Part 1: Waking Up to Lucid Dreams
This is Part 1 of a three part series:
* Part 1: Waking Up to Lucid Dreams
* Part 2: On-Demand Lucid Dreaming—The Current State
* Part 3: On-Demand Lucid Dreaming—The Roadmap to Mainstream
Lucid dreaming — or realizing you’re dreaming in a dream — is a life-changing medium through which we can explore our minds and potentially a broader consciousness. Every night, by waking up in our dreams, each of us has the potential to explore realms limited only by our imaginations.
If you showed someone a smartphone in the 1600s, they’d call you a witch. Back in 2014, that’s also how I would react upon hearing my lucid dreaming explorations from my current self. Stories of spirit guides, precognition, mutual dreams, and mystical experiences would make my 2014-self say, “Wow! San Francisco turned you into a total weirdo.”
Lucid dreaming has expanded my perspective on what’s possible.
I maintain a sense of skepticism today, but damn — I’ve had wild experiences in lucid dreams. I’ve explored dream realms that feel more real than waking reality. In these realms, I encounter entities with seemingly greater consciousness and intelligence than people I encounter while awake. These dream figures claim to be anything from manifestations of my subconscious mind to spirits from other planes of consciousness to other people also experiencing lucid dreams in that moment. I’ve received information beyond my existing knowledge base, sometimes predicting the future. Again, my past self in 2014 would quickly call bullshit on all of the above, but I can’t help but have an open mind now.
The Fall and Rise of Dreams
I experienced vivid dreams throughout my youth. Over the years, these dreams faded in quantity and quality. I accepted this as a byproduct of aging.
In 2014, I realized my worsened sleep was primarily due to a sleep disorder. I stopped breathing an average of 37 times per hour during a night in a sleep lab. Instead of exploring dreams, I was choking myself awake every few minutes.
Relief came in the form of CPAP: a plastic mask attached to a long tube that kept my airway open. It hampered my dating life, but was an immediate boon to my dream life. I could finally sleep through the night again; dreams immediately rebounded. It was like watching fuzzy shapes on an old television snap into crisp, ultrahigh definition.
Also around this time, I started meditating. Beyond the 10-minute segments of peace, I also got in the habit of observing my mind and thinking about my thinking throughout the day. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was building my metacognition muscle, which would prove valuable for lucid dreaming.
This combination of mindfulness and sleep apnea relief unleashed a tidal wave of vivid and lucid dreams, seemingly built up for decades. These lucid dreams felt both unreal and more real than anything I had ever experienced. Imagine a perfect virtual reality experience in which you have superhuman senses. Here, you’re not confined by your finite, faulty, biological sensors. The colors are impossibly vivid. You feel the wind against your face as you fly. You taste the best foods imaginable. The experience is only limited by your expectations.
Explorations in Lucidity
I was hooked. These early lucid dreaming experiences sparked a desire to go deeper. I read books focused on how to increase the frequency and quality of lucid dreams. This produced richer lucid dreams, which inspired me to learn more. I attended an in-person workshop facilitated by Fariba Bogzaran and recently joined an online workshop facilitated by Kristen LaMarca. This set a solid foundation of skills and techniques, but much of my learning came from direct experiences within hundreds of lucid dreams.
When I tell people aspects of my lucid dreaming experience, I can’t blame them for thinking I’m either insane or making it up. I still hesitate to share these experiences in a public forum now—they cause me to question the very nature of reality. What follows are several of these experiences.
Knowledge Beyond my Brain
In some lucid dreams, I received information that seemingly came from a source beyond my brain. Dream figures, and dreams themselves, revealed new knowledge I could bring back to waking life.
In one lucid dream, a dream figure claimed we were on another planet. He casually mentioned how he uses microwave technology for intergalactic travel. Upon waking, I assumed that I had merely made an odd mental connection between space travel and a lazy (i.e. efficient) man’s kitchen appliance. A quick online search revealed a deeper connection: the conversion of electricity into microwaves is actually being explored by NASA as a promising means of space propulsion.
In another lucid dream, I sought help on a work project, asking how to best manage clinical sleep disorders from screening to ongoing treatment. The dream responded with, “portfolio pricing,” a term I can’t ever recall hearing. Upon waking, another online search revealed that portfolio pricing is a legal term for bundling related services together into a single payment. This is analogous to using capitated payments in healthcare to manage the end-to-end care for a specific medical issue (e.g. total hip replacement) instead of paying a fee for each individual service provided. This approach was seemingly perfect for the problem and was not something I had explored in depth prior to its appearance in my dream.
Perhaps this information was previously absorbed by my brain, and was forgotten before resurfacing in the dream. Alternatively, lucid dreaming could be a portal to communicate with nonlocal intelligence.
Precognition
In other lucid dreams, I’ve experienced precognition — receiving information that later came to pass.
In one such lucid dream, I sat at a table with a coworker that lived across the country. She told me, “I like your brain.” This didn’t make much sense at the time. Days later, we attended the same in-person workshop during which they arranged us in seats according to how we scored on a personality test. To my left was this same coworker — in the chair that supposedly was most similar to my brain’s spot on the spectrum of left-to-right brain dominance.
In another lucid dream, on September 19th, 2015, I ask nearby dream figures, “What can I do to make the world a better place?” The group provided an adamant response, “Stop Donald Trump.” They implied his election would put us on a negative path and may lead some citizens to eventually become insurgents. I hope the latter part doesn’t come true. Either way, I was surprised by their adamant advice, given he was not a credible candidate at that time.
Maybe my lucid dreams can accurately predict future events. Or perhaps my claims of precognition are misguided, as I only point out the predictions that came to pass, while omitting the predictions that did not.
Transcendent & Spiritual Experiences
Other lucid dreams have bordered on spiritual experiences. These experiences are difficult to put into words. A few years ago, I would have quickly dismissed the experiences as strange misfiring of neurons at night. I hesitate to even share snippets publicly. But given the power of my firsthand experiences, I can’t help but share a sampling.
I’ve encountered dream figures claiming to be my life guides. We immediately recognized each other — feeling a connection that could only be made over many years or lifetimes. Deep love was evident in their eyes, words, and presence. I think the concept of life guides was unknown to me prior to these lucid dreams, and I later learned it’s a common concept across many cultures.
I’ve also encountered dream figures with harmful intentions posing as life guides. One told me my death was imminent, and that him and the other life guides almost decided to kill me six years ago. That week, it felt like I was being stalked through the streets. I expected something horrible to happen. Spoiler alert: I didn’t die. However, I did get shingles across my back for the first and only time in my life.
I’ve had many meditation sessions in lucid dreams that shook me to the core. These meditations often produced a strong vibrational sensation that coursed through my being. Sometimes, it felt like floating in a sea of cosmic bliss. Other times, it felt like I was about to explode. Meditation in lucid dreams can tear the very fabric of a dream and expose a rawer reality: a formless, expansive oneness.
I’ve had shared dreams with a friend, confirmed by the friend the next day.
I once gazed into a monk’s glowing eyeball, as he informed me, “You’re ready for the next level.”
The intelligence behind the dream has instructed me to activate my fifth chakra as my throat pulsed with energy. At the time, I don’t think I knew about the concept of this chakra, or its association with the throat.
A mystical dream figure in another dream chanted, “everything is everything” as energy tingled through my being. Now, in waking life, I sometimes feel this same tingling sensation from my thighs to my head when thinking about past lucid dreaming events and dream figures, or as a silent confirmation of others’ statements.
I’ve felt my dream body suddenly eject from my physical body during the direct transition from the waking state to the lucid dreaming state.
I’ve been visited by dark beings and experienced auditory hallucinations during bouts of sleep paralysis.
I’ve been firmly told by some dream figures that I shouldn’t be exploring this domain.
These experiences have been life-changing. They’ve opened my mind to consider existence beyond my physical body, but they have not yet convinced me at a 100% confidence level. I’m hopeful future explorations in lucid dreams can give me complete confidence.
More to Explore
There’s a clear opportunity to engage in thoughtful, evidence-based experimentation to further explore these uncharted realms of consciousness. Right now, lucid dreaming is difficult to access for many people, but techniques and tools are improving each day.
In Part 2 of this series, I outline the current methods to induce lucid dreams, thus enabling deeper exploration.
What we find may alter the course of human history.
Continue to Part 2 of this series: On-Demand Lucid Dreaming—The Current State
