40: How do you feel about dreams, lucid dreaming, and how to experience our dreams to the fullest or get better at dreaming?

I’ll begin, in order, with how I feel about dreams. Like many of my responses, I like to use the word ‘tool’. The interesting thing about dreams is that they are a two-way tool, in that we can use their interpretations to help us, and they are a tool for different levels of consciousness to communicate to ourselves. By that definition, it’s easy to understand why dreams are difficult to classify. Science has already proven that we dream regardless of whether or not we remember what the dream was about. Is this because we aren’t supposed to remember them, or is it because we are supposed to develop a greater awareness of them and we are just (generally) born under skilled? Well, that’s a question that we have to ask ourselves as individuals. Dreams communicate to us through symbols. As a society, we tend to be very naive when it comes to the interpretation of symbols, which makes me feel that we are hundreds, if not thousands of years away from truly utilizing the tool of dreaming. The same thing goes for other tools like, astrology, numerology, tarot, palmistry, etc.. I believe that the more we evolve, the more important these tools will become. Personally, I’m not a master of those tools but I do dabble in them. As far as dreams go, I would like to spend some time in seeing if I can use them more efficiently, or understand them better as a tool.

My experience of enlightenment/nirvana (I bring this up in almost every question because I believe it’s pertinent to my stance and statistically most people come to my blog or open my book to a page other than the first one, so I’m hoping to lead them into wanting a better understanding of my point of view and ultimately checking out more than one Q/A pair. I don’t repeat it to boast in anyway. Ten years after the experience, I’m only now using it for any good outside of my personal circle and have no bases for conceit.) was a communication of symbols. Going into it I had other questions on the forefront of my mind and I don’t have any ‘special’ answers about dreams. Continuing, dreams also speak to us in symbols that are sometimes universal and always personal. There are many books out there on dream interpretation. Two different people dreaming about the same symbol can easily lead into two different interpretations of the symbol, based on the recipient of the dream. Of course there are some symbols that are considered to be archetypical, or mean the same thing to everyone. Another factor about dreams is that our body’s react physiologically to the stimuli within them. I believe this ultimately relates to our chakra system and that dreaming can help relieve energy blockage.

Wikipedia defines: “A lucid dream is a dream in which the sleeper is aware that she or he is dreaming. When the dreamer is lucid, she or he can actively participate in and often manipulate the imaginary experiences in the dream environment.” For me, all of my dreams became lucid at an early age. I only had a few nightmares that I didn’t know I could control but that was at under about 8 years old. In the above definition you could say that there are degrees or levels of control within a dream. A side story.. One time I was in New York City, inside of Washington Square Park, and there were some followers of Krishna giving away books for donations. One asked me if I wanted one, but I had no money to donate (really). He told me I could pick one out anyway. The one that caught my attention the most was one that seemed to be about space travel through meditation or astral travel. In reality the book said to practice lucidly dreaming that you are on Mars, for instance, and that at the moment of your death if you do the same thing, you will be transported to Mars! When I dream I don’t try to control too much of it with my conscious mind because I feel instinctively that I should see how the dream will play out. I don’t do this every night or even that frequently but I may at sometime in the future.

What works for me, and you should try, is to suggest to yourself before you sleep that you want to be in control and remember your dream. If you don’t remember your dream, you won’t know if it was lucid. You can also suggest a theme for your dream and I imagine, with practice, you could fine-tune it. While you are dreaming, the first step is to be able to realize your dreaming and that you CAN wake up. This will relieve the feeling of fear, if you have it. There are some other factors as well. The location that you live (because of the electromagnetic fields created by the stars, planets and also our own earth), the energy within your environment (like the energy vibrations that the prior resident projected and was received/embedded in the physical environment), your diet and the direction (i.e. north, south or whatever degree), among other things, all have an influence.

So, in order to get the fullest experience out of your dream, suggest to yourself to remember it, and let it flow without fear or mid-interpretation. If you practice you will get better. Write your dreams down as soon as you wake up. If it doesn’t seem to work, try to rotate the direction of your bed. Sleep tight, sweet dreams!