By Alysa Braceau
Lucid dreaming gives you a great feeling. When you dream consciously, you can have control over events, or at least the realization that you can control a situation. You become the dreamer and the dream, as shamans say, a living dreamweaver. With practice, there will come a day when you can instruct yourself to dream about something; to fly like a bird or to meet a deceased loved one.
If you dream consciously—dreaming while being aware that you are dreaming—you reach a state of totality, in which you truly experience yourself as a creator of this reality. Totality is one of the teachings of the Native American sorcerer’s tradition. There are four practices that guide the apprentice into totality: stalking, hunting, the art of the warrior, and the art of dreaming.
Steps to Creating your own Reality
The techniques here can help you achieve conscious dreaming in about four weeks. They will help you build energy to develop a dream body, in which you can travel outside known reality to the boundless second reality of dreaming and creativity. This finally takes you to totality, where you experience and become aware that you are creating your own reality.
Learning to dream consciously really starts with attentiveness, being aware of your surroundings, and your actions in daily life.
Finding the Dream Stone
In the following exercise you take the first step in developing a dream body.
Take any kind of stone and study it in detail. You need to know it inside out, every line, every dent, every outline. Visualize the stone on your third eye or inner eye—the place between your eyebrows. Practice as long as it takes to get it in your mind and aim to find the stone in dreaming within the next 10 days. Begin counting down the days until you find it. When you don’t find it within that time, start all over again, until you get it right.
Before going to sleep, look at the stone in detail and place it somewhere near. Close your eyes and visualize the stone on the inside of your inner eye, between your eyebrows. Then become conscious of the moment right before you fall asleep. At that specific moment, visualize the stone immediately inside your inner eye—you will find out that you get dream flashes that you can fixate or stop. Don’t worry if you can’t achieve this at first. It is actually enough to have the intention to be conscious and to stop your dreaming before falling asleep. Attempt it.
Aim to wake up consciously every morning and let your inner eye visualize the stone. Pick up the stone and move it closer towards you, from arm’s length to the tip of your nose. And do not forget to repeat to yourself that you will find the stone.
Making a Bridge Between Reality and Dreaming
Make a habit of observing your surroundings in detail. Try to do those things that you usually do on autopilot as consciously as possible, and imagine you are dreaming. Of all your daily tasks, even the simplest you usually do without thinking, you need to be conscious.
Before going to sleep, rewind all the images of the previous day from the evening back to the morning. You will gradually notice that these exercises have an effect on your dreaming because you will begin to see this retrospective view of your day in your dreams. You’ll also observe every little detail in your everyday surroundings and your dreams more thoroughly.
Your dream body has to be at full capacity to travel to the boundless second reality of dreaming and creation. You develop your dream body by bringing experiences, objects, or specific acts or movements conscious from dreaming into the reality and vice versa. For example: If you see or find a shell in your dream then you harden your dream body by taking a similar shell with you and putting it in a special place in your home where you collect these dream-items. With that you make a bridge between reality and dreams.
Be impeccable both in everyday reality and in dreaming. This trains your attention, which has to be perfect. Through attention you build your intention, and with that you travel into the boundless unknown.
Six Steps to Lucid Dreaming
1. Write down your dreams as soon as you wake up. Even if it’s in the middle of the night. No matter how meaningless they may seem, appreciate what you receive.
2. If you wake up while you are dreaming, review the events of your dream as often as you can. This trains you to remember your dream the next morning and give it your attention.
3. Develop your dream body with the dream stone technique (see opposite) and aim to find the stone in dreaming.
4. Be aware of your surroundings and your actions in daily life. Make a habit of observing your surroundings in detail and try to do those things that are usually done on automatic pilot as consciously as possible, and imagine you are dreaming.
5. Develop your dream body by bringing experiences, objects or specific acts or movements from dreaming into the reality and vice versa (see above, the bridge between reality and dreaming).
6. Before going to sleep, review the events of your day from the evening back to the morning. This helps you to become lucid in your dreams.
Good luck! May your dreams come true.
Alysa Braceau, Dreamshield, lives in the Netherlands and is mother to an eight-year old -daughter. A freelance journalist and publisher, she also has a healing practice and gives workshops on lucid dreaming. Her book, The Sorcerer’s Dream, a true story of initiation into the Native American sorcerer’s tradition, is available from bookstores and amazon. Contact Alysa at info@dreamshield.nl.