In my own definition, a lucid dream is a dream in which the dreamer is fully conscious and aware to the extent of being awake. Take a look around you. Right now. Just notice, and acknowledge every little detail about everything in the room surrounding you. Now imagine that the entire scene you are viewing right now is all in your head. Nothing exists and the world is your domain to do whatever you will. In the dreamstate, you are god. You can do whatever you can think of. Literally anything is possible, and it will appear to you just as realistically as you are viewing the room around you at this very moment! A favorite quote of mine comes to mind when I think of the dreamstate- “Whether you believe you can do it, or not, you’re right” – Annonymous.
Why have lucid dreams?
The dreamstate is only limited by your imagination. If you can think it, it can be done. That’s cool, but many people ask me what’s so great about them. Simply put, lucid dreams are among the most amazing and wonderful experiences a human being can experience in his or her natural life. When I had my first lucid dream, upon realizing I was dreaming, I was full of such a sense of overwhelming euphoria, that I could barely contain myself. It’s like an orgasm of the mind. Upon realizing I was dreaming, I became so uncontrollably happy that I actually woke up. I was in a good mood for the rest of the day.
But aside from how amazing it feels to be in a lucid dream, you can do whatever you want. You can create scenarios in your head. Ever wanted to be a pro basketball player? Conjure up a basketball arena, fans, and players, and play away! Believe it or not, lucid experiences are flawlessly realistic, as far as what you see, and how you interact with dream characters. Dream characters are people you may encounter in your dreams, lucid or otherwise. They have the appearance and characteristics of real people.
They are also an excellent way to fulfill aspects of your life that seem empty, or inhibitors that keep you from experiencing life to its fullest. Maybe you got picked on as a kid, and you want to confront the people from your past. Perhaps spend a couple dreams, using superpowers on your enemies, but eventually realize that you need to make peace with the past. Maybe there is a long lost love you dearly miss, who you know you’ll never see again. Again, of course you’ll probably want to spend several dreams in a romantic setting with them (as it really is entirely realistic), but eventually you can use lucid dreams to make peace with the waking truth. There are endless reasons why lucid dreaming is something everyone can benefit from.
It is also an excellent tool for working out your fears. I used to be terrified. TERRIFIED of heights. So what did I do? I warped myself to a very tall cliff, and willed myself to walk up to the edge, and along the edge for a good mile or so. I would do that very often. I’ve told that to many people and most of them asked, “well knowing that it’s just a dream, doesn’t that make you less afraid?” The answer is no! And yes! That’s the beauty of it. It’s so realistic, that you’re just as afraid as you would be if you really were standing on a cliff in the waking world, but you still have the security of knowing that it’s a dream. I cannot explain accurately how realistic and life-like the dreamstate is. Every little detail clearly represents the reality of the waking world. Of course, clarity and vividness varies on an individual basis, which I will get into later.
The science of consciousness
The dreamstate is a very interesting concept. You see, your brain learns, functions, and remembers things in the waking world by storing them, thus, you are able to predict occurrences in the waking world, and generally be correct. For example, if you see a car approach a stop sign with their right turn signal on, one could accurately predict that the vehicle will indeed turn right. This seems like common sense, but it’s actually because some trigger is going off in your head that tells you that a turn signal indicates that the given vehicle will turn in the direction indicated by the signal. That trigger is called a schema. You have schemata for just about everything. Your brain in the waking world uses schemata to predict and understand the things happening around you. In the waking world, the schemata in your brain interact with external sensory input and thus you know what’s going on. In the waking world, you do not rely entirely on schemata for your information. That’s the whole idea behind external sensory input. You receive information from your senses, which interact with things going on, and they do the work for you.
When you dream it is entirely the opposite. The environment in your dreams, the dream characters you meet, the abilities you have, the feelings you feel, every little detail of everything you can possibly experience in a dream is all based on schemas and other forms of internal sensory input. The vividness, clarity, and realism varies from person to person, depending on how generally aware one is. If you spend some time every day just observing your surroundings and paying attention to every detail, your stored schemas will grow in variety and range. The best part about schemata is that they are used primarily by your subconscious, and require no effort for you to draw from them. If you were dreaming about being in a forest, you would simply find yourself in the forest. You would see every blade of grass, every bit of warped bark on the trees, the leaves blowing in the wind, etc. You don’t have to contribute any effort to make any of that happen, it’s automatic. The brain is an amazing thing. It creates an entire world for you to exist in. This lucid world becomes your playground. How to control your dreams is critically important. If you try to force control in lucid dreams it can in time have a very large effect on the level of realism in your dreams, because of the fact that they rely on internal sensory input, which I will get into in a different section of this tutorial.
How to have lucid dreams- Induction methods and techniques
Since conscious dreaming was discovered, there have been endless attempts to create techniques to induce them. There are different types of induction methods, and I will be explaining a few of those types in this tutorial, along with the various sub-techniques. These techniques do not work for everyone, and the way the work is not necessarily set in stone. Induction methods are different for everyone, and can be altered to best suit the individual. In general I recommend following these techniques and methods as written unless you have a fairly competent understanding of consciousness and how it works.
A note on dream recall…critically important!
Before I list the methods and techniques, I need to explain how important it is for you to keep a dream journal if you expect to have lucid dreams! The reason many people don’t have lucid dreams is because they don’t even remember the non-lucid dreams that they have every night! Every single one of you who sleeps for at least eight hours has at least five dreams every single night. Always. You never go a night without dreaming. Every REM period is a guaranteed dream period. You also don’t have to be in REM sleep to dream. That’s why I say at least five. In an eight hour sleep period, you have five REM sleep periods, therefore at least five dreams.
Most people do not remember their dreams because they don’t care to. If you don’t care to, your subconscious won’t make the effort to. So how can you improve your dream recall? Keep a dream journal. The few dreams you do remember, right them down immediately when you wake up! It’s a pain in the ass, but it will increase your recall from the average 1-2 dreams a week, to 4-6 dreams a NIGHT. I remember about 3-5 dreams every night. You wake up after each REM period is complete. Whether you remember it or not. Most people fall back asleep almost instantaneously, thus instantly forgetting that they woke up. When you wake up, use autosuggestion to try to trigger shadow memories. A shadow memory is how I refer to segments of a dream that you may have forgotten.
When you wake up next time, wake without moving a muscle. Don’t move at all. Don’t think. Do not think about the day, or what you have to do, or anything else, or you may lose the chance of remembering your dream. Just think about what just happened. Ever wake up with a feeling like you just saw someone? Or just wake up feeling really happy, but you don’t know why? It’s likely because you had a dream, forgot it, but the mood you had still overlapped into the waking world. If you use autosuggestion, you can remember an entire dream right there when you wake up. When I can’t remember a dream when I wake up, I don’t move, don’t think about anything else but the dream, and I say sentence fragments. Eg. I was running…I was talking too….Seeing…parks…benches…cars… it’s a similar feeling to when you can’t recall someone’s name, and you’re trying to just spit out names. Just spit out random sentence fragments. What this is doing is trying to find something that triggers those shadow memories, or memories that are right there on the tip of your tongue. All it takes usually is one word. Then that one word leads to the remembering of a single scene. Then that scene triggers another, and another. It becomes a chain reaction and then in an instant you remember the entire dream.
This technique for dream recall seems like it couldn’t possibly work, but for me and MANY others I know, this recall technique is FAILSAFE! It does not fail, ever. Upon remembering the dream, write it down IMMEDIATELY. Try to do so in as dimly lit of a space as possible. Lights will diminish dream recall ability. I recommend using a laptop computer to write down your dreams. Open up notepad, or a text editor, and write away. You don’t have to write the entire dream either. You can just write the major events. Enough for you to remember so you can fill in the gaps later. I recommend a computer because typing is far faster than writing, although writing is swell. Just write the major parts of the dream, and fill in the rest later. When waking from REM sleep to write a dream, your consciousness will still be in “dream mode” so you will be loopy.
Dream recall seems hard doesn’t it? It’s really not. That seems like a lot of work, but that’s only to get you started. Once you get to a point where you can remember just ONE dream per night, it goes on autopilot from there. Your subconscious takes over, and all you’ll have to do is write them down. You won’t have to work on autosuggestion and all these other things to try to trigger shadow memories. If you get in the habit of writing down your dreams, there will be no shadow memories! You will remember the entire dream every time! But it is important! Establish good dream recall BEFORE you try these lucid dream induction techniques, or else they will NOT WORK. (except the WILD techniques, those usually work no matter what your recall is).
Dream Induced Lucid Dream (DILD)
As with any type of lucid dream, there are many sub methods and techniques for how to induce them. A dream induced lucid dream is simply a lucid dream that occurs midway through a non-lucid dream. At some point during a non-lucid dream, you become aware of the fact that you are indeed dreaming. Most of the time these types of lucid dreams occur on accident, but it is possible to induce them. The easiest way to start triggering DILDs is to increase your consciousness and level of awareness. This is most commonly accomplished by practicing reality checks. A reality check is any sort of test that can help you to determine whether or not you are dreaming. A decent understanding of internal sensory input is helpful, but not entirely necessary, as I will list some basic reality check techniques.
In a dream, reading becomes a challenge. You can read something once, but if you look away and look back, the text you just read will say something different. This is because there is no external sense showing you something that is constant. Because you’re in a dream, your conscious mind can only receive information from schemas. If you see text, the text will normally appear as random words, that appear to make sense to you at the time, as your logic is altered in a dream. Therefore an excellent reality check to perform is simply to read something, look away for a few seconds, and attempt to read it again. If the text remains the same, you are awake, and if the text changes you are dreaming. With any reality check you do, they will only be affective if you remember to practice them while you’re awake. If you practice them while you’re awake, you will automatically practice them in your dreams, thus making you lucid from the dreamstate- a DILD.
Another DILD technique is one that I found out about from Stephen Laberge, PhD. It’s a passive technique that he calls “lucid living”. Basically, similar to remember to do reality checks, you must remember to try to convince yourself that you are in a lucid dream at all times. Even if you can’t prove it. Try to convince yourself that right now this is all a dream. Eventually you will do so IN a dream, and become lucid within the dreamstate. There are other ways as well, but they are less common and less effective. If you want more info, feel free to ask me.
Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD)
MILD is basically a type of self-hypnosis or autosuggestion. Before going to bed, convince yourself that you will have a lucid dream. Part of this process is the requirement to actually sincerely believe that you will have a lucid dream. Don’t try to force it by saying “i WILL have a lucid dream!” because in the event that you do not have one, your subconscious will remember your “failure” and next time you try MILD it won’t work as well, and then you’ll get under the impression that lucid dreaming is not possible for you, which of course would be untrue. You must understand that this technique does not guarantee a lucid dream, it just greatly increases the chances of one. The other part of it is, you may not have a lucid dream THAT NIGHT! Don’t let it discourage you if you don’t. It is quite likely that you will have one in the near future, but with this method, doubt is the enemy! Always believe that you can, because anyone…ANYONE can intentionally have lucid dreams. It’s not as difficult as everyone makes it out to be.
Wake Initiated Lucid Dreams (WILD)
Sleeping isn’t the only way to have lucid dreams. In a similar process to that of the induction of astral projection, it is possible to shift your consciousness to the dreamstate without actually losing consciousness! And contrary to what one might think about it, it is actually more vivid and realistic than common DILDs. There are different ways to induce WILDs, and I will give a detailed explanation of how to induce them.
If any of you read my previous three part tutorial on astral projection, you’ll be familiar with this process. The first step in achieving a WILD is to induce sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is something that occurs every night when you sleep. The concept is very simple, you see, it just means that your body is paralyzed when you’re asleep. And it is! It is a sort of defense mechanism for your body, so that you don’t subconsciously try to act out your dreams while you’re asleep. Clearly having a dream about trying to fly would be catastrophic without the nightly function of sleep paralysis. So for any method of WILD, that’s the first thing you will need to do.
To induce sleep paralysis, obviously you’ll need to get into a position that is comfortable and will allow you to minimize movement. It’s also preferable that you do this in a quiet environment. Just be still, and breathe normally. Try not to think too hard. Just let your mind be blank, but if thoughts arise, do not force them away. Just notice them, acknowledge them, and let them pass. Nothing more. Do not dwell on thoughts, or you will drift into non-lucid sleep. You will know when you are paralyzed. It’s different for different people. For me it’s never actual paralysis, it just takes a lot more concentration to move at all, but it’s not difficult for me. Which means WILDs are more difficult for me. Other people who induce sleep paralysis find that they find it very difficult to move even when they really try. Which of course would obviously make inducing a shift in consciousness much easier.
A note about sleep paralysis: Some people become startled at the fact that they literally cannot move. I promise you, there is nothing wrong with you. It happens to you literally every time you go into REM sleep. Most people who experience sleep paralysis consciously for the first time know what to expect- not being able to move, and a feeling of heaviness throughout your whole body. Every once and a while one of the people who are into this sort of thing and they give a recount of how they panicked upon reaching the paralyzed state. There is no need to panic. If something occurs where you need to move, do not panic. Simply take deep breaths and understand that you can force movement in your body at any time, even though it doesn’t seem like it. The paralysis occurs as a result of the body shutting down preparing for the sleep process. You’re not actually paralyzed, you’re just in an altered state of consciousness that makes it difficult to communicate with your physical body. It happens just as you’re going to sleep every night and it is absolutely nothing to be alarmed by. Lucid dreaming and all of the required steps to have them are 100% entirely safe.
Once you reach sleep paralysis, there are a number of techniques you can use to achieve a WILD. Basically the goal is to reach the transitional stage, where you begin to phase into a dream. No matter what WILD technique you use, there ends up being a transitional phase of the whole process. At some point during your WILD attempt you will experience a visual (or series of visuals) called hypnagogic imagery. Hypnagogic imagery appears differently to everyone, but normally its just colors and patterns, and shapes. After a while (time varies from person to person) the shapes and colors will start to become sort of impressions of scenery. You might see a brief flash of a street, or a yard, or a forest, or anything you may have seen a lot of recently. The shapes don’t literally morph into these scenes. They just sort of appear. You also don’t literally see them like you literally see the shapes and patterns. You see the impressions in your minds eye. So that raises the question, how do you know if you’re seeing something with your mind’s eye?
Well think of when you have a song stuck in your head. You don’t literally hear the music playing in your head, but you remember what it sounds like, and it sort of plays through your mind. It’s passive and you hear it in you head, even though no actual sound is being played. This concept applies to the impressions you see with the hypnagogic imagery. You don’t literally see the images, but at the same time they are right there before your closed eyes. Think of it like daydreaming. Sitting in class, zoning out staring at a wall. Even with your eyes open you find a way to create scenes in your head that you can imagine and therefore passively see. Just not with your eyes. You see these impressions of places you’ve been and hear music in your head because your mind remembers them, and shows them to you. Your mind is like a bank. You make deposits and withdrawals at given times.
These impressions, or flashes of scenery eventually evolve into elaborate scenes that appear to you in the same fashion, but they are actual scenes being played out in your head. This is the beginning of the transitional phase. The transitional phase is moderately difficult, but with practice it becomes second nature. You eventually become part of the scene and before you know it, you’re in a lucid dream, without ever having lost consciousness!
Hypnagogic Imagery Technique
This technique is centered around using hypnagogic imagery to induce the transitional phase of a WILD, thus throwing you full tilt into a nice vivid lucid dream. With any WILD technique it is important to let your mind relax. Do not focus on the imagery. Just notice it and let it form into the impressionistic scenery I described earlier. You will eventually notice that the impressions become scenes playing out, and you will eventually become a part of it in a full blown lucid dream. The whole idea behind any type of lucid dream, but particularly WILDs, is mind awake, body asleep. But that doesn’t mean body asleep, mind analyze everything. The most important part about using this technique is to understand that you need to take a passive, almost uninterested perspective on the imagery. Do not necessarily FOCUS on the imagery, just let it happen. This technique just uses the imagery to keep your mind just awake enough to cross into the transitional phase and enter the dreamstate.
While trying to induce a WILD, you will not always see hypnagogic imagery, which is something that often throws people. I actually don’t like having the imagery, as my favorite WILD technique to use is VILD, which I explain below. If you do not see hypnagogic imagery, it does not mean you can’t proceed with the WILD. It just means that you won’t have a progress mark to know where you’re at in the whole process. If you don’t see imagery, you will eventually at some point sort of “click out” of one form of consciousness and into another. At that point, you can ever so slightly try to move to see if you find that you’re in the dreamstate. The transitional phase is the hardest part of WILD, but once you get it, it becomes second nature.
VILD- Visualized Induction of Lucid Dreams
Yes, most of these techniques and dream types end in ILD. But hey, what can ya do. Anyway, onto VILD! VILD is a technique that does not need hypnagogic imagery to make it easier. In fact, I personally find VILD much easier to accomplish if there is LESS hypnagogic madness going on. VILD is sort of like daydreaming. With the hypnagogic imagery technique, you eventually start seeing impressions that turn into scenes. With VILD, you start with the impressions and scenes.
The best way to describe it is daydreaming. When you daydream, you zone out, and passively see scenes that you create in your head consciously. This is basically what the idea behind VILD is. Instead of relying on hypnagogic imagery, you create your own mind’s eye scenery. The way to go about this is to choose a setting, then choose what you want to do. Start with something extremely simple and small, and work your way up to larger things. Every technique for WILD methods are all only for one purpose- to distract your mind from focusing on too many things at once. They are designed to distract your conscious mind so that your subconscious mind can go to work without interference from your thoughts.
When working with VILD, you have to start small, because you must try to visualize every possible detail of the setting, and scene you are trying to materialize in your mind’s eye. EVERY POSSIBLE DETAIL! Why? Because if you focus passively yet intently on ONE thing (which is essentially what you’re doing when you use VILD), you are getting your conscious mind out of the way of your unconscious mind. This method is VERY effective! When you are creating your scenery, think of an artist drawing a scenery. You in a sense are drawing every little detail. Before you know it, you’ll be dreaming. I find that this is the best WILD technique, because it is by FAR the easiest. With the other WILD techniques, you have to pay attention to catch the transitional stage, so you know when to let go and sink into a dream, but you can’t pay too much attention or it will fail. With this, the idea is to get so caught up in the making of the scenery, that you totally forget that you’re WILDing at all. You don’t have to pay attention to the process at all. You really shouldn’t that much anyway. You will suddenly just be in a dream.
How to fail a WILD
Normally I try to avoid negative aspects of trying things, but many people ask me why these methods are not working for them, and I get blamed, sadly, as I’m the one many people got their information from. I hate to focus on anticipating failure, but I can almost assure you that you WILL fail any WILD attempts if you do any of the following-
Are not completely relaxed
Fear. If you have any fear, your mind will automatically deem wake initiated lucid dreaming unsafe, and you will likely fail all future attempts until you lose the fear. Lucid dreaming is completely safe, and it’s actually healthy for you. There is no reason to fear it.
Trying to keep track of where you are in the WILD process will GUARANTEE failure! Do not think about the process, just do it and let it happen. Focusing on the process will only guarantee that you miss all of your transitional opportunities! Just be chill, go with the flow, and do NOT over-think it! Relaxation is key with any method of WILD.
Panicking during oncoming sleep paralysis. Again, there is no reason to panic. If you decide that it was a bad idea, sleep paralysis is very easy to get out of so long as you do not panic. Panicking makes it seem horrifying, but really you are capable of moving at any time. Sleep paralysis while conscious is nothing more than a mental block.
Getting too excited. This goes hand-in-hand with thinking too much. Upon reaching the transitional stage, you will know when you’re getting there. I always got really excited…”this is it…this is it!” and then I would fail. Always. Remain calm and passive!
Talking to yourself, even non-verbally will cause you to fall into non-lucid sleep. (In other words, fail the attempt.)
If during a WILD attempt, you fail and fall asleep right after, you are quite likely to have a dream induced lucid dream, DILD, solely because the subconscious remembers that you were trying so hard to have a lucid dream, that you may just have a spark of awareness within a dream.
“I’m lucid!…now what?” How to control your dreams
Now for the fun part. Once you’re lucid, you’ve got an entire universe to yourself, per se. You can do whatever you want. But how? It is very important that you read this entire section if you want to maintain the highest degree of realism and vividness in your lucid dreams! There are two types of control in lucid dreams- forced control and passive control. Both are very easy to use, but in most instances I would recommend that you only use passive control.
Forced Control
Both of these sort of speak for themselves. Forced control involves directly forcing events and immediate happenings to occur in your dream, and passive control is less direct. With forced control, if I wanted to be somewhere, I could just spin around in a circle quickly (also called body spinning) which always makes the dream scene blurry. While you spin, think of the scene you want to see, and voila. You are there. This is a method of forced control because you are directly reshaping the environment to suit your needs or desires in a dream. There was no justification for doing it, you just know that you are the god of your universe and can do whatever you want. You can be talking to someone you hate in your lucid dream and just decide to have them suddenly die a gory and painful death. You can change the color and brightness of your environment directly. These are all forms of forced control. Forced control sounds fun doesn’t it? It is. However, I HIGHLY advise that you absolutely never use forced control unless you find yourself in a critically horrifying dream from which you need to escape immediately.
This is because using direct control demonstrates to your mind that the world you are in is not realistic. As soon as it realizes this, it becomes less realistic. It appears less vivid, less clear, and you can’t control them as easily. Overtime, your lucid dreams become completely lame and can change at random. Have you seen the movie “Click”? He keeps fast-forwarding moments of his life, so when a similar situation arises, the remote automatically fast-forwards. It is exactly the same with lucid dreams. If you force control upon your dreams, or directly alter them, you will find that in the future, they start to alter themselves, and you can’t control it. Why is this? Because when you try to alter something in the dream directly and without justification, you are in a sense removing yourself from the dream, altering it, and then coming back into it. Forced control is something that should be used very very rarely, and only in extremely necessary circumstances. (And usually the extremely necessary circumstance never comes. I’ve never had to use it, and I anticipate you never will either.) AVOID forced control.
Passive Control
Passive control is the other type of control, and there are no negative consequences from this method. Passive control still gives you complete and total control over the dream. It’s not as direct as forced control, which is why it’s better to use. You can still “warp” to new scenery, or spawn people that you want to see, or conjure up some item you want, or use super powers, whatever. It’s just about how you go about doing it that separates this method from forced control.
Let’s say you wanted to have superpowers. You could just decide to have super powers, because you know this is a dream. That would be forced control. Any type of ability you use should never be a result of you “knowing that it is a dream”. Taking that approach will show your mind that you do not appreciate the realism, and the realism will disappear. Always act as though you are in a real place. If you want to have super powers, create a reason, or justification for why you would have super powers at this very instant. I do so by deeming that the dreamstate is a realm. It is the “Realm of Wonders”. Anything is possible in the Realm of Wonders, therefore you can have superpowers. That is a method of passive control. Do you understand the difference? I was changing something about the dream, but in an indirect way. Passively.
Want to conjure up/summon/make someone appear in your dreams? Not just anyone. Let’s say someone specific. Maybe a love? There are several ways to do this. It would be of course very difficult to just make them appear before your eyes, and even if it was easy, that would be an example of forced control, which we want to avoid. My favorite method is to just think about what they look like, walk somewhere, and expect to see them running from behind the next corner. Remember that schemas are what power a lucid dream. Schemas are based on expectation. Because of the fact that the dreamstate is run by schemas, what you expect to see is ALWAYS what you will see. But you have to genuinely expect to see whatever you’re trying to make appear. So if I expect to open a door and see my friend Kayla standing there, she WILL be standing there. If I approach a building corner, and expect to see my friend Steven just coming around the corner as I reach it, he will be there. Get the idea?
Lucid Activities
Here’s a topic that frequently comes up when I discuss control in lucid dreams- FLYING! Everyone asks how to fly. Many people describe having difficulties flying. They jump, but nothing happens. I find that it is much more realistic if you have flown in a plane before. Just so you know what it feels and looks like. But if not, that’s fine, your mind will put it together. Basically there are endless ways to fly. You can conjure up a jet-pack, try to grow wings, act like you’re swimming through the air…those are all just suggestions for if you’re having problems flying. Anyone, however, has the ability to simply jump up in the air and start flying. All you have to do is expect that when you jump up into the air, you will keep going. I find that it is extremely helpful to associate flying with some sort of movement. Take off in a certain fashion that you associate with flying. I used to have massive difficulties flying. One day I had a lucid dream and couldn’t fly, and so I said to myself…”hey…this is the Realm of Wonders…gravity cannot hold me back”. And I took off flying, and let me tell you first hand, it was the most realistic and mind blowing experience ever. It’s probably the most incredible experience to have lucidly. At least in my opinion. I love it.
I find that if like me, you would rather not use a tool to help you fly, do some sort of movement that helps you with take off. Have you seen the matrix? I do what Neo does before he flies. That sort of “charge up” thing he does. I find that that gives me the placebo effect to appoint where I believe that doing the Neo thing helps me fly. Therefore, every time I do it, I succeed in flying. Find something that you associate with taking off, and do it.
Another extremely common topic that comes up in the discussion of lucid dreaming is ever so naturally, lucid sex. Everyone wants to know about it, and learn how to do it. Well as with any activity in lucid dreaming, if you become overly excited, you will likely slip out of the dream. In order to do this, you will obviously need to create a partner. Maybe you’ve always wanted to have an encounter with a famous celebrity? Maybe a close friend you’ve always had feelings for? Maybe the secretary at your office? Okay, you get the point. Just conjure them up in the method I showed above. But instead of just making them appear, you really have to focus on the reason. You expect that they are there because they are secretly in love with you and want to confess their love to you right now- passive control. Then they’ll want to have sex. Careful not to offend your dream characters, because even though it is your dream, dream characters are not as easy to control as one might think. That’s why you have to create them with the expectation that they want to “be” with you. Then from there….well use your imagination.
Lucid sex is also a very realistic, amazing experience. From what I remember from recounts of Dr. Stephen Laberge, it is possible to climax and orgasm within a dream, but usually this has no effect on the physical body. I don’t know how that one works yet, but I’m working on it. Many people wake up before orgasm occurs because like I said, over-excitement will often cause you to wake.
Aside from fun things to explore in your dreams, there are useful things that you can do in your dreams. Not to say that fun things aren’t useful. You can better yourself as a person. I mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial about fears. Lucid dreaming is an excellent way to conquer fears in a controlled environment, but it’s so realistic that you experience the fear just as you would in the waking world. It’s an excellent tool in overcoming fears.
Letting go of your past how about? Maybe a lost love? A lost or failed dream? A death? Letting go of your past can be difficult. I’ve had problems with that. Everyone at first of course spends a few dreams reliving the wonders of their pasts that they perhaps regret. But in time you can use lucid dreaming to help you let go of that past and make peace with whatever happened. It still hurts, but in time you can let go.
A final word
Thank you everyone for taking the time to read this tutorial. I believe lucid dreaming is something that everyone should get into, as it’s an incredibly rewarding experience, and it’s something I think would make the world a better place, literally. Some people come to me with questions regarding safety. I am here to assure you that there is nothing dangerous about lucid dreaming. Occasionally I have felt like I was getting addicted to lucid dreams. It would be easy to. But it is a healthy activity and it is not dangerous. Another issue people worry about is being able to determine the dreamworld from reality. Well that’s what reality checks are for. Do them frequently. For the first little while that you are engaged in lucid dreaming, you may experience times when you know you’re not dreaming, but it feels like you are. Some people even lose touch with the difference between reality and dreams. This does go away. It just takes getting used to. I have said it before and will say it again- lucid dreaming is safe.
