Back in my TZM activism days I met a guy in his mid 50s at a chapter meeting who wanted to help the chapter grow and spread the message. At the meeting we were talking about many things related to our system and the issues to be tackled to overcome the matrix-structure of scarcity we were all born into.
However, the real impactful bit of information came after the meeting was done. Wilfried and I kept talking about things that went further than the core notions of the movement, and he casually threw out the question: "So, have you tried lucid dreaming yet? It's my favorite thing to do."
Having never heard of it I didn't really get the relevance of the topic he had brought up, but knowing he was a smart man I asked him to elaborate.
"Well, it's a way of taking control over your own dreams and to learn how to dance with your mind in that lovely state of awareness."
I had no idea what that meant. To me dreaming had always been something special, but totally out of my grasp and beyond my conscious control. I neither saw the importance for dreaming as it relates to our waking consciousness nor did I see how this could ultimately be relevant to what we were trying to achieve in activism - spreading the message about a new and emerging paradigm to other people. After all, this here was REAL LIFE and dreams were just dreams, right? ;)
It wasn't until our second meeting that I actually wanted to try it after Wilfried brought the topic up again. "My friends and I meet every night and fly together."
My rational mind instantly said WTF - he seemed to remind me of Peter Pan in that moment and I couldn't quite take it seriously, being the down-to-earth rational thinker I professed myself to be, atheist-materialistic and all. But being curious about his marvellous claims I finally asked him how I would go about trying out this lucid dreaming thing for myself.
And boy did that endeavour change my outlook on reality forever!
Homework
The next few weeks I dug deep into the topic of lucid dreaming and I was stunned at what I found. There were people claiming you could use it to do whatever you want in the dream world - travel places on Earth and of the imagination alike, living out your "wildest dreams" to the fullest, rediscover hidden meaning for the questions in life and even learning new skills.
It almost seemed to good to be true, but since I liked Wilfried and didn't have the impression that he was bullshitting me I vowed to do some experiments for myself before I discarded the idea prematurely.
Some of the basic steps I took got me to a lucid state in less than two weeks time from that point on, and many of these strategies are advocated by lucid dreaming pros all over the internet.
Here are some of them that worked well for me:
Here you simply write down what you dreamed about last night, right after you get up (or even before you get up, keep the journal near your bed). You either record or write down everything you remember about the dream you just had - what was it about? Where was it set? What role did you play? What details can you remember?
The reasoning people gave for this strategy seemed solid to me: You want to get in touch with the recurring patterns in dreams, and writing them down will get you a nice overview of your most frequently dreamed dreams rather quickly. This will not only allow you to get to the core situations that seem to be repeating in your subconscious mind within the sleep state, it will also make you hyperaware of said situations to easily recognize them the next time you find yourself in one of them - and thus: to realize instantly that you must be dreaming right now.
Since becoming aware of when you are dreaming is the most important step to get lucid, making a dream journal seemed like a great idea. And after mere days I had a whole liste of odd situations written down, many of the settings kept on repeating in the following weeks and I found it easier and easier to eventually to recognize these situations as "dream state candidates".
Today I can be 99.7% certain that whenever I find myself in some type of school building, a college hallway or a lecture hall with professors I KNOW I am dreaming. I have many memories of times I found myself in such settings in recent years, despite my not having set foot into such institutions and buildings in more than a decade. Awesome indicator!
Another thing I often seem to do is running on all fourths, making incredible leaps and strides with high velocity. Like a crawling baby, only way more optimized for high speeds. Like a Cheetah.
Since I NEVER walk on all fourths in waking life, I can be certain that whenever I find myself in such a situation or such a body experience I know I am dreaming.
Writing down these recurring patterns will greatly sharpen your awareness to pick up on the fact you are dreaming next time you revisit such a setting. Recognizing these circumstances doesn't make you lucid automatically, but it's a great starting point with higher chance of success than randomly hoping to notice you are dreaming.
The logic centers of the mind seem to be turned off in the dream state, which is why situations don't often appear odd to us until we woke up and it's too late to get lucid.
Pt. 2 - Basic Techniques for Achieving Lucidity
Pt. 3 - Implications & Test Flight
Pt. 4 - A Novel Approach for Learning Skills
Pt. 5 - "That's Quite Far Enough"
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I have had quite a few lucid dreams. They can get pretty trippy lol. I can't say that any particular setting tips me off but not being able to control light levels does.
Right! The lightswitch worked for me once years ago, thanks for the reminder.
Totally trippy, especially after the logic centers are back up when sitting upright in the bed and going: "WTF" ;)