5. Increase your Self-Awareness by Reality Checks
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Throughout the day, ask yourself whether you are awake or dreaming. This is called a reality check. A reliable way to do this is set your digital watch to chime every hour. When it beeps I look at my hands and ask myself “am I dreaming?” Then I try to push my hand through a wall or desk. When you habitually do this in a dream, your hands will appear in high definition, and you will be able to push them through any solid object. The sudden increase in self awareness will instantly trigger your lucidity!
This technique is great for a first lucid dream. Doing reality checks programs self awareness into your regular dreams, thereby creating spontaneous lucidity. A reality check is simply trying to do something impossible in the real world – like pushing your hand through the wall. Making this a force of habit will create reality checks in dreams, giving you the opportunity to recognize the dream state. (In a dream, if you try to push your hand through the wall, it will go straight through.) Reality checks are probably the easiest way to have lucid dreams. They are not the only way – and certainly aren’t 100% reliable – but they don’t require any skill and quickly teach your subconscious mind to learn lucid dreaming. Using this system, you will never wake up in a dream! Your subconscious mind can’t test the same principles as your logical conscious mind. It’s the reason you have normal dreams every night, instead of clear, conscious dreams. In order to have self awareness in a dream, you need to have that “eureka!” moment. Something that jogs your conscious mind into waking, so you have the capacity to say “hang on, this is a dream!” Reality checks will provide that cue. Perform your reality checks every couple of hours throughout the waking day. It’s best to combine two together. Soon they will occur in a dream automatically, and when they do, you will become fully lucid. You may even lucid dream tonight. Some examples are:
Breathing – can you hold your nose and mouth shut and still breathe?
Jumping – when you jump, do you float back down?
Reading – can you read a sentence twice without it changing?
Vision – is your vision clearer or blurrier than normal?
Hands – can you push your right fingers through your left hand?
Time – can you read a clock face or digital watch?
Magic – can you fly, shape shift, or walk through walls?
Lights – do light switches work properly?
Mirrors – does your reflection look normal in the mirror?
Memory – what day is it and what are you doing now?
Logic – can you add up two numbers for a correct answer?
4. Observe Your Hypnagogic Imagery
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After 5-10 minutes you will see hypnagogic imagery. This is the beginning of the dream state! Blobs of color will swirl around behind your closed eyelids. Observe it if you like, but also be aware of other sensations beyond your field of vision. Let your inner voice go quiet. As the dream state deepens, you will be aware of voices and sounds. This is normal – they are coming from inside your own head. Hold on to this state of blissful relaxation, while focusing on your intention to recognize the dream state when it occurs.
3. Fall Asleep Consciously
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Remember you are tricking your body to fall asleep consciously. So hold on to that thin strand of conscious awareness as your mind goes deeper. This is the great secret of meditation. It is not easy at first, but practice makes perfect. When your body falls asleep, you may hear a loud vibrating or humming sensation in your head. It’s exciting at first, and may ruin your early attempts. This is the point of transition: from waking to the dream state. If you try to move now, you may find your body has naturally entered sleep paralysis. This is normal and occurs every time you go to sleep – you just aren’t usually aware of it. It’s a weird sensation but nothing to worry about. Most people don’t even notice this state when practicing. Sleep paralysis is a naturally occurring mechanism that begins when we fall asleep each night. It prevents us from acting out our dreams, by blocking the brain signals that tell the muscles to move. This is vital to keep us out of harm’s way when we are unconscious – and if we want a good night’s sleep.
2. Enter the Dream World
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By now, your mind is aware but your body is asleep. Whether you followed your hypnagogic imagery into the dream state, or the images came from beyond your natural field of vision, you will notice a dream scene emerging in front of you. There are two ways to enter your lucid dream now. First, you can simply step into the picture, so that it becomes 3D around you. To do this, simply push your awareness deeper into the dreamscape. Alternatively, you can “climb out” of your physical body. In your mind’s eye, imagine you have two bodies; a physical body and a dream body. You can roll, sink, or float off the bed, but be careful not to move your physical body by accident. Or simply imagine yourself in a different location. This movement out of body is what finally releases you from the waking world to a lucid dream world.
1. Control and Explore your Dream
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The final part is the most fascinating. After stepping into lucid dream, the single most important goal of your subconscious is to control your dreams. Now, imagine what it would be like to realize you are dreaming. Imagine you are back in the last dream you can remember and re-live the ending. But this time, become conscious within the dream. Look around you and see everything in high definition. Smell the scent of the air. Feel the ground underfoot. Engage all your senses. This is the key to increasing self awareness in dreams. This powerful visualization technique is excellent for becoming lucid, especially if you do it as you fall asleep. Sometimes you will find the dream world literally unfolds around you. Other times you will fall asleep and dream of this memory later on in the night. That is the secret to Lucid Dreaming. The very last thought you have before falling asleep is about lucidity.
