I really don’t really have much planned at all for the next week, and have decided to dedicate a bit of time to my goal of learning how to lucid dream.
A lucid dream, as defined by Wikipedia, also known as a conscious dream, is a dream in which the sleeper is aware that they are dreaming. When the dreamer is lucid, they can actively participate in and often manipulate the imaginary experiences in the dream environment. Lucid dreams can be extremely real and vivid depending on a person’s level of self-awareness during the lucid dream.
I first heard of this when I saw a documentary many years ago about lucid dreaming. It was on just before a movie called “Dreamscape”, and that night I went to bed with a head filled with possible dream adventures.
Walking along a corridor I met someone I knew, and said to them, “Ah, this is a dream, isn’t it?”
“No, of course not, it’s real,” they answered, trying to convince me that this was real, but I knew it wasn’t. I couldn’t believe it. I knew that I was dreaming! I tried flying, but couldn’t manage, and just sort of drifted up some stairs to an upper balcony. I could hear people laughing behind closed doors, and was laughing myself at the realisation of what was happening.
In the morning when I woke, the dream was so clear, but like most dreams, hard to explain in a way that makes sense to anyone else. But I had done it! I had realised in a dream that I was dreaming.
But since that time it has never happened again.
I spoke with a friend once about this, and she said she used to do it all the time, and in her dreams she could fly, go wherever she wanted and do pretty much anything she wanted. She said it was very easy to control and direct what happened and have whatever adventure you wanted.
I did some internet research recently, and there is a lot of information on the subject. One way to learn is to document your dreams for a while, and look for common occurrences in them. Then when one of those occurrences happens, practice doing a “reality check” to see if you are dreaming. My friend said she would try to turn her head around 360 degrees, and if she could, she knew she was dreaming.
Here’s another suggestion about reality checks, that I received via email recently from Joey, who suggests, “There are only a few simple steps. All you have to do is look at your hands for a few minutes at a time on the hour, every hour, until you go to sleep. and when you are looking at your hands think to yourself, “When I see my hands that means I am dreaming.”
It only really takes a few days to do this, then one night you will be dreaming and see your hands, and you will remember, “This means im dreaming,” and then you will be able to control your own dreams.
I would love to be able to do this. I read something once, written by someone who would spend their dreams free falling and practicing skydive manoeuvres, without any of the time limitations of a real skydive! Fantastic!
So after quite a bit of internet research I bought and downloaded a 7-day course called The Lucid Dreaming Kit, which I am going to follow over the next seven days.
I will keep you updated on my progress over the course of the week.
