Lucidity, Secret Doorway in the Night, Part II

What can Lucid dreaming do for you? There are a countless number of things that can be experienced and accomplished during lucid dreaming. When in control of our dreams we can face our fears, improve our self confidence or maybe use the experience for creative problem solving. It's and endless opportunity for us to explore our unconscious minds or simply an infinite source of pure entertainment. It is what we make of it and as unique as the limits of our imagination.

For Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein, harnessing the power of their dreams helped them visualize their ideas progressing them from concept to reality. Einstein was able to visualize all the moving parts of whatever project or invention he was working on at the time. He could do so with such clarity to determine how the different parts and pieces would mechanically interact with each other. He was able to troubleshoot and work past potential problems in his mind well before his ideas had materialized. Paul McCartney claims that the melody to the hit song "Yesterday" came to him in a dream. Although superior intelligence and natural artistic talent played a part in these examples, it does give relevance to the power of one's mind while dreaming.

There's a significant difference between our normal dreams and lucid dreaming. It's not my opinion that Einstein, Nicola Tesla and Paul McCartney were experiencing lucidity when using their dreams to achieve these impressive feats. It is my opinion however, that the same level of clarity can be reached by those of us possessing just normal levels of intelligence and artistic ability once we've gone lucid during a dream.

Have you ever bought a new car and then began to notice how many more of them were out there? Even the same color as yours? Logic tells us that there are about the same number of cars now as there were before you bought yours, you've just never noticed them before. That's just the way our minds work. The vast majority of the activity happening around us is not noticed, processed or stored on a conscious level. Unless it has a significant meaning to us, it gets purged with all the other useless information we encounter. It's not necessarily gone, it's just not readily available in our brain's memory bank.

We've all had that moment where we struggled to remember the name of someone from our past, the name of a song , or phone number that we've dialed many times. When someone tells you that name or number that you couldn't remember there's instant recognition, suddenly you remember it. This is not a learning experience by any means. That name or number was on the tip of your tongue and you just couldn't remember it. You didn't learn anything, you only bridged the connection in your brain to what was already there.

We all carry with us a lifetime of experience and information. Tucked away in our mind is all the smells, sounds, tastes, visions and physical sensations of all that we've ever encountered. Lucidity is the key to tapping into all your faded memories. Creativity may be nothing more than bridging old connections in your mind.

The importance of remembering your dreams is imperative and is the key to building a strong foundation toward your journey into the world of lucid dreaming. Remembering your dreams will not turn you into a lucid dreamer, but it will lead you down a path to recognizing features and patterns in your dreams. This awareness will ultimately be instrumental in training your mind to realize that you are dreaming while it is actually happening.

Memories of our dreams begin to fade almost immediately when we wake up. Many experts suggest keeping a dream journal which is a great idea, but let's be practical, most of us will not even make it to the first step of obtaining a dream journal. I suggest you figure out a way to use your smart phone. Your phone typically will be within arms reach at any given moment, day or night. They all have notes applications and speech to text technology built in. Simply start a note and talk to your phone. It will document everything you say with enough accuracy that it can be deciphered at a later time. Make this the first thing you do in the morning even before you even get out of bed.

Get as much information into that phone as you can. Even if the memories are fragmented or don't flow well it's okay, just document everything. You will find that browsing through you notes later will help bring out other details of the dream that you didn't remember before. It's also likely that new memories will be triggered hours later in the day.

No matter what they say about teaching old dogs new tricks, we're highly trainable creatures. One of your new habits will be to perform reality checks. You're awake right now reading this and there should be no doubt in your own mind that you're awake. Well, we need to throw the obvious out the window and begin to question things. You need to ask yourself "am I dreaming?". You need to ask this question of yourself constantly, make it a habit. Am I dreaming? This habit will carry over into your dreams eventually.

Now, here's where you need to be careful. Before you arbitrarily answer no, make sure that you really are awake. Proving this to yourself should only take a few seconds at most. Find something tangible that you can use, such as a clock. Look at what time it is and then look back at the clock again. Did the time change? Studies have found that repeated attempts to read something while dreaming will almost always result in a change of what is being read. Something as simple as a clock will not hold true time in a dream. The point is to convince yourself that you really are awake before you answer no. You must always use logic before answering that question.

Reality checks performed while dreaming will have much different results than what you're used to seeing during the day. This is where you will begin to recognize and become aware during your dreams. This is why it's important to not just automatically tell yourself "no" when asking "am I dreaming". The first time that you answer that question with a "yes", it will be a true moment of deep significance to you.

In time, you will develop the ability to recognize patterns or things that only happen in your dreams. For instance I have never been able to successfully dial a phone in my dreams. The buttons will not press correctly, I can't seem to remember peoples names, or I will have forgotten how to navigate through the contact list in my phone. After several unsuccessful attempts to make a call, I will usually realize that I am dreaming. At that point, the urgent need to make that phone call will lose all significance and I may ask myself if I am dreaming, but usually by this point I already realize that I am. I'll usually take a moment to look around, for me, it's typically a 360 degree look around at an empty room. Gathering my thoughts for a moment I'll decide what I want to do and see. Then I'm off into whatever world of lucidity that I choose. There really is nothing else in reality that can match that feeling you experience when you realize you've become lucid in your dreams.

Lucid Dreaming: In part three we will dig deeper into our dreams and I'll share some of my personal experiences with you. Are you dreaming?