Lucidity and Self-Realization through
Emotional Surrender
by
Beverly (Kedzierski Heart) D’Urso, Ph.D.
Proposal for the 2012 Association for the Study of Dreaming
Conference, Berkeley,
CA, June 2012
Copyright 2011
Summary
When we fail
to internally experience our emotions completely, dramas
involving similar emotions appear in our life and in our dreams.
I will give personal examples of dealing with such recurring
emotional dramas, breakdown the steps involved, and compare my
lucidity work to a contemporary psycho-spiritual
teaching of self-realization.
Abstract
When
we fail to truly experience a strong emotion in our bodies
completely, life seems to give us more opportunities to do so in
both our waking life and in our sleeping dreams. We experience
new dramas or dreams, often with different characters and
environments, but similar emotions. If we pay attention, we can
notice patterns of such recurring emotional dramas or dreams.
As a
child, I learned to become aware of such patterns in the form of
recurring dream nightmares. When I found myself in a similar
dream drama, I recognized it as part of the pattern. I fully
faced my fear, my dream nightmares ceased, and I became ‘lucid’ in a dream for
the first time. As my dream-self expanded into the dreamer, I
gained powerful abilities and positive qualities, such as will,
joy, and peace. I now understand that my recurring nightmare
evolved from an accident I had in the waking state at eighteen
months old. At that time, I could not deal with the strong
emotions that arose during the drama of the accident.
As an adult, I experience lucidity in my waking life, as well as
in my sleeping dreams. I call this ‘lucid living.’
Currently, I am studying a psycho-spiritual teaching that
describes a similar process called ‘the theory of holes’. This
‘theory of holes’
explains how earlier in life, when we could not completely
experience an emotion, we would develop a related psychological
‘hole.’ We try to fill the
hole with external
obsessions, such as
taking drugs, overeating, or having superficial relationships.
We don’t allow room for ‘aspects
of our true essence,’ such as love, strength, or joy. We
get many chances to face up to the emotion in new recurring
dramas in our waking life. When we finally do so, and completely
experience our empty hole, aspects of essence finally arise to
fill it. I will show how we can use this process in our sleeping
dreams as well.
As
an analogy, imagine our ‘Creator,’
which I call the ‘Dreamer
of life,’ as the sea and people as the waves. During
lucidity, a wave expands DOWN
into the sea knowing unlimited possibilities and
self-realization. In the ‘theory
of holes,’ the deep water of the sea, our ‘true nature,’ can
represent aspects of essence. The waves represent people with
holes. When we fully experience our emotions and face our empty
holes, the deep-sea water rises UP to fill them. The
waves finally realize themselves as the sea. When the water
overfills the holes of all the people in the world, or we all
become lucid, only a peaceful sea will exist as the potential of
God.
All
audiences can relate to this presentation, which should increase
self-awareness and emotional growth.
REFERENCES:
‘Essence
With the Elixir of Enlightenment: The Diamond Approach to
Inner Realization,’ Almaas,
A.H., Weiser Books, York Beach, Maine, March 1, 1998.
http://ahalmaas.com/