Bad Dreams

One of the advantages of eremitical monasticism is the freedom to adapt practice to needs and conditions. Among the disadvantages is having life make its own changes without consulting you first.

Recently my meditation practice was largely eliminated by unsupportive circumstances. Then I got it back, as new conditions imposed themselves. And that's precipitated some valuable insight.

Meditation causes bad dreams.

This isn't my first experience with this. Most dramatic was ango, the salient features of which were a monastery-grade meditation schedule and unhappy REM sleep. Not nightmares per se; just reviews of personal regrets and fears that left me sad and circumspect.

But this is the first time I've noticed the causal relationship. When I'm prevented from meditating deeply or regularly, the bad dreams go away. Then I start getting more reliable cushion time, and they come back. Why?

I might spin a few hypotheses. One is just the free exercise of my whole brain. When you don't meditate much, you're actively firing only a small chunk of your neural net. Most of your mind runs in the background, cataloguing details and mapping associations while you drive ignorantly on. But meditation uses all the plumbing, and that stirs up rust and mould and silt that's settled quietly for years.

None of which is news to beginning meditators. The sensational tilling of ancient strata is one of the top ten results of new practices, and the main drive of the famous "burning off" of accrued delusion that Zenners often report at that stage. My own was a veritable inferno.

But apparently something more is going on. I generally get more courageous, in all facets of my life, when I practice consistently. "Composed" may be a better word; the mind-set Thich Nhat Hanh calls "mountain-solid". It's an un-macho, un-histrionic sort of gravel; I don't become a soldier or a warrior (thank God). I'm just more willing to "go there", where I otherwise might dither.

I think this is related to the bad dreams; whoever it is that edits that content when I'm not meditating regularly becomes less squeamish when I am. And the fact is, with further sustained practice the monk starts inserting himself into those scenarios.

"Well," he says, "we can always leave."

Or he confronts a critic: "Remind me again what business it is of yours?"

Or he apologises. "I should have thought more carefully before I made that decision. I shouldn't have assumed I knew what to do about this."

I'm still wistful during and after these dreaky movies, but I wake up informed at worst, and sometimes gratified.

Any road, as sincere sitters know, meditation isn't about feeling better or fixing things; it's about confronting and accepting them. I'm no greater fan of bad dreams than anyone else, and if I had the choice I'd skip that part, but I deeply value the insights they offer, and particularly the sense that I'm in greater control and that something useful and productive is happening between my ears.


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)