My dream life was very vivid from an early age. I had out of body experiences starting around the age of 7 or 8, which I related to my mother who was dismissive that it was just a dream. When I told my maternal grandmother she explained I was astral traveling, and when I was a little older she gave me her book on the subject by Robert A. Monroe, Journeys Out Of The Body. I was fortunate to have a grandmother who was interested in mediumship, near death experiences, ESP and such.
In my younger years all lucid dreams happened spontaneously, I never incubated them or even considered that it was possible to do so then. These early lucid dreams were mostly sexual in nature, or involved thrill seeking adventures like flying or shapeshifting.
I recall one lucid dream in particular, that I had in my late teens, which made me think there was something special about this state and that it held great potential:
I am sitting with my back against a palm tree on an island. I see/hear the ocean around me. I am making a list of things I need to do when I wake up – things I actually planned on doing before bed. I realize I am dreaming and think it would be great to have sex with a really hot guy.
I manifest another me and an attractive guy to have sex with – no one I recognize in waking. I am simultaneously able to see the guy and experience sex while seeing myself writing by the tree; conversely I am observing myself having sex while making my list/seeing it in front of my eyes. I was amazed I was able to carry on these two activities simultaneously and experiencing each from both the first person perspective of doing and the second person perspective of observing.
Lucid dreams surprise me to this day. The out of body experiences that lead to lucidity usually surprises me the most. One that was the catalyst for seeking a spiritual teacher started as an out of body experience where I am walking around my bedroom and I become lucid by seeing another world within the sliding mirrored closet-doors. They seemed like extraterrestrial type beings adorned in 17th century French clothing and hairstyles. They had very white, luminous skin. They were dancing to music I could not hear, their feet hovering above ground several inches as they moved gracefully across the floor.
One being came up close to the mirror and was beckoning me to join the party. She telepathically communicated they were looking for “intelligent and creative humans to join them.” I had the sense that if I did crossover into their world it would be forever, so I declined. I still regret not taking the risk.
When I imparted this dream to my newfound spiritual teacher she thought I was having an encounter in the faery realm not with alien beings. My understanding of faeries at that time was that they were small, winged, humanoid creatures. A few years following this dream, and discussion with my teacher, I found a big hardcover book, Faeries, by Brian Froud and Alan Lee that had an illustration with similar looking beings called “the Gentry” — wearing 17th century-esque clothing and hairstyles as they wore in my out of body/lucid dream.
Everything! I was amazed I could reason so clearly, manipulate some aspects of the environment and move about in ways that defied waking reality/gravity while at times the dreamscape and dream characters were often beyond “my control” or “my making.” Not many people I knew had experienced lucid dreams, so it became even more fascinating to me to explore this dream state. I wondered why I was having these kind of dreams when no one else was.
Just when I thought there were rules something would happen to challenge that belief. Today I still find there are no rules, and just when I think I have overcome an obstacle or limitation I am challenged anew. For me lucid dreaming aids in moving beyond limiting beliefs, or the “reality boxes” of mind as Ingo Swann might say.
It wasn’t until my adult years, my thirties, that I decided to try to lucid dream for healing myself or others. I had read about others doing so, but I had never incubated for this purpose. I didn’t have much success right away, but then I had a spontaneous lucid dream when I realized my grandfather could not be younger than my mother (his daughter) and, “Oh yeah, he’s been dead since I was 4 years old.” I decided to send him into the light, I began spinning him over my head and released him into the cosmos where he dispersed as streams of light into the night sky.
I rationalized mom was still alive, so I could not do that with her, but I knew I needed to do something in order to maintain lucidity. I decided to perform a Reiki healing on her within the dream. When I mentioned it to my mom later that morning she was stunned because in the middle of the night she was walking around her bedroom trying to get rid of leg cramps when they suddenly just stopped and she could go back to bed. In the lucid dream I was standing at the foot of her bed and ended the Reiki healing with what is called, the “butterfly technique,” which entailed passing my hovering hands up her legs as far as I can reach and then expanding my hands/arms outward outlining her auric egg and back down the sides of her body returning to her feet and then repeating two more times.
I obtained pain relief for myself from 2 lucid healing dreams that I had 6 weeks apart. My original intention was to meet another dreamer in a designated space and hold a healing circle in the dream state. I was unable to get out of my dream-room despite knowing I was dreaming, so I thought I am not going to waste time and lose lucidity trying to escape “I will heal where I am at,” which is what I titled the dream. It was an unusual and spontaneous form of healing, but I woke without pain for the first time in a long time. I had been having some structural problems with my back and joints. In the lucid dream I recall my purpose is to heal myself and learn to work with the group to heal others in the dream state:
I stand on my bed and grab the bars overhead and I am performing gymnastic maneuvers; I am doing back flips and as I land I think of how machines replace springs, coils and such, and I think of how this can be done miraculously through healing dreams. As I land – knees bent and springing back up and flipping backward and landing again – I hear creaky metal spring type sounds. I feel liberated, free and healed.
I experienced a continuation of this type of healing in a subsequent lucid dream where I am supposed to meet the same dreamer in the same specified location, but again, do not make it out of my bedroom:
I decide to try Holecek’s technique to pass through mirrors and doors by walking backward, and it worked, though instead of getting to Psidreamer’s Astral Temple, which was my intention, I just end up standing in the dark closet. I could feel a strange sensation/warping type feeling when I did pass through. Oddly, I could walk through back into my bedroom area facing forward. I decide to heal where I am again, and I start saying, almost like a cheer, “Heal my ankles, my knees, my hips, my back, etc.” Naming every joint from feet to head/ending with jaws, and doing gymnastic maneuvers – saying a different joint as I land and spring backup. Back flips, forward flips, double flips, using the bed posts as gymnastic bars. I am thinking this is an odd way to do healing. I woke feeling great and pain-free again.
I think this can be applied to any lucid dream, but I have learned that while ‘I’ can set an intention the ‘dream-maker’ may have other plans, and so it is best to remain open, flexible and seek alternative methods in order to fulfill my goals. I didn’t get hung up on being obstructed from going to the location I’d incubated to meet at; I chose, instead, to heal where I was at in the dreamscape in which I found myself.
Yes, sometimes I set the intention and other times psi information simply presents itself. For example, May 3, 2014 I had a spontaneous lucid dream featuring the current president of The International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD), Angel Morgan, Ph.D. In the dream I am lucid and a dream character keeps trying to distract me from carrying out my task. I walk away from her and find myself indoors:
…and approach Angel Morgan. I ask her what techniques she uses to prolong lucidity because I was just distracted by a dream character. Can't recall what she said. I then ask, "Have you written any books on the subject of prolonging lucidity?" She replies, "Yes, with Harper & Collins." I say, "I am going to order it.”
April 16, 2018, almost four years later, she published, though not with Harper & Collins, Dreamer's Powerful Tiger: A New Lucid Dreaming Classic For Children and Parents of the 21st Century. Prior to this book she had only published one other book, not dream-related, but focused on empowering girls with positive female role models.
I dream with a group of dedicated oneironauts that hold regular psi dreaming practices, many of us aim at lucidity to hone in on target images. We have had some really great results incubating to view target images that are either telepathically sent, remote viewed in the dream state or dreaming to see the target image that will be chosen on a future date/time, i.e. precognition.
During the Psidreamers’ first telepathy dreaming practice, nine years ago, I served as the “sender” and was able to get lucid and send the target image within the dream state while also recalling the names of several dreamers who were participating. The target image was of the earth suspended in space with an androgynous human figure, almost as large as the planet, seated in meditation with chakras lit up as two winged snakes ascend the spine/central channel from the pelvic area towards the head.
For me, the artwork evoked Earth healing, as the caduceus is used as a symbol for doctors and medical facilities in the USA, and the image also represented awakening to me, both in the individual sense and on the collective level, so I thought it was a good energy to begin our psi dreaming adventures:
. . . I realize I am dreaming that there is neither a downstairs nor a salon.
I exclaim, “Hot damn I did it…I’m lucid!” They look at me puzzled, so I float in the air – knees to my chest twirling slowly behind the couch – and then I float supine to show them it’s a dream. I tell myself not to get caught up in convincing them it’s a dream. I go directly into the bedroom to get to the target image. The room is dimly lit, so I try to light the white candle with the red lighter that was below the picture affixed to the dresser mirror. [In waking physical reality (WPR) this is how it was arranged, so I could wakeup and meditate without turning lights on]. I could not work the lighter – it felt awkward in my hand. I could only see half the image at a time with the way the light was coming through the window. I told myself not to waste time on this and take the image into the living room because it was lit up.
I go and sit in the middle/between the living and dining rooms, and mediate/focus on the image. Every detail looked exactly as it does in WPR. I focused on it for what seemed like a really long time. As I was gazing at it I thought, “I am connecting to the Psidreamers: [omitted names],” and was struggling to recall everyone’s name in the group. I could hear Michael Jackson’s song that I had listened to throughout the day in WPR playing within the dream, Heal the World.
Several dreamers picked up on various aspects of the target image, but I was most struck by Carol’s post when I first saw it; she uploaded a photo to our forum of Michael Jackson singing while he is embraced by an androgynous angelic figure enfolding him within her/his wings along with the lyrics to his song, Will You Be There. She said it popped into her mind and posted it the day I was telepathically sending the image and listening to music I felt evoked the tone of the artwork. She picked up on the healing tone of the image via the song she posted and the fact that I listened to Michael Jackson while awake, as well as hearing it within my lucid dream. The angel in the photo Carol shared also tuned into the winged aspect of the caduceus and the gender ambiguity of the meditator in the target image.
My dream life was very vivid from an early age. I had out of body experiences starting around the age of 7 or 8, which I related to my mother who was dismissive that it was just a dream. When I told my maternal grandmother she explained I was astral traveling, and when I was a little older she gave me her book on the subject by Robert A. Monroe, Journeys Out Of The Body. I was fortunate to have a grandmother who was interested in mediumship, near death experiences, ESP and such.During an annual online conference for the IASD, you (Robert) and Cynthia Pearson hosted the precognitive dreaming contests, and in 2011 I was able to get lucid and make a “hit” to the target image which ended up being a photo of a DJ spinning records. Here’s the relevant portion of the dream where I get lucid:
… I couldn’t find my client, I had gone to the front of the spa to get a “cassette” of a band called “Stranger” – supposed to be New Age music like Andreas Vollenweider. Recall making a remark like, “Who the hell uses cassettes anymore? I don’t even use CDs – all my music is digital.” Then some guy said my last name is “Cassette,” and I thought it might be clue to the precog contest. He was there for a wedding. Suddenly, the spa was having a wedding. Recall the groom being unhappy with the female musician that was playing. She was playing an acoustic guitar and singing songs that were “out of genre.” Recall climbing up steps to go ask her to play something else.
I was able to hone in on the theme of the target image — music — and the use of outdated technology as people rarely play records anymore, and many DJs use digital music from their laptops nowadays.
I entered this dream fully lucid with the intention to meet the group of people I dream with regularly, as mentioned earlier, and hold a healing circle for all sentient beings:
Meditating On The Astral Plane
I am in a vast space that’s suffused with light. I think, "It doesn’t look like the Astral Temple, but at least I made it onto the astral plane.” I am alone. I don’t see any of the other Psidreamers, so I sit down and begin meditative breathing and call in the healing energies and imagine the others here — I see us, with my inner vision, linking at the heart level. I am filling myself with healing and radiating out to the world/universe and all beings. I feel very peaceful. (Meditation for a prolonged period.)
I went back to sleep and re-entered the above dream using the WILD technique:
Back On The Astral Plane
I am sitting in a room alone with an ambient light source seemingly emitting from the walls. I am waiting for the other Psidreamers to arrive. I decide I better start meditating or I will lose my focus and get swept up in normal dreaming. I start breathing and calling in the healing energies. (A period of prolonged meditation before waking.)
A feeling of great inner peace stayed with me for several days after meditating in these lucid dreams despite having felt stressed about the pandemic and ongoing political issues in the USA for an extended period of time.
Lucid dreaming has helped me to make peace with death. The below dream brought to mind the Tibetan Dream Yogi’s goal, which isn’t just to have cool lucid dreams, which is wonderful, but rather to practice maintaining awareness in both the waking and dreaming states so as one crosses into death one does not get swept up in the variety of phenomena that can occur in the intermediate state between one life and the next. The below dream made me realize that out of body experiences are basically rehearsals for death, it's the same process, consciousness withdraws from the physical body but awareness persists. The dream also seemed to contain precognitive information about our eventual need to wear masks.
Surrender
I am walking down cobblestone streets at night – reminds me of an old EU type city. There’s hardly anyone around. I start to walk across the street on a diagonal and I see a short man, about my height, walking diagonally towards me from the opposite direction. He is wearing a mask over his nose/mouth like medical personnel use. He raises his arm. I assume he is wielding a weapon. I think, “This is it, this is the end,” but then I say, “There’s no point robbing me I don’t have any cash on me and this is a dream and money has no value here.”
He passes me and I think it’s over, but then feel struck on my mid-lower back left side and I hit the pavement face down/head rotated to side. At this point I have two perspectives, a disembodied overview and through my dream body’s eyes lying on the pavement. From the disembodied perspective my eyes look like someone who is dead – a blank/unblinking stare with slack mouth.
I wonder if he shot me or stabbed me (dream body consciousness). I feel my life-force withdrawing thinking, “This is how it feels to die,” it feels peaceful. I surrender to the experience knowing (disembodied consciousness knows) I am just going to have an OBE if I go with it. Just as I feel like I am separating/rising up out of my physical body the guy jumps onto my back and I wake up startled.
I have a few dream themed blogs posted on Jean Campbell’s website, WorldDreamsPeaceBridge.org that can be found at the following link, https://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org/dgtfw_team/maria-cernuto/. This organization regularly dreams for world peace, setting our intention as a group, and is involved in different programs to aid traumatized children in war-torn areas.
This article was released in issue from
December 2020
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