Conscious Dreaming

What is conscious dreaming?

Many people find themselves in a situation where they are conscious in their dream. This is where they are aware that they are dreaming and at the same time, they are in a consensual reality that they are experiencing. During conscious dreaming, you can't seem to control and direct some of the events happening in the dream or even all of them. Conscious dreaming is most of the time referred to as lucid dreaming.

How can you experience conscious dreaming?

If you so wish, you can develop your conscious dreaming to a higher level. You can do so by keeping a notebook by your bedside where you keep your daily updates of your lucid dreams. With time, you will find that you will start writing extensively about your experiences, and at the same time, you will enjoy doing so and derive a lot of fun out of it. You will eventually develop the ability to have deeply sensual experiences, visits to alternative realities like the sun and the moon, and near death experiences. This could become another avenue of spiritual or psychological exploration. Sounds exciting right!

It is common for patients who encounter sleep analysis to have such dreams. They focus on evaluation of the dream state to report their experiences with conscious dreaming and other out of the body experiences. When you have an out of the body experience at the onset of sleep, or later on at night, it comes out as a variation of a lucid dream. People who experience out of the body dreaming say that they travel to various parts of the world and even to other dimensions or realms. While you might assume that this happens due to the mental state in the dream, those experiencing these types of dreams often have a feeling like it is happening in reality. Take a scenario where someone during the lucid dream, travels to a friend’s home and finds that they have become ill; a few days later, they receive a phone call that, that particular friend is sick. It is hard to make anything out of this report bearing in mind the vagaries of sleep memories.

How can we distinguish between normal dream and conscious dreaming?

The main difference between the two is that consciously dream you are fully aware of your surroundings, and you have charge of almost everything that is happening while in the normal dream, you are pushed by the circumstances with no control of your own. Dreams hold elements which are not present in our normal waking life and thus, they remain to be a mystery of sorts. Mysteries and unusual qualities involved in dreams have been explained for centuries by traditional healers, shamans, philosophers, and storytellers. The shamans explain that, during the conscious dreaming, they visit the dream world to get information which they then use for healing purposes. It possesses challenges for an explanation of the concepts of the modern world, both psychological and physical realities.

What does conscious dreaming Mean?

Everyone seems to know about conscious dreaming the concept and at the same time, know nothing about. For you to qualify to have had a conscious dream, you need to know that is a dream but being somewhat “aware.” Most people get attracted to conscious dreams due to the eagerness to do complete things in their waking life. Let’s turn this on it’s head. The power to fly to the sun or taste fire you would never be able to do in real life! Advanced conscious dreamers have realized the importance of these type of dreams as they can explore boundaries of their powers during sleep and travel through the universe.

What are the techniques used for you to become a conscious dreamer?

For you to become a more experienced conscious dreamer, you must listen and look and also pay attention to small details in your dream state - because, when you start seeing things that don’t fit in your pattern, you will consciously know that you are dreaming. To make it possible to become an expert in this area, you can start by examining your state or the environment in the day. The habits you try to memorize during the day, tend to follow you to your dreamland and you will notice that you are dreaming when you start seeing something amiss in what you saw during the day. When you become a conscious dreamer, you tend to have a high level of consciousness.

What is the concept of conscious dreaming?

It is something which has remained controversial and which has made many people come up with various alternative explanations for what is happening. It could be that, when you are conscious dreaming, you are in a state of semi-wakefulness daydream like scenario. Or it could be that you were dreaming, but had a clear mind to the extent that you can remember the dream word for word and thus confuse it to be a conscious dream where you directed it. You could be in a sleep state distortion where you are both asleep and awake in the dream state at the same time. Or you could just be cheating, having a conscious dream is a great experience. Once you realize that you are in a conscious dreaming state, you will be able to explore your world totally and with clarity.

Everything you touch, hear smell and taste will become authentic, and this becomes mind-blowing as you encounter your virtual world. You will be able to overcome personal psychological issues such as your anxieties, fears, and phobias; past traumas, nightmares, and recurring dreams. During conscious dreaming, you will be in a position to fulfill any fantasy that you are harboring: have sex, dinosaur spotting, fly over mountains, time traveling, ninja fighting, visit alien planets, and meet your heroes.

There are several products which are being developed by researchers to help people to develop conscious dreaming techniques. There are similar light and sound devices which have been around since the 1980s, which were developed in an altered state of consciousness or utter relaxation with the difference being that they are used during sleeping time rather than when one is awake. It is normal to experience conscious dreaming.

What is the difference between a lucid dream and a conscious dream?

They are both the same. Any dream where you are aware of yourself is referred to as either a conscious dream or a lucid dream. During such a period, you have the control over the dream narrative, characters and the environment where the dream is happening.

What Happens When You Are Having a conscious dream?

There are several things that happen when you have a lucid dream. All in all, the most important thing about this type of dream is that you are supposed to realize your experience in the dream. After that, anything else can fall into place. Most, if not all lucid dreamers claim that they have flown through space, danced in the fire, visited the sun and had sex with strangers. It is up to you as the dream to have a pen and paper to jot down your experience immediately after waking up completely before it evaporates because, the common denominator about these types of dreams is that, they evaporate from memory very fast.

How common are conscious dreams?

Because not everyone narrates about their experiences with lucid dreams, it is hard to place an exact figure and the frequency of these types of dreams. Those researchers who have been conducted place it at roughly 20 percent of the total world population do at one point on a monthly basis, have a lucid dream. It also puts at 60 percent of everyone seems to have a lucid dream in their lifetime. So if you happen to encounter a lucid dream, don’t think of yourself as going insane, but consider it as part of a process that is being experienced by people all over the world. It is a normal occurrence which is triggered by various factors.

Are There Risks or Benefits of Having Lucid Dreams?

Some researchers claim that more lucid dreams you have, the sharper you become in problem-solving, you enhance your creativity, your self-confidence goes up, and you improve your memory. It also claims that, when you have lucid dreams, you are likely to reduce the number of nightmares that you will have and thus, give you more peaceful night’s sleep.

Lucid dreams can be more of fantasy, but if you want to reap its benefits in full, you need to tell your brain exactly that; that your dream matters to you and you would wish to remember it once you are done with dreaming. Lucid dreams are fun as you can fly, go to the clouds and back in the comfort of your bed. It can also be a sanctum for deep meditation and personal reflection; while in a lucid dream, you can mull over big decisions and chat with your true self without any outside interference's of the world around you.

You can use it to practice real-life activities, and this can only happen if you start thinking of your lucid dream as a mental rehearsal space. With it, you can go through your presentation for work, go for further studies before doing an exam or even concentrate on a forthcoming athletic event. If you are an extrovert, your lucid dreams can bring you several artistic inspiration. You will use your dream world as a canvas where you will have to draw anything in it.

You can use lucid dreams to overcome any anxiety that you might be facing in your life. During the dream, you can practice on how to practice being social, stand up to bully, have the courage to question your boss or even ask for a pay rise. You are going to conquer your fear practicing lucid dreams. Traditionally, lucid dreams have been considered harmless while other stories in newspapers claim otherwise. It is believed that a lucid dreamer can at times lose touch with reality and exhibit mental illnesses.

The state of being between dreaming and waking that occurs when you are a lucid dreamer is frightening because you cannot move yet you are aware that you are awake due to the hallucination. It is a sort of paralysis which, though uncommon, it accompany lucid dreams. The good news is that you can wake yourself up from this state or decide to induce yourself to fall into full sleep or dream state.

How do you become a lucid dreamer or conscious dreamer?

Ask the experienced lucid dreamers like me! they will tell you that, all you need to do is to start paying close attention to your experiences when you are awake. Make sure that you take into account all the elements that make up your daily life and this will make it possible for you to notice when you are breaking away from the normal pattern that is when you are lucid dreaming. With this, you will be able to recognize during your sleep, when you are dreaming, and with time, you will be able to take charge of your dreams and become a lucid dreamer.

You can also adjust your behaviors to become a lucid dreamer. You can form this habit whereby, before you retire to bed, you can take some time off your normal schedule and start focusing on what you want to dream. It could be as weird as wanting to fly and fulfilling your sexual fantasy or as sober as wanting a solution to a conflict that you are facing in your life. Focus intensely on it as you drift into deep sleep, and before you know it, you will be having a lucid dream of the same. Predetermination is the process of preparing yourself in the conscious to dream about a certain event or action, and it is what will increase your chances of having a lucid dream where you will be able to experience and take control in whatever way you want. I have written a guide found by clicking here about how to actually dream in this state tonight!

How will you feel in a lucid dream?

As a lucid dreamer, you are going to experience euphoric feelings of motion, sight, sex or even happiness. On the negative, you could feel sad, fear and pain which appear in your waking state since that is the time when you have no control of your just concluded lucid dream.