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YOU WILL WANT TO LEARN LUCID

DREAMING AFTER READING THIS
Jade Small | February 9, 2015 | Metaphysics | No Comments

So you know the psychological definition of lucid dreaming and how its all supposed to
work but what do lucid dreams feel like?
Years ago, before I had my first lucid dream, I had a very specific idea about what a lucid
dream would feel like. I thought it would be very intense and magical and perhaps a bit
spooky. Turns out I was right on all fronts.
But there is a heck of a lot more about the sensation and perception of lucid dreams that
I have learned about since then. While no two lucid dreams are the same (and while its
no substitute for experiencing a lucid dream first-hand) I have tried to definemy
own experience of a lucid dream for the uninitiated.
Ive broken it down into physical, mental and emotional components:

THE PHYSICAL EXPERIENCE

Your physical experience is made up of sensory interpretations, like the feel of the
ground underneath your feet, or the smell of the ocean. In waking life, this information is
received via the five senses: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. The stimulus is real
and your brain interprets the data.
In dreams, this information is synthesized by the mind from memory and imagination.
And yet, when lucid, it can feel just as real and vivid as waking life. Sometimes thats
very intense and pleasurable (which is why many beginners go in search of lucid dream
sex) or sometimes it can be dulled down (when you lose lucidity).

Here are some examples of physical lucid dream experiences:

CLICK HERE FOR ADVANCED LUCID DREAMING

TECHNIQUES.
EATING IN LUCID DREAMS
It may be a cliche that women love chocolate but its a cliche for a reason.
So naturally, I have eaten some truly delicious
chocolate cake in my lucid dreams.
Imagine the smoothest, richest, creamiest
chocolate cake in the world. Its perfection
embodied in a dessert. Now intensify that
experience and youre getting close to lucid
dream cake
When lucid eating, chewing and swallowing takes less time and its all about the flavor
and texture of the food. Whats more, your taste buds never become accustomed to the
flavor so each bite is like your first. And of course theres no need to feel guilty about
consuming unnecessary calories.
While chocolate cake is right up there, you can of course eat anything imaginable in a
lucid dream. It can be a favorite childhood meal or even something youve never tried
before (would that taste be authentic?)
Remember that your expectation of it being totally delicious makes it so. Which means
you wont get gristle in the worlds best beef burger, nor a floppy bit of lettuce.
Expectation is why eating in lucid dreams is so awesome.

FLYING IN LUCID DREAMS

Aside from skydivers, base jumpers and other extremists of that ilk, most people have
never experienced the physical sensation of flying freely. Yet the lucid dreaming mind
simulates it in extraordinary physical detail.

In my flying dreams, the sense of

weightlessness, whooshing and wavering in
the air is incredibly authentic (or at least how
I imagine it to be). This awareness is critical to
the experience, and your mind can even play
tricks on you, like suddenly falling and
simulating that stomach-dropping feeling.
Your dreaming mind may add more sensations
such as feeling the wind in your hair, rain
hammering on your skin, or the warmth of the sun on your face. If you have any doubts
about your new skills, you may unexpectedly whack into a powerline mid-flight which
brings me to the subject of pain in lucid dreams

PAIN IN LUCID DREAMS

The lucid dream is co-created by two players: the unconscious dreaming mind (the one
that loves surreal symbology) and the conscious self. In normal dreams, the unconscious
has basically all control. In lucid dreams, the conscious self steps in and starts to tweak
little things as it desires.
Both can technically create pain in lucid dreams, although its most likely the
unconscious mind that produces this experience. Pain is a result of pre-conceptions and
established neural pathways: if you hit your thumb with a hammer, what do you expect?
The brain simulates dream pain because this is its reality.
So, if you fall onto a bed of spikes in your
lucid dream, you might just find out what it
feels like to be impaled. But fear not you
can will the pain to stop instantly or even
wake yourself up. And Im sure it wont be a
patch on the real life experience of being
impaled.
When Ive experienced pain in a lucid dream,
it was very different from real pain. It was
inconsistent with the cause, and stopped
abruptly when the dream moved on. Whats
more, there was no psychological component,
which can make real life pain so much worse.

I have also experienced choking, drowning and dying while in a lucid nightmare and my
dream self automatically moved out-of-body where it was no longer painful and I could
keep observing.

THE MENTAL EXPERIENCE

Now lets move to the cognitive experience of lucid dreams: how it feels to be aware,
process information, recall memories and mentally control the dream.

LOCACTION AWARENESS IN LUCID DREAMS

In lucid dreams, your focus is expanded considerably compared to normal dreams, but
some aspects are still very different from what you experience in waking life. Location
awareness is one of them.
For example, sitting at my desk right now, I am aware of the room around me, the house
beyond that, the garden, the village, the New Zealand landscape, and even a sense that
I am on planet Earth. I know my location in the grand scheme of things and I know this is
a solid, reliable construct.
But the lucid dream world is much
more fluid. When lucid, I am most often
in unfamiliar places which have no
GeoTag. I accept this automatically,
knowing that I can teleport to a new
location any time. Its as if my brain
has no intention of placing my location
so instead focuses my awareness only
in the immediate vicinity. The best way
I can describe it is becoming absorbed
in a video game or a movie and forgetting the real world exists beyond it.
Of course, with conscious effort, you can recall that your real body is lying in
bed. Sometimes, however, such thinking only serves to wake you up prematurely.
But generally (for me, anyway) the default setting is to focus on the pretty colors in in
front of my face right now. This is why its a good reason to set up a lucid dream
intention while awake, because its hard for the conscious dreaming mind to imagine
new places from scratch. If you have no pre-set intention, just allow the dream to take

over and show you an unlimited amount of cool new stuff. This is where the best
creativity arises anyway.

MEMORY IN LUCID DREAMS

Your memory works differently in the dream world. Thats because large parts of your
brain are inactive during sleep and it can be difficult to rouse them, even when you
become conscious inside the dreamworld.
In normal dreams, you have little memory of your real life, and sometimes you even
have false memories to make the dream scenario fit. Even the memory of the dream
itself fails to lock into short term memory very accurately. In other words, your dreaming
memory rather sucks.
Lucid dreams are only a notch or two above this. Waking memories can be hard to grasp
while lucid, and the lucid dream must be recorded immediately upon waking or you risk
losing the detail forever.
The moment I become lucid, I try to recall my lucid dream intention (my goal for the
dream). Usually Ill set this the night before, when Im going to bed, or earlier in the day
during meditation. Sometimes I cant remember any particular intention, which is
frustrating if I had a great one lined up, but I always have a backup plan to simply
explore the local dreamscape, ask general probing questions of fellow dream figures, or
let the dreaming mind take over.
Long term memory in lucid dreams is also off the radar. Like location awareness, unless
you are specifically trying to access a piece of information, the awareness of past
memories are simply absent or out of focus. This is equally true of thinking about the
future. My lucid dream self lives in the present moment and cares little for childhood
memories or abstract intentions, unless I make deliberate attempts to focus on them.

DREAM CONTROL
Dream control is a cognitive aspect of lucid dreaming because its all done through
willpower and mental focus.
Contrary to popular belief, when you become lucid you dont automatically have total
control over your dream environment. Lucid dreaming only means to have conscious
self-awareness within the dream state. Sometimes this means controlling many aspects

of it, sometimes just a few key expectations, and sometimes you may choose to
relinquish all control altogether.
The sailor does not control the sea, as lucid dream researcher Robert Waggoner puts
it. You may navigate your ship (consciousness) through the ocean (the dream) but you
do not have to consciously populate every dream scene with every leaf and blade of
grass and wisp of cloud. The dream populates itself while we consciously frolic within it.
Sometimes that means a bird flies of its own accord, or a dream figure behaves
autonomously. It is all still classified as lucid dreaming.
Beginners often run into the trap of trying to control major features of the dream with
only a partial sense of lucidity. This can be frustrating and disheartening. To overcome
this obstacle, employ these tricks for increasing and prolonging your lucidity. Only then
can you master full dream control (if you so choose).
When you do exert greater control over the dream, the world is your oyster. You can
paint the sky with a sweep of your hand. You can burrow down into the ground and
journey to the center of the Earth. You can fight zombies, become Iron Man, or even
create an entirely new civilization. Absolutely anything is possible unless you have a
preconceived limiting belief about it.
For instance, if I told you it was
impossible to fly into the sun in a lucid
dream (and you really believed me)
and then attempted it, youd probably
hit some kind of psychological
roadblock. Perhaps youd melt and
emerge in a new scene. Or perhaps
youd hit a wall like Truman Burbank
when he reached the edge of his
world.
When it comes to dream control, your expectations are paramount. And if you have no
conscious expectations of a certain event, your unconscious will fill them in for you,
evolving the dream on your behalf.

THE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE

The intensity of feelings in lucid dreams can be the same, or more intense, as feelings in
real life. The main difference youll notice is that because youre having such a jolly
wonderful time, the emotions are more along the lines of awe, ecstasy, excitement, lust,
gratitude, love and all that other fluffy stuff.

GETTING TOO EXCITED

The big problem with lucid emotions is being overcome
with excitement especially the first few times you
achieve lucidity. Its tempting to jump for joy, shout and
tell everyone in your dream that you are in fact
dreaming. This is undesirable because it vastly increases
your changes of waking up. Besides, in my experience
its universally true that other dream characters really
dont care that youve become lucid anyway. Go figure.
So in your early lucid dreams I recommend taking extra
care to remain calm. You can do it. All it takes is the
simple acknowledgement right now that you wont run
off on like a raving luncatic.
Eventually you wont need to ground yourself like this and you can let your emotions run
a bit more free. But until youve mastered that minimum level of focus required to keep
the dream running, just tone down the jubilation.

HEIGHTENING THE INTENSITY

Eventually you may start to look for a deeper meaning in your lucid dreams. Dont get
me wrong; youll still have plenty of ego-gratifying activities you want to do. But none of
it will be too original or paradigm-shifting. Thats when its time to turn inwards.
One of the more profound applications of lucid dreaming is to communicate with the
dream itself by asking questions. Simply stop what youre doing and address the
dreamscape:
How can I feel at total peace with myself?
How can I find true love?

What is the meaning of life?

Can you show me a totally original dream?
Or if youre really bold: What is my greatest fear?
Then let the dream reveal itself.
When you probe your dream self you will very likely start to experience more
intense emotions and take-home lessons in your lucid dreams, learning about
the true nature of your basest self.
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