LUCID DREAMING

LUCID DREAMING - The Reality of the Situation

Apart from three 'Out of the Body' experiences, I've also had many Lucid Dreams - dreams in which I am fully conscious and awake, but still in dreamland. It is a totally strange phenomena and an exhilarating experience ! , and it does have a profound effect upon one's perception of reality. There are ways or techniques to stimulate or encourage Lucid Dreaming, and enough stuff on the web, and in books, about the subject. I don't feel I need to add any more to, I think, an unresolved debate [apart from some notes on dream journals in my other blog http://www.hexagramhighway.blogspot.com/]. In my case, these Lucid Dreams happen periodically and spontaneously, but I've been a fast learner. I can only add here a summary of what I found out.

1.Your 'level of awareness' determines the quality/reality of what you experience. In dreams, as in awake life (with interiorised thoughts about the past and future), 'fantasy' tends to dominate. This is none other than your ability to produce our own reality through your attitude, which affects perception. I suppose, people see what they know to be true. NLP and hypnosis might go someway in altering your attitude, then perception, so that you can affect and live in a different situation with new potentials. In dreams it is your 'ordinary' level of consciousness that interacts with what your own mind creates, and this is no more (and an extension) of what you are doing during each day, with your involvements, concerns, beliefs, and attitude ('experience as expectation'). I've hinted in my other blog that the use of the hexagrams of the TAO I CHING can circumvent this process, but probably only through an understanding of the energy we use (see my book). To step into Lucid Dreaming without this awareness would invite Fantasy, and a lot of other stuff.

2. Your activities betray your awareness. People do what they want to do, and always revert to their own 'nature' or interests. There is in Lucid Dreaming the prospect of all sorts of activities, which include flying, sex, all sorts of adventures, walking through walls, or under water, and at some point there may be the choice to go on to 'something else'. If you can think what that might be, you might be (close to) what you think.

3. You get through it all with (the use of) confidence. As you go through life, or just walking along, you don't have to think too much about what you are doing, you just get on with it. Some people do this confidently, and some worry all the time. Actually the conscious use or expression of confidence gets you flying, not the flapping of your arms or the Superman pose. In Lucid Dreams this confidence extends beyond your own mind and body and can cause alterations in the situation, weather, elements, and people. As the TAO I CHING might say "Confidence is ease, not force or control". What they didn't tell you was that Lucid Dreaming is easy - you've just got to know it's possible (most people have never heard of it, or think it's impossible), and then want to have a go. The techniques and flapping about is just something you go through to convince yourself that you're 'doing something'.

4. The expression of your Will is a last resort. Someone once said that in a battle between the Will and the Imagination, the Imagination always wins. "Imagination" here refers to the ability to see and feel what may not be material and real, rather than the commonly held notion of imagination as wishful thinking, or daydreaming. At some point, if you proceed a little deeper into Lucid Dreams you will encounter certain 'barriers' to put you off, and often frighten you. These are necessary to keep the 'uninitiated' in their place. The only way forward is the 'expression of your Will'. If you get into any trouble just make the sign of the cross and forcefully demand that 'the problem' go away. This of course will have no effect, but when you repeat with all your heart and soul (your Will) anything will retreat! You will only have to do this once to get through certain 'unpleasant barriers' that may be put before you. Whether these are from your own subconscious fears, or overseeing entities is a matter of debate. The sign of the cross is, in this case, an extension of flapping your arms about - it just focuses your intention. [Not withstanding the debate on symbols and their power].

5. Symbol manipulation is the name of the game. Alter the symbol and you alter reality. Sounds crazy, but that's what they do in Healing. You believe in the symbols and the rules. These can be changed. Some people involved in NLP would call this 'symbol manipulation' altering the neural pathways, by giving your fears and hopes a symbol (a colour, or feeling, a 'mantra' or phrase, or scenario, or a 'drawn object' or symbol), and then altering the symbol itself to change your outlook or situation. Interestingly enough, on page 48 of my book TAO I CHING, you can use this process to alter and change your selected hexagram (which is supposed to be a reflection of your present situation, and therefore 'real' and not open to change, since it is what it is), and yet by manipulating your Elements (which you should have purchased with the book), you can see the physical change to your hexagram, and what is possible. What is possible, is probable. Tread quietly through Lucid Dreams, for it is all a collection of symbols.

6. Is fantasy better than reality ? Well, that's up to you. Both have the same effect, and are probably the same thing - perception and imagination. If you are not using that imagination you're missing a lot of fun. 'Reality' shifts about, and seems to be connected to our perception. If your Lucid Dreams go further than our common ground of what we accept as 'real' (even to the possibility of walking through a wall - and we all know what a wall is), you may indeed step into 'fantasy' realms. Others have, and these other realms have their own reality and heirarchy, but they are not 'real' or 'reality', however much we belive in them. From my own background, if I see it, or it 'works', I use it, but always maintain an element of common sense, wherever I am.