Now that I’ve given you an example of what a Lucid Dream (LD) is, you may be thinking, “How can I do this for myself?”
Well, as with any other skill, becoming a master of LD’ing must first start with the basics.
Based on my experiences with LD’ing, I’ve broken the skill down into what I see as the “basic” skills that must be built upon. They are:
- Dream Recall
- Reality Checking (The ability to know the difference between dreams and “reality).
- Control of State (remaining in the LD state indefinitely)
- Control of Context (being able to control the events of the dream itself)
Dream Recall
This is the first skill to be worked on to gain a mastery of lucid dreaming. I read somewhere that the average person has about 5-7 dreams per night. The better you are at actually remembering your dreams each night, the more likely you are to be able to enter the LD state.
Reality Checking
This skills is probably one of, if not the most, important skills in the lucid dreaming toolbox of skills. It is, for most, the most difficult to do consistently. In Reality Checks, you are basically evaluating your immediate environment for telltale “clues” that what you are experiencing might not be real. The power of this skill lies in the fact that the brain is always struggling to make sense of the data it is receiving and perceiving. Remember that dream you had before? The one where a clown is running naked down the street, and she’s being chased by a pink horse? Remember how, after you woke up, you asked yourself how in the world you could have NOT known it wasn’t real? This is what reality checks are good for. When you master reality checking to the point of habitual competence, success in LD’ing is virtually guaranteed.
Control of State
Invariably, when a person finds themselves in their first Lucid Dreaming experience, they think “WOOHOO! I’m dreaming!” then they excite themselves awake. I did this my first time. I would like to say it’s a frustrating experience. For me, however, I was too exhilerated on waking up too feel frustrated. It just served to cement my desire to do this again. Control of State is what I term the skills used to stay in the dream state as long as you wish. There are quite a few skills for doing this, including:
- Spinning (like a tornado)
- Defocusing (focusing too long on one particular object, especially for beginners, tends to disrupt lucidity and take you back into a non-lucid state)
- Anchoring (my personal favorite. I won’t say much about it here yet, since I have a LOT to say about it later on)
The whole point of this skill is to be able to remain in the dream state as long as possible without losing consciousness.
Control of Context
This is thought by many to be the “fun” part of Lucid Dreaming. This is where you get to control the dream itself. This, in a sense, makes you like Neo. Able to shape the dream as you see fit. Anything goes. The powers of flight, weather control, control of dream characters, and so on. I believe that in order to really excel in this area, the three basic skills above should be mastered to a certain degree, to prevent loss of lucid consciousness when attempting dream control.
Look for more detailed information and tips on each of these skills.
Dream on!