Knowledge and Experience: July 2007

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A lucid dream is a dream in which the person is aware that he or she is dreaming while the dream is in progress. During lucid dreams, it is often possible to exert conscious control over the dream characters and environment, as well as to perform otherwise physically impossible feats. Lucid dreaming has been researched scientifically, and its existence is well established

Well there you have it, if it comes from the Wikipedia it deserves a second thought, at least to me it does. While reading some forums I stumble on something called Lucid Dreaming, not knowing what that was and on seeing how everyone think its so cool and stuff I had to check it out. I’ve been trying to get into lucid dreaming for a while now. I started out remembering my dreams every once a week to the point where I could remember up to 3 to 4 dreams per night. Up to now I think I've had up to 4 lucid dreams, the first 3 was cool but kind of cloudy, I just can't describe them clearly enough to be satisfy.

My Personal Experience
The most recent lucid dream was vivid and fantastic. I had just woken up to go to the toilet, still tired and early I attempted to go back to sleep by curling up to the heater. Tired but conscious, I felt a hand pushing at my back as if helping my soul push forward out of my body. Previously I’ve been trying to get an Out of Body Experience (OBE) without any luck – more about OBE on the next post. So feeling this invisible hand pushing at my back I welcomed it and tried to go out, then in the darkness from my closed eyes, I saw a glitter of sparks fly up and outwards, then suddenly I see myself flying through the darkness in 3^rd person perspective. I’m not sure what was going on but who cares flying is cool.

After a short while I just felt silly flying through the darkness, so I sent out an intention to be flying over a sparkling ocean. The darkness ended and I’m finally over the ocean with sparking waters. The feeling was the most wonderful feeling as I can feel the wind in my hair and the trickles of water particles hitting my face as I sweep past the water below me like in Dragon Ball Z. At times I was going really fast too, and at some point I notice I had followers behind me flying with me, not sure who they were as I didn’t bother to look back, I just know they were either my friends or angels, what difference does it make, I’m Flying over the ocean and that’s all that mattered.

I classified this as a lucid dream because even though this might have started out to be what I thought was going to be an OBE; I ended up flying over oceans feeling great while still aware that I’m lying in bed next to the heater. As I felt tremendous freedom and joy I felt a warm glowing light heat up somewhere in my chest, not sure what that was about but yeah.

Why bother learning lucid dreams
So what is so great about lucid dreaming? For experience lucid dreamers it is possible to control the content of your dream, for example, you can bring about anyone you want into your dream and interact with them; for example you might want to dual out with Jacky Chan - I had that dream a couple of days ago even though it wasn’t lucid. You could go on a date with Jennifer Aniston; arms wrestle with Arnold Schwarzenegger … and win, beat Freddy Cougar at his own game, beat up your worst enemy, etc. Aside from manifesting people, you can manifest objects, environment, superpowers/abilities, the skies the limit people.

On average we sleep 8 hours a day, that’s a third of our lives spend doing pretty much nothing, why not use that time to be having fun which is another reason to pick up this cool ability. Another reason I found on the Wikipedia site is quoted here:

People who suffer from nightmares would benefit from the ability to be aware they are dreaming. A pilot study was performed in 2006 that showed lucid dreaming treatment was successful in reducing nightmare frequency. This treatment consisted of exposure to the idea, mastery of the technique, and lucidity exercises. It was not clear what aspect of this treatment was responsible for the success, though the treatment as a whole was successful.

Methods of practicing lucid dreams
So now you’re convinced and want to give it go, but where to start? From what I learnt and from my experience, I think the first most important step is to start remembering your dreams as vividly as you can. I mean what’s the use of having a lucid dream if you can’t remember them the next morning? It’s like having a cake and not able to eat it too. Anyhow most of my friends that I speak to can’t recall any of their dreams like how I did when I first started out. When I as them “so what did you dream last night?” they just shrug their shoulders and say “I don’t have any dreams”. Truth is we dream every night, in fact we have 4 to 6 dreams every night due to slipping in and out of REM (Rapid Eye Movement). I’m not really sure what REM is but you can read that from the Wikipedia.

Back to the first step of practicing lucid dreaming, every night before nodding off just put out the intention of remembering your dreams, and in the morning try recall anything, and I mean anything. If all you can remember is a cat, good work, throughout the day when you’re free just try to figure out what the cat dream was all about, even if you nothing comes back it doesn’t matter, the important thing was you tried. As time goes on you will start to remember more as you keep trying. I have this theory that your subconscious is playing a part in this somewhere, if you keep thinking about your dreams daily, your subconscious will start to get the idea that dream recall is something you really want to do, and so throughout the week you will gradually remember more and more. It very useful to have a dream journal or just get a notepad to just jot down anything you remember from your dream.

The second step is to actually try to be aware that your dream while your dreaming, an obvious step. This is done through many techniques, most of which is described in the Wikipedia website, here’s the link:

Lucid Dream (Wikipedia).

Here is a link to Erin Pavlina’s fantastic podcast on lucid dreaming,

Pavlina-010-Lucid-Dreaming.mp3 (Time = 11:38, Size = 5.3MB)

She clearly outlines the steps the she personally uses to perform lucid dream, by the way she has had numerous lucid dreams and even OBEs and knows what she’s talking about.

For me I just try to do what Erin suggest, as I don’t have much experience in inducing a lucid dream, the most previous lucid dream I had have was an accident so yeah, however I can recall my dreams way better than any of my friends.

Well, all that I know on lucid dreaming; as I mentioned earlier I’m still practicing. There are still so much to learn, best of luck to everyone trying and keep practicing.