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!

Can lucid dreaming quicken physical healing? Can you use your dreams to scan for illness in the body? And what are the best ways to apply the skill of self-awareness in dreams for facing your fears and revitalizing your spirit?

These are the questions we’ll be addressing next Wednesday, March 16, during a free teleseminar with guest Robert Waggoner, author of Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the inner self.  I’ll be joining dreamworker Amy Brucker to co-host the discussion, as part of a special event for The Dream Tribe.

My own lucid healings

The topic of healing in lucid dreams has a powerful pull for me. My own lucid dreams began as nightmares where I learned to literally stand my ground and find my voice. Later, as an adult, I went through another period of intense lucid dreams that resulted in recovering lost vitality after I faced some ancient sorrows. Lucid dreaming has also allowed me to say goodbye to loved ones and find real closure.

Physical healing through lucid energy

But psychological healing or healing “spirit loss” is only aspect of the conversation. Robert Waggoner has amassed a fabulous array of accounts from people who have applied their lucid dreams to assist in physical healing. We’ll also discuss the possibility of lucid dreaming as a foundation for seeking out unknown illness. Some of these stories can be found in his book Lucid Dreaming, but others are never-before-told accounts that will soon be published in the Spring edition of the Lucid Dream Exchange, which Waggoner co-edits with Lucy Gillis.

Beyond the Placebo Effect

These topics are cutting edge applications for lucid dreaming, especially as we come to grips with the realization that self-healing is so much more than a “placebo effect” but may actually be the secret behind shamanic healing and the miraculous remissions of cancer and other “intractable” diseases, as documented by Larry Dossey, MD.

Indeed, lucid dreaming embodies the role of focused will, spontaneous mental imagery, and the application of spirituality and prayer in healing — all of which are currently hot topics in medical, psychiatric, nursing and hospice communities.

So how to we harness our own lucid healing? What are the best approaches and possible pitfalls? We’ll discuss this too.

I hope you can join me for this fun and revitalizing conversation next Wednesday at 8pm EDT (that’s Midnight GMT). If the timing is all wrong, don’t worry, we’re recording the call and you can listen to it at your convenience.

Click here for the link to sign up for the teleseminar on Wednesday, March 16th.

My recent poll showed that you want more book reviews about dreams and consciousness – lovely! With so much information in the world, it is helpful to have a guide. With that in mind, I highly recommend Robert Waggoner’s new book: Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self.

Waggoner’s book has already caused a stir in the lucid dreaming blog community – so also be sure to check out Ben’s interview with Robert Waggoner as well as Hatter’s take on Ben’s interview. These articles bring up the most important points of Waggoner’s message about lucid dreams. I will focus on a few of my favorite aspects of the book before leading into my thoughts about how his perspective can be seen as an introduction into indigenous science and the transformational nature of the unconscious mind.

Lucid Dreaming Experts Caught in the Wild!

Rarely do we get to hear from seasoned, expert lucid dreamers about their process. They are like some rare tropical bird that has never been photographed. Usually, lucid dreaming is marketed to beginners, with a focus on how to lucid dream (preferably in seven days or your money back). Waggoner provides what we have been so desperately lacking: a battle-tested road map into advanced lucid dreaming.

My favorite tidbit that sums up Waggoner’s philosophy of lucid dreaming is neatly described here:

“One common assumption…. is that the [lucid] dreamer controls the dream. Yet, any thoughtful analysis shows that lucid dreamers direct their focus within the dream but do not control the dream (as the sailor does not control the sea). Those maintaining the assumption of control limit their experience and understanding, unless they are able to see through this assumption and broaden their viewpoint.” p.100

Waggoner goes on to explain how this promise of dream control may at first seem fulfilled, but as dreamers move deeper into lucid dreaming practice, they will begin to notice this control unravel before their eyes. The roadblocks to greater lucidity are pointed out, with many helpful exercises to help combat them.

A New Model for Lucid Dreaming Development

He then presents a developmental model for lucid dreaming, based loosely on humanistic psychology with a Jungian bent. In other words, the path of lucid dreaming leads us inevitably to our growth and wholeness, even though we may go kicking and screaming, and even though we meet many nightmares, monsters and roadblocks to growth along the way.

I resisted this developmental model at first, but then I had to laugh that part of my resistance is due to the fact that, using Waggoner’s model, I am “only” an intermediate lucid dreamer. Beyond that, my issues with Waggoner’s model are largely academic, having to do with the model’s assumption that the lucid dreamer is a Western person living in modern civilization.

Since then, my inner anthropologist has calmed down, (as well as my egotistical lucid self!) because I realize that Waggoner is making no claims at universality, but rather is addressing his experience as well as other Westerners’.

Indeed, my own experience fits well within his model of lucid dreaming as a movement from focus on dream control and the avoidance of pain, to the ability to lose control in order to meet the dream’s other autonomous characters who have much to tell me, to a focus on transpersonal experiences that are beyond the realm of representational dreaming and more in line with the experiences of advanced meditators. Now I know my resistance: Waggoner has got me pegged! And, like I said, this is just the first part of the journey that he lays out….

Lucid Dreaming and Psi

What also sets Waggoner’s book on lucid dreaming apart from the dozens of other books (most of which plagarize Stephen LaBerge’s 1991 classic the World of Lucid Dreaming), is his integration of lucid dreaming with other anomalous dream experiences such as psi dreams, mutual dreams, and dreams of the dead. Waggoner has plenty of stories that would be perfect to tell around the campfire, but his interest is not on convincing his readers that these extraordinary experiences happen.

Rather, he actively invites readers to use their lucid dreams to help devise rigorous dream experiments so they can swim in these waters themselves. (After all, Krippner and Ullman’s Dream Telepathy has been in print for 25 years, and has plenty of scientific data that test the limits of statistical significance and coincidence in regards to dream telepathy. As they say, you can bring a horse to water, but you can’t force a skeptic to read scientific studies that might challenge his paradigm).

The Universe is Alive

But my favorite part of reading Waggoner’s book on lucid dreaming is how he stumbles upon the basic tenets of indigenous science and the world’s wisdom traditions. These are the tenets laid out in hundreds of ethnographies of historic native peoples around the world, and still being taught in the few indigenous societies that have survived the global industrial culture. These tenets include these insights from lucid dreams that have transformed his life and the lives of hundreds of other lucid dreamers:

1. The universe is alive.
2. The universe is an inter-connected whole.
3. The human mind is also unified and harmonious.
4. Our senses, dreams, and thoughts are reflections of a reality that extends far beyond what we have so crudely determined as the “material world”

Waggoner didn’t read a book on shamanism to come to these tenets. Nor does he ever use the terms “pan-psychism” or “transpersonal psychology” although his work can easily be seen to reflects these philosophical systems. Instead, these ideas are the fruit of 30 years of experience in the dynamic, shifty, and altogether bizarre world of lucid dreaming.

Always humble, Waggoner suggests that he has much to learn still, and at the end of the day, he stresses that he’s just a guy “from Kansas, far from the centers of world power.” In my opinion, this book firmly locates Robert Waggoner in the center of the lucid dreaming world, and paradoxically, on the leading edge of lucid dreaming self-exploration.

Find Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self here.

Veteran lucid dreamer Robert Waggoner has launched a new lucid dreaming portal called Lucid Advice. Besides announcing his new book Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, Robert invites people to post their questions about lucid dreaming, Dear Abby style.

Why ask Robert Waggoner about lucid dreaming” Well, he is a co-editor of the Lucid Dream Exchange, an online and print magazine that has been sharing lucid dreaming expertise for almost a decade.

The magazine started out as a group of friends who shared their lucid dreams, but now has a much wider offering, including expert lucid dreamer interviews, featured articles, and ways to participate in the lucid dream research community.

Oh yeah, Wagonner himself claims to have documented more than a thousand of his own lucid dreams, so he’s speaking from experience. I”m currently reading his new book, and will have a review out soon.