Alright, I just had a thought about the "mechanics" behind meditation. I am reading a book called "Fear Itself". It seems the brain is constantly scanning for threatening things in our immediate environment. If something is threatening to us, it starts the fear response before we are even conscious of the threat. Anyway, I was thinking when we meditate or listen to music with eyes closed, it seems like we are basically cutting off streams of sensory input (visual if silently meditating; visual & auditory if we concentrate on a piece of music with eyes closed). As we do this, we are basically "working less" at our survival so we are able to follow our thoughts, emotions, etc. more thoroughly and fluidly than we are able to with the usual storm of response to what our senses are perceiving in our environment. So, meditation in itself is kind of a fear-ignorance tactic, allowing us more time with our imaginative and mental faculties for our own interests.

I really don't know how this could relate to dreaming and/or lucid dreaming (since our body continues to monitor threats even while we sleep), but who knows.

Any thoughts?