Becoming a lucid dreamer is about so much more than being able to control what happens in our dreams. It’s the ultimate test of our ability to merge the conscious mind with the subconscious mind. Why does this matter? It is only the unified mind that is fully self-aware. This is what ‘Gnothi seauton‘ (Know thyself) refers to. It’s about getting to know the whole self.
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However, getting to know the deeper layers of the self doesn’t happen automatically as soon as we learn how to become lucid in the dream state. What can happen, and I speak from my own experience, is that once we start diving deep into a traumatised psyche, lucid dreaming can reopen old wounds and create chaos in our lives. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Chaos is fertile ground for change and transformation. That said, the lateral damage can sometimes be very pricey. Again, I speak from personal experience.
Back in 2022, I started successfully become lucid while sleeping and had some amazing experiences. However, it wasn’t long after that I had a Religious Trauma relapse. In the end, this was indeed a good thing since it gave me the opportunity to finally heal from RTS.
The Dragon in the Sea
In one of my most memorable lucid dreams from 2022, I was flying across a vast sky when I reached the edge of an equally vast ocean. I landed on the beach and from the sea arose a large sea monster that looked like a dragon. At first, I was terrified but then I remembered I was lucid so I turned the monster into a more cuddly version of a dragon and then gave it hug before I flew off to explore some more.
I didn’t get what this dream was about that back then and refused to consciously explore its deeper meaning. However, now I can see that it was about me refusing to face my own and collective fears about the Divine Feminine. This is tied in with the return of Sophia and the myth of Tiamat, something I hope to cover in a later post.
Dragons are extremely wise, ancient and powerful messengers. We ignore their messages at our own peril!
How to Become a Lucid Dreamer
Learning how to lucid dream opens up a world of incredible possibilities and self-discovery. It involves practice and patience, as well as a commitment to enhancing your waking state awareness.
Waking State Awareness
A key aspect of lucid dreaming is developing a heightened awareness in your waking life. This involves regularly questioning your reality and training your mind to recognise the subtle clues that indicate whether you are dreaming or awake. Essentially, the more mindful and aware of the present moment you become, the easier it will be to induce a lucid dream state.
The Role of Meditation and Mindfulness in Lucid Dreaming
Regular meditation and mindfulness practices are powerful tools for developing lucid dreaming. By training the mind to stay focused and present, meditation enhances your overall awareness, which is crucial for recognising the dream state. Mindfulness, through its continuous engagement with the present moment, helps in discerning the subtle differences between waking and dreaming worlds.
When you meditate, you cultivate a deep sense of self-awareness and mental clarity, making it easier to catch those fleeting moments within a dream where you realise, ‘This is a dream.’ Incorporating these practices into your daily routine builds the foundation for increased lucidity and richer dream experiences. It also helps with dream recall.
Keeping a Dream Journal
Keeping a dream journal is crucial for anyone interested in lucid dreaming and dream exploration. It serves as a vital tool for enhancing dream recall, which is foundational to becoming a lucid dreamer. By consistently recording your dreams upon waking, you increase your ability to remember details and patterns, making it easier to recognise dream signs.
This practice also helps in understanding the deeper layers of your subconscious mind, revealing recurring themes or symbols that may appear in your dreams. Over time, a dream journal becomes a valuable resource for personal growth and self-discovery. It facilitates bridging the gap between your waking and dreaming worlds.
Tips for Improving Dream Recall
- Set an Intention Before Sleep:
Every night before going to bed, tell yourself that you will remember your dreams. This simple act of setting an intention can significantly enhance your ability to recall dreams upon waking. - Keep a Consistent Sleep Schedule:
Aim to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. A regular sleep pattern improves the quality of your sleep, which in turn can improve dream recall. - Limit Alcohol and Caffeine:
Substances like alcohol and caffeine can disrupt sleep patterns and affect your ability to remember dreams. Try to avoid these, especially in the hours leading up to bedtime. - Create a Comfortable Sleep Environment:
Ensure that your sleeping area is comfortable, quiet, and free from distractions. A peaceful sleep environment can lead to more restful sleep and better dream recall. - Wake Up Slowly:
When you wake up, try not to jump out of bed immediately. Spend a few moments lying still with your eyes closed, and allow the details of your dreams to come back to you.
The Importance of Recording Dreams Immediately
Recording your dreams as soon as you replay them in your mind is crucial. Here’s why:
- Memory Fades Quickly:
Dreams often fade rapidly upon waking. By writing down or recording your dreams immediately, you capture the details while they are still fresh in your mind. - Developing Patterns and Symbols:
Over time, your dream journal can reveal recurring patterns, symbols, or themes in your dreams. Understanding these can provide valuable insights into your subconscious mind and help you identify dream signs for lucid dreaming. - Enhancing Dream Recall:
The very act of writing down your dreams reinforces the habit of remembering them. The more consistently you record your dreams, the better your dream recall will become. - Bridging the Conscious and Subconscious:
Recording your dreams helps to bridge the gap between your waking consciousness and your subconscious mind. This practice can lead to greater self-awareness and personal growth.
How to Record Your Dreams
- Keep a Dream Journal:
Place a notebook and pen beside your bed so you can write down your dreams as soon as you wake up. Even a few keywords or phrases can help trigger full recall later. - Use a Voice Recorder:
If writing feels too cumbersome upon waking, use a voice recorder or your smartphone to verbally recount your dreams. - Describe Emotions and Sensations:
When recording your dreams, try to include not just the events, but also the emotions, sensations, and any other impressions you had during the dream. This can provide a richer context and deeper understanding of your subconscious.
Methods for Becoming Lucid
Several techniques can enhance your ability to achieve lucidity in dreams. Here are three effective methods:
1. Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD)
The MILD method involves using a specific intention to become lucid. Here’s how to do it:
- Wake up after 5-6 hours of sleep.
- Recall a recent dream in as much detail as possible.
- While falling back asleep, repeat to yourself, “Next time I’m dreaming, I will remember I’m dreaming.”
- Visualise yourself becoming lucid in your dream.
The combination of intention and visualisation heightens the likelihood of recognising when you’re in a dream.
2. Wake Back to Bed (WBTB)
The WBTB method takes advantage of the natural cycles of sleep and dreams. Here’s the process:
- Set an alarm to wake you up after 5-6 hours of sleep.
- Stay awake for 20-60 minutes. During this time, engage in activities that promote wakefulness but keep your mind relaxed, such as reading about lucid dreaming or meditating.
- Go back to bed with the intention of recognising when you’re dreaming.
This method helps you re-enter REM sleep with heightened awareness, increasing the chances of lucidity.
3. Reality Testing
Reality testing involves consistently questioning your reality throughout the day. To practice:
- Choose a few reality checks and perform them multiple times a day.
- Ask yourself, “Am I dreaming?” and then follow with one or more reality checks.
- Be mindful and truly question your surroundings as if you might be dreaming.
By integrating this habit into your life, you train your mind to become more conscious and self-aware, making it easier to recognise the dream state.
Stabilising the State of Lucidity
Achieving lucidity in dreams is an exciting milestone, but maintaining that state can be challenging. Typically, the first time you experience lucidity, you get so excited that you wake up instantly. However, it is possible to learn how to stabilise the lucid dream state. Here are some effective methods to help you stabilise and extend your lucid dreams:
1. Focus on Your Hands
One of the quickest ways to stabilise a lucid dream is to look at your hands. This technique engages your focus and brings you back into the dream environment. By focusing on the details of your hands, you reinforce your presence in the dream and prevent waking up prematurely.
2. Rub Your Hands Together
Rubbing your hands together creates sensory input, grounding you further in the dream. The sensation and the visual of your hands moving can help stabilise the dream and increase your control over it. This technique also helps maintain your awareness.
3. Spin Around
If you feel the dream starting to fade, spinning your dream body can re-anchor you. To do this, spin around in circles while focusing on the dream environment. This action helps to reset the dream and can often prevent you from waking up.
4. Engage with the Environment
Interacting with your dream surroundings can significantly stabilise your lucid dreams. Touch objects, feel textures, and explore the environment. The more you engage with the dream world, the more anchored you become within it.
5. Verbal Affirmations
Speaking out loud in your dream can strengthen your lucidity. Phrases like ‘I am dreaming’ or ‘Stay lucid’ can reinforce your awareness. The act of speaking engages another sense and helps keep you grounded.
6. Perform Reality Checks
Even within a lucid dream, performing reality checks can help maintain your lucidity. Try pushing your finger through your palm or plugging your nose and attempting to breathe. These actions reaffirm that you are dreaming and help stabilise the state.
7. Focus on Details
Paying close attention to details in the dream can prolong lucidity. Observe small elements like leaves on a tree or the texture of a wall. This heightened observation helps deepen your immersion in the dream.
8. Calm Your Emotions
High emotions can cause the dream to destabilise and end abruptly. Practice remaining calm and composed, even if you experience something exciting or frightening. Taking deep breaths within the dream can also help maintain emotional control.
9. Visualise Stability
If the dream becomes unstable, visualise it stabilising. Imagine clarity and vividness returning to your dream environment. This mental exercise can reinforce your control and extend the duration of the lucid dream.
The Limitless Possibilities of the Lucid Dreamer
In the lucid dream state, the possibilities are limitless because you have control over your environment and actions. Here are some activities you might wish to try while lucid dreaming:
Finding Solutions to Longstanding Problems
Lucid dreaming allows you to access the deep recesses of your subconscious mind, making it a powerful tool for problem-solving.
- Engage in Problem-Solving: Visualise the problem you’re facing and explore different solutions in the dream. The creativity and insights available in the dream state can offer unique perspectives you might not consider while awake.
- Consult Dream Characters: Interact with dream characters who can act as advisors or mentors, offering guidance and solutions to your problems.
Sending Healing
Lucid dreaming provides a safe space for emotional and physical healing.
- Self-Healing: Use your lucid dream to perform visualisation techniques that focus on healing affected areas of your body or mind.
- Healing Others: Imagine sending positive energy or healing light to loved ones who may be in need of support and healing.
Experience Intimate Relationships
Lucid dreams can enhance emotional connections and offer a deeper understanding of relationships.
- Communicate with Loved Ones: Reconnect with people you miss or wish to understand better. Have conversations that you find challenging to initiate in waking life.
- Experience Emotional Intimacy: Engage in activities that nurture emotional connections like sharing experiences or revisiting treasured memories with the person.
Creative Exploration
The dream world is an ideal playground for uninhibited creativity.
- Artistic Pursuits: Create art, music, or writings within the dream. The absence of physical limitations can lead to extraordinary creations.
- Invent and Design: Experiment with new ideas, inventions, or designs. The unrestricted environment allows for innovative thinking.
Adventure and Exploration
Lucid dreams can be used for thrilling adventures and exploring new landscapes, impossible in real life.
- Travel to Far-flung Locations: Visit places you’ve never been, whether they exist in the real world or are entirely fantastical creations of your dream.
- Fly and Defy Gravity: Experience the sensation of flying or other superhuman abilities like time travel, teleportation, or invisibility.
Overcoming Fears
Lucid dreaming is a powerful method for confronting and overcoming fears in a controlled environment.
- Face Your Fears: Confront situations or entities that scare you to diminish their power over you in waking life.
- Transform Scary Situations: Change the elements of frightening situations to something more manageable or even pleasant, thereby altering your perception of fear.
Learning and Skill Enhancement
Use dreams as a practice ground for developing and refining various skills.
- Practice Skills: Improve real-life skills like playing an instrument, sports, or public speaking. The brain experiences practice in dreams similarly to real-life practice.
- Study and Memorise: Review and memorise information or work on understanding complex concepts to improve your waking life knowledge and performance.
Spiritual and Personal Growth
Use lucid dreaming as a tool for spiritual exploration and personal development.
- Meet Spirit Guides: Incubate dreams to meet with specific spirit guides who can offer insights and wisdom for your personal growth.
- Explore Past Lives: Delve into past life experiences or explore different identities to gain a deeper understanding of your current life.
These activities can profoundly enrich waking life, offering solutions, insights, and experiences that contribute to overall well-being and personal development.
The Lucid Dreamer Tarot Spread
This spread can help you explore the subconscious mind, uncover hidden fears, and promote personal growth through lucid dreaming practices. Use this spread to gain insights into your lucid dreaming journey and to find guidance on overcoming obstacles and enhancing your experiences.
Card Positions
- The Dream Initiation: What can I use to trigger lucid dreaming?
- Waking Awareness: How can I enhance my mindfulness in waking life to improve my lucid dreaming?
- Facing Fears: What fears or subconscious blocks are preventing me from achieving lucidity?
- The Dragon in the Sea: What important message is my subconscious trying to convey to me through my dreams?
- Stabilising Lucidity: What technique will best help me stabilise and extend my lucid dreams?
- Healing and Transformation: How can I use my lucid dreams for emotional and physical healing?
- Creative Exploration: How can I harness the power of my dreams to boost my creativity?
- Overcoming Challenges: What is the key challenge I need to address in my lucid dreaming practice?
- Spiritual Insights: What spiritual lessons or insights can I gain from my lucid dreaming journey?
How to Use the Spread
- Shuffle the Deck: Focus your intention on gaining insights into your lucid dreaming practices.
- Lay Out the Cards: As you place each card, think about the corresponding question or aspect of your lucid dreaming journey.
- Interpret the Cards: Reflect on the meaning of each card in the context of its position. Consider how the answers relate to your current experiences and aspirations in lucid dreaming.
- Take Action: Use the insights gained from the spread to enhance your lucid dreaming practices, face your fears, and tap into the unlimited potential of your dream world.
Sample Lucid Dreamer Tarot Reading
1. The Dream Initiation – 5 of Cups
The 5 of Cups suggests that an intense emotional connection is the key to initiating your lucid dreaming practices. You may find that focusing on emotional experiences and unresolved feelings before sleep can act as a powerful trigger for lucidity. Reflect on past memories and unresolved emotions as you set your intention to become lucid.
2. Waking Awareness – King of Pentacles
To enhance your waking awareness, the King of Pentacles advises you to stay grounded and be constantly aware of your body and the details around you. Practice mindfulness exercises that emphasise your physical presence and sensory experiences throughout the day. This grounded awareness will assist you in recognising the dream state when it occurs.
3. Facing Fears – 6 of Cups
The 6 of Cups highlights that childhood trauma and not feeling safe while sleeping might be a significant barrier preventing you from achieving lucidity. Revisit your past and address any unresolved issues or emotions that stem from childhood. Confronting these memories and processing them can help remove blocks in your subconscious mind, facilitating easier entry into the lucid dream state.
4. The Dragon in the Sea – 3 of Pentacles
The message your subconscious is trying to convey through your dreams is represented by the 3 of Pentacles. This card indicates the importance of collaboration and skill development. Your dreams may be nudging you to work collectively with others or to focus on honing your skills in waking life to achieve greater fulfilment and balance. If this is something you struggle with in waking consciousness, you can ask your dreaming mind to come up with solutions.
5. Stabilising Lucidity – 10 of Pentacles
For stabilising and extending your lucid dreams, the 10 of Pentacles suggests emphasising long-term security and usefulness. Establish a consistent and nurturing sleep routine that promotes strong and stable lucid dreams. Focus on becoming lucid for matters that also have an anchor in waking consciousness and that help you create your legacy.
6. Healing and Transformation – The Star
The Star card emphasises hope, renewal, and serenity in your use of lucid dreams for healing and transformation. Focus on visualising healing energies and use your lucid dreams as a space for emotional and physical rejuvenation. Remain hopeful and trust in the transformative power of your dreams.
7. Creative Exploration – 2 of Swords
When it comes to creative exploration, the 2 of Swords highlights the role of decision-making and weighing options. Use your lucid dreams to explore different choices and creative paths you might take in waking life. This will allow you to make more informed decisions and unlock creative potential.
8. Overcoming Challenges – Judgement
The Judgement card points to your life purpose as the key to overcoming challenges in your lucid dreaming practice. Reflect on your calling and life’s mission within your dreams. Understanding and aligning with your purpose can provide clarity and direction, helping you to navigate and overcome obstacles in both your dreams and waking life.
9. Spiritual Insights – 7 of Wands
In terms of spiritual insights, the 7 of Wands encourages standing your ground and strengthening your willpower. You are likely to face challenges in your spiritual journey, but maintaining your resolve and perseverance will lead to profound growth. Use your dreams to strengthen your inner fortitude and determination.
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