“Living Life as a Lucid Dream”
D’Urso,  Beverly (Kedzierski  Heart), Workshop presented at the Association for the Study of  Dreams (ASD) Conference 1997, Asheville, NC., June, 18, 1997
(Available as an audio tape from ASD at http://www.asdreams.org/subidxcontapes.htm )

Summary of Living Life as a Lucid Dream

This workshop explores the use of lucid dreaming techniques and implications in our waking life. As in sleeping lucid dreams, we will learn to ‘awaken in our lives’, to live with less fear, to experience the joy of success, and to feel a sense of oneness with everyone and everything.

Abstract

This workshop explores the use of lucid dreaming techniques and implications in our waking life. When we are lucid in our sleeping dreams, we are ‘aware that we are dreaming’. This means that we experience ourselves in a 3-dimensional, vivid world where we know that we are safe, that anything is possible, and that everyone and everything around us is just part the dreamer’s mind. We are free to do whatever we please, have fun, experiment, and go wherever our imagination takes us.

In this workshop, we will examine the possibility that life as we know it may itself be a dream. Life may seem ‘real’ and unlike a ‘dream’ merely because we are not lucid enough. If we look at life this way, then we can use lucid dreaming techniques from our sleeping dreams to become more lucid in our lives, solving problems and accomplishing goals along the way.

Lucid dreamers realize that becoming lucid, with all the associated benefits, can be learned with motivation and techniques. A discussion of the techniques and implications of lucid dreaming can lead to new approaches to life’s issues and goals. In this workshop, we will learn to use awareness techniques during the day to help us become lucid in both our sleeping dreams and in our waking life.

One technique that my students have used for years to become lucid, is to look for unusual or specific situations in their day and ask whether or not they are dreaming. Another technique lucid dreamers use is to review reoccurring dreams and nightmares and practice imagining themselves having new reactions. This is how I had the first lucid dream that I remember at the age of seven.

We will learn to look for unusual or recurring situations in our life and choose to respond in new ways. This can benefit our lives tremendously. Lucid dreamers have brainstormed for hours about different ways to respond to monsters in their dreams. We will learn to do the same, for example, about quarrels we have over and over again with people we love. We must first look at the life situation the way we look at a dream when we know we are dreaming. In other words, we must first become lucid. There are also ways lucid dreamers can learn to remain in dreams, wake up out of dreams, change dreams, become more lucid, and learn to accomplish intricate goals within their dreams. We will explore how we can do so in our lives as well.

Lucid dreamers often report that they feel safe when they know they are dreaming. In this workshop, we will learn to respond with less fear in our lives. In sleeping lucid dreams, we act as if we are more than just our dream bodies. In life, our bodies often feel as if they ‘are who we are’. The same is true in non-lucid dreams. When we are not lucid, we believe that death is inevitable and that our dream body is ‘all we are’; that is, until we wake up out of the dream and discover that the dream was all in our mind. We think, after the fact, that we could have responded differently, that it was only a dream. After waking up, we don’t think that our dream bodies ‘died’. We see that we have merely switched focus. Could this be true of life? Of course, even in sleeping dreams we would not, for example, jump off a cliff if we weren’t positive that we were in a dream and that we could, for example, merely fly away. Our goal, then, is to learn to respond differently at times, and with less fear, in our lives. We do not need to wait until ‘after the fact’ to realize that we could have responded with more love in our lives. Instead, we can ‘wake up within our life’!

Lucid dreamers have experienced the amazing feeling to have an exciting goal and made it happen! We can experience the joy of success more often in our waking state by learning to become lucid in life and set upon accomplishing a task with a new outlook. At the very least, we can probably gain an understanding of how we may be blocking our selves and try again.

When we are lucid in life, we can enjoy our selves more by feeling a sense of oneness with everyone and everything. Then next time we find ourself in an undesirable situation in our life, we can take action with the belief that other people are parts of ourself, or that we are all in the mind of the dreamer of life! This can help us to stop and listen to what others have to say, not because we have been told to, but because we want to understand our whole, true self. For example, once during an argument with my cousin, I suddenly stopped to think, “If this is a dream, then my cousin is expressing a part of my own mind.” Miraculously, at that exact moment, she started to explain how our points of view were related instead of opposed.

For many lucid dreamers, it was easier to become lucid once they heard about the idea; that is, once they believed that it was possible to ‘know that they were dreaming while dreaming’. When they questioned that they might be dreaming and looked for evidence, they were more likely to see the evidence and became lucid. When they experienced results, they became great believers. We can do the same with lucid living.

This workshop may have a profound effect on our lives. Of course, as in our sleeping dreams, it is very easy to go on automatic and lose lucidity. However, the more we practice being lucid, whether at night or during the day, the more likely we will be lucid at all times. By living life lucidly, we strive to live the most illuminating, clear, and enjoyable life possible, being: ‘in the flow’. We can also obtain a greater understanding of what religions, and even fairy tales, have been telling us for ages. Lucid living can give us an experience of being connected to, or even part of, that greater ‘Dreamer of us all’.