Audible Life Stream

The Eckankar spiritual tradition focuses on spiritual dreaming and soul travel. In my case, I never had a lucid dream until I started routinely doing some of Eckankar’s contemplative practices, such as chanting HU while focusing on the third eye before drifting off to sleep. Since then, I’ve had many lucid dreams, including some powerful, vivid, and transcendent ones. 

For example, recently, I dreamed I was walking down a damp trail next to a small creek. Initially, the dream had somewhat of a drab, muted feel. At some point, I became lucid and asked the “awareness behind the dream” to show me a Golden Wisdom Temple, special places in Eckankar in which divine knowledge is dispensed. Immediately, the scene shifted to awe-inspiring vividness with intense energetic ambiance. I was ecstatic. Although no temple appeared, golden light enveloped the setting beneath a vivid blue sky. It was a little bit like how fall’s luminescent golden cottonwood trees contrast with Northern New Mexico’s vibrant blue skies. 

Once a trickle, the stream was now a raging torrent, in the middle of which a towering island had appeared with a waterfall gushing down to the stream. Eckankar, as well as other spiritual traditions such as Shabda Yoga and Sikhism, emphasize the “audible life stream,” the flow of the divine life-force energy that percolates down to us but tends to be muted by our everyday consciousness of limitation. Perhaps, this dream was a manifestation of this phenomenon at some level.

As I gawked at the island and its gushing waterfall, I saw some movement. A little bird flew from the island to me. With great joy, I extended my arm, the bird landing on it. We joyously gazed into each other’s eyes. Through the gaze of this tiny creature, I felt I was receiving the darshan or holy transmission from a master. The dream left me with a blissful feeling that lingered much of the day.