Quote:
The Experience of Lucid Dreaming
If you haven’t yet had a lucid dream, you may find it difficult to imagine what it is like. Although you have to experience it to really know what it is like (“Those who taste, know”), it is possible to get an idea of the experience by comparing lucid dreaming to a presumably more familiar state of consciousness: the one you are in right now! The following experiential exercise will guide you through a tour of your everyday waking state of con-ciousness. Spend about one minute on each of the steps.
EXERCISE: YOUR PRESENT STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
1. Look
Become aware of what you see: notice the richly varied and vivid impressions— shapes, colors, movement, dimensionality, the entire visible world.
2. Listen
Become aware of what you hear: register the various sounds taken in by your ears—a diverse range of intensities, pitches, and tonal qualities, perhaps including the commonplace miracle of speech or the wonder of music.
3. Feel
Become aware of what you touch: texture (smooth, rough, dry, sticky, or wet), weight (heavy, light, solid, or empty), pleasure, pain, heat and cold, and the rest. Also note how your body feels right now and compare that to the many other ways it feels at other times, tired or energetic, stiff or limber, painful or pleasant, and so on.
4. Taste
Become aware of what it is like to taste: taste a number of different foods and substances, or remember and vividly imagine their tastes.
5. Smell
Become aware of what you smell: the odor of warm bodies, earth, incense, smoke, perfume, coffee, onions, alcohol, and the sea. Remember and imagine as many of them as you can.
6. Breathing
Attend to your breathing. A moment ago you probably were not consciously aware of your breathing even though you have inhaled and exhaled fifty times while doing this exercise. Hold your breath for a few seconds. Let it out. Now take a deep breath. Notice that being conscious of your breathing allows you to alter it deliberately.
7. Emotions
Become aware of your feelings. Remember the difference between anger and joy, serenity and excitement, and as many other emotions as you care to feel. How real do emotions feel?
8. Thoughts
Become aware of your thoughts. What have you been thinking while doing this exercise? What are you thinking right now? How real do thoughts seem?
9. “I”
Become aware of the fact that your world always includes you. As William James noted, it is / see, / hear, / feel, I think that is the basic fact of experience. 5 You are not what you see, hear, think, or feel; you have these experiences. Perhaps most essentially, you are who is aware. You are always at the center of your multidimensional universe of experience, but you are not always consciously aware of yourself. Briefly repeat the exercise with the following difference: At the same time you attend to each of the various aspects of your experience, be aware that it is you who is noticing these things (“I see the light...”).
10. Awareness of awareness
Finally, become aware of your awareness. Normally, awareness focuses on objects outside ourselves, but it can itself be an object of awareness. In the light of ordinary experience, we seem to be distinct and limited centers of awareness, each alone in our inner worlds. In the light of eternity, mystics tell us, we are ultimately all one—the unlimited awareness that is the source of being. Here, experience cannot be adequately expressed by language.[/b]
