Lucid Dreaming

What is Lucid Dreaming?

(Fun fact: I listened to "Dream" while writing this)

So, clearly the topic of Lucid Dreaming intrigues you. Perhaps you are a Lucid Dreamer and want to know more? Or you're bored and want something to read. Either way, I digress.

Lucid dreaming is when a person can dream, but they are also (usually) aware while doing so, and can often control what happens. If I'm not mistaken, anyone can learn to do it, but for the sake of elongating this book, I'll cover that in a different chapter.

Originally, I wanted to consult Wikipedia for help on the topic, but they succeed in confusing me as per usual, so here's what I know.

When I was younger (maybe about six or seven?) it dawned on me one night that dreams happen in your head, and that people control what happens in their head. Thus, with a few tries, I managed to produce my first Lucid Dream. However, with the mind of a six year old, I was side tracked too easily, and before I could successfully fabricate the pink castle I wanted (what? I was six, okay?!) I woke up. Come to think of it, when I was even younger, (five I think?) I had another Lucid Dream. Being a five year old who watched shows like Max and Ruby, I had a dream where everything was dark. However, I knew that I was in my own bedroom, and for some reason one of my walls was littered in seashells. I was standing with Ruby's friend, Daisy or something, and we were collecting shells from the wall. Issue is, whenever I "opened my eyes" to see where the shells were, I woke up. After a few unsuccessful attempts at falling back asleep and trying to see the wall, morning rolled around and that was the end of that.

The moral of my strange childhood dreams, is that once you are aware you are dreaming, it becomes far easier to wake up. However, I notice that once you fall back asleep, the dream tends to resume. But, my own observations are for another chapter.

Wow, I'm remembering all sorts of lucid dreams from my childhood, but I think each shared account helps you, the reader, better understand the concept of Lucid Dreaming, and since that's the point of this chapter, I'll continue.

Whenever I had a bad dream, dream me would mutter some nonsensical series of "words" that I refereed to as "magic" and, bibbity bobbity boo, I was awake. (This likely lead to my "I can control my dreams" discovery). The issue was being able to convince myself I was dreaming so I knew to say this string of random words. And that translates to actual lucid dreaming, too.

I like to think of it as your mind trying to trick you into believing that this is real, and this embarrassing moment in front of your classmates is real. It takes quite a bit of courage to fully convince yourself that this is a dream, and to either change it or wake up. I say quite a bit of courage because your mind will likely tell you things like "but what if this IS real and I look like a fool trying to wake myself up?". It's a dillema I've encountered multiple times.

Seeing as though this is getting lengthy, I'll be ending my explanation here.