A guest article by Rebecca Turner of World of Lucid Dreaming
Lucid dreaming is a powerful mental ability that virtually everybody can access. It is a state of awareness that enables you to consciously control your dreams with clarity. A lucid dream begins with the simple realization that you are dreaming, which awakens the conscious brain while the body remains in a restful slumber...
Instantly, your dreamworld becomes a living alternate reality, where everything you see, hear, feel, taste and even smell can be as authentic as real life. A lucid dream also acts as a direct communication channel to your unconscious mind, enabling you to talk to your inner self and gain incredible insights into your deepest fears and desires.
What is Lucid Dreaming Like?
"No one can be told what the Matrix is," Morpheus said. "You have to see it for yourself."
This rings true for lucid dreaming... while you can intellectualize the signs of a lucid dream, you can't appreciate exactly what it feels like until you become lucid yourself. Even though you've experienced thousands of regular dreams in your life, nothing will prepare you for the sensory onslaught that greets you in a lucid dream. Visually, the colors become more vivid and intense, the dreamscape snaps into focus, and you become aware of every minute detail around you - without any of the fogginess associated with a regular dream.
Mentally, you are struck by a sense of boundless freedom. You realize that the dreamscape has just become your personal playground, where anything and everything exists at once. Unrestricted by the laws of physics, you may fly to the distant horizon, feeling the wind running through your hair and warmth of the sun on your face. You can teleport to Pandora and live among the Na'vi people in tune with a living, breathing Mother Earth. You can act out your favorite video game as a Ninja assassin, jumping across rooftops with impossible ease and taking out your enemies before they even know you're there. You may seek an erotic encounter with your favorite celebrity or soul mate, in which all your physical senses come bursting into life.
All of this is possible with conscious dream control. And yet, this is only the beginning of lucid dreaming...
Lucid Dreaming and The Inner Self
There's no denying that a lucid dream provides the ultimate playground for wish fulfillment. But there is a whole other side to lucid dreaming that often goes unrecognized. In short, lucidity gives you direct access to the unconscious mind.
When you meditate, your aim is to shut down sensory input from the outside world and find a way to focus inwards. We don't want to hear the mind chatter or the busy thoughts about day-to-day trivialities. We want to tap into the insightful self, the quiet observer that takes in millions of pieces of information every day, and passes the few pertinent bits to the conscious brain for processing. To connect with that inner self, who has been growing and developing inside us since birth, would be something very special indeed. No wonder Buddhist Monks see meditation as the path to enlightenment.
A lucid dream is an equally unique state of consciousness, in which you are deprived from all external sensory input and have access to a higher state of self awareness. Everything you experience is now generated from within. You can willfully summon up intense sensory experiences. Or you can shut them all down until you are a singular point of awareness floating in an empty void of space. Here, you can observe what it is to be conscious without any outside distractions. The only thing that exists is you - and your insightful inner self.
Another way to get literal answers from your unconscious mind is to approach a person in your lucid dream and ask, "What do you represent?" Note that dream figures are rarely altogether controllable and still act of their own accord. This frees them up to explain, in no uncertain terms, what part of your inner self they represent, how they feel at this moment, and what they want from you: the voice of their deepest desires.
Equally, in nightmares you can ask hellish violent figures what they want and be met with childish responses; unreconciled emotions from your inner self that are 'acting out' in the dreamtime just to be heard. Simply by asking questions of your lucid dream figures this way, you can gain amazing insights into your unconscious personality that shapes the way you behave in everyday waking life. It is an excellent platform for personal growth.
How Is Lucid Dreaming Possible?
To borrow another quote from Morpheus: "If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain."
Once again, Morpheus has it on the nose. In the simulated Matrix and in a lucid dream, you are not really transported to another dimension, where everything you conjure up must somehow exist in a physical sense. Your lucid dreamworld - however real it feels - is just an illusion created by your own brain.
Sometimes, especially for beginners, a lucid dream present with only half strength. You suddenly become consciously aware but the details are still half fuzzy... and it still feels impossible to control the dream exactly as you want. The answer to this is to fully engage your conscious brain with dream stabilizing techniques.
Once fully self aware in the dream, you will be in a highly conscious state of lucidity, in which the brain is operating at a Gamma frequency range of 38-90 Hz. This is often more alert than waking life; perhaps the most conscious and self aware you have ever been in your life. This increased brain activity, paired with zero input from the external world, is what enables your conscious brain to create the exquisite lucid dreamscape, full of incredible details drawn from both memory and imagination.
How to Incubate a Lucid Dream with NLP
Pete (author of NLP-Secrets.com) is currently busy writing a video guide that uses NLP suggestions to create a lucid dream. The second part uses subliminal images and should be watched prior to going to bed, in order to induce lucid dreams.
About The Author
Rebecca Turner is a lucid dreamer and the creator of World of Lucid Dreaming, a website dedicated to teaching this powerful mind skill to anyone who wants to explore their inner self. She strongly believes that bridging the gap between consciousness and the dreamworld is a worthwhile pursuit that will expand your perception of reality.
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