Want to Have Sweet Dreams? Learn to Dream Lucidly!

We’re often wished, “Sweet dreams.” But dreams are confusing and often frightening. But learning how to lucid dream can make your dreams much sweeter.

The best way of experiencing sweeter dreams is to learn how to dream lucidly. This is when you realize that you are dreaming while you are dreaming. Even though scary and upsetting events may still occur in a lucid dream, the very knowledge of knowing that it is all a dream takes the edge of any fear, sadness or disappointment.

Many people who experience lucid dreams report that they can in some ways manipulate the dream, sometimes even turning a nightmare into a very sweet dream. Lucid dreams are a safe place to vent emotions, engage in fantasies like flying or reasoning with the monsters that haunt our nightmares...

Remembering Your Dreams

Some people are born knowing how to dream lucidly, but most dreamers have to learn it. The first step is to remember the dreams (lucid or not) that you do have. If your memory is good, then pick out what objects appear again and again in them. But if you can't remember your dreams, begin writing them down. Look for strange patterns like dead relatives coming for a visit that can tip you off that you are dreaming.

Keep a journal and pen by the side of your bed. Have it opened to a blank page each time you sleep. When you wake from a dream, don't move. Remember the dream as best you can and then move to pick up the pen and scribble a sentence or two. Fortunately, most REM cycles in our brains needed to create dreams happen in the few hours right before we have to wake up, so you shouldn't lose too much sleep.

Sweet Recognition

So you've written down a couple of weeks' worth of dreams and perhaps you notice a pattern, such as being in high school - decades after you have graduated. If a good chunk of your dreams is set in your high school, then walking along the school halls or sitting at a school desk your clues that you are dreaming.

While you are awake, get in the habit of asking yourself if you are awake or asleep. This sounds silly, but it helps your mind get in the habit of checking your reality. This also helps your subconscious plant hints in your dreams that you are dreaming. Many lucid dreamers report noticing such hints as clocks that never tell the time, at words constantly changing on a page or of lights that will not go off even after you've unplugged them.

Keep On Dreaming

One common complaint among beginning lucid dreamers is that they are so excited by realizing that they are dreaming that they immediately wake up. This is a good sign and happens to a lot of people. But try memorizing a sentence that you can say right when you realize you dream. This sentence can help calm you down enough to keep on dreaming. For example, this writer states, "My name is Rena Sherwood and I'm lucid dreaming."

Eventually, you will be able to have a long lucid dream. Everyone learns at their own rate. Lucid dreams are amazing and definitely sweet experiences and definitely make the prospect of going to sleep a lot more attractive.

References:

• The Art of Dreaming." Carlos Casteneda. HarperCollins, 1994.
• "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming." Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D. Ballantine Books, 1991.
• "Sleeping, Dreaming and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness with the Dalai Lama." Wisdom Publications, 1997.
• "Lucid Dreaming for Beginners." Mark McElroy. Llewellyn Publications, 2007.
• "Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self." Robert Waggoner. Moment Point Press, 2009.
• Author also has had lucid dreams since her teenage years.

Image of Eros statue by "shooting_brooklyn" for Wikimedia Commons.