I hope you’ve been enjoying this series – I know I have. With a 6 week old baby, I’m obsessed with anything to do with sleep – ha! But seriously, I love dreams and have always believed them to be so much more than entertainment or something to shrug my shoulders about the next morning. Adam’s posts have been helping me understand just how useful they can be to creating the life I want and finding answers within.
If you missed Part 2, please have a read here and then come back and finish off the series with this post.
Part 3 of 3
Step #4 – Depth and Stability
Our first lucid dreams are often very short and unstable. The sheer excitement of becoming lucid is almost always enough to wake you up and end the experience. Practice will lengthen the experiences and reduce the initial surprise factor. Spending just 10 to 15 minutes in meditation once or twice a day will begin to calm the mind and will therefore have an impact on dream experiences.
- When you first become lucid, stay focused on your hands. Try not to become too absorbed in the dream or the objects within the dream world, as this will quickly transform your experience to a regular non lucid dream as you lose awareness. Glance around but return your focus to your hands each time. This technique is described by Castaneda in “The Art of Dreaming”
- If you feel that the experience is beginning to fade, spin round – no one knows why this works, but it does work well!
- Deepen your awareness by truly questioning your surroundings. Although you may be lucid, there are depths to lucidity, just as there are depths to waking awareness, and this will set you up for a more powerful and memorable experience.
Manifestation
Manifestation within a dream world is exactly the same as manifestation within the waking world, but the results are immensely more powerful. The exercise is incredibly simple but requires a level of control over the dream environment and this only comes with practice.
Step #1 – Once lucid, simply imagine yourself within your ideal dream environment. Your only limit is your control over the environment and the focus you can apply to your visualization. Manifestation within the dream world is instant. Try to conjure up your first object – just imagine it appearing in front of you, whatever it may be – small is good to start with. To begin with, this process is so counter-intuitive that it often doesn’t work – your logical mind just won’t let it happen. In that case, just imagine it appearing behind you. Really imagine what it would look like as you visualize it. Then, turn round, and you might just find it there!
Step #2 – You can manifest objects within your dream. Now, manifest an entire dreamscape or “scene.” Try to manifest one that matches your current environment as closely as possible.
Step #3 – Within your dreamscape; manifest the object of your desire – whether that is a relationship, money or a future career. Just use the same technique as you did to manifest your first object and the dreamscape itself. Really live the experience you are trying to manifest within the dream world. It’s the fact that you’re “living” it rather than visualizing it that makes the practice so potent.
The result is a powerful message going out to the universe that maximizes the possibility of manifesting in waking reality.
Creative Problem Solving
We all have hopes, desires and wishes, yet how many of us go on to realize them? We get caught up in ourselves; schools, careers, money and distraction. So often do I hear, “I wish I could…”, “I was always going to be a …” or “I couldn’t do that at this stage of life.” Sure, it may be difficult, a huge change or intimidating, but where there is a true intention, nothing is impossible. Often though, we get stuck in a rut, unhappy, but with little idea of where we would rather be instead.
Creativity Exercise
Step #1 – Once lucid within a dream, ground yourself and become very calm and aware of your surroundings.
Step #2 – Issue your command loudly and clearly. Here are some suggestions –
- Specific: “Show me how to realize my dream of ‘working with animals’”
- General: “Show me what holds me back in ‘changing my career’”
- Vague: “Show me what I need to see right now”
Step #3 – Spin round, and see how the dream changes when you stop. If this does not produce a result, clearly imagine a glowing portal behind you –turn round, and walk through it.
Of course, you can repeat this exercise as many times as is necessary, to get additional insight and clarity.
My Experience
I left the corporate world after over ten years running an IT development and security company. I had done everything I was “supposed” to, yet I was deeply frustrated and dissatisfied. “Is this really all life has to offer?” I wondered. I performed the exercise described above, and the results couldn’t have been delivered any clearer. I spun round, to find 3 tables. On the first, were a range of miniature animals; dogs, cats, rabbits and goats. On the second was me, holding large book with elaborate cover art, “beginners guide to lucid dreaming”. I was reading from it to a small group sitting around me. On the third table was me again, offering some kind of physical instruction to someone. It looked similar to Castaneda’s “tensegrity” exercises.
Whatever you may believe about dreams and sleep, lucid dreaming has been exhaustively proven in science. Whether you see the lucid dream world as your own imagination, your deepest subconscious, a spiritual experience or an alternate reality, don’t magnify or subtract from the experience. With practise, the exercise work pays off and the results are very much real and immensely powerful.
*********************************
Adam Palmer has been consciously practicing lucid dreaming and exploring the out of body state for over 10 years. Now he wants to help others share the experience. Connect with Adam at Astral Zend.
