School of Dreaming
Good morning, Dreamers. As you may or may not know, lucid dreaming is quite possibly the most consciousness-expanding experience one can have short of death or DMT. For a personal account of the extreme possibilities, see my entry at Dream Log: August 29, 2001 or visit my home node. Today let's answer some reader mail.
Dear stash,
I have known about lucid dreams for a while, but never really got interested
in them until I saw Waking Life (by Richard Linklater; if you've not seen
it I highly recommend it). I am aware of several methods of achieving lucidity,
such as trying to fly, trying to change light levels, trying to read fine print,
but my main problems are that it just doesn't occur to me to do these things
when I am in a dream. I try to do a 'reality check' probably 4 or 5 times a day during waking life, especially when I wake up and as I go to sleep. The other problem I have is that I very often don't remember my dreams; or sometimes I'll just remember the last one I had. Do you have any specific advice about these?
Thanks,
benjaminbradley
Thanks for your questions, Ben. They are good ones. Let me give you and our other readers some quick basics. The
techniques I mainly use are written about in the 2nd writeup under the
lucid
dream node, and also the
dream spinning node. The most powerful
technique I know is also the simplest:
think about dreams and lucid-dreaming as
often as you can while awake. All "reality-checking" and dream journaling methods are ultimately variations on this. I'm sure you've noticed that a dream's
contents often come from your thoughts or activities from that day. Simply
put, we dream about our lives; and if your life has dreaming and lucid
dreaming as a common theme then you will dream about dreaming and become lucid--wake up inside your own mind.
For
instance, many times throughout the day, I consciously try to fly (no kidding) by thinking about
it, willing it to happen. Since it's a normal pattern of my behavior while awake, I continue the
pattern while asleep and fly all the time! Similarly if you think many times throughout
the day, "Am I dreaming?", and look around you for clues that you
are...then you'll eventually do the same while asleep and it will be true.
You say you remember to reality-check mostly when you're in bed before sleeping or in the morning. The mind works by context association. If you only reality check when
you're in bed, then in a dream you'll only reality
check if you happen to be lying in a bed. So if you want to become lucid in other contexts besides lying in
bed, you need to create an association between the idea of lucid dreaming
and some ordinary context you might commonly find yourself in while
dreaming. For instance, my friend August and I talk about dreams and lucid
dreams all the time. Thus when August appears in my dream, we often start
talking about dreams--which results in lucidity. Another example: whenever
I'm near an ocean cliff while awake, I imagine leaping off of it and
flying out over the sea. So when I dream of an ocean cliff, usually I fly
off it. Perhaps if you choose one specific thing or person that you
encounter often while awake and somehow mentally associate it with the
reality-check, continuing to reinforce this association every time you
encounter this thing, then you'll continue the habit while dreaming and
become lucid.
So those techniques are the best for inducing a lucid dream. Sometimes however, it's difficult
not to wake up when you realize your dreaming. That's where dream
spinning comes in. Read that node for the info. As an alternative to
this, I just look at my hand and wiggle my fingers and that seems to do
the trick. A good idea would be to do this hand-look-finger-wiggle while
awake whenever you ask yourself if you're dreaming, so it too becomes part
of the behavior pattern.
Now to answer your second question about how to remember your dreams better. First of all, if you're in a lucid dream you are much more conscious than in a typical dream and you'll almost certainly remember the dream because of this. So don't worry about succeeding in your lucid quest but not remembering in the morning! All the advice for stimulating lucid dreams applies for remembering dreams as well. Keeping a dream journal--writing something down no matter how
small or vague the fragment--has proven invaluable to me for remembering more of my dreams. Dream memories fade so quickly after waking that keeping the journal by
your bed gets you in the habit to make dream recall your very first
mental activity in the morning. Any other distraction--listening to the radio,
planning your day, etc.--will overwrite the fresh dream memories in a
matter of seconds.
Eventually the goal of this habit is that you'll be
recalling and rehearsing your dream memories even before you are fully
awake. That's the key. You're like a diver swimming down into the ocean of
mind, and the only memories you will come away with are those you
clutch tight to your chest as you rise back to the surface. Those waking moments are critical. And you may discover that they can be just as thought-provoking as a lucid dream--in and of themselves. Great knowledge and insight is to be found there: between dreaming and waking.
If you haven't already, check out my home node
which rates my most lucid dreams. They can give you a sense of what's
possible. I like Dream Log: August 29, 2001 in particular. Beyond
that...right now I'm in a phase where I try to get into a lucid dream, sit
down to meditate, then leave my body behind. Some people say you can
actually return to the waking world in this state and view events that are
actually happening (astral projection) but I'm not sure how much I
believe that.
Have fun. And remember: if one can dream anything that is possible to imagine, then one could dream a world exactly like this one.