Lucid Dreaming
From SourceryForge
Most people don't know they're dreaming as they dream. With lucid dreaming, you're dreaming and you know it. Also called "conscious dreaming," the experience starkly differs from a normal dream. A lucid dream is unmistakable; you know one when you do one. Even at (usually) less than 15 minutes in length, a lucid dream packs quite a wallop.
However, for those of us who haven't yet consciously dreamed, some distinctions can help clarify what a lucid dream is and isn't.
- Normal dreams, when recalled, generally remember like a movie; that is, they have the flavor of something happening to the dreamer.
- Vivid dreams are not necessarily lucid dreams. They are just like normal dreams, but hold extra power because of their clarity, detail, and intensity--sometimes having a lasting effect on waking life. An example of a vivid dream is a terrifying nightmare.
Lucid, or conscious, dreams, on the other hand, are remembered like a true memory, because your conscious mind was literally there. They can be vivid; they can be dull. But in all cases you were there, interacting of your own free will.
However, just because you bring your awareness to a dream doesn't necessarily mean you bring complete control--though lucid dreams have the distinct advantage of free will.
And doing as you wish in the limitless dreamworld has obvious advantages for self-understanding, magick, spiritual work, and of course recreation!
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How To Do It
If you want to consciously dream, there are specific techniques to get you there, keep you there, and master your dreamworld. While you are practicing those, though, you can increase your chances of lucidity by also:
- Working on Dream Recall. This makes lucid dreaming highly likely, and has solid benefits of its own.
- Practicing any magickal, creative, or spiritual work daily.
Getting There
As with most Dreamwork, you must do real work in the waking world to jump-start yourself the dream world. This is because you normally do not have access to your will in the dream world. So you must push your intention into your dreams through habit forming, self-hypnosis, and brute force methods available with technology. For lucid dreaming, all these methods focus on one result: to make you realize you're dreaming.
"am I dreaming?"
This is a classic, effective, technique. Plus, it works without intimate knowledge of the nature of dreams.
- Throughout your day, look at your hands--or your feet, or your belly, or whatever.
- Still looking, ask yourself, "Am I dreaming?"
- Think about it, and surmise the answer for yourself.
- Answer "yes" or "no."
- Do some other stuff.
- Repeat.
Make it a habit; whenever you see your protuberant belly or your shapely hands, whether it's by bringing them into view or by peripheral vision, ask yourself, "Am I dreaming?" Think about it, then answer "yes" or "no."
The more habitual this becomes, the more likely you will ask yourself in a dream, which is what you want to happen.
Remember this guideline when answering yourself: if you are unsure of whether or not you're dreaming, you're definitely dreaming.
After all this work (about 1-4 weeks of it), when you're dreaming, you might gaze at your hands and ask yourself "Am I dreaming?" and respond "yes," launching your awareness into your dream. And there you have it! You're doing it! (You'll know it when it happens).
Looking at a part of your body is useful because
- it anchors the question physically and visually, and can be used later to keep the lucidity alive (see below),
- uses an item you will likely encounter in a dream, and
- is an element you can control.
Other variants of the question are "Is this a dream?" "Am I awake?" and the presupposition "Am I enjoying this dream?" You can obviously make your own question, as long as it makes you consider: which world am I in?
A peculiar side effect of this technique is that, by way of honestly considering the question, you may evoke occasional glimpses into how strange and fascinating waking life truly is.
hypnagogic suggestion
In that twilight between waking and sleeping, you can give yourself commands. This falls under meditation or self-hypnosis, but has of course a specific bent. Commands like "As I drift asleep, deeper and deeper, I feel I must ask myself: is this a dream? Am I dreaming?" Or "drifting asleep, I recognize the dream approaching..." You can whip up your own version of these. The key part is to command your mind that you will realize when you are dreaming.
waking up and doing it again
When you wake up with a dream on your mind, go back to sleep with the intention of entering the dream in full awareness. This can go under self-hypnosis, too, but has the specific benefit of knowing what dream you are entering--and of course you already know it's a dream. Plus, it gives you a second chance to get lucid!
drink too much water before going to bed
Surprisingly, if your bladder is about to burst, and you are asleep, you will notice it within a dream. With practice, you can associate that feeling, that urge to get up and go, with realizing you are in a dream. For example, you might get up to go to the bathroom, but the light switch doesn't work; therefore you realize you are dreaming. (See Reality Check)
This can sometimes be bad if you are unable to wake yourself up from your dream.
reality check
Similar to "Am I dreaming?", you can, in your waking and dreaming life, perform what is called a "Reality Check" to determine whether or not you are in a dream. This usually involves attempting something that is impossible in real life, or trying something that usually doesn't happen in a dream.
When you discover, for example, that you can fly, then you become aware that you are dreaming, and enter lucidity. Some common reality checks (with corresponding waking-reality exercises) are:
- light switches don't work. (turn light switches on and off)
- dead people show up. (ask yourself if any of the people around you are dead)
- you suddenly jump to another space. (how did you get here?)
- you can't remember where you might have been 10 minutes ago. (try to remember)
- long-gone acquaintances talk to you. (is this person you're talking to a long-gone acquaintance?)
- the sky is magnificently colorful. (look up)
- books, magazines, and signs have jumbled letters. ("I must not be dreaming because I've could read this paragraph")
- Reality becomes resistant to analysis. ("I need to read this book to know if I'm dreaming, but my eyes have been glued shut, so I must be dreaming")
- [please, more examples, dreamers!]
Once you recognize one of these things, you will realize that you are dreaming (or not) and enter lucidity. Because you exert the effort during your waking life, this habit of checking reality will transfer into your dreaming life, where you can reap the benefits.
Another form of reality checking is reading through your dream journal. Some people have recurring "themes" or places within their dreams; if you recognize one of these themes or places, then you can suddenly be aware you are dreaming, and enter lucidity.
outside help
From listening to a talk show as you go to sleep, to using light-emitting products, there's a wealth of gadgets that can help you get to lucidity. This could be a section in its own. Alarm clocks, hypnotic tapes of music and voice, computer software, and the like are all available to help the struggling dreamer try to get a hold on the elusive lucid dream.
Whatever the technique is, if it informs you when you're dreaming, use it. If you come up with another effective trick, well then, record it here!
[It would be nice to have rankings of the effectiveness of these techniques: is this possible?]
keeping the dream alive
One of the difficulties with lucid dreaming is that lucidity is transient (my guess is that your conscious mind is too damn slow and deliberate for your unconscious mind, and your unconscious mind will simply take off without you), and many lucid dreams are very, very short, as in "one second" kind of short. Maintaining lucidity is difficult, but a skill that can be mastered. Here are some techniques.
- Remember the body part? Well, when you feel yourself losing lucidity, look again at that body part, study it, pick out the lines in your hands, and tell yourself that you are dreaming. Usually this will extend your stay.
- Spin in place. Why this works, I don't know. But spinning on your axis when you start to lose lucidity is very effective, perhaps because of the disparity between your real body lying in bed and the physical movement in your dream. In any case, it will extend your stay, but a common experience is that your current dream will shift to another, completely different dream. Used with the technique above, you can choose to stay where you are by looking at your body, or you can change your dream by spinning, at your will.
mastering lucidity
To master lucidity is to become the 9th level yogin. It is to maintain awareness of the awakened self through the wall of sleep and into the dream world, without ever losing consciousness. The method is simple in description: Keep oneself as a disinterested observer and not become too involved in the thoughts that pass through the mind prior to sleep. Maintain a vigil past the hypnagogic state where at once and, all of a sudden the entire dream world will form, at this point you will recognize you are there and it will be one of the most memorable and vivid experiences of your life. As for myself it went like this....
Through the hypnagogic state.... Suddenly I was as if not there but, looking at an old pick-up truck with the hood opened up. Then I heard a voice comming from the man that was suddenly working on the engine say, "Would you hand me that wrench from the toolbox?", I looked down (the clarity really struck me as I saw my arm and hand reach into the tool box to retrieve the tool) and got the wrench and handed it to him, I knew I was fully in the dream world and no longer just observing fleeting images. Then I left that dream and formed another for an experiment I was working on that concerned dream-time expansion. Good luck.
People
Jargon
(MILD, DC, RC, Hypnogogic suggestion, etc.)
History
Cultures that Embrace Lucid Dreaming
(and sometimes refer to it by another name) Yaqui Indians, and the Senoi. The Senoi taught that destruction of an enemy in a dream could be accomplished by learning to look for a weapon with which to conquer the adversary (requires lucidity) and then one could demand a gift from the defeated foe which was usually given without reluctance.
Actually, the original source on Senoi dreaming culture - the single source which all further writings on the matter are based - is now believed to be a fabrication. It still contains some interesting ideas on how to work with your dreams.
Lucid Dreams vs. Normal Dreams
pros/cons, distinctions
