Lucid Dreams

Finally we have arrived to dreams which are more on the lighter side – Lucid Dreams. What is a Lucid Dream? A Lucid Dream is having a dream where the dreamer is totally conscious of what is going on. Basically this means being awake while you are dreaming. In these types of dreams, anything is possible and unlike the previous types of dreams, lucid dreams do not fall in so much to tragic experiences because the dreamer can create their own dreams just from imagining their ideal scene.

Lucid dreams come in three forms:

• Dream-initiated lucid dream
• Wake-initiated lucid dream
• Mnemonic-initiated lucid dream

A dream-initiated lucid dream happens during the state when the dreamer is having a dream and then realizes that they are dreaming. It is kind of like dreaming and then waking up but you’re still in a dream, not having “really” woken up yet.

A wake-initiated lucid dream is when one goes from being awake to falling asleep, but when they fall asleep, they are still awake, and the dream begins as they are awake. So it is basically a transition between being conscious while being awake and then being conscious while dreaming.

A mnemonic-initiated lucid dream is one is confident that they will have a lucid dream in the upcoming dream. This could mean that they fall asleep and know they somewhere in the dream, they will come back alive conscious again. It is not randomly processed, but is done through repetition, someone like when a hypnotist can tell the mind when something is going to happen.

Below are some dreams of people who describe their lucid dreams. These lucid dreams are from a book called Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D. & Howard Rheingold.

Case Examples of Lucid Dreams

1. I realized I was dreaming. I raised my arms and began to rise (actually I was being lifted). I rose through the black sky that blended into indigo, to deep purple, to lavender, to white, then to very bright light. All the time I was lifted there was the most beautiful music I have ever heard. It seemed like voices rather than instruments. There are no words to describe the joyI felt. I was very gently lowered back to earth. I had the feeling that I had come to a turning point in my life and I had chosen the right path. The dream, the joy I experienced, was kind of a reward, or so I felt. It was a long, slow slide back to wakefulness with music echoing in my ears. The euphoria lasted several days; the memory forever. (A.F., Bay City, Michigan).

2. I was standing in a field in an open area when my wife pointed in the direction of the sunset. I looked at it and thought, “How odd; I’ve never seen colors like that before.” Then it dawned on me: “I must be dreaming!” Never had I experienced such clarity and perception – the colors were so beautiful and the sense of freedom so exhilarating that I started racing through this beautiful golden wheat field waving my hands in the air and yelling at the top of my voice, “I’m dreaming! I’m dreaming!” Suddenly, I started to lose the dream; it must have been the excitement. I instantly woke up. As it dawned on me what had just happened, I woke up my wife and said, “I did it! I did it!” I was conscious within the dream state and I’ll never be the same. Funny, isn’t it? How a taste of it can affect one like that. It’s the freedom, I guess; we see that we are truly in control of our own universe. (D.W., Elk River, Minnesota).

3. One night I was dreaming of standing on a gentle hill, looking out over the tops of maples, alders, and other trees. The leaves of the maples were bright red and rustling in the wind. The grass at my feet was lush and vividly green. All the colors about me were more saturated than I have ever seen.

Perhaps the awareness that the colors were “brighter than they should be” shocked me into realizing that I was in a dream, and that what lay about me was not “real.” I remember saying to myself, “If this was a dream, “I should be able to fly in the air.” I tested my hunch and was enormously pleased that I could effortlessly, and fly anywhere I wanted. I skimmed over the tops of the trees and sailed many miles over new territory. I flew upward, far above the landscape, and hovered in the air currents like an eagle.

When I awoke I felt as if the experience of flying had energized me. I felt a sense of well-being that seemed directly related to the experience of being in a lucid dream, of taking control of the flying. (J.B., Everett, Washington).

As you can see from the above, Lucid dreams can offer the dreamer more fun than he or she usually has when entering a normal dream state. How many dreams have you had when you woke up and gone through the day totally unaware of what dreams you have had? To me, and to many others, it would be interesting to see what types of dreams we have in the moment of dreaming and remembering with vivid clarity, what we’ve dreamt the night before.

In the last past week, we have gone over many dreams in which were totally absurd to totally mind blowing. All this stuff is possible through lucid dreams, such as having telekinesis like moving objects with your mind or supernatural abilities such as flying at the speed of light across the earth. In the next post, I will explain how one can have a lucid dream and conclude this series with how we can enlarge consciousness through our dreams.