At some point, you taught yourself how to do Wake Initiated Lucid Dreams (WILDs). For those who might want to practice this, tell us the approach that you used, and how you managed to move your awareness into the sleep state?
I have found WILDs to be one of the most difficult ways of attaining lucidity. The only time that it seems easy is after waking up in the morning hours, and still feeling sleepy, or waking from a nap. If I am able to stay fully conscious into the hypnagogic state of awareness, then the struggle of having to stay ‘awake’ yet going to sleep, is almost over. It is walking a fine line to keep that balance in check, and is a very difficult mental task.
Having two states of consciousness aware at the same time is hard to accomplish for most people, which is why not everybody masters lucid dreaming. Having ego consciousness (everyday awake consciousness) go from being unaware within the subconscious, to being aware (waking up in the dream), is one thing. But when attempting WILDs, it is almost the opposite. It is keeping the ego consciousness aware while entering the subconscious.
Every lucid dreamer knows how difficult it is to keep your ego consciousness in a balanced state to prevent collapse of the dream state. Well, with WILDs, you don‘t suddenly become aware like you do when waking up in a dream. You have to have that balance so steady, so naturally flowing, that you ride your consciousness right into your subconscious.
Can you give us an example of one of your WILDs?
I have entered WILDs first thing upon going to bed. It is a long process doing it that way. It is basically meditating to make sure you are aware as you shut down into sleep mode. For me, I have already had a long day, and to attempt a WILD, knowing that I have the entire night ahead of me, seems a little fruitless. The best time is when you do not have anything going on the next day; waking up on a Saturday and not having any pressing matters to take care of, or waking up from a nap.
I‘ll give an example:
November 4, 2007 – Lucidity/Vibrations/WILD
My first attempt when I found myself lucid was to try for ‘Clarity.‘ To my great surprise – I didn‘t think it would actually be as simple as just saying the word! The voiced intention within the lucid dream did have an effect, though not as dramatic as I was hoping for. But I was excited that it worked!
So, I was extremely excited to say, ‘Greater lucidity.’ Something wonderful. A tingling sensation, possibly a precursor to vibrations. I said it again, ‘Greater lucidity.’ Stronger vibrations, but somehow feeling of a different frequency than other types of vibrations I have experienced. But I was excited and so said it again. And lost lucidity by waking up.
Something just seemed to pull me right out of the lucid dream.
Since I was in an ideal place for practicing, I closed my eyes and waited for a dream to begin manifesting. This type of practice owes a great deal of its success to meditation. Using meditation techniques, I am able to keep my mind aware and at the same time let it drift off to find sleep.
A dreamscape began manifesting in my mind, which seems a strange experience. There is awareness while meditating, and although the mind environment is very dark, it doesn‘t ‘feel‘ dark. It feels like potential waiting to manifest. It is very similar to being in fog (but blackness all around), and beginning to see shapes in front of you, but not being able to exactly discern what the shapes are. Initially, they are like shadows within a darker backdrop. I noticed that if you try and ‘create‘ the shapes into a form (like seeing particular shapes in the clouds), the WILD begins crumbling.
Instead, I focus on subtle details within the forming ‘moving picture‘ by meditating on them. Slowly the dream environment gets more substantial and soon I find myself fully lucid in the dream. It is very similar to an opening that occurs within the blackness. The shapes in the fog begin taking on more detailed form, and the more details of the form that become visible, the more motion within the visual becomes manifest.
I have realized that if I focus on particular shadow/ shapes, my mind wants to construct them into whatever it is thinking they may be. So, instead, I do not focus, but let them be. Soon, it is like a portal blooms into color and shape and the dream space is suddenly real looking, but as if viewed through a portal. It feels like it has locked into place in my awareness, and I need to push/pull myself directly in to become a part of it.
So what became your go-to technique for lucid dreaming? What did you hope to investigate and explore?
The go-to method was different meditation (focus) techniques within lucid dreams. That changed everything, including the frequency of having lucid dreams. During these times, I also wanted to explore OBE‘s and astral travels. I found that the longer I was in an OBE, the more the OBE became similar to full lucid dream states. I was testing the limits of what I could do in those altered states. One of the things that occurred (and still does) while in the standard out-of-body state, is the inability to look at my face.
Rarely, I would be able to glimpse my body. My body would look like a fuzzy grey cloud in the shape of a body, with no details. But for the most part, it was always very difficult to look in the direction of where my physical body lay. It was like there was a repulsing magnetic force pushing me away. I have never been able to ‘see‘ my head area while in an OBE state. It‘s always been impossible to bypass that force or whatever it is.
I was seeing how far I could go. I wanted experiences that were beyond any experience you could have in a physical body. Traveling to different, strange ‘worlds,‘ and sometimes living as different beings, exploring environments that are almost impossible to describe, visiting different entities. I even began having relationships with some of these ‘spirit‘ entities, and could travel to specific astral locations to find them.
We would talk about aspects of the non-material compared to the density of the material. These relationships spanned a couple of years with some of them. There was a very strong sense of connection, as if I knew them, and they knew me, long before my being human.
As you went deeper into lucid dreaming, did you feel like you were being shown new information, or a new perspective on the nature of reality?
The depth of lucid dreaming seems endless. Even the content of what one can learn from experiencing them is of a nature vastly more varied than what is experienced during waking reality. There were three significant areas I felt I was being shown and these completely changed my perspective of ‘the nature of reality.‘ To generalize the three, I would say one is science based, one is spiritually based, and one is the ability of lucid dreams to change how you view and experience life. I call it, playing in my sandbox.
So give us an example of a ‘sandbox’ lucid dream that allowed you to explore a scientific question? What did you learn?
In this sandbox lucid dream, I decided to see how small I could ‘see‘ or perceive. Researching quantum physics gave me this interesting idea to try, and this one was based on a quantum theory that relates to what is called, the Aether Unit. In a simple, brief explanation, it is how quantum ‘clouds‘ manifest as mass. When I originally had this lucid dream, I didn‘t understand exactly what I was seeing. Now, after a couple more years of studying quantum states and photons, I do, and what I saw in the lucid dream is extremely accurate to the new research and experiments quantum physicists are currently working on.
June 25, 2012 – A Quantum Viewing
Immediately I find myself lucid. I don‘t even notice any dreamscape, my mind is so incredibly focused to try and pull this off. I have attempted this type of dream before, seeing as small as I can, but the results are always unsatisfactory. This new technique of confining the experiment to the space between my hands is a major breakthrough. I considered it my Sandbox to play in.
I bring my hands up to form the experiment between them, palms facing towards each other. Everything is clear in between the space of my hands. I drop all awareness except what is necessary. There are no words I need use anymore to manifest the experiment. My mind rests into the feeling of a quantum sized focal point of awareness. Clear. Pure. Silence. Stillness. Patience.
I must have injected my awareness into the space between my hands. There is no awareness of my hands anymore. Little, tiny, tiny silver/white sparks began shining like the tiniest of diamonds within the clear, pure, silent stillness. (The feeling I have remembering them, is indescribable.)
The shine of them, so small, so brilliant with a radiance that stays contained within the miniscule sparks, as if the place is so clear, so empty but for the tiny sparks of perfect light; there is nothing for the light to reflect off. There is no diffusion of the light and the sparks almost appear as if they are impossibly small pinpoint holes of reality, drifting, shining in non-reality. I cannot escape the feeling this environment evokes. It is far beyond awe. It is sacred. Divinity being realized, holy and alive! Zoom in.
The brilliant diamond sparks of reality are now white dots floating in the clearness. The clearness is not light, not dark, just pure ‘clearness.’ They look like white/silver beads of moisture seen in fog. Tiny, so incredibly tiny, drifting. Oh! Movement! Flashes of ‘silver/white‘ streaks through them! The streak flashes are perhaps 50 times the height of a white dot and maybe 10 times longer than itself in height. As a streak flashes by, going from right to left in my perceptual awareness, the white dots that are touched or completely engulfed in the streak as it races through, sparkle like tiny white/sparks shining like the tiniest of diamonds. Flashing brilliance and fluctuating faster than it seems possible for me to interpret, the white spheres glimmer as if coming to life.
Zoom in.
White sphere but see-through. There is something like an energy band racing through it; a result of the streaking flashes‘ touch. It is becoming much more difficult to define. Things that were split have combined. Two aspects, whose division was previously invisible, are now combined. I never saw the two aspects, didn‘t ever see they were different from a singular ‘thing‘. But somehow, I know this is true.
White sphere is itself. It is the energy band that has the initial dynamics. The silver/white energy streak is made up of 3 ribbons. Zoom closer to the ribbons. They are toruses, but whose dimensionality is so flat it appears as a thick circular band. But they ARE toruses.
Zoom out.
As the energy streaks by and hits the clear white sphere/bubble there is a snapping-together. Like a clear taught rubber band containing light, snapping while releasing energy. With that snapping, the 3 toroidal shaped ribbons fuse with the sphere. All of them together make a ‘hard‘ field of localized force; a magnetic sphere-like containment of the streaking movement that is now brilliant multicolored light bands.
Zoom in.
I can hold the new object with my hands. I try to decipher the pattern the ribbons make up but it has already become too complex, too difficult for my awareness to follow. They are like three Mobius strips entangled. There is an opening in the multicolored sphere, a corkscrew shaped hole. I peer inside. It is absolutely hollow. I rotate it around to the opposite side and it all merges together and drapes down into the interior of the sphere, like an incredibly small, tiny…sphincter.
You mention that lucid dreaming also naturally led you to explore spiritual issues. Can you give us an example of a lucid dream with a spiritual aspect? Does anything hinder exploring this area?
The further I went into lucid dreaming, and the sheer number of times I have done it, has allowed me to develop, or create, ways of advancing. And that word, ‘advancing‘ is to be taken in multiple ways, not only advancing abilities to attain higher states of awareness, but advancing along spiritual avenues as well.
I was recognizing patterns of what could work, and what wouldn‘t. I was discovering ways of breaking down barriers that had existed for a long time. I suppose these barriers are part of the individual psyche, but I also feel that these barriers are universal for humans as well. Many of these barriers can be equated with the seven sins, and as cliché as it sounds, love and light.
First let me say that I am a spiritual man, but I am not a religious man. I am of no particular faith, though I enjoy researching them. Many, many times I found that succumbing to the temptation of sins can stop advancement quite effectively. I conclude that sins are actually blockages that actively prevent one‘s self from attaining higher states of awareness and consciousness.
Most times I succumbed to temptations, I became lost to them. The more desirable the ‘sin,‘ or the temptation, the higher the probability of waking consciousness to lose itself, and lucidity slips away as the sin pulls you deeper and deeper into itself.
If I could overcome the temptations within the lucid dreams when seeking spiritual knowledge or advanced states of consciousness (almost always in the way of living symbols and even archetypes), most times I would learn something, have small epiphanies and awakenings that are unattainable in such a manner when in the ‘real‘ world.
It was extremely difficult to push through those temptations for many years. I felt like I had discovered the blockages of myself.
August 23, 2008 One of the First Times Playing with LIGHT
Lucid, I find myself in a dark neighborhood, ordinary, at night. I have been practicing forming light through my hands and body and decide to perform the exercise here. I focus my attention on my hands, imagining them lit inside, made of love/ light. I am somewhat successful, but not nearly to my satisfaction. I push intention on them, even voicing aloud the request, but again I achieve only minor success.
I am standing. I spread my arms wide and try a meditation technique that consists of gathering energy and releasing light. Back straight, arms fully out from my sides, I take a deep inhalation and imagine drawing energy in through my crown chakra. Breathe out imagining the energy transformed to light and exiting out through my hands. Incredible!
Bright blue light, like 4-inch in diameter lasers, blasts from my hands. As my exhaling stops and I draw breath in again, the blue beams weaken and retract back close to the palms of my hands. As I draw breath, I repeat the process of imagining energy being pulled in through my crown chakra. Exhaling, I push the light back out through my hands. Straight as a laser. Moving my arms around, the lights beam straight out from whatever direction my palms are facing.
As I am playing around, practicing this newfound ability, a young girl – perhaps 12 years old – runs from around the side of a house and stops abruptly before she runs into me. She has blue beams coming out from her palms also.
She says she is scared and that she is worried that she is going to hurt someone with them. I tell her that light is good, it is a higher vibration and that she has managed to work a wonderful trick. She is skeptical of what I say. She sits down in the grass and very carefully practices with the lights.
I get back to swinging the lights around, seeing how far into the distance they will travel. They reach as far as I can see. As I am doing this I see a shadowy dark form some way in the distant. It is acting as if it is investigating the beams of blue light. I rush past the four or five houses it takes to get to the black human form, a trickle of fear tickling my spine. I run right into him. He is laughing. He is full of hate. He is disfigured, ugly and emitting a dark/ negative vibration. My heart is pounding hard and fast!
Without thinking, I wrap my arms around the freaky man and he is struggling to get away. I do the light trick I just learned and place the palm of my right hand directly on his forehead. He is slowly transforming the longer I keep the blue light shooting into his head.
He stops struggling and a smile of extreme peace and relief takes the place of that death grin. He begins weeping and tells me how much he loves me for releasing him. He thanks me, and walks away into the dark night.
I think about some New Age readings about how the Earth is damaged and needs light and love to reverse the damage done to it. I place my hands on earth, palms facing down, breathe in deeply and drive as much light into the ground as I can. Dropping my awareness into a meditative-type state, I am able to do this over and over again without thought anymore.
Breathe in, push the light deep down. Breathe in while simultaneously pulling light down through my crown chakra. Exhale and push the light down, down. After an unknown amount of times doing this, a male voice, strong but distant, says with absolute clarity in my head, ‘You are doing very well.’
