DW's Blog

Waking and Sleeping: The Two Minds We Inhabit

by DW Green — April 2, 2025

Our dreaming mind might be showing us something profound about reality that our word-saturated waking mind often misses.

During our recently completed Dreams and Zen retreat, participants explored a fascinating territory that many of us overlook—the profound differences between our waking and dreaming minds, and what these differences reveal about the nature of reality itself.

The Word-Soaked Waking Mind

In our daytime consciousness, words and concepts dominate our experience. We narrate constantly, labeling, categorizing, and explaining our reality through language. These words seem to express our whole experience, yet they actually limit our awareness in subtle but profound ways.

Our waking self-identity becomes wrapped in verbal constructs—stories about who we are, what we want, what we fear. We soak our experience in words until the direct encounter with reality becomes obscured by our descriptions of it.

The Dreamworld’s Wordless Wisdom

But at night, something remarkable happens.

In dreaming, we fully experience a concentrated presentation of reality that operates largely without words. We enter what feels like a collective storehouse of pure experience where we interact directly with the dream elements themselves, not our descriptions of them.

There is no zafu, no zendo, no instruction—just the direct and open display, with no self-conscious editing. What emerges are creative expressions of open reality that reveal several fascinating contrasts to our waking consciousness:

Identity: Fixed vs. Fluid

In waking life, we cling to a stable sense of self. In dreams, identity becomes startlingly fluid. We might become another person entirely, observe ourselves from outside our bodies, or even experience being multiple people simultaneously. The rigid boundaries of selfhood dissolve.

Time and Space: Bounded vs. Unbounded

Time in dreams abandons its linear march. We might experience childhood and adulthood simultaneously, or find past, present, and future intermingling freely. Space becomes functionally irrelevant—we can be in multiple places at once, or transition between locations without traversing distance.

Knowing: Acquired vs. Direct

Waking consciousness relies heavily on accumulated knowledge and reasoning. In dreams, we often experience direct knowing—immediate apprehension without explanation or process. We simply understand, mirroring the intuitive wisdom (prajna) that Zen practice cultivates.

Dreams as Practice

By including our nighttime dreams in our Zen practice of presence and wide awareness, we access a different mode of experiencing reality—one less constrained by conceptual thinking. The odd, unlikely, unconventional narratives of our dreams reveal how our minds operate when freed from conventional limitations.

This integration deepens our realization of emptiness, openness, and just this. The path of practice reveals its wider, deeper, unbounded aspects when we recognize that our dreaming mind might be showing us something profound about reality that our word-saturated waking mind often misses.

The wisdom of dreams doesn’t replace our waking practice—it complements and enriches it. By paying attention to both states of consciousness, we develop a more complete understanding of mind itself and its relationship to the boundless reality we inhabit, both day and night.