Let’s talk about lucid dreaming, what it is in plain language, and what you can do in lucid dreams.

Our Normal Experience of Dreams

I saw a film last week that was about a girl who apparently had lucid dreams. She would wake up in the middle of the street not knowing how she got there. She left her car running in the middle of the road and woke up the next day with no memory of it.

They were basically equating lucid dreaming with sleepwalking and sleep disorders.

This is not lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is not sleepwalking, it’s not psychosis, it’s not daydreaming, it’s not having nightmares.

The problem is that 99% of people, 99% of the time, dream and have no idea that they’re dreaming. We believe our dreams as they are happening. You think it’s real. You have no awareness of the fact you’re lying in your bed experiencing this projected, fabricated dream world.

You’re having all kinds of dream experiences and confusing them for everyday life. You literally think your dream is your real life, no matter what’s happening in it. AND you do this several times every night. It’s only when you wake up that you realise that “it was all a dream”. Isn’t that incredible? Just ponder that for a moment.

It’s understandable, dreams are extraordinarily convincing. Sure, weird things can happen, but usually they come down to objects defying the laws of physics, or things being much larger or smaller than usual, or people’s personalities changing. They’re still based on everyday perception and things we know. We dream about friends, family, our work, our memories, places we know, etc.

That’s part of the reason that we’re “asleep” in our dreams.

So if lucid dreams aren’t psychosis or sleepwalking or anything like that, what are they? It’s really simple.

What is Lucid Dreaming?

I’ve tried to explain this to people and they just don’t get it. I’m going to try my best, but I know that leading the horse to the water doesn’t mean it will drink.

Let me ask you: are you awake or dreaming right now? How does it seem to you? Look around you. Feel your body. Contact your senses. Does everything feel real? Is it behaving as it usually does?

You should conclude you’re awake, because you’re watching this video. Most importantly, you know you’re awake.

Now, imagine doing this exact same process, called a dream check, but instead of concluding you’re awake, you conclude that you’re dreaming. You’re aware that you’re dreaming. You know you’re dreaming.

In a lucid dream, you look around you. You see people, or the place you’re in, you hear the sounds, you feel your body, and yet you know that this is a dream.

You might think this is weird. But think about it. If you dream like an ordinary person does, basically you believe that the dream is real, as real as your everyday life.

You mistake your friends in your dream for your real friends. You mistake your children in your dream for your real children, and so on, until you wake up. Isn’t that weird? It’s like acting in a film and truly, 100% forgetting that you’re acting. It’s very strange.

How on earth do we not realise it’s a dream? I say this to myself too, because when I don’t do my exercises, I can’t lucid dream.

Some people can lucid dream with no practice. In fact, that’s how they dream. I’ve only heard of one person who can do it. She was doing it for years without knowing. It was only when she shared it with others that she realised her skill was special.

Now, it’s not only that. The awareness is just the beginning. Imagine waking up in an alternate reality where the rules are fundamentally different, almost like being in a video game where you have all your senses and your body as usual. This is what lucid dreaming is.

In lucid dreams you can fly, make things appear and disappear, do whatever you want with no consequences, go wherever you want, speak to whoever you want, all with a click of your fingers. You know it’s a dream, you don’t confuse the dream for real life, unlike you usually do.