For many people who had spontaneous lucid dreams as children (using the simple definition of realizing within a dream that they were dreaming), they often report another kind of experience while falling asleep.
During it, they might feel a strange energy, hear buzzing around their head or body, and then view their bedroom from six feet above their bed! At some point, did you notice these common features of (what people call) out-of-body experiences? What happened?
As mentioned earlier, I had no language for lucid dreaming as a young boy, let alone for out-of-body experiences. However, the sensations you’ve described were very real to me. I went through everything on the below list and more…
- Seeing through closed eyelids
- Lifting, floating, sinking, rolling, rocking, spinning sensations
- Tunnels of bright light and colours
- The presence of people or shadowy figures standing around my bed
- An inner feeling of arms and legs being tugged
- Face stroked and hands held
- Butterfly sensations in my stomach or racing heartbeat
- Feeling of “coming out” of my body from the brow or top of head
- Hearing my name being called, sounds of music or voices
Soon after my childhood lucid dreaming experiences began, I started having a second kind of experience, which had fundamental differences.
With the lucid dreams, I’d always wake up in the dream from sleep. There would be drama, like me being chased by someone or something, and my bedroom or house would always take on an exaggerated form.
Whereas with this other experience, I’d be woken from sleep by one or more of the sensations listed above. I’d feel like I was on a roller coaster and then suddenly I’d be standing in the middle of my bedroom. I could see my body lying under the covers. I could go outdoors and I would be in my neighbourhood and everything pretty much seemed the same. So I kind of had a feeling things were different.
Like lucid dreaming, I didn’t know out-of-body experiences were a thing either. It was a lot for a young mind to take in and process. And as encouraging as my mother was, her insights into what was happening were pretty basic — though she was more helpful than my father, who always took the line, “It’s just a dream.”
Knowing I’m not alone in having these experiences as a child, I strongly feel we have a responsibility as grownups to educate ourselves, so we can teach our children how to better navigate the one third of their lives spent in dreamland. Because I can assure you from personal experience — there’s more going on than just sleep and dreaming.
In your experience with dreams and lucid dreams, did you ever seem to have a ‘shared dream’? What happened in the experience?
Some of my most interesting shared experiences took place between my father and me when I was a child. And though he never seemed to remember anything, I think you’ll understand why I feel these experiences qualified as shared dreaming. During these experiences, he’d share interesting details about his own childhood. Things he never shared with me in waking life.
As my father was not a very approachable man, I usually kept the experiences to myself. Though after one particularly realistic experience, where I found him very animated in the front yard during one of my “sleepy house” experiences, I felt compelled to share what he told me during the experience.
So I waited till he was in a good mood and then hit him with this: “I had a dream with you last night and you told me about the time you skipped school to go see Johnny Appleseed.” My dad’s eyes became as big as saucers. “I never told anyone about that day,” he said. He then confided to me of his fascination with Johnny Appleseed, the famous American pioneer, who planted apple seeds everywhere he went. After learning Johnny Appleseed was buried in a cemetery near to where he lived, he decided to skip school to go see it.
I remember him being incredibly fascinated by my “dream,” which seemed to be a turning point in his beliefs about them being “just dreams.”
When verifiable information gets exchanged in shared dreams or lucid dreams, how do you explain it to yourself? As a meeting in an inner realm? As ‘thought energy’ being exchanged, perhaps telepathically? Or do you imagine it in some other way?
I had an experience a few years ago where I was teaching a class on lucid dreaming within a dream. I remember looking around the classroom and thinking, “I don’t remember promoting this event. What venue is this and how did I get here?” My questioning led to full lucidity.
Later that morning, after waking from the lucid dream, I started to journal about the experience when I received a text message from a friend; “Todd, do you remember any dreams this morning? I was in a classroom with you, and you were teaching lucid dreaming.”
With my lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences as my personal evidence, I no longer doubt the nature of our physical universe. Like an onion, it appears to be layer within layer of projected realities, all contained within the one true reality of consciousness; a formless, intelligent substance that underlies and permeates all layers, to create a system of interconnected realities.
With this relativistic model of reality in mind, what was once labelled mystical becomes explainable, because within a system of interconnected realities, psychic phenomenon such as déjà vu, telepathy, precognitive dreaming, astral projection, etc., all become explainable. Like the Internet, which is a constructed system of interconnected computer networks (realities) where information flows from one computer to another (think email and instant messaging), psychic phenomenon represents the flow of information from one layer of reality to another. And all supernatural and paranormal phenomenon, such as ghosts, poltergeists, and so on becomes an artefact of realities that are most closely interconnected within the system, such as the intermediate spaces between the earth plane and the astral planes.
I see dreams as a conduit between realities, where deceased loved ones can communicate with us and where guides and teachers can instruct us.
The movie Inception posed the idea of using lucid dreaming to enter another’s unconscious mind and extract information or secrets? Do you feel that possibility exists?
Short answer, yes. Because if it can happen in waking reality, why couldn’t it happen in the vulnerable space of unconscious sleep?
At a recent symposium on belief and memory, Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, a respected forensic psychologist, had this to say about the controversy surrounding false and repressed memories:
“Despite the ethical limitations imposed on laboratory studies of artificially created memories, research showed that creating false memories of a relatively benign childhood experience, i.e., becoming lost in a shopping mall as a young child, was easily induced. In other studies, even much more extreme examples of false memories (e.g., spilling punch on the bride’s parents at a family wedding or nearly drowning as a child) could be induced in as many as a quarter of the subjects tested. Even in subjects who failed to develop a complete false memory, partial recall could be induced in nearly half of all research subjects.”
With the above in mind, I’ll share one final experience of my own. In the early days of my consciousness research, I was on the road a lot giving lectures and running workshops. This was really hard for my family, my youngest daughter in particular, who was just five years old at the time.
During one of these times away, I had a couple of back-to-back shared dream experiences with my youngest daughter, one of which was verified. On the third morning, I woke from a lucid dream experience and as I lay still with my eye mask on, lingering imagery started to take form. I then felt a strong energy sensation that seemed to draw me into the imagery.
A hyper-realistic, 3D scene of a room then took shape before my eyes. The room was a high fidelity recreation of my youngest daughter’s bedroom.
Moving over to the bed, I found my daughter fast asleep. As I watched her sleep, the scene of my daughter swimming with seals flashed across my mind. I had a feeling I was witnessing a dream within a dream. Watching the imagery I reached down to stroke her face when, to my surprise, she opened her eyes and said, “Daddy,” and smiled. I then asked her to call me after waking up, to tell me all about her experience of swimming with seals. Later that day, my daughter rang me, where she excitedly shared her dream.
Based on my own personal experiences, I believe we can and do influence one another on an unconscious level, and that, yes, if we master these skills they can be used to “steal” information, ideas, and repress memories. I believe free will is a double-edged sword. Can this gift be used to harm others? Yes, of course it can, just like your thoughts and words and emotions can be used to harm others. But that is far from what most people will use it for. I think the real question should be: Can this gift be used to help others, to share love and healing, knowledge and language and solutions to problems? The answer to that is also yes.
“This place in between
the multi-verses, where we
are all one, finds a way
to love us, transform us,
and grow within and
through our experiences
with us, co-creating every
reality we dream and live
within.
I believe it
speaks our language,
whether that language
is lucid dreaming,
astral projection, or
meditation. As we learn
to take responsibility
for what blocks our
light from shining,
We become free. We become healthy. We become powerful.”
— Todd Acamesis
Check out Todd’s website, upcoming events and more at https://spiritualunderground.com.
