Do you want to increase control over your dreams? The idea is that additional control over your dreams can reduce your nightmares and other symptoms of anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder by confronting dream monsters and other threats, or by changing them into something neutral or desirable, or by changing the scene in the dream altogether.  In addition, the common thinking is that lucid dreaming is a way for you to  increase your confidence and waking life skills through skull practice in a death-proof environment. If you have stage fright, for instance, practicing in dreams while knowing that you are dreaming can extinguish fear of the judgment of others.

There is little doubt that you can learn to control your dreams and thereby reduce your anxiety, not only while dreaming, but while you are awake. There have been plenty of studies now that verify these abilities. As you can find elsewhere on DreamYoga.Com, many talented people have developed excellent strategies that are concrete and  effective tools for developing such competencies. IDL supports your exploration of these methods to increase your awareness of your dreams, your enjoyment of them, and their usefulness for your waking life.

There is another, more basic question that few ask: Do you need to increase control over your dreams?  There are reasons to approach extending waking control into the dream state with both caution and skepticism. It assumes that your waking self will structure dream reality in ways that are superior to the ways that it is already structured. This may indeed sometimes be the case. However, a further underlying assumption beneath such approaches to lucid dreaming is that dream reality is not already structured in ways that are superior to your waking life. Is that true? How do you know that? On the basis of what do you arrive at that conclusion?

Most people would respond that it is self-evident – that they sometimes become  confused, out of control, or anxious in dreams, and that these are not desirable states and are to be avoided. This assumes that happiness, well-being, and growth are predicated on more control, less anxiety, and less confusion. Therefore, anxiety, confusion, and being out of control are states to avoid and lucid dreaming, as a talent that allows you to do so, is a good and helpful thing.

But is the problem with nightmares and dreaming a lack of conscious control within them? Do such dreams cause you to feel anxious and confused? These are assumptions that people often make and then project onto their dreams. If you do so, the result may be that you will see dreams and dreaming as a source of feelings of confusion, anxiety, and being out of control. Is that true? Could those feelings have little to do with your dreams at all?  If you are falling in a dream don’t you get to choose whether to be scared or to enjoy the experience? If you feel confused in a dream, don’t you get to choose how you will respond? Don’t you get to choose whether to stay confused or to ask questions for clarification? If you don’t ask such questions, is that about the dream or is it about you? Is the dream state intrinsically confusing, irrational, and primitive, or are these assumptions that you bring to your dreams and project onto them?

The basic problem is that when you assume your dream is the source of your confusion or fear you give your power away. You become a victim and the dream a persecutor. You then need lucid dreaming to rescue you. So you learn lucid dreaming – and remain stuck in the Drama Triangle. Why? Because the problem never was with the dream; it was always with your perception of your dream and dreaming in general.

Similarly, is the dream state intrinsically clear, rational, spiritual, and transpersonal, or are these assumptions that you bring to dreaming and project onto that state?

The first set of assumptions discount the value of dreams; they assume dreaming is inferior to your waking state of mind and that therefore you should learn to control and master your dreams.  The second set of assumptions is “elevationistic,” which means that it assumes dreaming is superior to your waking state of mind and that therefore you should revere it, perhaps as real experiences in some other dimension.

Both of these viewpoints distort dreams and dreaming, both while dreaming (thereby changing dream actions based on your waking assumptions about them) and later, when awake. This causes you to draw flawed, self-validating conclusions about your dreams and dreams in general.

An example of a self-validating conclusion would be, “That dream monster was chasing me; he was therefore threatening me; therefore I was scared; therefore I need to either fear my dreams or learn to control them so I no longer have scary monsters in them.”

But in most IDL interviews with dream monsters they either say that their intention was not to threaten or they had to scare the person to get them to pay attention. However, most people respond to scary dreams by not listening, not paying attention, or trying to exert control in some way – defeat the monster, change it, or change the dream.

IDL interviewing takes a different approach. You learn to listen to dream monsters and other dream threats and change your response to them instead of changing the dream. Lucid dreaming then becomes more about lucid living –  learning to wake up out of your waking delusions – than it is about taking action in dreams. You learn to live in a lucid, awake way as you recognize and park your assumptions, learning to interview dream characters, asking questions in dreams instead of reacting, and assuming that whatever occurs in a dream is not about you; you stop personalizing reality. (All of these life skills are discussed and taught in Waking Up by this author. It covers how your waking dream state is created by your cultural and familial scripting and maintained by the Drama Triangle, cognitive distortions, lack of clear goals and a lack of assertiveness. It explains IDL interviewing as well as how to generate a meditative consciousness in your everyday life using your awareness and your breathing, moment to moment.)

If we create our dream monsters, then aren’t they parts of ourself? If they are parts of ourselves, doesn’t that mean we should take them personally?

No. When you take things personally you make them about you. You are jumping to conclusions. Waking up includes the realization that almost everything that people do or say, even directly to you, whether in real life or in a dream, is not about you; it’s about them. Waking up involves the realization that reality and life aren’t about you. What a dream character says or does is probably more about itself than about you. How do you find out? Well, you can always ask, can’t you?

As you learn to suspend your assumptions about your dreams, as you stop assuming that they are either primitive or spiritual, irrational or trans-rational,  you get out of your own way. You stop needing to control. You stop wanting to manipulate dreams. You stop needing to make them happy, productive, peaceful, enjoyable, or understandable. You see that all those desires are reflections of your own discomfort with yourself and have very little to do with the dream itself. As you learn to make this shift, you wake up, first through waking interviews of dreams, then through generalizing into your waking life, and finally in your dreams themselves. Waking IDL interviewing is generally enough for most nightmares to go away on their own, generally very quickly.

Integral Deep Listening asks, “Why not suspend your assumptions and projections about dreams and dreaming and see what happens?” “Why not see what you can learn not from controling, and in effect colonizing. dreaming with all the assumptions you bring into the dream state, just because you are you, but instead learn to respect, listen, and ask questions, both afterward, while awake, with interviewing, and while  dreaming?

IDL assumes that nightmares, like everything else in dreams and in waking life, can best be approached as if they were wake-up calls. The proper response to a wake-up call is to listen to it in order to hear what it is telling you: Wake up! Nightmares are then no longer viewed as threatening intrusions or challenges to overcome, but as teaching opportunities you leverage for your growth to higher levels through listening and partnership.

This approach to nightmares is laid out in a book I wrote several years ago, Ending Nightmares for Good.  It  has been published in Farsi (Iran). Right now, in early 2013, a gifted student and teacher of IDL who is also a cardiologist in Tehran, along with a psychologist at the University of Isfahan, are in the process of getting final approval for a study with ninety children to test this hypothesis. In the study, there will be two control groups; one group of fifteen boys and fifteen girls receives cognitive behavioral therapy, the other control group experiences traditional group therapy. These are the two most common interventions for post-traumatic stress disorder within the Department of Veterans Administration in the US. As you may imagine, the VA has an enormous problem with the very high percentage of veterans who have some degree of PTSD. The third, experimental group, learns how to do IDL interviewing of characters in their PTSD nightmares.

Will we see far fewer symptoms of PTSD in the IDL group than we do in the other two control groups? Assuming that the project is funded, I will post the results in about a year.

IDL encourages you to consider that you will wake up in your dreams gradually and normally as part of the human evolutionary process if you learn to approach dream characters and events as wake-up calls and interview them. By doing so you will soon recognize that the real issue is to learn to wake up out of your normal waking delusions that keep you from clarity and effectiveness, whether awake or dreaming. Therefore, instead of attempting to focus on gaining greater amounts of security and control, you will recognize that what you need is clarity – to get out of your own way – because your need for security and control is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of who you are and what you are here to do.

Lucid Dreaming: Why Become a Dream Toilet Brush?

Using IDL and Lucid Dreaming for Financial Decisions

Can a Log Fence Teach Benefits of Lucid Dreaming?

Comparing IDL and Lucid Dreaming

Using Lucid Dreaming and IDL for Financial Decision Making

Dream Lucidity as Self-Rescuing

A Pre-Lucid Dream

Transformative Dream Lucidity

Shamanistic Attributes of Dream Yoga

Okay, so you’ve experienced a lucid dream. That’s great, but how long did you remain in a lucid state for? Unfortunately, the first time you experience a lucid dream may not last very long. You may become aware of the lucidity, get excited and wake up as a result. This is completely normal. It is common for first time lucid dreamers to be unable to sustain a lucid dream for a long period of time. Although it may seem like a bad thing to wake up from being excited (and it’s disappointing, that’s for sure), at least you’re on your way to sustaining a lucid dream for a long period of time. The main piece of advice you can hear is to ensure you remain calm as you enter a lucid dream.

As you progress into the lucid dream, it needs to be ensured that focus is kept on the dream itself, and nothing else. When entering, pause for a second. Try to grasp the scenario, and then proceed calmly. Don’t focus too much on actually controlling the dream at first – that may require more experience to be done correctly. First things first: focus solely on remaining lucid, and nothing else. In order to focus on anything else, you will need to perfect the time you remain lucid – this is essential! By all means, feel free to experiment with your lucid dream, just don’t get so overwhelmed by the whole experience. This will reduce the likeliness of remaining in the lucid state.

There are two very common and useful techniques you are able to perform in order to enhance your lucid dreaming experience. These techniques can be used, whether it to be increasing the awareness of the lucid dream, or to make sure you don’t lose the lucid state. These recommendations are not guaranteed to work as everyone is different, but they are two of the most renowned ways you are able to maintain your lucid dream, and have it last longer.

Hand Rubbing

Staying lucid is critical to and lucid dreamer. One common method used to ensure the lucid state is remained is to simply rub your hands together. This will reinforce the idea of keeping focused on the dream opposed to waking up – which is obviously something you want to try and avoid. When in a lucid dream, you may dream you’re indoors or outdoors. If indoors, try touching furniture or the walls. If outdoors, touching the ground may be useful. Essentially rubbing your hands is destined to stabilize the lucid dream you’re in.

Dream Spinning

One common experience may people face is a lucid dream beginning to fade unexpectedly. If you begin to sense the lucid dream is coming to an end, a common technique used for prevention is called dream spinning. Dream spinning is actually relatively easy. Imagine yourself as a child and spin around on the spot. Sounds easy, right? This technique is practiced by many lucid dreamers and is considered to be reliable in sustaining a lucid dream. In order to receive the full effects of dream spinning, it will likely take 10-30 seconds of spinning. Once you come to a finish with spinning, you will often find that your lucid state has restored, and the position of your lucid state may also change, i.e. environment, place, etc. Not only is it possible to change your setting through this method, but it is also a common practice to experiment with dream spinning in order to achieve a different setting, regardless if the lucid state is diminishing. That being said, a smart practice is to continue to remind yourself that you’re lucid dreaming whilst dream spinning as you may find yourself losing lucidity as a result.

Yes – these two techniques should work on the typical lucid dreamer. The most important thing you can do is not get too worked up on losing lucidity when you first begin to lucid dream. Instead – praise yourself having gained lucidity which many people fail to do, you deserve it! I know, it sucks finally becoming lucid only to lose the state moments after, but it will get better if you set your mind to it; it all comes down to self belief and determination.

http://www.dreamlucidly.info

Ending Nightmares for Good

“False Awakenings” are dreams in which you think that you have awakened from a dream when you have not. You continue to dream. False awakenings are different from lucid dreaming in that in lucid dreaming you know you are dreaming and stay dreaming. In false awakenings you know you are dreaming but then attempt to awaken out of the dream only to awaken into a dream that is the context, set, or ground, in which the previous dream was figure. You do not know that you are still dreaming, although it is possible to have either another false awakening, move into lucidity, or wake up. False awakenings are also called “inceptions,” “double dreams,” or a “dream within a dream.”

False awakenings are clearly attempts to wake up, and therefore on a scale of lucid dreaming would be more lucid than normal dreams but less lucid than lucid dreams. As such, they can be considered a type of pre-lucid dream.

Here is an example of false awakening as nightmare in a sufferer of post-traumatic stress disorder:

There is a different kind of nightmare which I don’t know how to deal with. It centers more around anxieties from the future. Ever since that terror attack, which happened at work, I got scared that a terrorist will break into my house while I am asleep and kill me (At the time there actually were some incidents like this). The nightmare goes like this:

I dream about something normal, then I am suddenly awake because I hear footsteps in the next room. Also the night-light is off. I am scared to death. I try to get up and can’t see anything because it’s so dark. Then I suddenly wake up with my heart racing and realize it was a dream. But then to my horror some man actually walks into my room, sits on me while I am in bed and pins me down so that I can’t get up. He wants to kill me. I scram and I try to fight, but he is stronger than me. Then I wake up for real.

The problem with this dream is that I “wake up” several times during the dream and then I don’t know what is a dream and what’s reality (at night). I feel Like a victim. I know the man wants to kill me. I don’t know how to deal with this kind of dream. And I suffer a lot from this dream.

Notice that this is a special subcategory of false awakening. It is not only a nightmare, but a PTSD nightmare. Also notice that the sufferer is deep within the Drama Triangle: she is a victim in her own experience at the time she experiences this horribly frightening nightmare; as the source of her dream experiences, she has manufactured at least three persecutors: the darkness, the attacker, and the inability to awaken-i.e., false awakening. She attempts to rescue herself by waking up but fails to escape her attacker.

Just as PTSD nightmares are excellent subjects for understanding the sources and effects of dreams in general, false awakening dreams associated with PTSD nightmares such as this one, shine light on some of the possible dynamics around false awakenings in general.  PTSD sufferers are unable to escape from their anxiety for very long. They are unable to awaken out of the waking nightmare of their fear.  Whatever they try to do in order to “wake up” out of the anxiety, does not work. Their attempts at rehabilitation amount to “false awakenings.”

Secondly, waking anxieties and fears clearly fuel PTSD nightmares, just as PTSD nightmares fuel waking anxieties.  Consequently, in order to stop false awakenings, which are a depiction of the subject’s inability to wake up out of his or her waking fears, the waking anxiety has to be interrupted.  The IDL interviewing protocol is designed to do this. When the subject turns her fear into a color and allows that color to congeal into a shape, she is mimicking the dream creation process.  Then, by interviewing the result, she is first respecting and then integrating her fear through the practice of deep listening.  When and if the fear transforms into a self-aspect that is high-scoring, the subject has generated an authentic, organic antidote to her internal conflict.  When she remembers to become that self, persona, role, or self-aspect, particularly at the onset of anxiety, she is practicing waking up out of her waking nightmare.  She will slide back in again, as we all do, but by repeating the interviewing process regularly with other personifications of her anxiety and other dream characters she discovers fresh, salient ways to perceive and incorporate her split off anxiety.  Such a process does not guarantee the elimination of PTSD, but if interviewing is performed daily and if the subject works diligently at becoming high-scoring self-aspects at recommended occasions, significant improvement can be expected.

Thirdly, this dream makes clear that PTSD sufferers are afraid of death, for good reason.  They have experienced one or more life-threatening traumas that almost literally scared them to death. However, high scoring self-aspects, such as one often accesses in IDL interviews, are not.  They represent parts of ourselves that have witnessed but not participated in life drama as victim, persecutor, or rescuer. When you become them, for that time you transcend your fear of death. This may be thought of as a type of practice at dying, as is meditation and as is the following exercise.  PTSD clients need to imagine their nightmares during their waking experience and allow themselves to be “killed” in the experience. They need to do their very best to experience themselves as actually dying and then finally, completely dead, with no thoughts and no feelings. Thoughts and feelings that arise indicate that the subject has not fully, completely died. Complete death means the complete surrender of struggle; such a unconditional capitulation is absolutely necessary for the rehabilitation from PTSD, since it is the very fear of death that maintains the cycle. Again, IDL subjects get a dose of this when they become high-scoring self-aspects, but that is not enough for people with PTSD. They need to practice being dead by finishing off their re-experiencing of their nightmare by actually experiencing being killed, dying, and staying with the experience of being dead.  If they do, they will move into a state of deathless, fearless, anxiety-free peace and spaciousness.  The more this exercise is repeated the more a new perceptual framework that transcends and includes the old evolves.

Most importantly and most profoundy, false awakenings are a metaphor for the human condition. At some point we outgrow our awakenings. Our first love, a genuine first awakening, is often looked at in retrospect as an embarrassing delusion. Our loyalty to our family, employers, and nation is often experienced as a type of awakening into honor, honesty, and commitment, only to later be understood as a form of sleepwalking enslavement to cultural dreams.  By making such statements I am not negating the importance or value of any of these experiences or commitments; they have their place. I am simply pointing out a simple fact of human experience: if we are fortunate, we wake up out of false awakenings. Nor is it cynical to assume that this process is unlikely to end. In fact, it is a sign of hope, an indication that growth continues, and that enlightenment will never be a final, static awakening, regardless of how transformative it is.

(From the text Dream Yoga)

There is Nothing Intrinsically Transpersonal About Lucid Dreaming

It is amazing how many people who can wake up in dreams think that lucid dreaming is a sign of higher spiritual development. However, five year olds can recall lucid dreams.  (See Deborah Armstrong-Hickey’s “A Validation of Lucid Dreaming in School Age Children, Lucidity Letter, Dec 1988; Vol. 7, no. 2) In fact, almost anyone at just about any level of development may report having lucid dreams.  Criminals in jails can lucid dream. Does this mean they are spiritual adepts?  The accessibility of lucid dreaming to all levels of development indicates that it is best thought of more as an aptitude or talent than as a mark of transpersonal competency. It is best given its own developmental line, called the “Dream Self” line, along with such things as cognition, empathy, interpersonal communication, moral development, artistic ability, and the self-line. We can then consider lucidity on a continuum: from unconsciousness to awareness of self in a dream, to non-conscious intervention in dreams, to lucidity, to different levels of lucidity within dreams, to both lucidity and pellucidity.  Consequently, what you do in your lucid dreams reveals a good deal about your level of development, and you can learn a good deal about just how narcissistic a particular lucid dreamer is or is not by the content of the lucid dreams that he or she reports.

Correlating Lucid Dreaming With Levels of Development

Normally when we dream we do not question the cultural and physical assumptions presented by our circumstances. We participate in a consensus reality.  While lucidity can be a response to trauma or boredom, it is probably best understood, from a developmental perspective, as an expansion of waking curiosity into the dreaming state.  Waking up in a dream begins to occur whenever we start to question consensus reality. While developmentally this normally begins very early in waking life, with children driving their parents crazy asking “why,” such questioning does not seem to naturally carry into the dream state unless it becomes desirable or important. Historically, this has rarely been the case, since parents normally emphasize the learning of reality testing, life skills, and social communication. Because of the importance of a questioning, doubting, challenging attitude to the cultivation of dream lucidity, lucid dreaming is better framed as a mid prepersonal to mid personal waking competency that is transferred into the dream state rather than being a transpersonal phenomena.  The cultivation of curiosity, questioning, skepticism, and doubt in waking life builds a foundation for a greater potential to wake up in a dream. While such abilities are important, they are not sufficient. A person can be a great skeptic or cynic and still never remember a lucid dream.  This is because they have never developed either the interest in or the ability to transfer such mental attitudes into their dreams.

Most casual lucid dreamers are simply into expanding waking control and pleasure without concern for the interests of other dream characters. These are clearly prepersonal priorities. Shamans in traditional cultures have historically been immersed in pre-rational mythological world views. They know the sun rises and that rocks and sticks are alive.  Their lucid dreams are therefore likely to reflect pre-rational agendas: bringing dances and totems back to the tribe, defeating enemies, hunting game, or passing tests in dream visionquests.

If most lucid dreamers are developmentally at prepersonal or personal levels of overall development, that does not at all detract from how momentous an event it is to expand waking awareness into an entirely new state of consciousness.  The potentials and opportunities inherent in this step, as well as the challenges and pitfalls, need to be considered so that overall development is aided, rather than simply that of one line, that of dream lucidity.

Problems with Tibetan Dream Yoga

Tibetan dream yoga uses waking up in dreams to accomplish several aims. It wants to establish radical freedom for waking identity.  It wants waking identity be awake continuously, whether dreaming, deeply asleep, and while “awake.” It wants this wakefulness to be transferrable to the after death state so that one has control over their incarnational destiny. Tibetan dream yoga begins with a strong background in serious, ongoing, daily meditational practice under the direction of a spiritual master. It then sets a strong waking intention to recognize that one is dreaming. It also uses the visualization of different Sanskrit letters in association with various chakras while falling asleep.  For Tibetans these letters and chakras have important sacred associations that increase focus and intention.  In addition, particular breathing exercises are recommended in conjunction with certain postures and mudras, or hand positions, including the covering of one nostril or the other while falling asleep and sleeping on one side.  Once one wakes up in a dream the object is to learn to change any dream event in any way, according to one’s wishes. It does so by teaching waking identity to create any dream object or character it wishes.  The problem here is that the interests of the dream characters themselves are rarely considered. This implies a prepersonal dream perspective, as the interests of others only start to be seriously considered at early personal levels of development.  This is a beginning level of instruction in dream yoga within Tibetan Buddhism.  One is expected to advance and follow the example of saints and adepts like Milarepa, who reported lucid dreams in which they listened to the teachings of masters and brought them back for the edification of mankind. Such dreams may not involve changing anything; they may simply report what happened while one was lucid. In such a case, this sort of dream is much more pellucid than lucid. But what is it about such events that makes them more than early personal experiences? Don’t people at early personal levels of development respectfully listen to authorities and report what they have heard for the benefit of their family, tribe, religion, sports team, political party, army, or country? If such lucid dreams are to be transpersonal, then they have to convey transpersonal content. Examples of such content would include radical freedom, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, equanimity, witnessing, experiences of unity with nature or deity, or experiences of no self.  Because each of these is interpreted in terms of the level of development of the recipient, and we always think that we are highly evolved, we have to look closely at how one defines “wisdom” or “compassion,” or “acceptance.”   It is often found that there is less to these definitions than meets the eye. For example, “wise” can often turn out to mean “smart,” “compassion” to mean “loving toward believers only,” and acceptance to mean “only of the Dharma.”

Tibetan Dream Yoga wants to demonstrate that all dream events and entities are illusions, on the assumption that by doing so one can and will grasp that all waking events and entities are likewise illusions. This waking up out of the assumption that dream and waking reality are real will hasten the coming of the “clear light,” or radical enlightenment.  The problem here is, as Wilber has pointed out in Integral Spirituality, that one is always waking up into a larger dream, determined at the very least by the level of development of one’s society.  This is the post-modern realization of the inescapability of contexts. So the issue becomes acting with integrity within some dream.  It may be this dream or it may be that dream, it may be a waking dream or a sleeping dream, but it will be some dream.  You may want to stop incarnating on Earth because you think your opportunities in the Pliades are better, but you’ll still be dreaming up there, just in the context of conditions in the Pliades rather than the conditions here. However, you are still experiencing self-conditioned reality, and it’s still your dream.  Maybe Jesus did stop incarnating here on Earth, but it is likely he’s locked in the context of some dream somewhere, if he still exists.

The way Buddhism attempts to deal with this problem is to say that if you get rid of the dreamer, you get rid of the dream.  However, getting rid of the dreamer is experienced differently in Bronze age India than it is in 21st century world culture, and it will mean something entirely different in the 23rd century from what it means now. What it means to be enlightened in a non-dual reality differs based on the cultural context in which you awaken. If you disagree with this then the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate why and how experience can ever hope to transcend all contexts.  This is the postmodern argument, and while it must be balanced by other perspectives, it remains a legitimate consideration that impacts what it means to wake up, whether in a dream or in our waking lives.

Lucidity is not Pellucidity

As Wilber has pointed out, lucidity is not pellucidity, and the difference is not trifling. While lucid dreaming is waking up while you are dreaming, it is most broadly and more commonly understood to include all actions by your dream self that control and change the dream.  On the other hand, pellucidy is pure lucidity: being awake while dreaming or deeply asleep and simply witnessing; not attempting to change or control anything. Therefore, lucid dreaming, as it is commonly understood, is not pure witnessing; it is moving out of the position of witnessing and into immersion in dream drama, only one that is fashioned according to your desires.  It is this definition that will be used here, and it will be distinguished from pellucidity.  It is also assumed that it is better to be able to be both lucid and pellucid than it is to only be able to do one or the other, simply because you then have more options and therefore experience more freedom.

Dream Self is Waking Self Unconstrained by Matter

Your sense of who you are when you dream is the same as your waking self, in that it shares the same world view.  Your dream self thinks it is your waking self, and it is, in that it shares the same assumptions about what is real, good, and true.  The difference is that your dream self can do things that your waking self cannot, like turn into a mongoose, fly, fall off a cliff and not die, or resurrect.   Your dream self is your waking self without the constraints of matter. Therefore it has available to it any possibility that it thinks of. What it does with such unbounded possibilities depends on the level of development of the self line, that is, of your waking identity.  While your waking life is built around your sense of self, your dream life when you are lucid is even more so.   You get to alter matter according to your whim.  The problem with this is that if waking narcissism – thinking that you and your wants are the center of the known universe – is a problem, dream lucidity is waking narcissism manifesting as dream self grandiosity. Might this simply compound the delusions of waking identity?

Waking up into Waking Dream is Waking up into Delusion

When you become lucid in a dream you are waking up into your waking identity. Before your dream self thought it was your waking self but it wasn’t, because it chronically confused self-created experience with objective, waking experience.  When this distinction is made, your waking self is making it.  It, not your dream self, differentiates between dream and waking reality and determines if you are awake or asleep. It, not dream self, has the objectivity to make this distinction.  When it does so, your dream self and your waking identity then merge.  Your waking delusions are combined with an unlimited ability to manipulate reality according to your current desires, rationalizations, or justifications.  What this means is that you have incredible opportunities to rehearse and expand waking competencies, create new relationships, and consciously continue your development during your sleeping hours. It also means that your dream self is no longer victimized by dream events.  Instead, aspects of your dream self are now victimized by your waking dream.  Think about that for a minute.  If you were not enlightened in your waking life, is putting that unenlightened self in charge of dreaming wise? Is it healthy?  You are now free to consciously victimize yourself in an entirely new realm of consciousness.

Do You Really Know What’s Best for You?

Changing dreams while lucid is predicated on the assumption that you know better than your dreaming mind what is best for you.  So what is your track record at knowing what is best for you? As you survey your life history, are you happy with your ability to know what’s best for you?  Of course it would be better for you to make a monster disappear or to be able to fly or to have sex with whomever you want, right?   You know this because fear and victimization are bad, freedom is good, and pleasure is well, pleasurable. But what if fear and victimization are wake up calls which, when they are changed, are not heard? Isn’t that an opportunity for self-development that has been missed via repression? What if you already misuse or abuse the freedom you have?  Won’t having more freedom in your dreams just compound the problem? What if your idea of pleasure is simply self-centered hedonism? What does that have to do with spirituality? What if your goals for your life as well as your goals for lucid dreaming are well-intended but limited, short-sighted, and not supportive of the intentions of spirit within you, despite your fervent beliefs that they are? What then? How would you know if they were or not?  This is where Integral Deep Listening comes in.  It is designed to support your adventures in dream lucidity by keeping them aligned with the innate intentions of spirit within you as you continue to grow and develop.

Dream Lucidity Can Suppress Wake-Up Calls

Integral Deep Listening assumes that whatever happens to us, awake or asleep, is best understood as a wake up call.  Are we listening? If we change a wake-up call or avoid it instead of listening to it, can we say that we have accurately heard it?  Have we understood what it is saying to us? If we have not, might it not simply get louder or express itself in another form, more difficult to ignore, like disease or waking drama?   So when a monster is chasing you and you change it into your idea of an ideal lover, are you listening to the monster? Have you missed any wake-up call it may have for you?

Lucid Dreaming Can Be Waking Manipulation

What if the manipulation of lucid dreams is not transpersonal anything? What if it is mostly a prepersonal developmental experience?  What if it is well-meant, innocent yet naive, grandiosity?  What if it is you wanting what you want when you want it because you want it?  Only, you want it for the highest good of spirit, of all, or because you view the competency as proof that you are somebody special? While we all have to become somebody before we can become nobody, even in our dreams, becoming somebody special in your dreams is not the goal of Tibetan dream yoga, nor does it have much of anything to do with becoming nobody. Could waking manipulation of dreams be the colonization of one entire state of consciousness, dreaming, by another, the waking state? Could it be a form of waking authoritarianism and totalitarianism expanding into another realm of consciousness?

Can Lucid Dreaming Suppress the Rights of Your Dream Characters?

Instead of Integral Deep Listening lucid dreaming may be Prepersonal Deep Forcing.  This is a distinct possibility if it turns dream characters into slaves for waking identity. From the perspective of your dream characters themselves, might that be experienced as the suppression of their inherent rights and liberties?  How you treat other parts of yourself is how you are treating yourself. If you abuse your dream characters by ignoring, repressing, or changing them without their consent are you abusing them?  Are you operating anything above a late prepersonal level of development?  In what sense are you transpersonal anything?

Compounding Self-Delusion

When you lucid dream, under what circumstances are you not trading your dream delusion for your current waking one, as if that is somehow superior?  You might be able to make the case that your waking dream is superior if it takes into account the perspectives of yourself that manifest in your dreams.  But if you do not consult them, whether awake or while dreaming, how is your lucid dream not prepersonal?  What about it makes it personal, much less transpersonal?

What is an Appropriate Approach to Lucid Dreaming?

Integral Deep Listening has developed an approach to lucid dreaming that is based on the priority of dream characters rather than those of any waking identity.  Dream characters that have been consulted express three basic interests. They appreciate being consulted about issues that concern them.  They place emphasis on waking up out of the drama triangle, both while awake and asleep. They encourage and support those activities and modes of thinking and feeling that support the development of six core transpersonal qualities. If one does these things, dream characters are supportive because these priorities are associated with waking identity waking up out of its waking dream.  Lucid dreaming does not seem to be a priority for most interviewed dream characters.  Lucid living seems to be of much greater interest to them.  The pursuit of lucid dreaming within such a context will make it more likely that awakening in dreams is at least a personal level activity, if not a transpersonal one.

It is more important to wake up within a dream than to wake up out of one

When you become lucid you wake up out of a dream while remaining in one.  You substitute one consensus reality for another. The dream consensus reality is being replaced by that consensus reality assumed, implied, imparted, instilled, and required by your waking identity, now within the dream.  You will experience the exhilaration of freedom. It is intoxicating! But what are your other self-aspects experiencing at the same time? Are they experiencing the exhilaration of your freedom?  Are they rejoicing?  Are they encouraging this change?  How would you know?  Have you stopped to ask them?  If not, why not?  Do you even want to ask them?  What would it mean if they expressed a different agenda? If they scored high and still expressed a different agenda, and you ignored them, wouldn’t that pretty much indicate that you are stuck at a late pre-personal level of development, at least as far as lucid dreaming is concerned?

If dream lucidity is really just substituting one dream for another, what does it mean to wake up within a dream?  Think of every state of consciousness as a context. We experience four major contexts, called states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and non-physical existence. Each of these are contexts in which consciousness arises and exists with some degree of awareness.  In deep sleep, objective consciousness is normally deeply asleep.  It is the unconscious causal, prior to any image, thought, or feeling.  In dream sleep intentions create an “objective” subjective reality. These source intentions may be waking, unconscious, or transpersonal, and their confluence creates dreams. The reason we cannot understand them is that we are identified with only one of those three intentional sources, waking. If we want to understand them we must identify with the other two sources.  When we do so, we wake up.

When you wake up in a dream in this sense you empathize with the perspectives of other self-aspects rather than simply accept the consensus reality of the dream at face value. In some important respects, this is more powerful than lucid dreaming because it amplifies the six core qualities.  It is compassionate, in that it strives to empathize with the perspectives of other sentient beings appearing in your dream.  It is wise, because it intends to take into account the agendas of other invested perspectives of your larger self. It is accepting, because it is receptive and non-judgmental toward those other perspectives. It is confident because it is not threatened by sharing power with other self-aspects.  It deepens inner peace because it reduces internal conflict.  It is a more powerful form of the witness, because it is not simply about waking identity witnessing the dream while it knows it is dreaming.  It is waking identity witnessing itself from multiple legitimate invested perspectives within the dream.

Acting on the Golden Rule

The Golden Rule, “Do to others as you would have them do to you,” Is a moral precept.  As such it can be learned and followed as a social rule from early childhood.  This, however, is a very superficial and relatively mindless understanding of the principle.  Any application of it from this perspective will be rote and unquestioning.  It is unlikely to consider such questions as, “What if what I want others to do to me is selfish, cruel, or sadistic?  Does that mean it is OK to do it to them?”  “What if I want others to treat me nice in certain situations, ignore me in others, and to discipline me in yet other situations?  How do I know that is how other people want or need me to treat them?”  “What if others have different needs from my own?”  For example, what if I need to be treated like a homosexual and you want to be treated like a heterosexual?  What then?  These are questions that Pittacus, Thales, Epictitus, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Brihaspati, Mohammad, Baha’u’llah, and other advocates of this principle did not seem to consider.

When we interview characters in our dreams we not only learn how they wish to be treated but experience the absence of that treatment.  Once we begin to look at life as a self-created dream our understanding of this principle deepens profoundly because we start to understand that how we are treating others is how we are treating those parts of ourselves that they represent.  This takes a moral precept and turns it into an experiential reality.   When this occurs we follow the Golden Rule not because our parents, teachers, sacred books, or spiritual guides tell us to, but because it is common sense.  We do it because it is the only rational thing to do.  It also means that we inquire into and respect the needs and wants of others and treat them accordingly. There are many occasions where we run into self-aspects who want things that we may not want ourselves, for instance to die or to no longer exist.  We can respect and accommodate those differences and in the process be true to our greater identity.

Practicing Deep Listening

Integral Deep Listening is more than interviewing self-aspects. It involves a phenomenological shift of identity, a detachment and dissociation from your normal, waking sense of self without going into trance or surrendering your sense of self.  It is instead an expansion of identity to include another self aspect in the present moment in your sense of self.  Your waking sense of self, normally in the foreground of your consciousness, voluntarily takes a back seat and another self-aspect is invited to come into the foreground and be heard.  This is a fundamental act of respect toward yourself.  It generates intimacy and authenticity as well as a tolerance for internal ambiguity and autonomy.  You become big enough to contain all of these things.  None of this is required by lucid dreaming.  Historically, lucid dreaming has rarely emphasized any of this.  Lucid dreaming tends to be all about me: all about me waking up, all about what I want, all about how long I can sustain it, all about whether I recognize dream signals and wake up, all about what I can do while I am lucid. None of this has anything much to do with Integral Deep Listening.

That having been said, lucidity is a natural outgrowth of the practice of Integral Deep Listening.  The more that you listen to other aspects of yourself the more aware you become. The more aware you become, the more awake you are.  However, the emphasis is upon first waking up out of your waking dream so that you do not import your psychopathology into your dream reality, contaminate it, suppress it, and repress it.  Still, developing the capacity to lucid dream is relatively harmless and will expand your sense of self.  It will allow you to rehearse waking situations in your dreams and play out different scenarios or consequences for this or that course of action. All of that can be tremendously valuable.  Consequently, the stance you will find here is not either/or but both/and: you need to develop both Integral Deep Listening and your ability to be lucid in all states. They go hand in hand and support each other.

Practicing Assertiveness

What does assertiveness have to do with lucid dreaming? Assertiveness in dreams is a pre-lucid form of waking up.  After becoming lucid, assertiveness is a way to make sure your dream actions are not coming from a prepersonal level of consciousness.

If aggressiveness is putting your needs before the needs of the other and passivity is putting the needs of the other before your own, then assertiveness involves taking both into consideration in your decision making. Most lucid dreaming is not assertive.  It is aggressive.  We can say this with confidence because there are few accounts of lucid dreams in which lucid dreamers stop and ask other dream characters what they want or need before taking action.  It is not assertive in dreams to change them without considering the interests of other self aspects; it is aggressive.

We can be assertive in our waking lives and still be passive in our dreams.  This is because we generally learn to question waking consensus reality before we learn to question dream consensus reality. For example, we can question consensus reality in our waking lives and not be lucid dreamers.  In addition, we can be awake in a dream and still not question the consensus reality of our own presuppositions.  This is a “consensus” reality because our waking identity is itself far from monolithic.  While it is experienced as unitary, it passes off identity from one orientation or feeling or role to another continuously and for the most part seamlessly even though these different attitudes, behaviors, and feelings may directly contradict each other.  It is rare for lucid dreamers to stop dreaming their waking dream, to stop assuming their waking perspective is the superior perspective from which to experience a dream. Again, such an approach is basically aggressive to the extent that it does not take into account the wants and needs of other self-aspects represented in the dream.

A more assertive approach involves interviewing other self-aspects once you wake up in a dream.  If you do so, the dream changes that you make will be more likely to reflect a consensus reality that transcends and includes that of your own waking consensus reality.

Avoiding the Drama Triangle

When we are aggressive we are usually in the role of persecutor, one of the three roles of the Drama Triangle.   We play persecutor in lucid dreams when we change them without consulting other self-aspects regarding those changes. We may either think that they do not care or that we are making changes for their own good, or it may be that we simply do not care what they think.  In any of those cases, we are generally playing the persecutor, when our actions are considered from the perspective of other self-aspects.  An exception is when we see abuse in a lucid dream and confront it. As long as that confrontation is not reactive but instead is an expression of intolerance of an abusive consensus reality, we are not in the role of persecutor.

We play rescuer when we assume what is best for other self-aspects in a lucid dream and take action without consulting them. We also play rescuer to ourselves in a dream by changing it or jumping in without asking questions.

We play victim in a lucid dream when we are awake but experience ourselves as being persecuted in some way or in need of rescuing. It may be that we are not getting what we want or become scared. In any case, victims make poor decisions; they merely jump into the role of rescuer or persecutor, thereby perpetuating the samsara of the Drama Triangle.

Respecting the Six Core Qualities

To act confidently in a lucid dream is to not be afraid that you will lose power, control, or autonomy by sharing power with other self-aspects by asking their opinion. To be compassionate in a lucid dream is to take into account the perspectives of other self-aspects.    To be wise in a lucid dream is to recognize that since the other characters in the dream are all aspects of yourself, autonomous action is impossible; the interests of other self-aspects must be considered.  To be accepting in a lucid dream is to be receptive and non judgmental toward all other perspectives.  To be at peace in a lucid dream means not to be in conflict with other self aspects. Enlightened dream lucidity is a more powerful form of the witness, because it is not simply about waking identity witnessing the dream while it knows it is dreaming. It is waking identity witnessing itself from multiple legitimate invested perspectives within the dream.

Lucid dreaming is awareness of the fact that you are dreaming. This awareness can range from very faint recognition of the fact to something as momentous as a broadening of awareness beyond what has ever been experienced even in waking life. Lucid dreams usually occur while a person is in the middle of a regular dream and suddenly realizes that he or she is dreaming. However, you can elicit a lucid dream using the methods that follow.

Steps

There is an excellent list of resources at  Stephen LeBerge’s Lucidity Institute. A number of practical tips are located here.

Why should I learn to lucid dream?

People want to learn to lucid dream for many different reasons, depending on who they are and their level of development.  A young child may learn to lucid dream to gain control of their lives when they experience little or no control in their waking lives.  Some people learn to lucid dream for status; it can be a good pick-up line; others to problem solve or to be more productive with more of their time. Some people learn to lucid dream to face their fears; others for the sheer fun and excitement of it; others t0 test the limits of the possible; others to experience life as a dream; others to grow spiritually in one way or another.  Some people believe that the ability to lucid dream implies higher order spiritual development.

Your motives will determine what you make of your lucid dreams.  If you don’t know your motives you will misperceive your lucid dreams. The more that you understand why you want to lucid dream the less likely you are to interpret them in a self-fulfilling, self-validating way.

“This morning i had several lucid dreams… in one of the last dreams there were two gentleman, who introduced themselves, i want to say they were Indian. I have a feeling they weren’t self aspects.. I just remember the feeling of being with them, it was so exhilarating, i was almost in a state of disbelief. They did most of the talking. But i cant remember what was said. What do you think of this? Is it possible that they were guides? Is it possible they could be energies from somewhere else? Do you believe this is possible in the lucid state?

Your dream guests could be guides or energies from somewhere else.  They could be “real.” They could be self-created and you are simply deluding yourself to think that they aren’t. Freud might say they could be day residue.  Others might reduce them random to nerve firings in the hippocampus.  Maybe it’s the devil tempting you to waste your time wondering about your dreams.  Who is right?  Who is wrong?

Integral Deep Listening says a couple of things about this common concern that everyone struggles with sooner or later.  Life itself doesn’t differentiate between subjective and objective, true and false, real and illusory; humans do. Life is only interested in how much we get out of our own way so that life can more fully awaken to itself through us.  When we cultivate core qualities associated with waking up, such as confidence, empathy, wisdom, acceptance, inner peace, and witnessing, we tend to be more awake and more out of our own way.

Why look at dreams if they don’t tell us what is real and true?

Look at your dreams, lucid and otherwise, to learn life’s priorities that are attempting to be born within you.  In order to do this you have to stop making assumptions about what is real and true and instead suspend your judgments, ask questions, listen to the answers, and apply those in your life that make sense to you.  No one character will reflect truth with a capital “T” or reality with a capital “R,” because it provides only one perspective on a life that is so abundant it provides infinite perspectives. Each character you encounter in a dream or lucid dream, just as in waking life, will have its own perspective on what is true and what is real. The more you learn to enquire, to ask questions of all these perspectives  the more you move from the position of a blind scholar grasping one part of the elephant of life. Instead of just grasping its leg and proclaiming reality is like a tree or groping its trunk and knowing that life is like a great naga or snake, you will be able to appreciate multiple diverse perspectives which together create a much closer approximation of what the elephant of life actually is like. This is fundamental to Integral Deep Listening (IDL) – to teach you to ask questions of all you encounter whether awake, asleep or in some mystical experience, whether in a regular dream or in some type of lucid state.

We all have our biases, prejudices, opinions and interpretations, based on where we grew up and the assumptions of the family and community in which we were embedded.  As a result, we all have agendas; we want our dreams, our lucid dreams, our lives to mean certain things. Or we are afraid that our dreams and lives will validate our fears that Earth is the insane asylum of this corner of the galaxy, that Hobbes and Darwin was right and that life really is about survival of the fittest, or that we are living in a house of mirrors, reacting to our own reflections and that there is no escape. We want to have inspiring, uplifting dreams to feel better and  lucid dreams so that we will feel more free, in control and “spiritual.” We want to know that life is meaningful and that we know what that meaning is.  We hate ambiguity and not knowing. On the other hand, we want dream “objects, like roads, keys and the sky to behave themselves, to just sit there and be a road to drive over, a key to turn in a lock or a sky to act as a nice backdrop. We don’t want them to muck up your nice, clear picture of the dream by giving you their opinion.

What you will discover if you simply apply the IDL interviewing process to your own dreams and lucid dreams is that  you cannot trust your own judgment about lucid dreams, dreaming or the nature of life.  That’s scary.  You don’t want that.  You want to believe in yourself and believe that you know who you are and what you should do.  Paradoxically, if you want those things, you have to be willing to give up your closed-minded attachment to the way you see the world.  You need to consult multiple alternative perspectives in order to expand your own.  This is a reason why IDL encourages you to not simply wake up, whether while dreaming or in waking life, but to learn to question everyone and everything, to challenge your experience and to learn to look at life from its perspective. For example, if you have a lucid dream of flying, interview the sky. Ask it, “Sky, what do you think of me flying? What do you think of me being lucid in this dream?” What does the sky say? Wha does it think? What is its point of view? The reason this is important is because it takes your lucidity to an entirely new, broader level. You now are not only lucid, but aware of your lucidity and its function in your life from a much broader perspective. This is an example of how you can use lucidity and IDL to speed your development.

If you were to ask, “Sky, what aspect of me do you most closely represent or personify?” what would the answer be? Perhaps the sky would say, “I don’t represent an aspect of you! You are an aspect of ME!” If that was sky’s response, what would that do to your concept of lucidity? If you have a lucid dream in which you really are sure that you are encountering a deceased relative or a being from another dimension and not a self-aspect, what will happen if you question it? It may say, “You didn’t create me.  I really am your great-grandmother/the devil/the White Sister Galadriel from the planet Mongo.”  If they say so, why not take their word for it?  That being the case, the character can still personify this or that aspect of yourself, and probably does.  They have some relationship to you, and they have some meaning in your life, other than their apparent literalness.  What is it?  You’ll never know if you don’t ask.

What will I discover when I ask?

There are four possibilities: you may get validation that your dream/lucid dream characters are guides or external energies, gods, devils, angels, beings from another dimension, or deceased entities.  You may get validation that they are aspects of yourself.  You may get validation that they are both or neither. You may get different validations from different characters that you interview.

What do I do in that case?

As a rule of thumb, go with the consensus of those characters you interview that make sense and which provide you with good recommendations which, when followed, improve your life. If they make sense, take their advice and see what happens.  If you do and it turns out badly, complain.  Take them to task.  Ask them why you should listen to them if they are going to lie to you or deceive you. This is also a movement into a broader definition of lucidity – you are developing an aware, awake relationship with multiple ways of looking at your life.

Can I find out what’s real and true by learning to lucid dream?

If you associate the more real and the more true with the external and the objective and the less real and the less true with the internal and the subjective, as most people do, then to get your attention and wake you up, life will produce external and objective experiences for you, even in your dreams.  Things like “real” nightmares or visitations from deceased relatives. How else is it going to get your attention if you otherwise block it out? The result is that you will be convinced that a character in a dream is not part of yourself or that you really did visit Rigel 12 in the constellation Cignus last night.

If that happens, you have probably missed the point.  As stated above, life doesn’t distinguish between external and internal, real and illusory, true and false.  Life is simply doing what it needs to do to get your attention so you will wake up.  But instead of waking up and listening you have jumped to a conclusion.  “Ah! My experience was more real than anything I experience when I am awake! Therefore I must have been lucid and those aliens must have been real!” This is the naive realism of shamanism. Because your experience feels real, it must be real.

Because we are constantly making such interpretations of our experiences, even in our lucid dreams, this is why we need to seek other points of view from other characters that are invested in the experience.  You and I slice and dice our experiences to fit our assumptions, presumptions, and foregone conclusions.  By nature we take the raw data of life and fit it into categories we already understand, whether or not those categories do violence to the actual experience.  (They generally do.)  We habitually  do this whether we are awake, dreaming, lucid dreaming, or meditating, but do not realize it because we are subjectively embedded in our own world view, even when we are lucid dreaming or having a mystical or near death experience. Because we lack objectivity, we assume what we are experiencing is true, just like the blind man grabbing the leg of the elephant and knowing that the reality of an elephant is like a tree. It is not that he is not lucid, but that his lucidity is partial.

Aren’t I always going to interpret my lucid dreams and come up with meanings?  Do I have any choice?

All you can do to compensate for this inevitable, natural, and often very useful human proclivity to interpret your experience and trust your interpretations is to be aware that you are always a blind man groping at the elephant of life, no matter how many lucid dreams or mystical experiences you have. Once you have this understanding, you can attempt to outgrow your prejudices and biases by asking more questions and jumping to fewer conclusions. This doesn’t mean you never have opinions or prejudices or never reach conclusions.  On the contrary, your opinions are stronger, but your willingness to challenge and doubt them is stronger as well. You therefore ask better, more penetrating questions and take a rather jaundiced view toward your opinions, particularly the ones you hold most dear, because you are quite aware that they are partial, and that this is the nature of both lucidity and enlightenment. You can never become lucid or enlightened, only more lucid and more enlightened.  As you grow in your ability to question all aspects of your experience, even to look at it from the perspectives of inanimate objects as you do when you interview your life dramas using IDL, you will find that your ability to do so increases while you are dreaming and lucid dreaming, not just when you are awake.

What do you mean, “Ask questions of characters in dreams, lucid or otherwise?

For example, one student dreamt, while taking a class in Dream Yoga/Integral Deep Listening, of seeing a huge sperm whale swimming off shore.  She asked in the dream, “Whale, are you there for me?”  “He jumped up over a railing out of the ocean to land in front of me on the highway.”  A powerful dream indeed!  So when you ask questions in your dreams, you may not get back verbal answers.  Characters may respond by changing how they relate to you in the dream.

Notice that lucidity is less important here.  What is important is that you ask questions in your dream, whether you are lucid or not.  What this does is wake you up in a broader way, because you become integrated with a larger, broader definition of who you are, whether asleep or dreaming.

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Meditation enhances lucidity by cultivating the clear witness.

Pre-sleep suggestion enhances lucidity by strengthening intention, particularly if those suggestions are vivid, repeated, and target specific aspects of the cultivation of lucidity. Reading and talking about lucid dreaming also acts as a pre-sleep suggestion as does rehearsed visualizations of becoming lucid in one’s dreams such as looking at the back of your hands and telling yourself that you will look at them in your dreams and that when you do you will wake up within the dream.

Daytime questioning of the dreamlike nature of life also works as a form of incubation of lucidity.

Doing things that cause you to be more awake and aware in your waking life will make it more likely that you will be more awake and aware in your dreams.

Although, vetting the art of lucid dreaming takes time, yet, it doesn’t mean you won’t see improvements anytime soon. In a matter of days, you will find yourself advancing through your journey, and it will encourage your motivation. Still, don’t enter with a wrong mindset of inducing lucid dreams right tonight. In short, if you are persistent enough, the rewards and benefits are worth it.

Quick Navigation

What Is Lucid Dreaming (The Definition)

What Can You Do In A Lucid Dream

Benefits of Lucid Dreaming

Risks of Lucid Dreaming

How To Lucid Dream (Beginner to Expert Step by Step)

Phase 01: Preparing Body & Mind For Lucid Dreaming

Phase 02: Dream Processing & Planning For Lucidity

Phase 03: Best Techniques For Lucid Dreaming

Conclusion And Final Advice

What Is Lucid Dreaming (The Definition)

Lucid Dreaming is a state where your dreams are so real as if you are living them in real life. There is almost no difference between the dreaming state and a conscious experience. You can touch, smell, and feel the objects in your dreams the same way as you would do in real world. Plus, you can take it to the extreme and alter those objects with your brain power even.

Sky is the limit. You can do anything in your dreams that is otherwise impossible in reality. The laws of the universe such as gravity, not able to breath in water, can’t survive in the space, etc. doesn’t apply in the world of lucid dreaming.

What Can You Do In A Lucid Dream

In a lucid dream, you can live any of your fantasies be it flying in the sky, visiting some alien worlds, or having dinner with top public figures etc. Moreover, you can simulate situations in your lucid dreams and find their solutions. Becoming lucid can be an excellent problem solving and fear-conquering tool in your arsenal. Here’re a few things you can do in your lucid dream:

• You can fly in the sky.
• You can meet with your favorite celebrities.
• You can make love with your crush.
• You can visit different planets and galaxies.
• You can enjoy your favorite weather.
• You can face your dreams and practice your skills in a virtual environment.
• And many more things, the list is endless. It all depends on your creativity.

Consider it like Alice in Wonderland. Watch the video below till the end, this all is very much possible in a lucid dream:

Alice In Wonderland – Clip: Alice Falls Into a Rabbit Hole (2010) | HD

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Benefits of Lucid Dreaming

• Lucid Dreaming possesses some therapeutic characteristics. The study shows it can cure recurring nightmares. Thus, it helps to overcome fears.
• Lucid dreaming can enhance the cognitive abilities. You make better decisions and have a higher state of mind
• If you practice a skill in your lucid dream, it will improve your performance in the real world. Surprising but true.
• It helps you advance in your spiritual journey and make you a more enlightened person.

Risks of Lucid Dreaming

• Once you induce lucid dreams, the emotions and experiences feel real. You can enjoy positive emotions such as joy, pleasure, freedom, etc. But, the opposite is also true. If you are not enough stable mentally, you may experience pain, fear, hallucinations, etc. too.
• The level of awareness differs person to person. So there is a fear of getting stuck in an unwanted dream, for longer than you want, without the ability to manipulate it. This situation is called Dream Claustrophobia.
• Sleep paralysis is another fear of lucid dreamers. You are in a state of dream and awakening. During dreams, the body gets paralyzed so that one can’t hurt himself acting out his dreams. But if you experience the paralysis in an awakened state, it may frighten you. Convince yourself, it is just a dream and sleeps paralysis is entirely okay.
• Lucid dreaming is a safe, fun, and joyful experience for most people. Moreover, there are therapeutic uses of this technique. Still, if the risks are scaring you, don’t jump into it. For some real life case studies, I suggest you read this article.

How To Lucid Dream (Beginner to Expert Step by Step)

There are three levels of lucidity that you need to master. Level 01: You dream but you are not aware at all. Level 02: You are able to induce lucidity and remain aware in your dreams but can’t control or shape them according to your will. Level 03: You can become lucid and have full control on what should happen in your dream. Let’s know how to hit all of those 3 stages the right way:

Phase 01: Preparing Body & Mind For Lucid Dreaming

01) Optimize Your Sleep

You must understand the relationship between sleep cycles and dreams. First, a good night sleep works in 4 cycles where first three cycles are known as NREM-Stages, and the fourth cycle is known as REM-Stage.

Second, for the first 4-5 hours, NREM stages dominate the sleep, and for the next 2-3 hours REM stage is dominant. Mostly, the lucid dreaming happens during the REM-Stage of the sleep.

Very Important: In a nutshell, you must ensure, you are getting a good 7-8 hours of sleep so as to hit REM-Cycle and experience lucid dreaming.

If you have trouble sleeping, use this comprehensive guide on how to fall asleep. Also, make sure you don’t snore while sleeping. If you do, here’s how to stop snoring.

02) Develop Your Mind & Mindset

Lucid Dreaming is a mind game. If you carry on your day to day confusions and doubts to your sleep, the same will ruin your lucid dreaming experience. You need to cultivate your mind & mindset to induce lucidity. Here’re 2 important rules that you should tell yourself repeatedly every day.

• You must let go the hard & fast laws of the universe. Remember, lucid dreaming is a world of unlimited possibilities where you have the power to create or destroy the things according to your will. Once you are lucid, there is nothing that can constrain your ability to do whatever you want to do. For example: if you want to fly in your dream, you should forget about gravity.
• If you want to have a lucid dream tonight, then you are on a wrong train. It is a skill that requires some persistence to master. Instead, have a long term goal. Be regular in your practice and eventually the rewards are worth it.

Timeframe: 08-10 Days

Expected Outcome: 1) Your body is getting 7-8 hours of deep sleep every night. 2) Your mind is prepared to put in hard work and not tempted with the idea of inducing lucid dreams overnight.

Phase 02: Dream Processing & Planning For Lucidity

01) Plan What To Dream About

Inducing lucid dream, for the first time, is a powerful experience. Often, it brings about a feel of anxiety with it. The dreamer gets so overwhelmed that he is unable to decide what to do once he is lucid. I don’t want that happening to you. The solution is planning for your dream in advance.

Before going to bed every night, make it a habit of planning your dream and deciding what to do in the virtual world. Don’t mistake and be sure about what you will do once you are lucid. A few dream ideas for the beginners could be:

• Flying off the ground.
• Meeting with some celebrity.
• Overcoming stage fear.
• Visiting some new place.
• Or having an erotic dream.

02) Keep A Dream Journal

You must have a system for constant monitoring of your dreams. It is necessary for the analysis purpose that helps to make improvements.

• At night, make an intention to remember your dream.
• In the morning, write your dream down, in a journal, as the first thing.
• Make sure you write them as detailed as possible regarding characters, landscapes, and climate in the dream. Label each dream with date, time, and a title.

03) Perform Daily Dream Analysis

Once you have recorded your dreams in your journal for a couple of weeks, you will have enough data to analyze.

What we are looking for is finding a pattern that repeats itself in the dream. It could be a particular object, person, strange form, environmental factor, etc. that is appearing over and over again in dreams. Finding this pattern is necessary to increase awareness and differentiate fiction from the real. Analyze your journal and see what is common among all or most of the dreams.

04) Do Reality Checks Multiple Times A Day

Doing reality check is crucial. As you know, there is almost no difference between a lucid world and a real world; a reality check is a way to calm yourself down and realize that it is a dream.

To know if you are dreaming or it is happening for real, do something that you can’t do in a real world. A few reality checks that you can perform are:

• Try crossing your finger through your palm. In a real world, you can’t do it, but it is possible if it is a dream.
• Try reading something. Dreaming is done by the right brain but reading by the left brain. So, you can’t read with ease if it is a dream.
• Observe the objects carefully in your dream. They won’t be as accurate and detailed as they would be in a real world.

Timeframe: 25-30 Days

Expected Outcome: 1) You are sure about what to do once you are lucid. 2) You have enough data to perform the analysis. 3) You found the repetitive pattern occurring in your dreams. 4) You can differentiate between scenarios of the real world and happenings in a dream.

Phase 03: Best Techniques For Lucid Dreaming

Very Important Concept: Your body transits from a sleep state to dreaming state for many times during the night. This transition is at its highest during the REM-Sleep that happens during the last 2-3 hours of a 7-8 hours sleep. We want to hack this transition period with different techniques. Keep that in mind and let’s discuss the different lucid dreaming techniques:

01) Wake Back To Bed (WBTB) Technique

With WBTB technique, you interrupt the sleep, wake up, spend some time staying awake, and go back to sleep. When you sleep back, the chances are very high that you start dreaming and become lucid. Do it as:

• Set the alarm, 5-6 hours from the time you sleep. Wake up with the alarm and stay awake for 30 minutes or so. It will heighten your awareness.
• During the awake period, pick your dream journal up and rehearse your dream thoroughly.
• After 30 minutes, go back to sleep. Keep saying to yourself- I am dreaming, I am dreaming, I am dreaming, and so on until you fall asleep.
• Soon, you will fall asleep, and may have your first lucid dream.

It is the best technique for beginners as its the easiest one. But don’t do it often as you have to interrupt your sleep and it may affect your health. Doing it a couple of times a week should be fine.

02) Mnemonic Induction Of Lucid Dreaming (MILD)

With MILD technique, you perform the same steps that you do with WBTB technique, but the trick to inducing a lucid dream is different.

Instead of rehearsing your planned dream, you rehearse the very last dream that you recall upon waking up. Alongside, you visualize yourself becoming lucid in the exact dream. It is a moderately difficult technique to master.

03) Wake Initiated Lucid Dreaming (WILD)

With WILD technique, the trick to induce a lucid dream is different. Also, you don’t stay awake for 30 minutes but a couple of minutes.

Instead of rehearsing a dream by reading it or reinforcing your last dream, you practice visualizing a dream of your choice. Remember the visualization should be highly detailed and vivid. Each and every object, environment, character’s emotions, and your role should be visualized in great detail. It is the most difficult technique to master but worth it.

Timeframe: 45-60 Days

Expected Outcome: 1) You have tried all three techniques and found which works best for you. 2) Congrats! You have experienced your first lucid dream. 3) You are able to induce a lucid dream on any night of your choice.

Conclusion And Final Advice

Lucid dreaming is not just a hobby or fun. It is a higher mental state that can’t be mastered easily. It helps you advance in your spiritual journey by taking you to some new heights of awareness. So take it seriously and be ready to put in work.

Unfortunately, the newbies are tempted to the shortcuts or quick methods. As a result, they can’t stick to one way and therefore fail miserably. Remember, lucid dreaming demands physical and mental development and this development takes persistence, time, and efforts to happen. BeddingPal advises you to proceed with your lucid dreaming journey, but by one step at a time. Otherwise, you will fail to crack the code. Good Luck.

If this were all there were to it, lucid dreams would be delightful, but ultimately trivial entertainment. However, as many have already discovered, you can use lucid dreaming to improve the quality of your waking life. Thousands of people have written to me at Stanford telling how they are using the knowledge and experience they have acquired in lucid dreams to help them get more out of living.”

Stephen Laberge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, Page: 4

“If you are having a dream and you think it’s real, it can get very scary. Say you are dreaming you are tightrope walking across Niagara Falls. If you fall off, you plunge to your death. So you are walking very slowly, very carefully. Then suppose you start lucid dreaming, and you realise it’s all a dream. What do you do? Become more cautious and careful? Noo, you start jumping up and down on the tightrope, you do flips, you bounce around, you have a ball – precisely because you know isn’t real. When you realise it’s a dream you can afford to play.

The same thing happens when you realise that ordinary life is a dream, just a movie, just a play. You don’t become more cautious, more timid, more reserved. You start jumping up and down and doing flips, precisely because it’s all a dream, it’s all pure Emptiness. You don’t feel less, you feel more – because you can afford to. You are no longer afraid of dying, and therefore you are not afraid of living. You become radical and wild, intense and vivid, shocking and silly. You let it all come pouring through, because it’s all your dream.

Life then assumes its true intensity, its vivid luminosity, its radical effervescence.

Ken Wilber, The Essential Ken Wilber: An Introductory Reader., Page: 33

This quote by Wilber demonstrates the approach to lucidity favored by IDL. Learning to lucid dream can be interesting, educational, empowering, build self-confidence and self-esteem. It is also an important realm for interviewing dream elements, just as IDL does in waking life. However, who you are in your lucid dreams is your waking identity; it just knows it’s dreaming. This is why Wilber and IDL both stress the importance of waking lucidity. As you wake up in your waking life, you take that expanded sense of self into your dreams as well, lucid or otherwise. You start to understand that there are many forms of lucidity, such as exiting drama and recognizing your emotional, logical, and perceptual cognitive distortions. This is why IDL recommends the broad-based approach to lucidity that it describes in Waking Up.