{"id":130,"date":"2010-11-03T01:22:40","date_gmt":"2010-11-03T01:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/2010\/11\/lucid-dreams-inside-lucid-dreams.html"},"modified":"2010-11-03T01:22:40","modified_gmt":"2010-11-03T01:22:40","slug":"lucid-dreams-inside-lucid-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2010\/11\/lucid-dreams-inside-lucid-dreams.html","title":{"rendered":"Lucid dreams inside lucid dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"silverware<\/a><\/span>I haven’t much favored the term “lucid dream” – though I’ve been a lucid dreamer all of my life – because of past associations with agendas for “controlling” or “manipulating” dreams. But as the discussion matures, especially since the publication of an excellent book by Robert Waggoner titled Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self<\/i>, I find that my resistance is softening. So I am going to tag a series of personal experiences from the early hours as “lucid dreams within lucid dreams”. Here’s what unfolded quite naturally:<\/p>\n

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I am with a woman companion. We move in and out of several dream scenes, aware we are dreaming and traveling in our second bodies.
   In one dream, we are with the crew of the Tonight Show on TV. We go on-camera and get a terrific response from the studio audience. This is fun! After the show, we have drinks and a buffet supper with the host (who is someone other than Jay Leno).
   In another dream, we board a plane. There are only three first-class passengers, one of them a man in blue dungarees who is carrying a tubular container that could hold a fishing rod or a rifle, broken down into several pieces. There’s nothing scary about this; I know he’s okay. The plane is fairly empty, and this man decides to move to the back, perhaps so he can stretch out over several seats. My woman companion and I seize the chance to upgrade ourselves to first-class and the flight attendants are cool with this.
   There are several dreams of this kind. I call them “dreams” rather than simply “scenes” because my friend and I emerge from each one and confer in a kind of in-between space. We agree to reenter several of the dreams to claim gifts – for example, food and drink from the first-class cabin. <\/p>\n

I am mildly shocked when my companion decides to filch silverware (it is excellent quality) from the plane as well, though nobody seems to mind. We also bring gifts back from the Tonight Show. I think these include studio passes so we can use the door to the building reserved for insiders.<\/p>\n

I am lucid through all of this. Actually I’m in several states of consciousness at the same time: (1) I am fully aware of my body in the bed and of noise and movement around me, of trash collection in the street outside, of my puppy snuffling and licking my face etc; (2) I am vividly engaged in each of the dream episodes; the Tonight Show feels like the Tonight Show etc; (3) I am equally engaged with my woman companion in planning our next moves in that in-between space, and each time we reenter a dream we select, I am in effect experiencing a lucid dream inside a lucid dream; (4) through all of this my observing mind is tracking these three levels of awareness, interested in the possibility of claiming gifts of a deeper kind, involving the understanding of different levels of reality and of the self.<\/p>\n

As the noise and bustle of the day grew more insistent, I gently extracted myself from the dream locales, conscious of returning through several distinct levels of dream reality. I rose upbeat and intrigued. <\/p>\n

This is an example of how it can be relatively easy to enter a state of lucid dreaming in the hypnopompic state between sleep and waking. This twilight state of consciousness is a wonderful launch-pad for lucid dream adventures, and it is also a state in which we can practice sustaining multiple states of consciousness from the comfort of our own bed.<\/p>\n

Sustaining consciousness on several levels, I must note, is a prerequisite for my practice as a teacher of shamanic lucid dreaming. In workshops and gatherings, after defining a shared intention and a portal, I drum for groups. Everyone uses the power and focus of the shamanic drumming to travel through the agreed gateway, on assignment to have a shared adventure and bring back gifts. While drumming and watching over the physical space, I am also traveling on my own journey, tracking for others, and looking in on the dream situation of individuals in the group (with permission, of course). Extraordinary things become possible within the shared energy of a circle of active dreamers.<\/p>\n

But I also enjoy the natural, everyday fun of an at-home (and out-there) adventure like the one I’ve reported here. <\/p>\n

I’m curious about why my companion chose to filch the silverware. In the sporting parlance of the Brits, “getting the silverware” means winning the cup. My mind also goes to “spoon bending”, a phrase that entered the language with Uri Geller, and (when not used in derision) relates to the effort to produce physical proof of psychic phenomena. Maybe my dream girl wants to pull off the trick of bringing a physical object home from the dream space. <\/p>\n

What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dreams, you went to heaven and plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

That’s Coleridge, of course. And, what if, in your dreams, you boarded a plane and pocketed the silverware? And what if, when you woke, you had a spoon or fork in your hand?<\/span><\/p>\n

I’d love to discuss this with my dream companion. But I have yet to confirm her identity. However, o<\/span>ne of my friends and students has reported vivid dream adventures with me from the same early morning hours, including taking part in a grand production in front of an audience. But she has not mentioned stealing silverware from the first-class compartment of a plane and has yet to produce a spoon or fork.<\/p>\n

“Bite” silverware by Mark Reigelman via StyleBust<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven’t much favored the term “lucid dream” – though I’ve been a lucid dreamer all of my life – because of past associations with agendas for “controlling” or “manipulating” dreams. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}