I Lucid Dream, But All I Want to Do Is Wake Up
On dreaming as a thumbprint for life
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The writer Annie Dillard said that how we spend our lives is how we spend our days. I think the same can be said about dreams.
Our dreaming life — the dilemmas we face, the interactions we find ourselves in — are good indicators of what we struggle with or the challenges we face in waking life.
A lot of people are interested in lucid dreaming these days. If dreams are your hobby or your profession, this is not news to you. Lucid dream “experts” and online influencers abound on various social platforms.
Lucid dreaming was once a skill I hoped to sharpen, especially after a few ecstatic out-of-body experiences. However, I lost interest after a couple of intense interactions with…I suppose one might call them “entities.”
At that time, as a busy mother of young kids living in a foreign country, it didn’t feel worth it to dabble in an experience that felt potentially dangerous to me, especially without a teacher or a guide. There were some online resources available, but not many (this was in the early 2010s), and no one I knew locally who could support me.
Further, the more I dabbled in lucid dreaming and OBEs back then, the more interrupted my sleep was. I needed sleep badly. Still do.
Last year, however, I spontaneously had a joyful lucid dream experience.
It got me to consider whether or not to re-engage with lucid dreaming. I watched some YouTube videos. I followed a few lucid dreamers I felt were grounded and well-intentioned. Still, I find that I am not too interested in lucid dreaming, or at least in the top-level benefits, such as flying, astral travel, and anything that looks like “controlling” the narrative.
More than anything these days, in fact, I am working towards letting go of control in my dreams. If I have a goal for my dream life, it’s to heal; which for me has a lot to do with softening and trust, or with…
