THOUGHTS | DREAMS | ACTION

THOUGHTS | DREAMS | ACTION

If we’re going to get through the next few years, we need a change of narrative so profound that our entire culture changes direction. We need not just new stories, but a whole new shape to what a story is. And it will start with our writing.
Lucid Dreaming: Ancient Skill or Modern Fad?
What is Lucid Dreaming?
I am teaching a group of students: I know them all by name: Hannah, Nic, Robyn, Jeremy, Bob… We are discussing dreaming, and in particular the difference between shamanic dreaming and lucid dreaming and whether there is an ancient lineage. I say that we ought to ask the gods, but first we need to make sure we’re not dreaming (cue laughter from my students: they’re pretty good at laughing at my weaker jokes). I say that being able to write and then read a coherent sentence – or even just our own name – is a pretty good indication that we’re not dreaming. In dreams, writing is often hazy and changes each time we look at it. I have a piece of paper and a pen and I write I AM NOT DREAMING and show it to the group. “Can you all read that?” They can. So we know we’re not dreaming. And we can invite in the gods and ask them whether dreaming in shamanic terms has a lineage and whether the capacity to know that we’re dreaming within the dream, and then to direct it – which is lucid dreaming – is a modern experience or an ancient one. The gods arrive, and we ask our question and just before the answer is offered, my dog leaps off the bed, barking at a fox in the yard. And I wake up. So if you want a straightforward definition of lucid dreaming, it is ‘the ability to know that we are dreaming from within the dream.’ An obvious corollary to this is that once we know we’re dreaming, we can act on that knowledge and do all the things that are possible in dream worlds that are not possible in the solid, 3-dimensional, restricted-by-gravity-and-boring-things-like-walls version of reality that we choose to inhabit.Lucid Dreaming: How is it done?
This, then, is lucid dreaming: the ability to know we’re dreaming and then to act on it. The routes to knowing are direct and straightforward – what it requires is a clear intent and a continuous discipline, which sounds a lot more onerous than it actually is. Building intent is a key part of shamanic practice – in fact, of any genuine spiritual practice (we’ll take it as read that religion and spirituality are not necessarily the same thing, and that spiritual practice, by definition, is an application of clear intent to the stilling of the mind in the pursuit of greater human/planetary flourishing. It goes beyond that, of course, but this is a good first step). So we need clear intent. If we’re not sure we have clear intent, then we need to build a contemplative practice of some sort which helps to hone intent: any of the modern mindfulness practices will do it, as will yoga, tai chi, some martial arts, rock climbing: anything which requires consistent application of mind to a single act, and in which we can become self-reflexive. Only by knowing the pathways of our mind, can we bring our minds back to a single point of focus. Because that’s what we want to do: in this case, we want to bring our minds back to the question: Am I dreaming at this precise moment? If we ask this through the day, we will, over time, begin to ask it in our dreams, to. There are physical cues we can use, too – I can stare at my right thumbnail, and ask ‘Am I dreaming now?’ (There’s nothing magical about the right thumbnail, any body part will do: just pick one and stick with it).Lucid dreaming: stick with it
Stick with it. Read that again. Pick a body part and Stick. With. It. This is not an overnight phenomenon. It routinely takes six months or more before we begin to ask ourselves in our dreams if we are dreaming. It doesn’t happen every night – and actually, given the value of our dreams, I’m not sure it should – but it’ll start to happen on a regular basis.Dream Diary: the key to lucid dreaming
In those six months you want to be doing the next thing that makes lucid dreaming – any dreaming – work best: start writing a dream diary. Every shamanic dreaming course I teach, someone says, ‘I don’t dream.’ Which is not the case, unless they are the one person known to medical science who doesn’t. Everyone dreams. My dog dreams. The cats dream. What we don’t all do is remember our dreams. So here’s how to remember your dreams: Write them down. Your dreams will honour you exactly to the extent that you honour them. You can make notes on your phone if you don’t want to do it longhand, but makes notes. They don’t have to be essays. “Am in a hotel in Japan, learning Japanese – am astounded that I understand one sentence, and it’s a joke. I remember learning some Japanese in Aikido, and think it must be a hangover from that. I try to hold a conversation and can’t. Feelings: surprised, frustrated: mainly not sure why I’m here. Feels like someone else’s dream. Colours: lots of blue and yellow – I can see the sky. The language is a long, linear, golden thread.” These are part of my notes from last night. It’s hardly comprehensive, but it’s enough for me to connect later with the feelings of the dream – which are the third key to lucid (or shamanic, or any) dreaming. It’s the feelings that matter. This is why the old style books which purported to tell us what dreams meant, are a complete waste of time. Please don’t read them. In fact, please get rid of them soonest. Because a dream of flying means entirely different things to an airline pilot about to sit a final flying test, to a military pilot who has just strafed an entire road of fleeing civilians, to a grandmother who is on her first trip to visit family abroad, to the twenty-something executive who hates flying, to the aerophobe who lives in terror of the smell of aviation diesel. And the takeaway from this? It’s the feelings that matter. Really. Trust me on this. The colours are interesting, The human interactions are rewarding. If you can regularly become lucid and decide that what you want to do with this is to have the most amazing sex you’ve ever imagined, (personally, I think that’s a terrible waste of an opportunity, but there you go) – it’s the feelings that matter. Write them down. If you write nothing else, write those. If there is a narrative arc, write that (a storyline). Otherwise, write what you remember of the people, places, things you encountered. If there’s music, write it. Colours: write them. Get as much detail as you can – in the long run, if you want to start working with dreams, this is your raw material, and there’s a lot more you can do than simply waking in the dream.