Lucid Dreaming Read online

  I have a few suggestions to add to these ideas about how to resolve nightmare situations. One is an extension of the “confront and conquer” approach. Though I cannot wholly recommend conquering dream characters, the intention to confront all danger in dreams is fully in accordance with my concept of a constructive dreamlife. Remember that nothing can hurt you in dreams, and consider whether there is any reason why you should not allow yourself to experience the things you are trying to avoid in the dream.

  In an excellent example, a woman dreamed she had difficulty avoiding being struck by cars as she crossed a busy street. As she had an unusually intense fear of traffic in waking life, upon becoming lucid she decided to directly confront her fear and leaped into the path of an oncoming pickup truck. She described that she felt the truck pass through her and then she, in an ethereal form, rose heavenward, feeling elevated and amused.

  This passive, nonviolent, “let it happen” approach may not be best when dealing with dream characters, however. In Tholey’s research, “defenseless behavior almost always led to unpleasant experiences of fear or discouragement.”[17] hostile dream figures would tend to grow in size and strength relative to the dreamer. The reason for this may be that dream characters often are projections of ourselves, and by giving in to their attacks, we may be allowing untransformed negative energies within us to overpower our better aspects.

  You do not need to talk to shadow figures to make peace with them. If you can find it in your heart to genuinely love your dream enemies, they become your friends. embracing the rejected with loving acceptance symbolically integrates the shadow into the self-model, as illustrated by my “embracing the ogre” dream quoted in Chapter 1.

  RECURRENT NIGHTMARES

  When thinking about a nightmare becomes so painful that we avoid it, it is not surprising that it recurs. In contrast, even the most terrible images become less frightening when we examine them. More than a century ago, and definitely ahead of his time, Hervey de Saint-Denys clearly described the mechanism of recurrent nightmares in the following comment on his living gargoyle dream, quoted earlier in this chapter:

  I don’t know the origin of the dream. Probably some pathological cause brought it on the first time; but afterwards, when it was repeated on several occasions in the space of six weeks, it was clearly brought back solely by the impressions it had made on me and by my instinctive fear of seeing it again. If I happened, when dreaming, to find myself in a closed room, the memory of this horrible dream was immediately revived; I would glance toward the door, the thought of what I was afraid of seeing was enough to produce the sudden appearance of the same terrors, in the same form as before.[18]

  In agreement with Saint-Denys, I believe nightmares become recurrent by the following process: In the first place, the dreamer awakens from a nightmare in a state of intense anxiety and fear; naturally, he or she hopes that it will never happen again. The wish to avoid at all costs the events of the nightmare ensures that they will be remembered. Later, something in the person’s waking life associated with the original dream causes the person to dream about a situation similar to the original nightmare. The dreamer recognizes, perhaps unconsciously, the similarity, and thus expects the same thing to happen. Thus, expectation causes the dream to follow the first plot, and the more the dream recurs, the more likely it is to recur in the same form. Looking at recurrent nightmares in this way suggests a simple treatment: the dreamer can imagine a new conclusion for the dream to weaken the expectation that it has only one possible outcome.

  Several years ago, I used a similar approach with someone suffering from recurrent nightmares. A man telephoned the Stanford Sleep disorders Clinic asking for help. he feared going to sleep because he might have “that terrible dream” again. In his dream, he told me, he would find himself in a room in which the walls were closing in, threatening to crush him. He would desperately try to open the door, which would always be locked.

  I asked him to imagine he was back in the dream, knowing it was a dream. What else could he do? At first he was unable to think of anything else that could possibly happen, so I modeled what I was asking him to do. I imagined I was in the same dream, and I visualized the walls closing in. however, the moment I found the door locked, it occurred to me to reach into my pocket, where I found the key, with which I unlocked the door and walked out. I recounted my imagined solution and asked him to try again. he imagined the dream again—this time he looked around the room and noticed that there was no ceiling and climbed out.

  I suggested to him that if this dream should ever recur, he could recognize it as a dream and remember his solution. I asked him to call me if the dream came back, but he never did. Unfortunately, we cannot be sure about what happened. But I think that having found some way to cope with that particular (dream) situation, he had no need to dream about it again because he no longer feared it. As I have discussed previously in this book and elsewhere, we dream about what we expect to happen, both what we fear and what we hope for.

  Rehearsal redreaming is done while awake. However, a similar technique can be practiced during the recurrent nightmare, if the dreamer is lucid. Instead of imagining how the dream might turn out if the dreamer tried something new, while lucid, the dreamer can try the alternative action right there in the nightmare. The resultant resolution should be all the more empowering, because of the enhanced reality of the dream experience. Practicing altering the course of recurrent nightmares both in waking and dreaming may be even more effective. Sometimes, the waking redreaming exercise is enough to resolve the problem created in the dream so that it never recurs again. However, if the dream does occur again, then the dreamer should be prepared to become lucid and consciously face the problem. The exercise below incorporates both reentry techniques.

  EXERCISE: REDREAMING RECURRENT NIGHTMARES[19]

  Recall and record the recurrent nightmare. If you have had a particular nightmare more than once, recall it in as much detail as you can and write it down. examine it for points where you could influence the turn of events by doing something differently.

  Choose a reentry point and new action. Choose a specific part of the dream to change, and a specific new action that you would like to try at that point to alter the course of the dream. Also select the most relevant point before the trouble spot at which to reenter the dream.

  Relax completely. Find a time and place where you can be alone and uninterrupted for ten to twenty minutes. In a comfortable position, close your eyes and relax completely.

  Redream the nightmare, seeking resolution. Beginning at the entry point you chose in Step 2, imagine you are back in the dream. Visualize the dream happening as it did until you reach the part at which you have chosen to try a new behavior. See yourself doing the new action, and then continue imagining the dream until you discover what effect your alteration has on its outcome.

  Evaluate your redreamed resolution. When the imagined dream has ended, open your eyes. Write down what happened as if it were a normal dream report. note how you feel about the new dream resolution. If you are not satisfied and still feel uncomfortable about the dream, try the exercise again with a new alternative action. Possibly, achieving a comfortable resolution with the waking exercise will be enough to stop the recurrence of the nightmare.

  If the dream recurs, follow your redreamed plan of action. If the dream occurs again, do in the dream what you visualized during waking reentry. Remember that the dream cannot harm you, and be firmly resolved to carry through with your new behavior.

  CHILDREN'S NIGHTMARES

  Children tend to have more nightmares than adults, but fortunately they appear to have little difficulty putting into practice the idea of facing their fears with lucid dreaming, as I can attest from my own experience. Once, when I was making long-distance small talk with my niece, I asked her about her dreams. Madeleina, then seven years old, burst out with the description of a fearful nightmare. She had dreamed that she had gone swimming, as she often did,
in the local reservoir. But this time, she had been threatened and terrified by a shark. I sympathized with her fear and added, matter-of-factly, “But of course you know there aren’t really any sharks in Colorado.” She replied, “Of course not!” So, I continued, “Well, since you know there aren’t really any sharks where you swim, if you ever see one there again, it would be because you were dreaming. And, of course, a dream shark can’t really do you any harm. It is only frightening if you don’t know that it’s a dream. But once you know you’re dreaming, you can do whatever you like—you could even make friends with the dream shark, if you wanted to! Why not give it a try?” Madeleina seemed intrigued. A week later, she telephoned to proudly announce, “do you know what I did? I rode on the back of the shark!”

  Whether or not this approach to children’s nightmares always produces such impressive results we do not yet know, but it is certainly worth exploring. If you are a parent with children suffering from nightmares, you should first make sure that they know what a dream is and then tell them about lucid dreaming. For more information on children’s nightmares and how to treat them, see Patricia Garfield’s excellent book Your Child’s Dreams.

  That lucid dreaming promises to banish one of the terrors of childhood seems reason enough for all enlightened parents to teach the method to their children. In addition, an important bonus of the lucid dreaming approach to children’s nightmares is that it results in an increased sense of mastery and self-confidence, as can be seen in all of the examples above. Think of the value of discovering that fear has no more power than you let it have, and that you are the master.

  Life as a Dream: Awake in your Dreams and Alive in your Life

  ***

  We shall not cease from exploration

  And the end of all our exploring

  Will be to arrive where we started

  And know the place for the first time.

  Through the unknown, remembered gate

  When the last of earth left to discover

  Is that which was the beginning.

  —T.S. ELIOT, “LITTLE GIDDING ,” FOUR QUARTETS

  ***

  A VEHICLE FOR EXPLORING REALITY

  Dreams are a reservoir of knowledge and experience, yet they are often overlooked as a vehicle for exploring reality.

  —Tarthang Tulku, Openness Mind

  For more than a thousand years, the Tibetan Buddhists have used lucid dreaming as a means of experiencing the illusory nature of personal reality and as one part of a set of practices said to lead to enlightenment and the discovery of the ultimate nature of the self.

  The Sufis may also use lucid dreaming, or something like it, for spiritual purposes. The famous twelfth-century Spanish Sufi Muhiyuddin Ibn El-Arabi reportedly recommended, “A person must control his thoughts in a dream. The training of this alertness ... will produce great benefits for the individual. Everyone should apply himself to the attainment of this ability of such great value.”[1]

  Tarthang Tulku explains the benefits of lucid dreaming as follows:

  Experiences we gain from practices we do during our dream time can then be brought into our daytime experience. For example, we can learn to change the frightening images we see in our dreams into peaceful forms. Using the same process, we can transmute the negative emotions we feel during the daytime into increased awareness. Thus we can use our dream experiences to develop a more flexible life.[2]

  “With continuing practice,” Tarthang Tulku explains,

  ...we see less and less difference between the waking and the dream state. Our experiences in waking life become more vivid and varied, the result of a lighter and more refined awareness... This kind of awareness, based on dream practice, can help create an inner balance.[3]

  For Tibetan dream yogis, the lucid dream, as “a vehicle for exploring reality,” represents an opportunity to experiment with and realize the subjective nature of the dream state and by extension waking experience as well. They regard such a realization as bearing the profoundest possible significance.

  realizing that our experience of reality is subjective, rather than direct and true, may have practical implications. According to Tarthang Tulku, when we think of all of our experiences as being subjective, and therefore like a dream, “the concepts and self-identities which have boxed us in begin to fall away. As our self-identity becomes less rigid, our problems become lighter. At the same time, a much deeper level of awareness develops.” As a result, “even the hardest things become enjoyable and easy. When you realize that everything is like a dream, you attain pure awareness. And the way to attain this awareness is to realize that all experience is like a dream.”[4]

  As a result of practicing lucid dreaming, continues Tarthang Tulku, “our experiences in waking life become more vivid and varied. This kind of awareness, based on dream practice can help create an inner balance” that not only “nourishes the mind in a way that nurtures the whole living organism,” but “illumines previously unseen facets of the mind and lights the way for us to explore ever-new dimensions of reality.” Moreover, and directly to the point at hand, lucid dreaming practice can be used to “learn to change ourselves” and “to develop a more flexible attitude.”[5]

  SELF-KNOWLEDGE

  Nasrudin went into a bank to cash a check. The teller asked him if he could identify himself. “Yes, I can...” Nasrudin replied, taking out a mirror with which he scrutinizes his features, “that’s me all right.”

  —Idries Shah, The subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin

  Who we really are is not necessarily the same as who we identify ourselves with. We are not who we think we are in our dreams (or indeed while awake). You can readily observe this fact for yourself in your next lucid dream. Ask yourself about the nature of each thing you find in your lucid dream. For example, you may be sitting at a dream table, with your feet on the dream floor; and yes, that is a dream shoe, on a dream foot, part of a dream body, so this must be a dream me! All you need to do is to reflect on your situation in a lucid dream and you see that the person you appear to be in the dream cannot be who you really are: it is only an image, a mental model of your self, or, to use the Freudian term, your ego.

  Seeing that the ego cannot be who you really are makes it easy to stop identifying with it. Once you no longer identify with your ego, you are freer to change it. The recognition that the ego is a simplified model of the self gives you a more accurate model of the self and makes it more difficult for you to mistake the map for the territory.

  If you can see your ego objectively in its proper role as the representation and servant of the self, you will not need to struggle with your ego. You cannot get rid of it in any case, nor would it be desirable to do so—the ego is necessary for effective functioning in the world. The fact that both ego and self say, “I,” is a source of confusion and misidentification. The well-informed ego says truly, “I am what I know myself to be.” The self says merely, “I am.” If I know that I am not my ego, I am detached enough to be objective about myself, as in the Sufi story in which a monk boasts to Nasrudin, “I am so detached that I never think of myself, only of others.” Nasrudin replies, “Well, I am so objective that I can look at myself as if I were another person; so I can afford to think of myself.”[6]

  The less we identify with who we think we are, the more likely we are to discover who we really are. In this regard, the Sufi master Tariqavi wrote,

  When you have found yourself you can have knowledge. Until then you can only have opinions. Opinions are based on habit and what you conceive to be convenient.

  The study of the Way requires self-encounter along the way. You have not met yourself yet. The only advantage of meeting others in the meantime is that one of them may present you to yourself.

  Before you do that, you will possibly imagine that you have met yourself many times. But the truth is that when you do meet yourself, you come into a permanent endowment and bequest of knowledge that is like no other experience on earth.[7]


  Before feeling the sincere desire to “meet yourself,” you may find the fulfillment of your ego’s wants and wishes far more compelling. This is natural, and it would probably be counter-productive and frustrating for you to try to pursue more sublime aspects of yourself when part of you is still crying for the satisfaction of drives and passions unsatiated in waking life.

  Likewise, you should not seek transcendence as a means of escapism. Remember van Eeden’s demon-dreams. You must first be willing to deal with whatever problems you may find on your personal level. But after having resolved any problems within the dream, and after a sufficient amount of wish-fulfillment activity, you may feel the urge or need to seek possibilities beyond what you have known or conceived.

  To go beyond the ego’s model of the world, the lucid dreamer must relinquish control of the dream—surrender—to something beyond the ego. One of my most memorable and personally meaningful lucid dreams occurred when I opened myself to guidance from “The Highest”: