Introduction to Lucid Dreaming
My Abbreviated Personal History
I have been lucid dreaming since I was a teenager, even though I have developed a skill set that enables me to do it with greater frequency and with increasing awareness and presence over time. I had some lucid dreams with extraterrestrials and mermaids starting around the age of 15, and as a child, I had the classic dreams where I was “falling” and waking up suddenly. I always had vivid dreams, but most of the pre-teen ones were not truly lucid (self-aware of dreaming while in the dream).
I became a more conscious enabler for my lucid dream life around 2012 when I was actively exploring different methods for contact with interdimensional beings. I discovered many techniques and modalities for setting up potential dreamscapes (basically trying to “pick” what the landscape would be like when I dreamed and who or what I dreamed with/about), becoming lucid while asleep, and then going back into dreams and continuing them if I woke up (inconveniently) before I felt they were complete. I was always intuitive about setting my physical sleeping space up for my comfort and success because as an autistic person, I am essentially the Princess and the Pea when it comes to discomfort (the slightest thing “off” will warrant immediate attention!). However, it took me quite some time to realize that I could help others become more aware of how their physical sleep space could impact their lucid dreaming abilities and that I could share my lucid dreaming experiences with others.
All of that changed in 2013 and 2014 when I was a co-speaker and co-host of several lucid dreaming playshops. Most of them were held online since spiritual attendees were located all over the world, and the co-hosts would spend time talking about their lucid dreaming backgrounds and the positive reinforcements we experienced that kept us consciously coming back for more. Most of us used lucid dreaming to make contact with extraterrestrial beings, so we would also share what those interactions looked like with each other. A few of us branched out and found out that we could lucid dream together in dream-teams (or pods as they were more commonly called). We would record our dreams separately upon waking and find them congruent with the recordings of the same people we had dreamed with once we decided to share our dream memories with each other.
There was a fantastic website called Dreamcatcher.net that was created specifically for people to record their dreams (privately or publicly) and earn “dream points” for their entries. It had cute features like listing the most common words we would use in our recordings next to our usernames, and it helped us establish dream networks and friendships online. Sadly, the site was corrupted and became unusable a couple of years after, and I switched to typing my dreams into documents, but I still wish we had Dreamcatcher around! Now, websites like DreamJournal offer similar online recording opportunities with the accompanied assets of community, feedback, and dream analysis included.
“Prophetic” (Precognitive) Dreams
Fun fact: I once dreamed about the name of a hybrid extraterrestrial child and then brushed it under the figurative rug. Then, Shaun Swanson, an e.t. channel and spiritual guide shared the name with me in a personal session without any prompting or prior knowledge about me. The exact name I had dreamed about extensively was the name of a being he explicitly said wanted to make contact with me. That was pretty compelling!
I have had quite a few “prophetic” dreams, though they have been seemingly random when I peer at them through my ordinary human lens… They have been anything from being aware that a friend was having chest pains and waking up to check on them immediately, to dreaming that someone I hadn’t talked to in 8 years would message me soon (they messaged me the next day), or dreaming about someone having a meaningful experience across the country from me and bringing it up in a session together the next time we spoke. As a child, I had one of those fantastic flying dreams (those are the best) and I flew around my grandparents’ dining room table in Tennessee (12 hours away from where I lived). I noticed that next to the table, they had a new decorative piece that was pretty. We visited them about a month later, and lo and behold, next to the table was the exact piece I had dreamed about (I think it was a giant glass strawberry). I asked them when they bought it (maybe I was mistaken? I had seen it before?). They had bought it nearly a month before I visited… which was two months after my previous visit. Basically, there was no way for me to know about the piece before visiting again, and yet, it showed up in my dreams for some reason.
When I try to riddle out exactly how I “do it” when it comes to prophetic future dreams, the only conclusive answer I can arrive at is that I simply “stay open.” If you are an open channel, information can flow through you. If you are closed for any reason (and we all are sometimes due to sickness, stress, or redirected focus) then the information will have a harder time trickling in. Prophetic dreams often drift outside the realm of the typical lucid dreaming experience because they concern divination, but since I am lucid in most of them, I include the dream species here.
Healing Dreams
Some dreams seem to come just for the sake of providing some measure of healing. In dreams, we can experience better versions of who we are—more powerful, more discerning, and less fearful. When something is “off” in our personal experience, we often look for permission slips to feel better and use them to learn “how to” feel better so that we become a vibrational match to what we want. Dreams have often served as this tool for me, giving me insight into high-frequency emotions, sensations, and feelings that I can then use as a stepstool in my waking life to integrate them physically. Even though some dreams can push us to expand and grow beyond our comfort zones, others serve as incubators and spa retreats that carve out spaces designed to remind us why we chose a path cobbled with the decadent and the daunting.
Lucid Dreaming Development Should Be a Fun Option, Not Another “Spiritual” Measuring Stick
Something I used to errantly say when guiding others to lucid dreaming was: “We spend roughly one-third of our lives sleeping, so with all of this time at our disposal, we ought to be actively seeking to use the tools available to us to lucid dream and integrate meanings and messages through the conduit of our dream space.” After a few years of reflection, I mostly recant this statement. This statement serves well in context for people who avidly want to lucid dream, and who want to do so regularly. However, after some self-examination, I found that this drive to assign constant “meaning” or purpose to sleeping or deep-resting states was a symptom of self-absorption of toxic capitalist ideologies. The fact is that we do not always need to be “doing something” or growing spiritually. Sleep is for restoration, and we do not need to make it into another hierarchy of aspiration… nor does everyone feel truly “restored and rejuvenated” after lucid dreaming, even if the dreams are “good” ones.
Lucid dreaming is a hobby, interest, and vehicle for spiritual growth if we want to use it. What one person gains from meditating, another gleans from lucid dreaming or doing herbal tea ceremonies. Not everyone needs to lucid dream to feel that they are progressing spiritually, and like meditation or anything else, it isn’t useful for everyone. Some of us may want to utilize our “dreamscapes” to delve into deeper truths, but the people who do not are not inferior to us, nor are they missing out on any opportunities we may perceive for ourselves. Sleep is already useful because it creates a space for physical healing and mental rest… anything else is a bonus!
In this article, I have a few tips for lucid dreamers in a broad sense, but techniques with fine-tipped singularities will be saved for future discussions. This work takes more of a preparatory role for someone who first becomes interested in lucid dreaming. I will have future blogs with lucid dreaming “hacks” and tips (like the WBTB method and so on) in the future.
Dreaming and Science
Lucid dreaming is also not something that can be scientifically interpreted or easily defined, nor can it be studied scientifically with objective data like many other areas of psychology. Behaviorists (scientists who think that studies should only be validated when they can be directly observed and measured… and it is 100% understandable to think this way) tend to take an approach that refuses to waste its time on something that is based on anecdotal evidence and interpretation. I can’t argue with that logic, but as someone who likes the strange, eccentric, and unexplained, I do still hold an interest in lucid dreaming and have found it to be meaningful for me, even if my dreams simply “excite” me and allow me to live an alternate fantasy storyline while asleep.
Jungian practitioners and psychologists speculate that Jungian archetypes (each of us supposedly has an assortment of archetypal identities we need to integrate and explore during our lifetimes such as the Divine Child or Wise Elder) serve to help us process things present in our “unconscious” which can then enter our consciousness and make us more whole in a spiritual sense. (Keep in mind that the unconscious is a very nebulous idea scientifically, though it is interesting to consider.)
Evolutionary psychologists differ from the behaviorists in that they think that the purpose of dreams could be to explore different aspects of our lives, without the dangers embedded in real-life experiences. However, this view is a bit limiting, since not all dreams place us in dangerous or challenging situations. Still, it is interesting since the scope of this approach does hold dreams to be somewhat meaningful psychologically.
My Reasons for Lucid Dreaming
My reasons for lucid dreaming are self-delineated and, again, should not be trusted as objective truth or scientific knowledge. It is very important to me that in all my work (mermaids, spirituality, lucid dreaming… everything) that I retain neuropsychological humility and communicate that I could be wrong about many things… or that the things I experience could be meaningful for a small group of people only… or (more likely) that I have some things right and other things wrong. It is hard if not impossible to test many concepts that we find “spiritual”, so we must experience and interpret them personally and decide if they are helpful enough to us to continue pursuing them as interests.
My two main motivators for choosing to lucid dream and constantly finding new “hacks” to make dreaming more accessible are: 1. I use it as a mode of creating contact with other realms and spiritual beings and 2. I use it to explore the vast inner regions of my Self… hazy and unregulated as its borders may be.
Based on my personal experiences, the way that extraterrestrials and elementals (e.t.s especially) will often contact us first before showing up physically on planet earth, is through our dreams. I think this is because:
1. It is a safe space to help humans get used to species very different from us.
2. It makes contact accessible for people who want to experience it rather than forcing it upon the entire world population before we are ready for it.
3. Because it is a place for beings who supposedly have different vibrational frequencies to interact spiritually without compromising anyone’s physical safety.
A Few Introductory Steps for the Dream-Curious
The First Step is… Intentionality
I know how this may sound. Honestly, in any yoga class, I roll my eyes (internally and with some humor) when the instructor tells us to “set our intention.” I don’t like to limit myself to a singular intention, even if I somehow make it broad in scope. When I centralize my focus too much, I sometimes close myself off to revelatory experiences and “surprise” gifts that can unfold when I let go of the cognitive reins. In yoga practice, when someone wants you to set your intention, what they usually mean is that they want you to choose a goal or a mantra to hold onto (kind of like picking leg day or arm day at the gym).
When it comes to lucid dreaming, setting your intention is more akin to staying focused on the strategies of lucid dreaming, or better stated, staying present within them. If the technique itself is the blueprint (procedures) for the dream, the consistency of your focus is the lifeblood that carries the information through to the dream arena. Nothing is more potent or mentally medicinal for me than completely saturating in the lucid encounter from start to finish. Nothing has been more obnoxious (for me in the past) than weaving in and out of my dream state so that it is experienced in snippets, rather than a continuous immersion in Deep Self territory (think of it as trying to play a video game where it keeps glitching and missing parts you really wanted to see). Now, I have come to find the value in dreams presented in a fragmentary manner but have mitigated how their appearance was the only manifestation for a while… now they show up every so often instead of every time.
I also refer to lucid dreaming as an encounter because whether we interact with anyone else in our dreams or not, we are facilitating contact with an alternate version of ourselves, however we choose to interpret the adventure. No matter which techniques work best for us individually, it is essential that we delegate our focus to the modalities in the same way a swordsperson directs their focus to the technique of wielding their instrument. Even though others may have a more casual approach to lucid dreaming (completely valid), my personal “intention” broadly is to achieve the highest level of proficiency within lucid dream autonomy itself and lucid dream recall upon awakening. Establishing “why” you want to lucid dream is a good start for setting your intentions if you haven’t chosen a technique you want to try yet… and the answer can change and be refined over the years as you gain experience.
Consider Dreaming While Awake First (Daydreaming)
If you are new to the lucid dreaming path and you are playing with some of your techniques but want somewhere to start before you have success while asleep, begin by recording a few of your daydreams. A common misconception about lucidity is that it only concerns the dreams we have when we are asleep. But how often are all of us truly lucid in real life? How often do we “zone out” and forget what we were thinking about? Start by bringing your attention to the daydreams you have, because they can be just as potent and revelatory as anything else. Shamans, mystics, and interdimensional travelers all know how important it is to bring lucidity with you to share the magical gleanings with the community. Inform the lucidity in the wakeful states, so that it is more natural to you when you enter the resting ones. Awareness is the soul of the dream life, because it concerns how much of it we fully experience and remember.
Choose Your Liminal Space: Hypnopompic or Hypnagogic
Before becoming an adept oneironaut (lucid dreamer) while you are fully asleep, some people like to experiment with liminal states between waking and sleeping. These states are the hypnopompic state (while you are waking up) and hypnagogic state (while you are falling asleep). I suggest these two spaces (sweet in-betweens) because these are the states where hallucinatory phenomena are commonly reported, even among people who have no intention of experiencing them. This is because our brains are displaying both alpha and theta brainwaves, which remain in balance with each other for a while so that neither one rules the show. This is a great interval (if you choose hypnagogic especially) where your meditation or focused thoughts can travel through the bridge of falling asleep and can translate over into your dream space. For some, the most powerful lucid dreams can be experienced in this liminal expanse and can serve as the platform for the main course of the dream, instead of when you are fast asleep. Most people have more luck with hypnagogic experimentation because you can go into the experience by starting out with full awareness (after you get into bed) first, but I know a few people who had more luck with the hypnopompic arena. Keep in mind that I am using the word “dream” when the liminal margins of waking consciousness are more accurately defined as the areas in which we experience hallucinations. In my own practice I have found little difference between my actual lucid dreams while fully asleep and the messages that have come through while in-between. It is a good area for self-development either way since it can nourish your transition into delta and theta brain waves (deep restorative sleep waves!).
Prepare Your Body and Your Physical Environment
This step looks a bit different for all of us. There are the general rules of thumb to follow: 1. Limit blue light after dark 2. Be conscious of your caffeine intake 3. Pick a sleep schedule etc. Beyond that, we may adopt certain physical rituals or preferences such as bathing, playing music, or meditating before bed. Cultivating one’s physical sleep environment can be rooted in privilege and accessibility… I understand how lucky I am to speak on this topic, especially with personal experience. If you have the means to do so, experiment with how your bed and objects around it facilitate or interfere with your dream life. Some people prefer a bed closer to the ground to be closer to the earth, but I am one of those wayward spiritualists who detest sleeping near the ground when I am intending to dream (past lives floating around in space did this to me?! =) However, sleeping near the ground while camping is restorative and sweet when I want to experience it.
Different kinds of bedding and fabrics may help get you into a relaxed, dreamy state more efficiently than others, so that may be a creative way to enhance the accessibility of your own dream life. You may choose to have crystals, water, plants, or a scent diffuser nearby as permissive pyramids that help you focus your energy into a singularity of upward dream flow. Anything goes if it works for you!
A Few Lucid Dream Initiations: A Taste Test
Learning the Art of Ease
Words like intention and focus can be misleading, in that they may put some people in the position to feel as if they need to go into “hyperdrive” to slip into the silky world of lucid dreaming awareness. Usually, this does not work out well and leads to burnout and frustration. Keep in mind that even if we are going into the lucid dream state with a focus on our techniques or mental imagery, they are best absorbed into our sleep realms when they are enveloped in ease and “allowance.” We slip seamlessly into allowance when we release insistence on the specifics of how the dreams unfold and allow them to flow.
For most people, even the most adept lucid dream engineers, lucid dreaming at every rest isn’t feasible or desirable. Sometimes “dream fasts” interposed between nutritive lucids are like the dark between stars—lending their luminosity some clarity. It is not a sign that something is wrong or that your techniques are not working. It is usually just a neutral template presenting an opportunity to experience greater definition and luxury within our traditions.
Allow what comes each time to be an invitation to experience what is, not an invitation to experience “more” if you simply work harder. For me, that looks like appreciating those abbreviated rascals for dreams as they come, even if they are in fragments. I prefer a scroll unrolled in its entirety when I am being overly fastidious, but the truth is that it doesn’t matter how the “message” is sent if it is received with gratitude. Alongside my current lucid dream journal, I have a little gratitude section for each dream where I can briefly mention how it is appreciated and what it could mean for my practice. In meditation, we often relax the mind, but in master-level lucid dreaming, we focus it, but without tightening our grip into a chokehold. The paradox (or seesaw we ride at first until we find balance) is to learn how to focus yet allow. Ease is the art of counterbalancing motive with grace. We can become the poets of our own imaginations, sitting down with an analogous pen, paper, hot tea, and good seating, but can still be pleasantly “surprised” by our poem’s ending and what it means for us. Not every line or word needs to be scripted in advance. Preparation is not synonymous with authoritarian dictatorship over results. We have simply given our dreams a platform upon which they can best offer their gifts and salubrious bliss.
Navigating Difficulty (Obstacles)
Once in the dream world for the first few times, many of us experience a happy “honeymoon period” where all seems well and we’re happily playing hopscotch on the road to Fairweather Cloud Nine. Then, the obstacles arise… the inevitable and the unaddressed. They offer juicy concoctions from what we have disregarded or unremembered… the tonics of our shadow selves with the faces of clowns, hairy spider legs, death, and narratives of our seemingly “failed” selves. How do we address them? Most of us try running first… perhaps if we drank chamomile instead of ginseng before bed it would alleviate… or music played beforehand in 432 Hz frequency… or if we pre-meditate on a compassionate bandwidth… or if… then…
We cannot outpace our inner depths forever, not without abandoning our lucid practice altogether and further divorcing ourselves from the richest understanding of our metacognitive multiverse (Self). Whether the infinite isotopes of You are configured in such a way as to be determined “spiritual” or not, every lucid dreamer has to come to terms with their adaptability and courage. We can get very creative with our bypasses and shortcuts, but ultimately, they will just take us in circles until we acknowledge whatever it is that so terrifies us. We weave our dreamscapes with the threads we are willing to unravel. The eye of the proverbial needle isn’t as hard to pass through when we open it wider to see more clearly. You can do all of this at your own pace, but there are no guarantees that the underbelly of your own framework will choose to raise its head gently.
The good news is that your physical body will be safe when you are finished! A tip I have found that helps when diffusing across this byzantine gargantuan of Shadow Self (for those who are interested) concerns the oneiro-plasticity of the dream world… There are no rules that say you can’t ask for help, and I have found that doing so enables me to access some versions of myself from past lives (aka parallel incarnations), including their memories and skill sets. It isn’t cheating to call up “forgotten” forms of ourselves or to ask them to lend their wisdom. Many may appear or only one form just depending on the circumstances. The dream world always offers integration… the melding and acceptance of all that we are. If you need a hand to hold while facing the bear-man, the precipice, or the phenomenon where your teeth are falling out, reach out your hand and see which fingertips brush yours… Often, they will be attached to you in another form.
Dreamspace Ecology: The Alpha Architect vs. the Round Table Self
When I talk about lucid dreaming architects (or engineers), I am referring to experienced lucid dreamers who have cultivated the ability to “choose” their dreamworld and invite other beings to meet them in it. (Like you would plan to meet your friends at a particular resort or pretty campsite to hang out and bond.) This is a dreamer with a finely tuned skill set that enables them to focus and make clear choices in a dream while not pulling themselves out of the dream state due to their hyper-awareness. But sometimes the adept architect becomes a little neurotic and slips into alpha architect territory. This is someone who posits themselves as the god of their dream world, without any nuance or wiggle room for equanimity. “But it’s MY dream,” you might be thinking. Yes, your brain is creating the dream, but when your grip is too tight on the steering wheel, you can miss the lush uprising of your personal mythos… When we exert too much control, even in the every day, we become less permissive for the emergence of our magic and whimsy.
Lucid dreaming may come with intentions, goals, and desires, but it isn’t a resource to be mined relentlessly in one direction. You can cut your teeth on cave walls all day, but you will miss the crystalline perfume of meeting an unexpected friend (animal or humanoid) or rubbing shoulders with another Self (however it may manifest). An alpha is an authoritarian, while a round-table dreamer recognizes that their “conscious” autonomy and influence within the dream is just one sliver of the whole gem. Dreams are supple, but not always submissive.
Most dreamers find out pretty quickly that their dreams rarely turn out exactly as planned… you can waste your time trying to “herd cats” but it will never work out for you exactly as you hoped. You can wrestle until you tire if you want to, but when you’re exhausted and heaving on your back, reality will set in and you will still be faced with the shadows and the unresolved that are asking for your attention. Dreams are not escape rooms, but they can still give us opportunities to live out some fantasies. They are not coin machines either (pop a coin in, pop a snack out), but our personal prep and focus can unlock a large menu of options for self-exploration.
There are layers within layers and infinite ways to experience the Self… Prepare your vehicle (body, mind, bed) for full absorption of the magic, but don’t dictate how the mystery has to uncoil. That is the lion’s share of the pleasure and the key to a balanced ecosystem of Self. Sculpt a round table like Arthur of lore, sit down with the parallels and potentials, and Receive what comes. You might say, “This dream is me, but ‘me’ is magnificent enough to chase the fringe and always find its valence expanding.”
The Path of Remembrance and Recall
The entire human life experience is the path of remembering who we are—We are one of the few species in the universe who supposedly chose to forget who we were so that we could have the joy of “waking back up” to its magnificence. In this tradition, lucid dreaming recall mirrors the Great Wish we are all fulfilling, piece by piece in the conscious states… It is both the dessert and the main course, a natural consequence of cultivating the courage to gaze unfazed at all we are.
There are many techniques for dream recall, but one of the misconceptions (unless you’re one of the lucky few) about calling up your dreams is that the skill has to develop all at once when it usually appears in waves. First, you may feel like you have forgotten something. Second, you may remember that you experienced something. Third, you may be able to recall “flashes”, words, images, or interactions from the dream(s). Fourth, the dream may come mostly intact in its raw state. Fifth, not only may you recall the dream, but you may probe and search for its “meaning.” Most of the time, I find that dreams are not inherently meaningful even if they are purposeful. It is up to us to assign the meaning as is relevant to what we are currently embodying- this initiation is self-dependent and sometimes anxiety triggering… We want to choose all the paths in advance, but we can only choose one or two and see how it unfolds when we are done. We want to play god until we’re given the chance to be fully responsible for our path, and then sometimes we hesitate while we wonder if we are choosing the “right” direction. Forks, crossroads, and intersections are all common knitting patterns in the fabric of our dream life. What makes us decide? When our map is an autogenetic platform of shifting designs and holographic dreamworks, how do we develop confidence in that sovereignty?
A massive, feathered snake (both adorable and terrifying) came to me in a dream once and said: “What do you wish for me to be?” I thought it would be funny for it to change shape (like a balloon twisted to look like bunnies or cats), so I said, “Do something fluffy like a rabbit.” Then the snake changed shape to become a feathered rabbit. I was amused with it for quite some time, even daring to reach out and brush its back as it bounced by… Then the snake-rabbit asked, “What now?” I thought and said: “A horse seems poetic.” The snake seemed surprised as well. “I can rarely do as commanded, but today is your day,” and the snake-rabbit shifted into a feathered stallion. And I was right… it was poetic as it galloped around and found an alluring cadence with its stride. I wanted to ride it but didn’t want to push my luck too much. After what seemed like an eternity with my snake-rabbit-horse, I became a little restless. What I saw was cool, but I wasn’t really getting the object lesson I thought I was supposed to receive. My snake-rabbit-horse galloped up to me and skidded to a halt. “What now?” I sat there for a minute and then confessed that I was a little bored. “Ah, perfect,” said the feathered shapeshifter. “Would you like to alter your request?” I had this funny flash of Harry Potter standing with Professor Lupin when the Boggart has the potential to become anything that scares and challenges him… I hung in the balance for a minute, unsure of what might come next. So, I said, “Become what I need the most right now.” The shapeshifter smiled with its fluffy lips and said, “As you have asked…” Then it disappeared completely, leaving a giant pile of feathers at my feet, devoid of animation, granting me the solitude to search for its meaning.
Until Next Time… Have Some Canaries
This lucid dreaming introduction is hardly a comprehensive guide or list of techniques, but it is a taste test for you to decide whether you want to pursue the unique opportunity of plunging into the universe of your inner Self (All parts included: Higher Self, Experiential-Self and Underworld-Shadow-Self). There is no shame in dabbling or trying it out with some training wheels because almost all of us start there if we are being honest. Most of us can limit how deeply we peer into the cauldron of lucid dreaming potential when examining it as a possibility, but none of us can tell the ocean, “Stay within the shoreline and go no further,” when we truly come to understand its nature.
The following poem I wrote is titled as a reference to the experiences one can have when they become vulnerable (and brave!) enough to write, share, and critique poetry… But what many people do not know (including the people at the poetry symposium where I read it) is that it was also inspired by my experiences with lucid dreaming… and I nearly titled it with a moniker more indicative of those realms. Ultimately, it was meant to be what it is now, but when I read it to myself, I think of it in terms of both poetry AND lucid dreaming. Since both of these mediums are the most common vehicles I use to facilitate contact with interdimensional beings and all versions of myself, it is fitting that they came together for me in this form.