Chapter 8 - The lucid shield
“One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion.” - Voltaire
The dream world has the feel of a subtler reality than the physical world. In the physical world, we’re concerned with objects, matter, and avoiding pain. In dreams, these things become less important, and our focus turns towards finer, harder-to-describe things. The texture of dream stuff is softer, subtler. Even if we’re holding a dull, heavy object in the dream, and even if it seems exactly like it would in real life, we’re still experiencing some other subtle element. There’s some dream-like quality that is interwoven throughout everything. The air is alive with it. Many lucid dreamers will know right away what I’m talking about, even if they’ve never stopped to think about it. Some strange energy of the dream pervades both the dreamer and the dream, and in the dream, you’re connected to it all. The leaves on a branch a mile away might as well be right in front of your nose. There is no real separation. Your awareness seamlessly flows wherever you want it to. Nothing is holding you back. You look at the mountains and it’s like you’re there. You can feel them, they’re so present that you almost feel like you’re standing there now.
Talented lucid dreamers know they can take that feeling to the next level. Not only can you feel like you’re there, if you so choose, then poof, you actually are there. Dream teleportation is easy as long as you’re tapped in to the interconnectedness of the dream. You don’t have to travel anywhere because you’re already there. When you’re aware of the subtle energy of the dream and when you can feel it permeating your dream body, you know that the real “you” is just consciousness hopping around in the dream, shifting perspectives wherever you want. We can start to experience this permeated connectedness in the Dreaming exercise.
When we wake up, rather than being permeated by the physical world, we try to keep that reality at arm’s length. We don’t open up to it like we do in the dream. Even though we’re constantly being maintained by the physical universe, breathing it in, breathing it out, ingesting it, using it, becoming it, sweating it, passing it - being it – even though we are exactly it, in a constant state of flux and motion, we pretend that we’re not. We pretend that we’re somehow separate from it. It’s not giving us life and being, we’re doing that all on our own, thank you very much! Or so we seem to believe. In the dream, this illusion is gone. We embrace the lucid environment and let it in. We know that we are an essential part of the dream world, and we swim and soar in that connection. When we wake up, however, walls come up and we try to keep things out.
We’re afraid of physicality because we believe it to be dangerous. It could hurt us! We spend great amounts of time and energy protecting ourselves from the world. People, places, and things have hurt us in the past, so we erect barriers, certain modes of consciousness that we believe will keep us safe. People wounded in love might hold themselves back from a new potential romance. People who have been bullied might approach strangers with caution. Countless bumps and bruises from life slowly accumulate as we grow older until one day, we’ve cut ourselves off from everything. We believe and creates ourselves as separate. A veil falls across our eyes, and the world ceases to be a place of wonder. We’ve fallen asleep and the world must now be endured, tolerated, or overcome. Life becomes a game of me versus them. Compare this to life in a lucid dream!
On the other end of the spectrum, we have children who live in the Now. They live for the Moment. They embrace the wondrous physicality of life. They roll in the mud. They run as fast as they can. They’re quick to make friends. They are truly, purely, and beautifully a part of the world. They don’t view the world as outside of them, there is no isolated, ego self they’re trying to maintain. They are open and present and connected. Countless spiritual teachers tell us, “be here now,” but what does that mean? What they’re talking about is being connected, tearing down all of our walls and being a part of everything, as if we were lucid in a dream.
As adults, we live in a subtly projected space that cuts us off from the flow of that waking dream we call Life. We’ve already discussed the mentally constructed version of reality that prevents us from seeing, but where does that reality come from? As we grow up, we learn to shield ourselves from the world. We learn to protect ourselves and keep bad things “out.” Unfortunately, during this process, we get cut off from the subtle aspects of the Dream. There are many nuances to lucidity that a dreamer taps into when he becomes lucid. The experience is enlightening whichever world you’re in. All the feelings of connection and bliss and peace and joy that we experience when we’re lucid (in dreams or in life) come from being open to the world. We’re tapped in. When we shield ourselves from that glorious realm, it gets boring really fast. All the feeling is gone. All the sensation is gone. And so, desperate to get a piece of that back, we generate a mental construct of reality and immerse ourselves in our own little world. We leave reality and the freedom of being a lucid dreamer, and exchange it for a smaller self that thinks it’s the master of its own universe. In our mentally constructed world, we’re safe and seemingly in control. And we dream that we’re connected. We dream that we’re awake.
In truth, we’ve shielded ourselves so utterly and completely from the world “out there” that we have expressions like “He lives in his own world,” and this is actually normal! Our minds have taken control of our thoughts, actions, perceptions, and lives so completely that we are completely removed from reality. We live in a virtual world, and we are cut off. As long as we’re in our shielded reality, keeping the universe at bay, we’re asleep in our dreams and we’re asleep in life. Consider the moment before becoming lucid in a dream. You’re caught up in a fantasy. Everything happening is a dream, but you don’t realize it! It all seems real. You swear up and down that you’re “you” until you become lucid. Then the walls come down and you wake up. There was a lucid shield around you, a great veil, keeping you from knowing a simple truth: a false world had been pulled over your eyes.
We believe the lucid shield keeps us safe, but all it does is keep us asleep. We can become aware of it right now. An easy way to feel this bubble-like shield is to conceive of it as your personal space. When nothing threatening is in your personal space, you feel safe. Everything is under control. You know who you are, you know what to expect, and you don’t have to worry about anything outside of you. The walls of this personal space are familiar and known, they’re comfortable, relaxing, almost lulling… which means if we wish to experience the unknown, the mysterious, the bizarre - the lucid - we must leave those walls. Leaving our shielded reality can be very exciting or very uncomfortable. That choice is ultimately up to us. We can fight it, or in the words of the shaman I studied with in Peru, we can “let it go, let it go.” The more illusion we let go of, the more lucid we become.
Most people have a sense of their personal space and how far out it extends. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, find a partner and stand about ten feet apart. Have your partner slowly come towards you. At some point, if your partner isn’t a lover, you’ll suddenly feel on guard or uncomfortable. In the case of lovers, we grant them access to our personal space, and unsurprisingly, our lovers tend to make our lives more mysterious, lucid, and unknown…
Personal space cuts us off from the subtler realms of experience. This illusory separation shields us from being lucid in dreams and in life, but luckily it’s not a fixed thing. With certain people and places our guard goes up. With others, our guard goes down. We can expand and contract our personal space according to the situation. Consider someone who has just arrived in Paris for the first time. She’s been looking forward to this trip her entire life and is expecting two weeks filled with adventure, romance, and dreams come true. For this person, her personal space would be at a minimum. Her shield is almost transparent. She’ll head out, as lucid as she knows how to be, ready to experience a Parisian wonderland. When she meets someone at a café, she’ll feel open and interested in the other person. She isn’t projecting any walls or barriers. Unknowingly, she’s taken down her lucid shield as best she can.
Consider now a disgruntled businessman. He’s got a million things to do. He’s upset about his situation at work and being sent to straighten things out with his foreign counterparts. He may enter the same café as our first-time traveler, but he’ll feel completely different. His personal space feels almost solid, a wall cutting him off from the experiences and wonders around him. He is cut off from the Dream, shielded from the world around him and asleep. We are actually sensitive to these shields. When someone doesn’t want to be bothered and you approach them, you can feel their space and you walk away.
Imagine yourself completely lucid in a high level lucid dream. Let yourself feel open and connected, powerful, joyful, and free. Now imagine yourself that way right here, right now. Feel as lucid as you can. You can do anything you want. You can be anything you want. Now in that space, the lucid shield at a minimum, imagine your parents looking at you. How do you feel? Did you change? Was your feeling of freedom lessened? Do you need to behave a certain way? Add in your siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Can you feel the shield coming up? Can you feel it strengthening? Keep adding people in: teachers, ex-lovers, bullies, enemies, strangers. The shield gets stronger and stronger. You become less and less free, and the “you” that is emerging isn’t the real you.
The lucid shield is a subtle force we project that cuts us off from whole realms of subtle sensations. When we can connect to that realm of subtle sensation, we are lucid and free. Whereas Gurdjieff said that we don’t see the world as it truly is, it’s equally true that we don’t feel the world as it truly is. The physical world actually feels the way it does in a lucid dream. The magic and thrill of interactions in the waking world are there, just on the other side of our lucid shields. The subtle sensations of the dream world occur in this world too, but we’ve barricaded ourselves in a self-created illusory cocoon. There is a marvelous world happening on just the other side of our lucid shield. There is ecstatic, lucid life waiting for us to wake up and let it in.
The famous scientist Sir Isaac Newton, and the somewhat less famous mystic and dreamer, again Sir Isaac Newton, noted that whenever a force is exerted upon an object remaining at rest, there is an equal and opposite force exerted back. What this means for us living in our lucid shields is that any force we project against the dream to keep ourselves feeling safe is matched from the other side by the Dream. The Dream is there waiting to wake us up, but we’re actively fighting against it. As soon as we realize this, we can take steps to stop fighting, and when we do, we’ll find ourselves another step closer to full lucidity.
Exercise 8a: Exploring the lucid shield
Before we leave the lucid shield, we first need to fully explore it. The lucid shield is a projection into and against the subtler realm we’ve been seeking. If we want to fully experience the lucid world, we need to start by fully experiencing our lucid shield. By tuning in to these projections, we develop our subtle perceptions and increase our skills as lucid dreamers.
Become aware of your lucid shield. This is the personal space, the bubble, the reality in which you live. How far out does it go? Become aware of its walls. Notice how you feel when nothing is threatening your shielded space. You feel safe. You feel like you.
Go for a walk maintaining awareness of the lucid shield. Can you strengthen it? How solid can you make it feel? If something were to threaten you, what would happen to the feel of the lucid shield? Notice that there’s a world “out there” and a world “in here”. You’re safe in one, but not the other. Continue walking and exploring the outside world while maintaining full separation from it, safe within the walls of the lucid shield.
Exercise 8b: Morphing the lucid shield
Just as we can strengthen or weaken the lucid shield with our will by perceiving danger or perceiving safety, we can control the size and shape of the shield with our will as well. We do this naturally in life. Alone in nature, our shield tends to be big and expansive, whereas in a crowd, it becomes very close to the skin.
To explore the malleable nature of the lucid shield, let us imagine a very solid shield extending out from us to a range of about 8-10 feet. Feel the walls of the lucid shield. This is your personal space. This is your domain. Enjoy how it feels to be in your domain. Extend your perception all the way to the walls of the shield and explore the world that is inside. In this space, you are in control, outside, the world is Unknown.
Retract the lucid shield in a foot or two. You’ll instantly feel the Unknown fill the vacated space. The bubble is smaller now. Feel its edges and explore the space as you did before. When the new lucid shield is clearly perceived, bring it in a little more. Continue gradually bringing the shield in and feeling the new space until you’ve brought it in all the way to your body. Once the shield corresponds to your physical body, realize that the only thing separating you from the Dream, the bizarre Unknown, is your own skin.
Now pop the bubble, release the lucid shield, and note any sensations that may occur.
At the end of the exercise, project the shield out 10 feet. Then farther. Then farther still. Then as far as you can. When the lucid shield has been projected out as far as you can imagine, and you are experiencing all that space as your domain, again let it go and conclude the exercise.
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