Ever heard of Lucid dreaming ?....
Its when you become aware that you are in a dream while you are dreaming . And better yet you can then sometimes control the dream and your surroundings. They say most people who can do this usually do it when they are children and then lose the ability as they get older.
The first time i had a lucid dream i was only about ten or eleven years old, and as soon as i started to control my dreams the first thing i would do is fly .
It was a weird kind of flying where i had to flap my arms to take off , and flap if i wanted to go higher , but i could glide for the most part. It always felt so real, you could feel the wind on your face as you soared about .
The worst part is that i would always get too excited and wake myself up. I remember it would be so disappointing when i woke up and then i would desperately try to get back to sleep.
Then after a couple of years they seemed to stop and i became interested in other things . Interests come an go, like so many other things that get forgotten or fade away when your in school like best friends , favorite bands, crushes etc ....
Fast forward about thirty years , and i read something on the internet about a thing called lucid dreaming, i remembered for the first time in so long that i could do the same thing at one time, and it now had a name.
I bought a kindle book on lucid dreaming and it turned out that some cultures have been practicing lucid dreaming for centuries. Some even go to the next level which is a form of meditation called dream yoga , practiced in Tibetan Buddhism.
This is where people meditate in a dream , and the benefits are even greater than normal meditation.
I read that there are things you can do to bring on lucid dreams such as keeping a dream journal by your bed and keeping a record of your dreams. Its amazing how your dreams fade and become lost within minutes of waking . It's like the act of remembering your dreams brings these two worlds a little bit closer.
Another thing to do, is to set a reminder on your watch or phone every hour to do what is called a reality check. This is where you question your surroundings and whether you are awake or dreaming. They say to count your fingers and if your dreaming , chances are you wont count five. The idea is that the more you do this when you are awake, the better the chance is of doing this in a dream and becoming lucid.
I was ready to go, i did the things that the book said to do , and within about three days i had my first lucid dream in about thirty years. Here is how it went.
I was at the local beach in my home town in Queensland Australia . It was night time and there was light rain ( it was also raining that night in reality as well ). There was a row of shops on the foreshore that didn't exist in real life, there was a guy with a big stick smashing the glass windows on the shop fronts and i told him to stop otherwise we would get in trouble with the police. Any way this guy kept going and sure enough , i heard the sirens coming and i started running just as the cop's turned up.
As i was running down the road i realized i was dreaming and i took control of my dream. Within about four steps i started flapping my arms and i took off.
It was so real , i was flying over the surf, getting higher and higher, but there was no fear at all.
There was no fear because i knew i was in control. I could feel the cool wind on my body and the light rain on my face, it was so realistic. I was swooping down close to the waves and then soaring back up again.
It only lasted for about a minute and then i got too excited and i woke up just like when i was a kid.
When you start to wake up , everything in the dream starts to dim or fade to black . Some people say they control this by staring at their hands in the dream until everything clears up again .
A few weeks later i took a photo close to the area at night where i had the dream.
It wasn't raining , but it was a similar night.
I like this photo because it reminds me of that dream.
I have had a couple more lucid dreams in the last twelve months or so , but i keep waking myself up. It was a lot easier when i was young but now it requires a fair bit of commitment to do everything to bring on the lucid dreams.
Some people talk to relatives who have passed, some people ask quetions of the strangers who fill their dreams, and apparently the answers astound them, as if it couldn't possibly be something their own mind could come up with.
I don't know about that, as soon as i become lucid , i turn into some sort of flying fool just like Forrest Gump only he was a running fool :) .
Anyway i'm not sure how many other people have done this before , but if you have done this or are currently trying to do this, then leave a comment on how your dreams go and what techniques or tips you may have to bring on these dreams.
The only reason i made this post is because i see there is a new movie on netflix called lucid dream and i thought maybe there a few other people out on Steemit that have done this.
Anyway , sorry if i bored anyone, or weirded anyone out with my matrix style dreams.
And apologies for my punctuation and grammar, i'm definitely not a writer :) .
Thanks for reading.
Up vote , resteem or follow if you have done this yourself