Speaking of dreams, we often encounter the concept of “lucid dreaming“, which represents the level in which we can actively participate in the dream instead of limiting ourselves to being spectators. Our goal, speaking of dreams, should not be simply to understand their meaning but to even guide them, or rather, the goal of guiding our behavior within the dream that is taking place, a little like how we guide our lives during the day. The dream in which I am aware of what happens and I can choose my actions is the lucid dream. As often happens for the activities of the human being that are considered “border line” today, the dream world has been very present in the culture of peoples of the past. The most attentive dreamers of whom we have traced are probably the Toltecs, a Mexican population that had its greatest splendor in the period corresponding to the European Low Middle Ages, which stated that “Who does not dream and does not remember his dreams is a dead man ; a living man is someone who dreams and remembers his dreams“.
Today the lucid dream is the subject of studies in many universities around the world but in reality it was only after the Second World War that it began to be investigated with adequate attention, which has allowed confirmation of what the Toltecs, but also the Senoi, the Greeks and the Tibetans, had already affirmed many centuries ago.
Dreaming in two phases
The dreams that a person experiences during the night, imagining a person who does not suffer from particular sleep disorders and can sleep for six to seven hours, are divided into two phases. In the first part of the night, there are dreams that re-elaborate what we have experienced during the day: re-elaborating, digestin and processing what we have experienced when we are awake. These are dreams of which interpretation is possible and easier because they refer to symbols and emotions that refer to the life of the person. They are the dreams connected to the unconscious. In a second phase of sleep, deeper dreams begin, which project us into an autonomous dimension, which does not depend on that of the waking even if naturally it has many connections with it. It is the real dream dimension, made up of its own rules, to which we can learn to participate consciously.
A lucid dream
To do this, what we need above all is to have been asleep for a while, in order to allow our unconscious to process all the events of the day and to calm down just as the body does. It is not by chance that the function of the first phase of the dream is precisely that of reorganization, without which the second can not be accessed. At this point, you literally need to wake up in the dream. In other words, at the beginning or at some point in the dream we need to awaken our awareness and then choose how to behave within the story we are facing. Everyone has occasionally become aware, during the dream, that it is only a dream, that we are experiencing an “imaginary” situation. That awareness is one step away from waking up and being conscious: we are not yet in a lucid dream but it would take a little effort, a click of our mind to enter.
Can I do it too?
There are people who have a natural predisposition for lucid dreaming, there are methods for artificially inducing lucid dreaming in the laboratory but above all, it is possible to train and learn how to do it and courses at Damanhur University.
Once we are awake in a dream that, at that point, is “lucid”, we behave like we do in our daily life but with some great differences: first of all, in a different dimension, we have the possibility to express a character, a way of thinking and feeling that is different from that of the waking world. So, even if we remain truly ourselves, we can be different people, thus experiencing parts of us that we normally do not know well. and then….many other things are still possible.
But now it’s your turn. Do you remember your dreams? What did you dream of last night? What do you want to dream about next? And above all: have you ever thought that this can depend on you? Share with us in the comments below.
