Thread: Techniques For LUCID DREAMING - Preparing Oneself For The Endeavor

AWAKEN FOLLY

Coming awake is akin to remembering the physical self. Within the first few minutes of waking from dreams there is a dramatic shift from subconscious to conscious thought. Almost immediately we begin to perform and lay out the script or template that we will follow for the rest of the day. Most templates tend to include the same general categories. We make future plans; plans concerning today, tomorrow, next month or even years from now. We recollect recent history to history long past; on Monday we may recall what happened at our job last Friday or we may recall a particularly joyful or painful experience from ages ago. When not involved in an imaginary future or reminiscing about the past, we tend to keep a verbal play-by-play of the current situation or whatever ideas come to mind. We converse and argue with our self with regard to every opinion and perception that passes our way. We don’t awaken from a dream ready to debate and make an elaborate speech. Verbalization requires a great deal of effort. The shift from the sub-conscious to consciousness is a result of energy allocation. We start with a minimal awareness of our surroundings followed by simple and often repetitive utterances. Many persons actually sing themselves awake. Not by singing a song from start to finish, but by repeating whatever verse comes to mind until a greater degree of lucidity has been attained. Once you realize that this is how you are managing to wake up, you may feel a bit foolish. Trying to wakeup without these rituals, however, can be very difficult. If you are paying attention to the internal dialogue to the degree that you begin to silence the script that you would normally follow, you may counteract its usefulness such that you begin drifting back to sleep and dreams. Following the same poorly written script, each day we place ourselves in similar situations. We play through our usual feelings and reactions and are held back by the same fears and inhibitions. Without intentional and directed effort – our emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing remain unchanged. Though ignorance isn’t bliss, it is comforting to remain within the parameters of the status quo. In some persons, however, there will arise a hunger for new kinds of emotion, knowledge and purpose. These persons will want to write a new script, adopt or improvise a different template. Wishing to move forward, they will bear in mind that we arrive at a destination only by understanding and factoring in our current position. Self-study is the cornerstone of future growth and development. Therefore, allow your everyday self to indulge in its current rituals, but endeavor to observe them just the same. It is an art to realize that though we are actors and perceivers, we may perceive without being caught up in our perceptions and act without being caught up in our actions. Self-study involves stepping away from the immediacy of the self. We may step back from thoughts and emotions, almost as if the physical body were only a puppet. For now, don’t worry about taking the strings of the puppet into hand. The task isn’t to be the puppet-master or to cut the strings to the puppet, but to simply move away as if part of the audience – observing the various and often comical machinations of the puppet.
In this way the observer becomes the observed. This type of vigilance doesn’t require you to silence the internal dialogue or to behave differently than you normally would. The only difference is that you section off a part of yourself to take mental notes in an impartial manner. With a bit of practice, no matter the earthly drama which unfolds around or inside of you, there can be a place in your mind that remains calm, unperturbed and watchful. Start by assuming that everything you do is completely necessary – and you will be able to watch as it becomes otherwise. As an observer, it is your job to recognize that each thought is absolutely significant; defining who and how you are at this moment. Each thought is also utterly insignificant; very likely having less effect on the world than each individual breath that you exhale. If you are able to see each thought and action as both important and unimportant, then you have reached the vantage of which we speak. From this vantage the burdens of self-importance are lessened, the over certainty of the ego is yoked and we may take our rightful place in the universe as a mystery among mysteries. Being drawn from complacency to increased wakefulness needn’t leave you sitting cross-legged in meditative wonderment. When, “..the world, while still persisting, has lost its validity; one still has to do one’s share in it but, as it were, without obligation, in the perspective of the nullity of all action … decisions (you) must continue to make in the depths of spontaneity unto death – calmly deciding ever again in favor of right action.” (Buber) Cognizant that the manner in which he or she moves through the waking world either strengthens or loosens the ties that bind, the sorcerer strives to balance activity and passivity, self and other. Those who practice the mastery of awareness will discover that in the absence of self-importance the only way to deal with the external world may be in terms of ‘controlled folly’. A short dialogue from the works of Carlos Castaneda will serve to clarify. After being asked to explain what is meant by controlled folly, his teacher slaps his own leg and replies, “I am happy that you finally asked me about my controlled folly after so many years, and yet it wouldn’t have mattered to me in the least if you had never asked. Yet I have chosen to feel happy, as if I cared that you asked, as if it would matter that I care. That is controlled folly.” (Castaneda) Seeing that no one is really going anywhere and seeing that nothing is more important than anything else, the practitioner becomes connected to his fellow man only through his controlled folly. “Thus a man of knowledge endeavors, and sweats, and puffs, and if one looks at him he is just like an ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under control. Nothing being more important than anything else, a man of knowledge chooses any act, and acts as if it matters to him. His controlled folly makes him say that what he does matters and makes him act as if it did, and yet he knows that it doesn’t, so when he fulfills his acts he retreats in peace, and whether his acts were good or bad, or worked or didn’t, is in no way part of his concern.” (Castaneda) And from the work of Martin Buber we hear, “This is the activity of the human being who has become whole: it has been called not-doing, for nothing particular, nothing partial is at work in man and thus nothing of him intrudes into the world.” When you abandon the fallible construct of reason and can give pause to the incessant internal dialogue, then you have begun to practice the sorceric task of self-remembering: the absolute not-doing of being caught up in the drama of the waking world. An old story tells of a troubled king who, while at market, had several philosophers imprisoned for arguing in the streets. Back at the castle these philosophers were chained and brought before the king. He said to them, “You have one night to think and agree upon a think which will bring me joy when I am feeling troubled and will cause me to remember my sorrow even though my heart may be glad. If you fail to do so by this time tomorrow, then your lives will be forfeit.” The philosophers convened for long hours in the dungeon below. Near morning they had instructions sent to a local metal smith whom was well known for his skill in fashioning jewelry. When the philosophers were brought before the king the following afternoon a courier arrived as well. One of the philosophers hailed the courier, stepped forward and presented the king with a simple gold ring whose inscription read, “This Too Shall Pass”.

“I choose whether or not to see I always am what I choose to be.”

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FOLLY PAST

Each and every second of our lives we are involved in making a choice. Though we can choose to be willing victims of circumstance, we may not choose to avoid making choices all together, because in every moment we are reaffirming our decision to remain powerless. It is said that we are ten percent what happens to us and ninety percent what we make of it. Our choices and reactions are what define us. They explain who we are and determine the manner in which we tend to exist. Each moment we decide how to occupy both our mind and our body. We pick and choose the range and depth of our daily emotional content. For us, each moment holds the promise of both sorrow and joy. Too often, however, we allow past habituations and occurrences to affect our perception of self. Who we are today needn’t be the result of things which occurred in the past that were beyond our control. We can clear our mind of regrets and stop obsessing over things which might have gone differently. The drama which unfolded yesterday or years ago needn’t affect your current state of mind or your sense of self-worth. When you feel that you have gained some proficiency with the task of unattached self -observation, such that a part of you can remain separate and watchful without being harsh or judgmental, then it may be time to regain energies that were lost due to past folly. Time to loosen the ties that bind past baggage to the present moment. The task is to step away from the cultural hypnosis to which we can be unwittingly engaged and toward an intentional goal-directed self-reflection. We have the ability to remember an amazing amount of information, even bits of experiences that have never before entered into our conscious perception or recall. By starting with the present moment or recent past and working toward your earliest memories – you may be surprised at how much you can remember and just how far back you can go. Though most persons won’t be able to remember much prior to the age of four years old, some may have select memories prior to their second year of life. When we take into consideration that a single undifferentiated cell once contained all of the information needed to create the myriad of forms and functions that are contained in each unique human body, it becomes easier to believe in the possibility that each experience records itself to some degree or another on the neural matrix that continues to reconfigure itself in the electrochemical gray pulp that we refer to as our cerebral cortex. That first undifferentiated cell (formed when sperm contacted egg) not only contained blue prints for future growth, but also recorded hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Darwinian scientists support the notion that physiogeny recapitulate phylogeny, which is to say that the fetus goes through stages in which it has both vestigial gills and a prehensile tail because man crawled out of the ocean after being a fish and walked bipedally on land only after climbing through the trees with four feet and a tail. If a single cell can know both who you will be fifty years from now and who you were five hundred thousand years ago, imagine what a whole brain full of memory cells might be capable of. In memory we might find the exact nuance of pitch and the wave form of a voice from a conversation long past, a blossom exhibiting a specific blended shading of color among the several thousand colors which can be distinguished, the scent of another person – a signature which can be duplicated by memory alone, as the same person (even) over time undergoes a subtle distinction. Forays into the past shouldn’t be casual, but refined – or you risk losing yourself to the past. As an example, let us consider the habit of talking to oneself. At some deeper level there is an ideation, a realization, an observation or perception. Thoughts and perceptions stream through our minds in great number. It has been found that women especially (with greater parallel as opposed to serial processing) may have several thoughts going through their mind simultaneously. Not all of our thoughts and perceptions make it from the subconscious to the conscious. Much energy is spent classifying and filtering out excess information. When something does make it to conscious consideration, we tend to further classify the experience by assigning basic verbiage. For example, when a person sees something red on top of a stove they might go through the following protocol: First they will experience a generalized apprehension or fear condition. Then, they will assign basic verbiage, “Alarm, I see red.” We are further habituated to apply advanced syntax and to complete a grammatically correct internal utterance. “The stove could be hot. I must be careful not to burn myself. The red lid that is lying on top of the stove looks much the same as a hot burner.” Accompanying the thought or perception (and requiring further energy expenditure) is the emotional charge that is present or later attached to the utterance. We tend then to further cross-reference both the original conscious ideation and the following utterance, as well as making necessary corrections in syntax or word choice. We then deposit the utterance into memory along with any response which may have been made to the utterance. “I musn’t burn myself like I did that one time…” (The conversation may branch off or continue on with the same subject almost indefinitely.) Depending upon the degree of obsession with regard to the person or the particular subject, persons may even find themselves repeating the same utterance verbatim, ad infinitum. (IE: “Don’t burn yourself. Don’t burn yourself…” How many times do we repeat to ourselves that we should or shouldn’t do a particular thing? The next step for some persons, though I’m sure that all of us do it at some time or another, is to repeat the utterance aloud. To recap, first there was a subconscious thought, it became conscious, we attached basic verbiage, arranged advanced syntax, made a complete internal utterance with a corresponding emotional charge, and may have even repeated it internally several times before saying it aloud. To this we must now add the external auditory perception of our own voice – and the corresponding memory deposit containing acoustical information. Thus, we manage for the majority of our waking lives to squander all of the energy that is available to us by being lost, not to the here and now, but to the moment that has just passed. Imagine how much further energy we might waste with a particular preoccupation – by continually running through mind or re-experiencing some unfortunate moment or incident in our personal history. It is worse than simply being stuck in the loop of some computer program, because our mind is like a disk drive that is continually both reading and re-writing itself. Our preoccupation generates an accumulation of useless and repetitive data. To past baggage we add even more baggage by further charging the preoccupation with our current vitality and emotion. Our energies are being poured into the past rather than reclaimed from it. From this type of activity we must achieve separation. Recapitulation should take place from the vantage of non-judgmental and relaxed observation. Feel and experience the memory to the fullest extent possible, then seek equanimity. Though some memories may be unpleasant, only step away from those which you are comfortable laying to rest. Once the negative emotional charge has been diminished, from every experience may be drawn strength or wisdom. If it didn’t kill you, then it can make you stronger. If you are being honest with yourself, not all of your memories will place you in a favorable light. It is our nature in being human to behave in ways which can be considered petty, greedy, obsessive, compulsive, irrational and self interested (along with a dozen other ill-sounding adjectives). It isn’t our task to balance the scales of justice in an attempt to determine whether we have been naughty or nice. Just be sure not to rose-tint your personal history through selective recollection. It is more important to sever ties that bind you to past unpleasantries than it is to pat yourself on the back for selfless deeds. ‘Without black, no white - without night, no day… between evil and good there is only the Grey.’ -

Begin the task of recapitulation by making yourself comfortable. Sit or lie down in a symmetrical or semi-fetal position with eyes closed. Preferably the location will be quiet and dark. Focus on slowing your breathing and heart rate. Seek ‘that which is between two thoughts’, clear your mind. Then gently pursue, as if tickling along a trail with a feather. At times, in order to succeed, it will be necessary to keep the goal in the back of your mind without actually struggling toward it. When you can’t think of a word that you are trying to say, all of the stumbling in the world may not bring it to mind. Instead, keep the goal ‘small as a grain of sand floating on the silken scarf’ that is your mind. Be mindful always of which way the breeze blows, whether you are breathing in or out. Without rush or agitation, the subconscious mind goes to work drawing you, without apparent effort, closer to your goal. Relaxing the mind is important when stretching the mental muscle. The idea is to gain insight into the experiences which seem to make you the person that you are today. To forgive yourself for indiscretions and imperfections. To sever the ties that bind you to unhealthy concerns or preoccupations. To view your life (in effect) as flashing before your eyes, such that you needn’t wait for some near-death experience to expose your true regrets, fears, or unfulfilled fantasies. In stretching the mental muscle and improving recall you will also be coaxing your conscious and subconscious ‘brains’ to work together. The eventual goal will be to improve dream recall, which is only a step away from gaining access to the subconscious mind while you sleep in the sorceric act of lucid dreaming or ‘dreaming awake’. Consider the following topics for recapitulation, choosing the ones that interest you the most. Conversely, the ones that you would least like to explore may turn out to be most fruitful as far as gaining insight and knowledge of self. You might delve into recollections concerning things that you have written or read, songs that you have heard or sung, persons that you have met or conversations that you have had, extended and immediate family, pets, lovers or enemies. Perhaps you will attempt to recall all the times that you have experienced love or lust, jealousy, anger, sorrow or loss, contentment or joy. Work, school, church, activities, or sports. Achievements, regrets, hopes or prayers. Conversations that you have had with yourself. Specific images or sounds. Dreams, spiritual moments, drug-related experiences, meditation, deja-vu, experiences involving birth or death, unexplainable phenomena, memorable storms or holiday celebrations. Bring back from these recollections pieces of self that were lost in the past. Reclaim all of yourself by remembering all that you have seen and done. When you feel that you have had a degree of success in this task, you may attempt the recollection of experiences which have never before entered the conscious mind. These experiences are your dreams and have shaped your person as surely as the external world. Even dreams that took place years ago, as with ordinary events, still remain stored in memory. Evidence of this exists with recurring dreams, which many persons have experienced at some time or another. A similar dream or dream locale may come to mind several nights in a row or on several different occasions years apart. When attempting to recall dreams that you have had it will be easier to start with dreams that have already made it to the conscious mind. These are dreams that were particularly vivid or dreams which you remember because you awoke suddenly in the middle of having them. From there you will discover that it is possible to bring to conscious recall dreams that may have taken place years ago but which have never before come to mind. In doing so, you will be gaining knowledge of the dreaming self.

“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.” - William Dement

DREAMING FOLLY

While relatively few persons will gain some semblance of control over the perpetual folly that takes place in the waking world, fewer still will manage to awaken to the folly of dreams. Freedom in the waking world is brought about by no longer being caught up in one’s own actions and perceptions. Acting without great attachment to action and perceiving without single-minded devotion to a particular band-width of perceptions; these are the ‘not-doings’ of being caught up in the waking world. Freedom in the world of dreams is brought about, similarily, by not being caught up in one’s own imagination. Toward this end, sorcerers of antiquity developed the art of the ‘waking dream’, ‘dreaming awake’ or lucid dreaming as it is referred to today. When you awaken to the fact that you are currently engaged in a dream, you are remembering (and experiencing) the dreaming self, the self in you that dreams. This self is usually under complete control of your sub-conscious mind. In a waking dream the sub-conscious and conscious mind begin to overlap, yet you remain asleep and continue to have the rapid eye movements which characterize the dreaming state.

One moment you are surrounded by persons and things, then you suddenly realize that all of it is but an unwitting choice of perception – dreaming folly. It is not unusual for the excited initiate to awaken from both sleep and dreams after coming to this realization. If it is your intent to do so you may, however, remain asleep. The realization that you are dreaming is often one that is quite fleeting and passes as quickly as it came. A small portion of your mind may continue to view the remainder of the dream somewhat more objectively. Or a larger portion of yourself may rise up and cause the dream to disperse altogether. If you do continue to remain ‘adream’ all things previously seen or heard may disappear entirely. The dreamer then finds their self surrounded by an infinite stretch of blackness. Says Havelock Ellis in ‘The World of Dreams’, “It is the charm of dreams that they introduce us into a new infinity. Time and space are annihilated, gravity is suspended, and we are joyfully borne up in the air, as it were in the arms of angels, we are brought into a deeper communion with Nature.” And brought to a greater understanding of our own nature, I might add. After escaping from some of your own delusions you will find that on this plane of existence the body is not physical or solid, but luminous, ephemeral or energetic. Science has advanced to a state of viewing all matter as energy. Atoms formed of neutrons, protons and electrons. Quirks, quarks, ‘charms’, and dark matter. Miniature solar systems of free-floating energetic bodies in orbital mimicry of the heavens. Having awakened to the self in you that dreams, your dreaming senses will begin to fall under conscious control. The domain that surrounds you will be physically empty, but energetically full. As you stand awake at some place and time in the waking world, so too, do you exist dreaming in a world of dreams and dreamers. There are places to go where you will be alone and places where you will have to be blind in every sense to miss the energetic manifestations which will surround you. There will be new rules to follow, such as ‘Why walk when you can fly?’ The degree to which we fixate on the waking world is almost absolute, such that we commonly behave in the dreaming world as we would in the waking one. Waking to the world of dreams allows us a new freedom, the freedom to explore the vastness of an entirely different and unique domain. In dreams we can be at both our best and our worst, doing things that we wouldn’t have the courage or audacity to do while awake. We may awaken the Beast, unfettered by moral dilemma or fear of reprisal. We may awaken to the evolution of our spirit, our inner child, or to our most sagacious potential. The Aborigines believe that before all else there was the Dream Time, a time during which all things were created. Aborigines share their dreams with each other and excel at dream recall. In their dreams they interact with other dreamers and entities which may be friendly or hostile. Especially significant are dreams in which they interact and achieve communion with an animal spirit. Children are taught at a very early age that how they behave and react in the world of dreams is as important as how they react to and behave in the waking world. If they encounter an entity which they find frightening then they are expected to turn toward and face their fear. In dreams we practice, recapitulate and learn. In dreams we may experience things beyond our wildest imagination, energetic configurations outside our waking perceptual focus. None-the-less, our reactions to these dreaming events shape the very essence of our personality and being. You are, whether dreaming or awake, 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent what you make of it. Welcome to dream karma. Every action that you take in the world of dreams has as much influence and significance (if not more) on the state of your soul or overall mental health as any action that you take in the waking world. And so, if you believe that after death you will simply cease to exist and that there will be no continuation or reckoning, then feel free to run rampant. Dreams will be your playground. Almost every person there will bend to your will. Your hedonism needn’t have any bounds. You may use drugs in dreams, lie, cheat, steal, rape, pillage, plunder and kill. Live like a king and make others bow before you while you play God. Free will. It is our greatest asset - and liability. The first fully lucid dream that I am able to recall occurred shortly after reading LaBerghes book titled ‘Lucid Dreaming’. Something struck me as being odd, though I don’t remember what, at which point I remarked “This must be a dream!” On previous occasions this realization caused me to immediately wake up, but on this occasion I was able to stay with the dream for a short duration. I knew at that moment that anything that I saw or heard would likely be of my own creation and so I chose to see a beautifully kaleidoscopic rainbow pattern and to hear a cascading choir of angelic song. Knowing that for the moment I could choose to feel any way that I wanted – I made a conscious decision to feel absolute joy. A moment or two later I woke up to the sound of my own laughter… and stayed in a remarkably good mood for several days. Many of the lucid dreams which followed were only partially lucid. I would realize that I was dreaming, but the elements of the dream would remain. It was partially lucid in that I was able to maintain some small awareness of the dreaming state and exercised some degree of conscious control regarding my course of action in the dream. I went through a phase in which I was disgustingly selfserving. My new-found partial control coupled with a complete lack of sensitivity brought out the Beast in me. Having a strong sexual appetite (or nature), I spent a great deal of time forcing my will on those around me. I grabbed. I pinched. I stripped bare and had my way with many a maiden fair. This went on for some time until I realized that one of two things was taking place. Either the women were of my own creation (different aspects of my own sub-conscious personality) and so I was raping myself… or on some occasions the women were not of my own creation (but were the dreaming souls of other entirely real persons) and so I was committing rape against another living person or entity. Upon reflection, I didn’t find either possibility particularly appealing. And so the seed was sown for a lucid dream conscience. With our ordinary consciousness we can aspire to experience and master the entire gamut of human alternatives. Everything which can be known or chosen by us as human beings is within our limited reach. When we awaken to our dreams we may pass beyond human alternatives and delve into the possibilities that exist for us as energetic beings. With the body as an object among objects we tackle the known, as energetic beings we are capable of tackling the unknown in its far vaster scope. Should a person have no urge to explore, if standing at the gate between two worlds is enough for them, then they still will have replaced 10-15 years of utter folly (ordinary dreaming) with 10-15 years of conscious life. Before beginning to summarize the various techniques employed by lucid dreamers it will be useful to digress to a sorceric explanation of awareness.

THE ASSEMBLAGE POINT

The unfocused awareness that we are born with is quickly harnessed into attention; the ability to focus on particular phenomena, particular emanations. At any one time our perceptual focus is engaged by only a small portion of the emanations that surround us. From this portion we are able to assemble a coherent picture of the world that lies before us. Sorcerers, seeing that attention may shift to include other bands of awareness, call the current location of our attention ‘the point at which we have assembled’ or our ‘assemblage point’. We are coerced from an early age to assemble on particular bands of awareness. Our peers beckon us to fixate on the same emanations that they do, in part, by teaching us to practice an increasingly complex internal dialogue. The habit of this dialogue serves to hold steady our assemblage point. In this way our arbitrary species specific umvelt (our cultural trance) is passed on and adopted. In most persons this state of being remains the status quo and the ability of the assemblage point to shift remains in the background for the duration of our lives unless it is brought about by deliberate training or accidental trauma. The intentional shifting of the assemblage point is of central importance to the practice of sorcery, indeed, all sorceric practices are geared to this end. Stopping the internal dialogue breaks the self-absorption of the ego with the waking world and frees up the energy that we pour into our words. This practice of controlled folly conserves energy and lessons the rigidity of a fixated assemblage point. Sorcerers, noticing that the assemblage point is naturally displaced to various positions during the course of sleep and dreams, also employ the use of lucid dreaming as an aide to heightened awareness. The concentration needed to be aware that one is having a dream is distinct from that which is needed to deal with the physical world. The ability to have conscious dream awareness is a path, among many, reaching toward the energetic self. As a small portion of our self monitors the environment around our body even while we sleep, so too does a portion of our self dream even while we are fully awake. Reaching the energetic self from a state of wakefulness isn’t brought about by doing some technique so much as the not-doing of being fixated on the waking world.

TRICKS OF THE TRADE

It may be useful is discussing the techniques used by dreamers to draw a distinction between various overlapping and related phenomena. Hypnagogic imagery refers to the auditory and visual segments or fragments which most usually accompany a persons initial descent from wakefulness to dreaming sleep. They may range from simple sounds and flashes of color to metamorphysizing pictures or lengthy verbal utterances. They are not yet dreams in that they seem to spring forth spontaneously from the subconscious and lack the continuity of an ongoing story. We will define an ordinary dream as being any dream in which the dreamer is responsible for creating all of the dreams elements subconsciously and upon awakening has no conscious recall of anything that transpired. A lucid dream is any dream in which the dreamer gains at least temporary conscious knowledge of the fact that he or she is actively dreaming while their body is asleep. A lucid dream may be only partially lucid such that the dreamer gains no particular control over the dream or is unable to maintain dream lucidity (with the dream lapsing back to the ordinary). Or a dream may be more fully lucid such that consciousness of the dreaming state is maintained for a longer period of time and a greater degree of control is exercised over the course of the dream or the dreams elements. Apart from hypnagogic imagery, ordinary dreams and lucid dreams - we must also differentiate ‘real dreams’. Real dreams are frequently accompanied by an overpowering sense of realism. The dreamer has no doubt that what they are experiencing isn’t an ordinary dream. The dreamer may or may not awaken to the fact that they are dreaming during a ‘real’ dream. These dreams are real because dreaming takes place in a world of dreams. At times you may dream alone, but at other times the dreaming world will demand your attention. When the essence of two entities overlaps their shared dream will be much more real than the dream created by a solitary individual. The interaction that takes place between self and other creates a tension or energetic torsion which may shock a dreamer from the stupor of an ordinary dream to an experience much more profound. A –fully- lucid dream is also a ‘real’ dream in that the dreamer is no longer creating dreaming elements, but is experiencing the actual content of the dreaming world, whether or not they experience themselves as being alone or in the company of another individual at that time. To top off any confusion you may have regarding these four types of dreams (hypnagogic, ordinary, lucid and real), each of them may occur without recall upon awakening. Hypnagogic imagery and ordinary dreams are most easily lost to the subconscious depths of the mind. Lucid dreams are ordinarily remembered upon awakening due to the fact that the conscious and subconscious mind overlap for at least a short time during the dream. However, when the dream ends there is no guarantee that you will recall your dreaming lucidity. Real dreams are easier to remember than ordinary dreams, but not necessarily easier to remember than a lucid dream (unless the real dream was accompanied by lucidity). In an interesting cultural case study, “The Temne, a people inhabiting Sierra Leone and the Guinea Coast of West Africa… (in their) cosmological vision four worlds are distinguised: the visible world inhabited by human beings, the world inhabited by the spirits, the world inhabited by the ancestors, and the world inhabited by witches. The last three worlds are regarded as towns that surround ordinary people (at all times) although they are invisible. Only certain people, possessing two ordinary eyes and two invisible eyes, can penetrate the darkness of the invisible worlds.” (An excerpt from James R. Lewis’s ‘The Dream Encyclopedia’.) Having a lucid dream is akin to opening your ‘invisible eyes’, the eyes of your energetic self. These eyes may be encouraged to open by cultivating different types of awareness while in the waking world. Different types of meditation may be used to supplement controlled folly. The three types of meditation which follow will better prepare you for experiencing a lucid dream.

BREATHE EDEN

From time to time evoke a relaxed posture in whatever position that you choose. Personally, I prefer lying down with my eyes closed. Begin to focus all of your attention on your breathing. Each time that you exhale imagine as fully as possible that your exhalation is making the area immediately around you a warmer, greener, more lush and tropical place. With each breath attempt to expand this ‘sensual jungle paradise’ outward, expanding your sphere of influence as far as possible. The only aspects of awareness that should pierce the shroud of your imagination are natural ones such that the whispering of the wind or the chirping of insects will add fuel to the harmonious garden that you are shaping. Attempting to mold the world in this way will help to draw out the subconscious self which creates its own world each night in dreams.

MIND OF MOEBIUS

Awareness is a fluid enterprise. Much like an ameba, it is able to stretch first in one direction… and then in another direction altogether. We necessarily leave behind potential aspects of our perception when we shift our focus to include other incoming bits of information. The Moebius meditation isn’t about expanding that field of perception, but rather, it concerns a narrowing of that focus. The task is to close your eyes and to clear the mind of all thoughts. It is a new experience for some to fall silent without falling asleep. When the world is only a void or a vacuum in your mind, then it is time to gather every bit or your awareness and perception into a singularity, a tiny point of immensely bright light. All that you are should be fed into that floating pulsar until there is only the point of light surrounded by the void. When you have accomplished this degree of focus then you will be ready to exercise the fluidity of your awareness. With every ounce of your being you will attempt to trace the path of the Moebius Strip. Your consciousness should ride the strip as if it were a roller coaster. The Strip, unlike most 3-dimensional objects, has only two sides. It has only one edge and one face, both of which run uninterupted along the construct. The exercise will be of greater benefit if you can experience your whole self as moving along the surface. A lesser degree of success can be achieved by imaging the Strip as a small construct just before your eyes with a point of light correctly tracing the correct path. Either way, you will find that the exercise is more difficult than you might imagine it to be. It’s easy to ‘fall off’ or lose your place on the strip without a great deal of fluid and focused awareness.

FACING THE DOUBLE

Wherever you happen to be, imagine yourself as clearly as possible as being a short distance away from where you actually are. If you are sitting in a chair then imagine that your dreaming self is standing a few feet in front of you, facing your current position and looking right back at you. Alternately, you may imagine that your energetic self is floating with legs crossed a few feet behind you at shoulder height and is looking over your shoulder. Whatever you see or hear should take just a moment longer to react to as the information must travel first to your ephemeral self who will then pull the strings to activate the puppet that is your physical body. This meditation works to evoke a sort of dual awareness that is reminiscent of a scene from the works of Carlos Castaneda in which his teacher Don Juan explains that, “..his double is dreaming him at the same time he is dreaming his double”. In other words, if ever your dreaming self is looking down on your physical body asleep in bed, your physical body is also dreaming of you in return.

For most persons lucid dreaming is a veiled faculty, an ability unknowingly possessed. As it turns out this is the case for adults even more so than it is for children. Just as infants are born able to swim and then quickly forget how if the ability is not exercised, children are natural born lucid dreamers. In a study by Deborah Armstrong-Hickey (from DeCastles ‘Our Dreaming Mind’) 63 percent of ten year olds average at least one lucid dream per month, 58 percent of eleven year olds, and 36 percent of twelve year olds…etc. It appears that the ability to both have and recall lucid dreams declines with age. A survey by Jayne Gackenbach indicates that only 20 percent of adults average one lucid dream per month. Only 60 percent of the adult population claims to recall having had a lucid dream at least once in their life time (demonstrating that lucid dreams aren’t always remembered for any length of time since 63 percent of ten year olds were having at least one per month!) For the purpose of these studies a ‘lucid dream’ was any dream in which there was even partial awareness of the dreaming state. Gackenbach also reports that approximately 13 percent of the dreams recorded the morning after in dream journals have lucid content. And so, if it is your goal to achieve dreaming lucidity then you may wish to work on improving dream recall by keeping a journal of your dreaming experiences. Just keep a pad and pen by the bed for when you awaken in the middle of the night or the wee hours of the morning. You’ll notice that talking to yourself causes dreams and dream fragments to flee immediately from conscious recall. Clear your mind and stay lying down with your eyes closed, then ‘tickle as with a feather’ if you wish to remember. James R. Lewis, author of ‘The Dream Encyclopedia’ says, “Even people who remember their dreams every night only remember the last several dreams they had immediately before awakening. Dreams from the early and middle periods of sleep are permanently forgotten.” While I don’t agree with the ‘permanently’ part, he does bring up an interesting phenomena. It is the case that later dreams are easier to recall. It is also the case that dreams are stored in memory a bit differently than things that take place in the waking world. When, for example, we are recalling a story that we have been told (aside from major plot twists or the climax) it is a simple matter to picture the events as they unfolded from start to finish. When attempting to recall a dream things somehow work in reverse. In order to remember approximately how a dream began it is usually necessary to begin at the end of the dream and then work your way backwards. As for dreams being permanently forgotten… I can’t say how many times I have suddenly gained recall of a dream which took place years ago and that never before made it to conscious recall. I have also had dreams that took place years apart but which were identical in theme, scenery or location. Dreaming déjà vu is usually quite accurate. Though lucid dreams are more likely to occur after a few hours of sleep, they may also occur during the first few hours of sleep or even immediately after the very first dream begins. It is more likely than not that almost every dream that you have ever had is somehow expressed in your long term memory, though normally available only to the subconscious mind. If you decide to keep a dream journal consider keeping track of all things dream related. From hypnagogic imagery (images and sounds that occur while passing from waking to sleeping) to hypnopompic imagery (images and sounds that occur while passing from sleep and dreams to a state of of wakefullness). From partially lucid dreams to fully lucid dreams. From ordinary (self-created) dreams that you are able to recall to real dreams (in which there seem to be actual outside influences). In order to gain lucid acuity, attempt especially to record instances in which you experience only partially lucid dreams. These are dreams in which you were at least temporarily aware of being a dreamer but had little control over the dreaming environment or your own actions. While undertaking outlandish maneuvers (like flying or breathing under water or other actions not possible in a physical world) your movements may have been choppy or only moderately successful. You may find yourself settling for one outcome instead of another more preferable outcome. You may be unable to perform some action that you know you could (such as floating up to the clouds). It may take great effort to perform an action that you know could be easy. You may fly for a short duration and then find yourself falling. These dreams are partially lucid because you have gained a measure of control, but are still facing a degree of opposition. After recording these instances, resolve to conquer your inhibitions and to succeed where you may have faltered. From David Fontana’s book ‘The Secret Language of Dreams’, “Lucid dreaming is achieved by an act of will, but not by an act of teeth-gritting determination. Like any creative activity, it is most readily achieved by a mind that is concentrated, motivated and persistent, but at the same time light and playful." Whether or not your attempts at lucid dreaming meet with immediate or delayed success, keeping a dream journal will undoubtedly give you insight into your own personality. Dreams shed light on our hopes and fears, our noblest goals and our most base perversions. Even without lucid dreaming you will undoubtedly have both ordinary and real dreams. So long as you are able to recall them, they will reveal a wealth of information. An example would be a particularly telling dream which was, for me, very real. As if pulled from a scene out of Siddartha (the book), I was sitting cross-legged in a wooded locale next to a meandering river. A kindly looking shorter gentleman with a balding crown introduced himself to me and instructed me to choose one of his daughters at my leisure (and for my pleasure). The first woman stood before me smiling, she was blonde and easily the most attractive of the three. If I had to give her a name I would have called her ‘Beauty’. The second woman standing before me was brunette and held a dour smile. Her eyes shone with playful argument and reason, her name would have been ‘Intelligence’. The third woman had black hair and a slightly wild or unkempt look. She turned away from me and went to her hands and knees by the river urging me to mount. Her I would name ‘Animal Lust’. Unlike Siddarth Guatama Buddha, I did not put my palm to the earth and dissipate the Maya Man and the illusion that was before me. I chose the latter of the three women – and in doing so gained insight into my most personal self, a taste of my own true nature. (I am fond of women who are straight forward, somewhat animalistic, and don’t require me to make the first move. As an aside, for some reason, I don’t normally develop romantic feelings for a woman until I have dreamed of her!) Carl Jung once wrote, “I want to know for what a man is preparing himself. This is what I read out of his dreams.” Without lucid dreaming the subconscious mind will continue to plod toward wholeness, but with lucid dreaming you may be able to dance and fly toward fulfillment. For Jung the dream is a, “…meeting point between all that the individual had been in the past and all that the individual might be in the future.” If willpower alone doesn’t seem to be doing the trick, you may wish to explore the potentials of self hypnosis. Self-hypnosis is a matter of mind-over-mind. When one person hypnotizes another the subject is implicitly agreeing to agree upon whatever the hypnotist says. They are also agreeing to do just about anything that the hypnotist suggests so long as it is within there power to do so. The person is, you might say, surrendering the better part of both their will and judgement to the hypnotist. Selfhypnosis is a bit different in that you partition off a lesser part of yourself to give instructions while the greater portion of your being agrees implicitly to follow these instructions. While it may sound a bit like intentional schizophrenia, the technique may be useful in several different ways. The goal of selfhypnosis should be decided in advance such that once begun the greater portion of yourself may proceed as the subject rather than the hypnotist. This ‘division of self’ is responsible for persons being able to localize pain such that a person skilled in self-hypnosis may undergo surgery without the need for anesthesia. Understanding how hypnosis works may make it more difficult for some persons to become hypnotized for fear of ‘surrendering their will’. These same persons should have no difficulty hypnotizing themselves, however, after learning the procedure. It is usually estimated that 90-95 percent of adults may achieve some level of hypnosis, with 25-40 percent capable of being led into a deep sonambulistic trance. Persons that can be hypnotized this deeply may be commanded to sleep or even dream at will. Persons who do not make for good candidates are the mentally handicapped and children under the age of ten or twelve. These persons lack enough focused attention for the hypnotist to ‘capture’. The hypnotists job is to shut down or short circuit the subjects ability or desire to persist in the exercise of reason (and consequently, the internal dialogue). By way of example, the hypnotist usually request that the subject closes his or her eyes and focuses solely on the sound of their voice. The hypnotist uses a smooth and monotone voice as well as a rehearsed script or several scripts skillfully pieced together. They begin with suggestions so as not to arouse resentment. They might start by saying, ‘I want you to take a deep breath, hold it.. and let it out’ He then guides the subject to breathe more slowly and deeply. This decreases mental activity and puts the person into an altered state of relaxation not unlike that which precedes a persons going to sleep. The hypnotist gradually moves
from making suggestions to making statements of fact. ‘You are now more relaxed. Your limbs are beginning to feel heavy. You have no desire to move them whatsoever. The darkness is soothing. It makes you want to just slump down in your chair and let go further.’ A stage hypnotist usually begins the show by running through a few test exercises which facilitate his choosing the most suggestible subjects. The suggestions that the hypnotist gives are timed to coincide with whatever bio-feedback he is able to pick up. If he sees that your eyelids are drooping or beginning to blink more often then he says, ‘it’s becoming more difficult to keep your eyes open’, etc. When you are hypnotizing yourself you won’t need to be practiced at reading another person’s body language. The suggestions that you make will coincide exactly with your current state of relaxation. If you are a person capable of achieving a sonambulistic trance then it will be possible for you to enter into a lucid dream directly from a state of self-hypnosis. The only procedure is to bring yourself closer to the world of dreams by becoming increasingly relaxed. When you get close enough you will either enter into a lucid dream or lapse into the ordinary dreams which accompany normal sleep. If this procedure gives you any difficulty, self-hypnosis may yet avail your cause. After entering into the deepest state of relaxation possible, give yourself a clear and explicit directive to have more lucid dreams more often. This is known as a post-hypnotic suggestion and may prove quite useful. If the idea of self-hypnosis just doesn’t rub you right, then consider making a waking suggestion. Just before releasing yourself to sleep, re-iterate your desire to experience a lucid dream. Make plans to take some particular action in the world of dreams. As a child I went though a phase during which I had to contend almost nightly with nightmares. Like most boys, my nightmares generally revolved around large animals, a monster or beast. In order to combat these nightmares I intentionally went to sleep thinking about all of the super powers that I would like to possess; like being invisible, able to fly or stop time. This pre-sleep imagination enabled me to take control more often of the dreams that followed. After these self-suggestions more of my dreams tended to be pleasant or benign. Similarly, by imagining yourself becoming lucid in dreams before going to sleep it is likely that you will increase the odds of your actually doing so. By effort of will you may also attempt to focus on the hypnagogic imagery and sounds which precede the initial stage of dreaming sleep. The task is to pay attention to your ‘slide to the underside’. The conscious internal dialogue that we maintain begins to shift and give way to the subconscious conversations that the conscious self will not remember. It is especially useful at this time to clear the mind of all thought… then anything that pops into your head will be from the subconscious and recognized as such. To maintain lucidity from the passage between awake to dreaming, there must remain a small seed of unperturbed consciousness. In order for sleep and dreams to come, the seed (initially, at least) must not be too large, nor can it be sending out roots in order to grasp or affect the events unfolding around it. If the seed of consciousness can be maintained while the rudimentary hypnagogic images shape themselves into more fully formed images, then dreaming lucidity will be achieved. Since a portion of the mind continually monitors the environment surrounding the physical body even while asleep and adream, there are physical maneuvers which may be employed toward the end of gaining lucidity as well. Arm Raised – For this maneuver a person should be tired, but not unduly so. Prior to going to sleep the person lies flat on their back with one arm raised off the bed from the elbow up (the forearm is raised vertically while the elbow still rests on the bed). The person asserts to themselves that though it is alright to fall asleep, that they will maintain the 90 degree angle of the arm raised in the air. When a person accomplishes the task of dreaming with their forearm raised, they will have successfully forced a greater degree of lucidity (or consciousness) to accompany them into the world of dreams. They will be remembering the physical self even as they dream and will gain greater knowledge of the dreaming state. Sitting Position – Many persons attempting to experience a lucid dream have success with the maneuver of sitting upright. A person need only resolve to fall asleep while remaining in an upright
position. The difficulty that one has in keeping the arm raised or remaining in an upright position usually occurs with the onset of the hypnagogic imagery, the shift from conscious to subconscious mind. Persons may find themselves distracted to the point of not being able to fall asleep or of being continually reawoken as their arm or head begins to fall. Others may simply lose focus and drift into sleep after allowing their arm to fall back down. Persons who are having a difficult time falling asleep with their arm raised shouldn’t have as much difficulty falling asleep, if they are truly tired, while sitting upright with their back against a wall. Use pillows as necessary to support the lower back and neck. The uniqueness of the sitting position is likely to work itself into the dreams which follow to such an extent that the person is forced to remember the physical self and realize that they are experiencing a dream. State Checking – Steps may be taken during normal wakefulness in effort to affect your sleep and dreams. The aim is to increase the likelihood of asking yourself, “Is what I am currently experiencing a dream?” Some persons attempt to make a habit of asking themselves this question throughout the day in hopes that this ‘script’ will eventually carry over into their dreaming lives. You may take this exercise a step further by purchasing a cheap watch (or an expensive one as suits your tastes) which emits a small beep or chirp every hour on the hour. Every time that you hear the beep you must make the effort to briefly pause, gather your wits, concentrate your powers of discrimination and then ask the all important question, “Dreaming or Awake?” Picking up the habit and successfully carrying it over into the world of dreams isn’t completely foolproof. We spend so much time treating dreams as if they were a physical (waking) reality that we may continue to believe the illusion even after the pause of self reflection. However, the likelihood of answering correctly the ‘dreaming or awake’ question grows exponentially after we remember to be aware of it as an issue of contention. If it is possible for you to do so, set a watch to make the single beep every 90 minutes throughout the day. The significance of the 90 minute interval is that it roughly equates to the lapse of time that takes place between REM (dreaming) periods of sleep. Most persons pass through around five dreaming sessions each night. Each dreaming session is generally longer than the one that preceded it. A person may also use a wristwatch with an alarm function to wake themselves every 90 minutes throughout the night. Upon awakening it is likely that they will remember at least a portion of the dream that was interrupted, thereby increasing dream recall. One Eastern belief suggests that this is more than just a rude awakening. Some persons believe that the spirit leaves the body in its nightly travels and that if a person is startled or awoken too quickly that the spirit may become confused or lost and unable to return to its physical form. Personally, I always find waking up to an alarm clock harsh enough once per night and wouldn’t subjugate myself to this type of treatment. But death or a ‘loss of spirit’ aren’t likely to result. Even so, persons now have the option of utilizing a clock which awakens them with soft and pleasant sounds or a soft glowing light that grows ever brighter. Not being a morning person, I can appreciate taking a few moments to shift from dreams to the waking world. As an interesting aside, the artist Dali referred to his work as “hand-painted dream photographs” and would sleep with an intense light on in order to heighten the visual intensity of his dreams. If you find losing a bit of sleep or wearing a wristwatch abhorant, then you may attempt to form a statechecking habit without their aide. Once every one and half hours or so throughout the day try to examine one or both of your hands in great detail while asking yourself, ‘Are these my physical hands or my dreaming hands?’ It isn’t enough to just remember to ask the question, it must be followed by a detailed inspection. The reason being that in dreams we often have difficulty duplicating the minute intricacies of a physical object. Like trying to read a book in your dreams, the words are liable to shift and jumble around on the page. A few seconds of examination will make it difficult for you to ‘explain away’ any variation that you may see from one moment to the next. Just as waking preoccupations eventually make their way into our dreams, so too, will an intentionally formed habit of state-checking. If you do not wish to be a creature of habit, then there is a variation on this theme which doesn’t require any intentional preoccupation. A person not used to wearing jewelry can dress themselves in either a ring or a necklace just prior to going to sleep. A ring may be preferable if you wish to avoid dreams in which you are being strangled or choked, but also isn’t quite as effective. It is likely that at some point during the night the jewelry will affect a dream that you are having. The trick will be to remember the actual cause rather than explaining it away or incorporating it into the dream without further attention. Just as when your clothing or bedding become too tight, hot or restrictive – your inclination will be to assume that the dream itself is the cause of your discomfort. If this isn’t working for you, then try supplementing the tactic by wearing a piece of “dream jewelry” while you are awake.. in the same place that you wear the real physical jewelry while you are asleep. Throughout the day periodically recall the position of the imagination jewelry, envisioning it in as much detail as possible. Before going to bed mentally remove the imagination jewelry and put on the real thing. As you come to recall the presence of the imagined jewelry in the waking world, so too, may you increase your recall of the real physical artifact amidst otherwise ordinary dreams. Another way to influence your dreams with an item from the waking world would be to go and and purchase (or mail order) a ‘dream mask’. The DreamLight, as it is called, consists of a mask that covers the eyes with built in flashing red L.E.D. lights that activate with the onset of REM sleep. After incorporating the flashing red lights into your dreams as UFO’s or cars going past on a busy road, it is likely you will remember that the effect is from the mask and that you are dreaming, thereby inducing lucidity. If you goal is to increase dream recall and lucidity then you may also choose to suffer the inconvenience of causing yourself to rise from bed several times each night out of natural necessity. By drinking ‘pee water’ (water whose only purpose is to cause you to rise from bed several times each night in order to piss) just before going to bed, you are assured that you will need to rise to full consciousness at least once during the night. Your need to relieve yourself will introduce itself without fail into the dream. And so, when you dream that you need to take a piss, you will have the opportunity to realize that you are in fact dreaming. This practice may be more trouble than it is worth, especially for men – who become engorged when they dream and upon awakening will need to find some way to
make water south of the border. (Time to practice the control of blood flow!) Women, also, become engorged with blood in the nether regions during dreaming but won’t have a particularly difficult time relieving themselves thereafter. Members of at least one Native American Indian tribe used a similar trick to achieve wakefulness throughout the night and so that they would rise (of necessity) early in the morning before a war party could sneak up on them unawares. What you must not do is drink any sort of alcoholic beverage before going to bed. While one drink may help some persons to fall asleep, any more will wreak havoc on your ability to have pleasant or normal dreams what-so-ever. Drugs and alcohol taken when a person should be going to sleep lead toward ‘..the dark and tasteless after hours that constitute premature bliss on more hellish days’. The dreams that result will very likely be unpleasant or even nightmarish. While a person might make some argument for the use of drugs in the waking world, drugs do no belong in the world of dreams. In dreams, all states of mind and being are already readily available. They await only personal preference and the choice that we must make with free will. The ability to recall that we may exercise this option in our dreams may be strengthened by our resolve or determination (willpower). We may increase willpower through the practice of ‘clear-minded’ meditation. Lengthening the amount of time spent in meditation is akin to stretching the mental muscle. Meditation also conserves energy such that it may be redeployed as the energy which is required to change the course of our dreams.

AWAKEN DREAMS

Sleep researchers suggest that there are four different levels of dreaming sleep. As the night goes on we tend to dream less deeply. Which is to say that we are more likely to awaken during later dreams, more likely to recall them, and more likely to achieve lucidity (conscious recognition of the dreaming state) after we are fairly well rested. While dreams which are ‘super real’ will likely be remembered no matter when they occur, our best chance of unmasking ordinary dreams is more toward the waking hour. And so, persons attempting to have lucid dreams should sleep-in whenever possible. During these later dreams it becomes easier to take notice of the abnormalities which should indicate a dreaming state of mind. Math becomes very difficult in dreams, as does reading or telling the time. Numbers and words tend to shift and change. It is unlikely that you will ever read an entire paragraph while you are dreaming. Items tend to metamorphosize into other items. A person that you are speaking to one minute.. is someone else entirely in the next moment. Scenery and location can change or shift without so much as a blur. To the dreaming mind these things make perfect sense and need no explanation. But, if by some chance you begin to register some small amount of disbelief, the dreaming mind steps in and creates a perfectly believable (if not logical) explanation. We are great storytellers. And in dreaming it is as if we have agreed to become hypnotized, to suspend disbelief and to believe everything that we are telling ourselves. Sometimes the conscious mind is able to break through this façade and we find ourselves saying, ‘it simply cannot be so’. At this point most persons exit a dream that has been shattered by reason to a state of wakefulness. The option exists, however, to remain asleep and to continue to dream. Simply reengage your interest in the elements of the dream or actively engage in the creation of new elements. If a dream begins to lose cohesion you might also try spinning like a top or a figure skater. The experience of twirling is so far removed from what your physical body is experiencing that it is likely your interest will be rekindled. Alternately, you can envision yourself becoming as thin as mist. Sometimes the trick to having a lucid dream isn’t remaining asleep so much as realizing that you aren’t really awake. It is toward morning that persons are most likely to experience a ‘false awakening’. Back when there were B.B.S.’s (Bulletin Board Systems) and long before the World Wide Web, I created a text adventure game by the name of ‘WHOA!’ The game began with a young man being rudely awoken by his mum and progressed into a very strange world where dogs wore clothing and all of the people did not. The game ends when he realizes that he hasn’t really woken up and that everything he experienced was only a dream. Deprive yourself of sleep or set an alarm clock for way too early in the morning and a false awakening will be more likely to occur. Unless the entertainment value far
outweighs showing up late for school or work, this isn’t actually recommended. It is possible to realize the situation for what it is when it does arise and realize during a false awakening that you are actually still dreaming. The last chance to achieve dreaming lucidity each night occurs during the transition from dreaming to awake. Though we awaken for a very short duration several times each night, the last transition (after which we arise for a new day) may be the most fruitful. As the dreaming schema (story line) loses validity and cohesion the dream begins to break down into separate components or elements. Persons become only faces or voices. Scenery changes into simple shapes or flashes of light. If you have had little success in gaining lucidity during the hypnagogic (awake to dream) imagery, then perhaps you will have more success in gaining lucidity through the examination of your hypnopompic imagery as you are coming awake. After the seed of your conscious mind has begun to sprout, simply allow the dreaming elements to persist for as long as possible. Finally, there remains yet one more alternative for those that have failed to achieve lucidity by every other means. Though undoubtedly the most difficult path to follow, a rare few will have a natural affinity for this course of study. It is possible to gain lucid dreaming awareness while transitioning from the unconscious state (wherein there is little or no brain wave activity) to the subconscious and dreaming state. This is somewhat akin to remembering ones own birth, as the person passes from a state of near death to one of conscious (although it be subconscious) life. This claim isn’t far removed from the truth of the matter as it is not uncommon for a person to stop breathing during unconscious sleep for up to ten seconds at a time - before some small seed of the conscious mind tugs hard enough to cause the body to breath, and to live, and to resist the pull of sleep, which has been called “death’s little sister”.