Lloyd I Sederer M.D.

Lucid Dreaming

Might you know what a lucid dream is? Do you have lucid dreams?

A lucid dream is not just another vivid dream in which intense images and feelings dominate your sleep. A lucid dream is one in which you are aware you are dreaming. During (or after) a lucid dream you may have an epiphany like ...‘Wait…I’m dreaming!’” 

In a lucid dream, the dreamer is frequently in an unfamiliar or distant location. Commonly, the dreamer is moving at great speed, like flying or in a high speed in a train or a runaway car.

The hallmark of a lucid dream is knowing you are dreaming. Some lucid dreamers ‘enjoy the ride’, so to speak. Others experience an out-of-control distress. For the latter, their nights can be miserable and leave them exhausted in the morning.

However, with cognitive exercises, a person can recognize a lucid dream and learn to shape it into a pleasant ‘trip’, Also, I learned from a pulmonologist that a CPAP machine rid me of lucid dreams. One I learned to master my lucid dreams, I did not use the CPAP so I might continue to experience my lucid dreams, which, by the way, don’t happen every night, they are intermittent.

The content of the dream is as varied as the psyche of the dreamer. For many years, my lucid dreams principally took two forms, though in each I was aware of myself in the dream. Lucid dreams became curiosities, not distressing, after I learned about “non-focal consciousness” – referring to consciousness that exists outside our brain, outside our cranium. More about the vast, non-focal consciousness can be found at www.ions.org.  

One form of my lucid dream had me in what felt like grave danger. I was being pursued by human or dream-like predators. Whatever their form, they were out to get me, with mortal injury in mind. Though they never did, so at least I did not experience myself being beaten or eaten alive.

In another form, which I felt ashamed of, I was a teacher, miserably pedantic, droning on and on before a group of people about what I did not know. In some of these dreams there were no people, just me, thus, sparing others.

A variant would be my looking at written text appearing as an endless series of pages, hovering about a foot in front of my eyes. I would be following the text but did not comprehend what I was reading; - a dream with no value. The pages went on and on, like in a book. At times, as I imagined actually reading a book, I thought it was one I was writing. I wanted to capture the text so, presto, I would have another book to add to my collection as a writer. These dreams felt extraordinary, in that I dreamed I was reading what I had written, maybe what would be a new book of mine. A very pleasant experience for aa writer, I made myself, with the feeble agency of a lucid dreamer, try to memorize the text, so I would be left with yet another new book to my credit.

One memorable time, that, in fact, did happen. But I was not asleep. I was walking the ancient Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage trail, 1600 kilometers in northern Spain, west to the Pacific Ocean. One day into the pilgrimage, my mind quickly filled, whole cloth, with a short book, which etched into my conscious memory.

A week or so after the pilgrimage, I transcribed from my mind - in six sequential mornings, a book I called, “Improving Mental Health, Four Secrets in Plain Sight (2016)” (“If cancer is the Emperor Of All Maladies, then Mental Illness is their Zeus/lis”). Short and precise, yet with breadth, it laid out, with examples, four foundational ‘truths’ of mental disorders. Even the publisher’s line editor made barely any changes.

Where did my book’s detailed text, with references (!), come from? To answer that question, you may need to familiarize yourself with the concept of the non-focal consciousness, a vast ‘vapor” (so to speak) of consciousness, encompassing the past, present, and, yes, future, that our local (in the brain) consciousness can learn to access. Lucid dreams are regarded as one manifestation of a non-focal consciousness. Among ancient examples may be the prophets, exhibiting “precognition”, or clairvoyance, as their non-focal consciousness permeates their minds.

Keep a sleep/dream journal to record your dreams, if you don’t want them to vanish - faster than the last rays of sunshine at the day’s end. I spent six years keeping a dream journal (when I was in classical psychoanalysis as a young psychiatrist) and have regularly recorded my dreams since then. I can assure you it is work to keep one: it means learning to recognize when you are coming out of a dream, rousing yourself despite your languor to put pen to paper with a legible scribble, then going back to sleep primed for the next cycle. Lucid dreaming takes much more than that, but when learned, it has its unique value.

Becoming “lucid”, if not sui genesis, often starts with daytime exercises to train your mind to distinguish dreaming from reality. A key next step is creating “intention” before closing your eyes for sleep.

As a lucid dreamer for decades—I did not invite the capability, it just happened. I recently had a lucid dream in which I revisited an old traumatic situation from work, triggered by an event that took me back over 15 years ago. I knew I was dreaming. I used intention in the dream to try to direct the outcome to be more sanguine to my mental health than it had been. I was able to stay in the dream for an extended period of time and call upon reason, persuasion, and relationships to try to undo the past. But the outcome was no different. Sometimes, circumstances are just lousy and can haunt you for a long time.

When I awoke from this dream I was reminded about how exhausting both vivid and lucid dreaming can be. My dreams are alive most every night and have been since I was in my 20s; as I have grown older my dreams are even more vivid, though fortunately lucid dreams seem to occur with no greater frequency. When they do, I still usually awake in the morning needing to recover – as if a nap would come in handy.

A couple closing thoughts:

First, some books and websites about intensive lucid dreaming should come with a “black box warning”, which identifies the risks of intensifying your dream life, as well as the time and effort needed to do so.

And second, there should be resources about how to undo (or at least diminish) vivid and lucid dreaming for those who, without intention or training, have crossed into the zone of lucid dreaming and want to get a good night’s sleep.

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Lloyd Sederer MD, is a psychiatrist, public health doctor, and non-fiction writer.

More of his writings can be found at www.askdrlloyd.com