Twelve Affirmations for Conscious Dreaming

 
(1) I Will Let Dreams Teach Me Self-Knowledge

Dreams are the theater of my night time mind.
I will enter the theater of dreams, and without fear, without denying,
without censoring, I will let dreams be whatever they are.
Attentive to the experiences and images of dreams,
I will let the filmmaker of the mind show me
whatever it wants to show me.
 
 
(2) I Hold the Entire World in My Bowl of Dreaming.

I am the world already complete and whole,
but I have forgotten my wholeness.
I see all the facets of my forgotten self
in the alembic of my dreaming.

In dreams I act out dramas of opposition and victory,
journeys of adventure and conquest. I may even
strategize the subjugation of "others" or implement my own downfall.

Knowing that the myths of a divided world are contained
in my vessel of wholeness, I dream fearlessly, without recoiling
from the multi-faceted fragments of myself.

 
 
(3) By Giving Attention to My Dreams
I Become the Center of the Process of Dreaming.

When my daylight mind meditates the mystery of the dream,
I am transformed by the very process of meditating the dream.
The next time I surrender to sleep, and enter the theater of dreams,
my dreaming will, without fail, reflect the changes
that have taken place in me. As my self-understanding grows,
I am given more to understand.
 
 
(4) Night to Night My Dreaming Awareness Moves,
Like Water Flowing from Mountain to Sea.

I am the river of awareness,
and everything that appears to my dreaming mind
is the shaping of water, the passing permutation of awareness itself.
I am the water of consciousness, and all experience
is the free play of my watery nature
upon the streambed of existence.
 
 
(5) As a Self-Aware Dreamer, I Pass from Realm to Realm,
and I Am Not Confined by Images, High or Low.

As my understanding grows,
my dreams transcend one another,
and each night's world enfolds the night before.
Symbols swallow other symbols
and the limitations of today are nested and
dissolved in the expanded awareness of tomorrow.

Forever moving with Nature's change,
I know I am not confined to the shape
that awareness takes in any one moment.

 
 
(6) At the Hearth of Dreaming,
I Tend My Fire...Observe... Notice...and Wait.

I am not struggling toward a goal.
I am not seeking self-perfection.
I am engaged in self-observation, self-understanding,
and noticing everything that arises.
I tend the fire upon which I cook the gods and demons of my dreams.
I observe the process...and wait for the change to come.
 
 
 
(7) In Dreaming I Make the Night Journey of the Soul.

In Conscious Dreaming I will, inevitably,
uncover the dark regions of the heart.
I must go toward that of which I am afraid, for it is there
the separation and flaw in my being is found and healed.
And it is in these nether realms of my lost wholeness that the gateway
to visions and dreams of spiritual power is won.
 
 
(8) The Deep Mind is a Snake Who Turns Into a Rope.

Mythological mindforms, both light and dark,
arise from the Deep Mind of my own existence.
When such mindforms appear powerfully in dreams,
I cook them over the slow fire of self-observation,
watching and waiting until they release their knowledge
and energy in the waters of my soul.

I will learn to relax the shape of the mind, to reunite my energy
and my awareness to the energy and awareness
I project into the mythological mindforms.

This is how I come to notice that the snake is in fact a rope,
and was never anything but a rope.

 
 
 
(9) I Shape My Own Future in Dreaming.

Everything that happens to me in life is prefigured in dreams.
In dreams I have forgotten, I have abdicated my future
in unconscious bargains with mythological phantoms of the mind.
In conscious dreaming I will bring these forgotten transactions
to the light of day, examine them, and undo them
in the waters of understanding.

In conscious dreaming I will meditate the probabilities of my life.
To the degree I dream consciously, to that degree
will I assume responsibility for my destiny.

 
 
(10) In Conscious Dreaming I Open Myself
to the Gifts of the Spirit.

I am not as wise as the Deep Mind that dreams me.
Through dreaming I learn to know what I am,
but what I will ultimately become is unknown.

If I am humble before the unknown in myself,
the divine core of Being,
which is intimate with the heart of every person,
reveals Itself to me in dreams.

The Deep Mind does not seek to obscure but to reveal,
and to bestow its treasures on the daylight mind.
Dreams are not solid objects like crystal or stone.
Dreams are profound deeps which reflect
the infinity of Self Awareness.

 
 
 
(11)

"May I recognize whatever appears
as being my own mindforms.
May I fear not the bands of the Peaceful and the Wrathful,
who are my own mind-forms"


The Tibetan Book of the Dead
 
 
(12)

"Dreams are a mirror revealing the Invisible to Itself."

"E"