Lucid Dreaming

I read an interesting story in the New York Times concerning the upcoming publication of a heretofore unpublished work of Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology. The Red Book, as it is called, represents his dream journal and dream experiments, kept on and off for about 16 years. He never published it because he thought it would subject him to ridicule. Yet, "All my works, all my creative activity," he would recall later, "has come from those initial fantasies and dreams."

Dream are like that. They can embarrass us even as they lead us to greatness. To encourage your own dream work, I thought I would pass along these "7 Steps to Start Lucid Dreaming". Lucid dreaming is consciously being aware within your dream. When you are dreaming and you become conscious that you are dreaming you can start to influence your dreams and the direction they go in. Enjoy these tips and use them well!

1. Remember your ordinary dreams.
A lot of people say ‘I don’t dream’, everybody dreams, whilst you may not remember them you still dream. To start remembering your dreams try this simple technique. Each night before drifting off to sleep repeat the phrase ‘I will remember my dreams as soon as I wake up’. Say this phrase over and over until you fall asleep, after a few days you will start to remember your ordinary dreams.

2. Keep a dream journal
This can be tedious but it’s well worth the effort. Even writing a few short sentences about your dream is enough. This will get you into the habit of remembering your ordinary dreams and to start looking for dream signs within your dreams. It can also be a tool to analyze your thought processes.

3. Pick out dream signs
A lot of your ordinary dreams will have objects or people in them that could act as a cue to you waking up in your dreams. For example if you regularly talk to ‘Elvis’ in your ordinary dreams this is an obvious dream sign and can be used to ask yourself if you are dreaming because you know Elvis is dead.

4. Notice your waking world
To be conscious in your dream world means you have to be conscious in your waking world. That might sound crazy, as you are conscious when you are awake. But we must be "consciously focused" when we are awake. For example, we are consciously focused when learning a new task, we are thinking about every action we are taking to get the right steps. When we have learned the new task we no longer have to focus as intently as we did when learning it. Being consciously focused means looking around and saying what we see, feel, hear, smell and touch and voicing it. This has the added benefit of being in the moment and can guide us to inner calmness, it’s almost Zen like. If we start to consciously focus on the world around us, we will carry this over into the dream world.

5. Ask yourself; "Am I dreaming?"
Ask yourself just now "Am I dreaming?". Your obvious answer is to say no, of course you are not dreaming. How do you know? Don’t just say; "Because I know". Try and think about why you know that you are not dreaming. For example you could say, "If I was dreaming I would be able to fly". When you are dreaming you cannot read text for longer than a few seconds, so try reading text to prove to yourself you are not dreaming. This again will carry over into your dreaming world and you will start asking the same questions in your dreams which can turn into a lucid dream.

6. Your first lucid dream
Many people have their first lucid dream simply by reading about it. You might find that you become over-excited and lose the lucid dream. Often, however, your first lucid dream will be remembered for years to come.

7. Staying lucid
To stay within a dream, calm yourself down with self talk and dream spinning. If you find that you are losing your lucidity you can talk to yourself to calm yourself down and just start noticing the things around you in your dream. Dream spinning is when you feel you are losing control of your dream and you mentally spin like a tornado to stay within your dream. This is focusing the mind on staying lucid.

Coaching Inquiries: How would you describe your dream life? Do you write them down? Do you seek to enhance their influence through lucid dreaming? How could your dreams become more interesting and available as a resource for happiness? Who could you talk with about your dreams? Why not start tonight?

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