Do you have nightmares that you’re sick of? Are you an explorer by nature? If so, let’s talk about lucid dreaming.

When it comes to lucid dreaming, some typical questions that I hear are: “What is lucid dreaming?”, “Why did you try it?”, “How did I do it?”, and “Who else is doing it now?”

What is Lucid Dreaming?

From my past teenager’s point of view, lucid dreaming is the sword to conquer nightmares. Seriously, lucid dreaming was part of how I conquered the dark and powerful demon who gave continuous birth to nightmares. Literally shaking my entire dream world through unspeakable terror, there was an evil overlord ruling my night. While everything around me shook, the last thing I would hear was horrible and evil laughter.

More than once, I asked myself: Could this be Satan? No, it wasn’t. Whatever it was, lucid dreaming was one key to conquering this nighttime evil.

Besides lucid dreaming, the second key to conquering my nighttime terrors was imagining a glowing positive energy shining from me in every direction fueled through a Lovingkindness chant.

Instead of just screaming in fear, this chant gave me courage and a positive direction to orient my mind towards. To see the specific Lovingkindness meditation technique I used back then, see the “My Words” section in Meditating and Coming Across Colder Than Ice. In my dreams, the chant and my wholehearted belief in the power of love (Agape) assured me victory.

No Really. What Is Lucid Dreaming?

Lucid dreaming is knowing that you’re dreaming while you’re dreaming. Since knowledge is power, this also leads to a path towards control of your dreams and mental exploration. While you’re doing lucid dreaming, you can do all kinds of things, think about things, and enjoy the most erotic dreams.

What Do Others Say About Lucid Dreaming?

If you like TEDx talks, here’s Lucid dreaming: Tim Post at TEDxTwenteU:

The video goes deep into how lucid dreaming is real and the science that shows that. For me, it’s already a no-kidding moment. Having lucid dreamed many times, I know that lucid dreaming is real. Since the talk is limited to less than 15 minutes, all it had time for was to talk about how lucid dreaming is real and its potential use. It doesn’t answer the question: How does one start to lucid dream?

How To Lucid Dream?

In regards to how to lucid dream, here’s a quote from Star Trek Deep Space Nine’s episode, Waking Moments:

He will do so by remembering a visual cue – such as Earth’s moon – to remind him that he is dreaming.

That’s the right idea. You need a cue. Yet, having something visual was not good enough for me. I needed something more physical.

When my feet left the ground and I swam up into the air, I knew I was dreaming. My cue was being able to swim-fly. To ensure that I could clearly feel the difference between being asleep and being awake, I hopped up and down acting like I’m trying to swim in the air during the day.

To lock in success, I would write too. “Remember”, “Remember”, “Remember” was written down right before I went to sleep. I wanted it in my mind and ready to go before I shifted into dreamland.

Lucid Dreaming Success..?

Initially, success was not letting fear rule every night of my life. As they say in games, achievement unlocked. Success!

Once I conquered the nightmares, I tried what a typical young man might do. I went for the sexual dreams.

“Ya! Sex dreams!”, I said out loud. “Let’s do this!” I was pretty excited about the potential. However… Like most things, the anticipation was more fun than the experience.

Although some of the erotic dreams were sensual and quite fun, I realized there’s no substitute for the real thing. Although the visual was there, the sense of touch was not as pronounced as one can get in real life.

After that realization, I tinkered around with creating entire dream landscapes and fantasy worlds. I could literally move mountains. I would also conjure up things to explore.

When I woke up, I would write down what I could remember as if the contents of the dream were sacred clues that can unlock the secrets of the universe itself! Having that kind of urgency about it trained the mind to remember more from the dreams.

However, what I wrote down was merely a shadow of what I experienced. In other words, “boring” became the new chant. This all started to get really dull. Whatever utility I got from lucid dreaming, my daily meditation practice gave me so much more.

Is Control Still Useful?

Since everything was now under my control, I wondered if I was missing out on something. Was complete control useful anymore?

After sharing my concerns with another, he suggested: “Why don’t you let go? Let go of controlling everything.” In a playful and friendly way, I should see what happens. It made sense. All the parts of my mind had made peace and I was less likely to terrorize myself.

So, I completely let go of control…conditionally. If things ever got out of hand, I would just say nope and wake myself up. I’m not letting anyone bully me, not even my creative yet mischievous mind.

Want To Play a Game?

One thing I never had but was shared with me recently was a community around lucid dreaming. Dream Views Lucid Dreaming is a well organized forum board community. Specifically, they have fun tasks to try while you are lucid dreaming. If you succeed with the tasks for the month and year, they give out badges. Sounds like fun to me!

To Sum Up

Lucid dreaming is real. Through the power of neuroplasticity, you can train your mind to know that you’re dreaming and exert control over your dreams. Coupled with Lovingkindness meditation, I’ve used lucid dreaming to conquer the scariest of chronic nightmares and create my very own dream landscapes.

If you explore lucid dreaming and would like to share your experiences, please feel free to comment below. Multiple people read these posts and would be interested in whatever insights you have to share.

Shout out to Michael Reichenbach from the Octalysis Prime mastermind group for sharing the Dream Views Lucid Dreaming‘s fun tasks to try link and the link to the TEDx talk.

Back in my college years, some thought I had psychic powers. I blame mindfulness meditation. Due to my mindfulness meditation practice, my ability to pick up subtle details was quite acute. I think I even sometimes picked up these details subconsciously!

Since I was still investigating the available evidence on psychic phenomenon, I was open to the possibility of having psychic powers. As a result, I would sometimes get called on by others to use my psychic powers to help them combat evil. To my current embarrassment, sometimes this meant I was running around in the woods with others trying to sense “evil hotspots” and sometimes I would get emergency phone calls.

One day, I got an out of town phone call from a distressed group of people. They felt a friend was being attacked psychically by a former member of their group. They requested my help. The importance of this was stressed quite heavily!

“Sure! I’ll help.”, I said. At this stage, I was starting to doubt the validity of psychic powers and interacting with this group. However, I knew nothing but good could come from me doing my meditation practices. What did I have to lose? It turns out, I was about to get quite a fright!

So, I laid down on my bed in my college dorm and began to meditate. By this time, I had done many years of meditation. So, I slipped quickly into a meditative state.

I used one of my favorite meditation techniques. It’s a combination of focus and lovingkindness meditation. I focused on my breath and then shifted to focusing on a mental image of a bright loving light shining from the center of my being. Through this, I was wishing good fortune on the person who was suffering.

Since no news is often good news and it seemed like lots of time had passed, I figured the person was okay. Since I was already meditating, I tried something new I had been playing with. I tried what I now call becoming Bowl Bottom Centered.

Back then, I imagined myself sinking into the bed and letting myself mentally go. I would drop all and allow myself to freefall mentally. It was like letting myself mentally fall into a bottomless pit.

Surrendering myself to this meditative experience had me experience something that I had never experienced before. Although the description is inadequate and will strike you as strange, I became the bottom of the bottomless pit.

I will describe this experience through imagery and with the help of your imagination. Imagine that you are a star filled night sky. It’s all you’ve ever known. It’s your reality. The stars have always been shining. It has always been night. As far as you’re concerned, the stars will shine forever. There is no other reality. Now, poof! The stars are gone. There is nothing. There’s not even a night. It’s darkness without the concept of light.

“Yikes! What was that?” was my first thought after the experience. Since I grew up on stories which introduced hell as a real thing and read books that described hell as a cold lifeless void of nothing, I was quite concerned. “Had I visited hell itself?”, I asked myself in alarm.

In reality, I may have had a taste of the Jhāna stage known as the Dimension of Nothingness. Since at that time I didn’t have anyone to turn to, I had not known that such a meditation stage was possible.

That night I had a nightmare about a shapeless monster of darkness. It was so intense that after I woke up I briefly saw the outline of the thing still in my room before it gently faded away. Apparently, seeing things before or after being fully asleep is considered normal and is known as being in a state of hypnagogia.

Absent a meditation teacher to guide me and assure me that I hadn’t seen hell, I had my imagination producing nightmares about the undead for a long time after. This leads us to a few lessons to share.

The first is that science is your friend. If people are making wild claims without a shred of science to back it up, don’t waste any time on those claims. The burden of proof is on them. Even if something is remotely possible and yet maybe not reliably reproducible, I’ve learned it’s not useful.

The second is applicable if you’re going to do any meditating beyond the equivalent of the morning jog. If you are going to sit for hours meditating and go deep into seeing what meditation has to offer, it is essential to have an experienced and trusted meditation teacher / coach. You would be surprised what wild experiences you can have while meditating. It’s good to have someone to talk to who has already experienced them and can assure you that it’s normal.

All that said, it’s worth deeply exploring your mind. You can discover things you didn’t know about your own mind as well as reap the fruits of meditation. Enjoy the journey!