3 signs you may be lucid

People will talk about astral dreaming and lucid dreaming and sometimes wonder if a difference exists.  You can be asleep yet, still conscious and even conscious while dreaming.  These are sample phases of awareness.  

Lucid dreamers tune out from the physical world, that is, they choose not to be in conscious sensory contact with it.  They act as if they know what they are doing when they do it.  You can learn to awaken your senses and experience new kinds of contact with dream worlds. One view is that astral and lucid dreaming differ based on what part of your mind is in control.  Subconscious mind levels work differently.

If you believe that human consciousness only permits you to focus attention on one or a few things at once, then you begin to realize you are less conscious than you could be and it takes energy to focus and raise awareness.  Consider your own experience.  Reflect on these four signs you may be lucid;

1) You recall lessons you have learned in waking life during your dreams. Non-lucid dreamers experience state-specific amnesia.  That is, while asleep, they only remember fragments of waking reality, if any at all.  They do not sense a bridge or move beyond it.

2) You sense you are radically shifting or transforming experience. Completely lucid dreams have a profound and lasting impact on the dreamer's thoughts and perception.  You move from feeling contained within the dream world to where you transcend it, realize you create it, and expand.  You no longer totally identify with dream roles.

3) Insight you acquire during dreams is accessible when you awaken.  Inventors, scientists, business people and others have been inspired during sleep with ideas they write and apply while awake.   It enables you to access deeper answers within you.

Comments

[Ginae B. McDonald]

Well, I feel the truth of your article and for *me*, I have certain symbols associated with lucid dreaming.

[Liara Covert]

Ginae, as you say, dreaming is part of a subjective and personal journey. Some people will actually evolve to break objects when lucid and then use their ingenuity to put the objects back together while still in dream states. This is reflective of life in the physical world. Human beings spend lifetimes collecting fragments and putting pieces of puzzles together. People are motivated by the mystery, on conscious and unconscious levels.

[soulMerlin]

Fascinating - especially lucid dreaming (for me)

a few months ago, I got very tired whilst driving. There was a lorry in front of me...then there wasn't. I had been dreaming with my eyes open and the lorry didn't exist (?)

I'm not trying to drag you over to the Almanack, but I have just posted a 30 second video there, which shows just how selective our consciousness can be.(just click my name - I've linked it to the vid' :)

thanks for a really interesting post.

henry

[Liara Covert]

Henry, I look forward to viewing the video you mention. Your described experience with consciousness reminds people that just because an experience defies logic or scientific explanation, that does not discount its realism in the mind of the dreamer. Upon reflection, it may be concluded that 'Science' is really the generalized view of a community of scientists who adhere to a common set of standards for verification. As such, Science tends to be conservative, to resist the new or unusual, and to hold perhaps to tightly to what is already widely accepted. Your own self-acceptance of a particular experience is a vital step to encourage yourself to explore dreaming differently.