Success in lucid dreaming requires the ability to navigate a realm where gravity is not guaranteed.  And where comfortable chats in a café can be interrupted by sudden feelings of spinning, drifting, or falling down an infinite chasm. During the REM dreaming state, as well as during hypnagogia, these sensations ebb and flow thanks to activation in the inner ear as well as the supercharged visual processing of REM.

That’s why working out the inner ear is the key to mastering the weirder aspects of lucid dreaming.

Phasic REM and Vestibular Land Mines

Lucid dreaming tends to occur during the active form of REM sleep known as phasic REM, which includes greater brain activity as well as more eye movements than tonic REM. 

Lucid dreams remembered from phasic REM often include awareness of vestibular (inner ear) hallucinations and intense bodily sensations as well.

It’s a trip.

How do you develop confidence during these weird experiences? I have already discussed how playing video games influence lucid dreaming, which combines saturation of an activity with often confusing visual stimuli: perhaps the perfect workshop for developing proprioception.

But we can also take a hint by looking at professional athletes, who reportedly have spontaneous lucid dreams that can improve motor skills and focus. 

Furthermore, Hindu yogis and Sufi mystics develop lucid dreaming as a side effect of their bodily training.

These bodily practices all have this in common: the development of balance.

Pick up a Balancing Act

Incorporating a body practice that develops balance and focus is key. If you have lucid roadblocks involving confusion or getting overwhelmed by dizzying sensations, bodywork can help with developing proprioception and field independence.

You don’t have to become a master yogi though. Just find some activity that is attractive to you and in line with your interests. Some enjoy martial arts, especially the energetic art of Tai Chi.

There’s also rock climbing, bouldering and sailing. Fly-fishing is another example—this is lucid dreaming expert Scott Sparrow’s preferred body meditation.

And don’t forget the Wii.

Inexpensive habits include walking the rail of abandoned train tracks at your lunch hour or following along with a yoga video online.

Even a daily walking meditation develops bodily awareness. Simply take a walk and attend only to your breath and your body as you navigate the landscape. When thoughts come up, acknowledge them, and let them go.

Immerse yourself in the lucid landscape

Me in the Mojave Desert, 2002: showing off a rare Rosewood Springs point. I had so many lucid dreams during that archaeological survey in the high desert of CA, I had trouble finding time to write them down.

Personally, I am an avid hiker, stream-walker, and rock scrambler.

Recently, I took a hike in which I walked a fallen tree over a rushing stream. That night, I had a challenging dream that took place on a steel girder high above the ground.  I found myself balancing just as I had on the tree trunk in waking life. As I slipped and almost fell, I noticed I could die and that thought led to lucidity.

Rather than escaping the scene or trying to fly, I stuck with the situational physics of the dream and found a solution that led me to safety.  

I also enjoy walking terrain to find historic and prehistoric archaeological sites. The practice is intuitive, leading me to prehistoric hunter’s camps, mound sites, and rock clusters where women once pounded acorns and cornmeal while telling stories.

The practice is mirrored in my dreams, where I often discover beautiful ruins, golden treasures, and flint knives glowing in streambeds. The discoveries in the dreams inevitably lead to lucidity.

The beauty of developing a body practice for your lucid life is that you can simply redirect new energy to the things you already love to do. The practice also keeps you grounded and prevents the flighty spinning out that can sometimes accompany an intense new focus on dreaming.

So what’s your balancing act?

—————————————

This article is adapted from my new digital kit the Lucid Immersion Blueprint, a how-to-guide for really encouraging lucid dreaming.

This is not the same old tired stuff about WILDS and DILDS you’ve heard before. 

Rather, it’s the latest research in lucid dreaming combined with the ancient wisdom of lucid dreaming lore: the best of the old and the new.

Find out more about the Lucid Immersion Blueprint here.

The asclepieion on the island of Kos, where Hippocrates trained in dream interpretation.

Dream incubation is the art of inviting a dream into your life for problem solving or healing. The term comes from the Latin incubare, which means to lie down upon, or as we say today: just sleep on it.

How does this relate to lucid dreaming? Lucid dreaming induction can be thought of a specific form of dream incubation in which we are not looking for a dream message, but a specific form of dream cognition: self-awareness mixed with the magical thinking of the dreamworld.

The Great Forgetting

The practice of dream incubation is well documented throughout the ancient world, with deep roots in our Western culture. Over the centuries, however, Christianity slowly began pulling away from the idea that dreams can contain wisdom, leading to a loss of this important ability.  

But the writing is literally on the wall.

Statue of Aesclepius from the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece. CC: DerHexer, 2008.

The work of archaeologists and classicists has reconstructed the Western practice of dream incubation based on ruins, documents and statues. During the Hellenistic era (the first three centuries of the Common Era), the practice took place in dream incubation temples that were staffed by priest-physicians.

In fact, dream temples made up the single most popular spiritual healing institution in the Mediterranean world. These restful sanctuaries were designed to produce dreams that provided healing wisdom—and also instant cures—if we are to believe the boasts of ancient graffiti.

The dream healers of ancient Greece were also surgeons and herbalists, teaching their young doctors the art of empirical observation coupled with an environment of safety and spiritual cleansing.

Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, learned from his dream healing mentors to make empirical observations rather than simply following untested beliefs.

By the way, Hippocrates also wrote a medical dream dictionary that focused on a number of common dream symbols that indicate bodily ailments.  So cool.

The divine figure associated with these dream temples is Aesclepius, the Greek god of healing. When doctors take the Hippocratic oath today, they still give thanks to Aesclepius and his daughters.

Aesclepius was commonly depicted standing with a large staff with a snake curling up it, identifying his origins as an earth spirit related to healing and the animal powers.

5 reasons why the ancient dream temples are relevant to lucid dreaming

•    Sleeping practices. Clients slept on special ritual dreaming beds known as klines. More like a couch, the kline often included a stone neck or head rest, facilitating clients to elevate their heads and sleep on their backs. These sleeping styles are known today to encourage lighter sleep, more awakenings, as well as longer experiences in REM sleep.  Given the universality of sleep biology, it seems as if Aesclepian temples directly encouraged vivid dreams as well as realistic hypnagogic hallucinations.

•    Disruption of circadian rhythms. When those seeking healing crossed the threshold of the healing sanctuary, they entered an inner sanctum where sleep and prayer intertwined until a strong dream came. This pattern can also seen in Native American vision quests,  where disrupted sleep (and attempts at night-long vigilance) leads to powerful visions often involving visitations with larger-than-life figures.

•    Positive expectation. Clients hoped for and actively sought an interaction with a healing figure.  Priests and priestesses also whispered in the ears of the sleepers to encourage dreams of Aesclepius. Today we know that dreams can incorporate sounds and suggestions into the dream narrative, as well as smells. LaBerge’s DreamLight may be considered a modern variation of this technique.

•    Relaxation and cleansing. Before the intense dreaming incubations began, dreamers relaxed in baths, walked around the beautiful gardens around the temple, and took naps. They were removed from their everyday life in order to focus on healing. They also adhered to a cleansing diet while staying at the temples, further setting the stage for ritual purification in the final part of the healing process.

•    Good dreamsigns. Snakes roamed the temple unmolested. As an ancient symbol of healing, snakes are at the center of the Aesclepian worldview. Dreams about snakes were taken to be dreams of Aesclepius himself. So, physician-priests made good use of the startling presence of snakes. According to lucid dreaming educator Tim Post, this is the perfect example of an effective dreamsign: one that is focused, meaningful and has an element of the bizarre.

Introducing Lucid Immersion

This article is drawn from the Lucid Immersion Blueprint, which will be available for download Thursday, December 8! UPDATE: January 2, 2012.

Drawing from the wisdom of dream cultures like the Aesclepian sanctuaries, as well as the latest in lucid dreaming research, Lucid Immersion Blueprint is a home study course. 

The Blueprint sets you up with a container of mindful and structured rituals to effectively stimulate greater self-awareness in the dreamworld…. and waking life.

Mom was wrong: video games don’t rot your brain. 

Gaming can actually develop your focus, self-esteem, and mental balance; which are all useful skills for encouraging lucidity in dreams… and in waking life.

Lucid dream researcher-turned-technology psychologist Jayne Gackenbach has collected some solid evidence that playing video games may increase the chances of going lucid. In 2006, Gackenbach reported in the journal Dreaming that frequent gamers have more lucid dreams than those who don’t game at all.¹

Although this research is still in its infancy, it appears that playing video games can develop consciousness in similar ways as more traditional methods, such as meditation or chanting.

Gaming targets and augments several abilities simultaneously:

First, gamers develop concentration by engaging in a goal-oriented task amongst many distractions.

Secondly, gamers have a highly developed sense of proprioception, or knowing where their avatar is in relationship to the game matrix. Gaming appears to develop field independence, a psychological trait that has already been correlated with high lucidity levels.²

Finally, gamers have a “can-do” attitude and excellent self-esteem after playing, a trait that bleeds over into other aspects of your life. So if meditation is not for you, a regular gaming practice may actually develop your awareness.

I can't recommend lucidity training with violent games, unless you want to numb yourself down

Interestingly, gamers do not have more nightmares than non-gamers, even though they spend much of their waking awareness shooting zombies. On the contrary, playing violent video games may dampen your response to violence.³

So, when using violent first person shooters games to develop your awareness, ask yourself “what am I training for?”

You gain an appreciation for architecture after trying to recreate it. I keep accidentally building Norman castles.

Personally, I have been recently spending an inordinate amount of time playing the indie hit Minecraft. This game is styled after classic 16-bit first-person shooters, but it’s really a building game like SimCity with strong role-playing influences a la Final Fantasy.

There is no goal: you are free to build structures and terraform your world all while picking up resources and making tools. Currently, I spend my time building to-scale Neolithic megaliths on my private ice planet.

The game also encourages vigilance due to the zombies and monsters that come out at night, but it’s not a violent game unless you seek it out or hang out in dark caves.

Just like real life.

This article is drawn from my upcoming course The Lucid Immersion Blueprint, which with luck will be available for download in early December.

Sources

¹ Gackenbach, J. Video game play and lucid dreams. Dreaming, 2006, 16(2): 96-110.

² Gackenbach, J. (2010). Psychological considerations in pursuing lucid dreaming research. International Journal of Dream Research, 3 (1), 11-12.

³ Anderson, C. and Dill, K. (2000). Video games and aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the laboratory and in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78,  772-790.

Emotions are often put aside when we are looking for ways to increase lucidity in dreams. This is definitely a missed opportunity, because by design dreaming is built upon emotional logic.

Navigating the lucid dream successfully, whatever your intention, demands the skill of dancing with the powerful emotional traces that construct and inform the dreamscape. This is a form of metacognition that involves being aware of your emotional state in the dream and making choices in light of this powerful force.

How emotions affect lucid dreams

Thanks to activation of the amygdala gland during REM sleep, our fight and flight responses are in overdrive during the dreamstate. Negative emotions far outweigh the positive: dreaming is not exactly the CandyLand depicted in popular media.

The most common emotions include fear, anxiety, anger, and confusion.

Dreamworker Jeremy Taylor has written eloquently about how facing fears and giving up unhealthy psychological projections in waking life can stir up dream lucidity. Emotional know-how can also help with dream navigation: so you can stay lucid in the dream for longer than a few seconds when it gets weird. (And it always does). 

The average dream: not exactly a stroll through Gumdrop Pass

As Robert Waggoner suggests in his excellent book, to maintain the lucid dreaming state, we must modulate our emotions. If we don’t learn this, we have a host of issues, from waking up too soon from excitement, to becoming enmeshed in the dream drama again.

Lucid nightmares, of course, are intense struggles against strong feelings that threaten to blow us out of the dream into a panicked awakening.

Remembering how to feel

Unfortunately, we are taught in our culture that emotions cannot be controlled and they are to be feared. Men especially are acculturated to always be strong and never cry. Meanwhile, women are taught that shopping, entertainment and distraction is the best way to calm down.

Essentially, we live in an emotionally undeveloped culture that rewards (and profits from) us not knowing how we are feeling. As a result, when we embark on a quest for more awareness and choice in our dreams, we can be blindsided by emotional surges that we never expected and don’t know how to handle.

Growing gratitude

With this in mind, working with your emotions takes some training.

Start with gratitude. It’s easy and… so refreshing.

Gratitude evaporates one of the greatest lucidity killers: negative expectation. Given the major role that expectation plays in lucid dreaming outcomes, gratitude as a practice protects the dreamer by grounding the lucid mind in a spirit of trust and confidence.

Gratitude in waking life spills into the dream when we need it the most: when we’re scared, facing dark truths and being challenged by terrifying dream figures.

(Don’t get me wrong: sometimes we need to face shadows. In fact, that’s another emotional skill set altogether.)

Interestingly, the effects of gratitude extend into sleep physiology. A 2009 study suggests that gratitude is correlated with good sleep quality above the effect of all the other personality traits.

It just feels good to pay respect. The world deserves a little more love. And so do you.

The practice of Ho’oponopono

Gratitude must be rooted in forgiveness. Especially self-forgiveness.

In Buddhism, this is known as maitri, or complete self acceptance. Pema Chödrön writes, “Only when we relate with ourselves without moralizing, without harshness, without deception, can we let go of harmful patterns.” (2002 p. 25).

Self-acceptance in the lucid dream is a powerful place to lean against; allowing flexibility and courage when the dreamworld shifts and moves with the visionary intensity of REM.

I recommend repeating a Hawaiian reconciliation affirmation, known as Ho’oponopono. (pronounce each o like “oh”:  Ho-o-pono-pono. In Hawaiian, it’s said very quickly.)

Traditionally, this ritual is used when someone is ailing, or during community conflicts, guided by a ritual authority.

I’m very careful to not culturally appropriate native ceremonies. But this practice has been offered to the world by Hawaiian elder and kahuna Morrnah Simeona, who modified the traditional chant and philosophically integrated it with both Eastern and Western cosmologies.

Recently, the practice of Ho’oponopono was clinically investigated as a relaxation method. The practice resulted in significant drops in both diastolic and systolic blood pressure, showing that the practice could be useful as a complementary therapy in many medical settings, including the treatment of hypertension.

Try the following affirmation in waking life. It’s particularly effective (and sometimes mindblowing) with your romantic partner. In the dream, the practice of Ho’oponopono can also be grounding, courage building and love infusing.

Repeat slowly, and mean it:

I love you
I’m sorry
Forgive me
I’m thankful.

Recently, I tried the affirmation while looking at myself in a mirror, in a lucid dream:

I watch my reflection morph and shimmer as I repeat the words. My visage changes from uncertainty to acceptance. Now I have a beard, as well, and look older than I am in my waking life. My heart opens as I forgive myself. As I say the words, the mirror becomes like a sheet of mercury. I tap it with my fingers and concentric rings dance across it. I slip inside it, dissolving into a dark and spacious space. Now I have no dream body, and I breathe fully, protected and safe in the dark void. (10/10/11)

What would happen if this affirmation was the way we started every day?

Or the standard greeting for meetings of the United Nations?

We would live in a more lucid world.

This essay is excerpted from my forthcoming project Lucid Immersion: a holistic blueprint for conscious dreaming. The blueprint should be available in the next month or so… stay tuned.

First Image: Forgiveness by Taston CC 2008

In two words: highly recommended.

At first glance, this husband and wife team are an unlikely duo for a lucid dreaming book. Paul’s expertise is cognitive archaeology and earth mysteries, and Charla is most widely known for her bestselling book the Aromatherapy Kit.

But these dynamic writers have crafted an easy-to-read introduction to lucid dreaming that combines their personal experiences, interesting historical context and some unique tales from the early days of lucid dreaming research.

In fact, the original research is what  impresses me the most.

How many times have you heard the story of how Stanford researcher Stephen LaBerge thought he was the first to verify lucid dreaming in the laboratory, only to discover Keith Hearne did it two years prior using the same method? 

The authors contacted Hearne and heard his side of the story, a fascinating account about his trials and tribulations. Hearne’s experience makes clear the resistance of the scientific establishment in the 1970s to acknowledging the reality of consciousness in the dream state.

Lucid dreaming in context

This readable volume also provides the best framework of lucid dreaming yet in print.

That’s a bold claim, I know.

This is exactly what Paul Devereux has accomplished in his other books as well, and it’s so refreshing to see his vision applied to the dreaming arts.

The first chapter is a fascinating tale that covers ancient lucid dreaming practices, the role of the Church on lucid dreaming suppression, the subsequent “rediscovery” of lucid dreaming my 19^th century psychologists, and modern sleep science. This grounding is essential to lucid dreaming, because we don’t just “wake up” in a vacuum.

Correcting misconceptions

Lucid dreaming also clears the air of some oft-repeated misinformation about lucid dreaming. Contrary to popular belief, Frederick van Eeden did not coin the phrase “lucid dream.”  Rather, he translated into English the same phrase from the French “rêve lucide.”

Other popular misconceptions discussed include the true nature of dream control (harmless fun but missing the point) and the value of dream dictionaries (limited). They quote dream researcher Tore Nielsen on this last point: “Dream dictionaries are dumb.”

The oldest Lucid Technique you haven’t heard of: Aromatherapy

The middle section of Lucid dreaming is dedicated to induction practices. Most are well-known by now. The usual induction masters are reviewed: LaBerge, Castaneda, and Paul Tholey. However, the Devereuxs do an excellent job leading beginners through the process of remembering more dreams and discovering what works best for you.

My personal mugwort patch

But then Charla lends her aromatherapy expertise to lucid dreaming induction, with expert suggestions that can electrify your intention and increase the odds of lucidity when asleep. She has sold over a million copies of her aromatherapy book, by the way, so her advice is solid when it comes to the effects of plant essences on consciousness.

Of course, dream pillows have been used for such purposes for hundred of years, but admittedly the empirical evidence for this claim is lacking.

Still, strands of evidence do exist.

Researchers have found that smells can increase the vividness of dreams, as well as enhance positive emotions in dreams. Also, other researchers have found that memory can be reliably improved when subjects go to sleep smelling botanical infusions. Taken together, aromatherapy may indeed improve recall of a lucid intention, as well as provide more vivid opportunities to go lucid in the dream.

This revitalized my desire to keep mugwort by my bed, a classic dream herb that happens to grow in my front yard.

The spectrum of lucidity

Finally, Lucid dreaming contains balanced discussions about related altered states of consciousness, including out-of-body experiences and sleep paralysis visions. Ever careful, the arguments are presented for and against the common perspective that OBEs are actually the soul in travel (this is called naïve realism, or the folk psychology view).

They also present a holistic theory linking lucid dreaming, OBEs and false awakening dreams as a continous set of related mental events. I am delighted to see their model, as it has neat parallels with other dream research theories, such as Alan Hobson’s AIM, Harry Hunt’s dream diamond and Ernest Hartmann’s continuity model.

Lucid dreaming: accessing your inner virtual realities is a great read. My least favorite part of it is the title, actually. The metaphor of virtual reality is dated, and does not really jive with the nuanced and historical view of lucidity that the Devereuxs present within.

The rest of the book, I’m happy to report, is filled with timeless wisdom. For lucid dreaming beginners, I recommend this book wholeheartedly, and it will captivate more experienced dreamers as well.

Here’s where to get your own copy.

Lucid dreaming is a practice that can take us into the realm of soul and spirit. But while we may hope for ecstatic experiences in our dreams, sometimes a different sort of scene arrives: one that tests our resolve, and leads us into dark places and emotional challenges. This is not a failure of the lucid dream, or an impurity of the dreamer. It’s the dream doing its work.

Soul and spirit

Usually, the terms soul and spirit are used interchangeably, but I like psychotherapist Bill Plotkin’s distinction: “Where soul is associated with the many earthly mysteries, spirit is associated with the one heavenly bliss. Soul opens the door to the unknown or the not-yet-known, while spirit is the realm beyond knowledge of any kind, consciousness without an object.”¹

Similarly, depth psychologist James Hillman called the dream realm the underworld: the realm where we contact dark emotions and the existential truths of death and decay.

These processes of the soul have nothing to do with our connectedness to other living creatures, but rather the unique distinctiveness of the personality.  It reflects our personal path through life.

This may be why those attracted to the light are so uncomfortable with dreaming. The path towards soul, towards inner nature and emotional truths, has been historically associated with evil, the pagan gods, and earthly sins.

That’s our Western heritage speaking. 

It plays out still in a polite society that still actively fears the power of the feminine, the body, and our animal instincts.

Lucidity as neurognosis

Anthropologist Charles Laughlin coined the term neurognosis to describe innate knowledge we have about the world. These are internal, self-generating patterns of thought related to our brains and our bodies. Lucid dreaming is a forum for this kind of knowing due to the biological constraints on this altered state.

As neurognosis, lucid dream content around the world (and throughout history) showcases extreme emotions, initiation, and contact with the deceased as well as the oft-reported white light experiences and non-dual bliss.

Even if you are interested in becoming one with the light, or contacting the divine–however you conceive of it–chances are you will run into these more difficult themes as well.

Transcendence and transformation

Lucid dreaming scholar Scott Sparrow has also noted our culture’s love affair with light and oneness may come at the expense of understanding what he calls the transformational path.

Similar to Plotkin’s analysis, and with Laughlin’s neurognosis in mind, Sparrow suggests that transformation in dreams is about delving into emotions and initiation-style experiences—encounters that parallel Tantra and the almost forgotten Western culture of alchemy.

Transformation is a process of decay, of breaking down, and ultimately the growth of something new.

Sparrow writes eloquently how the pursuit of white light and non-dual experiences in lucid dreaming can actually distance us from the spirit of non-attachment. In the transformative path, he suggests, “instead of pursuing a transcendent goal, our goal becomes meaningful engagement with ourselves and the world, giving way to a flowering of a myriad of creative forms and possibilities.”

With courage and compassion, self-awareness brings opportunities to face those mortal fears, those dirty bodily truths, and those emotional frailities that tend to get washed over by the waking ego and its quest for positivity and bliss.

Competency in this realm is necessary for some lucid dreamers, based on individual motivations and, perhaps, personal destiny.

For myself, this was a process of facing lucid nightmares, learning how to fight and knowing when to surrender.

A dream to illustrate this underworld:

Throwing nails and throwing up

A group of boys throw nails at me. I run away. Then I approach them again and they have calmed down. I’m very uneasy. One of them directs his attention at me. We walk off together; he is volatile, angry. I’m lucid; I know I’m dreaming. I want to run but decide to stick with him. We sit on a bench and I know he hates me and thinks I am weak. I realize I don’t have to hate him back. I fight the urge to flee again. I struggle and then accept him fully in my heart. With this, I suddenly need to throw up. I do so, barfing all over myself. I see that he is sweating profusely too; his expression is that of someone who is doing hard work. I tell him I love him, and I know we just have to accept each other as we are; we don’t even have to embrace. He gets it and visibly relaxes. I wake up, invigorated, full of energy. (6/10/2008)

Like for all dreams, I measure it by its fruits: I awoke with renewed energy and courage. The transformative path of lucid dreaming is not a popular way to go, but it needs to be acknowledged if you’re serious about lucid dreaming as a path to knowledge. Descent is not a slippery slope into corruption, but an ancient way of knowing that purifies the soul.

Or the spirit, whatever. I don’t think we have to choose.

Your thoughts?

Notes

1 Plotkin, Bill. Soulcraft: crossing into the mysteries and nature and psyche. 2003: p 29.

First Image: Stairs by spaceyJessie

Interested in rubbing elbows with some of the top dream experts today?  I invite you to join me at the 10th annual PsiberDreaming Conference. The con is entirely online, hosted by the International Association for the Study of Dreams. This year’s theme is “Perspectives on lucid dreaming,” and the line up is pretty impressive. And I’m not just saying that because I’ll be there.

Keynote presenter Fariba Bogzaran: artist, psychologist and lucid dreaming researcher

Keynotes include psychologist Fariba Bogzaran, founder of the Dream Studies program at John F Kennedy University, and Robbie Bosnak, Jungian therapist and clinical psychologist. Integrating dream wisdom with modern life, both presenters have had a powerful impact on thousands with their books, workshops and trainings.  

Two other notable presenters include Robert Waggoner, author of Lucid Dreaming: gateway to the inner self, and Jayne Gackenbach, one of the most prolific lucid dream researchers to date.

There’s over 25 presenters total, so I’m just scratching the surface here.

My presentation: introducing Lucid Immersion
Lucid dreaming is the art of knowing you’re in a dream while still within the confines of sleep. I’ll be presenting my personal method for increasing lucidity in dreams, based on material from my soon-to-be-released mastermind guide Lucid Immersion. Just like the best way for learning a language, you can go deeper with lucidity by saturating yourself in an environment where you eat, breathe and live lucid.

It’s really a meta-method, drawn from the latest lucid dreaming research (including many co-presenters’ work) as well as the wisdom of historic dreaming lore. My presentation at PsiberDreaming focuses on building a safe container for lucid immersion within the constraints of everyday life.

Not the Dragon, Laura Atkinson, digital art, 2010. A piece from PsiberDreaming 2010.

An Online conference – how does that work?
The PsiberDreaming team has been leading social spaces on the web for 10 years. That’s Before Facebook (BF).

Essentially, for each day during the two week conference—September 25-October 9— new papers and workshops will be unlocked. Participants can join discussions, and ask direct questions to the presenters.

Meanwhile, there’s a beehive of general discussion activity ongoing in the Dreamer’s Inn, and another area for dream sharing.

It’s not just text either: the conference will also display an online digital art gallery.

Contests too: including the popular annual dream telepathy contest, as well as contests for mutual dreaming and  other elements of paranormal dreaming.

I’m also excited to announce that moderators from LucidDreaming4all will also open a portal at the con. Five LD4all experts will be present to answer questions.

In case you didn’t know, LD4All recently celebrated its 15th anniversary, and remains the oldest lucid dreaming forum in the whole wide net.

Attend for free
The International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) has made an offer that if you become a member before October 9, you can attend the PsiberDreaming Conference for free.

Members of the IASD receive a yearly subscription to the peer-reviewed research journal Dreaming and the popular magazine DreamTime. Members also can rev up their dream education by participating in online study groups monitored by dream experts and researchers.

The conference costs $45 for general public. $40 for IASD members, and $30 for students with a current ID.

Here’s where to learn more about the conference, check out the other presenters, and register.

Hope you join me!

This is the third article in a series covering arguments against lucid dreaming. The fear that lucid dreaming is somehow unholy or spiritually corrupt is voiced in conservative religious circles as well as new age spiritual communities. In all of these groups, the fear is that lucidity allows contact with undesirable, unsavory or otherwise harmful forces.

As it turns out, these fears may have a basis in a neurological reality: some of us are prone to dip into the dark side of lucid dreaming, including contact with aggressive drives and powerful experiences of sexuality.

But the truth is not black or white, good or evil.

Lucidity, Sex and Sin

For dream-fearing Christians, the concern of lucid dreaming focuses on demons and sin. A quick review of the role of dreams in early Christianity shows that dreams actually played a major role in the early church. Interestingly enough, many of the scholars who helped popularize lucidity are Christian.

For certain new-agers, the dirty dream is viewed as a reflection of an unhealthy attachment to desire. Moving towards emotions and sexuality on purpose in your dreams is a step towards ignorance.

The monkey mind.

Transpersonalist Ken Wilber has even opined that dreams can “only” reach into the etheric realm, nowhere near the non-dual possibilities of “higher” states such as meditation.

What this viewpoint misses is the potential to work with emotions and sexuality in order to refine and channel these drives. Tantra is one example of sacred sexuality that can lead to higher states of awareness within the dream. 

Sorcery, Satanism and Wicca

There’s not any evidence behind it though.

This particular fear of lucidity is a hold-over from historic times, when women were actually burned at the stake for their lucid dreaming skills, along with their knowledge of herbalism and abortive aids.

What’s more, Wiccan lucid dreamers, who represent the remnant of this European shamanic tradition, are not concerned with doing evil, but with communing with the planet and healing themselves and others.

Wiccans are more likely to hug trees than take flight

Granted, lucid dreamers can focus on anything they want. There are indeed some self-proclaimed lucid dreaming satanists who attempt to use the state to increase their power and say their spells.

Honestly, many more young people learn actual spells from Harry Potter. Neither are threats, simple because both camps will have new hobbies to irritate parents with in a month’s time.

Bottom-line: Lucid dreaming can be directed towards “sinful” activities, but many more people with religious and spiritual backgrounds use lucid dreaming as a reliable way to make contact with the more-than-human realm. The values of those traditions are reflected in the goals of lucid dreaming.

The neurology of base emotions

In dreams the limbic brain --the seat of dark emotions--is in high gear.

The fears of darkness in lucid dreams do have a grain of truth though. I’ve discussed this in earlier articles in this series, particularly the idea of dreaming as aggression.

To review, dreaming is a way of knowing in which negativity, fear, and intense sexuality mingle in challenging ways. The amygdala is highly active during REM sleep, the part of the brain that instigates flight or flight.

Meanwhile, the self tends to double and fragment in dreams as well, which is why some lucid dreams can involve confrontations with intelligent doppelgangers who know as much as you do about what is going to happen next.

This is the neurological set and setting of dreams. A little activation in the prefrontal cortex does not pull rank, nor does a strong desire to stay on the sunny side of street.

Temptation and Metanoia

Given this neurological base, these dreams are not necessarily sinful from a Christian perspective. Even Saint Augustine suggested that he was forgiven for his violent and sexual dreams. If you are Christian, the proper question to ask yourself is “am I encouraging and reveling in this material?” Lucid dreaming–like all conscious acts of imagination–reveal our wishes, and that can include temptations.

How you deal with temptation is a personal matter, but priests and mystics have been working with this material for centuries. In Christian mystical tradition, transforming base temptations into creative energy is an age-old process known as metanoia, which is about changing your mind’s habits and desires for the purpose of healing and personal growth. This work can be catalyzed within the lucid dream as well as in waking life fantasies.  

However, a sexual or violent lucid dream is not a failure. It is still a dream. I would recommend taking responsibility for your intentions, but forgiving yourself for what happens in the dream itself.

When in doubt, give thanks

Expectation is still the single greatest influence on lucid dreaming outcomes–within this neurognostic framework, that is.

By practicing gratitude, and having respect for your fellow dream figures, the ancestral dreaming mind begins to show its gifts. These are the keys we know well from all the great religions of the world: the practice of love, charity, and compassion.

When you’re scared, give thanks. Have compassion. Give a gift.

The doors to the mind that open next are worth all the trouble.

This article is drawn from Lucid Immersion, my mastermind guide on lucid dreaming.

First image credits 118/365 Meditate by Lisa Dragon.

This is the second article in a series that starts with the question: Is lucid dreaming safe? One of most frequent arguments against lucid dreaming is the notion that lucidity disturbs the process—and the function—of dreaming.

It’s a strange critique, because the function of dreaming remains unknown. But for many clinical practitioners, dreams are thought to perform psychological duties that are best left untouched by the “tainting” force of self-awareness.  The dream is a beautiful wilderness, destroyed by the civilizing effects of the waking ego. Can lucidity destroy our inner nature?

The Roots of Distrust
The clinical dis-ease of lucid dreaming may in part be rooted in dream theories of the fathers of psychology: Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Freud only mentions lucid dreaming in a tiny note in his later editions of Interpretation of Dreams. Freud never experienced lucid dreaming, and did not have a chance to read the works of his lucid dreaming contemporaries Frederic Van Eeden and Hervey de Saint Denys.

Freud never had a lucid dream

Freud was skeptical. He thought it a “secondary revision” of memory. Furthermore, he thought that if it was possible, it would only censor the dream’s message, a process he called the dreamwork.

Carl Jung also never directly commented on self-awareness during the dream. For Jung, dreams reflect a lifelong maturation of the personality called individuation. Some Jungians today argue that lucidity disturbs the process of individuation by putting the dream ego in control of something that is much more powerful and ancient than we could possibly understand.¹

It’s always been a bizarre position, seems to me, as some styles of lucid dreaming have much in common with Jung’s method of active imagination, a way of interacting with the dream from a relaxed waking state. As Jungian psychotherapist James Hall and psychiatrist Andrew Brylowski noted in 1991, in both active imagination and lucid dreams, we can enter into a fruitful dialogue with spontaneous imagery and narrative.

Lucidity as Tainting the Dreaming Mind

There’s three main issues with this idea that lucidity is damaging or somehow unnatural.

First, lucid dreams are not the same as control dreams. You can be lucid and not in control of either the dream environment or the dream body. And you can regularly direct the dream’s direction without lucidity. Dream control is a separate skill than maintaining self-awareness in the dream. They often come together, but this may be a culturally-entrained association.

Regarding lucid control dreams, the unconscious mind is still doing most of the heavy lifting anyways. Awareness, choice, and occasional bouts of dream-stomping magic don’t add up to dream generation. Robert Waggoner says it best, “does the sailor control the sea?”

But, are some control dreams denying the dream’s voice–I would venture yes. I do not have a doom and gloom perspective about this co-creative work, however. Lucid control dreams can be worked therapeutically like any other dream. Ironically, lucid control dreams dovetail right into one of Freud classic theories about dreams: that they can reveal conscious wishes.

Secondly, this myth rests upon a false dualism: that the dream is an unconscious process, and lucid dreaming is a conscious one.

This notion assumes dreams are experiences that happen to us, in which the dream ego makes few choices but rather is dragged along by the force of the dream.

We continue to think, reason, and focus our attention in dreams

Studies in cognitive psychology paint a different picture, in which dream narratives have been shown to be full of choices, thoughts, and active decision making. Thinking about feelings, wondering about choices, and other kinds of complex dream thoughts are called “meta-cognition.” A 2010 study by Tracey Kahan and Stephen LaBerge found that dreams have similar levels of meta-cognition awaking life experiences.

That’s a startling claim, showcasing a couple things:
1. Dreaming thought is much more complex than we’ve given it credit for.
2. Waking life is not as lucid as we might expect!

In this light, lucid dreaming is not a conscious dream, but a more conscious dream.

Seriously, if dreaming was wholly unconscious, we would not remember the experience. Are all dreams we remember tainted by consciousness?

Spontaneous Lucid Dreaming

The last issue I have with the view that lucid dreaming is a conscious corruption of the dream is that many people, myself included, have had spontaneous lucid dreams throughout their lifespan.

Because lucid dreaming is a learnable skill, critics of lucid dreaming (who more often that not have not experienced it for themselves) have assumed that it is only through “tricks and tactics” that the rational ego injects itself into a dream, proceeding to muck up the works.

But spontaneous lucid dreams are fairly common: many lucid dreamers have the experience and then later learn that this ability has a name. According to one early study, 20% of the population have spontaneous lucid dreams once a month.² Even the master of lucidity induction, Stephen LaBerge, had his first lucid dream as a child, long before he began his studies about lucid induction methods.³

And of course, consciousness in dreams has been around for thousands of years before modern psychology could tsk-tsk. We were probably lucid dreaming in the Stone Age, given that our brains have not changed much, if at all, in the last 100,000 years.

Lucid dreaming is natural, and there’s room for consciousness in our dreams. Awareness does not imply exploitation, because the dream is not an untouched wilderness.

We already live here.

Next up: is lucid dreaming evil or sinful?

Notes

¹ For a dated, but still relevant, review of contemporary dreamworkers and therapists who have argued against lucid dreaming, see Shafton’s Dream Reader p. 470.

² Snyder, T. J. & Gackenbach, J. (1988), Individual differences associated with lucid dreaming. In J. Gackenbach and S. LaBerge (Eds), Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain (pp. 221-259). New York: Plenum Press.

³ The Mind at Night: the new science of how and why we dream by Andrea Rock, p. 50

First Image (cc) Wilderness by Elido Turco – Gigi

Feeling a vague discomfort about the safety of lucid dreaming?  Is it dangerous: a slippery slope into madness? Will it make you lose touch with reality?  You’re not alone in these thoughts, although I say with confidence that there’s nothing to fear. Not even fear itself.

This essay is part one of three addressing the central arguments used against the practice of lucid dreaming. Today, I’ll address lucid dreaming and mental illness, a connection that is being made more frequently than ever as lucid dreaming becomes a household word.

There’s no evidence that lucid dreaming can bring on mental illness. In fact, lucid dreaming has recently been linked to resilience, the ability to maintain stability during and after traumatic events. Lucid dreaming is used clinically to help cope with nightmares, and is considered by many psychologists to promote psychological growth and encourage problem solving.

So why does the myth continue to rear its head? We can thank bad journalism, for one, such as Time magazine’s regrettably unbalanced and fear-mongering piece on murder suspect Jared Loughner last fall.

But the myth goes deeper, and seems to be based on common fears of lucid dreamers, as well as some logical fallacies and headline-grabbing metaphors used by dream psychologists.

Mental illness and hypnagogic visions

We’ll start with the logical fallacy that lucid dreaming can cause mental illness. This myth begins with the observation that both people who have dementia and lucid dreamers sometimes see things that are not there. I am talking about hypnagogic hallucinations, imagery that is seen at the threshold between waking and sleep.

People who are suffering from mental illness often experience lucid hypnagogia, as mental illness often comes with arousal disorders that increase the likelihood of awareness at sleep onset.

Seeing things at sleep onset is also an early symptom of the grab-bag of conditions known as schizophrenia, often occurring years before the arrival of other symptoms of mental disease.¹ For years, hypnagogic hallucinations has been seen as a predictive factor for developing schizophrenia later in life, especially in individuals who have a family history of mental illness.

Lucid dreamers run into hypnagogic hallucinations when trying techniques that encourage wake-initiated lucid dreams. But even today, psychiatrists still misdiagnose lucid hypnagogia and sleep paralysis as early symptoms of schizophrenia, despite the fact that these states frequently occur in normal, health adults with no trace of illness.

Dreaming as Delirium

Another strand of this myth is due to an old literary convention. For over a century, psychiatrists have compared paranoid delusional patients as existing in “a world between waking and sleeping.”

More recently, dream researcher Allen Hobson has strengthened this metaphor with his tantalizing metaphor that “dreaming is delirium.”  Just as tantalizing, Harvard sleep doc Patrick McNamara has recently argued that dreaming is “an act of aggression,” due to the high levels of negative dream content.

This is the perspective that was miscontrued by Time Magazine into the unsubstantiated claim that classifying dreams as delirium means that lucid dreams can lead to psychosis.

Indeed, dreaming, waking hallucinations, and disorders of social aggression involve some the same brain mechanisms. The implications are complex, pointing towards the often-unrecognized dark side of dreaming that is an artifact of our evolutionary heritage. But no one is suggesting that dreaming, lucid dreaming, or dream journaling for that matter, leads to madness or anti-social behavior.

The terror of false awakenings

Salvador Dali: Woman at the Window (Muchacha en la ventana) oil on board 1925

Finally, the experience of false awakenings leads to worries that you’re losing touch with reality. A false awakening is a dream in which you think you have awaken, but are actually still securely in the dream.

Lucid dreamers run into false awakenings because lucid dreams tend to terminate with waking up. The expectation that you’re waking up as a dream scene fades and another begins creates a virtual bedroom that seems real…..

until you get out of bed a there’s a Grecian sea where the bathroom usually is.

Other common triggers for lucidity include strange bodily feelings (lifting off the ground, dizziness, drunkenness, etc) and strong emotions.

False awakenings are disconcerting. We don’t know if we are awake or asleep.

Here’s a tip: if you’re seriously doubting if you’re awake, chances are you’re dreaming. This confusion leads dreamers to wonder if they will start to doubt waking reality too. But it doesn’t work like that. Having false awakenings does not lead to a break from reality in waking life.

Read about how to deal with and prevent false awakenings here.

The real connection between lucidity and illness

That said, there is a link between lucid hypnagogia and sleep disorders, such as insomnia, narcolepsy and sleep apnea. Lucid dreams also tend to come when fighting serious illnesses like influenza and malaria. Anxiety disorders such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which come with hyper-arousal and increased nightmares, may also indirectly bring on some disturbing lucid dreams.

This last tendency has recently been leveraged by psychiatrists who have had some early positive results in reducing nightmare frequency in PSTD sufferers by teaching them how to change their dreams to more positive outcomes via lucid dreaming.

Lucidity and Vision Quests

Now for some cross-cultural context of this association between lucidity, visions and stress. Throughout history, and in some indigenous cultures today, young people are encouraged to bring on lucid dreams and hypnagogic visions through the vision quest complex. This process instigates all the stressors that co-occur with anxiety conditions and sleep disorders, including sleep deprivation, disordered sleeping, social isolation, and prolonged fasting.

This is the shamanic side of lucid dreaming.

The difference, of course, is that these rituals are culturally supported. They are done within a context of initiation into adulthood and backed by a supportive spirituality that views dreams and visions not as illness but as profound, meaningful experiences. They are not illusions, but more real than real.

Studying lucid dreaming will not cause a descent into madness. If your lucid dreams are distressing, however, you may want to do what you can to reduce your anxiety and find some social support for working with the dreams therapeutically.

Lucidity in dreams does not make us enlightened by default either. Lucidity is not good or bad, healthy or unhealthy: it’s a natural product of arousal during sleep and other states of consciousness.  Lucid dreaming is a skill that can be applied—and misapplied—for many purposes and intentions.

This post is part one of a series that addresses arguments used against the safety or advisability of lucid dreaming. The next post deals with the claim that lucid dreaming is not natural and disturbs the dream process.

Finally, we’ll look into the common fear  that lucid dreaming can bring contact with unsavory human drives or cause “spiritual corruption.”

The series is drawn from my Lucid Immersion: my mastermind guide on lucid dreaming.

The next post in this series: Is lucid dreaming unnatural?

Notes

¹ Mavromatis, A. 1987. Hypnagogia: the unique state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep. London: Thyrsos Press, p. 183.

First Image: Rockclimbing by Carolincik