Exploring The World Of Luc

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that you should always be conscious of what you are doing in waking life. Sometimes self-
consciousness can interfere with effective performance; if you are in a situation (dream or
waking) in which your habits are working smoothly, you don t need to direct your action
consciously. However, if your habits are taking you in the wrong direction (whether dreaming
or waking), you should be able to wake up to what you are doing wrong and consciously
redirect your approach.
As for the benefits of dream interpretation, lucid dreams can be examined as fruitfully as
nonlucid ones. Indeed, lucid dreamers sometimes interpret their dreams while they are
happening. Becoming lucid is likely to alter what would have otherwise happened, but the
dream can still be interpreted.
Q. Sometimes in lucid dreams I encounter situations of otherworldliness, accompanied by
feelings of the preence of great power or energy. At these times my consciousness expands far
beyond anything I have ex-perienced in waking life, so that the experience seems much more
real than the reality I know, and I become terrified. I cannot continue these dreams for fear that
I will never awaken from them, since the experience seems so far out of the realm of waking
existence. What would happen if I was unable to awaken myself from these lucid dreams?
Would I die or go mad?
A. Despite the seemingly horrific nature of this concern, it amounts to little more than fear of
the unknown. There is no evidence that anything you do in a dream could affect your basic
brain physiology in a way that is harm-ful. And, as intense as a dream may be, it can t last any
longer than the natural course of REM periods at most an hour or so. Of course, since
explorations of the world of dreams have really just begun, there are bound to be regions as yet
uncharted. But you should not fear to pi-oneer them. The feeling of intense anxiety that
accom-panies the sudden onset of strange experiences in dreams is a natural part of the
orientation response: it is adaptive in the waking world for a creature in a new situation or
territory to look first for danger. However, the fear is not necessarily relevant to what is
happening. You need not fear physical harm in your dreams. When you find your-self in the
midst of a new experience, let go of your fear and just see what happens. (Chapter 10 covers the
theory and practice of facing fears in dreams. )
Q. They say that if you die in your dream, you really will die. Is this true?
A. If it were true, how would anybody know? There is direct evidence to the contrary: many
people have died in their dreams with no ill effects, according to the re-ports they gave after
waking up alive. Moreover, dreams of death can become dreams of rebirth if you let them, as
is illustrated by one of my own dreams. After a mysterious weakness quickly spread through
my whole body, I realized I was about to die of exhaustion and only had time for one final
action. Without hesitation, I decided that I wanted my last act to be an expression of perfect
acceptance. As I let out my last breath in that spirit, a rainbow flowed out of my heart, and I
awoke ecstatic. 3
Q. If I use my lucidity in a dream to manipulate and dominate the other dream characters, and
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magically al-ter the dream environment, won t I be making a habit of behavior that is not likely
to benefit me in waking life ?
A. Chapter 6 discusses an approach to lucid dreams that will help you establish ways of
behaving that will be use-ful to you in waking life. This is to control your own actions and
reactions in the dream, and not the other characters and elements of the dream. However, this
does not mean that we believe it harmful if you choose to enjoy yourself by playing King or
Queen of Dreamland. In fact, if you normally feel out of control of your life, or are an
unassertive person, you well may benefit from the empowered feeling engendered by taking
control of the dream.
Q. Won t all these efforts and exercises for becoming lu-cid lead to loss of sleep ? And won t I
feel more tired after being awake in my dreams? Is it worth sacrificing my alertness in the
daytime just to have more lucid dreams ?
A. Dreaming lucidly is usually just as restful as dreaming nonlucidly. Since lucid dreams tend
to be positive expe-riences, you may actually feel invigorated after them. How tired you feel
after a dream depends on what you did in the dream if you battled endlessly and nonlucidly
with frustrating situations, you probably will feel more tired than if you realized in the dream
that it was a dream and that none of your mundane concerns were relevant. You should work on
learning lucid dreaming when you have time and energy to devote to the task. The exercises for
increasing dream recall and inducing lucid dreams probably will require that you spend more
time awake during the night than usual, and possibly that you sleep longer hours. If you are too
busy to allot more time to sleeping or to sacrifice any of the little sleep you are getting, it s
probably not a good idea for you to work on lucid dreaming right now. Doing so will add to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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