Today I have some free time, so I will be writing about a topic that greatly interests me. I have’nt done it in a while, but hopefully after writing this article, I will feel more inspired to practice it. I am going to talk about : LUCID DREAMING.
What’s that you might ask? Well Lucid Dreaming is basically a form of dreaming, where a dreamer is aware of his/her dream environment and hence realises that he/she is in a dream. What’s so special about this? Well, once a person realises he is in a dream, he can actually control it!
As you probably already know, the human subconscious mind is very powerful. In dreams, vivid worlds are created in an instant. Fabulous places, people, objects and crazy things happen in dreams. To even try to recreate this with a computer would require tremendous computing resources, so you can see that the human mind is capable of very complex creations. Why not make use of that subconscious for some fun?
See, my logic is that, we live in reality most of the time. Sometime’s it’s rather drab and boring. Sometimes we just need to do something out of the ordinary… Like fly to or visit a magical place, or take a holiday to a faraway land with dragons, elves and other wierd mystical dream creatures. There is another world out there! (Actually ‘in there’, in your head).
Lucid dreaming is a skill, that can be learnt, and once someone masters or perfects this skill, he/she will be able to conjure lucid experiences at will. Thankfully for you guys, I have been doing a lot of research over the years and already know the best method for achieving this kind of dream state. A good read in general about lucid dreaming can be found at www.ld4allcom. However, I think I will talk about the technique that best suits my style and that I’ve found to be the most effective.
But before that, let me talk about what YOU can do in a lucid dream :
– PRETTY MUCH EVERY DAMN THING
Yes. That means, you can conjure a nice shiny red ferrari, drive down sunset boulevard in it… Fly, possess magical powers, visit different worlds of your own subconscious creation, visit your past lives, walk through a mirror and discover another world on the other side, etc. A few ideas that ld4all describes is : look up at the sky (dreamskies are nice and wierd!)… Talk to people in your dream… Do air-swimming (like swimming through the air with your hands, just like you do in water)… Transforming your ‘dream self’ into another form, like an animal perhaps? A whale? Some kind of a bird? A hot chick? You can’t do these kind of things in real life eh? I guess you can pretty much do anything you can imagine…
Now how do I actually achieve a lucid dream? I should be charging you guys for this excellent info but hey sharing is caring and only like 1 person reads this blog at the moment so LOL… here is the method for free :
1) The method works by inducing the brain to produce alpha waves before sleep. By combining an affirmation and focusing intent in this state before you fall asleep, and also ‘hacking’ sleep and dream states by waking up and disturbing the sleep cycles / rthyms, one can ‘hack’ their mind into being awake while their subconscious is dreaming… ie, awake while dreaming. The key here is to be aware that you are dreaming. Once you are aware that you are dreaming, all becomes easy.
2) How does one exactly hack the brain into producing these perfect patterns for lucidity? I’ve developed a method :
- Sleep at 11pm. Before you go to sleep, stay awake in bed focusing your intent on being able to recall and recognize that you are in a dream when you dream tonight. You can repeatedly chant an affirmation to yourself such as ‘I will remember and realize when I am dreaming’. Or something to that effect.
- As you do this, close your eyes and look 20 degrees upward. (Roll your eyes to look up, while keeping your eyelids closed). Stare at your third eye chakra located at the center of your forehead. (With your eyes closed) For some reason unknown, this position of the eyes alone triggers alpha brain waves. After a minute (or 5) you should see some swirly red patterns forming behind your eyelids. This is known as hypnagogic imagery. Focus on these patterns as you fall asleep while chanting your affirmation and also focusing your intent on remembering and realizing that you are dreaming.
- Wake up 6 hours later. You will want to set an alarm clock for this since each sleep cycle is approximately 4 hours. Sleeping for exactly 6 hours will wake you up right in the middle of a dream cycle.
- Upon waking, stay up for 1 hour exactly. During this hour, you can focus your intent on remembering your dreams, etc etc. I guess a good way to do this is perhaps surf the web on lucid dreaming topics. The key here is to stay awake for exactly 1 hour.
- Fall back to sleep after 1 hour. Do the same eye positioning exercises and affirmations before you fall asleep again. The time now should be 5am when you fall asleep. This will totally fuck up your body’s sleep cycle so your mind will be dreaming, but because you woke and stayed up 1 hour in the middle of a dream cycle, your body is inclined to stay awake then. (That’s the theory but I might be wrong as to how a lucid dream is actually induced.)
- So you should find yourself dreaming now after you fall asleep. You might find that you just go through the dreams as per normal and don’t recall anything. That is when you have to train yourself to recognize that you are in a dream. Once you realize that you are dreaming, you are ‘in’ the dream world! And you can do anything you like there. Laws don’t apply, nothing is real, anything can be conjured. Go wild!
3) What do you do now that you are in a lucid dream? Anything! If you don’t like your current scene, one way to change the location or scene that you are in is to spin your dream body. As you spin, the world spins as well, try to decide where you want to appear when you stop spinning. And when you finally stop spinning, the world you want to appear in appears magically. Try it! If you need to ask a question, you can try summoning a dream character, or dream guide if you will. Ask it anything you want. Do anything you please! It’s a dream!
So, where do you want to go tonight?
