Benefits of Lucid Dreaming
By: John Ege
Tags: Benefits Of Meditation, Joy, Mindfulness, Awareness, Lucid Dreaming

If you track this post, I suspect you know something about Lucid Dreaming. This isn’t ‘how to do it.’ There are plenty of books on that. And videos and articles available that are very helpful in terms of instructions. I am wanting this to be helpful in another way. Existentially. That’s my preferred method of interacting and favored therapeutic paradigm. While listening to an old Art Bell Podcast on Lucid dream last night, one of the guest provoked a realization. Practicing Lucid Dreaming has given me greater confidence, but also access to joy.

I have not had a nightmare since I was 16 years old, with one exception- I was sick with fever. Fever dreams feel differently than nightmares, so I might not label them nightmares. I do remember having nightmares and being scared throughout childhood, awakened with heart pounding and sweat; I remember being upset about the dream for a day, even a week. At 16, the last nightmare- it was a recurring dream of being chased by a monster. I never saw the monster. I just new I was being chased, and I would run. I remember it like it was yesterday. 16, I had this dream and woke up screaming, I was terrified enough to turn on the lights, and then suddenly, I was angry. I swore, “If I ever have this dream again, I will turn and face the monster.” I had the dream again that night. I started to run. I remembered my declaration. I stopped in the dream. I turned around. Monster became a best friend. I woke up elated. No more nightmares.

At the time, I didn’t know what Lucid Dreaming was. Technically, the above may not count. I didn’t say, I know this is a dream and changed it. There was awareness, and I remembered an intent from waking life and acted on it. Maybe it was? The thing is, I didn’t share this. It didn’t become a useful meme over all, or a story that jumped me into more sophisticated dream work. That came in time. The lesson stuck with me. And then that video, an old podcast… Successful Lucid Dream Episodes results in improved moods. That is paraphrased from the guests.

Lucid dreaming isn’t an easy thing for me. I have to work to get them. I have to work to stay in them. I get so excited and full of joy, I usually wake myself up. That joy lingers through the day and week. Nightmares have negative affects that linger. Confronting nightmares forces them to change. Even Jung was aware of this- you don’t escape by running from demons- you run towards the shadows, because the lights on the other side. Confronting nightmares, night terrors, even the monsters of sleep paralysis, results in change- positive change that has an after affect- a glow that lingers.

We don’t have full control over anything, in real life or in dreams. It is always a participatory event with many agents. In the dream world, there is a negotiation with the subconscious. Before lucid, your situation is scripted and you’re handed stuff and a script and a context and then “Action,” you’re on. You are every character. Even not being you is being you in a way that is educational from the view point of a life simulator. We are here to learn, why not also learn vicariously through dreams? Being lucid in a dream gives you choices- you can expound on your options within the context, or break walls and change it up.

In real life, when I am being mindful, I will ask agents- people, animals, objects, what do they mean, what’s their significance; sometimes I just thank them. I have decided I don’t always need to know everything. When I remember, I ask ‘am I dreaming.’ What would happen if we treated real life like dreaming life? This reality is handed to us, and if we sit with it, accept it, not try to change it, not run, not fight, but instead ask ‘does this hold meaning?’ or ‘can I learn from this?’ or ‘can I understand the context of the other agents and extend compassion to myself and others?’ Would our worlds change if we all did this?

You may think there is a distinction between real life people and dream people. I would argue, there is no distinction. Robert Wagoner, author of my favorite lucidity book, ‘Lucid Dreaming: Gateways to Inner Self’ seems to agree. I recommend his book. I have not met a 2 dimensional character in my dreams. I have treated beings as if they were two dimensional- in real life and in dreams. How you treat others in your dreams is evidence for how you treat yourself in real life. I’ve treated myself badly. How you treat others in real life is evidence for how you treat yourself, a fairly solid Buddhist belief. I have treated others badly. Whether you consider the agents of your dream real or not, I would argue they are definitely sentient. I argue that they are you, or your subconscious. You are sentient. Your subconscious may be even more profoundly sentient. Your soul or essence runs these agents- so they are not just NPCs. They have stories and background. They can’t not. There is not one thing in your head that has been completely isolated in a vacuum from the start. Everything has momentum.

There is solid evidence for how you experience reality in a dream being exactly the same to your experience of real world. It goes through the same brain channels. I wonder if you experience dreams in real time. There is overwhelming evidence you don’t experience the real world in real time. Google 80 milliseconds. Read “Who’s in Charge,” a book by Michael Gazzaniga. You think you are in real time, but the reality you experience is being uploaded into your conscious awareness after the event. More precisely, events happen, your brain processes the information, and it hands you some of the event data, constructed in a frame of reference that you can interpret, but it doesn’t give you everything. Your world is constructed after being filtered, and you are never privy to all the facts. You make decisions based on incomplete information that is biased per your filters. If you think about it, from within any dream you ever had, you never doubted the reality of it, even though it is illusory. We make the same error with daily life- we make more decisions based on our assumptions than on absolute facts. That doesn’t mean there is validity to reality. You may experience someone who is angry- but most the time, we take that personally instead of asking, ‘are you angry?’ Some people aren’t angry, but we misinterpret information based on cultural bias. The look of ‘anger’ isn’t universal between all cultures, nor between species.

If you take reality personally, you might be dreaming.

Stop the world and melt with you seems like a great segue way song. Practice slowing the world down and experiencing without reflection. Ask yourself, are you dreaming. Thank the agents in your life. Did you get to work safe with no check engine light? Thank you, car. Thank you traffic. Thank you weather. Lots agents participated in that event. Practicing gratitude is helpful for changing perspective. It changes beliefs. Practice long enough, over time you will forget that there is any other way of being. You will one day wake up and realize, life is actually okay most the time.

Practice asking ‘is this a dream,’ and over time you find it will be automatic. What you practice in real life gets uploaded into dreams. One day you will ask that question in a dream and become aware- oh, I am dreaming. Suddenly, you will have the keys to changing the world in more dynamic ways. In real life, a flat tire is annoying, but from a dream perspective, this is interesting- why is the world slowing my roll? What does my unconscious want me to consider? Maybe it’s just time to slow down, take a walk? COVID feels like a dream. The world needed a slow down reminder. There are better ways of existing available to us. I hear the dolphins have appreciated the quietness. Maybe we can commune with them when we get quiet. Boss yelling in a dream means something. Being reserved when the boss yells at me in real life, having composure to breathe before responding, asking if this is a dream, might allow for a reflection question that turns it around; ‘are you angry?’

Most people don’t want to be loud or angry. Most people have a positive view of themselves. Most people want to be kind, not just seen as kind, and if we were aware of all the times we forgot to be who we want most to be- we’d likely be embarrassed. There are many ways we impose ourselves as opposed to simply experiencing. I remember a stretch of time where I had daily headaches and if someone asked how I was, I grumpily delivered ‘I have a headache.’ One person remarked, ‘you always had a headache.’ I stopped saying those words. I didn’t want to be the headache guy , even if I was the that guy. The headaches didn’t go away immediately. I continued to have weekly migraines, had to be sedated regularly, and had to seriously contend with some stressors. I got migraines down to once a year. It’s been two years now since I had a full blown migraine. I still get headaches. I ask myself, what does it mean? And then I push through. One of the strangest events after making this decision to not ‘own’ daily headaches was that I experienced a migraine that didn’t result in being sedated- but, and this is the strange part- I experienced JOY simultaneously with the migraine. I wondered if that was evidence for brain damage or for of epilepsy. I was at school and told the instructor, I feel happy, and I have a migraine, like I am nauseous, and the light is bothering me, but I also feel like, I am okay. I didn’t want the headache, but I felt good. The professor agreed that was strange, and we went about our worlds.

But isn’t that the way of dreams? We have an experience and we move on? We don’t get stuck there. I wonder if that is the message behind ‘Row Row Row Your Boat.’ Not the first time I have thought about that. That was a narrative one of my favorite characters gave me when I wrote him into existence. Tammas Parken Arlbaster Garcia, “Star Trek: A Touch of Greatness.” Fan fiction. You may think ‘it’s just a character.’ But aren’t we all? Maybe that’s why narrative therapy is so useful. Lucid Dreaming is narrative therapy. Writing books, narrative therapy. Day dreaming is narrative therapy. Interacting with other humans is therapy. The world isn’t a stage- it’s a holiday treatment center. Everyone in your life, in your dreams, in the stories you enjoy and share- those are counselors and elders.