By Ed Kellog III, Ph. D. 2013 © 2014

Many cultures believe that some acts, such as meditating and healing, have as much as a seven-fold enhanced effectiveness in lucid dreams, as compared to the same acts performed in waking physical reality. Tibetans have even developed a series of dream yoga practices to take advantage of this effect to accelerate spiritual development.

 

If you want to try meditating in a lucid dream, it helps to choose a meditation that you can accomplish in a short period of time, as one often does not know just how long a dream will last. Although the Kabbalistic Cross meditation that I did in a lucid dream, might not seem as simple as chanting a mantra, it takes less than a minute to perform, employs vivid, archetypal imagery, and becomes easily remembered once one has done it with focused intent a few times in WPR.

 

In waking meditations the KC usually does not stand alone, but instead serves as the “opening movement” for a longer meditation/visualization that follows it. Although I used a modified version that I developed, with respect to pronunciation, hand and arm gestures used, etc., one can find descriptions of reasonably similar KC versions online.

 

The Kabbalistic Cross belongs solidly in the Judeo-Christian tradition. One begins by intoning Ateh, (“Thine,” the Divine Aspect), while visualizing the Tree of Life sefirah Kether as an energy center above the head, and then intoning Malkuth, (“Kingdom,” the Physical Aspect) while visualizing an energy center below the feet, connecting “the Above with the Below” with a beam of visualized light.

 

To make the cross, one then intones ve Geburah (“The Power,” the Judgment Aspect), while visualizing the sefirah Din near the left shoulder, and then ve Gedulah (“The Glory,” the Lovingkindness Aspect) , while visualizing the sefirah Chesed near the right shoulder.

 

In this way one symbolically brings into balance the left and right, yin and yang, sides of the Tree of Life, the Pillar of Severity and the Pillar of Mercy, connecting them with a beam of light. After creating the cross, one completes this short meditation by intoning le Olam, “Without End”, and finally Amen, thus intentionally mapping the concluding words of the Lord’s prayer (“For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, Forever and Ever. Amen.”) onto the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

 

The lucid dream described below highlights the amazing results that can sometimes occur when meditating in a lucid dream. In this case the enhancement, as compared to my WPR experiences, proved far greater than seven-fold, but more like a thousand-fold – and more! “Kabbalistic Cross”

 

EWK 40 121 (From semi-lucid towards super-lucid) “I go out into a field, under the open sky, and do the Kabbalistic Cross ritual chanting the Hebrew words (Ah/TAW, Mal/KUTH, veh Geh/BOO/rah, veh Geh/DOO/lah, leh Oh/LAM, Ah/MEN) I feel an incredible sense of expansion, like I grow a mile tall in seconds. I do it again, and experience a sense of ecstasy and super-humanness, but not beyond a certain point.

 

The Kabbalistic Cross ritual and chant takes me so far, but no farther. I feel the next level of cosmic consciousness, but I can‟t quite achieve it. I fall short, the ritual can only take me so far.” Note: For those interested in learning more about dreaming and the Kabbalah, see my LDE Lucid Dreaming Challenge, “Exploring the Tree of Life Through Lucid Dreaming,” in the Lucid Dream Experience, Vol. 1, #4, pp 15-22, March 2013 issue.