A while ago, Michel Vuijlstreke wrote a blog post (dutch) that stayed with me – he described how he has lucid dreams. He remains aware of and can control his dreams, like pick them up where they left off.
Even stranger, he sometimes manages to be aware of the bits in between, when you don’t dream. This, apparently, is somewhere between frightening and boring, because there’s no concept of time.
This made me decide to pay attention – i’m an average person, where sleep is concerned, i think.
I lie in bed, and relax. Either i’m just thinking about this and that, or i’m telling myself a story (full visual surround). And then, out of the blue, gibberish start slipping in, as if i’m talking in a language i don’t know. If i’m on visual, I get psychedelic stuff, like green mandelbrots sets popping up in an otherwise normal landscape.
And then, poof, i’m gone. My brain slips into a mode where consciousness can’t follow, and that’s me for the night. Lights out.
Sometimes i remember dreams – when i wake up in the middle of a dream, or if i’m lying in. But to be honest, it’s not that often. And i can rarely steer them.
Maybe that’s something to look into, i’ve heard there are exercises – take a boring dream and give it a spin, cage the scare monsters, or jump up and fly … sounds good to me.
I have lucid dreams on average once or twice a week. Once you realise you’re dreaming it’s relatively easy to put that knowledge to good use. Every once in a while however I’ll wake up in the middle of night, with the sudden realisation “of course it was a dream you big nimwit!”. I guess it’s no exact science, or maybe I just need more practice.
Flying in dreams is a constant frustration for me. I can usually do it, but every single time I think to myself “damnit why can’t I go faster!?”. If anyone has any tips to increase my aerial velocity, please do share.
If you practice a bit, then you can also have lucid dreams. Search the internet for ‘learn lucid dreaming’ or something like that. It consists most of the time of the following: during the day, you need to ask yourself very often if you’re dreaming or not by checking for signs like you’re flying, light switches don’t work and so on.
thx, I’ll give it a try