Lucid Dreaming: Awake IN Your Dreams

In most of our dreams, our inner eye of reflection is shut and we sleep within our sleep. The exception takes place when we seem to awake within our dreams, without disturbing or ending the dream state, and learn to recognize that we are dreaming while the dream is still happening.

Stephen LaBerge

Welcome dreamers,

Most of us have heard of the phrase “lucid dreaming” but are not aware of the intricacies of it. It has become an increasingly popular concept however. A lucid dream has been defined as any dream within which we are aware that we are dreaming. To be lucid while dreaming implies being “awake” or conscious while asleep (sort of an oxymoron), and then to be able to control or direct what happens inside the dream. (While my blog title is “Awake To Your Dreams,” lucid dreaming can be thought of as being awake in your dreams).

Until recently I was somewhat prejudiced against this as a worthwhile goal, given that I believe that it makes more sense to dream all the way through a dream that we are given, and then to work with it. In other words, not to interfere with our wise unconscious dreaming self from doing the work that it does best: Taking our unarticulated dilemmas, longings, desires, wishes, issues, pains, and struggles and then present them to us in dreamtime with as much metaphor and symbol as it thinks we need in order to be able to begin processing them. Pictures, images, emotions, story lines, fragments, a single word or a whole epic- let ‘em role – and then go back and find the layers of meanings. But as I have been giving the concept more thought, I have been coming to see other options available in lucid dreaming that do not necessarily hijack our innate processing systems.

[See my guest article in the June 2020 edition of Lucid Dreaming Experience magazine, page 12, for my latest thoughts on lucid dreaming.]

What is the “lucid” in lucid dreaming

So as a modern adult with a teenager to learn from, I Googled “lucid”. It was defined as “articulate, rational, or luminous”, with additional synonyms of thought-through, clear, eloquent, and silver-tongued (the later being my personal favorite). Not what I had expected, given how the term is commonly used in the dreaming world. And yet, it makes sense. I especially liked the use of the word “luminous”: implying otherworldly, shining and glowing and yet clear and eloquent — all hallmarks of a dream well-dreamt from our soul’s warehouse of dreams.

There seem to be two kinds of lucid dreams: 1.) “Dream initiated lucid dreams” that begin as a regular dream, and then turn lucid, and 2.) “Wake initiated lucid dreams (or “W.I.L.D.”). These can occur a.) while we are drifting off to sleep but are still technically awake and we are aware immediately that we’re dreaming, or b.) when we incubate a dream before going to sleep.

To incubate a dream, we purposely journal, think, or pray to journey into a dream on some issue or dilemma while we are awake, and then dream on it in the subsequent dream. This latter method is a form of lucid dreaming that combines inside and outside worlds — focusing our attention on what we hope to have a dream about while awake, and then having the dream on that topic while asleep. This seems to be one way not to interfere with the wisdom of our dreaming mind — we kind of point our radio frequency dial in the direction we want, and then our dream mind picks up on the right signal and we make contact.

Both kinds of lucidity can be useful for nightmare sufferers. The ability to point our dreams in the direction of healing while awake, and the ability to purposefully change course in the middle of a distressing dream to avoid a pitfall or disaster can greatly alleviate the distress of chronic nightmares. If we don’t misuse the method to bypass the inner work we need to get through, this skill can be a gift and a shortcut to relief. No one gets extra points for prolonged suffering!

I once had a dream in which I was being assaulted. I somehow knew it was a dream and that I didn’t want the assault to continue, so I remember deciding to get out of there. I knew I had to swim upwards to get out. Then I had the sensation of straining my way up and out of the dream like swimming through sticky molasses, aiming for the light at the top. I could feel the pulling and kicking feelings in my arms and legs, and when I got to the top I was awake. I still recall the feeling of relief and self power that I got myself out of there.

The ability to lucid dream is both innate and can get better by practice, much as exercising any other kind of muscle gets stronger with practice.

Popular methods of getting more lucid

1. “Am I Dreaming?”

Ask yourself periodically during the day “Am I dreaming?” and perform some kind of reality check. If you do it often enough you will remember to do in in your dream as well. For example, if you lean against a wall and ask yourself “Am I dreaming?” and you don’t fall through the wall you are awake; since in a dream you are more likely to fall through. Jump up in the air: if you land, you are awake; you are more likely to be able to hover or fly if you are dreaming. Clap your hands together or snap your fingers — if you can hear, see and feel it, you are awake. If you are missing any of those sense awarenesses, you are asleep.

2. Journal It

Keep a dream journal. As you build up a dream lexicon of recurring images and themes, they will become easier to recognize in your dreams. Make a list of your common images and themes and review them before going to sleep.

3. Set Your Clocks

Try a variation on Stephen LeBerge’s method. Set an alarm clock to wake you up at periodic intervals of several hours duration during the night, and record the dreams you have then. We are most likely to have lucid dreams during our deepest REM sleep. So after recording as much as you can remember, lie back down to the position you were just in, and tell yourself “I am aware that I was dreaming”, and you will be more likely to know that inside of your next sleep/dream phase. (Personally I can’t imagine wanting this badly enough to wake myself up for it on purpose, but that’s just me. For some people it’s very effective.)

4. “Look At Your Hands”

a.) As you get into bed, look at your hands, and say to yourself over and over “I will dream and I will see my hands” until you are tired and go to sleep.

b.) If you wake in the night, look at your hands and repeat the phrase.

c.) With practice, you will see your hands in the dream and can say in the dream “Wow, here are my hands — I am dreaming!”

5. The Diamond Method

While you meditate, try to visual your whole life, both waking and sleeping as facets of a diamond: All is one, just different aspects of the same whole, a synthesis of the spiritual and the psychological. Our dreams and our waking selves are thus just two facets of the same human consciousness. A.H. Almaas calls this diamond the Universe, or God, or the Soul. The key is to recognize that all of life is happening at once, and it is only our limitations and perceptions that separate it out into its different facets or dimensions. Once we recognize this, it then becomes easy to see dreams and waking as simply different facets of the diamond, and therefor easier to be “awake in your dreams” with little effort.

Of course, as Robert Waggoner points out in his book on lucid dreaming, we can’t control everything in a dream, or in life – not the color of the sea, or the height of the waves. But when we develop a relationship with our Inner Guide, our inner Wise Woman or Wise Man, our clear cut Diamond Self, then we can direct the ship of our life more confidently and with more resources.

Dream well,

Linda Yael