Having automated the process of maintaining the dream as long as I want using a form of NLP Anchoring, I’ve been wondering lately how I could go about automating the process of getting into a lucid dream from the very beginning!

I’m not the world’s greatest at doing reality checks.  Lately, my lucid dreaming has been hit and miss, mostly miss.

When I DO get into a lucid dream, I have no problem maintaining the state.  I’ve even gone so far as to finally pull off Lucid Dream Sex.

My big problem is I am having a hard time lately getting into the lucid dream state to begin with.  I’m not entirely sure if it’s because I don’t keep a set time for sleeping, or set length of sleep.  But if I could take the reality checking part itself and automate and then let my subconscious handle that for me, I think that would rock.

I’m mostly curious to hear from you though.  If you seem to be able to have lucid dreams without having to actively work at it using reality checks, logging/journaling dreams, or any of that other tedious stuff, either leave a comment on this post or hit me up on the chat at the bottom right of this post.  If I’m logged in, I’ll chat live with you.  If not, you can just leave me a message and it will email me.

HIT ME UP!

Make sure to read the disclaimer at the bottom of this article prior to using this process for yourself.

What is a phobia?

In order to make sense of how to Cure a Phobia in a lucid dream, we first need to understand what a Phobia really is.  A phobia, to define it simply, is an irrational fear of something.  By irrational, I mean a fear which is so overpowering that it makes a person unable to do something or be somewhere.  I’ve heard several people refer to “anxiety” or “fear of something” in terms of phobia.  This isn’t quite accurate.  Let me use the example of flying in an airplane to illustrate the difference.

If you are faced with the prospect of getting on an airplane, and are able to motivate yourself to get on the plane, that is not a phobia.  That is anxiety about flying, or possibly fear of flying.

With a phobia, however, the subject of the Phobia (which I’l refer to hereafter as X) is something that no matter how much you WANT to do X, or how much you NEED to do X, it simply won’t happen.  A person with a phobia of flying will NOT get on that plane short of someone pulling a Mr. T and drugging him/her into unconsciousness and then being strapped in to the plane.  Better hope that he/she doesn’t wake up on the flight, or all hell could break loose.

As promised, the point of this article is to introduce you to an 8-step process whereby you, as an experienced lucid dreamer, can rid yourself of an irrational fear of X.

Here are the steps: (again, don’t let this scare you)

1. Close your Dream Eyes.
2. Announce an intention to see a symbol representing your current phobia/irrational fear of X.
3. Open your dream eyes and study the symbol from every possible angle until you have an intimate understanding of the symbol and how it’s put together and what it looks like.
4. Ask the symbol how it would need to change inorder for you to be unafraid of X any longer, in the appropriate circumstances and contexts.
5. Tell the symbol to make those changes.
6. Ask again to make sure there are no further changes that need to be made.  Make any changes that are left.
7. Once the symbol is changed, take the symbol back into yourself.
8. Allow the changes to permeate through your body and mind.

Of course, I’ll explain each step in enough detail to make sense.

1. Close Your Dream Eyes

This step is as easy at it sounds. In the lucid dream, just close your eyes.

2. Announce the intention to see a symbol which represents your current phobia of X.

For this step, it’s enough to simply say aloud “When I open my eyes, I want to see a symbol which represents my current phobia of X.  This can be similar to conjuring up a dream character except now you’re keeping intentionally vague and letting your Subconscious Mind control what the symbol is that shows up.

3. Open  your eyes and study the symbol.

For this, open  your dream eyes. Look at whatever is there that wasn’t there before. Don’t try to analyze or understand it.  Your Subconscious Mind knows a lot more than you do about the phobia.  Your only job is to get to know that symbol by seeing it from each possible angle. Your job is to understand what the symbol looks like in intimate detail, but not what it MEANS.

4. Once you have a good understanding of how the symbol looks, ask it directly how it would need to change in order for you to be unafraid of X any longer.

Just ask the symbol, “What about you need to be changed so I’ll no longer be afraid of X like I am now. I understand that being mindful of X in certain contexts is appropriate. But how would you need to change so I’m not afraid of X in contexts Idon’t need to be afraid?”  Then, wait for the answer.  The answer(s) will come to you in any of several possible ways.  Pay close attention to what answers you get about changes that need to be made.  If you have ask if the answer is real or something YOU came up with, then simply ask for clarification to make sure.

5. Once those changes are known, tell the symbol to make those changes to itself, and give it permission to do so.

At this point, the symbol may seem to take on a life of its own This means the process is working.

6. Once those changes are made, ask the symbol if there are any changes that are left which need to be made to make the process complete.

If there are any changes left to be made, have the symbol make them to finish up the change process.

7. Once the symbol is changed, take the symbol back into yourself.

Once the symbol is changed as it needs to be, literally take the symbol back into your dream body so it can integrate back into you.  This can be done in any way which seems appropriate for you to get it integrated.  If the symbol is a person, a simple hug could work, so the person melts into you.  If the symbol is an abstract image, you can reach out and grab it and pull it into yourself.  Or you can just walk right into the symbol and through it like walking through a fog.  The options here are limited only by your imagination.

8. Allow the changes to permeate through your body and mind.

For this final step, the changes you make will cause a sort of “ripple effect” in your body and mind. A good way to describe this is by way of example. Imagine a completed jigsaw puzzle, which represents the whole YOU.  Now, imagine you take out a single piece of the puzzle.  This is like seeing the original symbol.  Now, imagine that you change the shape of that particular piece of the puzzle like you did with changing the symbol.  When you re-integrate the symbol, it’s much like putting that new puzzle piece back in the spot you pulled it from.  Since it’s a new shape, the pieces around it have to also change shape so the new piece can fit where it belongs.  The ripple effect comes about because as those pieces alter and adjust, the pieces around THOSE PIECES must also change to accommodate the changes each piece has to make.  So changing that one piece has far-reaching implications for the entire puzzle.

***Disclaimer *** I have NEVER done this process with anyone.  However, my growing experience as a hypnotist leads me to believe this would work beautifully in a lucid dream.  As I do not have any phobias that I am yet aware of, I cannot test this for myself.

My non-lucid “regular” dreams are more brightly lit.  If you’re familiar with Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), I think it may be a submodality or reality strategy thing.  I’m not certain  yet.

Another quirk of most (not all) my lucid dreams is that other characters seem to disappear or just become irrelavent.  For example, in my Deep Trance Identification dream, as soon as I became lucid, the other people in the pub seemed to not matter anymore.  Their voices faded into the background. In the majority of my lucid dreams, though, people just disappear completely. Or I’ll find myself in environments where people just aren’t there to begin with.

I’m curious.  What sorts of patterns have YOU noticed across your lucid dreams that differ from your regular dreams?

This “new”  technique basically involves foregoing trying to condition yourself to look for passive clues about the possibility that you’re dreaming.  Instead, the technique involves just trying to control the environment directly.  If it works, I’m dreaming.  If not, at worst I look like a crazy idiot standing there straining myself trying to mentally lift  cars or buildings  I’ll describe what I mean by way of a dream of mine.

My most recent lucid dream was on January 21.  I’ve been pondering that experience since my last lucid dream prior to that was four and a half years before that.

“I was awake early that morning waiting for someone to come pick me up so we could go to work. We were delivering stuff for Sears Home Delivery at that time.  I had awoken, gotten ready for work, and sat on the couch, waiting for my coworker to get there. I knew I had about 30-45 minutes left to wait based on the time.  So I lied down on the couch waiting. I decided to have a quick nap.  Eyes shut.  Breathing Normal.

Well, I’m still laying on the couch, and I open my eyes and get up, and start walking around.  I walk back into the bedroom.  My wife is laying in bed, asleep.  I have an uneasy feeling this entire time.  I suddenly begin to wonder, while standing in the dark bedroom, if I’m possibly dreaming.  As soon as I have that thought, I start to get excited.  But, my sense of self-control kicks in.  As usual, I can feel that tiny subtle voice in the back of my head automatically keeping me calm.

I suddenly decide that if I am indeed dreaming, I should be able to control the dream environment (since that would mean I have the awareness that is a requirement for lucidity).

I look down and see an unsharpened #2 pencil on the floor.  I hold out my hand, like when Sylar levitated all the pieces of broken glass after Peter turned invisible. I then begin willing the pencil to lift.  After what seemed like a good 2-3 second long eternity of mental strain, the pencil jumps up into my hand. I’m Dreaming!

I then spend the next few minutes walking around.  Just perfecting and playing around with my new found dream-telekinesis.

Then, I eventually find may way back to the living room.

I’m standing in front of the couch, and decide that this is the perfect change to give lucid dream sex another effort.

I look at the empty couch and decide to conjur up a beautiful woman to have sex with.  Since my mental list of women to have sex with in my lucid dreamscape is long and extensive, I decide to trust my subconscious.  Remembering from past experience that I seem to have the best successes with conjuring up dream characters if I don’t try to witness the actual process, I turn so the couch is behind me and I declare “When I turn around, there will be a beautiful naked woman there for me to get frisky with.”

I turn around, and my wife is there, on the couch, stark naked.  Her feet are on the couch and she’s crouched on the couch.  I walk up to her, reach down, grab her and lift her off the couch, and suddenly I’m naked.  We go at it  like we’d never done it before.

At some point, I feel like I could actually reach a climax with her in my dream.  As this happens, a growing realization begins creeping over and and growing…a sense that I am running out of time before my coworker calls to let me know he’ll be coming around the corner.

Just as I am about to finish, the phone rings and I am awake.”

To recap, I tested the idea that I was dreaming by mentally willing the pencil to fly into my hand.  It did.

I realize this dream isn’t a perfect example of that technique, because for whatever reason I already had the growing “hunch” that I might be dreaming.  I’m not aware of anything in that dream which would have tripped my awareness alarm.  I think that, for me, the best bet is to build in anchors like I did for prolonging the dream.  But this time, I’ll build in anchors that will be like little reality checking machines that my subconscious can run (which seems to be what happened in my dream).  I’ll just trust my subconscious to bring that awaerness to me as needed.

If you’re like me and have problems with “normal” reality checking, give this a go and see what comes out of it for you.  Just go throughout your day trying to move shit with your mind. With enough repetitions of doing this, it should eventually spill over into your dream.

I have no idea why.  I’ve been analyzing stuff off and on since then, trying to figure out why.

I’m not sure now, but the closest I can figure is some sort of mental block.

It’s frustrating. and it pisses me off at times.

Anyway, that is why this blog has sat dormant for all this time.  I went through several periods where I thought “How can I continue to write about lucid dreaming when I can’t seem to have any LDs of my own anymore?”

Part of my new plan is to push ahead and keep writing, but now I’m obviously just as interested in what can block LDs as in what/how to have them.

I figure if I go down this path on the blog, then maybe it will help me push through into being able to dream lucidly once again.

If you’re reading this in a feed reader, thank you for sticking around so damn long.

Much Love,

Bill

In my dream, I am in the lobby of a BIG building, and I mean BIG.  The inside is pristine.  The floor is that brownish weird stuff that is hard like marble, but they use in some Post Offices and older Hotels and stuff.

As soon as I’m in the lobby, I get the impression that I’m very high in the building, on a very high floor, and I have the distinct notion that somewhere in the building is something I’ve either seen or been to before.  Like I’m vaguely familiar with the building itself.

I have the sudden idea that I need to find the 11th floor.  So, I go into the building looking for an elevator that will take me to the 11th floor.  I find an elevator, and go into it, and there is somebody in there, and I notice that the elevator only goes down to the 12th floor, and not wanting to look stupid by just walking back out of the elevator, I push a button (forget which one), and go to that floor, the person in the elevator doesn’t get off, and I push the button for whatever floor I had just been on.

I walk around and find another elevator, and this one goes to the 11th floor, meaning the buttons start at 11 and get higher.  I push the 11th floor button, and the elevator then goes down and the doors open.  I step out and I’m in a room that is very small, compared to the rest of the building.  It is approximately 12′ by 15′ or so.  There is a long table in the corner, the table is like one of those in a school cafeteria, the long ones.  There are two men sitting across from each other talking to each other, very casually.  Their posture is such that it’s like they are on their break or something, slouched in their chairs and elbow on the table, head on their hand.

I look at this room, and remark to myself how small the room is, and I then think that with the REST of the building being so big, there MUST be something else behind the walls, but I do not remember seeing any other doors or anything.  Just the room.

I then decide I need to explore the building and see what else I can find.  The rest of the dream is very nondescript as I just walk around and saw a lot of people in different rooms.

This is probably one of the most exciting posts I’ve put on this blog to date!

When I wrote about doing Deep Trance Modeling in a Lucid Dream, it was just an idea I wanted to try out. Well, I am proud to say that I’ve done it and it works! At least for me…..

So, here’s the good stuff. A couple weeks ago, I had come home from work at 3am. I piddled on my computer for about 2 hours or so, then went to sleep for a nap. I woke up to have lunch and decided to head back to sleep for about one and a half hours before work. I realized that since I’d already slept enough for at least 2 good deep delta sleeps, I would have a good chance of having a lucid dream.

So, I lay down, and I decided to try to induce a lucid dream with the WILD technique. I picked a woman that I wanted to use as my first test of “manifesting a dream character”. For now, I’ll have to keep her nameless as she has no idea that I’ve done this yet. I simply focused on the idea of her as I fell asleep, with the intention of seeing her in a dream.

Well, I sensed the initial onset of hypnagogia, and next thing I know, I am in a pub the likes of what I’ve seen in Scotland. The bar was made of the dark heavy oak that is stained and finished. I walked a few feet, there were several people in the room. My friend isn’t in the room, so I decided to try out the technique that Scott Lee mentioned of intending a person to be behind you, and then turning around. IT WORKED!

So, as soon as she sees me, she walks up to me and starts groping me and kissing me. I am already lucid at this point, and remember my previous intention to try out Deep Trance Modeling next time I’m in a lucid dream. I pushed her away and said “Stop. This isn’t the real you. Now, I fully intend that you will become as close to the real-life version of XXX as my mind can reasonably muster up, based on everything I know about her. IS THAT CLEAR?”

I am pretty assertive with the dream character, and as soon as I made that demand of her, she transformed from this super-sexed person into a regular person. I swear, it was like an instant transformation. She is now standing there completely like the real person saying “yes, I understand you. What am I doing here?”

I reply, “Well….” and proceed to ask her a bunch of questions, with the intention of gaining a deeper insight into her as a person. She answered the questions in great detail. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to put a notebook by me and forgot the questions and answers:(

Interestingly enough, there were a few questions that her reply was, “I can’t answer that question because you don’t have the answer in your mind.”

I challenge you to give this strategy a shot and let me know in comments how it goes.

p.s.

As I am sitting here writing this post for you, I realized that this strategy could likely be easily modified to incorporate the “New Behavior Generator Strategy“.

Here’s my story:

I first heard about Lucid Dreaming one night in 1995. I was standing a roving security watch for the old Chief Petty Officer’s (CPO) barracks while stationed in Groton, CT for Submarine School. I was making a tour of their night club to make sure there were no safety hazards and all that. Lying on one of the tables was a magazine, which I think was Discover or OMNI. There was an article in there about Stephen LaBerge, the unofficial father and resident strong-man of Lucid Dreaming. I don’t remember anything specific about the article, other than it had a small picture of LaBerge looking at one of his DreamLight or NovaDreamer devices.

I was intrigued by the article’s main point of being able to be fully conscious while in a dream and being able to take control.

My first Lucid Dream didn’t occur until around the summer or early fall of 1996. I was on a Western Pacific deployment on board the USS Hawkbill, my first submarine. We were on a specific mission at that time that I could not perform my usual Electronics Technician duties due to my security clearance having some administrative issues (waiting for paperwork). Because of this, I was elected to wash laundry every day for 10 people, on a first-come, first-served basis. I usually had all the laundry done by anywhere from noon to 3pm each day. So, lucky me, I was able to get anywhere from 12-15 hours of sleep each day, which is usually unheard of in the US Navy Submarine Force.

So, one day, I was asleep and had My first lucid dream.

That is how I got into Lucid Dreaming.

Thanks for the shout-out Ben!

At one point midway into his post, he asks, “I wonder what would some dream shrimp taste like? Or some dream milk?”

Then he posits, “My guess is my mind wouldn’t be able to conjure up the non-vegan foods that I’ve not eaten for so long and have little to no memory of.”

I tend to disagree with this a bit, because the mind doesn’t forget things like that. I remember a dream in which I was visiting with a person I knew as a youngster, that I haven’t really consciously thought about since I was about 6 or 7. The brain remembers basically every experience you have, and in the Lucid Dream State, or any dream state, you have unparalleled access to the reserves of your subconscious mind and your storehouse of memories.

Check out Ben’s entire post and leave a comment to let him know what you think.

BANG!

You are off running. You are in a close 2^nd place as you are rocketing toward the finish line. You are paying particular attention to the signals your body is giving you. Your muscles start screaming subtly for more air, so you adjust your breathing rhythm to match. Suddenly, before you know it, you are the leader of the pack. And sooner than you can realize, you are over the finish line, breaking the outstretched tape. You win.

In this post, I’ll be discussing how you can use Lucid Dreaming to enhance performance in just about any area of life.

As we look into how we can do this, I’ll first explain how my urge for writing this post came about.

A few years ago, I came across a Wikipedia article on Deep Trance Identification (DTI), sometimes referred to as Deep Trance Modeling (DTM). This is basically being put into a hypnotic trance and then having your unconscious mind recall everything you have ever known about a person you might want to gain more insight into. After the unconscious mind does this, you can then “step into” that person and experience awareness through that person’s eyes.

I began to wonder if this would be possible while in a Lucid Dream. The dream state is, after all, essentially the same as being in a hypnotic trance. The dream state, like the hypnotic trance, is the deepest and fullest connection we can have with the unconscious mind.

So, I began to wonder if I could use lucid dreaming to do the equivalent of DTI/DTM.

Which brings us to the “how”.

For the purposes of this, I’ll be assuming that you are now able to Stay in a Lucid Dream as long as you want, and Control the Dream. If not, check out my posts under “Basics of Lucid Dreaming” in the sidebar.

So, try this. Let’s assume you’re thinking about asking for a raise at work. You may be anxious about how to approach your boss and ask. So, next time you are in a lucid dream, create the dream setting to be at work, just outside your boss’s office. Tell your mind that your boss is in the office. Make sure to tell your mind that the character of your boss is the best, most accurate model of your boss that your mind can conjure up.

Knock. Go in, and point blank ask for the raise. The worst that can happen is your “boss” can say no. If your boss says no, don’t take that as an answer.  Ask, “What do I have to do or say to you to make you want to give me a raise”?

What this does is that your mind, using your mental model of your boss, will give the most logical answers it can muster up.

The key here is to refine your model by interaction in the real world. I know it may sound difficult, but honestly, the unconscious mind registers and stores millions, if not billions, of bits of information that never even makes it into conscious awareness.

So, when you at work (real world), go to your boss and say or do whatever the dream boss said to say or do. Don’t worry so much about remembering everything that is said. Obviously, you’ll want to pay attention to what is said, but do so as you would any other conversation. Keep the unconscious mind free to register everything else, which is what it does best.

Then, next time you are in a lucid dream, repeat the process, and see if anything different comes up that you should pay attention to.

Of course, it goes without saying that if your boss gives you the raise the first time, then there’s no need to repeat the process!

The beauty of this technique is that it can work for just about anything. Is there a special someone you want to connect with at a deeper level, or even someone you WANT to be your special someone? Get into a Lucid Dream and ask how.

Are you a race car driver wishing to cut down on your lap times? Grieving and wanting to communicate with a lost loved one? Programmer wanting learn from some of the coding legends? Are you a marketer wanting to get the best of Seth Godin’s knowledge? A blogger wanting to create a blog the likes of The Green Geek or Scott Lee? The examples for this are limitless. Let me know in comments what your ideas are.