In lucid dreams, dreamers realize they are dreaming and can assume control of dream events. The idea of lucid dreaming has fascinated me for years, but only recently have I become interested enough to experiment with the technique.
It’s taken me about two months to realize my first lucid dream. Here’s the process I’ve used:
1) Keep a dream journal. Some people obsess on this, keeping a pen and paper beside the bed so they can jot down every dream. Me? I’m a slacker. I remember dreams pretty well, so I wait until morning to record details I recall from the previous night’s dreams.
2) Use the journal to find your personal dream cues. Here’s what you don’t realize about your dreams: they contain repeating patterns, themes, and symbols. In my case, my dreams tend to feature elevators (in my case, very large room-sized ones), skyscrapers and towers, and, oddly — since I’m not star-struck at all — celebrity cameo appearances.
I never noticed this pattern, even while keeping the dream journal; I spotted it after the fact, while reviewing thirty days worth of dreams. Having become aware of the pattern, I can use elevators, skyscrapers, and celebrities as “cues” — signs that will help me recognize that I’m dreaming.
3) Perform “spot checks.” Pause occasionally and ask yourself, even when you know you’re awake, “Am I dreaming?” (You can also tie spot checks to events, pausing to ask the question whenever you walk through doorways or check your watch.) Try to make something unusual happen; if it fails, you’re most likely awake.
It sounds crazy … but, eventually, you’ll start doing spot checks in your dreams, too. The difference? When you try to make something happen — it will.
Using this simple, three-step process, I successfully produced my first lucid dream last night. In the dream, I walked into an elevator with an odd feature: hundreds and hundreds of buttons lining the walls. At first, a standard dream reflex kicked in: “That’s odd,” I said, and I prepared to move on.
Then it hit me: I’m in an elevator. Something strange is going on.
I’m dreaming.
I was immediately able to open the elevator doors simply by thinking about it. I willed them to open on a bright, sunlit meadow; they did. Once in the meadow, I thought of several people I wanted to see: a college friend, a friend who’s moved away, and a television character.
As soon as I thought of them, these people appeared. At this point, I was afraid I would wake up and lose the dream, so I rushed up to speak with them.
Unfortunately — maybe because I’m a beginner at this? — they weren’t quite themselves. They felt real (I hugged one), and they looked real, but they were like bodies without brains. The trio staggered around the meadow, slack-jawed as zombies. No matter how hard I tried to make them behave normally, they just stumbled around and bumped into each other.
Rather than waste more time with these losers, I conducted other experiments. I was able to fly short distances (it looked and felt more like taking extended hops in lunar gravity) and bend or distort objects (like a stop sign) simply by thinking about it.
I woke up refreshed and very proud of myself.
Give lucid dreaming a try! Even with my half-hearted effort, I proved to be just sixty days from my first success. In less than two months, you may find yourself wandering a world where the only limits are those you imagine.
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