Lucid Dreaming

On Friday (January 18th), I had a lucid dream or rather a moment of lucidity in my dream. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, Lucid Dreaming is the act of waking up in your dreams. You are not awake per se but rather you become aware that your physical body is asleep and that you, in fact, are dreaming.

I can’t remember everything that happened. I do remember there were a lot of people going to and fro and it was in the midst of this chaos that I suddenly becoming “aware”. Having read about lucid dreaming in the weeks prior, I knew that my window of opportunity was small.

I stopped a woman rushing by me and said, “Excuse me? Can you please help me?” she paused expectantly. I felt like I had been given a magic lamp but I only had enough time to make one wish. I knew I wanted to speak to my subconscious mind but what to say? What wisdom did I want to cull from the vast land of forgotten information that is my subconscious?

I could feel myself begin to rise towards full consciousness. My window of opportunity was shrinking! I blurted out, “I need to know how I can be successful.”

The woman look surprised and then hesitant almost as though she wasn’t sure I was serious. I persisted. “I need to know how I can be successful,” I said in a firmer tone. This time there was a strange echo and I realized that I was talking in my sleep. That’s how strongly I wanted an answer to that question. I also noticed that due to a cold I sounded like the computer on War Games (Shall we play a game?)

It was enough to convince her that I was serious and she automagically produced a tablet that started outputting computer code on the screen. I could only decipher two lines because it was compiling too fast. Much of it seemed like garbage anyway. The two lines of code popped up at different intervals but said virtually the same thing:

“Take Action.”

I also noticed that there seemed to be a lot of junk suddenly. People were carrying around barrels of trash and sweeping it up off the floor and such. Shortly afterwards, I woke up, rolled over and had a pleasant dream about family.

Over the years, I’ve had an on again/off again interest in lucid dreaming. Usually my interest would flare after I’ve had a particularly peculiar dream. By peculiar I mean I have had dreams so real that when I wake up I felt like I had lived in another dimension for the night. I’ve also had precognitive dreams which I experience in my waking life as déjà vu when they come true. I know it was a dream, as opposed to some other psychic phenomenon, because when the dream “manifests”, parts of the dream will “suddenly” come back to me.

But my interest was piqued again after listening to a podcast by Erin Pavlina. Erin is a psychic and has had years of experience with lucid dreaming and in the podcast she gave some great tips on how to get started with it. I made a mental note at that time to begin studying it in earnest but, like most of my New Year’s resolutions, the thought found itself being put on the back burner as “real” life took over. I guess this lucid dream experience is the Source’s way of tapping me on the shoulder and telling me to get going on this project.

I believe dreams are a gateway of communication. It is how the subconscious mind gets in touch with the conscious mind, a way for higher beings to contact us that is non threatening and another unexplored avenue of communication with other people. I’ve set a goal to strengthen my mind and increase its effectiveness and power. I’m will start by pursuing the path of lucid dreaming. My ultimate goal is to be able to use it as a conduit in which to contact my higher self (or guardian angel or insert your choice of religious/metaphysical word here) but I’ll settle for having one dream where I’m in full control by year’s end.

According to articles I have read since then about lucid dreaming the first step is to get really good at remembering my current dreams. I’ve got a dream notebook ready to go by my bedside. Last night was my first attempt at programming myself to remember my dreams. I failed but then again I was struggling to breathe through my nose most of the night. But there is always tonight and tomorrow and the day after that…