Dream Yoga Quotes

“Psychopathology has always been considered — in one sense or another — as resulting from a distorted view of reality. But what one considers to be psychopathology therefore must depend upon what one considers to be reality.”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep

“As the mind relaxes its vicelike grip on thoughts and things, which happens with meditation, it doesn’t get so tired. When we sleep, we finally get to relax and rest. But if we’re relaxed and rested all the time, which is the mind of a buddha, there’s no need to relax the mind at night.”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep

“For the ego, ignorance really is bliss.”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep

“Fear is the minion of ignorance — where you find ignorance, you will find fear.”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep

“We see the world the way we do — as solid, lasting, and independent — because we’ve been primed to do so by our parents, teachers, and virtually everyone alive. It’s this continued reinforcement that continues into the dream state and primes us to see the dream as solid, lasting, and independent, and therefore non-lucid.”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep

“Remember that thoughts are not the issue. Thoughts are the innocent play of the mind. If left alone, they naturally dissolve, or self-liberate, back into the clear-light mind from which they arose. But, of course, we rarely leave them alone. That’s the problem. We pour the gasoline of attention onto these tiny sparks of mind, and they ignite into the worries, dramas, ruminations, anxieties, expectations, hopes, and fears that comprise the entirety of our lives — all born from taking our thoughts to be solid and real — just like we take our non-lucid dreams to be solid and real.”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep

“•​Two verses on the Samadhi of Illusion, from the Jewel Ornament of Liberation. First verse: “Knowing the five skandhas are like an illusion / Don’t separate the illusion from the skandhas / Free of thinking that anything is real / This is perfect wisdom’s conduct at its best!”6 Second verse: “All the images conjured up by a magician / The horses, elephants, and chariots in his illusions / Whatever may appear there, know that none of it is real / And it’s just like that with everything there is!”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep

“•​From the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: “Then, wanderers, these dream-like beings, what are they? / If analyzed, they’re like a banana tree / One cannot make definite distinctions / Between transcending misery and not.”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep

“•​From the Entrance to the Middle Way: “There are two ways of seeing every thing / The perfect way and the false way / So each and every thing that can ever be found / Holds two natures within / And what does perfect seeing see? / It sees the suchness of all things / And false seeing sees the relative truth / This is what the perfect Buddha said.”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep

“•​From the Knowledge Fundamental to the Middle Way: “Like a dream, like an illusion / Like a city of gandharvas / That’s how birth and that’s how living / That’s how dying are taught to be.”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep

“Just like we don't take responsibility for how we actualize our confusion and its resulting view of duality, we don't take responsibility for actualizing wisdom and its view of nonduality.”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: The Tibetan Path of Awakening Through Lucid Dreaming

“The relative unconscious mind is”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep

“If you’re scientifically oriented, you can deconstruct the power of words by remembering the physics of sound. Words are just longitudinal (compression and rarefaction) waves that strike your ear, that cause your eardrum to vibrate, that transmit electro-chemical impulses to the auditory parts of your brain, that are mixed with signals from other parts of your brain, that you impute meaning upon. They’re just vibrations. “Good” or “bad” are not intrinsic to longitudinal waves but are qualities we impose upon them.”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep

“when the tradition asserts that buddhas don’t sleep, it doesn’t mean they stay up all night doing physical activity. It means that ignorance has been completely removed, and they remain forever awake, or lucid,”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep

“In the Buddhist view, sleep is a product of ignorance. Indeed, “sleep” is another code word for ignorance. Buddhas, as “the awakened ones” or “the ones who know,” literally don’t sleep.”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep

“becoming familiar with (the very definition of meditation)”
― Andrew Holecek, Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep