Maybe pigs cannot fly yet, but you sure can. At least in your dreams. Lucid dreaming is a mysterious art form that many people wish they could master. You may have experienced a lucid dream, in which you were aware you were dreaming.
But would it not be great if you could have that self-awareness on a regular basis, and as a result able to influence your dreams?
Dreaming is realizing you are dreaming as you dream. When you reach the Lucid Dreaming state, you will be able to control your dreams and experience anything you wish.
Maybe you would like to take a flight through the sky or make other impossible things possible. Or maybe you would like to tell your boss you think he is unfair, without getting fired in real life.
There are many appeals to lucid dreaming, and if you can learn the elusive skill, then a world of excitement and an opportunity for personal growth await you.
I remember standing out on a deck in the foggy night air and having a most peculiar, amazing thought: I am dreaming right now. I can walk through walls. And then I immediately walked through a wall! Well, at least in my dream!
I will never forget this accidental lucid dream and I certainly would like to experience something like that again. But how? In order to become an expert lucid dreamer, you must understand the basics of the art.
1) Why not just have normal dreams?
What is the effect of lucid dreaming? Not only do we all desire to control our environment and make fantastical things happen, but a dream is a safe place to rehearse for our waking life.
This is not to say our real world fears and anxieties do not follow us into our sleep, but no character or plot we conjure up in our dreams can physically harm us and no one but the dreamer will know what happens in a dream.
This means that a baseball player can practice his swing, a politician can practice her speech, or a newly widowed man can find love again – all without actual consequences.
Lucid dreaming gives people a forum; a place they can test the water or fulfill their desires. It also gives them a place to confront their fears. When we are able to control our dreams, we can turn those nightmares into memorable, productive fantasies.
2) How to lucid dream
Many folks spend years and years perfecting the craft of lucid dreaming, but if you are like me, you are not about to dedicate your time and energy to such an endeavor.
After all, you probably have a full-time job or children to worry about! So what are some simple tips to having clear, lucid dreams? Luckily, there are easy things you and I can do to control our dreams.
a. Keep a dream journal
The first step toward effective lucid dreaming is to log all your dreams on paper. As soon as you wake up from a dream, jot down everything you remember from it.
Do this every morning as well. The better your dream recall, the better your ability to lucid dream will be. One of the goals of maintaining a dream diary is to find out if you are already having lucid dreams as is! You may very well be.
b. Notice trends
Now that you have a log of your dreams, you can begin to take them apart. Are there patterns to your dreams? For example, do certain objects always show up, is there a setting that you commonly dream about, do you feel your dream is first or third person, etc?
Once you notice these regularities, you can then train yourself to respond to them with the question – Am I dreaming or is this real?
If you raise your self-consciousness and doubt, lucid dreaming is all the more possible.
c. Expect to lucid dream
Every night before you go to sleep, write down on paper – I will have a lucid dream.
Studies have shown that when you suggest things to your subconscious, while conscious, your suggestions are often taken to heart!
So if you plan on having a lucid dream, say so.
d. Short is not as sweet
Many people complain that they cannot prolong their lucid dreams. There are three techniques to doing just that. When you realize you are in a dream, spin around, rub your hands together, and focus on an object in it, repeating to yourself – the next scene will be a dream.
After you practice some of these techniques, you may want to invest in lucid dreaming products and courses too.
One of the biggest mysteries about lucid dreaming is whether or not the ancient art serves to increase the frequency of lucid dreams or on the other hand, simply improves lucid dream recall.
Either way, the more aware we are of our dreams, the more aware we will be in our waking life. If we want clarity about real world problems, we can gain it by having clarity in our dreams!
Lucid dreaming is closely related to astral projection! So, I would be sharing some of my lucid dreaming journeys here and I wish you many sweet lucid dreams this evening.
Copyright (c) 2008 Steven Magill
Lucid dreaming is something that many people wish they could do. Often when they realize they are lucid dreaming they get so excited that they wake themselves up! Lucid dreaming, for those who don’t yet know, is sort of like conscious dreaming. At some point during the dream you realize that you are dreaming. That is a lucid dream. Some people find that when they are lucid dreaming they can actually control what is happening during their dreams. So how do you induce a lucid dream? Here is a tutorial on step by step lucid dreaming.
The first step in step by step lucid dreaming is learning what time is the best time to have a lucid dream. Pay attention to your personal sleep schedule and how long it takes you to have a dream in the first place (this can be accomplished by noting the time when you wake up from a dream and comparing it to the time you fell asleep). Typically lucid dreams happen during REM sleep which is the sleep cycle you go through right before waking up. The easiest way to achieve a REM cycle is to wake up earlier than you normally would, stay awake for an hour to an hour and a half and then go back to sleep. Your brain should drop right into the REM cycle and you can have your lucid dream.
The second step in step by step lucid dreaming is deciding to have a lucid dream. This is often called the MILD technique (Mnemonic Induced Lucid Dreaming). While you are falling asleep make the decision to remember your dream and then concentrate only on that idea. Repeat to yourself “I will remember my next dream.” This will tell your brain to pay attention to the next dream you have and chances are high that when the dream starts you will know that you are dreaming, which is what a lucid dream is.
The third step in our step by step lucid dreaming tutorial is to remember your dreams. Keep a dream journal and write down every detail that you remember from your dreams. By making yourself remember details from all of your dreams, you are telling your brain that your dreams are just as important to you as your waking life and it will start to stay more alert while you are dreaming. Keeping a record of all of your dreams can alert you to patterns in your dreaming and help you with the fourth and final step in our step by step lucid dreaming tutorial.
Perform regular reality checks. Intermittently throughout your day start asking yourself if you are awake or dreaming. Look around, take stock of your situation and consciously decide if you are awake or dreaming. Make sure to do this when you encounter any people, places or situations that are regular players in your dreams. Your brain will start to do this on its own and before you know it; your brain will tell you when you are dreaming!
Lucid Dreaming is a term coined by Frederik van Eeden. Very simply put, a dream in which you are aware that you are dreaming is called a Lucid Dream. The term ‘lucid’ is thus synonymous with ‘conscious’ or ‘aware’. But the degree of your ‘lucidity’ can vary according to the strength of your conscious focus and its stability, the presence of the critical faculty and memory ability, and finally, your ability to take control of the dream itself.
Similar to Astral Projection, Lucid Dreams can be spontaneous or intentional experiences, yet they are somewhat more commonly remembered. Sometimes people become lucid in a dream seemingly without any particular reason, just suddenly realizing that they are dreaming. But mostly, lucidity is triggered by an incongruity which would not occur in physical life, such as flying, or being unable to turn off a light switch, or words rearranging themselves, or anything that ‘cannot’ happen in the physical world.
The great thing about Lucid Dreaming is that once you recognize you’re inside a dream, you can change or create whatever you like in the dream. By becoming aware and exercising your will to choose, you get to experience just what you want to experience! Consider that for a moment. Not many people ever get a chance like that, certainly not so easily. It really is your own ‘Personal Virtual Reality’, with a flexibility and realism far exceeding the most advanced computer simulation.
I think this is best thing about them – you can do anything in a Lucid Dream. And I mean anything! There are no limits or boundaries to your experience as there are in the physical world, nor is there any time delay to what you create – everything appears virtually instantly as you desire it. I’m not sure how else to describe this but to say it’s very fulfilling and freedom engendering. And really really really fun!
This deeply satisfying aspect of these experiences may be partly why the Astral Plane has also been called the ‘Desire World.’ And because dreams take place within the Astral Plane, by becoming lucid we find we are already in the Astral! If and when we want to ‘project’ from a Lucid Dream, we just stop creating stuff, make it all disappear, and try to see what’s there. We may find ourselves exploring or interacting with other conscious dreamers or projectors on the Astral. Or we can return to our bedroom for an instant Etheric Projection.
Another huge point that needs to be made is that dreams are totally realistic to us when we’re experiencing them. It is only upon later reflection we may call an experience ‘just a dream’. All our senses, emotions, thoughts, feelings in a dream are as though the dream were ‘actually’ happening. It is! It’s not less real, it’s just more dynamic and fluid. And, when we become lucid, we usually find the acuteness and sensational aspects of the experience increase many times over, similar or beyond peak alertness while awake.
”Some dream events are more vivid than waking ones. It is only when the personality passes out of the dream experience that it may seem unreal in retrospect.” – Seth, Seth, Dreams and Projections in Consciousness p.219
And now for the real good news: you can induce Lucid Dreams too. One of these techniques is almost exactly the same as projection ones. In this case the difference in name is merely a technicality. But most Lucid Dreaming techniques involve learning to ‘wake up’ within a normal dream, at which point you decide what to do from there. There are a number of ways of doing this, some more effective than others, but I’ve made it my quest to explore and improve on them all.
Lucid Dreams can happen whenever regular dreams happen, and there are typically around four or five major dream periods in a single night, and each period can contain multiple dreams. So there is plenty of opportunity to make the most of our dreams. It’s actually quite hard to describe the sense of wonder that comes with Lucid Dreams! But okay, you convinced me, I will try…
To you – the self in the dream – the dream IS real, simply because that IS the ‘reality’ you are in. But at the same time you ‘know’ you are ‘dreaming’. From that inside perspective, it is your waking life that can seem like some kind of vague dream! It’s truly only a matter of perspective or focus as to what is ‘more’ or ‘less’ real at any particular time.
To use an analogy, it is as if you hold both hands out wide: one hand is your waking self and one hand is your dreaming self. If you turn your head and shift your focus from one hand to the other and back, is either ‘less real’? No way – both exist simultaneously. You remember the ‘opposite’ exists, but you are simply not focussed there. Just as both hands are ‘yours’, your waking and dreaming selves are both ‘you’.
By learning to dream with lucidity, we are blending our waking self and dreaming self identities in a way that will enrich the experience of both. We bring an ability to focus better consciously in the dream world and our creative abilities surface far more easily in waking life. And in the process we explore many new ideas and have a whole heap of fun!
Funny as it might sound, you can ‘induce’ a spontaneous Astral Experience. To do this you need to fill your mind up with Astral Projection and Lucid dreaming information by reading about it, thinking about it, discussing it. Some advocate becoming obsessed by these subjects to do this (I do not however. From experience I can say this information overload was more of a setback than a help. Concise quality information is a far better option. Meaning this course of course. 
But basically by this you are just suggesting and prompting your subconscious to induce an experience during or after sleep, and there are far more effective techniques for doing this too.
In the end, intellectual knowledge only helps so much. Both Astral Projection and Lucid Dreaming are things you DO, and get better at. They involve intentional active practices, like learning to play an instrument or a sport. Knowing about something is not the same as experiencing it. You can’t become an expert by studying the Astral second-hand, any more than you can become a violinist by reading music. Real results are achieved by the right attitude and actually using the techniques you learn.
Image taken on 2006-05-24 15:32:52 by Elfleda.
Image taken on 2009-02-05 12:02:08 by Claudio.Ar.
Lucid Dreaming is a very interesting subject, and is definitely worth taking a look at. As we continue to grow in our knowledge of what happens while we are sleeping, and how we can use our brains to help us achieve success, it is also becoming apparent that we can find pleasure and entertainment in our sleep, and can become a part of it all. Lucid is described as “conscious awareness” during sleep. What this means is, we know we are dreaming, and we want to get inside the dream and have some fun. After all, while in the dream state, all things are possible! We can fly, swim underwater for a long time, see all things, and now, with practice, we can participate in these dreams.
Many people have heard for years that we only use about 10% of our brain capacity. This is why so many people now want to find out how to use more of that capacity, not just for work, but also for play.
Lucid Dreaming – a Gift for Certain People?
It was once thought that lucid dreaming was a gift given only to certain people, much like true Psychics have; but this is not the case. Anyone can learn lucid dreaming; it just takes practice and time. According to Charles McPhee, you must spend the time to identify when your sleep cycles are, and when your dream cycles come. Then, as you become more aware of your sleep cycles, you can prepare mentally for those times. “When you awaken early in the morning, before you roll over and close your eyes for another cycle, be confident that your dreams are on their way. In the early morning hours, you stand on the brink of thirty to forty-minute blocks of nonstop dreamscape action. The trick, of course, is to recognize the dreamscape.” (103).
By definition, Lucid Dreaming means “conscious awareness during the dream state.” But how can this be? Every book I’ve ever read on dreaming has described the dream state as being an entry into the unconscious, so how can you possibly be conscious during dreaming, and be able to enter your dreams. Keep reading.
Can you be Conscious while Accessing the Subconscious?
According to Charles McPhee in his book “Stop Sleeping Through your Dreams,” the answer to the question on consciousness during sleep is a resounding NO! “Our ability for consciousness—our ability to achieve reflectivity in our minds—is specifically denied us during dream sleep. Single-mindedness is a quality that defines dream experience.” If you had the ability to reflect in a dream, you would recognize instantly that you were dreaming, and wake-up, and this is why it becomes difficult to judge and evaluate our dream experience.
An important event occurs with our muscle system with the onset of dream sleep. The main motor neurons of the body are inhibited, which prevents us from “physically” acting out dreams – you wouldn’t want to actually leap out of bed and start flying around the house; this would create chaos everywhere at night and you would wake up exhausted. Unfortunately, after the motor neurons are shut down, so is the ability for consciousness during dream sleep.
100 Minutes a Night for Lucid Dreaming
When we first awaken from dream sleep, we will have a good chance of recalling our dreams, whereas if awakened from any other stage, we will not even remember dreaming. We enter various stages of sleep during 90-minute cycles all through the night (you can test this by checking the clock before you go to sleep at night, and again when you awaken during the middle of the night.) This means that if you sleep for six hours a night, you will have four “dream cycles” which you can access for information or fun (most people dream an average of 100 minutes a night). In the book “Directed Dreaming,” you discover how to ask the proper questions of your dreams in order to receive problem solving information and direction for your life; now you can go one step further and discover how to step into random dreams to find out what clues they are trying to give you.
Trick # 1 – The First Step
The first step to becoming lucid during dreaming is to start trying to recall the previous nights dreams. This takes practice, but it can be accomplished. You will soon find out that if you work backward from the dream, it is easier to piece it together. This is easiest to do, of course, right after you wake up. If a dream is not written down, or recalled quickly, it will be lost forever. When you achieve the ability for lucid dreaming, you will find out that these dreams are recalled easier and do not vanish as quickly; that’s where the fun in lucid dreaming comes from! What good is it if you are able to jump into your dreams and “play,” then not remember anything about the experience. Remembering your lucid dreams can give you a calming feeling and something to smile about during the day. Soon, you will become aware of what you want to find out in your dreams, and you can tell yourself that the next time you have the dream where you are flying, you will remember that you are dreaming and want to participate in that adventure.
Trick #2 – The Best Time to Become Lucid
One important thing to remember about your dream cycles is that during the night, the time spent dreaming grows progressively longer with each cycle. This means that the longest stretch of dreamtime occurs just before awakening. This is the time you should concentrate on trying to become lucid. You should have tracked your dream cycles (as explained above), and determined approximately when you will reach the 4th cycle, then, when you awaken after the 3rd cycle, you can consciously tell yourself that next time you see or hear something, you will be dreaming, and you would like to be aware of this dream and enter into it.
Trick #3 – Not Sleeping!
It has been found that if you do not get enough sleep, and haven’t had time to dream, your body will compensate by dreaming more! It is almost as if it’s essential for us to have dream experiences. Therefore, if you are having a hard time becoming lucid in your dreams, you might want to try staying up later for a few nights, and then you will have more dream cycles as you try to “catch-up.” When you have these extra dream cycles in the catch-up phase, it’s a great opportunity to practice your lucid dreaming, as your cycles will be long, intense, and deep. It is more difficult to wake yourself out of sleep when the body is very tired, making this an excellent opportunity for lucidity!
Trick #4 – Associations
After you have become accustomed to writing down your dreams, it’s time to pick out a few common things in the dream that will remind you that you are dreaming. For example, if you commonly dream that you are driving various kinds of sports cars, the thing to tell yourself when you are awake is that the next time you are driving a fancy car you will be dreaming. That way, you create the association in your mind to trigger the unconscious to recognize that as a dream, and help you participate. If you commonly dream of flying, that’s also a good clue that you are dreaming, and if you consciously make a note of it, the next time you find yourself flying, you will wonder what you were supposed to remember about flying. If luck is on your side, this association will trigger your thinking that if you’re flying, you must be dreaming, and with that instant thought, you will be able to start your adventure into that dream.
The first few times you attempt to do this, the awareness that you are dreaming may wake you up! This is because your consciousness has been activated, and in order to keep dreaming you need to stay in the subconscious. It takes practice to make the acceptance that you are dreaming into a passing thought, and just go with the flow. If you think about it too much, you will wake up (and, of course, will need to try it all over again). Again, according to McPhee, “Whatever you choose as a clue to identify your dreams, the association will carry over to your dreams. As you keep a dream journal and familiarize yourself with the content of your dreams, you can experiment with clues. Before long, the next time you take off in flight or are pursued by some familiar tormentor, there is an exceptionally good chance that you will have the associated thought, “Oh! I must be dreaming.” And with this awareness, you will have successfully identified the dreamscape.
What do You Want to Find Out
After you have successfully entered your dreams, the next step is to find out what you want to accomplish by being there. Do you want to make your lucid dream into a fantasy where you physically fight off attackers, or do you want to be the fastest runner in the world and successfully outrun anything that comes after you, or would you rather have fantasies of a sexual nature? This fantasy type of lucid dreaming is fine, but what purpose does it serve? It does not help us resolve anything in real life; but it can be a good stress-reliever. A better way to work with lucid dreaming is to try to get some insight into why the conflict is occurring. If you were to stop those people who are chasing you in your dreams and talk to them, what would they say? Could they reveal to you why you are running and open up the opportunity to explore unconscious fears in real life? Since the unconscious is probably trying to tell you something, it would be best to find out what it is, so you can act on it when you wake up, and resolve these difficult situations. The more you practice, the closer you will get to resolving your issues — and then you can go back to fantasy dreaming (my guess is that that’s probably what you want to do anyway), but since you are taking your time to practice becoming lucid, you might as well make it work to your advantage every now and then.
Technology Can Help
As technology advances, so does the opportunity to get help with your Lucidity. There are now high-tech devices that you can use to induce lucid dreams. Most of them can be found in New Age bookstores, or you can go to the library and find mail order catalogs that carry these devices. You can now find popular devices such as eyeshades that detect rapid eye movement and blink a red diode when you start to sleep. This red light is incorporated into the dream, and reminds the dreamer to clue in that he or she is dreaming. If you’re having trouble getting into your dreams, these devices may be able to help you relax enough to have a little fun!