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The average person spends about a third of their life asleep. Yet very few can remember a small
fraction of what they experienced in all that time - most can't even remember what they
dreamed about last night. No one exactly knows why we sleep, but as being asleep is a threat to
survival there has to be a reason why we all evolved with it as a requirement. Some people believe
it gives our bodies a chance to regenerate and heal, but that does not account for why our brain
remains active and we why dream. One theory is that our senses recieve more data than we can process
during the day, so dreaming gives us a chance to process the rest, with a story woven in to
keep our minds focused.
The concept of Lucid Dreaming is about teaching yourself to wake up within dreams, that is to become
fully mentally conscious, without your physical body waking. For me, the main difference between
lucid dreaming and other wild hippy claims, is that Lucid Dreaming is something which I have first
hand experience of and can testify to it's existence.
Many people will become lucid several times in their life, but very few do so on a regular basis without
mental training and practice. Those that claim they do are either lying, don't understand the concept
fully or are lucky enough to naturally have the mental conditioning required.
It took me about 6 years from first discovering about lucid dreaming to get to the state where I
have more than a couple each year. Now I have on average one a week, sometimes more. Another challenge
of lucidity is retaining it once you have it. Even now my lucid dreams only last a few minutes,
but this is an increase on a few seconds that I used to only be able to achieve.
Becoming awake within dreams is only the first step. The
second is controlling your dream environment. Many people new to Lucid Dreaming don't understand
the distinction between the 2 and assume that the latter comes automatically with the first.
Sadly this is not the case and I am still teaching myself through practice within dreams how
to gain more control.
Instead of waffling on about logistics of Lucid Dreaming, perhaps I should try to explain to you what
experiencing one is like, to give you a bit more insight into why i bother. In a nutshell
it's the ultimate trip. Its like being in a parallel dimension. Everything around you feels 100%
real in every sense (sight, touch, smell) and not only can you learn control over your environment
and bend the laws of physics and reality to your own amusement, but there is no social
consequences for your actions. You really can do whatever you want with whomever you want and it
will feel 100% real. Pretty neat huh? It's certainly made me more interested in going to bed at night.
Training your brain for lucid dreaming is a simple concept - repetition. If you ask yourself whether
you are dreaming every time a certain thing happens in waking life then you will start doing it in
your dreams too. Dream researchers have found certain tests which can be performed quickly and without
people around you knowing, which when carried out in a dream will give a different result to waking life.
That way you can find out whether you are dreaming or awake. Of course you would think you'd be able to
tell if you are dreaming, because generally dreams are so obviously unreal, but imagine the shock you get
when you are going about your normal day and do a reality test, only to find you are a actually asleep.
This in itself is quite an extraordinary experience.
When you learn to remember and be conscious in your dreams you begin to see how much your mind plays
tricks on you and messes with you. Premature awakening is something which lucid dreams experience
regularly. This is where you wake up and start your day, only to find it was a dream when you actually
wake up for real. This has happened to me 3 times in a night once, and each time i 'got up' i realised
that the previous time it was a premature awakening. It's incredibly annoying!
Part of the process of learning to lucid
dream is keeping a dream diary, so you can spot markers and things you do regularly in your dreams. You'd
be surprised at how many things you dream about practically every night, yet are unaware of. Because we
forget what we dreamed about so soon after waking, its important to start writting it as soon as you
wake. Once I woke up, turned the light on and wrote my dream diary, remembering back to my dreams the night before and
recording them as I normally do. Later on I woke up for real, and realised that I had had a
premature awakening. Yet, in it i had managed to process quite complicated information about the night's dreams
and write it down. I ended up writing almost exactly word for word in my dream diary that morning what I had written in my dream previously.
It's really quite bizarre.
Despite it's annoyances, Lucid Dreaming has to be my favourite non waking hobby. If I could do it regularly
it would probably be my only hobby!
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