disempowering your object.

 

After creating your own totem and defining your reaction, you should make it a habit to “freeze the scene” at least twice a day. One must feel that one is dreaming and that it is necessary to wake up from said dream. All three questions must be answered as precisely as possible, making yourself well aware of each of the answers. Consider that "waking up" can be the most difficult step, so you should not lose heart if you spend a long time and cannot access dreaming. No matter which path you use, what may prevent you from “wake up” in your dream is not the path itself, but rather the Tonal may not be sufficiently ordered yet. If this is the case, I suggest you insist on the suggested practices in preparation for dreaming. But if it is the case that you manage to access the dream, the structure that keeps the dream world solid can easily collapse due to the simple fact that consciousness is now intervening. It will then be necessary to start with the second step.

 

Second Step: Breathing

 

You don't need to delve too far into mysticism to understand why breath plays such a vital role in existence. Being one of the four elements that sustain life, it becomes a fundamental tool inside and outside of reverie to anchor yourself to the present moment. Any meditation technique around the world demands a particular rhythm of our breathing, but it is not the rhythm itself that promotes "awakening" but the fact of putting our attention on the breath. I don't know of a guided meditation or therapeutic session that doesn't ask you to take a deep breath from the start.

 

A correct breathing gives rise to a correct functioning of the brain. When air enters our lungs, oxygen is carried by the blood throughout the body, primarily to the brain. Oxygenating the brain is essential to maintain active consciousness for longer. For many ancient cultures, air is vital because it contains energy in itself.

 

When you are in the dream world and try to breathe, you will realize that it is as natural as when you are awake. However, in the dream it does not breathe air itself, but vital energy. That life energy will be needed to support the dream structure itself and prevent you from rushing out of it. Simply activating awareness requires energy, which is found in every breath you take. For this reason, it is necessary to relearn how to breathe properly to ensure that each breath makes the most of the energy that consciousness needs to remain active. The quality of the air you breathe is also very relevant, since this influences your healthy development both while awake and in the dream world.

 

Abdominal breathing

After learning dozens of breathing techniques during all my travels, I came to the conclusion that the most important way of breathing is the one we are born with. If you lie on your back and begin to breathe deeply, you may feel your belly fill without your being aware of it. This movement of the belly is lost when we make an effort to straighten the body, whether standing or sitting. By forgetting it, we concentrate the air we breathe in the chest and not in the belly. So try that when you breathe, your belly inflates naturally. It doesn't matter if you do it through the nose or the mouth. If you relearn to breathe in this way, in which the abdominal part is initially expanded as you inhale, you will have remembered the breathing technique that has been most effective for your body. If you want to increase the oxygenation levels of your breath, make sure that after you expand your abdomen on the inhale, your chest expands posteriorly. You will then realize that you can introduce more oxygen than normal to your body, and this will be enough to energize you and fill you with vitality. If you do it correctly, you will find that this breathing helps to correct your posture. The spine is aligned without the need to strain the neck and shoulders.

 

Having mentioned the "correct" way to breathe, you should consciously adopt this breath at the first step. That means that when you decide to do your access move, you'll need to focus on taking a deep breath using the aforementioned technique. You must remember at all times that the air itself is the energy that will help you maintain consciousness during sleep. For that reason, your breathing should be deep and with sober intensity.

 

Warrior's Breath

An esteemed colleague shared with me a technique for making the vital energy of the breath flow through the body of the dreamer and of the dreamed of in an integral and powerful way, which I share with you below.

 

The Warrior's Breath takes its name from the Mexican Aztec tradition, known for its marvelous blend of dance, art, and warfare. This breathing is done at all times through the mouth, and it is necessary to be aware of the expansion of the belly and chest (in the order mentioned). The most important thing when practicing this breath is to inhale and exhale in a similar way to wanting to heat something with your breath. This is very similar to wanting to warm your hands when it's cold, but not only do it on the exhale, but also make sure that the throat is in the same position and the air flows with the same intensity during the inhalation. You can try it right now in a comfortable position.

 

This breathing can be done in different rhythms, depending on the purpose of the practice. Specifically for reverie, it will be necessary to practice it slowly and deeply. A good tip I can give away is to count to 5 as you inhale and count to 7 as you exhale. The account must be slow and continuous; You can even refer to the second hand of any watch. Counting 5 and 7 can help the mind to locate itself in the present time, but it is not necessary that this count is always carried out. Counting allows you to establish an ideal rhythm to breathe, but attention must be subject to the quantity and quality of the air that is breathed. Warrior's Breath can be applied when performing the daily access move. Remember that your breathing will be the energy you need to stay "awake" in the dream.

 

Third Step: Attention

 

The third step is the practice of an element that has already been applied since the preparation of the dream, but that now enters a much more complex context: the attention. If the first three steps were metaphorically like walking, access would be the command that the mind sends to the body to move, breathing would be like the energy that the body requires during movement, and attention would be the ability to see where we are going. walking. Together, breathing and attention support the consistency and stability of the dream world, making it more coherent, solid and linear.. With attention, consciousness has a kind of indicator to hold on, not only to the present moment, but to any object that is part of it. Attention is simply the illuminated area of our perception bubble, but not its entirety.

 

When you have already managed to access the dream world, becoming fully aware that you are dreaming, and through breathing you have reinforced your vital energy to sustain it, the next thing is to fix your attention on any object around you. Since in the plane of dreams all the elements that surround you have inconsistent shapes and representations, fixing your attention requires a lot of energy and concentration. When seeing an object while awake, it maintains its integral qualities, but in the dream world everything is changeable and spontaneous. Part of the practice of dreaming consists of solidifying with consciousness (breathing and attention) everything that surrounds you. It is of the utmost importance that the practice of attention be carried out while awake, since it will be almost impossible to replicate it in the dream world if it is not fully trained. If in the dream (as well as in life in general) there is no attention, the experience is simply forgotten..

 

If you live in a world where your attention is caught by television shows, radio news, your social media wall, or the gossip that is told daily among friends and neighbors, our energy is being drained and consciousness is being manipulated. Consciousness probably “wakes up” at the moment that attention is paid to the swaying of the trees as they are caressed by the wind, or the serene sun rises on the horizon at dawn. As long as attention is kept on things that are impossible to verify through one's own experience, it will only become lethargic and prolong personal sleep. If the desire is to "wake up" from the dream, then you have to start focusing your attention where it is never placed. You have to pay attention to the details of everything, to the textures and movements. Pay attention to even the smallest sensations that the body experiences during the day. Take back the authority and mastery of your own attention and watch your reality reveal itself as it is.

 

The tags"

When we are born, our system of interpretation of reality is extremely active, and everything around us is new and amazing. Things look just the way they are, so any reaction we have to the outside world depends more on our physical senses than the very interpretation of what is happening. We are very attentive to everything and that is why it is so easy for us to learn. A baby is not afraid of insects because they have not had the experience of dealing with any sting or bite. He is simply capable of launching into the experience of touching or even eating one of those insects, and it is not until the insect responds with an attack or one of the parents intervenes with a scolding, that the baby creates the (now mental) imprint of that the animal is dangerous. I call this process of recognizing the world the “labeling of things”. As we explore the world we begin to label objects and people, just as we do with products in stores. We put the label "Dad" on our father's face, and when we open the label we find a detailed description that includes physical features, personal information, qualities and attributes, and so on. The information on the label helps us make assumptions and prejudices about things. Every time we see things around us, we have already labeled the objects based on previous labels we have attached to similar objects since the beginning of our lives. The process in which the brain reads the labels and assumes and decides based on the information from each one is mainly what keeps us dreaming, outside of the present moment.

 

An important step to refine attention is to simplify the information of all the labels that we have created of all the objects and characters throughout our lives. When we say the labels of objects and people, we do so in a totally subconscious process. However, it is important to become aware of this process and to do everything possible to "un-label" everything we see.

 

Unfortunately, the labels created are, for the most part, detailed based on experiences limited to our perception bubble and the way in which we interpret those experiences. Furthermore, by unlabeling things, the mind enters a state of contemplation where it can see the nature of what it is looking at and has the opportunity to create a new label. When you remove the tag from an object to rewrite it, it's best to make new ones as simple and clean as possible. The reason labels need to be simple is because of the amount of energy the mind spends processing the labels when making decisions. Also, the less information each label has, the less bias there will be about those things, including people and places. The simple fact of considering unlabeling any object to relabel it already puts your attention to work and immerses you in a heightened state of consciousness, where focus plays an important role in creating the new label.

 

De-labeling is an important process for refining our attention and seeing the world in a more clear and objective way. To remove labels, you need to be aware that they exist and be willing to question and review them. In some cases, we can simply recognize that our labels are limited and may not fully or accurately represent reality. In other cases, we may actively seek new experiences and perspectives to expand our existing labels and add new labels to our repertoire.

 

To remove existing labels, we can start by paying attention to our thoughts and reflecting on the assumptions we make about the world and the people around us. We may wonder if our labels are accurate and based on solid evidence or if they are biases or stereotypes. We can also try to view people and objects with an open and curious mind, without immediately judging or labeling them. By doing this, we can allow our experiences and perceptions to unfold more naturally and organically, without being constrained by our old labels.

 

When one removes the labels on a person, it can be noticed that all the qualities we assume are lost, to the point where even the person's name does not seem to match. It is a very strange sensation that also appears when we remove the labels from an object. The word designated to the object tends to lose meaning, and the object becomes more precise and our mind more attentive to it. It is important to be aware that labels do not fully define a person or object and that they can limit our perception of them. By removing the labels, we are opening our minds to new possibilities and a deeper and more authentic perception of reality.

 

Also, it is important to remember that the untagging process is ongoing and never ends. There will always be new labels and perspectives to discover and explore, and we must be open and willing to review and update our labels as we learn and grow. By keeping our labels simple and clean, we can help our minds process information more efficiently and reduce bias and prejudice that may be influencing our perceptions.

 

Attention Exercises

I would love to share very effective exercises to regain control of your attention and strengthen the muscles of awareness. These practices should be considered as training to be carried out in the waking world, and should not necessarily be replicated during dreams. Not only do they help maintain the solidity of the dream world by "awakening" in it, but they will also enhance regular life, improving focusing abilities. The purpose is to work and strengthen attention, which will be crucial to experience lucid dreaming for as long as possible. All the exercises are inspired by different traditions and ancient teachings of the world, and they simplify a whole process of personal learning to achieve the dream.

 

displacement of planes

Try to locate yourself in some open place where you can identify objects at different distances from each other. A good example is any large space in nature where trees are the objects of the exercise. Take a comfortable position and start the warrior's breath. After a couple of minutes, open your eyes wide and locate the nearest object in front of you and fix your gaze on it as you inhale. As you exhale, locate another object that is slightly more distant than the first and keep your gaze fixed on one point on the object. Inhale and shift your gaze to another object more distant from the previous one, penetrating the view at a fixed point of the object. With each inhalation and exhalation, you will fix your gaze on an object further away from the previous one. Try as hard as you can to “inhale” or “exhale” the object you are looking at, thus establishing a deep connection with it. Make sure that during the exercise the only thing that moves is your eyes and not your head or the rest of your body.

 

 

The objective of the exercise is to make you perceive the totality of the things you are looking at, as well as to allow your eyes to move quickly and precisely. If you are unable to do the exercise in an open space, place two small objects in front of you. The first 2 meters away and at a height below your eyes. The second one twice as far away and slightly higher than the first object. Now place the index finger of your left hand about 10 centimeters from the tip of your nose and the index finger of your right hand at the height of your nose, but with your arm straight. The distribution of your fingers and objects should form a straight line. Now start by looking at the fingertip closest to your eyes, “breathing it in” and “breathing it out”. On the next inhalation, fix your gaze on the fingertip of your outstretched arm. Thus, continue with the rest of the objects, and once you have reached the last one, return looking from the furthest to the closest, always taking a deep breath in each object. After a few sets, undo the sequence and gaze at the objects in random order, making sure to "breathe" each object.

 

following the flame

You can get a candle preferably that can stand on its own on any flat surface. The lit candle is placed on any small table about 1 meter high (preferably made of non-flammable material). If you do not have any furniture to put the candle, you can place it on the floor. Make sure you have at least a 3-4 meter radius from the glider where there are no objects to trip over. Now you begin to walk around the candle, but do not take your eyes off the light that the flame provides. It doesn't matter which way you walk; the only thing that matters is that while you circle the sail you don't take your eyes off it. You can start the journey in a clockwise direction and go around it slowly for at least 3 turns. Then the direction of walking is changed to the opposite side of the hands of the clock, and at all times the view is kept on the fire. While walking, concentrate on practicing the warrior's breath.

 

You can try to vary the movement of the body with respect to the sail. You may want to twist your torso while walking, or perhaps jump instead of walk. You can even walk in reverse (ie backwards) to demand more attention. An extremely powerful exercise that some advanced practitioners do is to imitate the walk of any animal of their choice while looking at the fire. Some choose birds like the eagle and move their arms as if trying to fly. Others decide to be agile like a jaguar or ape, using every limb as such. You do what you do and how you do it, without taking your eyes off the candle and concentrating on maintaining the warrior's breath during the exercise. It is recommended to practice it in open spaces and in private. It can also be a good reason to live with small children and take the opportunity to practice paying attention to the whole group. Personally, I would not recommend replacing the candle with an artificial light source, as fire has a special effect on attention. Therefore, the necessary precautions must be taken to avoid accidents and fires.

 

eye clock

For this exercise it will be necessary to take as a reference the hand clocks and the distribution of the numbers in them. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Inhale and look up, that is, at 12 o'clock. Exhale and look at 1 o'clock, pointing your eyes up/right. Inhale and move your sight to 2 o'clock; exhale and move your gaze all the way to your right, at 3 o'clock. Continue every hour on the clock, breathing in and out in sync.

 

 

If you complete the cycle correctly, you will start again at 12 o'clock inhaling, ready to repeat the exercise. Do at least 7 laps with calm and deep breathing throughout the clock. If you wish, you can perform the exercise counterclockwise for another 7 cycles. You can also do the practice with your eyes open; If this is the case, I recommend using a chart known as a “Tibetan eye” that you can easily find on the internet.

 

tracing lights

In neurosciences, the ability to visualize images in our minds that evoke the areas of the brain related to vision is known as the Ascending Reticular Activation System (or by its acronym SARA). It is very similar to the mechanism that allows us to access different sensory stimuli in a mental way and that we call “imagination”. The reticular activation system is an indispensable tool to train attention that, exercised correctly, can speed up the manifestation process. The amazing thing about SARA is that it works even with objects or situations that could not exist in waking reality. With the typical example of imagining the pink elephant, it is possible to realize the capacity that SARA has to allow the mind to visualize what does not exist. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, claim to have used their imagination (specifically their SARA) to develop the proven theories that are now written in physics books.

 

The SARA will then be used to visualize some particular geometric figures being drawn by lights of specific colors. You have to imagine a dark room in which a sparkler is lit, like the ones children use to entertain themselves at Christmas festivities. Have you noticed how sparks leave trails of light as they move? These lines or traces of light are what we are going to try to imagine. Next, I will mention the first exercise in a simple and detailed way, so that the nature and essence of the exercise is understood and can be applied to other more complex geometric figures.

 

Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Start by imagining a red light source in the dark. The light source should be similar to the sparkler mentioned above, only it doesn't have to emit sparks from its center (although if it's easier for you to imagine it literally as a flare, feel free to do so). Now visualize the center of light moving in the shape of a horizontal 8, equal to the infinity symbol. This symbol is known as a lemniscate. The right side of the lemniscate should go clockwise, while the left side will rotate counterclockwise. At all times there must be only one source of light origin, and the trail that follows it must be the same color as its origin. Once the light has completed a few cycles, proceed to hold each cycle in a rhythmic fashion. Now focus on the warrior's breathing and make sure that each time you breathe in and out, the color of the light trail that forms the lemniscate will progressively move through the light spectrum until it reaches violet. Inhale and exhale observing (with eyes closed) the light forming the red lemniscate. Breathe in and out watching it change to orange. Continue with each breath towards the color yellow, green, blue, indigo and finally violet.

 

 

In the same way that you have traced the lemniscate with lights in your imagination, you can proceed to practice the following geometric figures following the same dynamics of colors and speed that you used for the lemniscate. Try rotating the following figures while the light center traces the trail of light forming the figure.

 

Pulse

Spiral

5 Pointed Star

 

Triangle and Circle

 

Contemplation

How long can you look at an object without starting to make judgments about it or simply wandering off into completely unrelated topics? Contemplation is the act of observing in inner silence. When contemplating, there is no internal dialog reciting the detailed information from the tags. It is precisely removing the label from things and seeing them as they are. Contemplation gives the mind the power to act much faster and more effectively than when judging or (over)analyzing.

 

Anyone would be amazed at everything that can be done in situations of death. For example, if someone meets a puma in the middle of the jungle and it growls ferociously, I assure you that the person will not have time to think if the animal is cute, or if it lives nearby, or if it has a family, or if it is still You are on time to arrive at an important appointment. The brain will stop reading labels and will only recognize the danger of dying. If the person has enough personal power, they will be able to run faster than anyone could imagine and the person could even climb a tree to save their life. The risk of dying is an extreme situation that it is not recommended to seek or induce at all. However, just becoming aware that there is always the possibility of dying can lead us to contemplate life itself from a much broader and enriching perspective.

 

To work on contemplation and avoid labels from preventing us from seeing things as they are, it will be necessary to train attention and redirect internal dialogue when we look at something. A powerful exercise that Pedro shared with me was to describe the objects and people we look at through sensations and not prejudices. He told me that when I look at something, start an internal dialogue in which I answer the following questions:

1. What color am I looking at?
2. What sound does what I look at make? (if it is static, what sound would it make if I tapped it?)
3. What is its texture and how will it feel to touch it?
4. What taste will it produce in my mouth?
5. What scent(s) does what I see have?

 

You may consider answering the questions mentally, paying full attention to feeling the answers. It is necessary to activate our sensory system with the mind, since only then can we concentrate on contemplating the object. You may try to answer the questions without judgment, without thinking about past experiences or things that other people have said about what you are looking at. You have to concentrate on the present moment and answer the questions objectively and punctually. To enhance contemplation, it must be anchored to the breath, so that there is no way for the mind to wander. If you are not thinking about any of the 5 questions or about the object you are looking at itself, you should focus on your breathing. If you are able to respond satisfactorily with your senses, you can give way to silence your mind, just to confirm that the responses are consistent with what you are looking at. It is very important to give in to the internal silence when answering the questions, since at that moment you will have the opportunity to rewrite the information on the label if necessary. Otherwise, you will find yourself contemplating in peace and serenity. Do this exercise with dedication and regularity. In a short time the internal dialogue will be able to be silenced more and more until staying in a state of contemplation without even thinking about it.

 

Dream Anchoring

By practicing all the above exercises, one can keep attention on any object that is decided upon during sleep. The important thing is that, regardless of the access movement that has been executed to "wake up" in the dream, the attention must be focused on some specific point around one. This means that, if it was accessed by looking at the hands, the gaze must be directed consciously to any other point in the environment that is not the hands. If there is an easily recognizable object in front of you, you should look at it for as long as possible, concentrating on your breathing and contemplating the object. From that moment on, two anchor points must be established in which attention can be held while not looking at the environment. The first anchor point at all times will be the breath, ensuring that it is deep and uninterrupted. The second anchor point will be the totem (or the hands in case of accessing with them).

 

The experience to anchor yourself to the dream world will be to alternate the attention between any point on the outside, the breath and the totem.

 

The breath and totem are likely to remain solid and steady, especially if you have already worked on keeping your breathing deep and calm. But the object that you decide to look around can undergo transformations or deformations very quickly. If when looking around you do not find the initial object on which you focused your attention, you should fix your gaze on any other point and keep your attention there for as long as possible. You have to do your best to keep your attention on the object and, as soon as you feel that you are losing energy or that sleep is collapsing, return to the anchoring points again. Doing this same exercise while awake can further prepare you for the moment you wake up in one of your dreams. The exercise should be performed at least a couple of times before moving on to the next and final step of reverie.

 

Step Four: Intent

 

The reverie really begins until this step is reached, for it is through intent that the manifestation of the possible and the impossible happens. Remember that intent is the force with which any available energy is given action to manifest what the will desires. Successfully completing the three previous steps does not guarantee that the attempt will succeed in the same way. However, if the training has been carried out with discipline and impeccable intent, the attempt will happen in a fluid and natural way. There will be nothing that can stop you from trying and achieving anything in the dream. There are basically two paths to manifest through intent within the dream world, which must be experienced in their entirety to exercise dream mastery.

 

Dream Paths

The first way is to allow the dream itself to propitiate the elements and circumstances on which one must act or try to consciously form part of the plot.. This implies that, after anchoring with attention, the anchoring exercise should be maintained for as long as possible until it is decided to exercise action in the dream. If the dream proposes a social situation in which several characters are involved, you can try to talk to one of them and ask specific questions. You can do research on the name of the characters or how they are related to one. On the other hand, if the dream suggests arbitrary and meaningless situations, one can interact with curiosity using all the senses to influence the environment. You can touch, look, listen, smell and taste whatever appears in front of you. While doing this, you must be fully aware that you are in a dream, and that you are in control at all times. With this method, improvisation and exploration are exercised in the present moment. I personally believe that it is the easiest way of dreaming to practice, but the one that in the end can give the best results to readjust and realign our life during wakefulness. Thus, one remains with greater personal power in the present moment and it is possible to stay "awake" for a longer time throughout the experience of life.

 

The second way to manifest in the dream world with intent is through pre-access planning.. It is possible to decide in advance about situations and places in which you want to be involved and pay attention to leading yourself to them. This requires defining exactly the main elements that you want to manifest during the dream and thus be able to elaborate them with the intent. This technique requires greater focus and energy, since undoing the original plot of the dream and readjusting it at will is a highly concentrated process. The instability of the dream world requires that any alteration of it be sustained by consciousness in total temperance and determination. The more orderly the Tonal is, the easier it is for the attempt to succeed. Manifesting objects, people or situations detached from reality has nothing to do with the difficulty in achieving it. The fluidity of the manifestation itself depends on the physical and mental cleansing that has been carried out. Precisely because of the difficulty of this way of dreaming, its implications may be a greater application of energy and, consequently, tiredness upon awakening or constant sleep collapses. The most effective recommendation that I can suggest is to carry out the preparation practices with discipline and dedication. It must be remembered that these exercises are designed to reduce stress levels and improve concentration, retention and action skills on whatever plane consciousness is on. Despite the foregoing, using this dreaming technique may lead to tremendously revealing experiences. Dreaming in this way offers an extraordinary expansion of the bubble of perception, so that the human experience is transcended to the extraordinary and ethereal. In this chapter, emphasis will be placed on different paths that can be taken when choosing this path of dreaming.

 

During the intent step it is very easy to develop interpretations that, instead of granting understanding and liberation, create further confusion or reinforce the limitation that one wishes to overcome. have a guide clarifying doubts about dream experiences is crucial for healthy personal development. You can go to any psychologist specialized in hypnosis or to any dream practitioner with several years of experience. Dreaming seeks to improve life, not complicate it. Precisely by disposing of the intent during dreams, the defense mechanisms of the unconscious will play a very important role in the process of manifestation in the dream world. Despite the fact that the interpretation systems of the mind should be kept as inactive as possible, it is normal that during the first practices one wants to understand in detail the meaning of what appears in their dreams. When dreaming, a meaning is not necessarily sought, but it is intended that the dreamer and the dreamed be the ones who elaborate the meanings and circumstances necessary to solve and clarify obstacles that are already located, or that are about to be revealed.

 

Once you are "awake", aware that you are dreaming, and that you have managed to sustain yourself with your breath and attention, it will be sought that consciousness directs the vehicle with which you move through the dream world. The power to move said vehicle will allow access to special information located in the personal and collective unconscious. The situations that one is capable of creating will lead to the unification of ordinary consciousness with that of the double. The dreamer and the dreamed will be one, and the totality of oneself will be known. The information that will be presented is virtually real and vitally useful for a process of self-discovery and transpersonal growth. That is why it will be very important to practice both paths of manifestation through intent, preferably in the order mentioned above.

 

Next, I leave some scenarios and places to which the attempt can be directed during the dream, which Pedro openly shared with me during our meetings. I have personally tried all of them, and I can assure you that the impressions generated after experiencing them have been deeply healing and empowering. I stress once again the importance of practicing them with the assistance of a specialized guide who contributes to the interpretation of the experiences.

You have to trust your personal ability and power to take the attempt to the limits of your imagination..

 

Conclusion of cycles

During the course of our existence, all the attitudes that we learn in our early childhood are repeated, regardless of whether they are constructive or not. There are events that we experience over and over again, which only drain our energy and destabilize our Tonal. Every time our body is subjected to stimuli linked to limiting imprints, some neuro-associations of the brain interpret that they are "normal" processes and the unconscious allows them to happen. The reason is simply that we learned by repeating, and we rarely repeat methods to get rid of suffering. This is how we create "cycles" in our life, which stagnate our energy and limit our personal power. The worst thing is that consciousness often knows in advance that these cycles are destructive to our health (physical and mental), but it is simply very difficult for us to get out of them. Remember that it is the imprints stored in your brain that reinforce the repetition of corrosive attitudes. They are knots that must be untied. Recapitulation is one of the most effective methods to untie these knots, but it is a technique that requires time and dedication on the part of the practitioner.

 

However, we can try to design a present experience that allows us to close any cycle that is pending completion. There are certain events in particular in our life that must be lived consciously and that accelerate the process of emotional healing. They are events of personal transformation, in which we recreate imprints that fill us with power and liberation. These events are usually mainly conversations, achievements or simple contemplations of unusual events. Those psychologists who use hypnosis as a work tool are specialists in designing and recreating events that promote the restructuring of suffering imprints. By putting intent to manifest a specific event in the dream, you will increase the chances that it will manifest sooner or later. You have to try to dream of a particular situation that leads to closing unfinished cycles to reinforce the liberation processes.

 

In order to induce any scene that culminates a particular cycle, it is necessary to understand in depth the origin of said cycle and the agreement that is sustained to remain active. Once again, I recommend that, if you do not know the conditions of the cycle that you want to carry out, you go to a specialist who can guide you in the creation of said event. Time and energy should not be wasted trying to dream up events that will only further confuse or cause more harm. Only the wisdom that comes from the heart is capable of offering light and knowledge to design a dream in which, through experience, you can heal imprints that still cause you suffering. It is worth trying to allow consciousness to live in dreams what is impossible for it to live while awake, so that the totality of being incorporates the experience deeply. Regardless of whether it is in the dream world or in the waking world, the sensory experience is what leads the body and mind to assimilate whatever is desired..

 

An interesting case that I can share is that of a man whom I had the opportunity to guide in his learning to dream. The man fell deeply in love with a very attractive young woman. We had been investigating the practice of dreaming for some time, so on a couple of occasions he met her on the dream plane. He recounts that, over time, his attempt led him to both fall in love and become intimate while awake, which caused the man to develop a strong codependency towards her. After a few weeks of not seeing each other, the man decided to recreate various experiences in the dream world where he could frequent her. In fact, he dreamed about her 5 or 6 more times, according to what he says. Each encounter that he shared in the sessions with me was satisfactory, as it contained important messages and teachings for his process of detachment. His last meeting with her through dreams consisted of a walk through high hills, from where he could see an immense river and hundreds of birds flying. After a pleasant talk and some gestures of physical affection, the man whispered to the young woman "we're free; for love I let you go”. Then she turned into an eagle and flew over the clear skies of that wonderful and surreal place. According to the practitioner, this experience was so vivid that it allowed him to cope with the situation of codependency while he was awake and led him to complete his process of detachment.

 

In the same way, through a dream, a woman whom I also had the opportunity to guide, was able to face a delicate situation that had limited her for more than a decade and that was related to her mother. During her adolescence, she had confronted a “tyrant” mother, reluctant to her daughter's decisions, especially related to her profession. Due to the conditioning of the mother based on personal experiences, she dedicated a large part of her time to decreeing what her daughter's life would be like if she chose the path of the arts. He assured that he would become a "lazy", drug addict and lacking in money. Despite the fact that she denied these precepts, the love she had for her mother was so great that her subconscious mind ended up believing the woman's words. Years later, when the woman evaluated her situation, she realized that all of that had become subjectively true. She saw herself wearing the same glasses as her mother. So, in a spontaneous reverie, he had the opportunity to face his mother face to face and tell her everything that he hadn't had the courage to say years ago. In the dream she was aware that she was in the dream plane, and that indeed no matter how far they went with the discussion, it was all just a dream. His way of speaking to his mother was severe and somewhat aggressive. She felt that she could at that moment, with the age that she already had, impose herself in the same way that she did when she was younger. According to her account, the more stagnant feelings she expressed to her, the smaller she became in size. When she woke up, she understood that that dream had been a tool for emotional relief, and that this waking confrontation with her mother was no longer necessary. This even led him to feel compassion for her, knowing how much it could make him suffer if the situation had happened while he was awake. In the end, the experience was enriching in every way, as she was able to heal a deep wound and rebuild the perception she had of her own present and of her relationship with her mother. Today she is able to deeply thank for her mother's teachings and incomprehensible love.

 

These examples can help design right now the scene that needs to be experienced during dreaming to heal any lingering emotional wounds. Emotions during dreaming occur so lucidly that an obsession with recreating scenes should be avoided.. The dream world must be used as an extension of reality, but not as a flight from it. If someone tries to sleep with other people, who are not their partner, just for pleasure, they will be experiencing cheating and betrayal anyway, because it is the subconscious mind that knows they are in a relationship. In the same way, if someone seeks to dream over and over again with a loved one who has passed away, the natural power of detachment will never manifest itself to make said person mature in their Tonal. I personally recommend going to this resource in a maximum of 3 sessions, that is, three successful dreams. I consider it healthy to allow yourself to complete cycles in this number of sessions because the body must also be allowed to integrate dream experiences during wakefulness and apply its teachings to daily life. I reiterate the importance of seeing a mental health specialist to act as a guide and counselor when designing an experience of this type during dreaming.

 

Flying

One of the most wonderful and revealing experiences that can be lived in dreams is flying. Fly like birds do; feel the body so light that we can take it to the heights and move it wherever we want. The human mind is believed to be capable of the feat of recreating flight thanks to evolutionary genetic components inherited from animals over millions of years. People who have experienced flying in their dreams describe a very familiar ease and freedom, as if it had not been done for the first time. The mind is so powerful that it is capable of allowing us to experience an event for which we are not designed while awake and that we will probably never be able to enjoy. The wonder of flying causes a magical sensation of expansion, pleasant and infinite. It is definitely a transcendent event for consciousness, since it metaphorically represents the breaking of significant limitations in our lives.

 

There are many reasons why this act is relevant to any empowerment process that we find ourselves living while awake. When flying, the representation of access to freedom that transcends the body is manifested through the intent. The unconscious interprets a "quantum leap" that transmutes fears into power. Flying is merely a spiritual experience, for the consciousness, which has been conditioned for years by the physical laws of the world, is subjected to a shock that is completely out of the ordinary. This sensation communicates to the unconscious the possibility of breaking similar limitations conditioned by the natural laws of the world. Thus, the nervous system takes this sensation as strong proof of the ability to overcome obstacles. In addition to all of the above, the sensation of flying is so fun and joyful that it connects us deeply with the innocence and spontaneity of our "inner child".

 

To fly during the dream, it is enough to try. You can tell yourself, as if you were trying to convince a skeptic, that tonight you will be able to fly like birds. During the day, activities must be stopped to find a moment of serenity in which the body is allowed to imagine the sensation of flying. You can even try, but not with the physical body, but with consciousness. Imagine that, no matter where you are, a translucent body identical to the one you already have comes out of the interior and rises through the skies. In this exercise, consciousness is allowed to feel the translucent body rise while still perceiving the physical body anchored to the earth. For no reason is it suggested to carry out this practice at heights or in any place where there is a risk of a dangerous fall.

 

In case the flight is difficult to practice, even already experiencing the dream, it will be necessary to begin to lighten the weight of daily life. Getting rid of everything that is considered as weight, physical or metaphorical, promotes the free flight of the double. What limits us to live the flight is everything that roots us to the ground. This rooting can be represented in mechanical acts and routines that keep our double subjected to said acts. It is not promoted for any reason to "unroot from the earth", but rather, to allow the decalcification of said roots. If you have put into practice all the exercises that were presented in previous chapters to command the Tonal, you will have gathered enough personal power to put the attempt into flight.

 

We can compare the sensation of flying in the dream world with the floating of the body on water. Many times it is even necessary to move the body as if it were inside some fluid to allow the double to float on air during dreams. The difference is that when flying there is no weight of a fluid, but rather, the natural force of gravity keeping the body of the dreamer towards the ground. It is very important that, when dreaming that the body flies, the consciousness clearly knows that it is dreaming. Sometimes, when trying to lift the body off the ground in a dream, there is the sensation that it is floating with difficulty, as if something were pulling the body back to the ground. The knowledge of being in the dream world empowers the dreamer to lighten all weight almost instantly and allow consciousness to move at will.

 

I want to share a position of power that lightens the energetic weight and stimulates the flight during the dream. The name of this movement is "Hug to Infinity", named after Pedro when he shared it with me. You have to make sure you are in a comfortable space, free from distracting judgments and prejudices, preferably in nature or somewhere where you can contemplate the open sky.

 

1. Stand upright, relax your posture completely and keep your eyes closed throughout the movement. Make sure that the shoulders and hips are relaxed, as well as the knees slightly bent and the feet at a distance of approximately 50 cm. Take a deep breath 3 times, allowing the air to enter the abdomen first and go up to the ribcage, expanding it.
2. On the fourth inhalation, begin to slowly raise your arms up and chest toward the sky. Keep the palms of the hands in the same direction that the chest is carried. This movement should not cause tension in the back, so the height to which the hands are raised should not exceed the height of the shoulders. Slowly bring your open hands out to the sides as you inhale deeply. The position that is acquired now is as if one wanted to hug someone. It is important to focus on keeping the shoulders as light as possible, avoiding any tension in the arms and around the neck.
3. Inhale again as the palms are fully opened and pulled back, still at shoulder height. At the same time, turn your face towards the sky, keeping your eyes closed. Hold the air in the lungs in this last position for as long as possible (as long as it does not induce fainting due to lack of oxygen). At this time it is extremely important to concentrate on the sensations that occur only in the upper half of the body and visualize yourself in the heights.
4. Then exhale slowly and bring your hands to the opposite shoulders, as if you were giving yourself a hug, squeezing your body tightly and slightly arching your back, as if you were trying to enter a cocoon.
5. Repeat step 3 and 4 at least two more times.

 

This movement stimulates similar sensations that are experienced during the dream flight. Opening your arms represents the openness and lightness that you have to experience. The hug symbolizes the trust and sense of protection necessary to allow the flight to happen. Make sure that, when you inhale and open your arms, the image that you visualize with your eyes closed is that of already flying. If done correctly, the focus will be solely on the upper body.

 

That afternoon was like the flight of the eagle. You could even hear the steps of Silence going up the path that leads to the temple. And brother Sun looked like a great ripe fruit slowly falling from the branches of Heaven into the arms of the mountains.

Quetzacóatl, sitting with his brothers, contemplated the ripples of water playing among the stones. And one of them asked him: Why don't you tell us about the mystery of death? and He remained silent for a few moments, as if remembering, and then he spoke to them like this:

“Once there was a worm called temictli walking along the rough surface of an ahuehuetl trunk. A butterfly saw him, fluttering playing through the air, and landing before him said:

- Hello, brother from the past! Do you by any chance know that there will come days in the future, in which, abandoning that earthly envelope, you become a flyer like me and ascend towards Heaven?

And the worm answered: -Yes. That's what my parents taught me, and they were taught by my grandparents. They said that after this, there is another life where we can free ourselves from the chains of the Earth and ascend winged to new dimensions. But I don't believe it, and although in my days and nights I think I'm walking towards something, my imagination stops at this Plane, where I adore the pulsing of the sap and the palpitating of the leaves when they caress my feet.

Then the butterfly fluttered and, flying up, disappeared. Several days passed, which for the worm were years, and it noticed that the end was coming. He went to a protruding pine branch and when the sun went down one afternoon he made his grave of silk, lying down to wait for the coming of death.

And in time came the Spring of his birth as a butterfly. It spread its wings and swift as an arrow it lost itself in the air giving its first flaps towards the morning sun. And when he was flying, he saw a temictli worm laboriously climbing up the trunk of an ahuehuetl and landing in front of it, he said:

Hello brother from the past! Do you happen to know that days will come….?”

 

-Caiatl Acotl
Thus Spoke Quetzalcoatl

 

Summoning the masters

Carl Jung spoke of a collective unconscious, the place where the archetypes (abstractly encrypted information) of all living beings on the planet are housed. He assured that dreams were a tool to access this site located in deep levels of the dream world and in which only with consciousness one could navigate in depth. in the stream New Age It is known as "Akáshikos Records", the latter being a cosmic information bank where all the information of everything that has happened and will happen is found, including the universal archetypes. The idea of accessing the information or codes that shape existence is one of the highest longings of spiritual seekers of all ages.

 

During the dream it is possible to evoke the spirit of people and deities, with the intent of accessing particular information that clarifies and enriches the path of our life. The word "spirit" is used to describe the transcendent essence of the entity to be evoked. This means that the figure that is evoked serves as a powerful means of interpretation that grants transcendental information. So, it is possible to evoke any entity whose personality facilitates the understanding of said information necessary for our growth and evolution.

 

Evoking the teachers is an act of love. When dreaming, you can call people who represent an important guide in learning. The call is achieved simply by bringing to mind those we wish to evoke, or calling them with the word and trusting that they will present themselves.. It is not about making a person with whom you need to close a cycle appear, but someone who is considered a teacher of many. People who have left a special legacy through their teachings and actions, and who can be honored as mentors. It doesn't matter if these people are still alive or not; the spirit (its essence) remains in the structure of the unconscious, and these personalities are essential to reconstruct generational memories. They also help to glimpse the mysteries of time, synchronizing with the flow of existence and glimpsing all those events, that have been and will be, at an individual and collective level.

 

Masters Levels

The first level of masters are those people we met in our life and who left special teachings in us.. Relatives, teachers (school and spiritual) and friends are part of this level. Evoking these personalities is relatively easy during dreaming, and they can pave the way for higher level summonings. It is important to remember that when evoking first level teachers, we do not contact the physical entity or its psyche, so the information obtained should not necessarily be interpreted literally. For example, if you evoke a living familiar who represents your teacher, and the teacher tells you that he or she will soon die, it does not necessarily mean that he or she will die physically. It is likely that the message of the dream is about a metaphorical death of everything that person represents, and thus make way for something new. Some questions that we can consciously ask these teachers are:

• What is your opinion and teaching about "such" thing?
• How can I solve "such" personal issue?

 

The second level includes personalities of a global scale. Human beings who have been and will be remembered for generations and who hold deep values that allow different societies to evolve in consciousness and spirit.. Mahatma Gandhi, Plato, Siddartha Gautama, Jesus Christ, Nezahualcóyotl? ...you name it. By evoking the spirit of these people, inner wisdom is reactivated, since it is the divine essence within them that will produce the exchange of information. Likewise, the information coming from the collective unconscious is at your disposal, and it is through the spirits of the teachers of the second level that said information reaches us. They can reveal the mysteries of time and deliver evolutionary knowledge of the utmost importance. Second level masters are timeless; that is to say, that they do not necessarily come from the historical past of humanity, but also exist in the future with bodies that are still unknown to us. Some questions that we can consciously ask these teachers are:

• What is your opinion and teaching about "such" thing?
• How can I solve "such" personal issue?
• What really happened during his time in this world?
• What will happen if you act in "such" manner?
• What led you to be who you are?

 

The third level of masters includes deities from any world culture. These entities are difficult to evoke due to their archetypal complexity. High personal power is required to summon an inorganic (non-physical) entity, and even more so, to understand the message it has to deliver. The purer the intent during the evocation of these teachers, the easier the summoning will happen. That means having no expectations and allowing awareness to view the experience with humility, surrender, and serenity. Evoking the masters of this level can lead us to interpret the experience in an esoteric way and, in the process, miss the primordial essence of the message. Be aware that these deities are archetypes built by the collective and personal unconscious, and that they represent complex human attributes that require complex evolutionary interpretation to be applied in the physical world. The information revealed by these teachers is more related to the development of our Nagual, but has a proportional impact on our Tonal. Some questions that we can consciously ask these teachers are:

• What is the meaning of "such" concept?
• Where is (the teacher) now?
• How can I know who I am?
• Where do I have to go?
• What should I do about "such" thing?
• What does my environment or my planet need now?

 

Take care to avoid obsessing over long-term relationships with any of these entities in dreams. The nature of the dream world is to be changeable, and that is precisely what this plane offers us. The goal of dreaming is not to make all dream elements completely consistent, but to allow the change itself to lead us to experience the diversity of our existence.. The level of reality of those experiences is reflected in their interpretation through the reactions of our nervous system. So allow the nature of the dream world to lead you to explore varied situations that contribute in different ways to the full experience of life.

 

Places of power

Just as the spirit of people can manifest during dreams to guide our spiritual experience, it is also possible to go to places with special energetic characteristics. Virtual spaces in which our Tonal identifies and that activate centers of the bubble of perception are known as “places of power”, allowing energy to flow to increase the bubble. The places of power are those geographical points, commonly embraced by stunning nature, where it is possible to identify said energy flow due to its notable influence on the Tonal. What makes these sites "places of power" may be their natural energetic qualities, or the meanings imposed by individual and collective consciousness.

 

Those places of power that exist while awake are places where our psyche has established a deep emotional and sensory connection. Probably some mountain, river, or even temple, where the sensitive and receptive Tonal has been experienced. All of us can think of a place or corner that we find throughout our lives in which we experience a special connection with the Whole. Those spaces maintain their energetic qualities within our psyche, and are capable of rekindling the sensations that they provoked in us by going to them, whether while awake or dreaming.. These places have the spirit (essence) of all the elements that make them up; mountains, plants, animals, earth, air, water and fire (light). There are mainly three types of places of power, regardless of whether their existence is on the dream plane or in waking life.

 

The first one is the place of personal power. This is a site where the individual develops a special bond through its influence. It is usually represented by a place where a situation of deep serenity or empowerment was experienced. The Tonal then keeps the qualities of the experience and evokes them each time it is in the same place. A colleague claims that his favorite place of personal power is a cave located on top of a hill in northern Mexico. She says that getting there, in addition to having been an unforgettable adventure that she lived in solitude, allowed her to glimpse moments from her past in which she had suffered and acquired the power to reconfigure and heal them. I explained to him that it did not necessarily mean that the cave had its own power, but that the process he had gone through to get to that distant point also mattered, and that his Tonal then prepared to be aligned after the stimulus of the physical, mental and spiritual effort that was required.

 

A woman whom I had the opportunity to guide in her process of empowerment shared with me a dream in which she was sitting on a pier, located right in the center of a turquoise lagoon. Not only did he state that the emotions of peace and temperance manifested in the dream were clear and vivid, but the imagery was so simple that this place of power allowed him to more easily evoke his masters and engage in conversations with them on the dock.

 

One more wonderful case is that of a man who managed to heal his relationship with his father during an empowerment workshop. During an exercise in which she had to visualize a moment in which she experienced deep support from her father, she was able to visualize the park where she learned to ride a bicycle with him. The scene turned out to be so powerful that the man decided to use the park as a place of power to continue his work of affirmation and visualization.

 

The second type of locus of power is the collective.. These are virtual spaces in which a group of people pour a common meaning or set of meanings. This is how communities and nations can find in these spaces opportunities to expand their perception. A clear example is the mitotes in which Mexican shamans meet with the intent of crossing into the consciousness of the Nahual as a group. They decide then to attend to a place of power together, and in common agreement, they direct their energy in expanding their Tonal. Said place of power can be accessed in a personal way, but the collective intent usually activates its true and authentic purpose in a precise way.

 

A group of people who access a place of collective power can, together, obtain power more easily than individually. A more practical example of places of collective power are temples or churches; in them the collective intent may be to establish a link with a superior force and it is easier to achieve this when surrounded by people with the same purpose. And just like the place of personal power, these can be accessed while awake or while dreaming.

 

The third type is the place of cosmic power. These places of power transcend the limitations of reality imposed by the laws of our planet, leading consciousness to experience sensations totally out of the ordinary. Thanks to telescopes, science has been able to reveal cosmic events that were inconceivable to our consciousness. Thanks to the dream world, we are also capable of contemplating places of extreme rarity, impregnated with mysterious and inexplicable qualities for the personal Tonal. However, these places offer very relevant archetypal information that defies the limits of time and space.

 

These types of places are those that require the greatest personal power to be visited during dreams (since the energy required to visit them while awake is still unattainable). These places of power can be thought of as interplanetary, macro and micro-cosmic, multidimensional or divine experiences; all of them directly and indirectly related to tangible qualities or situations in the Tonal plane.

 

As the causes and effects that these places of power bring about in consciousness are of enigmatic origin and of infinite interpretation, I invite readers to place their intent on this experience and share their own interpretations and conclusions. It is not only about knowing consciously about the existence of cosmic places of power, but about bringing awareness to those places and allowing emotions and sensations to guide us to surface.

 

Creation and Manifestation

What intent is capable of doing to the delight of our ordinary dreaming experience is the power to create, manifest, or materialize anything just by trying. In the dream world you can make anything appear in front of you just by using your thoughts. Maybe you'd like to test drive that sports car you've dreamed of for years; Or maybe I wanted to know what life is like in a beautiful house by the Caribbean sea. Anything that the mind is capable of imagining will materialize when you are aware that you are dreaming.

 

Manifestation during dreaming also requires great personal power and a high level of focus, especially with things that might seem more difficult to create.. These types of activities, if carried out successfully, can consume a large amount of the dreamer's energy, causing them to feel tired when they wake up and the body to be exhausted. It is very important to practice the exercises mentioned throughout the book (including those in the next chapter) to keep your energy in balance so that this activity is not counterproductive to your life in general.

 

When I was 15 years old and practicing daydreaming as a beginner, I had an experience where I found myself in a seemingly endless prairie. It was only possible to see the expanse of green grass to the horizon and the blue sky. As soon as I became aware that I was in a dream, I looked around me and thought: “But what an abandoned and boring place”. Following that I raised my right hand, positioning the palm up, and began to imagine (try) that in the far distance a mountain was slowly rising. My attempt worked, and the mountain that I envisioned began to rise monumentally in front of my eyes. So there was no barrier that divided my imagination with the sensory experience that I was living. I continued "playing" to raise mountains, feeling the effort that this entailed. My boredom was over, I had found an activity that seemed challenging and at the same time extraordinary. Said experience, once finished and having awakened from sleep, caused considerable fatigue in my body. I felt like I had spent the whole day exercising my body intensely.

 

There is not much to say about this activity, since creating and manifesting becomes a game that the person who practices it establishes the rules at will. When you are an apprentice in reverie, you may encounter some obstacles or impediments that make manifestation something very complicated and difficult to do. That is why I recommend following the exercises to lighten the tonal. In most cases it is impossible to manifest because the dreamer clings to the laws that govern his reality and it is impossible for him to accept the infinite possibilities that the mind has to provide us with vivid and extraordinary experiences.. The experience of creating, manifesting or materializing during reverie offers, like the aforementioned activities, a new neural path to our brain to break limiting beliefs and directly empower ourselves in wakefulness. When our nervous system registers our possibility to manifest, our belief system is reconfigured to make new energy available to us and thus manifest on the dream and waking plane.

 

It goes without saying that at no time should one believe that it is possible to use this manifestation technique while awake, since said belief can create a disruptive interpretation of the Tonal and the Nagual. What you and I want is simply to know what we are capable of doing in the dream world and that the emotions experienced after making manifestations there offer us personal power that we can use while awake, always under the physical and natural rules of the ordinary world. .

 

Transpersonal Movement

 

"Magic Passes" a term used for the first time by the author Carlos Castaneda, who claimed to have received instructions from his teacher Don Juan Matus to practice a series of conscious movements that would allow him to practice dreaming with safety and vitality. These movements were later presented under the trade name of "tensegrity”, a term that became a registered trademark, and that today promotes training and practices under his name. Said discipline is taught as specific sequences of movements that must be carried out with all the extremities and parts of our body in sync with the breath. The reality is that, from the beginning, the magical passes were movements that had to be born from a non-ordinary state of consciousness, or from reverie.. Carlos quotes the words of his teacher Don Juan saying that "passes are personal", implying that each individual has a different way of representing, interpreting or conceiving said movements.

 

From movement to dream

What do magical passes have to do with daydreaming? The answer is in the very practice of movements and reverie. I can write dozens of lines here about the benefits of these movements and how they affect the practice of dreaming, but only by putting them to the test oneself can understand that reality goes beyond my words. These passes could also be considered as transpersonal movements due to their multidimensional nature. The advantages of practicing these movements apply mainly to physical and mental health. The movements are intended to give our consciousness the ability to use, dispose, manage, and apply energy efficiently and even exponentially.. Transpersonal movements executed only with the body are nothing more than artistic representations of the capacities that our bodies have to develop in an infinitely creative way. They may offer benefits to the immune system, the formation of strong muscles and even better cardiovascular function. But the true power of these movements is found in the intent they put into themselves.

 

I want to share with you a very interesting case that you can work with a lucid dreaming expert. When I say "expert", I don't mean a scholar or researcher on the subject; I mean a person who not only practices it daily, but also has a natural talent for performing it. It all arose from a spontaneous chat we had when we met again after several years, in a restaurant in the city of Monterrey in Mexico. This young man practiced Hatha Yoga as an extracurricular activity at his university. This current in particular focuses on almost static postures that develop flexibility and attention to breathing while doing it. In addition, they work with mental balance and the development and strengthening of the immune system. At night, he had the ability to dream naturally, without difficulty accessing the dream world consciously. As we talked about how he was able to realize he was dreaming, he also began to mention those times when nightmares manifested themselves, even when he was under control of his own dream. He mentioned that one of his recurring dreams was that he was at his parents' house, sitting alone in the living room. He was able to realize that he was dreaming because the photographs hung on the walls were unrecognizable to him. He knew that he was in his parents' house, but he could not say where these paintings had come from. The moment he became aware of his dream, a dark dense mist would appear in the room, regardless of whether it was day or night. Next, he was able to feel a disturbing presence that led him to a kind of bodily paralysis. He comments that, after several occasions of experiencing the same dream, one fine day he intuitively decides to acquire a posture that he learned in his yoga classes, which he was not able to fully perform while awake. This posture is known as the Lotus Posture, and consists of sitting cross-legged, placing the instep of each foot on the thigh of the opposite leg. He comments that, when the dense mist appeared and he became aware of acquiring this posture, his emotions abruptly normalized and that the dense mist took on a radiant color and slowly vanished. He mentions that it was as if the posture had made the disturbing presence recognize its weakness before the Lotus Pose and decided to disappear fleetingly.

 

Now I would like to share with you a similar situation in which I was subjected to an experience in which the transpersonal movement represented a release of energy and blockages during a dreaming session. I had just arrived in the Mexican Caribbean to live, and I was staying in a hostel while I decided on an apartment to reside. I shared a room with at least ten other people, so a single room had five bunk beds. I got home very late that night, so I fell exhausted on my bed and fell asleep immediately. I had forgotten to turn off my alarm clock, so at 5:30 in the morning that it went off I had to turn it off. I had slept about four hours, so I decided to try to continue my sleep cycle right then and there. I returned to the bed and lay on my back, keeping my legs extended and my arms at my sides. Although I was very tired, I had the opportunity to focus my attention on the feeling of heaviness in the body. I watched as my limbs slowly faded away, but consciousness remained active and I was able to sustain wakefulness. After about 10 minutes of keeping my body still but my mind on, I decided to slowly move my left arm. For the first time in my life I experienced a unique and extraordinary sensation. I could see that my left hand was slowly raised over my body and that at the same time the same hand remained motionless on the bed. It can be imagined that a phantasmagorical form of my arms detached itself from my own body, and that said phantasmagorical form carried out the movements that my mind indicated to my body to carry out. I then began to move my right hand, obtaining the same result. While with consciousness I slowly detached myself from my physical body, it required a stronger push to get out of the heaviness of my bed. I tried exactly three times to get up, but every time I felt myself sitting down, a force greater than gravity would pull me back to my starting position; lying face up

 

In a desperate attempt to get out of bed, I decided to roll my whole body out, intending to fall to the floor. What happened next changed my life and the way I had experienced daydreaming thus far. I got up from the floor and looked back towards the bed; I was looking at myself lying down sleeping. I looked around and everything was dark, peaceful and silent. I not only realized that I had become conscious during the dream; I had literally detached my consciousness from my body and entered the dream world directly. In fact, it was something much more tangible than the dream world, since my surroundings were identical to the waking world. I felt stunned, stupefied; amazed and at the same time paralyzed. After assimilating what I had done, I began to walk slowly through the corridor that divided the bunk beds, between the blackness of the night and listening to the other people asleep. Suddenly, the bedroom door opened letting in a slight trail of warm light that partially illuminated the place. Stunned, I saw that a dark figure walked in. It was a man dressed in a suit, who wore a hat and had no face. My speed compared to that of said entity was much slower. The entity quickly approached me and with its "arms" began to push me back to my bed. I had the feeling that we were both shouting, making great opposing efforts, and yet I was unable to hear a single noise. In a quick moment of lucidity, I remembered one of the transpersonal movements I had practiced before. I began to move my arms in a circular way, placing the palms forward trying to maintain an energy flow "out". My right hand rotated clockwise, while my left hand rotated counterclockwise. After performing the movement about five times, apparently in slow motion and knowing that I was doing my best to do it quickly, a light of warm, orange and golden tones began to be generated, which reminded me of the lightning bolts obtained from certain powders when burned. Suddenly, my hands had disappeared and lost their shape, being replaced by two sources of light that emanated heat. Then I directed my hands, or said orbs of light, over the arms of the entity that was pushing me. I put all my attention to keep the energy active, and I watched how gradually the being was illuminated with the same tone of light that came from my hands. The man in the suit dissolved in light that emanated from my hands. Within seconds, the entity was gone and I was psychologically and physically empowered. I looked up at the ceiling of the room and jumped across it, reaching several tens of meters in height. From above I could contemplate the Caribbean beach where I was and with awareness I directed my body from one place to another, with lightness and complete control, as if I were a bird that could fly. Continue to enjoy the experience by jumping powerfully from building to building, with the deliberate intent of play and fun.

 

What kind of secrets are hidden behind the transpersonal movement, known as the magical pass, which seems to give power to the psychic plane applied even to reverie?

 

Dynamics and flow of energy

By themselves, postures and movements inherited from traditions such as Yoga, Tai-Chi, Ki-Gong or Gymnosophy, are capable of stimulating the production of oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine in our brain, offering us a natural and highly effective cellular detoxification process. . More these traditions that accept the mystical side and interpretation of the movements ensure that the psychophysical activities are potentiated through the intent. This means that it is not only a question of repeating or replicating movements or postures just for the power to do so, but that the intent that we put during the practice and the level of focus that our consciousness applies to them, substantially defines the depth and effectiveness of the exercise. experience. It does not matter if the physical discipline that you want to practice is traditional or modern, what is important is that it offers you a variety of movements and postures that your body can experience with differentiation.

 

What in our dreams appears in the form of nightmares, dark entities, mist, heaviness, pain, or any impediment to a satisfactory and fluid experience, is nothing more than a psychic manifestation of a limiting pattern that imprisons us in both worlds: wakefulness and dream. These limiting patterns don't just manifest as particular actions, emotions, or events. According to ancient traditions around the world, such constraints fit into a model of energy that can be traced with vectors and schematics that physics can provide. You can imagine the flow of a river, and visualize a huge stone in the middle splitting the flow of water in two. It can also be imagined that by introducing dye into a large glass vessel filled with water, patterns are created with a particular flow characteristic of the dye due to its properties in the liquid. You can even insert a wooden stick into the liquid with coloring and begin to play with the dancing shapes that appear due to the interaction of the water in the coloring.

 

Just as there is an energy available to us to move our bodies and put our thoughts into operation, it exists in a field similar to that of the water inside the glass vessel, and it cannot necessarily be measured with scientific measurement tools. This field is not only found around our body in the form of a luminous egg (electromagnetic field); they exist in the space of our creativity and our imagination, which are extensions of our neural system capable of perceiving the totality of existence. In my dream it manifested as yellow light; in the dream of my colleague manifested with the feeling of peace. It must be understood that, regardless of whether or not these forces physically exist outside of our body, the simple fact of being able to imagine them is enough for our nervous system to set them in motion.

 

I'm going to share one more mental exercise to be able to visualize the energy I'm talking about. You have to visualize yourself inside a completely dark room; in said room you have at least 5m forwards, backwards and to the sides. Now you have to imagine that blue lights are turned on from the ground, illuminating a cloud of extremely fine dust around you. The dust does not seem to go down, but moves with the air in a swing that lifts it up and makes it fall gently. Now you have to imagine that with your hands you begin to form a spiral just ahead quickly. What happens to the bluish dust floating around? This will begin to react to the spiral movement that is made with the hands, following the path that the hands dictate. The mist is, abstractly and applied to our energy diagram, like a cloud of dust with a chaotic fluid, or sometimes even static; and this mist represents certain limitations that we have regarding specific areas in our lives that require real energy and focus.

 

Practicing transpersonal movements is putting our energy abstraction system into operation, giving our psyche an understanding through physical movement, the ability to make energy flow. But it would not be the same to make a transpersonal movement just for the sake of doing it, without having in mind the bluish dust that I just mentioned in the visualization exercise. This bluish dust can be a greenish liquid, purple electrical currents, or any type of colored fluid you can imagine. The goal of transpersonal movement is to be able to visualize the flow of energy, regardless of its shape or color, when performing physical movement. This will significantly enhance any psychophysical practice, and of course, the management of (abstract) energy in any area of life. I make it clear that I do not assume, approve or deny the existence of electromagnetic fields or energetic fluids coming from our own body. What I want to imply is that the ability to imagine them is sufficient to gain the power to apply such abstraction in the waking and dream world.

 

Personal Passes

For this reason, I have considered that exercising through any traditional or modern psychophysical discipline is key to exercising a healthy and vital dreaming practice. The body is a great ally to translate the abstract intent into palpable movement and vice versa. If you want to practice yoga, you have to make sure that in each Asana you execute you can visualize the flow of energy around the physical body, and how the body is capable of influencing it. Tai-Chi and Ki Gong are mainly based on this ability, so if the ascending reticular activation system is not activated when you move your body, visualizing the energy and its movement in harmony with your own body, you are not really doing it. practicing neither of the two.

 

But what did Don Juan mean by saying that the magical passes were "personal"? Take as an example the case of my colleague and mine. It is not that from any book or from any teacher we have learned that a particular position or movement would work in a specific way for a particular energetic blockage (although traditional philosophies do so). Rather, it was our attempt to bring awareness to a movement that we had previously recognized as empowering that led us to execute it during reverie, and subsequently, to dissolve the blocks.

 

If a person says that a specific posture or movement will unlock a specific limitation, this will be effective as long as one puts intent and belief in it.. This applies especially when movements or postures release abstract or energetic blockages, that is, those that manifest themselves mainly in wakefulness in the form of unconscious patterns, and during sleep as apparitions or overwhelming presences. The fact that the passes are personal means that depending on the conscious motive that we put into the movement that we make, it will be the way in which it is activated for our benefit.

 

However, in the same way that chapter 3 discussed conditioning actions during wakefulness so that they are repeated during the stay in the dream world, said conditioning can also be transpersonal movements. In fact, the mystery of the magical passes (or transpersonal movements) inherited in shamanic traditions is that when they are constantly repeated while awake, they will automatically activate during dream complications, as a kind of dream defense mechanism. This applies only and exclusively if during the practice of psychophysical movement the flow of energy is kept in mind and its conscious interaction with it. The magical passes, then, are not only an access key to dreaming, but also an automatic defense mechanism against any threat from the unconscious itself that disturbs our dreaming practice.. I return to clarify that "transpersonal movement" is a term that I use intentionally to also refer to the psychophysical movement that the traditions of different cultures have contributed to humanity.

 

Taking up transpersonal movements as a habit is not mandatory to practice dreaming, but I can guarantee that much of the energy required to sustain lucidity in dreams can be generated and obtained from this source. The goal of habit is not to routinely apply the same movements or postures over and over again and lose your specialty. It is about beginning to educate the body about the abstract energy flow that surrounds us so that it can intuitively interact on its own. In this way, the vehicle of consciousness will be able, both during wakefulness and sleep, to move intuitively to activate the immune and energy system. By energetic system I mean the visualization power of SARA to translate and interpret the abstraction of movement in the application of psychic energy. That is why it is important to constantly innovate in the sequences that are experienced during the psychophysical movement, regardless of the tradition or school to which it belongs. For this reason, improvised dance, specifically from shamanic traditions, is another form of magical passes or transpersonal movement. They are conscious psychophysical movements that seek to set in motion the internal and external energy of the physical body.

 

Awareness of the movement of the body and its ability to flow through space is made to elevate the intent and sustain the experience of "being awake" for a longer time throughout life..

 

The Mastery of Dreaming

 

Throughout the work I have dedicated myself to emphasizing the importance of maintaining objective awareness of the dreaming and waking planes separately. It is natural that many practitioners begin to intuit or assume that both planes are not really separate. Such a statement may lead some to risky experimenting with certain practices, such as flying or playing with dangerous chemicals, in both worlds. There are thousands of cases of dissociation from reality treated by experts that prove how delicate it is to come to believe that there is no difference between the dream world and the waking world. If you have seen the movie "The Origin", you will remember that Mal (the protagonist's partner) jumps from a building when he completely stops recognizing the plane of dreams and reality. This is an extreme case of dissociation that should not be dismissed as probable if you overdo or obsess over lucid dreaming. For this reason, it concerns me to explain, from personal experience, what I consider as the Mastery of Dreaming, which will broaden the perspective on the interpretation of this practice.

 

I paused my dreaming practice for 2 years, from my 19 to 21, when I started a love relationship. These couple of years were like a long break from everything related to mysticism and non-ordinary practices; very useful to ground my thoughts and reconnect with reality. At the end of the relationship, that rest period also ended, and I returned to the practice of dreaming with guided hypnosis as an access tool. At that time, due to my emotional vulnerability, I was looking for meaning and shelter trying to understand the subject of past lives. I then dedicated my energy to access places of power located (metaphorically) in past times. It should be clarified that my interpretation of past lives is that they are metaphorical images created by our unconscious, built by the abstraction of our present and past experience of the current life, added to a possible genetic feedback inherited by family generations. I do not rule out the possibility of accessing past lives through dreaming, but it is indifferent to me for current practice, since I find a greater number of processes or symbolic tools to realign present life in a "non-linear" dream practice.

 

In one of my regressions, I visited a particular life set in the 19th century, which consisted of being a scientist, a university professor, living in the Scottish province. In this story, I was able to observe that, in addition to the symbolic details that were directly related to my current personality, it also sustained a fiery drama. I clearly saw a woman, who represented my romantic partner, walking through the corridors of a large residence. The story recounted, in clear and vivid visions, the death of said woman a couple of months after trying to conceive a child. After returning from the experience wrapped in turbulent emotions, my mind was hooked on that story.

 

As I led a relatively normal life, I looked for a couple of hours every day to return to said place in my dreams and try to understand more about that movie called "My Past Life". I would return from work and immediately lay down on the bed in my room, ready to follow a recorded tape that would take me back to that moment, together with that woman. With each session or chapter of my regressions, I was able to add a new piece to the puzzle I was trying to piece together. Ironically, I was further away from the presence of said woman; in each dream, his presence was more and more absent and diffuse.

 

My intention was to understand this story in order to untie myself from my current suffering due to the loss of a partner. According to me, I wanted to end my emotional dependency. What I didn't realize was that this experience was an abstract extension, or rather, a metaphorical and romantic interpretation of my current situation. What had begun as a possible technique to reconcile me with my personal history, ended up becoming a way of escaping from my reality. Thanks to the guidance of a person focused on dream interpretation, it was that I became aware of this almost addictive behavior towards a story that involved more and more drama.

 

I then decided to unlink my relationship with that of the character who lived in that world and for the first time I accepted the responsibility of resolving the life in which I already found myself. In one last regression session, I went to the back of the house where we lived to say goodbye to the person who played the role of my beloved. I opened the door that led to a back garden, in which a small stream about 50 cm long ran, and saw a woman sitting in a rocking chair. The woman's face was hazy, dark, and she didn't respond to any of my calls. I wanted to start a conversation with the intention of saying goodbye, but at that precise moment an angel-shaped entity (as it is presented in Catholic religious art) appeared between us. This "angel" also lacked a face, but manifested itself wearing a white robe and speaking with a very deep voice. The angel asked me to stop visiting the place, and that everything that I was trying to do, and that kept me related to that woman, should stop. I had the opportunity to thank the entity and the woman in the rocking chair, knowing that this would be the last time I would see them. Immediately, the angel approached me and put his hand on my head, making me enter a vortex of light that would take me back to my bed. I was able to understand over time that this past life worked as an alternative tool in my self-discovery process.

 

It took several months for me to consider returning to dreaming practice. During that time I worked with immense interest on many types of mindfulness and relaxation practices, specifically meditation type mindfulness, and I began to practice the traditional Yoga of India. Later, these would become elements and pillars of a healthy dreaming practice. I have also developed and refined all of the exercises written in this book, making sure that they work together for different types of psychic structures. For two more years I practiced reverie, using the dream platform for multiple purposes, seeing it more as a sports training ground than a retreat space from my daily activities. Enough time to develop versatile techniques to induce deep sleep, and in turn, an extended window of consciousness during sleep. So after all these years of practicing dreaming, and helping others to perfect their practices, I have decided to share three very important reflections that summarize the teachings that I inherited and that I inherit to you today.

 

The 3 Laws of Dreaming

 

1. The dream is an extension of reality

When we dream for the first time, a door to infinity opens and everything that seemed normal to us will change forever. The feeling we get from keeping consciousness on during sleep is exponentially transformative. But it is important to understand the following: the dream is an extension of reality, not a separate reality. Here I am referring to a universal reality, difficult to approach due to its extreme philosophical complexity, but which intends to include the experience of all living beings of existence.

 

Today science studies cases like that of the tribe Anchuar from the Amazon jungle, who contacted the renowned author Lynne Twist to finance a natural and social protection project (https://youtu.be/bnbTa_seb3s). Lynne regularly dreamed of the face of the Anchuar peeking out of the bushes, unaware of the existence of the said tribe. After weeks of research, Lynne was able to recognize the origin of the faces and, on a questionable and mysterious impulse, she traveled to the Amazon jungle to discover that leaders of the Anchuar had summoned her through dreams. Together, they ended up founding the foundation Pachamama Alliance, which would benefit 10 million acres of rainforest for protection. This particular case demonstrates that with great probability there could exist a multidimensional network from which information can be transferred through the world of dreams.

 

Almost everything that happens in the dream world is a reflection of what happens in wakefulness.. We cannot expect to have a harmonious experience in one world, while overflowing with chaos in the other. Even when it happens that, while waking, chaos is experienced, a cozy and moving dream is experienced, the misery of waking will make us regret the disappearance of said dream, making our waking experience once again a space of suffering. . That is the importance of ordering our Tonal (perception bubble) prior to exploring the world of dreams. One world can reveal valuable information from the other. Sleep and wakefulness are technically always in balance. Every limitation in the dream is a mere symbolic representation of real limitations, and every achievement achieved while awake is symbolically recreated in the dream. You should not try to dream to escape reality. You have to accept, work and love your own reality to extend the experience of life through dreams.

 

2. Interpretation: art, power and virtue

Everything that you experience both while awake and in sleep is subjected to a conscious or subconscious process of interpretation. In this process, you come to the unanimous conclusion about whether or not you can enjoy your life. It is not what happens to us that makes us feel how we feel, but the interpretation we give to what happens to us. One of the best pieces of advice I can offer is to pay close attention to the quality and type of interpretation that is done, both of waking life and the symbolism that appears in dreams. This book suggests practices that must be carried out to put consciousness in the dream world, plus the responsibility of interpreting every event is yours. I firmly believe that there may be guides that help us interpret our dreams, but it is not a conscious practice to allow someone else to interpret our life for us at each step we take. We then stop living our own life and allow someone else to do it for us. Perhaps even worse, we put on another person (the interpreter) the different responsibilities that correspond to us to attend to. You have the power to see the side of the coin that is best for you, as long as it does not harm other people or destructively affect their lives.

 

It helps to be simple with our interpretation processes. Making complex interpretations could risk making false assumptions that could end up entangling and confusing you. When we master the simple interpretation of our life, which happens consciously, we begin to react subconsciously in the same way to any event. Thus, by adding complexity to any area of our life, it will happen in a harmonious and resonant way to hopefully even inspire others. Interpreting each and every event in our lives, past, present and future, is an art that we are destined to perfect for the rest of our lives.. Interpreting these events to benefit our growth and evolution is a unique power that we all possess and that is developed with constant practice. Being able to interpret our own life with extreme practicality and give it an unusual meaning is a virtue that every human being deserves to experience..

 

3. Contemplation over Action

As I have mentioned throughout the book, practicing dreaming requires a large reserve of energy. This energy is used fundamentally for the motor functions of the consciousness vehicle and for creativity. For this reason, depending on the type of life that is led, the experience of dreaming will be a distant challenge to be achieved or a delight available to the will. For example, if you are an office worker with a fixed routine, it will be more difficult for you to practice healthy dreaming, since the configuration of your interpretation of reality during wakefulness can limit the spontaneous and creative dream unfolding. Even if you were able to daydream easily as an office worker, you would only be turning to a reality other than your own (assuming you don't even enjoy your life as an office worker). Otherwise, if you live with very few daily tasks, with a lot of free time available, it will be easier to direct energy to awaken consciousness during sleep. That would not have to take you away from your creative power manifested during wakefulness. On the contrary, the ability to invest time and energy in reverie should give evident results for a psychic expansion in both worlds.

 

The final lesson I can offer is to emphasize that only contemplating the experience of life can become more functional and pleasant than the need to control and influence what happens at all times. This applies both in wakefulness and in sleep. Although taking action in the dream is part of dreaming practice, it is not necessarily the end of it. The end, I believe, is simply to contemplate the infinite ways in which reality can manifest itself before our senses. After years of practicing dreaming, today I realize that the simple exercise of contemplating during my dreams allows me to enjoy them even more. When I behave in the same way while awake, decision-making and action are reduced to fleeting moments in which a little effort is applied and surprising results are obtained. By applying less energy to carry out actions to alter the reality in which we live, we have more energy left to promptly redirect the natural flow of constructive and transforming circumstances that the Universe is already operating.. In this way, what can questionably be called "our influence" appears as a flow, part of a spiral dance, which naturally already exists as part of the forces of nature. Undoubtedly, waking up from sleep is freeing oneself from the greatest number of judgments that condition the natural interpretation of existence. We will have achieved the mastery of dreaming by staying awake from the dream, personal and collective..

 

 

 

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