Q. Since I believe that dreams are messages from the unconscious mind, I am afraid that consciously controlling my dreams would interfere with this important process and deprive me of the benefits of dream interpretation.
A. As chapter 5 will explain, dreams are not letters from the unconscious mind, but experiences created through the interactions of the unconscious and conscious mind. In dreams, more conscious knowledge is available to our conscious experience. However, the dream is not at all the exclusive realm of the unconscious mind. If it were, people would never remember their dreams, because we do not have waking access to what is not conscious.
The person, or dream ego, that we experience being in the dream is the same as our waking consciousness. It constantly influences the events of the dream through its expectations and biases, just as it does in waking life. The essential difference in the lucid dream is that the ego is aware that the experience is a dream. This allows the ego much more freedom of choice and creative responsibility to find the best way to act in the dream. (page 19, Preparation for Learning Lucid Dreaming)
Also he wrote, "A few nights later, I had the first lucid dream I remember since the serial adventure dreams I had when I was five years old. In the dream:
It was snowing gently. I was alone on the rooftop of the world, climbing K2. As I made my way upward through the steeply drifting snow, I was astonished to notice my arms were bare: I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, hardly proper dress for climbing the second highest mountain in the world! I realized at once that the explanation was that I was dreaming! I was so delighted that I jumped off the mountain and began to fly away, but the dream faded and I awoke.
I interpreted the dream as suggesting that I wasn't yet prepared for the rigors of Tibetan dream yoga. But it was also a starting point, and I continued to have lucid dreams occasionally for eight years before I began to cultivate lucid dreaming in earnest. Incidentally, my impulsive behavior when I became lucid is typical of beginners. If I were to have such a dream now, I would not precipitously jump off the mountain. Instead, I would fly to the top of the mountain and find out if I was climbing it for any reason besides "because it was there." (EWOLD, page 47)
Bookmarks