The Journey Of Lucid Dreaming

Robert Waggoner is President-Elect of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) and a summa cum laude graduate of Drake University with a degree in Psychology. He has co-edited the quarterly journal, 'Lucid Dreaming Experience', and authored a remarkable book titled 'Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self'.

Why are you interested in lucid dreaming? What do you use it for?

Lucid dreaming was like my own, personal 'magic kingdom'. Flying through the sky, playing with dream figures, creating adventures - it felt fascinating to do this while aware in the dream state. Lucid dreaming became a free ticket to a kind of Hogwarts School of Wizardry. As I learned the principles of how to move and manipulate the dream state, my adventures really took off. Over the years, I began investigating lucid dreaming's potential deeply. Through experimentation, I realized lucid dreaming could be used to get 'unknown' information; apparently from the deeper part of yourself or some kind of collective unconscious. Moreover, lucid dreaming could be used to explore deep spiritual concepts, focus healing intent on your body, seek out telepathic and precognitive information and learn about the nature of reality (from the unique perspective of being aware in the dream state). In my book, I take lucid dreamers to these deeper aspects of lucid dreaming, and show them how experienced lucid dreamers approach these topics successfully. It's simply mind blowing.

What was your first lucid dream like?

My first incubated lucid dream gave me a glimpse of the wonders. I was reading Carlos Castaneda's 'Journey to Ixtlan', and began suggesting to myself each night, "Tonight in my dreams, I will see my hands and realize that I am dreaming." After three nights of doing this, I was dreaming of walking through my high school hallway, when suddenly my hands appeared right in front of my face. I thought, "My hands! This is a dream. I'm dreaming this!" I felt pure awe. Everything around me 'looked' real, but I knew it was a dream, a mental creation. The students looked real, the walls of the hallway felt real - I existed in an alternate reality, a mental projection, while consciously being aware of it. Then something wild happened. I stepped out of the hallway next to the administration building, when the dream began to feel shaky. I realized that I needed to look back at my hands to stabilize the dream (as Carlos Castaneda suggested). Looking back at my hands, I suddenly felt my awareness become a speck of light, floating through my palm prints and finger prints, which now appeared as giant flesh colored canyon walls, towering above me. Aware, it felt wonderful to have this microscopic view, as I floated along, just a speck of awareness. Then suddenly, I bounced back to my original viewpoint, still lucid. I decided to try flying, got off the ground and became too excited - and then woke! An epic adventure - and it was just the beginning. 

What have your lucid dreams shown you and who or what is creating this experience? 

Back in the 1980s, I was part of a lucid dream explorer's group, headed by Linda Magallon (author of 'Mutual Dreaming'). Each month for three years, we had lucid dreaming experimental goals to accomplish. During one of these experiments in which we were 'to find out what a dream figure represents', I had an unusual lucid dream. I very politely asked the dream figure, "What do you represent?" when a Voice boomed out a partial answer from the area above the dream figure! I asked my question again, and then the same Voice boomed out a more complete answer. Well that Voice startled me, and made me wonder, "Is there an awareness behind the dream?" So after a while, I began lucidly shouting out my questions or requests to this 'awareness behind the dream' - and it answered. Sometimes, it would change the dream completely and 'show me' the answer, while other times I would hear a response. This unseen 'awareness' seemed much more knowledgeable than any dream figure - in fact, I came to see it as the larger Self that Jung hypothesized. To understand what this awareness can show you, I devote a chapter to in my book. Most incredibly, asking this awareness to let you experience 'concepts' - spiritual concepts, esoteric concepts - some of these have tremendously expanded my mind. And in many cases, my conceptual experience would be later confirmed by reading ancient or obscure texts about that concept. Inventors, theorists and even theologians could use this approach to gain insight into concepts beyond their knowing, when lucidly aware (an idea that Jane Roberts called the 'dream art scientist'). Later when Castaneda's 'The Art of Dreaming' appeared in 1994, he talks about the 'Dream Emissary', an unseen awareness who answers questions honestly in lucid dreams and apparently has access to deep, unconscious layers of information. This seemed to re-confirm some of what I had already experienced.

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