I had a fruitful LD summer. During this period, there were two goals I wanted to work towards whenever I became lucid. One was improving my flying, the other was more serious: when lucid, I wanted to be able to talk to my Dad who died of cancer a few years back. We had always had a very difficult relationship, and for many years I had been carrying around a lot of anger direct towards him, as my parents went through a very painful divorce when I was a child. For the record: I was aiming at accessing and interacting with my own memory of my Dad – not at contacting the spirit world!

For fifteen years he’d shown up in my dreams – shouting at me, chasing me. I would wake up feeling pretty bad. On other occasions I’d hear his name and get angry and have violent thoughts. Not good.

So, I thought that if I could get lucid and access my memory of him in my dream state, maybe I could do something about fixing this problem. I did, and I believe it has worked (but of course time will tell).

Before going to sleep, or during the day, I would remind myself that once lucid, one of my aims was to find my Dad, and engage in conversation during which I would tell him that I forgave him for the past, and that things were all going to be ok.

Once lucid, finding him was easy – I just had to remember to look for him, and he soon showed up. He often looked tired and sick (as he indeed was before dying), but I was able to tell him I loved him, tell him I forgave him, and could give him a hug. Even in the LD state these moments could become quite emotional, and I had to remind myself to keep calm or I would wake up. It’s amazing how vivid and real it could be. I could actually feel the tears running down my cheeks (I once wondered, in the dream “gee – will my pillow be wet?” – but when I awoke it was dry as my physical eyes had not been crying). I would wake up feeling very relieved, relaxed, and good.

I was able to do this three or four times and I really have the strong impression that this has done much to ease (even erase?) a great deal of the anger and hurt I was carrying around. Pretty damn amazing, I think. Now I can concentrate on the flying!


(humm, a dancing cow - could I be dreaming?)