An anonymous person queried: “How did you learn to be lucid in Dreams? And why doesn’t ‘coffee or tea?’ has a rum option?”
Through obstinate stubbornness, repetition, and a close study of how the waking world operates.
My first lucid moments were happenstance. That sudden shock of clarity as I realize I’m dreaming, only for the dream to end suddenly after because the dream collapses from the impossibility of what I’m looking at. Once I realized that I was having random moments of lucidity, I decided to try and force lucidity at will.
The first thing is to recognize that I’m dreaming. While the tells will vary from person to person, they will usually be something that can not happen in the waking world. You read the title of a book, look away or set the book down, and come back and read the title again. In the waking world, the title remains the same. In a dream, the title usually changes unless the book is central to the dream. If you are not lucid, you will not notice this as unusual.
If you are lucid, you’ll notice this right away.You lay a fork to the right of a knife. You look back and the fork is now on the left. Flowers on the table were laying prone before, now they are in a vase. The remote was on the couch, now it is on the table. You have a small dog, now you have a large dog or even more than one.
Each time I would notice these little irregularities, I would exert my will to restore things to what they were before. If the book was titled “The Downfall Of Medieval Europe” before I looked away, and is now titled “Wake of The Black Plague” I would force the title to read what it was before. If I passed a red door, looked back and saw it was black, as much as I love the Rolling Stones, I would exert my will to make it red again before moving on. These little exercises in will often have no effect on the overall arc of the dream itself. But as you gain control over the little things, you’ll start to have an effect on the larger things without collapsing the dream.
I did not learn of the “flipping hands” trick until long after I gained control of my dreams. The premise is if you think you are dreaming, you hold your hands before your face and flip them back and forth. If you are dreaming, the hands will appear the same no matter how you flip them. By forcing your hands to appear “properly”, you will gain control over the dream. I’ve heard several use this technique to gain lucidity. By the time I heard it I was flying by force of will.
Because dreams present scenarios that should not happen in the waking world, knowing how the waking world works will help you recognize you are dreaming faster, and use that information to gain lucidity. If you dream about flying often, the study of aircraft and birds will give you information to recognize when you’re dreaming, and how to control the flight of your dream. Dreams are based in what we know. The more we know in the waking, the more elaborate and detailed our dreams.
When I first started trying to recognize I’m dreaming, or exert my will after I became lucid, my focus was on gravity and inertia. A small ball will hit a wall with this much force. A large ball thrown at the same speed will hit harder because more force is required. But if I’m dreaming, I can throw a large boulder against glass and will it to bounce off like a trampoline, and casually toss a pebble and destroy a cliff.
Want to make sure I’m dreaming? Casually drop a pebble. If it creates a crater, I’m dreaming.
At first, I could only control the little things. Book placement, if my shoes were tied or not, if the cat paid attention to me or not. But the little things added up, until I was able to take over the dream entirely and adjust it to my satisfaction.
Trying to control all aspects of a dream is taxing and likely to collapse the dream. Think of it like the movement of a large ship. Little nudges here and there is all that’s needed to control the plot and major characters.
If you want to try and start out lucid, the process is easier to explain and harder to practice. As you hunker down and your body starts to relax, you keep your mind focused on something or someplace you want to start your dream at. Your body is in bed, but you are imagining yourself seated in an opera hall, or behind the wheel of your favorite car, or in a museum. As your body goes through the stages of hypnagogia, your mind takes what you are focusing on and uses it as the seed of your dream. When the dream takes over, you are already lucid and in control.
That’s the plan, anyway.It takes practice. Stubborn practice and repetition. You will fail, often. Technically, anyway. But each failure is not really a failure. As trite as it sounds, you do get a trophy for participating. Each time you attempt, you get a little better at it, until you succeed more often than not.
Keep a dream journal. When you wake up, note which portions stood out. When you achieved lucidity, was there a bright flash of light? A sudden sound? Did you get a chill or felt feverish? Each person’s tells differ from person to person. I used to get chills along with a sudden dampening of noise when I realized I was dreaming.
I’m now to the point where I am lucid in my dreams nearly every time. Those dreams where I am not lucid, I still pay attention to. They often point to personal concerns that I am ignoring but should resolve.
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The “Coffee or Tea” interrogation has been corrected. Thank you.