Tag Archives: lucid dreaming

This was originally published on Huffington Post… However, in updating my links I’ve found that Huffpost were redirecting straight to their main page instead of letting people actually read my article! Not being pleased at being used like clickbait, I have deleted the links to Huffpost and instead reproduce the original article here.

How do I start Lucid dreaming?

Many of the questions I get about Lucid Dreaming come from complete beginners to the subject, and by far the most popular is, simply: “How do I do it?”

In my experience, there is a five step process to becoming an intentional lucid dreamer. First, you have to be able to remember your dreams: you can do this by, e.g., keeping a regular dream diary. .

Emile Coué (1857 – 1926)

Secondly, you should learn how to control what you want to dream about. One method would be to decide, before going to sleep, the topic of your dream that night, and then, as you drift off to sleep, silently repeat to yourself at least twenty times: “I will dream about…” (inserting the topic of your dream). This, incidentally, is essentially Couéism, a form of self-hypnosis, so named after Emile Coué, 1857 – 1926, who created the affirmation “Every day in every way I am getting better and better.” By deliberately impressing a Suggestion upon your unconscious mind before going to sleep, your unconscious, which is the source of all dreams, responds by shaping the character of your nocturnal visions accordingly.

There are other ways you can use to program your unconscious to show you the dreams you want. For example:

The Picture or Symbol Method. Obtain a picture of your desired dream topic, or a symbol which represents your wish. Gaze at it intently for one to two minutes before you go to sleep, and leave it propped up on your night-stand. This appeals to the right-brain, and hence stimulates other parts of the mind that the preceding method cannot reach, since being primarily verbal this would be more left-brain.

The Visualisation Method. As you are lying in bed, about to go to sleep, close your eyes and visualise what you would like to dream about not as a static picture but as a movie – i.e. a live scene which you experience in the first person. Think about not just what you are seeing, but what emotions you would be feeling as well – e.g. joy, excitement, sexual desire, etc. After running through this visualisation, relax and allow your mind to drift. This is potentially very powerful, as not only does it reinforce your desire to dream about a given topic, you may find that you slip into an actual lucid dream whilst in the middle of your visualisation – without any consciousness of having fallen asleep.

The Sexual Method. Prudes look away now. Whereas the preceding methods take advantage of the natural Suggestibility of the mind at the point of drifting off into sleep, there is another method of impressing a desire on the unconscious, which is through a sudden burst of spontaneous emotion. To use a metaphor: if your desire is a nail, you can either hammer it home with a series of gentle taps (the preceding methods), or with one well-aimed almighty BANG. Now technically there are other ways of creating such bursts of emotion, but as we are talking about lucid dreaming here – an activity that takes place in bed – it makes sense to focus on the resources which come most readily. Simply put: before starting, reduce the subject of your dream to a single word, or a single symbol. Do not attempt to think about this before becoming becoming aroused; but concentrate on it only after you have started, so that at the moment of orgasm it dominates your mind completely. The discerning will notice that here are sown the seeds of the basic of Sexual Magic as well.

This – the ability to control the subject of your dreams – is probably the most important lesson to learn. The third, fourth and fifth steps to becoming a Lucid Dreamer – becoming lucid, taking control of your dreams, and using them for advanced dream-work – are essentially extensions of being able to decide the nature of your dream before you go to sleep at night. In other words, once you are confident in determining the content of your dreams, you can use the same methods to give you more control in the dreams themselves.

This was originally published on Huffington Post… However, in updating my links I’ve found that Huffpost were redirecting straight to their main page instead of letting people actually read my article! Not being pleased at being used like clickbait, I have deleted the links to Huffpost and instead reproduce the original article here.

Make your Lucid Dreams vivid!

Lucid Dreaming is the art of becoming aware that you are dreaming, whilst dreaming. When you experience this you find your dream-life instantly becomes more exciting. For some it becomes a new resource of creativity; for others, it is the first step on a new path to Spiritual unfolding. Others yet again see it as an opportunity for wish-fulfillment: to indulge in epic adventures, exercise Matrix- or Inception-like superpowers or pursue limitless romantic and sexual pleasures.

A minority of people experience lucid dreaming spontaneously. What may not, however, be generally known is that you have the power to develop the ability to dream lucidly on a controlled repeatable basis. The first step in doing so is to remember your dreams when they occur.

Many people have difficulty remembering their dreams: some mistakenly believe they do not dream at all. In fact, remembering your dreams can be as simple as employing a few easy-to-learn strategies, which I outline below. Curiously, the act of wanting to remember your dreams serves to make your dreams more memorable, and ultimately more vivid.

Keep a Dream Journal

Get a new notepad and a pen, and keep them on your nightstand. Then, whenever you wake up either in the middle of the night, or to get up in the morning, note down whatever you can remember about what you were dreaming. Chances are that the first time you attempt this, you will not be able to write much. However, by persisting every night, after a week or less, you will find you are filling up whole pages at a time! By taking the trouble to keep a journal, you are reinforcing your unconscious desire to remember your dreams – to which your dreaming mind will then respond.

Practice Meditation Before Going to Sleep

This is based upon a Buddhist practice, although similar meditative techniques can be found in Christian mysticism (e.g. St Thomas A Kempis). Before lying down in bed, sit upright with your spine erect. Breathe slowly and evenly, and allow the events of the day to replay before your mind’s eye in reverse, i.e. starting with the present moment and going back in time, as far as you can go. Practice this every night. This leads to not only an improved dream-memory, but also an improved waking memory as well. It also leads to a curious effect: because the hold which the day’s events have on the mind is released during meditation, the dreaming-mind is then free to explore other more exotic realms of memory during the night.

Use Affirmations.

Emile Coue, who coined the phrase “Every day in every way I am getting better and better,” observed that the time immediately before going to sleep is the best time in which to implant an affirmation into one’s unconscious. The state in which one finds oneself whilst drifting off to sleep shares certain similarities with a hypnotic trance. Take advantage of this by repeating an appropriate affirmation to oneself as one drift’s off to sleep, such as “I can remember my dreams in detail” – repeat this at least twenty times in one go (the number twenty was determined by Coue himself, apparently arbitrarily).

Get Artistic!

Finally, I recommend that if you have the least trace of artistic talent, you can leverage this by drawing the contents of your dreams, instead of just writing them down. Writing your dreams is a left-brain skill: drawing them, however, is right-brain. By representing your dreams in pictorial form, you are therefore making use of parts of your brain which you might not otherwise use! Carl Jung made a point of not simply describing his active imaginations, but by illustrating them and turning them into an illuminated book for his own private use (see: The Red Book). More recently, the 17th Karmapa (Ogyen Trinley Dorje), the Tibetan spiritual leader, employs an artist to sketch his dreams for him. Great artistic skill, however, is not absolutely necessary – even simple sketches, line-drawings and diagrams will suffice to stimulate the visual capacity of your right-brain.

On Twitter there appear to be a large number of people who do not know the difference between Lucid Dreaming and Sleep Paralysis – so much so, that when they experience the latter they think it is the former, and consequently do not want ever to attempt to lucid dream again. Now I want you to understand the following:

LUCID DREAMING AND SLEEP PARALYSIS COULD NOT BE MORE DIFFERENT!

Lucid Dreaming is when you are asleep, dreaming, and aware that you are dreaming whilst doing so.

Sleep paralysis is a natural phenomenon which prevents your physical body responding automatically to the thoughts in your mind when you sleep. Everyone experiences this when they go to sleep and it is perfectly natural – unless you happen to have a sleep disorder like somnambulism (sleep walking). What seems to confuse people on social media is that sometimes it is possible to wake up mentally, and yet find that they are still experiencing Sleep Paralysis, which is what unnerves them. Occultists have claimed in the past that it was due to the astral body not being completely aligned with the physical body. However, it is not the same as Lucid Dreaming, because you are neither Asleep at that point, nor indeed Dreaming.

Incidentally, there is a very simple and easy way to overcome Sleep paralysis, and that is to just relax completely and wait for it to wear off of its own accord. I realised this as a small child, so the idea that Sleep Paralysis was anything of which to be frightened has never occurred to me.