My first lucid dream was in 1979, when realizing that I was dreaming and willed to go to a mountain top to meditate. For these few seconds, I experienced a most sublime, joyful and powerful time.
Then I started medical school and no time to remember dreams. So in the last year, the interest in lucid dreaming was rekindled.
I had fallen asleep three and a half hour previously on my back with the position of the arms as suggested by the Art of Living Course: https://drrmtoussaint.com/about-the-happiness-program/. I dreamed that I was floating in this mad rushing tall mud slide.[i]
These amount to close to 77 percent of our lives simply being wasting away. What can we do … lucid dreaming could be one of the most important spiritual practices for us to wake up to the true reality according to Morley, Wilcox[ii],[iii], Free Spirit and many others.
Why do we dream? According to neuroscientists, we dream so that we can digest the day’s events and work through new memories, which helps to update our mind with all the latest beneficial sensory input.[iv]
Why should we practice lucid dreaming? The limbic system mediates fear and emotion and shows increased activity during dreaming as per neuroscience.[v]
The limbic system does not mature like the rest of the brain. Therefore, as adults, when someone pushes our buttons, we may react as though we were a four-year old.[vi]
Thus one powerful way to modify the content of our limbic system and maturing emotionally is to practice lucid dreaming.
Most of us are not willingly able to see the content of our unconscious mind in our waking lives. When we dream the conscious mind views the contents of the unconscious[vii].
And in lucid dreams we are able to interact with the unconscious face to face in real time. [viii]
In the lucid dream state, our psychological concepts are personified, or at least animated. This allow us to interact with them at a seemingly physical level. We can literally have a discussion with our higher self, meet our inner child or even offer a hug to the source of our deepest fear.[ix]
Spiritual awakening is seeing through the illusion of duality. This maya or illusionary world can be very difficult to experience in a world that seems so separate from ourselves, so solid with powerful visceral emotions.
According to Morley, a lucid dream offers us a rare training ground for spiritual awakening.[x].
Morley quotes his teacher Rob Nairn, as saying through lucid dreaming: ‘we experience the realization that what we thought to be real is actually not real, and so we are no longer experiencing the ignorance of the illusion. This is a taste of awakening'[xi].
Morley shares Nairn, as saying that mindfulness meditation is ‘knowing what is happening while it is happening without judgment’. And lucid dreaming requires a constantly vigilant mindful awareness that has to be maintained throughout the dream, which is exactly what is required in waking mindfulness practice.[xii]
It is important to wake up to the dream of life as well as the dream of night. This helps us to train in lucid living as well as lucid dreaming. Through learning to dream lucidly we can learn to live lucidly and wake up to life.[xiii]
Synchronicity and Flashes of Intuition
Morley shares that the concept of ‘life sign’ which is any aspect of our waking experience which reveals the true reality of our eternal life or what Morley calls ‘lucid living’. Life signs are also meant to wake us up from this dreamlike and illusory world that we live in. What are life signs? Synchronicities, coincidences and flashes of intuition are all potential life signs.[xiv]
Anytime we experience a life sign, let us acknowledge it as a stimulus to awaken us from this illusory reality and allow us to awaken to our eternal life. Morley suggests that intentionally seeking for life signs helps shift this perception.[xv]
Wilcox wrote: The more we eat white flour, processed food and refined sugar, the harder it is to remember our dreams and the less synchronicity we experience[xvi]
According to Morley, doing spiritual practice in the lucid dream state is said to be so powerful that we have the potential to reach for enlightenment while we sleep.
He also noted Dr. Michael Katz’ testimony to this: ‘one moment of spiritual practice in the lucid dream is equivalent to one week of spiritual practice in the waking state'[xvii]. I love short cuts. Lucid dreaming may be my best one.
Morley quotes Nairn as: “There is no better way to show how our concept of reality can be blown away than through practicing lucid dreaming”.[xviii]
Lucid dreaming awakens our deeper capacity for wisdom and compassion. Lucid dreaming makes us kinder in everyday life. It shows us how our own mind creates illusion which allows us to see how other people’s minds do the same.
Once we see that we realize that everybody is trying their best and that we are all in this together. We become a bit more tolerant and responsive, rather than closed and reactive[xix]
Dream recollection is encouraged by Morley, Wilcox and many others as a first step to lucid dreaming. Recently, I was dreaming of being naked, in a group of people. I was about to get embarrassed when I remembered Morley’s suggestion of lucidity flash[xx], to become lucid during strange situation, the dream became lucid.
I asked to meet my higher Self. It was a beautiful meeting with this Being of light and then I asked for healing of my ankle. I woke up too fast and would love to have longer and deep lucid dreams every night.
The next night was so beautiful: I was a thousand-petal flower about to bloom, the rhythm of a symphony about to be born. Both erupting from my heart.
When I tried to sing, I realized the frequency of the song was the trillion cellular structure of my physical being. Every atom singing in perfect harmony! Human voice – superfluous. Then I realized I am dreaming so became lucid. And this is the true life, the true reality! I prolonged this supreme bliss as long as I could before awakening The time 342am: time to meditate!
I drank a glass of water realizing that the throat was sore, I had 2 packs of Immunocal, sat and typed this into the phone then ready to meditate time 342am. Amazing! The following night, I woke up and was reading this in the tablet in bed. I know know I vaguely agreed not to take electronics to bed. How could I write down my dreams if there’s no iPhone.? How could I read Kindle books at 3:00 am if the tablet is in another room? Taking notes from my reading in the tablet seems easier when using the iPhone.
The dream: I was in a clothing store, when I realized I was only wearing a bra, saying “Wow I am dreaming lucidly so let me sit down on the floor next to these racks of dresses and meditate. I create a white sphere of light to protect me from shoppers.’ The store disappeared and l begin calling on Jesus, Archangel Michael and Archangel Raphael. The latter to help create a spiritual healing center in Maui. And I woke up. My intention is to do Sudarshan Kriya Yoga, SKY with the Shakti practices next lucid dream. This will a real adventure in total sublime & divine awareness.
In my own short list of lucid dreaming experience, the ego seems very soft or not functioning. My will power to plan a long list of things to do no longer exist. What i love the most is no strings of endless and repetitive thoughts. Events seem to happen not by volition, by spontaneity.
Through lucid dreaming, perhaps we can even realize what these early Gnostic Christians were getting at when they said, ‘Wake up. How can you bear to be asleep when it’s your responsibility to be awake?[xxi]
Get these books for deeper insights, for the how-to lucid dream by Morley and let us share our practice of awakening in dreams, in our lives and wake up together!
References
- [i] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, Location or L 678, 2013
- [ii] David Wilcox, The Synchronicity Key, The Hidden Intelligence Guiding the Universe and You, P24, 2012.
- [iii] David Wilcox, The Synchronicity Key, The Hidden Intelligence Guiding the Universe and You, p46, 2012.
- [iv] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L494, 2013.
- [v] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L486, 2013.
- [vi] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L568, 2013.
- [vii] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L504, 2013.
- [viii] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L578, 2013.
- [ix] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L590, 2013.
- [x] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L 795, 2013.
- [xi] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L 795, 2013.
- [xii] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L850, 2013.
- [xiii] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L145, 2013.
- [xiv] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L3260, 2013.
- [xv] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L3261, 2013.
- [xvi] David Wilcox, The Synchronicity Key, The Hidden Intelligence Guiding the Universe and You, p48, 2012.
- [xvii] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L775, 2013.
- [xviii] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L581.
- [xix] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L 926, 2013.
- [xx] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L188, 2013.
- [xxi] Charles Morley, Dreams of Awakening Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dreams and Sleep, Kindle Book, L 885, 2013.
David Wilcox, The Synchronicity Key: The Hidden Intelligence Guiding the Universe and You
Charlie Morley, Dreams of Awakening: Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness of Dream and Sleep