Your mind knows that after becoming lucid you are either to return to the unconscious dreaming or wake-up. False awakening is a trick your mind plays to convince you that are already awake, keeping you dreaming at the same time. The setting in the false awakening is usually very realistic, re-creating your usual surroundings in great detail.

False awakening is often induced by nightmares when the dreamer tries to wake up or change the setting. It is hard to become lucid again when you believe you already awake.

False awakening may be so realistic that it even passes some dream checks. The surfaces, for example, stay solid; you won’t be able to pierce them with your hands. Light switching often works, as well as most of the other checks.

However, some tests are still dependable, even in a false awakening dream:

• Suspicion – not exactly a test by itself, but in a false awakening experience you are often unsure if you are awake or still dreaming. This uncertainty is most likely a sign of dreaming and induces further investigation.
• Dream characters – false awakening is usually devoid of any dream characters in your immediate surrounding. If you live with a family or roommates, they are most likely won’t be present. Have a look around. It won’t be a good dream-sign if you live alone, though. Pets, on the other hand, do follow you in a false-awakening dream.
• Reading – texts and numbers stay unreadable. Try to have a look at your alarm clock or notebooks (if you keep them close to your bed). Or try to open a book or start your computer.
• Mirror – another good test. In dream mirrors our reflections are don’t look like us; they are unrealistic, bizarre and usually change as we keep looking at them. A mirror reflection is a sure dream-sign.
• Oddities – however realistic false awakening may be, it is still a dream with all the dreaming inaccuracies in setting and odd events. Some things are misplaced and don’t look like they would in the waking life, their features and behaviour is strange. The good, old “that’s not right, I must be dreaming” check.
• Flying – if you can fly, you are dreaming (unless you are from Krypton).

An Example of A False Awakening Dream

I woke up as I heard my cell-phone ringing. It was still in my purse, on the table in the living room, where I left it as I came home.

Everything was as usual. The rooms were dark and quiet, my cats were asleep on the bed. The living room, it was lit with the yellowish light coming from the streetlight outside the building.

I started to look for my cell-phone in the purse, which was filled with all the usual clutter, including even the bus ticket from the day before.

I found the phone, but it was dead. “Wrong one”, I fought and kept looking. Another was dead to. As I reached for the third cell-phone, it suddenly occurred to me: how many phones do I have anyway?

One.

So, this had to be be a dream.

I tried to pierce the coffee-table. It was solid, as in the real life. The phone-screens were dead to read, so I tried to fly: I jumped and stayed in the air. I was dreaming, and my false awakening turned into a lucid dream.

False awakening is great pre-lucid state. These dreams are more stable then usual dreams and don’t contain characters or plot that would distract you right away. Once you become lucid in such a dream, you can go anywhere and keep lucidity for a longer period of time. If you wish to experiment or try some dream-control technique, the setting is perfect. False awakening provides you with a personal laboratory space. Once you’ve learned how to become lucid and use it, there are a lot of new possibilities.

Experiment and good luck! Let us know how it is going!

Transformation

Transformation is probably the toughest of the advanced dream activities. It needs very vivid imagination since it is not only your appearance that changes but also the feeling of your body and the world perception.

Unlike transportation, transformation doesn’t seem to have any immediate practical purpose. So why would we want to shape-shift anyway? Because it’s fun, obviously. A good enough reason for anything we do in dreams. However, transformation is also a very good training for mastering control over lucid dreaming. It needs imagination, good visualization skills and certain mastery of dream stabilization.

This complicated skill can be approached and learned in four simpler steps.

Step 1 – Hands

In dreams we are mostly unaware of our body. We can hardly tell in the morning how we looked or what we were wearing in a dream unless our appearance is a part of the dream plot.

Hands, however, are usually visible. We concentrate on our hands to stabilize dreams, and they are the easiest part of our body to manipulate.

As you look at your hands notice how unstable their form is. You can pierce your hands (a common dream-check), change their size or colour. You can grow your nails, extend your fingers. Transform your hands into paws, grow claws or membranes. Whatever shape-shifting you are doing, try to feel it physically, don’t just watch it.

You may even insert gems or flowers into your hands or try on a tattoo.

Once this step is mastered, which means you are able to go through any transformation, achieve the result you had in mind, while your dream is stable and the level of lucidity is high, proceed to step 2.

Step 2 – Mirror Image

Most of the times when we do remember how we looked in a dream, it is because we saw our reflection.

A mirror in dreams is much more than a reflecting surface. What it shows is almost never a reflection

but rather an image, a symbol, an inner state or a message.

In dreams, we are pretty much what we see in a mirror. The reflection determines the shape of our dreaming body. Change the reflection, and you change yourself.

So, the next step is the alternating of our reflection.

After becoming lucid find or create a mirror. A big wall mirror that shows your entire image works best.

Start with simpler adjustments: change your clothing, your hair – length and color; recolor your eyes, make them bigger or smaller.

Next, try to change your features, copy some other face – a celebrity, a movie character, a friend. Then change your age, grow huge muscles or a beer-belly.

When you can easily change into another human being, get creative. Grow some fur, extend your teeth or try to be an alien. Experiment with all kinds of fantastic features and shapes. When you feel comfortable enough with humanoid transformations move to step 3.

Step 3 – Advanced Shape-Shifting

Start shifting without a mirror. Go through the transformations you’ve learned so far. Train yourself to be aware of your body and all the changes it’s undergoing.

Ones your shape is stable, start changing your height. It may look simple after all the previous training, but it is not. A giant and a Thumbelina perceive the world in very different ways. The surroundings suddenly getting huge or very small is not to easy imagine or feel. The ability to see the world differently from usual humanoid creatures is important for the next step.

Step 4 – Animal Shape-Shifting

Changing into animal forms may be trickier than the previous transformations. You will have to change your entire world-perception. Imagination and good visualization skills are vital at this stage.

You may divide the process and start with something more human-like, adding details and changing your size and posture. For instance, you may start from a werewolf shape on the way to the wolf form.

Practice visualization even if it is not a part of your usual routine. Reading about shape-shifting may help too. After all, what you need is not a real first-hand experience but a plausible description that you may “try on”.

Mastering transformation make take months or years. But the learning is fun and will help you to sharpen other dreaming skills. Even though I list transformation among advanced lucid dreaming techniques, that doesn’t mean a beginner can’t practice it.

Experiment, have fun and good luck! Share with us your experience!

The most popular of such energy-consuming dreaming activities are transportation, transformation and world-creation.

Transportation

The thing is, we do not exactly travel in the Dreamland. It is more like locations are spawned as we need them. Most often, our subconscious throws them at us as we proceed along the dream scenario. But when we travel into a certain location we’d like to see, we create it as we go. That is a huge effort that needs a lot of concentration and control. Transportation techniques are basically tricks that, a workaround to make your mind think you follow the scenario and keep dreaming.

Teleportation. Basically, it is the simplest method of transportation, since it needs minimal conscious effort. Just close your eyes, think of a place you’d like to be and, when you open the eyes, you’ll find yourself in a different setting. The drawback is, it is not necessarily the place you had in mind, but keep training, and you’ll master the method. Still, it’s a good beginner technique.

Directions. A good way to visit already known dream locations. As we keep a dream journal (or make a dream map), we gather a lot of interesting dream locations. Visiting them is a good way to continue an old dream or look for certain dream characters.

Ask a character for directions. “How do I get to [name of the location from your journal]”. It doesn’t matter what the answer is “42”. Start walking or flying somewhere and soon you will reach the location you were looking for. Once again, it was “loaded” from your memory as you invoked its name and image. Talking to dream characters stabilizes the dream and, at the same time, makes your level of lucidity to look lower, tricking your mind and preventing you from awakening.

This technique, however, seems to work specifically for familiar dream-locations. Since it takes more time and more concentration than, say, teleportation, the chances to wake up or loose lucidity are higher. Trying to “load” an unfamiliar setting need more concentration and often fail.

Picturing. When I was a kid, I could sit for hours over a beautiful book illustration or an unusual interesting landscape. I would imagine myself striding towards those woods or exploring the moon craters. Well, if a setting on picture captivates your imagination, you can explore it in a dream.

Find or spawn a drawing surface. It is not necessarily canvas; I like to use walls. Whatever is stable enough and easy to work with. If you start with a small surface you can enlarge it later but that would be additional effort. Better to start big.

Watch the surface, remember the picture you’d like to import into your dream and let it develop itself on your surface, like a photograph. Concentrate until it becomes more or less clear and recognizable. You don’t have to work on small details – your dreaming mind will supply it later. Basically, this technique is very much like your visualization exercises. If you train constantly, you won’t have any trouble animating your picture.

Imagine it is nut a wall and a mural in front of you but a window – and a whole world behind it. Then step inside and explore it. The problem is, if the level of animation is low, you may just walk through the wall. Keep trying and training – this is an advanced method that is almost a world-creation technique. It also needs good visualization skills.

There are other transportation techniques, of course. Each dreamer develops techniques of her own over time. Something works better and something worse, methods are very individual and depend on your level of skills.

Experiment, invent and share with us your techniques!

I have finally watched Inception and was very disappointed. I mean, we all dream, every night. So why when it comes to filming a movie in a dream setting, the film-makers invent some kind of virtual reality that has very little in common with dreams? If they wanted an unusual setting for an action movie, where the characters can bend reality rules, they could use more imagination.

However, the movie actually pictures some lucid dreaming techniques quite accurately. The one that drew my attention was the use of a totem.

What Is A “Totem”

In the movie, “totem” is a small object with certain unique feature that would be absent or distorted in a dream. The main character, Cobb, uses a spinning top to determine whether he is awake or dreaming: in a dream, it would spin endlessly, which is impossible in the waking life.

It appears, I’ve been using a similar technique for a while, even before I saw the movie. I always take with me a small book of Edward Lear’s poetry (a great reading for any dreamer, by the way) to kill all that time on my way to work.

Once I was dreaming about waiting at a bus stop. As usual, I opened the book but couldn’t read a word. The pictures were moving and the text was constantly changing. Then I realized that I’m dreaming.

The inability to read is one of the most common dream-signs. The reason is that the function of the left brain hemisphere, responsible for speech and logic skills is passive in the dreaming state. So reading is a great dream check, but written texts are not always available.

A totem, on the other hand, is an object that is always with you, and so you are more likely to have it with you in a dream.

How to Choose A Totem

A totem should be rather small, so you don’t have a problem taking it with you anywhere. It cannot be your mobile or iPhone though: we are too used to these objects to pay attention to them in a dream. Besides, they tend to function more or less normally even in the dreaming state, so it is hard to tell the difference unless your level of awareness is already high.

A totem has to posses a feature that would change or be absent in a dream. Such as a top would keep spinning or a book would be unreadable. You have to decide whether the feature is prominent enough for you to notice a change.

Make a habit of having your totem with you and check it often. I usually do so every time I make reality check. We are unlikely to bring objects from our dreams, but we can take anything into the dreams with the help of conditioning.

The use of a totem is not, strictly speaking, a unique lucid dreaming technique but a variation of other mnemonic methods we know. Yet it may be very helpful, especially when other tests or techniques fail. The laws of the Dreamland aren’t constant, and we can’t always count on the same set of rules. In that case, it is good to have an additional reference point for a reality check.

At the same time, some people suggest that an item we know well will appear and behave in a dream just as it does in our waking experience. That is, as we know and expect it to be. In my experience the method worked – I had several lucid dreams induced by my “totem”. On the other hand, it could work because I used a text as a dream-check, and reading is an almost 100-percent-sure test for dreaming.

As most of lucid dreaming techniques, it is individual. You wouldn’t know until you try.

Let us know how it’s going! Good luck!

Is There A Space Between Dreams?

“Black void” is a strange phenomenon sometimes occurring in lucid dreams. It is quite rare but not too rare to be dismissed as a singular occasion. It is a dark and empty space, where nothing happens but lucidity level is very high and you can literally travel between dreams.

Interesting that everyone who experienced “black void” immediately recognizes it as “the space between dreams”. Each dreamer gives it a different name (“Black Void”, “The Nothing”, “Loading Space”), but the idea remains the same: it is a space outside our usual dreaming. It is hard to say how we know that. But all dreamers agree that it is not a usual dream: it is a very special state of mind, the nature of which is not clear.

If we assume that “black void” is indeed a lucid state between two dreams, we have to accept that we can become lucid in a non-REM phase, when we are asleep but not dreaming. People who practice meditation sometimes achieve similar states. How this mechanism works in sleep, for those who do not practice any kind of meditation, is hard to say.

It is clear, though, that “black void” state does not last for too long. It usually gives a dreamer an uneasy feeling and desire to return into a dream. It is also interesting to note that you neither walk nor fly in “black void”. It feels like nothing but your consciousness exists in this state.

How To Get Into the “Black Void”?

Some dreamers say that you can be “thrown out” into the “black void” if you try to do something unusual and energy-consuming in a dream (like levitating numerous objects, transforming your or somebody else’s appearance or teleporting).

One dreamer received a clear suggestion from a dream character that he should “re-load” his dream in order to perform transformation, and then he found himself in the “black void”, observing the previous dream from the outside.

My own “black void” experience happened when I tried to change a dream subject. I had no idea how to go about it, so I started to fly upwards, so that the current scene would somehow disappear. And suddenly I felt like I’ve crossed some line, a border, and there was nothing around me but the black void, which reminded me about open space. I felt uneasy but wasn’t scared. Somehow I knew for sure where I was: in the space between dreams.

I started to move forward, or maybe upwards – it was really hard to tell. At the same time I was thinking about a good place, full of light, where the previous disturbing dream won’t continue. So the light started to get brighter. I couldn’t see clearly at first, just felt something touching my face. In the next moment the vision became clear and I found I was standing in a sunlit yard surrounded by clean sheets drying on the ropes. I woke up in a couple of minutes.

Basing on my experience and the information I gathered in the Internet, I think at least two factors are responsible for our transition into the “black void” state:

1. You have to be lucid in order to get into the “black void”, because…
2. …you have to perform an activity that is complicated and engaging enough to raise your level of lucidity to a degree when you can completely detach yourself from the dream, observing it from outside or leaving it completely.

The “black void” phenomenon seems to be rare among dreamers. On the other hand, it is not uncommon, and the similarities between the experience of different dreamers are too numerous for it to be merely a common dream-type.

I believe that once we have more information, we will be able to incorporate the “black void” into the common lucid dreaming techniques, improving our abilities of dream control, prolonging the lucid state (since it seems to be unlimited in the “black void”, until you transfer into another dream) and helping us to learn more about dreaming mechanisms.

If you have ever had a “black void” experience, please share your knowledge with us!

Good luck and good dreams!

It is noticed by researchers that lucid dreaming is most often triggered by nightmares. A lot of people had their first lucid experience in a nightmare, when threatened or facing an uncomfortable situation. The thought of circumstances being too horrible to be real often induces a lucidity, at least for a brief period enough to make a dream more pleasant.

Nightmare is a sign of disorder, telling us that something is wrong even if we are unaware of it.

Stress can have many faces, but basically it is a conflict. Stress is a result of our expectations or needs being contrary to reality. In our daily life we often have to make compromises, suppress our true emotions and settle for decisions we inwardly don’t approve.

We may not notice anxiety and frustration at first. But an inner conflict builds up, even if tend to overlook it, often accompanied by the feeling of being out of control, at the mercy of circumstances.

And then our subconsciousness starts to sound the alarm Under stress, our dreams tend to be more vivid, more intense, richer in content with more complicated plots. Our subconsciousness goes wild to get through to us and literally shock us into attention.

Although nightmares are a part of “waking-up call” mechanism, they also leave a lasting negative impression on a dreamer even intensifying the overall depressing feeling.

Studies show that children susceptible to nightmares can develop serious mental disorders later in life. Nightmare management is extremely important, and lucid dreaming seem to be a key mechanism in this process.

Some people condition themselves to realize they are dreaming upon seeing a monster; more often than not, lucid dreaming occurs spontaneously during a nightmare.

LaBarge tells about a 5-year-old girl that dreamed about being attacked by a shark while swimming. LaBarge advised her to remind herself, if she dreams about a shark again, that there are no sharks in Nevada, and so she must be dreaming. Some time later the girl not only overcame her fear of the shark but even rode on its back.

Lucid Dreaming & Psychology

This story is a perfect illustration of a constructive and therapeutic use of lucid dreaming. In the terms of psychology, the dreamer met and incorporated the subconscious content that disturbed her in a guise of a monster.

Most of lucid nightmares follow this pattern. As soon as the dreamer becomes lucid, the monster is no longer a serious threat, and the fear is replaced by more positive emotions, such as curiosity and even sympathy. As the dreamer’s attitude changes, they disappear or turn into friendly creatures

But if nightmares are a symptom of stress, does curing a symptom affect the illness?

Most researches would rather say “no”. To do so, we should directly affect our subconscious. However, in lucid states we are closer to our waking conscious states, the unconscious being temporarily “pushed aside”. In other words, in lucid state we can only alternate the “movie”, but we cannot tinker with the machinery that produced it.

However, basing on this fact, the whole idea of dream analysis would be pointless. What’s the point discussing and analyzing the “movie”, being awake, when we even further from the subconscious than in the dream?

The idea of working on dreams is, basically, to decipher the message and take an action. If we are talking about stress, we should realize what’s causing it and try to remove the cause from our life, whether it is a drastic change or merely an attitude adjustment.

In this case, lucid dreaming is an invaluable tool. If we could turn our monsters into friends or directly investigate dreams while dreaming, why wouldn’t lucid dreaming be as helpful in fighting stress and anxiousness as is dream analysis?

Excitement

Lucid dreams are extremely positively charged. They fill us with excitement after awakening, also giving us the feeling of being in charge of our lives, at least tot some extent. I still remember the joy and sense of accomplishment upon realization that my nightmares were gone, and it was all my doing.

Lucid dreaming may not be a technique, affecting our subconscious directly. Yet it may be a valuable tool acting obliquely, helping us to face the day with a positive attitude and giving us strength and motivation to look for our true selves, learning from dreams to discern between illusion and reality.

Good luck and let us know what you think!

The Tarot images are great for visualization. You don’t have to create the scenery from scratch: the surroundings, the key images, the symbols are already there.

Lucid Dreaming & Visualization

I’ve started my experiment with the Ace of Coins. In the Rider-Waite deck and most of its clones, it features a hedge maze in the background. Whenever I look at the card, I can’t help wondering what is inside the maze and where would it lead. Since my imagination was already captured by the image, I’ve chosen it as a subject for visualization.

I practice visualization at the stage of hypnagogic images. As soon as I’m aware of falling asleep, I imagine the card and start “zooming” it until it’s big enough for me to step in. At this point the image is already three-dimensional. You start feeling the temperature, the smells, the texture of the grass under your feet. The coin in the sky, or pentacle, feels warm, emitting the heat of the sun.

As I approach the maze, however, the weather changes. It becomes gloomier, the skies darken. The air grows colder and, as I look back, a storm is building up in the background.

It’s ok if the images change or if you see images not related to the subject at all. That means your subconscious is working now, developing the picture, giving it more life. For instance, I know that the gloominess comes from my subconscious wariness of mazes. It is always associated with mystery and danger. Probably that wariness denied me the entrance into the maze for several nights.

Meditation & Lucid Dreaming

I kept meditating night after night, until at some point, looking at the locked gates, I’ve realized I was sleeping. The excitement at the realization pushed me out of the dream. I went back to sleep, and the next dream was not directly related to the subject of my visualization, but a coin held by one of the dream characters reminded me of the Ace of coins (an arm holding a pentacle). I became lucid and kept the state for a long period.

For the next month I experimented with four more cards, about a week each with at least one lucid dream per card induced by an image reminding of the card subject.

In other words, even if a card didn’t directly induce a lucid dream, it certainly facilitated a MILD (memory-induced lucid dream).

Reality Checks & Dream Signs

As a next step, I’ve made a list of Tarot related images regularly occurring in my dream to use them as reality-check anchors. At least those you can see in daily life: coins, bushes, cups, arches, swords (knives and razors will do) etc.

In fact, we often use such anchors to remind us about reality checks. The thing is, we usually choose them randomly, especially if we follow LaBarge’s instructions. But what is the use of an anchor if it is chosen arbitrary, without any connection to our dreams? Let’s say, I choose to do a reality check every time I see a rose or a red traffic light. But what if I don’t usually dream about roses or traffic lights? I won’t perform this check in a dream.

It seems to be more logical to pick a dream subject and, since we experiment with Tarot, some dream-and-Tarot related subjects we are likely to see in a dream.

At the same time, as long as Tarot-related imagery appears in your dreams, you can use these images as dream signs. The better you are acquainted with your deck, the more the chance you will recognize certain images or symbols as dream signs.

Tarot is very convenient in this respect: it contains most of the archetypal images we may see in the daily life or dream bout.

I can’t say using Tarot is an entirely new lucid dreaming technique. Rather, Tarot can give a better focus for most of your lucid dreaming skills, facilitating the studies in visualization and providing anchors for reality checks and dream signs.

Tarot also can help you to better recall and analyze your dreams, which, once mastered, is a useful and fun lucid dreaming technique helping you to reach deep into your subconscious and make a lot of amazing discoveries.

Have you done any amazing, life-changing discoveries yet?

The Tarot deck is probably one of the most ancient and most modern tools for working with subconscious mind. Its imagery conceals numerous layers of meaning, appealing to both our subconscious and imagination.




The applications of Tarot are numerous. Beside the usual card reading, Tarot are used for meditation, self-analysis, creativity, personal growth, decision making and even for dream interpretation.

Tarot and dreams have much in common. They both use images and symbols to convey their messages employing our subconscious mind and intuition. As we read the cards, we try to understand how the images fit into our current situation (similarly to interpretation of dream symbols), which often leads to unexpected revelations.

If Tarot and dreams employ similar mechanisms interacting with our mind, can we use Tarot as a tool in our lucid dreaming practices?

I’ve tried to incorporate Tarot into my lucid dreaming experience and found it to be a helpful and fun lucid dreaming technique.

“Dream Recall” Spread

I like to use different decks and the one I’ve used for the spread is the Medicine Woman Tarot deck. I believe it works best for meditations and dream interpretation. Its images and suites are different from those in classic decks.

The dream I tried to recall was about some futuristic war. That and some vague out of place images was all I remembered. I used a simple four-card spread, cards lining horizontally:

1.The Theme – what the dream was about, its central topic. I’ve got The Warrior in this position. Well, the dream was about a war, so the cards seem to be in tune with me.

2. Scenery – where the events of the dream took place, the surroundings. This time, it was the Ten of Arrows. Arrows correspond to swords in traditional decks and, as the element of fire, may stand for war-related themes.

The picture, however, features a group of people peacefully gathered around a table. I remembered a gathering of war veterans and realized that the main event actually occurred after the war, as the veterans, including me, gathered at the old airport.

If I used the classic Rider-Waite deck, I would see a picture of a person pierced by ten swords. Although the image is much gloomier than in my deck, it also could suggest an “after the battle” event, a defeated person representing the old veterans, nursing their wounds.

3. The Dreamer – her role and position in the dream. The Ace of Arrows features a woman armed with a bow. I already remember that I was among the veterans. There were a lot of female soldiers at the war.

4. The Event – the key event, what was happening in the dream. The Seven of Pipes with masked people, obviously performing a hunting dance, and a figure of a winged deer in the air, amidst the clouds. I recall the veterans watching the clouds.

One of them, in the shape of a spaceship, turned out to be a real spacecraft, mistaken by the veterans for an enemy. We all hurried in alarm to the hangar, ready for fight, when the ship revealed itself to be a training craft for our own trainees.

The Rider-Waite deck features a man fighting off numerous opponents, unseen at the picture. That leaves us wondering if those enemies are really there or are imaginary.

A simple Tarot layout helped me to put together the vague fragments of a dream that otherwise would probably be forgotten. Of course, I doubt it would’ve helped me if I hadn’t any recall whatsoever. The associations can also vary depending on the images you are using.

However, since the underlying ideas are more or less universal, I’m sure you can use any deck you like and feel comfortable with.

Learn, experiment and good luck! Don’t forget to let us know how it went!

The technique was also explored in the works by Carlos Castaneda and is successfully used by modern dream explores for better dream recall and navigation in the dream world.

The difference between dream cartography and keeping a dream journal is that cartography is focused on dream locations and not characters or events. Dream cartographers claim that this technique provides a better dream recall, making it possible to remember even your childhood dreams.

The number of locations we visit in our dreams is more or less limited. As the cartographers’ experiments show, dream maps of different dreamers are very similar: they usually have one city, which is the eclectic image of all the cities you’ve ever visited, and borders, represented by rivers or mountains, almost never crossed.

Why to Map Dreams

As we visit different locations within the dream world, we get an impression of unlimited and chaotic universe. The plot of a dream rarely takes us to more than one location. However, as you start to map the dreams, you will soon notice that we often visit the same locations. Moreover, some locations connect the others, merging together the points that seemed to be geographically distant.

Any world becomes more familiar and easier to navigate once you have a map and is capable of some topographic orientation. Dream world isn’t an exception. As soon as you realize how all those strange places you’ve visited are connected, you’ll be able to navigate them as you do your own hometown.

Where to Start

Of course, you need your dream journal. Go over the entries and make a list of all the locations (I keep it in an excel file, together with all other dream information). Try to remember every detail and describe those locations as precisely as possible. Probably you will see some connections immediately.

Familiar locations (such as your home, school, job, your parents’ house etc.) are most likely to be situated as they are in the waking reality. Other, especially fantastic locations, may be trickier to place.

For instance, I couldn’t place a mountain I’ve visited once, until I remembered seeing a mountain top when I was stranded in a forest. The two locations – the mountain and the forest – appeared to be connected.

Topography: How to Map

Dream cartographers usually assume your home as the center of the map. It is not necessarily your real home, but a place in dreams that is considered “your home”. It may be like the one in the waking reality or be a palace, a cabin, a zoo… The thing is,  it is your home in dreams.

For instance, I assume a location named “The Palace of the Rising Sun” as my “dream home”. I’ve first seen it a couple of years ago but immediately felt and knew that it is my home where I’ve returned after a long absence.

After your center is chosen, start to add other locations. Some will go in quite naturally, such as most locations familiar from the waking experience; some will take time to be placed properly. It’s ok to go with your intuition sometimes. After all, it’s your map and your world. You can always fix it after you have more information.

Just take into account that forests, rivers, seas and mountains are usually situated at the borders of the map. Urban and urban-like locations will be closer to the center, to your “home”.

Also remember that your map is three-dimensional. That means that beside the regular world you will also have some sort of underworlds that may be represented, for instance, by a subway or Hell. There is also a “world above”, a higher realm you may be unaware of yet.

As for how you go about placing the new locations, you may draw your map in a drawing redactor, such as Photoshop or Paintbrush. They are easier to change, and you won’t be making a mess out of your papers.

I prefer to draw my maps in paper, though. So I draw new locations on small pieces of paper, preferably sticky-posts, adding a brief description of the place and characters I’ve met there and add it to the map, often on the base of pure intuition. I can always re-arrange them if I need.

Map Orientation

Dream cartographers prefer to arrange their maps so that the South takes the place of the North, and the East of the West. They follow the shaman tradition: shamans oriented their maps so that the realms they visited looked like the mirror images of our world.

You may do so or not, it’s up to you. After all, the map should be easy for you to read in order to navigate your dream world.

Good luck to all dream explorers! Let us know how things go!

I can’t say I’m a hardcore gamer, but I like good games with an interesting story and unique atmosphere. So yes, I do spend weekends shooting monsters or solving puzzles.

When I look out of the window, wondering where the day has gone, I begin to suspect there is much more in common between games and dreams than meets the eye. I’ve spent the entire day at home, in front of my computer, and yet it feels like I was elsewhere. And although the virtual reality of a game does not feel as “real” as in a dream, the immersion and the emotional response are often extremely intense.

As a dream-explorer, I frequently visit dream-related forums and blogs and notice that people often use game-related terms to describe their dreaming experience. I also find it surprisingly convenient to use words such as ‘NPC’, ‘rendering’, ‘glitch’ etc. when I write in my journal.

Why does it feel so natural to discuss dreams and games in the same terms?

What Dreams And Game Have In Common?

• Control. Both dreams and games create a controllable virtual reality. However, in games we are constantly aware of our ability to control the environment and do so with more ease than even in lucid dreams. In dreams, on the other hand, we are not constrained by the possibilities of the game engine.
• Immersion. Dreams create a convincing model world that feels “real”, tricking our physical senses, while games mostly appeal to our emotions, imagination and empathy. We choose to let the game to capture our attention and immerse us into its universe. And although we are still aware of the world around us, it has to step aside as all our interactive abilities are commanded by the gameplay.
• Suspension of disbelief. While playing, we tend to suspend our disbelief and overlook the differences between the real world and the game universe. In dreams, where the bizarreness is much more prominent than in games, the suspension of disbelief is involuntary: our dreaming mind is unaware of the unusual, sometimes even in a lucid state.

In other words, games and dreams employ similar mechanisms to capture our attention for a long period of time. In games, it is a necessary part of gaming experience so that the gamer won’t stop playing. But why would dreams want us to play?

Games And Lucid Dreaming

Gamers often relate that in a threatening situation, when confronted by a monster in a nightmare, they become lucid realizing that they can fight back just as they do in games.

One gamer had a series of lucid dreams triggered by his experience in DOOM 3. During one of the missions a frightening woman’s voice was telling him that the reality is nothing but a dream. He continued to hear that voice in his own dreams for several nights, and each time he became lucid.

I also experienced a “game-induced” lucid dreaming once.

There is an NPC in Grand Theft Auto: San-Andreas. It’s a typical “crazy person” you can see in San-Fierro (one of the cities in the game) with a box on his had and a disturbing phrase “God is playing with us” on his T-shirt.

When I’ve met in a dream a similar person, I suddenly thought: “I’m in San-Fierro. But San-Fierro isn’t real, it’s a game. Is it a dream?”. Than I’ve made some reality checks and realized I was dreaming.

Games And Nightmares

It seems, that fear, a sense of threat is more likely to make us question reality. In this respect, any media may trigger lucidity, as long as it has strong enough emotional effect on us to do so.

However, unlike any other media, games give us the experience of control and the idea that we can overcome the threat. After all, even in the most frightening and difficult missions, the player is in the position of power. He always possess the right tool to resolve the situation, whether it is weapon or information, the clues to solve the puzzle. Games are made for the player to be able to win.

While looking into the topic, I stumbled upon an interesting research by Jayne Gakenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada.

She found, that gamers more often experience lucid dreaming and are better in controlling their dreams than non-gaming dreamers. They also have less nightmares and their overall dreaming experience is less aggressive. Even in nightmares gamers often begin to hunt their monsters, turning a bad dream into fun.

In other words, if dreams are a complex simulative mechanism that teaches us survival tactics in a safe playground, games provide the necessary preparation, conditioning us to “win the game”.

Perspectives

The attitude towards video games may be controversial and often negative. We still hear about games “killing your brain cells”, being a waste of time and preventing the player from facing the “real life”.

Nowadays, video games are not merely “kids’ toys”. It is a new form of art and entertainment that often combines skillful narration with artful cinematography, making the gaming experience not only entertaining but also aesthetic and often – inspirational.

The modern gamers, in whole, are no longer kids or teens, but adult people facing adult problems in the reality.

If gaming can help people to become aware of the importance of dreams, to induce lucidity and provide scenarios training people to overcome fear and solve problems, gaming may become a whole new lucid dreaming technique.

For dreamers, games can be a simulation, helping to develop additional lucidity triggers, achieve a better control of lucid dreams and teaching us to face the worst situations with a hero attitude, not only in dreams but also in the waking reality.