How to Have More Lucid Dreams: Through Lucid Living

Movies like Inception and Avatar have made lucid dreaming a household word. The buzz around the idea that we can wake up in our dreams ripples outwards, rocking our collective boat as more us realize that the world as we know it is malleable and magical.

But lucid dreaming can be difficult to learn. Some people are more inclined to lucid dream than others. For everyone, though, it can be frustrating to try to have more lucid dreams, especially if you’ve spent money on products like herbal supplements or technological assists and are not seeing improvements.

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Exploring the Void in Lucid Dreaming

Since I was a child, I have had conscious dream experiences that take place in immense, spacious realms devoid of light or objects.  Sometimes these spaces are truly voids and my own dream body does not exist.  Other times, these spaces become filled up with abstract geometric patterns, or multi-colored buzzing particles that resembles the “snow” from a television set.  I call this the “cosmic snow” because it is literally the stuff dreams are made of.

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5 Traits of Natural Lucid Dreamers

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Lucid Dreaming and Christianity: Entering the Light

The loudest voices of the lucid dreaming movement cite pleasure, power, and fulfilling fantasies as among the benefits of becoming more aware in our dreams.  Unfortunately this popular expression has added fuel to the smoldering and historic distrust of dreams by many contemporary Christians, who are told that dreams can only be temptations of the Devil.  However, lucid dreaming also has a modern development in Christian spirituality that is largely unknown but growing in influence.

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Lucid Nightmare Podcast

As promised, here is the recording of my talk this past June about lucid nightmares.

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What is Lucid Dreaming?

This is my final post on ways of working with dreams without a dang dream dictionary.  Becoming a lucid dreamer is an advanced dream practice that is actually easy to learn.   I’ve been leading up to this post because to start lucid dreaming you have to have good dream recall, know how to set a strong intention for dream incubation, and understand how to honor a dream with action.  All of these are foundational practices and perspectives for those who want to take their dreaming life to the next level.

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Dream ReLiving: An Advanced Lucid Dreaming Practice

I’d like to share an advanced lucid dreaming technique taught by Scott Sparrow, a psychotherapist who played a major role in the beginning of the modern lucid dreaming movement.   Dreams often give us gifts, but sometimes as lucid dreamers we ironically lose our lucidity about the value of the dream’s spontaneous gift.  This technique is a powerful way to re-enter a lucid dream that you feel you made a “bad choice,” and wish to have another opportunity to meet the dream as it comes.

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Robert Moss’s Blog & the Archaeology of Gratitude

Check out the new blog by renown dream worker Robert Moss.  I say new, but he’s really been at it for six months already.

Moss has an approachable style to working with dreams, and he never ceases to inspire me.  In fact, his classic book Conscious Dreaming came into my life just as I was wandering around the American West, looking to find a graduate school where I could learn about dreams, consciousness and psychology.  I was excavating a village site in Yosemite Valley at the time.  The park service was putting in a new parking lot –  pretty much anytime you kick up a rock in Yosemite Valley you have to call in a team of archaeologists because it’s all sacred ground.

In the evenings, I went back to my tent and read Moss’s incredible stories of his shamanic lucid dreams, and how he learned to value the dream’s path over his attempts to control the experience.  Moss isn’t too worried about our conscious and sometimes childish attempts at dream control, though.  He writes, “Dreams are wiser than our everyday minds and come from an infinitely deeper source.”

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Lucid Dreaming, Religion and Cognitive Science

For my San Francisco Bay area readers, I”m announcing a free public event titled “Lucid Dreaming, Religion, and Cognitive Science” taking place next week at the Institute of Buddhist Studies. I’ll be speaking about the history of lucid dreaming with a focus on religious and scientific applications, and will be joined by two other dream scholars, Kelly Bulkeley, professor of religion studies at the Graduate Theological Union, and Eleanor Rosch, professor of psychology at University of California Berkeley.

If you are interested in hearing about the secret history of lucid dreaming, as well as how ancient lucid dreaming wisdom is cross-pollinating with the latest findings in cognitive psychology, then please join us!

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New lucid dreaming blogs

A couple quick blog recommendations today:

The first is a new blog about dreams and consciousness: Oneirology +.

The focus is on lucid dreaming and science of sleep. They post articles, images, and original blogs that explore the interconnection of mind and brain as well as cognition and consciousness in dreams and sleep states.

And for an original look at dreams and lucid dreams, go to Lucider Waking. Lucider writes about lucid dreaming from the perspective of transpersonal psychology, and also has some original pieces that explores the topic from an East-West vantage. He doesn’t update often, or have an RSS reader yet, but there’s plenty of material to whet your palate.

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