My Experience With Tulku Lobsang (Medicine Buddha & Dream Yoga)

[Nuralshamal]

Dear Dao Bums,

Here's my experience with Tulku Lobsang (known for doing Tummo in -5 degrees celsius on "Story of God With Morgan Freeman" on NGC).

I'll share in 4 parts:

1) Intro and Background

2) Medicine Buddha
3) Dream Yoga

4) Wrap Up - To Be Continued

1) Intro and Background

I heard about Tummo when I was a child from my dad.

He learnt about yoga on a hippie island camp full of naked women burning bras when he was a child, forced to go with my hippie grandmother in the 60s. He had a life changing experience as a child with yoga and mantras, while on this naked women camp.

So in his late teens when small yoga and meditation workshops started in the West, he started attending.

Buddhism was super famous in my country on the spiritual scene, as it still is in much of Europe with the New Age crowd I would say.

While I grew up, my dad told me of naked monks in the snow-clad Himalayas drying wet sheets with their body temperature through magical yoga practices.

So now the family saga continues; as an adult, I've also pursued further what my dad exposed me to as a child.

This time, I saw Tulku Lobsang with Morgan Freeman. Being able to be comfortable in a t-shirt in -5 degrees on television I took as a "good enough" show of Tummo skill, that maybe I could finally pursue this magical practice myself.

However, I still had some doubts.

So, when I saw he was coming to my country, I decided to go check him out. If he "checked out" I would be willing to give it a go and fork over my hard earned cash to flight, hotel and the Tummo workshop (when the time comes).

With the intro out of the way, let me share how it went! The first day he taught Medicine Buddha. The following 2 days it was one long workshop on Dream Yoga.
 

2) Medicine Buddha

He gave us the mantra and we all chanted together for maybe 5-15 minutes.

Then he instructed us step-by-step in the visualisation.

After having stabilised the visualisation, we resumed chanting together (we were maybe 20-30 people).
 

During his transmission, I felt a special kind of energy coming into my head center. I felt like it made it easier for me to visualise. I also felt the energy from each of the lights we visualised in all of my body, and felt pleasantly relaxed.
 

Since this day, I've been doing a minimum of 108 reps of the mantra and then the visualisation meditation procedure he explained.

 

Already on the second day of the practice, it's like the energy had increased in power. Now it's growing day by day with my daily practice.

So far so good! He's definitely legit.
 

3) Dream Yoga

My dad took me to a dream yoga weekend workshop when I was about 18-19 years old with a Rinpoche visiting my country. I thought the whole idea of lucid dreams and using them for spiritual practice was extremely fascinating, and even at that young age I practiced quite consistently for about 3 months (while also reading his book).

However, I had no results whatsoever.

Then again when I was in my mid 20s, I picked up the book again and decided to give it a go. I practiced again for about 2 months, but zero results.

In my late 20s, I again read yet another book by a tibetan teacher on dream yoga. I tried it again. No results after 1 month. All of the above practices were the usual "visualise a red drop in your throat chakra, surrounded by a white lotus flower with 4 leaves". In this book there was also a tibetan letter on each leaf, and you said them one by one as a kind of mantra for a while, then proceeded to only visualise until falling asleep.

However, at the end of this particular book was also a shamanistic bön practice for lucid dreaming. After 1 month of failing with the vajrayana buddhist practice, I tried the shamanic practice. After about 7-14 days, it happened! I was super excited. Then it would happen every single day like clockwork for about a week. However, with each day I felt like I got more and more tired. Like I used up energy while sleeping, instead of regaining it. 

I remembered a warning from a daoist qigong teacher who had (as usually) dissed buddhist practices, especially their dream practices. He said "night is for sleeping and resting, that's what nature intended". So I thought maybe my bön lucid dreaming practice was sapping my energy and discontinued it.

Lo and behold, now I'm in my early 30s, and I was faced with yet another tibetan vajrayana buddhist practice of visualising a red drop in my throat. "Here we go again!" I found myself thinking, however I still had an open mind during the workshop.

During the workshop I felt Tulku Lobsang transmitted different states as well as different energies. I also found him to be extremely grounded in Being, never losing connection to himself, even if some of the people were weird or asked weird questions etc. He remained in Being, very relaxed, very present and extremely grounded and Embodied.

I was quite impressed! However, no succes with lucid dreaming, neither during the nights between the workshop days, nor during the workshops when we actually slept for 10-30 minutes under his guidance and blessing. I really felt he transmitted a lot of energy during these sleeping sessions on the workshop, but still no lucid dreams.

However, now after the workshop, I have actually had 3-4 lucid dreams so far using the typical tibetan buddhist vajrayana practice with the red drop! Something that's never worked for me, even though I've tried it on/off since I was 19.

So that also tells me that his transmission is legit!

 

4) Wrap Up - To Be Continued

So to wrap up, Tulku Lobsang is legit! He's extremely grounded in Being, in Presence and in his body, and he really does transmit states and energies. 

There's no more doubt in my mind - I will glady fork over my time and cash to learn Tummo from him when the time comes 

Edited February 20 by Nuralshamal

[Nuralshamal]

Dear Dao Bums,

Let me share an update with some insights gained from daily practice in 3 points:

1) Medicine Buddha,
2) Dream Yoga,

3) Take Homes So Far

1) Medicine Buddha

Practicing the mantra cultivates your speech, and practicing the meditation cultivates your mind.

Further, you don't only cultivate yourself, you actively connect with a lineage mandala field, where the medicine buddha is one particular part of the mandala related to healing. A specific dimension if you will.

Once you connect to this dimension, the energies from that dimension flow into you during practice, and over time builds your own energies stronger. Like your house being plugged into the larger, local electrical grid and powerplant, allowing you to use your share of the energy.

I felt the white light in my head center and in my entire body easily in the first few days. I take that to mean my mind energy is balanced and purified.

Likewise, I felt the blue energy entering my heart center also spreading to almost my entire body, just a few places here and there are not reached yet. That means my body is almost completely healed and purified, however just a little more to go.

However, the red light entering my throat could only fill up the left half of my body, and had a really hard time entering the right side of my body. After a few days, I start to feel the message is that my speech is not purified.

After some more practice, I reflect "why is my speech not purified? I am very mindfuld of speaking truth, avoiding lies, speaking positive words to others, and I have practiced mantras since childhood". Then I understood that speech is a kind of "mantra energy", and that it's not my current actions, but karma from previous lives that determine how much practice we need to purify our body, mind and speech.

And apparently my mind and body karma is okay, but there is some bad speech karma.

I then suddenly remembered a vedic astrology reading I had about 2-3 years ago, where they specifically said my worst past life karma was using the science of mantras in an a-dharmic way!

Suddenly it made sense; my current experience with medicine buddha's 3 lights of pure body, mind and speech, and this experience of the red light not being able to fill my whole body could actually fit quite well with past life karma!

Pretty interesting!

Of course continued practice will help alleviate that karma, as well as of course continuing to stay mindful of speech in daily life, and maybe find a way to use mantras to help alleviate the suffering of others, to generate a new, positive karma, that over time can help balance or even cancel out this old negative karma.

2) Dream Yoga

During dream yoga practice, you visualise a red drop of essence in your throat chakra. And as you read above, I never had succes with this practice until now.

It now makes sense that the negative karmic burden of a-dharmic use of mantras in previous life times was just too heavy, and much more practice and purification was needed until I could use this method.

It also makes sense that our speech body could in some way also be called a "mantra body", generated by millions and millions of mantras we've said in this or previous lives.

However, in my case, I've hurt others in previous lives with this energy, so of course the karma is that my speech body is not fully functional due to this burden.

Hence only after purifying it and cultivating it will I be able to grow in my dream yoga practice.

Lastly, I also got progressively more tired when I succeded with dream yoga practice a couple of years ago with the bön method! Because I'm running a marathon with just one leg! I'm doing physical work with a handicapped body, weighed down by negative karma from previous lives.

Only by repaying that debt and then rebuilding a normal dream body (speech/mantra) can I then continue to grow by actually building it stronger and stronger by continued practice. 

Further, my dream yoga is much better if I do the medicine buddha practice just before lying down to sleep and do the dream practice. Makes sense, as I strengthen, purify and recharge my body, mind and speech.

3) Take Homes So Far

- The force of karma is real!

- Only the combination of spiritual practice and mindful daily, virtuous living can alleviate/purify this over time

- The dream body seems very related to our speech/mantra body

- If you don't practice medicine buddha, maybe you will have a harder time with dream yoga, as medicine buddha replenishes and purifies your body, mind and speech. If you don't have a source of replenishing and nourishing, dream yoga could just make you more tired.

 

All the best!
 

[Nuralshamal]

Update:

In my first week of practice after the retreat, out of 7 nights, I've managed to have 3 nights of lucid dreams.

Overview
1. Night After The Retreat - lucid dreams one after the other (about 3-4 in a row during morning time)

2. Night After The Retreat - no lucid dreams

3. Night After The Retreat - lucid dreams one after the other (about 2-3 in a row during morning time)

4. Night After The Retreat - no lucid dreams

5. Night After The Retreat - lucid dreams one after the other (about 3-4 in a row during morning time)

6. Night After The Retreat - no lucid dreams

7. Night After The Retreat - no lucid dreams

So 3 out of 7 nights something happened since the retreat, pretty good actually. Still not as good as a couple of years ago with the bön method where it was every single night like clockwork for a whole week, but let's see how it goes.

My first preliminary observations and conclusions
1) all my lucid dreams from tibetan dream yoga have only occured in the morning hours, e-g. 5-8 in the morning. I usually wake up once or twice in a night to turn over (I sleep on my side). The last time I wake up to turn before actually having to get up, after that turn is usually when I get the lucid dreams.

So either it's because I have actually rested quite a lot already, and the built up energy is what allows the lucid dream to happen. Or it's because of the environmental energy shifting from yin (night) to yang (day) with the sun rising, which boosts the lucidity. Or probably it's both.

2) In all lucid dreams in my life, I've never been able to change the environment. I am simply lucid in a set of surroundings, people and objects already present, and then I can move myself around and choose how to react to what's going on, but I can't change it. Only once did I have "power" over the environment back when I did the bön method.

This is something I always pondered, how come I am lucid, but cannot control the dream? Because when reading about lucid dreams, control of the dream environment was one of the things most people spoke about.

However, now I think it's to do with how strong one's dream body is. In my case, my dream body was the weakest of my bodies, so it's going to take some time with continous medicine buddha as well as dream yoga practice to build it stronger.

 

Maybe I will get a further boost to my strength when I learn and start practicing tummo.

 

3) My sleep quality was worse, and I would wake up not fully rested when I did dream yoga earlier. This was also the case the first 3-4 days, however, now I feel it normalizing more and more from day to day. My sleep quality is returning to normal, I also fall asleep more naturally (whereas before it took me longer because I focused too hard on the visualisation while falling asleep) and lastly my level of feeling rested and recharged when I rise is also very close to normal now.

This is a huge thing for me, and I feel it to be related to my dream body strength growing, as well as of course finding the balance between visualisation effort and letting go while falling asleep.

"99% sleep, 1% awareness" is what Tulku Lobsang kept repeating during the retreat. I was probably more like "100% awareness, 0% sleep"! Now I'm more relaxed, that helps a lot with falling asleep.

 

Where To Go From Here

Tulku Lobsang gives several progressions for dream yoga:
Level 1) Stabilise your ability to have lucid dreams (have lucid dreams every night)

Level 2) Start traveling around your environment in your lucid dreams every night

Level 3) Start changing yourself in the environment (shift your own form) every night

Level 4) Start changing the environment (multiply objects) every night

Level 5) Start doing spiritual practice in your lucid dreams every night (this creates a "special dream body")

Level 6) Create a "special dream body" (now you no longer travel within your own mind during dream yoga with your ordinary dream body, now you actually travel in the real, objective universe with a "special" dream body - more similar to what's normally called astral projection) - however, how to practice at this level he didn't elaborate on

So I'm clearly still at the most basic level, level 1.

It's probably going to take quite a while to complete each of these levels, so I'm arming myself with patience.

Just stabilising lucid dreams every night would be a huge achievement seen from my current perspective.

I'm going to keep on keeping on, and we'll see if learning and practicing daily tummo from next month or so will boost my dream yoga.

 

Lastly, an underrated day practice that supports dream yoga is a kind of mindful attitude with everything that happens during the day, by saying to yourself "this is a dream, I'm dreaming". I've heard this from several lamas.

I've not really taken it seriously, but I've tried to do it a few days. I feel like it actually let's you work out your dream body in your daily life. So it's like a "cheat code" to level up your dream body much faster.

Now your dream body builds itself stronger BOTH during your daily life AND during your dream life. Each time you say "it's a dream, I'm dreaming" your start experiencing from your dream body, thereby feeding it experiences, working it out, and slowly building it bigger and stronger.