Wood’s World

Welcome to my first experiment. Over the next few days and weeks I am going to attempt to reach a state of lucid dreaming. This challenge has been suggested to me by my brother, Tom. I will be logging my experiences, problems and progress as I go.

What is Lucid Dreaming?

Lucid dreaming is being aware that you are dreaming whilst in a dream. This can happen when, at some point during your dream, you realise that the experiences you are having are not actually occurring in physical reality but merely in your head whilst lying in bed.

There are different levels of lucidity. Some people will naturally experience a low level of lucidity during some of their dreams. A strange or unlikely occurrence may trigger you to realise that you are in a dream, but generally when you are in a dream, unusual things don’t seem so unusual at the time. Low level Lucid dreams can sometimes occur when you have been awoken by something but almost immediately return back to REM sleep.

I’ve read that if you can reach a high level of lucidity, you can be very aware that you are in a dream and you can even manipulate your surroundings and the course of events. You may choose to do something that would be impossible given the laws of physics. All in the knowledge that there is no real danger and you are in fact lying in your bed dreaming.

Why Do I Want to Do This?

Going to a place where the laws of physics don’t apply, where you are only limited to the extent of your imagination is very appealing to me. So I’m going to try to train myself to be capable of a high level of lucid dreaming. I want to know if it’s possible, what it feels like and where my imagination can take me. People have said that it can be an incredible tool for creativity and inspiration.

I’m quite interested in what you can do with your mind and how you can control it. If I can control whats going on while I am asleep, could this help me improve my control over thought processes whilst conscious? Will power, fear and things of this nature.

I do experience very vivid dreams and I’m sure that on occasions I have experienced low levels of lucidity but never really thought anything of it, other than thinking that it was a bit of a strange dreaming experience. Also, I often find it quite easy to remember what has happened in a dream. These traits should be a good base for developing my ability to lucidly dream.

How Am I Going to Develop My Ability?

To trigger lucidity within a dream you need to be able to realise that the things that are happening around you are in fact only happening in this dream world.

There are several methods I will be using that could help me to achieve this:

1: A Dream Journal

Being able to remember your dreams is an important ability. If you can recollect common occurrences in your dreams, then you should be more equipped to recognise that you are in dream when you are dreaming. Also, if you do manage to get to a high level of lucidity, you want to be able to remember it. Logging your dreams as soon as you awake can help you develop your ability to remember dreams.

Along these same lines you can log specific things that may indicate that you are in a dream. For example you might often dream that you are riding a dragon or something strange like that. Then if you end up riding a dragon in your dream then that may act as your trigger, making you aware that it’s a dream.

2: Reality checks

You can do something throughout the day, for example writing a word on the back of your hand. Periodically during the day look at the word and take a moment to acknowledge what it looks like and what it says. Because you have been doing this a lot during the day or the past few days, you may subconsciously see the back of your hand during a dream. If the text is strange in some way, this can trigger you into realising that things aren’t quite right and you are in fact, in a dream.

3: Visualization

When you are awake, attempt to visualize what it would be like if you were in a dream at that point in time. Try to imagine the things you will be doing in your next dream. Then if these things happen when you are actually in a dream, that may trigger you to remember that you thought about this being your dream and you realise that you are dreaming.

Apparently, having a lucid dream could take days, weeks or months depending on the person.

Let the experiment commence!

Related Articles:

• Lucid Dreaming: Night 1 - A Breakthrough Already
• Lucid Dreaming: Night 2
• Lucid Dreaming: Night 5
• Lucid Dreaming: Night 10

As I am beginning this endeavor to create a site which hopes to help people and provide interesting information and articles which are enjoyable to read. I am fighting off some negative thoughts that are telling me - I’m not going to be able to achieve this. Do I have the personality, knowledge, creativity, technical ability, insight and writing ability to be able to pull it off? As with starting out at anything new, you haven’t proven to anyone, most of all yourself, that you are capable of doing it. As the saying goes “The first step is often the hardest” and the first step is where a lot of people fail, often due to negative thinking getting the better of them. Be it launching a website, going for a job interview, attempting to get into a sports team, developing an innovative idea or any number of ambitions you may have.

When ever you give these negative thoughts attention they grow and spawn new negative thoughts that you hadn’t even considered before. For instance, there is the knowledge that’s niggling away in the back of my mind that there are thousands of other people that have tried and failed to do what I am attempting to do now. Which leads me to thoughts of – Why am I even bothering, what makes me any different, will anyone actually want to read what I’m writing about? If people allowed these thoughts to defeat them then some of the most wonderful things in the world may have never been created or invented. I dread to think about the potential things that could have been created by those that were defeated by their own negative thinking, or negativity which has been imposed upon them by others. Which brings me to my next point.

Never discourage other peoples ambition or creativity. Actively encourage them to follow through with their ideas, don’t let them think they can’t do it. In most cases it’s much better to try and fail than to never try at all. Not trying at all will result in regret, and regret is a bad thing. Having said this, it is important to keep a sense of perspective. You don’t want to be banking everything on an idea or ambition succeeding or paying off because if it doesn’t you might be in for a crushing blow to your confidence and self esteem. Being positive and realistic at the same time can be tough to balance. Here are some tips that you may find useful towards achieving this.

1: Discuss Your Ideas With Someone You Know Will Give You a Positive or Constructive Response.

Avoid the people who wont. The last thing you need is someone pointing out all of the difficulties and obstacles and stating things like the number of people who try and fail etc. (Most of which you will already be aware of and have already spent time thinking about).

2: Find an inspiration.

This could be a number of different things, for example a book, a film, a person, music or something like Nature. Keep these inspirations at the forefront of your mind by surrounding your self with reminders. Things like jotting down inspirational quotes and sticking them on your bed room door so you view them each morning, or setting your desktop background to a particular picture which keeps your mind focused on what you want to achieve.

3: Be Aware of the Bigger Picture.

It’s very important to have a good indication of how long something may take and how difficult you will find it (different people find different things difficult). However, don’t be discouraged by the magnitude or difficulty of a potential ambition, see it as a challenge. The harder or bigger something is the greater the sense of achievement upon completion. I don’t think there is a bigger killer of ambition than a misconception of the length of time something will take or the difficulty level. If you know its going to be hard and it’s going to take a long time, then you are prepared for that and you spend time building up to things, but if you think it’s going to be easier and quicker than it turns out to be, that’s going to be a hard thing to overcome.

4: Don’t Let Anything Consume You.

It’s safe to say that becoming obsessive about an ambition can be detrimental to achieving it. In some people It might push you to eventually achieve your goal, but to what cost? It can cause pressure and stress to build up, possibly depression and a loss of perspective. If something becomes your life, then your life becomes it, which can result in your life becoming mundane leading to the possibility of missing out on many new experiences.

5: Don’t be Afraid.

Whether this is a fear of what others will think or a fear of failure. Remember that if your not getting things wrong then your not learning. If I’m riding around on my snowboard and I haven’t bailed all day then I know I haven’t progressed much that day because I haven’t been pushing my limits. You often progress yourself far more when you loose/fail than when you win/succeed. What you do in failure or defeat is a true test of character. Do you quit? Or do you dust your self off and come back stronger?

6: Have Your Own Perception About What You Are Doing.

Be a free thinker, don’t try to archive something just because the people around you, or society, thinks that’s what you should be doing. In addition to this don’t take on board society’s measures of success and failure, live by your own measurements. For example, just because its the ‘norm’ to grow up and get a job, don’t let that make you think negatively about pursuing an alternative idea you may have about supporting yourself.