subject: Lucid Dream Guide - A Brief Understanding For Beginners [print this page] Lucid dreaming is a phenomenon where the dreamers are in the world of dreams in a conscious state, i.e. he or she knows that he or she is dreaming. Lucid dream guide is for the beginners who would like to start attempting to have this experience.
Thus, a lucid dream guide cannot be complete without the usual beginner's FAQs such as what is it exactly, how does it happen, how can it be induced, what are the fears, tips to overcome the fears and other drawbacks, the myths of lucid dreaming, so on and so forth.
Any lucid dream guide should start with explaining what exactly the phenomenon is like. That is, why is lucid dreaming is so popular? Imagine someone passing into the realms of dreams from wakefulness with complete consciousness of mind. He/she realizes that he is in the dream world and thus can go anywhere and do anything. The mere knowledge that anything can be done without being able to harm you in reality is a feeling by itself and the core reason why a lucid dream guide is so much in demand.
A lucid dream guide mainly talks about the ways to achieve the lucidity. And the primary thing that it emphasizes upon is meditation. Meditation gives you the power to control your subconscious state of mind and helps you to keep your mind alert and focused when your body is sleeping.
Secondly you should be relaxed and lie down in some comfortable clothes in a dimly lit environment and go to sleep, and also meditate at the same time to keep the mind alert. You have to imagine very accurately that you are actually floating away, leaving your body or using a rope to climb out from the body and thus pass on to the world of dreams, slowly and steadily.
Nightmares are the only drawbacks that can happen in lucid dreaming where some unknown monsters and creatures can get into your dream, trying to get at you. The main problem lies in maintaining the lucidity of the dream. People may find their control slowly fading away and the dream setting taking a turn. Thus the person who is dreaming may suddenly wake up, after losing his lucidity.
A lucid dream guide would fail in its duty if it does not talk about the tools to overcome the problems mentioned above. The two tools are those of dream spinning where the dreamer has to spin round and round standing at one place and verbal affirmations, where the dreamer needs to constantly tell himself what he wants to see or do. Starting from a nightmarish situation to where you feel as if you are loosing grip on your dream, any dream setting can be changed according to your will by these two techniques.
Lastly, a lucid dream guide should aware a reader regarding the common myth surrounding this phenomenon. Many call this entire act to be an escapist behaviour since it provides a way to escape from life. But as a counter argument it can be concluded by saying that even if reading a book may be termed as an act to enter another world different from reality, lucid dreaming cannot be put under this, as it does not take out time from one's normal life since it occurs at a time when the person would have been sleeping and dreaming anyways.
