In his article, Better Lucid Dreaming, Alex Sumner writes:
- “Lucid Dreaming is the art of becoming aware that you are dreaming, whilst dreaming. When you experience this you find your dream-life instantly becomes more exciting. For some it becomes a new resource of creativity; for others, it is the first step on a new path to spiritual unfolding. Others yet again see it as an opportunity for wish-fulfillment: to indulge in epic adventures, exercise Matrix- or Inception-like superpowers or pursue limitless romantic and sexual pleasures.”
- Sumner has some good simple suggestions for becoming a lucid dreamer. His two main points:
- Remember your dreams.
- Learn to control what you dream about.
- Suggested ways to remember your dreams:
- Write down or draw your dreams as soon as you wake up.
- Meditate: “Before lying down in bed, sit upright with your spine erect,” suggests Sumner. “Breathe slowly and evenly, and allow the events of the day to replay before your mind’s eye in reverse, i.e. starting with the present moment and going back in time, as far as you can go. Practice this every night. This leads to not only an improved dream-memory, but also an improved waking memory as well. It also leads to a curious effect: because the hold which the day’s events have on the mind is released during meditation, the dreaming-mind is then free to explore other more exotic realms of memory during the night.”
- Use affirmations. Repeat to yourself 20 times right before sleep: “I can remember my dreams in detail.”
- To learn to control what you dream about, you can use these methods:
- Use affirmations. Sumner says, “By deliberately impressing a suggestion upon your unconscious mind before going to sleep, your unconscious, which is the source of all dreams, responds by shaping the character of your nocturnal visions accordingly.” You can repeat to yourself, “I will dream about [subject] 20 times before bed.
- Have a picture of what you want to dream about. Stare at it a while before going to sleep.
“Leave it propped up on your night-stand.” - As you’re heading off to sleep, lie in bed and visualize — like a movie in which you’re the main actor — what you would like to dream about. Be sure to experience the emotions.
- Use an orgasm. According to Sumner, “Whereas the preceding methods take advantage of the natural suggestibility of the mind at the point of drifting off into sleep, there is another method of impressing a desire on the unconscious, which is through a sudden burst of spontaneous emotion.” The easiest way, since you’re in bed anyway, is to have an orgasm. “… Before starting, reduce the subject of your dream to a single word, or a single symbol. Do not attempt to think about this before becoming aroused; but concentrate on it only after you have started, so that at the moment of orgasm it dominates your mind completely.”
- Sumner says that once you’ve learned how to control your dreams, you can use the same methods to gain more control in the dreams themselves.
- More specific information about controlling your lucid dreams can be found on many websites, including World of Lucid Dreaming, which also has a Facebook page.
