How to lucid dream for dummies (part 1)
A few person have asked me is there any techniques to induce lucid dreams?
Lucid dreams can manifest themselves without warming and are often the most surprising dreams, but there is also some exercices one can do to increase the chance to lucid dream.
The following techniques are from the book "the art of dreaming" from carlos castaneda. However, if you never read before any book from this author, you might find this book hard to understand, cause the universe of castaneda is vast and very different from what we are used to. Its the universe of chamanism.
Lucid dreaming, or the art of dreaming, can also be called "non-sleeping" because for those who have mastered this art they have extra time in their lifes to do something else than sleeping because they are in an awake state in dreams and can do whatever they "dream" to do there ;)
Lucid dreaming takes a bit of time and concentration in the daytime to achieve the desired results at night. It's been a long time since I have not had lucid dreams. I did not put my mind to it, because I have too many things to do, but once, I used to practice those techniques and they did work. I also noticed that when we are feeling too tensed or stressed we will experience less lucid dreams. The mind needs first a certain state of peace for that. Peace and a high degree of awareness.
Lucid dreaming is all about intense attention and awareness and applying our concentration over a long period of time. First we must be able to do it in the daytime to be able to have this state of mind in dreams.
If we are in a state of semi-counciousness in the daytime, living on auto-pilot, it is almost sure that we wont achieve a state of counciousness in dreams. First we must wake up in our lives to be able to be awake in a dream.
The first thing to do, during daytime, to get in a state to induce lucid dreams is to look around and look at yourself and ask yourself the question "Could this be a dream?". Ask yourself this question many times a day until it becomes almost an habit.
Then look at the surroundings "as if" it was a dream. In the book "art of dreaming" he suggested to look at ones hands. I personally perfered to look at the landscape around. You could also look at something that reminds you of dreams. Think of the movie inception and the little objects they used to know if they were dreaming or not. You look at your hands or the landscape or an object as if you were in a dream. Then you search for your hands or the object in dream. For me, it was just to look around that would do, but everyone is different I guess.
When this becomes an habit to wonder if you are dreaming or not, at some point the habit will transpose itself in a dream. In dream, you will wonder if you are dreaming or not and you will realize that yes you are!
You have just walked through the first door of dreams! Now the real fun can start!
(To be continued)
