Lucid dreaming begins when we know that we are dreaming while we are dreaming.
Yet lucidity itself goes much deeper than this simple definition.
The more we explore lucid dreaming, the more its benefits and gifts will quite naturally expand into our waking life.
My journey into lucid dreaming began when I was three years old and escaped from a nightmare of drowning in a turquoise swimming pool, but my deeper explorations kicked off when I was twenty and a friend suggested I find my hands in a dream.
I had no idea back then what this simple act would lead to.
I found so much more than just my hands!
I found my path in life. Lucid dreaming became my passion.
My lucid dream life exploded and I began to do intensive academic and personal research into lucid dreaming. Eventually, I became the first person to do a PhD on lucid dreaming and the creative process.
Now, over 20 years after finding my hands in that lucid dream, my big, practical, lucidity handbook has been published: Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Lucid Dreaming: A Comprehensive Guide to Promote Creativity, Overcome Sleep Disturbances & Enhance Health and Wellness.
Below is an excerpt from the Introduction of Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Lucid Dreaming. © Clare R. Johnson, PhD, 2017
What Can We Do in Lucid Dreams?
People ask me, “What can I do when I become lucid in a dream?” The liberating answer is that once you have learned how to stabilise the dream, you can do pretty much anything you like.
Waking up in a dream usually means finding ourselves in an environment that is as super-real as that of waking life, where thoughts can change reality, gravity can be weak or strong, and time is not linear. This means we can imaginatively create whatever we like by thinking about it with intent and expecting it to happen. It means we can have conversations with dream figures without opening our mouths, revisit our childhood home, or spend time catching up with friends who died long ago. In lucid dreams we can transcend the usual restrictions of the laws of physics by walking through walls, flying Superman-style, or teleporting to a new dream scene.
We can have fun in lucid dreams. We can find a beautiful, willing partner to have sex with, fly to the top of a mountain to soak up the stunning views, breathe underwater, invent a creature never seen before, practise our ice skating skills, or just reach out and touch a dream tree to feel the roughness of its bark.
We can heal past traumas, hone physical skills, and turn ourselves into eagles or tigers. If we encounter a frightening monster, we can face it and transform it with love so that it becomes our friend, or ask it what it represents and learn something valuable about ourselves and our dream world.
Lucidity gives us the option of guiding the dream to a more pleasant conclusion. And beyond all of that lies what I call “deep lucid dreaming”: when all the usual dream imagery falls away and we float lucidly in deep dream space, we can have transformative experiences and gain profound insights into the nature of conscious experience.
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Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Lucid Dreaming goes well beyond the scope of other books on the subject. It digs into the role of lucidity in sleep disorders. It gives care and attention to children’s nightmares. It shares my original methods for deepening creativity in lucid trance states. It tackles sticky subjects such as the ethics of lucid dream violence and sexual behaviour. It explores the scientific and practical aspects of lucid dream healing. It offers a wide range of useful techniques for engaging with lucid dreams. It takes a scientific and personal look at out-of-body experiences. It asks what the lucid dream body is made of and introduces a new theory of dreams and reality. It faces death and dying head-on.
Not only does this book cover the how-to of getting lucid, guiding dreams, and enabling lucid dreaming to enrich our waking life, but it also explores deep lucid dreaming—the profound experiences that lucid dreaming can open up for us, such as being bodiless in dream space, travelling at incredible speeds in white light, dissolving into blissful oneness in the sparkling black void, and connecting with a baseline state of consciousness that may be the bedrock of reality and the universe. I call this super-creative baseline state “Lucid Light.”
The world of lucid dreaming can be explored by anybody, and I encourage all lucid dreamers to discover their personal answers—and ask new questions—in their own lucid dream explorations.
Life is an unfathomable gift.
Lucid dreaming can help us to unwrap the gift of life.
What are we waiting for? Let’s get lucid!
From Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Lucid Dreaming by Clare R. Johnson, PhD. © 2017 by Clare R. Johnson, PhD. Used by permission from Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd., www.Llewellyn.com
How can you get hold of the book?
Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Lucid Dreaming can be ordered at any physical bookstore in the world, and it is available in many online stores, such as: Barnes & Noble, Llewellyn Worldwide, and Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk It’s also available as a Kindle ebook. I would love to hear your thoughts on the book, so do contact me via my website or leave a comment on any of my YouTube videos.
