Lucid is a beautiful word that has been adopted by the dreaming community to describe the state of conscious dreaming. A lucid dream is a dream in which we become aware and conscious of the fact that we are dreaming; we wake up inside the dream.
When we become lucid in a dream we have the enlightening realisation that the very solid-seeming world surrounding us is not as solid as it appears to be… it is actually made of the stuff of dreams; consciousness, masquerading as form. This is a very magical feeling that really needs to be experienced to be understood. Once we are lucid, the whole dream-world seems to also wake up and come to life. Colours become more vivid and sparkling, and everything seems to glow with a kind of hyper-realism, as if the dream world itself is thrilled to be seen and recognised for what it really is.
Once we have ‘woken up’ to the fact that the dream world around us and everything in it is actually made of consciousness, we can now shape, direct and interact with this dream by using the power and intention of our own conscious mind. This opens up all kinds of possibilities for amazing experiences that feel hyper-real; flying, shapeshifting, telekinesis, romantic liasons and much, much more. In a lucid dream potentially anything that we can imagine, we can manifest – and this is truly magical feeling.
How to Lucid Dream
1/ Begin your Dream Journal
Dream recall is the first crucial step to successful lucid dreaming because there is not much point in having lucid dreams if we don’t remember them! Nothing boosts our dream memory skills like keeping a Dream Journal. Its important to write down EVERY dream image you remember EVERY morning in your Dream Journal. Keep up this practice and your ability to recall dreams in vivid detail will continue to grow. I have written a whole other post on How to Remember your Dreams if you’d like to read it.
Its very easy to be lazy first thing in the morning but journaling our dreams is incredibly important for lucid dreaming as it will not only greatly enhance our dream recall but it will also give us crucial information on the patterns and symbols of our dreams. We all tend to have personal ‘dreamsigns’ (symbols or themes that keep popping up in our dreams) and these can serve to remind us that we are dreaming. When we journal our dreams we can take note of these recurring symbols and check our reality every time they appear. For example, you might often dream of an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend, so you can remind yourself, “Every time I see that ex I am probably dreaming.” We can set up these mental notes for all kinds of dream symbols.
Any blank notebook can serve as a Dream Journal, however I have designed some that I use myself and would love to share with you. This journal is available here.
2/ Begin Dreamworking with your Dreams
Dreamworking is a life-enhancing practice that brings more awareness to our dreams and to our waking life – and awareness is simply another word for lucidity. Not all dreams are lucid dreams, but all dreams contain potential wisdom that can bring magic to our waking lives if we explore and dreamwork with them. And as we engage more and more deeply with our dreams from a waking state, we bring more consciousness to our dreaming and our dreams become more vivid and more lucid as well.
Our dreamworking will help to reveal to us the patterns of our dreaming; the shapes and forms of the energies that are flowing through us and into our world right now as we co-create our reality. Lucid dreamwork is the practice of reflecting upon our dreams with the light of our waking minds and finding a way to heal and transform the energies that we don’t want to be manifesting, and celebrating and empowering those that we do.
There are many ways to use lucid dreamwork to achieve magical manifestation and the results are truly amazing.
3/ Set the Intention to become Lucid
Set your intention clearly before you fall asleep with one of the following statements (or make up your own):
“I will lucid dream tonight.”
“When I am dreaming, I will know I am dreaming”
“When I see my dreamsigns I will know I am dreaming.”
And then relax and fall asleep, trusting that your higher self has heard your intention and will be doing its best to ‘wake you up’ inside your dreams.
4/ Reality Check
During the day its very useful to be frequently asking ourselves ‘Am I dreaming right now?’ And then actually physically checking if we are or not. Its good practice to get in the habit every time you check the time – for example, every time you look at your watch, clock or phone ask yourself, ‘Is this a dream?’ Look carefully at the timepiece taking note of the numbers, then look away and back again a few times. Are the numbers the same? In the dream world there is actually no consensus reality of time, and so the numbers on the clock will usually change or look quite weird. If they do then you are probably inside a dream right now. If they look normal then its good practice to just remind ourselves that we are currently inside the dream of waking-life, and we can bring lucidity to that, here and now.
My favourite reality check is to pull on one of my fingers and see if it stretches out beyond its normal length. I’ll try this whenever I encounter anything that is dreamily strange, bizarre or beautiful, whenever I experience synchronicities, and – because I often have anxious dreams – at times when I feel heightened anxiety or get that ‘everything is going wrong’ feeling. If my finger stretches out longer than usual then I know that I am dreaming. Its a wonderful feeling to be experiencing a anxiety dream and then reality check and feel the instant relief as you realise you are actually dreaming.
Other popular reality checks include trying to push a hand through a wall or squishing a solid object as if it were putty, flicking light switches on and off, trying to fly or levitate, telekinesis (moving objects with the mind) and many more! Anything that can be done in the dream world but can’t be done in the physical world can work as a reality check.
5/ Lucid Living & Meditation
After becoming lucid in the dream, the next challenge is to stay lucid. With all the distractions and the habitual patterns of our non-lucid minds, its very easy to get lost in the dream and lose our lucidity. This is where the practice of meditation is so valuable. Daily meditation is a wonderful incubator for vivid lucid dreams at night. When we meditate we make the conscious decision to sit still and not get distracted by our thoughts and feelings as they arise. This stillness is a form of lucid practice that will help us to maintain lucidity within a dream and not lose our lucid awareness by being swept up in the action and drama of the dream.
Not surprisingly, the more that we approach our waking life with a lucid state of mind, the more lucid dreams we will also experience. Meditation allows us to practice our detachment from the waking dream of everyday life, remaining focused on maintaining lucidity. With practice we can maintain this lucidity through our whole day and night.
6/ The Dreaming Hours
Lucid Dreaming is far easiest when practiced in the early hours of the morning – the “dreaming hours,” between 3am and 6am. These early hours, as we linger on the cusp between awake and asleep, provide a golden portal for lucid dream launches. You can even set your alarm for 3 or 4 am, get up out of bed and wake your mind up a little, perhaps taking a lucid dreaming supplement, and then jump back into bed with the intention of lucid dreaming. Because at this time in the morning our minds are already in their dreaming REM state, all we need to do is stay focused on the visions of our minds-eye as they begin to appear. Slowly these visions (called hypnagogia) will become more and more vivid, and before long will lead us into a lucid dream.
7/ Lucid Dreaming Supplements
There are all kinds of lucid dreaming supplements available these days and while they are not magic pills, they are definitely helpful if we are already following the previous lucid dreaming steps. I recommend the natural, herbal varieties as they will have less potential side-effects and less toxicity which will effect the ‘tone’ of our dreams. (If our body is feeling mildly toxic this will lower our vibration and our dreams will tend to be darker and more edgy.) I have created a herbal tea mix that blends the most powerful lucid dreaming herbs with the most magical and protective plants for generating uplifting and high-vibrational lucid dreams. Made from natural organic herbs Mugwort, Blue Lotus, Passionflower, Skullcap, Lemon Balm, Brahmi, Got Kola, Rose Petals and Stevia Leaf, this yummy, dreamy tea will be available on this website soon.
8/ Lucid Journeying
Lucid Journeying is a kind of waking-lucid-dreaming in which we relax our waking mind and allow our creative imagination (our dreaming mind) to take us on a visionary and sensory journey. With practice these imaginal journeys can become as vivid as our lucid dreams, and if we lucid journey during the golden “dreaming hours” of the early morning then our journey can easily lead us into a lucid dream or an astral projection (depending on our intention.) There are many guided lucid journeys available for free on my youtube channel.
Conclusion
Following these steps with commitment and dedication will have most dreamers experiencing a lucid dream within a few weeks. Lucid dreams can be used beneficially and therapeutically in many different ways. The process I share here at the Magic of Dreaming is one of ‘lucid dreamworking’. This process is a journey of discovering and aligning with our Soul purpose and becoming lucid in our waking lives as we discover and share our gifts with the world.
~ Art by Netanel Morhan ~