For the longest time in my adult life, I felt out of place. I had everything I had ever wanted as a child (a good job, finishing my education, a loving spouse) yet it was never enough. It was in my search for answers that I stumbled across lucid dreaming. While researching and practicing lucid dreaming I attained the tools necessary to solve my problem. I found out I had no purpose, no endgame. My entire life I have always had a goal or bar to reach. First it was high school, then college but no one ever told me what to shoot for after that, they never do. It was in this discovery that I was able to reflect within myself and find a new purpose, change the world and I owe the discovery to lucid dreaming.
Lucid dreaming is the state of being consciously aware that one is dreaming. My goal is to help you achieve lucid dreaming and also use your ability to lucid dream to improve your life by interacting with your subconscious mind. Interacting with your dreams can allow you to converse with your subconscious and understand what it wants/thinks. Once you understand what your subconscious wants, you have the tools to improve your life in every aspect.
It is indeed a strange topic, and there will be plenty of skepticism. Some of what you will read cannot be scientifically proven or is not quantifiable, but once experienced, all is made clear. It would be like me telling you about the color green. I can use all the words possible to try and explain it, but you will never truly understand what green is until you see it.
- Start a Dream Journal
One of the most fundamental starting blocks for any lucid dreaming is to keep a dream journal. Have you ever woken up and can accurately remember all the details of the dream you just woke up from, but then later in the day you cannot remember for the life of you any of those details? This is very common and the dream journal can ensure that does not happen again. Very soon after waking up, you should record everything you recall in your dream journal. The act of writing it not only helps you remember the details about the dream you had, but it also gets your subconscious in the mindset that you are interested in remembering your dreams.
Personally I like to have my dream journal be personalized, not just any composition notebook will do, it is called the “dream journal” after all. However, any pad and paper will suffice for the purposes of the journal. Also while the priority of the writing should be as many details as you can, I will also go back after the fact and add in how I felt after waking up, or my energy level, etc. For example, when I have my anxiety/stress dreams, I am running from class to class never arriving at the correct classroom for eternity. I generally wake up feeling exhausted and defeated, and I like to keep a record of that, but completely optional.
It’s also worth noting that one should be aware of their sleep cycle for best results from lucid dreaming. There is nothing worse than waking up right as you are about to put on the one ring to rule them all!
- Reality check!
My personal favorite part of lucid dreaming is the reality checks. Reality checks are things you can do, to check yourself to see if you are dreaming, usually having one concrete response for reality, but a varying response while dreaming.
My favorite reality check is touching walls. In reality I touch a lot of walls, different temperatures, textures, but most of all, I can push against it, and thanks to Newton’s Third Law of kinematics, it will push back! In my personal lucid dreams (and I have read that this is a fairly common one) when I push on a wall, the wall becomes almost sponge-like, molding around the shape of my hand. Another fairly common one is looking at your own hands. It may sound strange, but many people don’t actually realize that they never see their own hands in a dream (or feet) and so getting in the habit to force one self to look at your hands or feet can help for lucid dreaming. What happens when I look at my hands you’re asking? That entirely depends on the person. Some have told me when they looked at their feet they were floating off the ground, another told me when they looked at their hands and they were transparent. The results may vary but the outcome is the same, it is a way to let yourself know you are dreaming because the reality check is usually something that is not physically possible in real life.
3.Meditate
Many American’s are confused to the actual purpose of meditating. Most think it is to focus your mind and/or take a break from a busy day (relaxation), when in reality it is to learn to control ones thoughts. You do this in mediation by clearing one’s mind of all thoughts, which eventually can help one control individual thoughts and most important recognize one’s “self” from one’s “ego.”
If using meditation strictly for lucid dreaming purposes, then I recommend doing so thirty minutes to an hour before you go to sleep. This can be extremely conducive to clearing your mind of all excessive chatter and prepare it for lucid dreaming.
- Mnemonic Induction to Lucid Dreaming (MILD)
I am sure we all remember being told to count sheep to help us fall asleep as a child? Well that is very similar to MILD. It is a repetitious action to help our brains shut off. In the case of lucid dreaming it can be very helping to come up with something like “I will remember my dreams” as a simple starter. This acts both as a way to shut off our brain, but also to help remind our subconscious of our goals/intentions.
Like the dream journal, I encourage you to make your mnemonic as personal as you can and do it as often as you can. The more something becomes habit, the more it works its way into our subconscious and the less we have to force ourselves to remember our dreams and the easier lucid dreaming will come to us.
- Notice Patterns
At this point you ideally will be dreaming often and recalling the majority of details from every dream and so now I find it helpful to recall old dreams by memory or from reading from your dream journal, and find the patterns in themes. For me personally, the most common dreams I have lately are stress or anxiety related (welcome to the life of a college student). Noticing patterns can be the most difficult part of lucid dreaming. It is not something that comes natural to our conscious mind, but rather our subconscious.
Part of noticing patterns is to learning to interpret your dreams and decipher the symbols used. One reoccurring dream I had for a very long time was loosing teeth. They would just fall out uncontrollably in my dreams and replenish instantly as if I were a shark on steroids. I only recently discovered through research and contemplation that the act of loosing teeth was a symbol for anxiety, after all loosing teeth is nerve racking. Once I realized that dream was about anxiety I can go back and realize how many different versions of anxiety dreams I was having, which was entirely too many. Do not expect to uncover the meaning behind all of the symbols from your dreams instantly. It could take many hours of research, and a lot of reflecting on your circumstances. I have found a book of symbols helpful in this regard.
- Conversate
The hardest but possibly most rewarding stage of lucid dreaming is interacting with one’s subconscious. Plenty of research has been done that suggest a higher brain usage rate during lucid dreaming than while awake (insert link). The reason you should value your subconscious is that your subconscious is designed to process complex functions much more efficiently than our conscious mind. It’s where the concept of “intuition” comes from. Intuition much like dreams, are your subconscious trying to communicate its conclusions to you.
So this is where things can get very strange and difficult to understand which is yet again where the dream journal comes in handy. Once you are in a lucid dreaming state, that is to say you are fully aware you are dreaming, and yet the dream continues on, then you should take the opportunity to interact. Ask the main figures in your dreams questions, “why am I here” or “what do you want to tell me.” Essentially you could ask them whatever you want, it is your dream after all, but I would suggest you use your time wisely. Many times the answer the figures from your dreams give you may not make logical sense. They might be dancing the hokey pokey but their response could be about the dog you accidentally ran over the other day, so again write it down.
- Research
Do not be afraid to read and research as much as you want about lucid dreaming. There is no one specific method that works for everyone; we are after all different people. Researching can give insights that may not come as naturally to you and therefore help in your evaluation and interpretation of your dreams. There are infinite websites to use, but one of my favorites is http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com. When looking for a “credible” site to research on, try to find one that offers a variety of opinions, and ideally also offers some articles based on science as well. While some aspects of lucid dreaming and subconscious minds cannot be scientifically proven, other aspects can, so it is important to have that as a resource when starting out.
In the end
You might be telling yourself “why?” or “so what!” in regards to why this is all relevant. You might be saying, “Plenty of people function just fine without lucid dreaming so why now?” While it is a strange topic and can be unhelpful if you are looking for immediate answers, it has long-term benefits that extend to all aspects of life. Lucid dreaming and developing ones ability to communicate with ones subconscious can have immeasurable benefits. Many people lack self-emotional understanding, the subconscious can step in and let us know how we truly feel. When making a potentially life altering decision communication with our subconscious can help us decide what we truly want, and not what others around us want. Knowing ones subconscious is to know ones self.
There skeptics about weather lucid dreaming is possible, but to them I say, even if it is not real, but it improves our life, then what do we have to lose? Many religious entities have successfully made that argument for centuries, and this is no different. All aspects of ludic dreaming require people to only look within themselves. Can the world really be worse off if we all know a little bit more about our selves? If we can find a way to improve our individual happiness without harming other people, then we would be foolish to not entertain the thought. Our primal instinct as a human is to adapt or die and in a world becoming increasingly more complex the subconscious mind can be increasingly more valuable.