The Dreaming Attention

The sorcerers’ explanation of how to select a topic for dreaming is that a warrior chooses the topic by deliberately holding an image in his mind while he shuts off his internal dialogue. In other words, if he is capable of not talking to himself for a moment and then holds the image or the thought of what he wants in dreaming, even if only for an instant, then the desired topic will come to him. I am certain that you have already done this, although you are unaware of the fact.

I am going to teach you the first step to power. I am going to teach you how to set up dreaming. To set up dreaming means to have a concise and pragmatic control over the general situation of a dream. For example, you can dream that you are in a classroom. To set up dreaming means that you do not let the dream move on to other things. You do not bound up from the classroom to the mountains, for example. In other words, you control the classroom vision and do not let it fade away until you allow it to.

This control is no different from the control we have over any situation in our daily lives. Sorcerers are used to it and get it every time they want or need to. In order for you to get used to it yourself, you should start doing something very simple. Tonight, look at your hands while dreaming …

Or look at anything else. The objective of the exercise is not to discover anything in specific, but to employ the dreaming attention. To ask a dreamer to find a determined item in his dreams is a subterfuge. The real issue is to become aware that one is falling asleep. And, strange as it may seem, that doesn’t happen by commanding oneself to be aware that one is falling asleep but by sustaining the sight of whatever one is looking at in a dream.

Dreamers take quick, deliberate glances at everything present in a dream. If they focus their dreaming attention on something specific, it is only as a point of departure. From there, dreamers move on to look at other items in the dream’s content, returning to the point of departure as many times as

possible.

The dreaming attention is the control one acquires over one’s dreams upon fixating the assemblage point on any new position to which it has been displaced during dreams. In broader terms, the dreaming attention is an incomprehensible facet of awareness that exists by itself, waiting for a moment when we would entice it, a moment when we would give it purpose; it is a veiled faculty that every one of us has in reserve but never has the opportunity to use.

Speak as harshly as you may when referring to dreaming. Explanations always call for deep thought. But when you actually dream, be as light as a feather. Dreaming has to be performed with integrity and seriousness, but in the midst of laughter and with the confidence of someone who doesn’t have a worry in the world. Only under these conditions can our dreams actually be turned into dreaming.

Dreaming has to be a very sober affair. No false movement can be afforded. Dreaming is a process of awakening, of gaining control. Our dreaming attention must be systematically exercised, for it is the door to the second attention.

The second attention is like an ocean, and the dreaming attention is like a river feeding into it. The second attention is the condition of being aware of total worlds, total like our world is total, while the dreaming attention is the condition of being aware of the items of our dreams.

The second attention is available to all of us, but, by willfully holding on to our half-cocked rationality, some of us more fiercely than others, keep the second attention at arm’s length. The idea is that Dreaming brings down the barriers that surround and insulate the second attention.

The dreaming attention is the key to every movement in the sorcerers’ world. Among the multitude of items in our dreams, there exist real energetic interferences, things that have been put in our dreams extraneously, by an alien force. To be able to find them and follow them is sorcery.