Lucidity and Self-Realization through

Emotional Surrender

Beverly (Kedzierski Heart) D’Urso, Ph.D.

Presentation at the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) Conference, Berkeley, CA, June 2012.

Copyright 2012

When we fail to internally experience a strong emotion in our bodies completely, life seems to give us more opportunities to do so in both our waking life and in our sleeping dreams.

We experience new dramas or dreams, sometimes with different characters and environments, but similar emotions. If we pay attention, we can notice patterns of such recurring emotional dramas or dreams.

I will give personal examples of dealing with such emotional dramas and dreams, and compare my lucidity work to a contemporary, psycho-spiritual teaching of self-realization.

As a child, I learned to become aware of such patterns in the form of recurring dream nightmares. When I found myself in a similar dream drama, I recognized it as part of the pattern.

I fully faced my fear, my dream nightmares ceased, and I became ‘lucid’ in a dream for the first time. I connected to the dreamer of the dream in a way similar to how spiritual teachings describe connecting to our true self, sometimes called the creator of life.

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Decades later, I discovered what likely caused my recurring nightmares. I will briefly describe the initial incident and the recurring dream. Even if you’ve heard my dream before, listen carefully to the details.

I have a relatively clear memory at eighteen months old. My father always left for work in the early morning. He’d come in my room and kiss me goodbye. One morning, I decided to hide from him. Because of this, or more likely because he was running late, he left the house without kissing me goodbye.

I remember feeling extremely upset, probably believing it was my fault. Viewing the kiss as extremely important, I ran out of my room and through the house to the front door.

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My father had not locked it, so I pulled it open and continued to run. I did not know about steps yet, and therefore ran right over eight stairs, and crashed, landing on my back on the cement at the bottom.

This memory ends here. In actuality, someone took me to the nearest hospital and discovered that I had broken my collarbone.  I had to remain in the hospital, and at that time, parents were not allowed to stay overnight in the hospital with their child.

In my second memory, my parents are waving goodbye at the hospital room door. I am standing alone in a crib, crying intensely. I sense that nurses are hovering over me. One gives me a saltine cracker. I can still clearly see how the cracker in my hand is getting soaked and mushy from my tears.

I can’t say that I definitively remember my dreams for the next few years, but by about the age of five, it seemed like I had had my recurring nightmare forever. It goes like this:

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I’d find myself in my bedroom, and without notice, gruesome witches would sneak out of my closet and come after me.  I’d scream and run through the house, making it to the back door.

I’d fall down the back stairs, landing on the cement at the bottom, spread eagle on my back. Just as the witches seemed about to devour me, I’d wake up.

After years of this same recurring dream, I’d find myself pleading, as I lay on the cement with the witches hovering over me, “Please, spare me tonight.  You can have me in tomorrow’s night’s dream!”  At that point, I’d wake up.  However, the dream was still very upsetting, and I always hated going to sleep.
One hot, sticky summer night, at the age of seven, I felt especially afraid of going to sleep. Still being awake in the middle of the night, I grabbed an old, dark pink, American Indian blanket, put it on the floor of the living room, and fell asleep.

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In the same recurring dream, I found myself back in my bedroom and noticed the closet door creaking open.  I knew at once the witches were coming for me, and I ran for my life.  I barely made it through the kitchen, fell down the back stairs, and landed on the cement.

The horrifying witches caught up with me, but the instant before I started to plead with them, the thought flashed through my mind, “If I ask them to take me in tomorrow night’s dream, then I must be dreaming now!”

I looked the witches straight in the eye and said, “What do you want?”  They gave me a disgusting look and I continued, “Take me now.  Let’s get this over with!”

Keep in mind that they still appeared just as scary, and I did not know what would happen. I watched with amazement, as they quickly disappeared into the night.  I woke up feeling elated.  I knew they were gone.  I never dreamed about witches this way again.

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It pays to note that some lucid dreamers may have first turned the witches into less scary beings before dealing with them, destroyed them, or merely escaped from them.

I believe that my choice of surrendering to my fear, controlling only my reaction, and leaving the witches to do what they pleased, served as an excellent choice for my first lucid dream.

I not only ended my witch nightmares, but eventually I learned to deal with the witches again by bringing them back into my lucid dreams because they became my creative power.

At least as important, this experience taught me that I could know that I was dreaming while dreaming, and I continued to do so my entire life. I did not actually know the term lucid dreaming until my twenties, when I met Stephen LaBerge, and did research with him at Stanford for decades on this topic.

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Now, let us come back to the present day. I have been studying a psycho-spiritual teaching for several years, and recently joined their seminary. This teaching describes a process called the theory of holes.

The theory of holes explains how earlier in life, when we could not completely handle an emotion, we would develop a related psychological hole. We try to fill the hole with external obsessions, such as taking drugs, overeating, or having superficial relationships.

We don’t allow room for ‘aspects of our true essence,’ such as love, peace, or compassion to arise. We get many chances to face up to the emotion in new recurring dramas in our waking life or, as I am introducing today, in our dreams.

When we finally do so, and completely experience our empty hole, aspects of essence finally arise to fill it. In a sense, we replace emotions of our personality with experiences of our true, realized self.

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So, in my case, when I could not handle the extreme emotions that arose when I got left in the hospital and had to separate from my parents, at eighteen months, a hole got created. I may have temporarily filled this hole with external comforts, such as always needing to have my parents near me.

Nonetheless, when I faced the witches at age seven, I experienced the hole, or the psychological emptiness, which likely resulted from my painful experience at eighteen months of age. By doing so, I gained the powers that people often experience when they become lucid in a dream. I believe that these powers, such as strength, will, and joy, match the aspects of essence from the theory of holes.

As an adult, I finally recognized the amazing similarities between my early waking state experience and my resulting sleep state nightmares, even though the characters and set of the scene changed slightly.

For example, in my recurring nightmare, I ran from the witches instead of towards my father. The witches likely played the part of the nurses, who I originally saw as the bad guys. I ran to the back stairs instead of the front stairs, as I did at eighteen months old.

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Still, the emotion remained the same, as did the main plot of both scenarios. I had many chances, to face my fear as the dream got repeated for years.

So, now I will jump ahead to the mid 1980’s, when, though a series of experiences, I decided to view waking life as a type of dream. As in my sleep state, I live in this waking dream with various levels of lucidity, or consciousness. I call this lucid living and have presented on this topic for over twenty-five years.

In this waking dream, or what gets called life, dramas also get created as they do in the sleep state. They seem to repeat until I completely face the difficult emotion from when the drama originated. I believe that I really connect to my spiritual teachings because they seem to say what I have been describing for years.

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I will now explain some other repeating situations in my waking dream. For example, in many romantic relationships during arguments, my partner would seem to hover over me and look very scary, similar to the hovering witches of my childhood. One time, while this was happening, I asked myself, “What if I am dreaming right now?”

Instead of arguing back, I saw my partner as an aspect of my realized self, the Dreamer of life. I began to listen more, felt less afraid, and surrendered to the experience. My partner then did exactly what the witches did when I became lucid in my sleep state dream. He just disappeared out of my life.

For another example, as a child in the waking state, my best friend moved away, but the emotion of getting abandoned, or left behind, remained. I imagine that this experience, and others from a younger age, affected the way I often felt during romantic breakups. Breakup experiences kept repeating in my waking life.

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I also noticed how my non-lucid dreams recreated romantic breakups. Sometimes the dream character looked just like my partner in my waking state. However, sometimes character reminded me of someone else.

The scene may also have seemed different, but the emotion remained the same. Once I really let myself internally feel the emotion of abandonment in my body completely, romantic breakups ended, and I met my husband of twenty years.

I have often stated that the night I met my husband I became the most lucid of all. Earlier that evening, I actually told a friend that I was giving up trying to meet a partner. I surrendered to my current situation as a single woman completely. Instead of acting needy or incomplete, I experienced the peace and joy of my true self.

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However, without even thinking, I went up to a guy I saw from across the room, and did not focus on fears or plans. I remained extremely present and in the moment. I felt unlimited potential.

We stayed together from that night onward. Although we do have disagreements, I must say that he has never hovered over me in anger, as did my previous partners and my scary childhood witches.

Nonetheless, early on in our marriage, I used to get disappointed at my husband when he acted the way my father acted early on in my life. I did not actually see my husband at these times. I internally replaced him with an image of my father and over reacted.

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Once I faced the disappointment I had for my father at an age when I seemed helpless, my disappointment toward my husband dissipated. In a sense, I may have tried to fill a hole with my husband’s affection. However, I could only stop my disappointment toward him, when I surrendered to the deeper feelings of the original disappointment, and allowed kindness and compassion of my true self to enter.

To work with sleeping dreams or waking dramas in this way, I first look for recurring emotional themes. As I have shown, they can come from sleep state dreams or from the waking state. I don’t necessarily need to get lucid, but it helps.

I merely focus on really feeling the related emotion deep inside my body in the moment, without discharging it, for example, with loud yelling. If that seems too difficult, it can help to express my feelings outwardly later on, in a safe environment.

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I have learned that whenever I feel any emotion strongly, it probably means that I have an unresolved emotional experience that I am projecting on the present situation. Even if I can’t recall a past, related event, I just try not to resist the current emotion, nor use something to numb my experience, such as food or sleep.

I try not to tell myself that I have matured beyond such childish feelings. I especially notice if I am blaming someone else for my current state.

Note that the unresolved emotion can originate from an experience at a very early age of which I have no clear memories. Perhaps I did not get fed soon enough as an infant, or got fed on a schedule that did not match my needs.

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My spiritual teachings have much more to say about all this, as the seminary to become a teacher takes well over ten years. If you have an interest in this path, you can find a reference in my online abstract for this conference.

In conclusion, to become self-realized, or to connect to my true self, in the waking state, I can practice by connecting to the dreamer in my sleeping state. When I allow, and then surrender to, ‘so called’ negative states, I may first experience what seems like pain or emptiness.

However, I soon become open to “so called” positive states, or aspects of essence. I have discovered that my truly lucid self, or realized self, only experiences such positive states. I definitely love living in this way in waking or sleeping dreams, which I call the most lucid of all!

Now, I’d like to demonstrate this surrendering process by describing a dream that I plan to present at Tuesday night’s dream ball.

“I dreamed myself as a wave, and you as a wave as well. We seemed separate with this space between us. Suddenly, we became lucid and let ourselves fall into this hole. We surrendered into emptiness, and as water filled the hole, only a calm sea remained as our true self.”

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Thank you.

Questions?

Lucidity and Self-Realization

through Emotional Surrender

by

Beverly (Kedzierski Heart) D’Urso, Ph.D.

Proposal for the 2012 Association for the Study of Dreaming Conference,  Berkeley, CA, June 2012

Copyright 2011

Summary

When we fail to internally experience our emotions completely, dramas involving similar emotions appear in our life and in our dreams. I will give personal examples of dealing with such recurring emotional dramas, breakdown the steps involved, and compare my lucidity work to a contemporary psycho-spiritual teaching of self-realization.

Abstract

When we fail to truly experience a strong emotion in our bodies completely, life seems to give us more opportunities to do so in both our waking life and in our sleeping dreams. We experience new dramas or dreams, often with different characters and environments, but similar emotions. If we pay attention, we can notice patterns of such recurring emotional dramas or dreams.

As a child, I learned to become aware of such patterns in the form of recurring dream nightmares. When I found myself in a similar dream drama, I recognized it as part of the pattern. I fully faced my fear, my dream nightmares ceased, and I became ‘lucid’ in a dream for the first time. As my dream-self expanded into the dreamer, I gained powerful abilities and positive qualities, such as will, joy, and peace. I now understand that my recurring nightmare evolved from an accident I had in the waking state at eighteen months old. At that time, I could not deal with the strong emotions that arose during the drama of the accident.

As an adult, I experience lucidity in my waking life, as well as in my sleeping dreams. I call this ‘lucid living.’ Currently, I am studying a psycho-spiritual teaching that describes a similar process called ‘the theory of holes’. This ‘theory of holes’ explains how earlier in life, when we could not completely experience an emotion, we would develop a related psychological ‘hole.’ We try to fill the hole with external obsessions, such as taking drugs, overeating, or having superficial relationships. We don’t allow room for ‘aspects of our true essence,’ such as love, strength, or joy. We get many chances to face up to the emotion in new recurring dramas in our waking life. When we finally do so, and completely experience our empty hole, aspects of essence finally arise to fill it. I will show how we can use this process in our sleeping dreams as well.

As an analogy, imagine our ‘Creator,’ which I call the ‘Dreamer of life,’ as the sea and people as the waves. During lucidity, a wave expands DOWN into the sea knowing unlimited possibilities and self-realization. In the ‘theory of holes,’ the deep water of the sea, our ‘true nature,’ can represent aspects of essence. The waves represent people with holes. When we fully experience our emotions and face our empty holes, the deep-sea water rises UP to fill them. The waves finally realize themselves as the sea. When the water overfills the holes of all the people in the world, or we all become lucid, only a peaceful sea will exist as the potential of God.

All audiences can relate to this presentation, which should increase self-awareness and emotional growth.

REFERENCES:

‘Emotions in Dreams Lead to Self-Realization,’D’Urso, Beverly (Kedzierski Heart), Workshop Presented at
The Association for the Study of Dreaming: PsiberDreaming Conference, September, 2010.

http://durso.org/beverly/emotions_in_dreams/emotions_in_dreams.html

‘Essence With the Elixir of Enlightenment: The Diamond Approach to Inner Realization,’ Almaas, A.H., Weiser Books, York Beach, Maine, March 1, 1998.

http://ahalmaas.com/

“Could You Be Dreaming Now?”

by Beverly (Kedzierski Heart) D’Urso, Ph.D.  Copyright  © 2011

Presentation for the 2011

International  Association for the Study of Dreaming

PsiberDreaming Conference

http://www.durso.org/beverly/

http://www.wedreamnow.info

Do you tend to label the ‘waking’ state as distinct from the ‘dreaming’ state? What if you actually ‘dream’ while in the waking state? Try referring to everything you ever experience as ‘dreaming,’ and deciding that your experiences differ only in your level of lucidity. You could then continuously apply lucidity techniques and lessons from sleeping lucid dreams to enhance your life. In this session, you will examine your current level of lucidity, which could lead to discovering a new aspect of yourself and new way to view your world.

Research on lucid dreaming shows that brain waves during REM sleep, the state in which you often dream, look remarkably like waking state brain waves. Tests can show whether or not you are sleeping, and if you are dreaming while sleeping, but not necessarily that you only dream in the sleeping state. Therefore, consider this theory of why you dream: You have the capability and need to dream in the sleeping state, in order to help you remember that you dream in the waking state. In a sleeping dream, it appears that your physical self, an expanded self you can call the ‘dreamer,’ dreams up your dream self. In a similar manner in the waking state, you might actually get dreamed up by an expanded SELF, which you can call the DREAMER of your life. You may actually exist as an aspect of the DREAMER, just as in the sleeping state your dream self exists as an aspect of you, the dreamer. This DREAMER produces the drama in your life and creates your world, which you can call a ‘dream.’

If you want to have a sleeping state lucid dream, you might practice answering the question, “Could you be dreaming now?” in the waking state so that your dream self would eventually answer it while you were asleep and dreaming. Your dream self might respond in the positive, expand consciousness, and get lucid, while you remain in the sleeping state. In other words, your dream self expands into the dreamer, and you know you are dreaming in the sleeping state, the actual definition of lucid dreaming.

In a similar way in the waking state, if you answer the question at least partially in the positive, you would expand consciousness and get lucid while you remain in the waking state. In this case, you have expanded into the DREAMER, and YOU know that YOU are dreaming in the waking state. This is also called lucid living (D’Urso, 2007).

Some Eastern religions, as well as Western philosophies, focus on the ‘negative’ aspects of seeing life as a dream, such as illusion or projection. (See APPENDIX A: The Dream Argument.) These are comparing life to non-lucid dreaming. This session looks at the ‘positive’ aspects of seeing life as a dream by concentrating on lucid dreaming. When lucid in the waking state, YOU experience YOURSELF as a producer of YOUR life instead of as a mere character. Just as in sleeping lucid dreams, YOU can get more lucid and move through ‘blocks’ that seem to restrict YOU in YOUR waking state. Flying through walls in a sleeping lucid dream, and discovering the power that you lost as a child in your waking lucid dream, both demonstrate ‘moving through a block.’

How do you become lucid in your waking state? You can use the ways you become more lucid in the sleeping state (D’Urso, 2007). For example, (1) practice becoming more aware or present and look for unusual situations; (2) answer the question, “Could you be dreaming now?”; (3) review recurring scenarios; (4) record, share, and study your life/dreams; (5) set lucidity goals; and (6) ‘act as if’ you are dreaming. This last technique does not mean to take unnecessary risks. Merely consider what might seem possible, and how YOU might act and respond, if YOU were dreaming. (See Appendix B: Beverly’s personal examples of lucidity in the waking state.)

Practice becoming more aware, not only of what your senses take in of your surroundings, such as sights and sounds, but of your body sensations and energies. You can notice lucidity as a very deep sensation, especially if your mind seems clear and lacks a continuous stream of thoughts involving the past and the future. In other words, experience presence. You can help clear your mind by practicing meditation, or by sensing your arms and legs instead of focusing on your head (Almaas, 2008).

Most importantly, answer the question as often as possible: “Could you be dreaming now?” with awareness of what this might imply. This question gets asked by the dreamer, your physical self, in the sleeping state and by the DREAMER, your expanded SELF, in the waking state. In effect, in both states, you are being asked if you are being dreamed up right now. Merely questioning if you are dreaming, in the sleeping state or the waking state, can get you to a certain level of lucidity. Remaining open to the possibility that you are dreaming brings you to yet another level.  Remember, contrary to many beliefs, you do not need to ‘control’ your dream for it to have lucidity. The appearance of control only shows that the level of lucidity has changed. At some levels, you may not even experience a body nor an environment, and yet come back to a place of amazing peace, strength, and joy (D’Urso, 2009).

So, “Could you be dreaming now?”

If you feel certain that you know you are not dreaming, you might miss out on experiencing the exhilarating, creative, and potent ‘magic’ that lucid dreaming can bring to every moment. See if your answer changes if you ask, “Could an expanded SELF be dreaming you up right now?” Can you see how these two questions relate? Do you label people who do not know they are not dreaming as crazy, or do you view people who know they are not dreaming as more sane?  When did you first learn the concept of ‘dreaming’ or of being ‘awake’? Why do you need to see them as mutually exclusive? When you think you know you are not dreaming, do you sense that you have little control or total control over your life? Do you see unlimited possibilities in your life or do you believe that some things are impossible? Do you view yourself as a separate individual without connection to others or do you really sense the oneness of everything?  Do you believe that you exist only as your body or do you sense yourself as more than this?

If you do not know for sure that you are dreaming, in other words you only have a belief that you are dreaming, you could say that you have some, but not much, lucidity. If you act dangerously upon this belief, you could experience disaster. For example, you could feel the pain of broken bones from jumping off a cliff in the sleeping state or in the waking state. This accounts for people that you may have heard of who perform dangerous actions because they thought they were dreaming, but did not know for sure. If you remain aware and sense your body, you’ll find many ways to help you determine that you are dreaming. Until you know for sure, however, don’t take unnecessary risks!

If you do not know for sure that you are not dreaming – if, in other words, you remain open to the possibility that you are dreaming – you have the potential for the ‘magic’ of lucidity while awake or asleep! So, stay with the question: “Could you be dreaming now?” What comes to mind? Have you noticed that you often repeat patterns from earlier in life over and over again like a recurring nightmare? If you were dreaming now, do you automatically think that the world around you would look fuzzy or more clear than if you were not dreaming?  What would you do or not do?  Would you feel more or less safe if you were dreaming or not dreaming?

If you know that you are dreaming, in the sleeping or the waking state, you can have amazing adventures and even get to a place of self-realization. The possibilities seem endless! At a certain stage of lucid dreaming, you might view having adventures in your lucid dreams as the primary purpose of lucid dreaming. For example, in a lucid dream of any state, you might start with asking yourself what you’d like to do next. Perhaps you have a goal in mind. You might ignore other possibilities, such as allowing yourself the sense of freedom and joy that you really want from the goal in the first place. While attempting your goal, you might get sidetracked. You might forget that you are dreaming, and decide that you don’t have the power to attempt the goal after all.  Something might seem to block you, and you might judge the goal as impossible. With more lucidity, however, you can eventually discover your inner strength, as well as understand the block.

To take lucid dreaming to a further stage, instead of focusing on adventures and goals, look at the implications of what it means to know you are dreaming, or that you are being dreamed up, right now. In a lucid life, as in sleeping lucid dreams: (1) YOU can ‘control’ YOUR life to some degree, but only because of YOUR expansion into the DREAMER. In a sense, the DREAMER can guide YOU if you don’t resist. (2) Seemingly impossible experiences can occur in YOUR waking state. YOU might experience extreme synchronicities, awesome psychic abilities, or amazing powers of strength or will. Think about the reported abilities of Jesus Christ, such as raising the dead and getting resurrected. Could his level of lucidity and his expansion into the DREAMER have something to do with his abilities? (3) YOU can sense YOUR oneness or connection with everything and everyone in YOUR life when YOU see each as an aspect of the DREAMER. (4) YOU can know YOURSELF as more than just YOUR physical body. Waking up out of a sleeping dream could even suggest that one day you might wake up out of your life. What do you think this implies?

Scientists say that while sleeping, you often experience dreams, usually in REM sleep, even though you may not remember them. They also show that you go into deep, non-REM sleep, as well. Apparently, you don’t usually dream in this deep state, and therefore you don’t really experience it. Your sleeping physical self dreams and then doesn’t dream, back and forth continuously. Therefore, by implication, the DREAMER may do the same, periodically manifesting life. Many human-developed systems do this as well. Computer programs ultimately work using an alternating series of 1’s and 0’s. Circuit boards have resistors that allow, and then don’t allow, electric flow. Could this on/off process explain how manifestation actually works? Studies that restrict REM sleep show that you do best in the waking state when, in the sleeping state, you have REM periods where you can dream and manifest worlds, even if you don’t remember doing so. Do you think the DREAMER does best by periodically manifesting life?

In conclusion, stay aware of your experiences; meaning your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and energies, in both the sleeping state and the waking state. Do not resist nor deny them even if they seem uncomfortable. Ask yourself if you have noticed these before. Understand where they come from (Almaas, 2008). Then, from a place of more lucidity, answer the question again: “Could YOU be dreaming now?” and “What does YOUR answer imply?”

APPENDIX A: The Dream Argument (from Wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_argument

While people dream, they usually do not realize they are dreaming (if they do, it is called a lucid dream). This has led philosophers to wonder whether one could actually be dreaming constantly, instead of being in waking reality (or at least that one can’t be certain that he or she is not dreaming). In the West, this philosophical puzzle was referred to by Plato (Theaetetus 158b-d) and Aristotle (Metaphysics 1011a6). Having received serious attention in René Descartes‘ Meditations on First Philosophy, the dream argument has become one of the most prominent skeptical hypotheses.

In the East, this type of argument is well known as “Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly” (369 BC)…This was a metaphor for what he referred to as a “great dream”: …Confucius and you are both dreaming! And when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming, too. Words like these will be labeled the Supreme Swindle. Yet, after ten thousand generations, a great sage may appear who will know their meaning, and it will still be as though he appeared with astonishing speed.

APPENDIX B: Beverly’s personal examples of lucidity in the waking state

A great example of using a lucidity technique in my waking life occurred when I noticed recurring scenarios of an argument during my romantic relationships before I got married. The last time this scenario occurred, I suddenly thought, “This seems like a recurring theme” and “Could you be dreaming now?” I immediately saw my partner as an aspect of the DREAMER, and considered his point of view and what he had to teach me. With trust and surrender, I stayed present.  Exactly as the witches did in my childhood nightmares when I faced up to them, my partner froze, stopped yelling, and then turned and walked away. I no longer needed to play out this drama and have not done so in the past twenty years.

I also acted with lucidity in my waking life when I set a goal of having a family. Acting as if I was dreaming, I believed in miracles instead of the terrible odds of having a family in my forties. I now have been married for eighteen years and we have a sixteen year-old son.

Often, I see how I block myself by reacting to my strong emotions, instead of just feeling and understanding them (D’Urso, 2010). When I stay present, and in the flow of what is happening without resistance, more possibilities eventually seem to open up.  I also find myself guided to what I could easily have missed: unusual situations ranging from finding perfect airplane reservations to noticing precognition. I share these with others on a daily basis.

REFERENCES

D’Urso, B. (2007). Lucid dreaming: A bridge to lucid living. Workshop, International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) Conference. Sonoma, CA.

http://durso.org/beverly/IASD_Workshop_2007.html

Almaas, A. H. (2008). The unfolding now: Realizing your true nature through the practice of presence. Boston. MA: Shambhala Publications.

http://ahalmaas.com/Books/unfolding_now.html

D’Urso, B. (2009). Levels of consciousness and lucidity while dreaming or awake. Presentation, International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) PsiberDreaming Conference. Online.

http://wedreamnow.info/?p=124

D’Urso, B. (2010). Emotions in dreams lead to self-realization. Presentation, International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) PsiberDreaming Conference. Online.

http://wedreamnow.info/?p=181

Self Image to True Self

Paper Proposal for the 2013

International Association for the Study of Dreams PsiberDreaming Conference

© Beverly (Kedzierski Heart) D’Urso, Ph.D

Brief Abstract: Beverly will share her ideas about lucidity, self image, and true self by telling a story about a little girl who begins life as her true self but quickly learns to dissociate from it. First, she equates herself with an image in a mirror. As she learns to walk and talk, she thinks of her body and personality as her true self. When she understands that she is dreaming she knows her true self as more than just her body. She discovers how her true self can release her from pain if she surrenders to it completely.

Brief Bio: Beverly D’Urso, one of the characters in this dream we call life, started having lucid dreams in her sleep at the age of seven after she surrendered to her true self  in a recurring nightmare. After researching lucid dreaming in the 1980’s at Stanford, where she completed her PhD, she began to study spirituality. Beverly currently follows the Diamond Approach path and maintains the sites:  http://www.durso.org/beverly/  and  http://wedreamnow.info/ She no longer waits to go to sleep to become lucid and surrender to her true self.

Emotions in Dreams Lead to Self Realization

by Beverly (Kedzierski Heart) D’Urso, Ph.D.
Copyright  © 2010 Beverly D’Urso
Workshop Presented at
The 2010 Association for the Study of Dreaming  PsiberDreaming Conference
http://www.durso.org/beverly/
http://www.wedreamnow.info

My work in ‘lucid dreaming’ led me to conscious ‘lucid living.’ You could call this self expansion, or ‘Knowing the Self’ [1]. I now see how my emotional, non-lucid dreams assisted this process by helping to open both my mind and my body. As a child, I felt willing to totally experience great fear in what I call my first lucid dream. However, in my waking state and in my non-lucid dreams, I often could not fully experience simple upsetting emotions without any resistance, outward expression of blame, or inner guilt. I did not even have awareness of any resistance or judgment.

I have created a workshop where you can play with experiencing your emotions in the waking state, the dreaming state, and particularly the state of awakening. Together, we can discover another way to benefit from our dreams.

At this point, in both my waking state and in all my dreams, I aspire to fully experiencing my emotions instead of projecting them outwards or stuffing them inside. I don’t need to avoid them in order to appear more ‘mature’ or less ‘crazy.’ Dissolving or discharging them by experiencing them fully eventually leads me to a more peaceful and centered place [2].

I don’t think I really ‘processed’ my feelings during past painful life incidents, especially during childhood. Interestingly, I am spontaneously having non-lucid dreams where I experience an uncomfortable incident over again. These dreams give me a chance in the dream, or just as I wake up, to fully feel my emotion without resistance or judgment. I notice how the emotion affects my body, my breathing, and my thoughts, and likewise, how these three affect my experience of the emotion. I believe that this process has removed many barriers to my experiencing a more whole and loving self.

Notice that the above process merely takes ‘awareness.’ In this workshop, I will also ask you to attempt to induce dreams and modify dream conditions if you become lucid. However, you do not need to do so to participate. Even if you don’t admit to having emotions or dreams, or you see emotions as ‘childish,’ play along and use your imagination. You may get enlightened.

Do the following exercises and report what happened. You can choose or use any emotions. If you don’t want to deal with uncomfortable emotions, you can choose feelings, such as joy or compassion. Keep in mind that a joyful experience can lead to self expansion, but you may see more amazing results by facing up to a feeling that you normally resist.

During the day:

Remain aware of any uncomfortable or frustrating feelings, or joyful ones, if you choose. When possible, stop what you are doing. Really feel the emotion that comes up for you. Immediately scan your body and breath. Notice your thoughts and your environment, including other people.

To start, you can label the emotion.For example, say to yourself, “I really feel hurt.” Do not try to focus on any thoughts such as, “He did not act fairly.” Aim at not replaying the ‘story’ of what happened or expanding the emotion. Your emotions may seem out of proportion because another person may have triggered a past emotion that never got discharged. See an example of this in Appendix A.

Next, relax and move any stressed muscles. Slow down, lengthen, or quicken your breathing. Do your feelings change? At the end of the day, review what happened and post your experiences on this thread.

At bedtime:

If you so desire, do what you can to intend or incubate a dream with emotion.You can even choose to dream of a past incident when you did not fully experience an emotion, such as a feeling that might arise at the end of a relationship.

Intend to pay close attention in your dream to how you are experiencing your feelings and noticing your body, breath, thoughts, and environment, as you did in your waking state. The waking state exercises should help you remember to do this. Experience and notice all of these NOW, and remind yourself to do so as soon as you begin to wake up.

During the dream:

For lucid dreamers: if your intention does not manifest at the start of your dream, you can call forth the people from the incident, or go to the place where the emotional experience occurred. Replay the scene as much as possible. Rather than tell yourself, “I am merely dreaming,” really delve into any feelings, such as fear, anger, hurt, or joy. You do not need to resist the feelings, project blame, or take on guilt. However, do not resist any resistance or judgment. Merely stay aware of them. Lucid dreamers can also start breathing differently, stretching, or moving around. See the example lucid dream in Appendix B.

When you awaken:

Most importantly, for all dreamers: as you awaken, look for and stay with any emotion you just had or are still experiencing. You can do this many times during the night, or just before you get out of bed. Even if you don’t remember any dreams or feel any emotions, stay with your experience and pay attention to your thoughts, body, breath, and environment.

If you do remember a dream, do not focus on the ‘story,’ but pay attention to the feelings you had or still have. If it happens naturally, let out any tears or grunts. However, do not amplify the feeling, especially by thinking of the details of the dream, such as what you or another person did or said. Determine or distinguish the feeling. Do you feel hurt, frustrated, sad, or peaceful?

Picture of All Emotions

What do you notice or feel in your body? Do you sense anything particular in any part of your body, such as tenderness in your heart area or tension in your head? Notice your arms and legs, and then move or stretch them. Slow down, lengthen, or quicken your breath.

Did moving your body or changing your breath change your experience? If convenient, record what happened right away. Post your experience on this thread as soon as possible.

I intend to respond to each post without analyzing or judging you, but by merely sharing my observations. I will do so throughout the conference, so you can participate any time, as often as you like. I suggest that you start NOW.

APPENDIX A: Waking State Experience with Hurt Feelings

While creating this workshop, I got a phone call from a close, long-term friend. She told me that she could no longer associate with me because she feels that I act rudely by not politely eating whatever I get served. She also said that she could not handle the way I talk about my eating habits. (I gave up eating meat a year ago, and I eat more vegetables.)

Picture of Woman Crying

As I heard her ending our relationship, I immediately felt extremely sad and began to cry. She sounded harsh and uncaring. My throat tightened up. While sobbing, I told her that I heard her, and felt glad that she was finally telling me how she felt. Between gulps of air, I said it made sense not to give unsolicited information about my eating habits. I also said that I cared about her and respected her. However, I did not hold back my hurt feelings. I told her that I did not blame her for my feelings. I explained that I have been practicing to feel my emotions deeply.

I did not feel guilty or ‘childish,’ and I aimed at not defending myself. I saw it as important for her to experience her own feelings. I did, however, ask her if she wanted to hear a few words about my point of view, a misinterpretation, concerning a situation that she had described.

I noticed that I was sitting in a crouched position, so I moved to another room and stretched out. I took some slow, deep breaths, and noticed a slight tremor throughout my body. I moved my legs back and forth.

After the call, I let myself continue to cry, and felt that I had fallen into an abyss. I remembered that I felt a similar way when my parents had to leave me overnight in a hospital at the age of eighteen months. The sobbing and choking-up felt familiar. I imagined that my friend’s feelings also related to her own past experiences.

I looked around, and saw that I was lying among boxes of junk that I had not yet cleaned up. After a while, I felt a sense of relief, openness, and energy.

APPENDIX B: Dream State Experience with Joyful Feelings

While creating this workshop, I had the following dream:

I am interacting with my son and notice that his height exactly matches mine. Because he has surpassed my height by about six inches in my ‘waking’ state, I realize I am dreaming. I ask him if he can lower his height and become about two or three years old.He does this, and we begin to laugh and play as we often did some twelve or thirteen years ago. I feel full of joy and excitement. We dance around the room, which appears large and empty, swinging our arms and legs all around. My breath feels full and open. I have tons of energy.

http://www.durso.org/beverly/
http://www.wedreamnow.info

REFERENCES

[1] “Levels of Consciousness and Lucidity while Dreaming or Awake.” Presentation for the 2009 International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) PsiberDreaming Conference (PDC2009). http://wedreamnow.info/?p=124

[2] Almaas, A.H. (2008). The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence. Boston, MA: Shambhala. http://ahalmaas.com/Books/unfolding_now.html

PROPOSAL

My paper will refer to a chart which describes levels of consciousness, including lucidity. I’ll start with what I call contracted, or low level of consciousness. At this level, I do not reflect upon what I do. When I act in the waking state or the dream state at this level, I may blame, suffer, have fun, or just plain not pay attention. In the sleep state, I may have dreams, but I do not recall them. However, when I notice in life, after the fact, that I have acted, for example, in hurtful ways, I fall into the level I call reflection. I do not have enough consciousness to notice or change my actions in the moment, but I can recall life issues or dreams from my past and begin to learn from them.

When I question my reality and my assumptions, my consciousness expands.  I call this level semi-lucid. In the sleep state, this corresponds to questioning if I am dreaming. The next level I call lucid. In the waking state, I really know my unpleasant thoughts as untrue assumptions. When I know I am dreaming in the sleep state my fear decreases and my mind clears. If I question my assumptions, especially when I do not feel positive about what I am experiencing, it can help me respond in more appropriate and creative ways, and I become what I call  more lucid. At a very lucid level, I can co-create interesting dramas in my life and dreams in my sleep. In my final level of lucidity, I would still experience a dualist world, but really know all parts as One. I call this the level of most lucidity. In some sleeping dreams, I feel that I go beyond lucidity. I no longer have a body nor an environment. For now, I aspire to come from an expanded level of consciousness, or lucidity, in every moment, whether awake or asleep.

WAKING                                SLEEPING

Non-lucidity

Contracted
No reflection                            No dream recall

Reflecting
Recall past issues of life            Recall non-lucid dreams
Study your life                            Study your dreams

Lucidity

Semi lucid                    Question thoughts                    Question if dreaming

Lucid                            See thoughts  as untrue            See dream world  as untrue

More lucid                    Change responses in life           Change responses in dream

Very lucid                     Change life                                Change dream
and potentially change life

Most lucid                    View all in life  as ONE            View all in dream  as ONE

Beyond lucidity
Unity                                         Non-Duality

REFERENCES

1. “Lucid Dreaming/Lucid Living,” D’Urso, Beverly (Kedzierski Heart), Online Publications, 1982-2009.

http://www.durso.org/beverly/Index_of_Papers.html

http://www.durso.org/beverly/My_Lucid_Life.html

BIOGRAPHY

I’d like you to participate in a consciousness expansion, or lucidity training, exercise as you continue to read, and report the results on my thread.  For now, notice your surroundings, feel your body, and become aware of any thoughts you might have. Are you having thoughts, such as:  “I love exercises!” or “I  have done consciousness exercises in the past.” or “I hope I do well on this exercise?”

Next, ask yourself if you could be dreaming right now. Do any beliefs arise? Are you making any assumptions? Finally, at the very start of my actual paper, where I define a dream, write down the current time. You don’t need a stop watch, just look as the closest clock.  Then, when you get to the part where I tell how ‘the water didn’t taste wet,’ about half way through my paper, write down the time once again.

When you finish the paper and my followup on exercises, just after the sentence following the phrase: “I wonder what will happen tomorrow?,” subtract the two numbers you wrote down. Post the time it took you to read the first half of my paper, which should equal the difference of the two numbers you wrote down. Don’t struggle to ‘get it right,’ just do your best. You merely want to remember to do the tasks: write, write, subtract, and post. I don’t care about accuracy of time or speed of reading.  You will learn from this exercise, even if you forget to do all or parts of it. I will include additional exercises in APPENDIX A, which you can also try in the days to come.

I define the term dream as an experience of an outer world made up of characters, actions, and environment that my expanded self, a collective mind of nonphysical form, has helped to create. I see life in the same way.

Lucid dreaming occurs when I know that I dream while I dream. When asleep and lucid dreaming, I see my whole environment including my dream body and others, as untrue, particularly in relationship to my waking state. When I call something ‘untrue,’ I mean that I let go of my assumptions and no longer see it as real or solid or true. By ‘untrue,’ I do not mean false, but rather ‘I  don’t know for sure.’

When awake and lucid, I also see my whole environment including my physical body and others, as ‘untrue’ in relationship to my expanded self.  In other words, I might say: “My expanded self is dreaming when Beverly seems ‘awake.’”

People have associated lucid dreaming with ego control and satisfaction. I will show how lucidity actually relates to expanded states of consciousness, and what it means to have lucidity in our dreams and in our lives.

I will refer to the chart in  APPENDIX B, which I have divided into columns for the waking state and the sleeping state. It describes three major levels of consciousness: non-lucidity, lucidity, and beyond lucidity. Note that in the non-lucid levels, I list actions that obviously do not happen in the sleep state, but merely relate to it.

I can act from any of these levels of consciousness at any moment, while awake or asleep. Also, at the higher levels, I still have access to the abilities of the lower states. For example, in a most lucid state, I can still change my responses. At different times in my life, I may have dreams that I don’t even recall, while in my waking state I seem very lucid. The opposite can occur as well. Also, I often lose and gain lucidity in a single dream.

The first two levels fall into non-lucidity. I will call the first, low-level of consciousness: contracted. At this level, I do not reflect upon what I do. When I act in the waking state or the dream state at this level, I may blame, suffer, have fun, or just plain not pay attention. In the sleep state, I may have dreams, but I do not recall them.

However, when I notice in life or in dreams, after the fact, that I have acted, for example, in hurtful ways, I fall into the level I call reflection. I do not have enough consciousness to notice or change my actions in the moment, but I can recall life issues, or dreams from my past, and learn from them. In this state, I remember dreams only after they happen and, therefore, they get called non-lucid dreams.

For example, to reduce my tendency to always blame others in the waking state, I may seek therapy.  To learn from my dreams, I may join a dream group.  In this reflecting level, I still may feel limited, especially when my experience seems uncomfortable or unloving.  I see my world as unchangeable.

At this level in the waking state, I might feel justified in feeling hurt that my husband often criticizes me, and therefore he must not care about me. I may go as far as assuming that if he does care about me, he will leave me, and I will perish. Without a higher level of consciousness, I could feel very depressed, and might act in an angry manner towards him and others. I could actually help make this scenario my experience.

In a sleeping dream, I might try to run away from some scary monsters that chase me while I focus on my dream body’s thought that they will devour me.  Afterwards, in the waking state, I might figure out ways in which I can deal with the monsters next time in these nightmares.

I will refer to the next levels of consciousness as lucidity. Whether awake or asleep and dreaming, when I really pay attention to my environment or my body, I have a greater sense  of aliveness or stillness. When I question my reality and my assumptions, my consciousness expands.  I call this level semi-lucid.

In the previous example about my husband, I might ask, “Is it absolutely true that my husband does not love me?” At this point, I could look for ways that he acts as if he does love me and for ways that I act as if I do not love him. I could also inquire about how I act and feel when I have the thought: “My husband does not love me,” and how I act and feel when I do not.

In the sleep state, I might to question if I am dreaming. Even if I do not believe that I am dreaming for sure, just the mere act of questioning brings me to this semi-lucid level. In a recent dream, I wondered if I was dreaming so I tried to float. I could not float, but I could tell that the water I was drinking did not taste ‘wet’ as it seems to in my waking state.

The next level, I call lucid. In the waking state, I really see my unpleasant thoughts as untrue assumptions. With even partial lucidity, I find that small frustrations disappear quickly, and I experience more fulfillment. I focus more on the present moment, and feelings of ambition or regret don’t come up. Time tends to disappear.

When I know I am dreaming in the sleep state, in other words when I see my dream world as untrue, my fear decreases and my mind clears. I do not have to do anything, but merely realize that I dream while I dream. At this lucid level, I often experience expanded potential and more awareness. I believe that most people are referring to this level when they use the term ‘lucid.’

If I question my assumptions, especially when I do not feel positive about what I am experiencing, it can help me respond in more appropriate and creative ways, and I become more lucid. My response to what happens comes from my expanded self. I can accept what is happening and easily surrender to, and fully face, painful or scary situations.

I have done this in my waking state when a doctor told me I needed a procedure. I insisted I would not go through it. Finally, my doctor said that, “It’s like I see you on a cliff about to fall, and I want to keep you from doing so.” I often recommend to my students not to jump off a cliff unless they really know they are dreaming, so I told him to proceed. However, seeing this common dream theme, I suddenly did become more lucid. Instead of focusing on my fears and thoughts of pain, I became calm and accepting, thereby making the whole process much easier. Then, like magic, I began to see  numerous sychronicities.

In my sleeping dreams, I have often become more lucid right before a head-on automobile collision. Right before impact, I realize I am dreaming, and I might instantly fly up into the sky or even wake myself up.

At this more lucid level while awake or asleep and dreaming,, I also notice that my view of how others act towards me may reflect how I act or have acted toward them, others, or myself.  So now, in my waking state, as well as in my sleeping dreams, I attempt to listen carefully to what others have to say to me. Even if I feel hurt, I may try to find ways to show I agree with them, instead of just defending myself.

At a very lucid level, I can co-create interesting dramas in my life and in my sleeping dreams. My expanded self has the awareness that what it expects seems to happen. If I do see or hear something that I don’t like, such as a broken tooth or a critical comment, I can attempt to heal my body or learn from the comment. I can fearlessly accept such ‘imperfections’ as a part of myself that can teach me what I need to learn.  Some lessons I have learned in my sleeping dreams also seem to enhance my waking life, and vice versa. Unrealistically, I believe that many people expect to get to this very high level of lucidity the first time they attempt lucid dreaming.

In my life, I feel that lucidity has helped me fulfill many lifelong goals, such as finishing my Ph.D., finding a mate, having a child, dealing with grief, and healing my body. I did these things with an attitude of presence, acceptance, and intention, and not with what gets called ‘will power.’ (See REFERENCE 2.)

At a very lucid level in my sleeping dreams, not only do I not experience fear when ‘attacked’ by ‘monsters,’ but I can do things, such as fly through walls. I can have these experiences because I don’t see the monsters or the walls as ‘true.’

Once, in a very lucid sleeping dream,  I thought: “I would love to be sitting in a boat on this lake in the distance.” Instantaneously, I found myself on such a boat in the lake. Others have talked about this process occurring in the waking state and call it ‘manifestation.’ However, in the waking state, with my time/space beliefs, I seem to experience a time delay not necessary in my sleeping dreams.

In my final level of lucidity, I still experience a dualist world, but really know all parts as ‘One.’ I call this the level of most lucidity. I believe that many spiritual teachers experience this state of no separation and a connection between everything in their waking life.

In my sleeping lucid dreams, I have often viewed everyone and everything, including my own dream body, as ‘One.’ Many years ago, in a sleeping dream, I was giving a presentation at a dream conference and suddenly stopped when I became most lucid. Losing some lucidity, I assumed that all the people in the audience existed only in my ‘head,’ so I felt I had no need to continue presenting. Now, I refer to ‘others,’ as well as my dream body, as all parts of an ‘expanded self,’ which  flourishes as all the parts develop.  When I experience the most lucidity, I see these ‘others’ experience lucidity as well.

In some sleeping dreams, I feel that I go beyond lucidity. I no longer have a body nor an environment. I merge into vibration, sound, and light, and then into nothingness, or what I also call everythingness. I could describe this as expansion into ‘Being,’ or ‘Source’ or ‘God.’ I prefer the term ‘Dreamer,’ with a capital ‘D.’ For now, I aspire to come from an expanded level of consciousness in every moment, whether awake or asleep.

In APPENDIX A, I have devised three additional exercises to expand your consciousness which you can attempt in the waking state and/or the sleeping dream state. I suggest that you do the first exercise during the next twenty-four hours, the second exercise during the twenty-four hours after the first, and the third exercise during the twenty-four hours after the second. Report on each one, even if you totally forget to do the exercises. Feel free to do only your favorite ones and/or continue doing any of them throughout the conference. See what happens and report your experiences on my thread.

Thanks for participating. How are you doing with the initial exercise? Did you come up with a time to post? Did you forget to write down the second number so that you can post the difference? In similar exercises, people have often forgotten the second number. However, the feeling you get when you remember to do so seems similar to getting lucid in a dream.  Have you forgotten the exercise completely or posted your results prematurely? Has the exercise made it easier or harder to read? Have you been worrying about missing a part of the exercise, or are you focusing on the present moment, instead of thinking about things, such as: “I wonder what will happen tomorrow?”  I welcome all comments about the exercises and my paper.

APPENDIX A

EXERCISE 1:
Every time you wash your hands in the next twenty-four hours, focus on the present moment. How does the water and/or soap feel? Do you notice any outer sensations, such as sounds or smells? What are you thinking about? Ask yourself if you could be dreaming. What assumptions are you making? Write up your experience, or just the answers to my questions, in the present tense. Does this sound like dream reporting? If you can’t write right away, come up with enough words so that you can do so later.

At the end of twenty-four hours, give a rough estimate of how many times you did remember to do this exercise, and how many times you did not. Write out one complete experience of the exercise in the present tense, if you did not do so earlier. You can also briefly mention a time when you washed your hands and forgot to do the exercise.  Notice how you feel right now about this exercise. You don’t need to have anxiety, guilt, or feelings of superiority. Post your results.

Example 1
At about 9 am, I go to my bathroom, pick up a rough bar of soap, and rub it onto my hands.  I feel the tiny bumps in the bar of soap. As I rinse my hands, I feel the cool water. I hear a machine revving up outside. I think that I am not taking enough time to wash, nor am I waiting for the hot water to flow. Then, I notice that I am judging myself and aspire to merely do my best at washing in the future.

I ask if I could be dreaming and say to myself, “Of course!” Although I do not notice anything odd about the room as I look around, I remember that things in dreams can seem to appear just as they do in the waking state. I look at myself in the mirror, and I notice that I have my shirt on inside out. I smile.  I do feel as though I am experiencing a dream. I go back to writing this example in my presentation and feel inspired.

I washed my hands over a dozen times in the last twenty-four hours. I remembered to do the exercise about three other times. I totally forgot the exercise the rest of the times. For example, after I smeared sun lotion on my legs, I must have washed my hands. I even washed my hands in a dream at about 5:00 am, and again, I did not focus on the exercise.

EXERCISE  2
This time, I suggest that you pay attention, for the next twenty-four hours, to every time you feel uncomfortable, such as when you feel frustrated, sad, or angry. Immediately notice what thought you are believing and ask, “In what ways am I judging myself or others?” Try not to defend yourself, but merely accept your feelings. If you can, write down your experience in the present tense, or at least a few words that will help you recall the incident later when you have time to describe it.

At the end of twenty-four hours, estimate how many times you did the exercise, and how many times you forgot to do it. Write out one complete experience of doing the exercise, if you did not do so earlier. Include how you act or have acted in some way that relates to your judgments. Also, note an example of when the person you judged acts the opposite of how you judged him or her. You can also briefly mention a time when you could have done the exercise, and yet forgot all about it. Post your experience on my thread.

Example 2
At about 4:00 pm my son comes home and tells me that he does not want to share his day with me, and he does not ask me about mine. I feel sad, and I believe that he does not care about me. I judge him as uncaring, but I say nothing.

I remembered this exercise one time and forgot it at least twice in the last twenty-four hours. I realized that I act uncaring when I don’t respect my son’s desires for privacy. Also, I often go overboard in sharing my feelings, or I ask too many questions, or not enough, and I don’t listen. I now feel uncomfortable judging myself. I remember how I often do well in communicating, and I vow to just do my best in the future. I also remember that my son often acts with love towards me, such as when he hugs me before he goes to sleep at night.

I forgot this exercise completely during the time that I felt angry after my husband criticized me in the car. I now reflect upon how I have done or do some of what he referred to. I remember how often I criticize him, and how he really listens when something else bothers me.

EXERCISE  3
Any time in the next twenty-four hours, notice anything ‘unusual’ or ‘odd’ about you or your environment, and ask yourself, “Am I dreaming?” Then do a ‘reality check,’ such as trying to float or repeatedly reading something to determine if it changes. Even if what you notice does not seem impossible, or if you cannot float nor read, can you imagine that you still might be dreaming?  Write up your experience in the present tense. If you can’t write right away, come up with enough words so that you can do so later.

At the end of twenty-four hours, give a rough estimate of how many times you did remember to do this exercise and how many times you did not. Write out one complete experience of the exercise, if you did not do so earlier. You can also briefly mention a time when something ‘strange’ happened, and you forgot to do the exercise. Post your results.

Example 3
At about 6:00 am, I ‘wake up’ and notice that the items on my dresser appear messed up. This seems strange, so rather than assume that someone else messed them up, I ask myself if I am dreaming. I doubt I am dreaming, but I try to float anyway. Nothing happens. I see a copy of my conference paper on the dresser, so I pick it up and read the first few sentences. When I read it over again from the start, the words change. The paper turns into a personal letter that, apparently, I had written to myself. This time, when I try to float, I rise to the ceiling. I go on having a wonderful lucid dream experience.

I remembered this exercise one time and forgot it at least twice in the last twenty-four hours. In another dream, my tooth fell out and I did not do the exercise. A few hours ago, I could not get through on my phone after trying many times. I blamed the phone service, and never asked if I could be dreaming.

APPENDIX B

WAKING                                SLEEPING

Non-lucidity

Contracted
No reflection                            No dream recall

Reflecting
Recall past issues of life            Recall non-lucid dreams
Study your life                            Study your dreams

Lucidity

Semi lucid                    Question thoughts                    Question if dreaming

Lucid                            See thoughts  as untrue            See dream world  as untrue

More lucid                    Change responses in life           Change responses in dream

Very lucid                     Change life                                Change dream
and potentially change life

Most lucid                    View all in life  as ONE            View all in dream  as ONE

Beyond lucidity
Unity                                         Non-Duality

REFERENCES

1. “Lucid Dreaming/Lucid Living,” D’Urso, Beverly (Kedzierski Heart), Online Publications, 1982-2009.

http://www.durso.org/beverly/Index_of_Papers.html

2.    “My Lucid Lucid Life,” D’Urso, Beverly (Kedzierski Heart), Appeared as “Dream Speak: An Interview with Beverly D’Urso: A Lucid Dreamer” – Part One, Two and Three, “The Lucid  Dream Exchange,” Numbers 29, 30, and 31, 2003 – 2004. Also appeared in the online publication: “Electric Dreams.”

http://www.durso.org/beverly/My_Lucid_Life.html

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Beverly (Kedzierski Heart) D’Urso, an “extraordinary” lucid dreamer all her life, has used her practical teaching called lucid living to give workshops and present at conferences for decades. She completed her Masters, involving Cognitive Psychology, and her Ph.D., focusing on Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University, where she also did lucid dreaming research. She has also created several startup companies, worked as a researcher, consultant, and a college professor, and has over sixty publications and several awards, including many IASD dream contests.

SUMMARY

Some people have associated lucid dreaming with ego control and satisfaction. I will show how lucidity relates to expanded states of consciousness, and compare it to the work of the contemporary spiritual teachers, Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle. My topics include: inquiry, the present moment, expansion of self, the connectiveness of all, facing pain, viewing death, and the interdependent illusions of space, time, and thought.

ABSTRACT

In my dreams, as in my waking state, I can act with various levels of consciousness. By the term dream, I mean an experience of an outer world made up of characters and actions that my expanded self has helped to create. In this sense, I view the waking state as a kind of a dream. I aspire to come from an expanded level of consciousness, or lucidity, in every moment, whether awake or asleep. In sleeping dreams, time and space may appear to differ from the waking state. Events can happen almost instantly, so I can quickly see the results of my thoughts, desires, or fears.

When I act in my dreams, or in the waking state, with a contracted level of consciousness, I may judge, attack, suffer, stressfully pursue ego gratification, or just plain not pay attention. However, when I question if I am dreaming, in other words, question my reality and my assumptions, and notice them in some way as ‘not true,’ my consciousness expands. This inquiry process seems similar to the techniques of Byron Katie, the author of Loving What Is. She helps people end their suffering by asking them to question any stressful thought and see if they absolutely know it as true.

If I believe that I am not dreaming, I may feel limited. When I know I am dreaming, my fear decreases, my mind clears, and I respond in more appropriate and creative ways. I often experience expanded potential. Eckhart Tolle, the author of The Power of Now, calls this state ‘Presence.’ With even partial lucidity, small frustrations disappear quickly, and I experience more fulfillment. When I know I am dreaming, I focus more on the present moment, usually realizing that I will wake up soon. Concerns, such as ambition or regrets, don’t come up, and  I can co-create interesting dramas, which sometimes seem to enhance my waking state as well. When I have increased lucidity, I easily surrender to, and fully face seemingly painful or scary situations, a process that both Tolle and Katie recommend.

The more lucid I become, the more I notice that my view of how others act towards me may reflect how I act or have acted toward them, others, or myself. I listen carefully to what others have to say to me and sometimes change my actions instead of defending myself. My response comes from an expanded self.  In her work, Katie calls this the ‘turnaround.’ In my extreme levels of lucidity, I experience no separation, but rather a connection, with everything. Eventually, I no longer have a body nor an environment. Tolle calls this expansion into ‘Being.’ Others use the word ‘Source’ or ‘God.’ I like the term ‘Dreamer.’

Lucid dreaming also gave me a spiritual perspective on death. In non-lucid dreams, I used to think of my ‘dream body’ as my ‘self.’ Because I did not have awareness of my expanded self, I believed that if my dream body died, I died. I continued to feel this way until I woke up out of the dream. Then, as a child, when I knew I was dreaming while I was dreaming, I experienced myself as more than just my body before I woke up out of my sleeping dream. Eventually, while very lucid in a sleeping dream, I let my sleeping dream body die, and yet woke up whole. As an adult, I now see that I can similarly “wake up” in my life before my physical body ‘dies’ and really enjoy the experience of my expanded, lucid self.

In Tolle’s recent book, The New Earth, he says, “To awaken within the dream is our purpose now. When we are awake within the dream, the ego-created earth-drama comes to an end, and a more benign and wondrous dream arises. This is the new earth.”

REFERENCES

1. “Lucid Dreaming/Lucid Living,” Online Publications, D’Urso, Beverly (Kedzierski Heart), 1982-2008.
http://www.durso.org/beverly/index.html

2. Lucid Dreaming: A Bridge to Lucid Living, D’Urso,
Beverly (Kedzierski Heart), Ph.D., Workshop Before the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD)  Conference 2007, Sonoma, California, June, 2007.
http://www.durso.org/beverly/IASD_Workshop_2007.html

3. “Loving What Is: Four Questions that can Change your Life,” Katie, Byron, and Mitchell, Stephen, Harmony Books, New York, New York,  2002.
http://www.thework.com

4. “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment,” Tolle, Eckhart, New World Library, Novato, California, 2004.
http://www.eckharttolle.com/eckharttolle

5. “A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose,” Tolle, Eckhart, Penguin Books, London, England, 2005.
http://www.eckharttolle.com/eckharttolle

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Beverly (Kedzierski Heart) D’Urso (USA), an ‘extraordinary’ lucid dreamer all her life, has used her practical teaching called lucid living to give workshops and present at conferences for decades. She completed her Masters, involving Cognitive Psychology, and her Ph.D., focusing on Artificial Intelligence, at Stanford University, where she also did lucid dreaming research. Dr. D’Urso has over fifty publications and has won several IASD dream contests.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES AND QUESTIONS

L1    Discuss some aspects of lucidity that demonstrate an expanded level of consciousness.

L2    Compare Byron Katie’s inquiry and turnaround processes to getting lucid and learning from dream characters.

L3    Explain Eckhart Tolle’s terms ‘Presence’ and ‘Being,’ and how they relate to lucid dreaming.

Q1    Describe three aspects of lucidity that demonstrate an expanded level of consciousness?

Q2    How does Byron Katie’s inquiry process relate to getting lucid?

Q3    Give two ways that lucid dreaming relates to Eckhart Tolle’s term ‘Presence.’

TITLE NAME EMAIL

LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

15:00 (Time left)

I’d like to speak today about various levels of consciousness in the waking state and in the sleeping dream state. I’ll start with some background.

Dreaming

I define the term dream as an experience of an outer world made up of characters, actions, and environment that my expanded self has helped to create. People have viewed this expanded self as the brain of the sleeping body.

I don’t agree. I view my expanded self as a higher, collective mind of nonphysical form. I talk about this more in some of the fifty other papers I have on my web site: www.durso.org/beverly. I also plan to put this presentation and the chart I will create on my web site soon.

Also, in this talk, when I call something “untrue,” I mean that I let go of my assumption, and no longer see it as “real or absolute or true. By “untrue,” I do not mean “false,” but rather “I  don’t know for sure.”

So, as you have heard, lucid dreaming occurs when I know that I dream while I dream. When asleep and lucid dreaming, I see my whole environment including my dream body and others, as untrue, particularly in relationship to my waking state.

By my definition, I view the waking state as a kind of a dream. I believe that I can NOT know with absolutely certainty that I am NOT dreaming at any time. The spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, the author of The Power of Now, made this exact point as well. Therefore, I assume that I am always dreaming and apply the positive lessons from lucid dreaming to my life, which I call lucid living.

Teachers

I have heard people associate lucid dreaming with only ego control and satisfaction. So today, I will attempt to show how lucidity actually relates to expanded states of consciousness, and compare it to the work of the contemporary spiritual teachers, Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie.

12:40

I discovered these teachers last year after setting a goal, with strong intention, to have greater lucidity or consciousness in my waking life. I use their techniques of expanding consciousness, as well as my own lucidity techniques, which I see as similar.

You can find links to their sites as references that follow my online abstract for this presentation. Their sites list their books and recorded workshops, which I actually prefer and mostly got from my local library.

To summarize my techniques for lucidity, I constantly ask myself if I am dreaming and question my world and my assumptions in the moment. I look for clues that I am dreaming, such as strange, impossible, or uncomfortable changes in my environment, my feelings or my body.

For example, I have suggested that students ask if they are dreaming whenever they wash their hands. Coincidentally, Tolle gave the exact same exercise asking people to focus on “being in the moment” every time they wash their hands.

Chart

As I speak, I will refer to a chart that I will create which describes levels of consciousness, including lucidity. I need to point out that I can act from any of these levels of consciousness at any moment, while awake or asleep.

Also note, that at the higher levels, I still have access to the abilities of the previous states. For example, someone in an enlightened state, can still change his or her responses.

At different times in my life, I may have dreams that I don’t even recall, while in my waking state I seem very lucid. The opposite can occur as well. Also, I often lose and gain lucidity in a single dream.

After my presentation, I plan to allow time when we can comment, discuss the chart, and ask questions.

So, I will begin.

WAKE  SLEEP STATE

I divided the chart into columns for the waking state and the sleeping state. Note that the non-lucid levels have actions that obviously do not happen in the sleep state, but merely relate to it.

10:20

CONTRACTED  –   No reflection nor dream recall

I think of the term “unconscious” to mean alive, but unresponsive, and others have many different definitions, so I’ll start with what I call contracted, or low level of consciousness. At this level, I do not reflect upon what I do.

When I act in the waking state or the dream state at this level, I may blame,  suffer, have fun, or just plain not pay attention. In the sleep state, I may have dreams, but I do not recall them.

REFLECTING  –  Recall past life issues and dreams

However, when I notice in life, after the fact, that I have acted, for example, in hurtful ways, I fall into the level I call reflection. I do not have enough consciousness to notice or change my actions in the moment, but I can recall life issues or dreams from my past and begin to learn from them.

STUDY LIFE AND DREAMS

For example, to reduce my tendency to always blame others, I may seek therapy.  To learn from my dreams, I may join a dream group. At this level, notice that I remember dreams only after they happen and, therefore, they get called non-lucid dreams.

In this reflecting level, I still may feel limited, especially when my experience seems uncomfortable or unloving.  I see my world as unchangeable. For example, in the waking state, I might feel justified in feeling hurt that my husband always seems to arrive later than he promised, and therefore he must not love me.

I may go as far as assuming that if he does not love me he will leave me, and I will perish. Without a higher level of consciousness, I could then feel very depressed and might act in an angry manner. I could actually help make this scenario my experience.

In a sleeping dream, I might try to run away from some scary witches that chase me while I focus on the dream body’s thought that they will devour me.  Afterwards, in the waking state, I might figure out ways I can deal with the witches next time in these nightmares.

8:00

PRESENCE

I feel that Eckhart Tolle refers to these next levels of consciousness as ‘Presence.’ He talks about how we can really pay attention to our environment or our body and sense a greater aliveness or stillness. For him, presence involves having no thoughts.

SEMI-LUCID  Question

When I question my reality and my assumptions, my consciousness expands.  I call level semi-lucid.

This inquiry process in the waking state seems similar to the techniques of Byron Katie, the author of Loving What Is. She helps people end their suffering by asking them to question any stressful thought and see if they absolutely know it as true.

In the previous example about my husband, I could ask, “Is it absolutely true that my husband does not love me?” At this point, I could look for ways that he acts as if he does love me. More questions of Katie’s involve asking how I feel when I have the thought: “My husband does not love me,” and how I feel when I do not.

In the sleep state, this corresponds to questioning if I am dreaming. Even if I do not believe that I am dreaming for sure, just the mere act of questioning brings me to this semi-lucid level.

LUCID   –  See thoughts and world as untrue

I call this next level lucid. In the waking state, I really know my unpleasant thoughts as untrue assumptions. With even partial lucidity, I find that small frustrations disappear quickly, and I experience more fulfillment. I focus more on the present moment, and feelings of ambition or regret don’t come up. Time tends to disappear.

5:00

When I know I am dreaming in the sleep state, in other words when I see my dream world as untrue, my fear decreases and my mind clears. I do not have to do anything, but merely realize that I dream while I dream. At this lucid level, I often experience expanded potential and more awareness.

MORE LUCID    –   Change Responses

If I question my assumptions, especially when I do not feel positive about what I am experiencing, it can help me respond in more appropriate and creative ways and I become more lucid. My response to what happens comes from my expanded, or inner, self and not my thoughts.

I can accept what is happening and easily surrender to, and fully face, painful or scary situations, a process that both Tolle and Katie recommend.

I have done this in my waking state when a doctor told me I needed a procedure. I insisted I would not go through it. Finally, my doctor said that, “it is like I see you on a cliff about to fall and I want to stop you.” I often recommend to my students not to jump off a cliff unless they really know they are dreaming, so I told him okay.

However, seeing this common dream theme, I suddenly did become lucid. Instead of focussing on my fears and thoughts of pain, I became calm and accepting, thereby making the whole process much easier. Then, like magic, I began to see  numerous sychronicities.

In my sleeping dreams, I have often become more lucid right before a head-on automobile collision. Right before impact, I realize I am dreaming, and I might instantly fly up into the sky or even wake myself up.

At this more lucid level, I also notice that my view of how others act towards me may reflect how I act or have acted toward them, others, or myself.  In her work, Katie calls this the ‘turnaround.’

So now, in my waking state, as well as in my sleeping dreams, I attempt to listen carefully to what others have to say to me. Even if I feel hurt, I may find ways to show I agree with them, instead of just defending myself. Katie also discusses this approach.

VERY LUCID – Change life and dreams

At this very lucid level, I can co-create interesting dramas in my life and dreams in my sleep. My expanded self has the awareness that what it expects seems to happen. If I do see or hear something that I don’t like, I can attempt to heal the situation, or pay attention to it and fearlessly accept it as a part of myself that can teach me what I need to learn.

When I really “get” the lesson, my world seems to change, showing me on the “outside” what somehow exists on the “inside.”  Some lessons I have learned in my sleeping dreams also seem to enhance my waking life, and vice versa.

LUCIDITY ENHANCING LIFE

3:20

In my life, I feel that lucidity has helped me fulfill many lifelong goals, such as finishing my Ph.D., finding a mate, having a child, dealing with grief, and healing my body. I did these things with an attitude of presence and acceptance, and not what I call “will power.”

At this very lucid level in my sleeping dreams, not only do I not experience fear when “attacked” by “monsters,” but I can do things such as fly through walls. I can have these experiences because I don’t see the monsters or the walls as “true.”

3:00

Once, in a very lucid sleeping dream, as my expanded, lucid self I felt, “I would love to be sitting in a boat on this lake in the distance.” Instantaneously, it happened. Others have talked about this process occurring in the waking state and call it “manifestation.” However, in the waking state, I seem to experience a time delay, not necessary in my sleeping dreams.

MOST LUCID

In my final level of lucidity, I would still experience a dualist world, but really know all parts as One, I’ll call this “enlightenment,” or the level of most lucidity. I believe that spiritual teachers, such as Katie and Tolle, experience this state of no separation and a connection between everything in their waking life.

In my sleeping lucid dreams, I have often viewed everyone and everything, including my own dream body, as One. Many years ago, in a sleeping dream, I was giving a presentation at a dream conference and suddenly stopped when I became most lucid. I  assumed that all the people in the audience existed only in my “head on the pillow,”so I felt I had no need to continue.

Now, as I said earlier, I refer to “others,” as well as my dream body, as all parts of a “higher self,” which expands as all the parts grow. Therefore, I won’t quite stop talking now. I must add that when I experience the most lucidity, I see these “others” experience lucidity as well.

THE HAPPY DREAM  or the NEW EARTH

In Tolle’s recent book, The New Earth, he says, [quote]“To awaken within the dream [referring to life] is our purpose now. When we are awake within the dream, the ego-created earth-drama comes to an end, and a more benign and wondrous dream arises. This is the new earth.”[end quote]

1:00

Also in this level of most lucidity, The Course in Miracles, another spiritual teaching, says we can merely enjoy the [quote] “happy dream [of life][end quote],” and God will take the last step. I call this last step the level of Unity.

UNITY    BEYOND LUCID

In some sleeping dreams, I feel that I go beyond lucidity. I no longer have a body nor an environment.  I have a sense of “nirvana” that I can’t explain in words. I have felt myself merge into vibration, sound, and light, and then into nothingness, or what I can also call everythingness.

We could describe this as expansion into ‘Being,’ as Tolle does. Others use the word ‘Source’ or ‘God.’ I like the term ‘Dreamer.’ For now, I aspire to come from an expanded level of consciousness, or lucidity, in every moment, whether awake or asleep.

1. “Lucid Dreaming/Lucid Living,” Online Publications, D’Urso, Beverly (Kedzierski Heart), 1982-2008.
http://www.durso.org/beverly/index.html

2. “Dream Speak: An Interview with Beverly (Kedzierski Heart) D’Urso: A Lucid Dreamer – Part One, Two and Three”, The Lucid Dream Exchange, Numbers 29, 30, and 31, 2003 – 2004. [Also in E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c  D.r.e.a.m.s, Volume #11,  Issue #7, 8, 9,  2004.]
http://www.durso.org/beverly/LDE_interview.html

3. Lucid Dreaming: A Bridge to Lucid Living, D’Urso,
Beverly (Kedzierski Heart), Ph.D., Workshop Before the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD)  Conference 2007, Sonoma, California, June, 2007.
http://www.durso.org/beverly/IASD_Workshop_2007.html

4. “I learned to use my dreams to improve my life”, about  D’Urso, Beverly (Kedzierski Heart), First for Women Magazine, Volume 8, Issue 26, June 24, 1996.

5. “Loving What Is: Four Questions that can Change your Life,” Katie, Byron, and Mitchell, Stephen, Harmony Books, New York, New York,  2002.
http://www.thework.com

7. “A Course in Miracles,” Foundation for Inner Peace, Tiburon, California, 1976.
http://www.acim.org/

8. “The Nature of Personal Reality,” Roberts, Jane, Bantam Books, New York, New York, 1974.
http://www.sethlearningcenter.org/

__________________________________________________

Dr. Beverly (Kedzierski Heart) D’Urso, an “extraordinary” lucid dreamer all her life, originally worked with Dr. Stephen LaBerge at Stanford. Numerous major magazines, such as LIFE, Smithsonian, and OMNI, television specials, books, and radio talk shows have featured her life and her dreams. Using her practical philosophy called lucid living, she has taught her own workshops and presented at conferences for decades. Working with Stanford University Professors, she completed her Masters degree in 1980, involving Cognitive Psychology, and her Ph.D. in 1983, focussing on Artificial Intelligence. Prior to working as a researcher, consultant, and a college professor, she created several startup companies. Dr. D’Urso has over fifty publications and has won several awards, often placing well in IASD dream contests.

INTRODUCTION

Good Afternoon.

Today, I’d like to tell you about ways that I often attempt physical and emotional healing for myself and others in my dreams. I believe it can have a valuable effect on us in waking physical reality. Although difficult to measure, the results of my healings have usually seemed positive.

I will give you some examples and techniques of interactive dream healing, as well as discuss a number of important related issues and questions.  For example, do we also heal ourselves when we try to heal “others” in our dreams? Should dream healers follow an ethical code? Can dream healing have negative effects?

MY BACKGROUND

I’ll begin talking a few minutes about my own background.

Before I do, by a show of hands, how many people have heard me present before today? How many attended the preconference workshop on Friday? Who heard my presentation on healing last year in Bridgewater at IASD2006? Did anyone here participate in my workshop on healing at the IASD PDC conference in 2005?

Although I do not feel it necessary to use lucid dreams for dream healing, many of my healing attempts have occurred when I felt lucid, so let me clarify what I mean by lucidity.

To me, lucid dreaming does not mean merely “clear” dreaming, or even “controlled” dreaming. It only means that I feel aware at some level that I am dreaming while I am dreaming. However, I believe that the more lucid I get, the more a dream healing may affect me.

In a lucid dream, I feel more present than in a non-lucid dream, bringing my whole self into the experience. I know myself as more than my dream body and that the source of myself exists outside of the dream or inside the mind of the dreamer, or what I call our greater self.  When lucid, I connect to this dreamer, let go of any fear, and see endless possibilities.

Starting in the late 1970’s, I helped do research on lucid dreaming at the Stanford Sleep Laboratory. I would signal from the dream to the physical lab while being definitely asleep and dreaming. Our experiments of monitoring my physical conditions and seeing them change as I attempted various tasks with my dream body, proved to me that what I dream can affect my waking life. This led me to try healing from the dream world.

As I have said, most of my dream healings have occurred in lucid dream reality, when I remembered my healing goal. Many times I did not a need a goal, but merely went along with the dream, with more power, such as lack of fear, because of my lucidity, and I got a healing result.

I do, however, feel that even without lucidity, we can use other methods for healing such as, dream induction, visualization, or acting-out while in waking physical reality. Without ever getting lucid, one can ask for help with a problem in a dream before going to sleep and then accept what the dream offers. Setting a goal for a lucid dream actually serves as a type of dream induction.

When I led groups and workshops on the topic of lucid dreaming/lucid living, I usually ended each session with a guided visualization. After getting everyone still and relaxed, with their eyes closed, I would describe an imagined scene and activity that usually included a healing. This helps non-lucid dreamers get a sense for what can happen in a lucid dream.

Such non-dreaming techniques prove useful to lucid dreamers as well, because it helps to practice in waking physical reality what one would like to do in a dream. Many people actually believe that dream reality, in general, provides us with additional power because we seem more connected to our essence.

Before I discuss healing issues in general, I’d like to give you an example of a healing dream that I had the summer before last. A friend asked me to try to help her son, whom I’ll call Erin. Erin has Perthes disease, which does not allow blood to flow to his hip properly causing discomfort and difficulty participating in sports. I spoke to Erin and he agreed to my doing a dream healing for him in the near future.

First, using a suggestion from Ed Kellogg, I formulated a goal that I would attempt when I knew I was dreaming. I decided to chant a Harry Potter spell called “scourgify,” which roughly means, “clean up,” while pointing my index and middle fingers at Erin’s body.

I had the following dream on July 26, 2005. In this dream, I find myself standing in an open structure, which looks like a barn. I remember that I am dreaming. However, because Erin does not appear near me in the dream, I decide to do the healing actions as if he stands invisible in front of me, making this a practice session.

I point my index and middle fingers straight out in front of me and say “scourgify.” I look at my fingers and see that a sticky, thick yellow liquid emanates from the pads of my fingers. I then put my fingers to my mouth in order to taste the yellow liquid. As I do this, the liquid turns green. Its consistency stays the same, and I do not notice any flavor. I have had several experiences in the past year where objects or substances turn green after a healing, almost as a sign of completion.

Next, in the dream, I see a group of children playing outside, and I decide to find Erin. I look around and call out his name. I find him in the middle of the group, who soon separate.

I say to him, “It’s Beverly. I am here to do the dream healing we talked about.” He acknowledges me, so I point my fingers toward his leg and say “scourgify.” I have a clear intention for the best possible outcome. To make sure I have reached his hip, I repeat the process up and down his whole body.

At this point, I see that he has about a half dozen small holes all over his body. A dark-purple, watery, liquid squirts out of them. Thinking that this shows his blood flowing, I ask, “Why are you bleeding?” He says he’ll have to consult the Ouija board. I feel surprised that he knows of Ouija boards. He says he used it at birth.

I return to waking physical reality and have a series of false awakenings of both trying to record the dream and of calling Erin’s Mom.

When I do call his Mom in the morning, I discover that her family had planned to leave town the next day for a month. I had been trying to attempt my healing goal for about a week. I describe my dream to Erin’s Mom, and she tells me that she has wondered if his disease might relate to blood problems he had at birth. Erin also mentioned his birth in my dream.

Erin’s Mom then asks him if he had any dreams. He reports that he dreamed he “was in a video game, got hurt, and was instantly healed.” One of the characters in the video game has the name “Luigi”, which sounds almost exactly like “Ouija,” the board mentioned in my dream.

Erin seemed to feel better after the healing because he did not ask for pain medicine during the next month, as he did in the months before the healing. Since then, his condition has improved and his doctors finally let him get back into regular sports last Fall.

Did my healing attempt have an affect on Erin’s condition? Would he have improved at the same rate without it? I cannot say one way nor another, but I still feel pleased that I tried to help him.

To offer you more examples to consider, at the end of this presentation, I will briefly mention some of my other explorations in the healing potential of dreams. For now, I’d like to discuss some general issues concerning dream healing.

HOW DO WE DEFINE HEALING?

The dictionary has many definitions for the word “heal:” To make sound or whole; to restore to health; and to cause an undesirable condition, which I will call a “problem,” that we can try to overcome.

CAN WE AFFECT OUR PHYSICAL BODIES BY WHAT WE DO IN DREAMS?

I believe that what we dream or imagine can affect us physically. At the Stanford Sleep Laboratory, when I dreamed of moving my dream body’s eyes in a particular manner, electrodes picked up similar movement from my physical eyes. Many other people have also showed positive physical effects from active visualization. I, personally, have many examples where my life seemed positively affected by my dreams.

DOES HEALING ALWAYS SEEM APPROPRIATE?

In certain cases, it might not best serve the subject of the healing to eliminate a problem. As an example, a doctor may not want to resuscitate a patient who asked ahead of time not to do so in certain situations, such as when they would only exist in a vegetative state.

Also, some problems exist as symptoms of other problems, which should, perhaps, get addressed first. For example, one may first want to learn to eat and exercise better before getting a “tummy tuck.”

Therefore, when attempting a healing, we should always ask for the “best possible outcome.” Many problems have several layers of complexity and may involve different aspects of our mind, body, and spirit.

WHAT CAN WE ATTEMPT TO HEAL?

We may want to heal an internal physical problem of ourselves or others, involving our organs, bones, muscles, nerves, or other functions, as in the example of Erin. However, we may want begin with simpler problems, such as a cut, burn, or wound. We can also consider emotional, mental, or spiritual problems, such as the pain of grief, depression, or of not seeming able to complete our goals, and thus not feeling whole.

DO WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO TRY TO HEAL OTHERS?

We need to consider the ethics and rights of others during the healing process. Do we need another’s request or permission to try to heal them in our dreams, or for that matter in waking physical reality? While in a dream, do we ask the dream character for permission, or do we need to wait to ask the person represented after we wake up?

By the term dream “character,” I mean a type of dream “body” or “entity” that may or may not have a connection to a physical person. For example, I usually connect to the dream “character” that looks and acts like me.

What do we do if we’d like to heal our pet, a person who has died, or a more general situation, such as our country? With these cases we cannot easily ask the subject represented and necessarily expect an answer.

I feel that a healing may help, but only if the subject desires it. Therefore, I make sure the dream character, whom I attempt to heal, agrees to the healing.

When helping heal another person from my waking life, I usually ask permission of the person in the waking state before I decide to dream of the person. Discussing the healing with the person ahead of time also means that I can share my results with the person and determine any potential benefits from the healing. A dream character that I work with may or may not look exactly like the physical person I wish to heal, but I can usually recognize something about the character that seems the best match to the physical person in my dream.

For people concerned about possible ethical issues of mutual dreaming, I will try to explain what seems to happen for me. I sometimes ask others to come into my dream by having them take on the role of a character in my dream. This seems similar to how a director might ask actors to take on a role of a character in her play. The actors must accept responsibility for any extreme emotions or harm that their characters may experience in the play, which could have lingering effects on them after the play finishes.

I also may search for characters that I feel best represent the people I want to heal while dreaming.  When I look for specific dream characters, it feels as if I am attempting to take on the role of a character in someone else’s dream. I feel that the other person, serving as the director of their own dream, has the right to not accept me. In this case, I would probably not succeed in finding them. I would never try to force myself into another’s dream.

WHAT HEALING TECHNIQUES CAN WE USE AND WHO CAN ASSIST US?

In dream healing, we can use various activities or props, including energy forms, such as sparks shooting from our fingertips at the subject of the healing, hands-on manipulation, chants, affirmations, potions, experts, or even alternative selves. Basically, we can use whatever we can imagine! However, some people feel that we should not make up techniques, such as chants, but use only historically proven or accepted techniques.

Other healing methods include asking to see the subject in perfect form in a dream, or just willing the problem away. Many times, merely having the subject face a scary situation or go directly into the pain in a dream can result in a fabulous healing. I will share a few of these examples toward the end of my presentation.

Sometimes, we may want to ask pertinent questions before going to sleep or in a lucid dream, about how the subject can best deal with his or her problem. In the dream, we may hear an answer spoken directly, or see it written on something, such as a book or a wall. Answers can also come indirectly through symbols, scenes, or activities.

For example, we could discover foods which we should or should not eat. We might find our dream body in a pool of warm water, which could mean that some form of heat or water therapy may help in physical reality.

We may want to ask an expert, or even a random person, in our dreams to assist in the healing. I feel that all dream characters represent, in part, aspects of our greater self, so anyone can have healing abilities in dreams.

WHAT EFFECTIVENESS CAN WE EXPECT?

Of course, a dream healing, as any kind of treatment, may only have a minor role in the healing process, or none at all. How we measure the effect of a healing becomes another area of investigation. The results may vary depending upon: the receptiveness of the subject; the ability, intent, and focus of the healer; the condition to heal; the appropriateness of the techniques; and many other variables.

CAN ATTEMPTING TO HEAL OTHER DREAM CHARACTERS HELP US?

When I assist others to heal in my dreams, I feel that I also heal, or experience more wholeness, myself because I view all my dream characters as representing aspects of my greater self. At the same time, I feel that the characters in my dreams can, potentially, have a connection to other people and therefore help these people as well.

One time, while in the sleep lab, I asked another dream character to move his eyes. The results on the polygraph showed movement in my physical eyes. This made me wonder if characters other than the one we seem to take on also have a connection to our physical bodies.

CAN WE ALSO CAUSE HARM?

I realize that the possibility exists where one may adversely affect dream characters, and hence their possible physical counterparts, while attempting a dream healing. However, I  think that this can happen only if the subject allows it.

I also believe that, potentially, anyone can tap into positive energy, or what we might call “love” or “God,” when attempting a dream healing. Therefore, I see interactive dream healing as a form of “prayer.”

I see “evil,” not as a separate force, but merely as the absence of love. Therefore, someone might not have the ability to heal, but this does not mean that they can tap into evil in order to intentionally cause harm.

MORE EXAMPLES

As I said at the start of this presentation, I have used my dreams to better myself, as well as others, in many ways all my life, without formally calling it dream healing. I will now summarize some other dreams that you may or may not have heard me speak about in the past.

As a child, I helped end the suffering that came from my nightmares by facing up to “the witches” in my first lucid dream. The witches still looked terrifying while I said, “Let’s get this over with,” without fear because I knew I was dreaming. After this dream, my witch nightmares ceased.

As an adolescent, I felt less inhibited by trying out frightening or embarrassing situations initially in my dreams. When my best friend died, I dealt with my grief by talking to her in my dreams.

I started doing formal lucid dream healings almost twenty-five years ago. Dr. Stephen LaBerge, from the Stanford Sleep Laboratory, suggested that I try rubbing my hands together and shooting out healing energy from my fingers to my neck when I complained of a stiff neck one night in the lab.

At the time, we were doing an experiment for Smithsonian Magazine. I remember that sparks shot out from my fingers in my dream, but then my hair caught on fire. I spent the dream trying to put out the fire. The reporters got a good example of losing lucidity in a dream!

I later asked others in my dreams to work on my neck. One time, I asked a janitor, the first person I saw in an elevator, to rub my neck. This action seemed to help my neck afterwards in waking physical reality.

I often shot healing sparks at my dog in dreams to avoid any old-age problems she might encounter. She lived a very long and happy life for her breed. I did the same for my Mom while she lived and after she died, when she appeared to me in a dream as needing some healing.  Recently, I added more techniques to my healing repertoire, such as chants.

In my twenties, I solved a writer’s block in a dream by letting myself get sucked into the “pit from hell.” Afterwards, I felt able to complete my Ph.D. in waking physical reality.

To help me with the frustration of finding a mate in my thirties, I found my alternative selves in a dream and listened to their advice.

In my forties, when I felt devastated about not getting pregnant in waking physical reality, I worked on the issue in my dreams by pulling my creative force, the witches of my childhood dreams, into my body. Soon afterwards, I had my son, now a healthy twelve-year-old boy.

In the year 2000, my mother had a sudden, massive stroke, and I became faced with taking her off life support. I dealt with my extreme grief in my dreams, in part, by surrendering to my now familiar “witches.”

With minor injuries, I try to get optimum healing through actions in my dreams. My dreams told me that a second degree burn I received last summer needed to heal slowly. To assist the healing in my dreams, I chanted a “Harry Potter” spell, similar to the one from my dream for Erin, and spontaneously shot yellow liquid at my burn site. The area appeared to get much better afterwards in physical reality.

I will give one last detailed example of an interactive healing dream. In waking physical reality, on Monday, March 7, 2005, I went in for a routine, annual gynecological exam. During the exam, my doctor found that I had an “expanded uterus.” He immediately did an ultrasound test and determined that I had: “both a large cyst and a mass that looked like it might be a tumor.” He told me to return when I got my period to do another ultrasound test to see if my condition changed.

I decided that I would try to have a lucid dream about my condition. This time, instead of just zapping my uterus, I wanted to understand more about why the situation occurred.

As a goal for my next lucid dream, I chose to ask some questions. I wanted to know precisely: “What message does this condition want me to know?” and “What can I do about it?” I also felt open to any healing that would occur naturally in my dreams. I finally had some lucid dreams on Monday morning March 14th.

I got answers to some of my questions in my earliest dreams. In my dream of 6:45 am,  I experienced a very direct healing.

In this dream, my nine-year-old son and I find ourselves in a camp-like setting. We look for a bathroom and can only find an odd one.

Standing outside, we notice these huge geometric figures in five different colors hovering and circling over us in the sky. They seem as large as ocean liners. A turquoise colored one comes closest to me. It has the shape of two candy dishes pressed together. They all seemed to shoot a kind of energy on me which I experience as a healing. I become very relaxed and open to taking in this invisible energy. I would describe it best as a type of heat.

My son seems scared, but I tell him not to worry. I explain, “They came to heal me!” Afterwards, we go back to the strange bathroom, which apparently now works.

In the last dream of this night, I find my childhood home getting rebuilt. Later, I discover that it did get rebuilt in waking physical reality around the time of the dream.

At 2:45 pm that same day, I went back to see my doctor. He did another ultrasound test searching for the cyst and the mass, but they did not exist anymore. He found my uterus “no longer expanded, but completely normal and healthy.” Two years later, my uterus still remains normal.

Although these dreams had a powerful effect on me emotionally and physically, I can not say for certain what part they played objectively in my healing. Even so, I believe that they played a large part in my healing experience, and I feel very grateful that I had them.

You can find the details of these examples and more on my website: http://beverly.durso.org

I now welcome any questions that you may have.

Thank you.

Link to Questions
Link to Exercises

Good Morning.
I’ll start with an
OVERVIEW***

I’d like to start with a show of hands:
How many people have heard me speak before???
Who heard me in Copenhagen at IASD2004???

I will start with an overview. As we discussed, lucid dreaming occurs when while asleep, you have awareness, at some level, that you are dreaming.

Who would you call the “dreamer” in your nighttime dreams???

I typically call the person asleep the “dreamer.” To get more precise, I think of the “dreamer” as one’s physical body’s mind, although  I would not say that one’s “brain” contains  one’s “mind.” As an analogy, I see our mind more as a radio broadcast than a physical radio and its parts. Our brain may tune us into certain stations, but it does not act independently.

Once we understand, and hopefully have experienced, lucid dreaming and related topics, such as levels of lucidity and techniques for becoming and staying lucid, we can discuss what I call lucid living. I need to first give you a little background on myself and my views of lucid dreaming, so you can see how I came up with the idea of lucid living.

Throughout my life, I have discovered many uses for lucid dreaming. Some of these include: psychological development, exploring new behaviors, healing, and much more. I’ve found that all of these can apply, whether we find ourselves asleep or what we call “awake.”

Who thinks they know what I mean by lucid living???

Next, I need to cover a little
BACKGROUND***

I remember having had lucid dreams since about the age of seven. I faced up to scary witches in a recurring nightmare. You can see my web site: http://beverly.durso.org  for several detailed descriptions of this dream and other places where it got published. I will also put this presentation on my website soon after the conference.

Basically, I recognized recurring dream scenes where I begged these scary witches, who hovered over me, to  “Spare me tonight and take me in tomorrow night’s dream.” Because they only came when I was dreaming, one time, while they hovered over me, I faced up to them and they flew away ending these nightmares.

Years later, I helped do research on lucid dreaming at the Stanford Sleep Laboratory. I signaled, using electrodes near my eyes, from the dream to the physical lab while definitely asleep and dreaming.  I also led workshops and taught others how to have lucid dreams, and I have given presentations on the topic at IASD conferences for over 20 years.

I have remembered, on average, six dreams per night, for most my of life. I’d call between 2 and 20 dreams per week lucid, to various degrees.  So, I estimate that I have had over 20,000 lucid sleeping dreams in my life so far. As you can tell, I have had many more non-lucid dreams than lucid dreams.

How many lucid dreams would you say you have???
One per week?
One per month?
One per year?
A few in your life?
None?
All the time?

My dreams usually seem like what we could call waking physical reality until I become lucid, although I often know that I am dreaming from the start of the dream.  I believe in levels of lucidity, on a spectrum from slightly to extremely lucid. Sometimes my non-lucid dreams seem very bizarre, and yet I ignore this sign of dreaming and rationalize the experience.

For the next four or five minutes, I will cover some basic issues and terminology. These apply to both lucid dreaming and lucid living.

First,
SPONTANEITY VERSUS CONTROL***

How many people think you need to control your dream to call it lucid???

In my lucid dreams, I feel free to go wherever my imagination takes me, and I take care to balance spontaneity and control.

Keep in mind that, you can have a lucid dream without having control of the dream. Unfortunately, the media often stresses control as the main benefit of lucid dreaming.

The ability to control your own reactions, or to control the action, characters, or environment in your dreams can help indicate your level of lucidity, but you can definitely have a lucid dream without control. However, at times, I feel that it helps to take control of the action in the dream, for example, when you want to carry out goals.

Once, when working on my Ph.D. dissertation and experience a case of writer’s block, I used control in my dream to get me to my desk and surrender to get myself to sit.

I often find it best to “surrender” to the lucid dream. I don’t use the word “surrender” to mean “give up,” but rather to mean “go with the flow.” In this case, I still have control, but of my own reactions and not of what happens to me. I do not automatically feel fearful, for example, when something scary happens. I now often what I call “surrender flying” to get places in my lucid dreams, where I get pulled from my heart area, by an invisible force.

I only need to remain conscious that I am dreaming. When conscious that I am dreaming, I think of my “physical body self” as safe in bed, so I have less fear, see more possibilities, and view my true “self” as one with the whole dream environment. With lucidity, I also have more choices. In other words, I don’t need to change a monster. I can look it in the eye without fear and find out what it wants.

Although I focus on awareness rather than control in my lucid dreams, I do not call my lucid dreaming witnessing. I can experience myself fully in the dream, yet not of it, meaning that I know while dreaming that my part of my self exists outside of the dimension of the dream.

To me witnessing seems like watching a movie or a play. Dreaming seems more like acting in a play. In a lucid dream, I act in a play in perfect character, have all the character’s feelings and consequences, yet still see myself as essentially the actor, and possibly the producer and director as well.

Next, I’d like to discuss the concept of:
DREAM CHARACTERS***

Who do think the characters represent???
Aspects of yourself?
People from your waking physical reality?
Illusional or “made-up” beings?

With lucid dreaming, I feel as though I inhabit a character in my dream.  This dream character seems to exist in another dimension from my physical body, albeit a three-dimensional world that seems real.

One dream character often looks and acts like me. I sometimes call this my dream-body or dream-self.  I may experience other dream characters that look like someone I know or someone that I don’t know.

I imagine that one or more of these other characters might get inhabited by a person from what we might call waking physical reality, or even by someone who has died. In a similar way, I can perhaps inhabit a character in another person’s dream. This concept allows for what we call “mutual dreaming” and “psychopompic dreaming.”

I once tried to meet a student in a lucid dream. I got lucid by noticing a woman who had died, but I tried to rush off and find my student before I listened to the woman. From this dream, I learned that I kept getting blocked until I first dealt with what I found in front of me.

As for dream characters, I still believe that, at some level, the characters in my dream represent aspects of my mind, even if inhabited by others who, in a sense, serve as actors taking on the roles of characters in a scene.

When lucid, I realize that my dream-body does not reside in what we might call “waking physical reality,” but in what I might call my physical self’s mind, not necessarily in my brain. When I wake up, I merely change dimensions or perspectives. We can say that I take on the role of a new character, or inhabit my physical body once again.

When I find myself in a lucid dream, the dream character that I inhabit, or my dream-self, sometimes tells other dream characters that they are dreaming. Other times, a different dream character may say this to my dream-self.

Has anyone here had another character tell you that you were dreaming???

When I experience a high level of lucidity,  either all the dream characters I encounter know that they currently exist in a dream, or I encounter no separate characters at all.

I consider myself “not completely lucid” when I encounter any characters in my dream that don’t believe they currently exist in a dream. I say this because I believe that if any aspects of my expanded mind do not have lucidity, then I cannot call myself  completely “lucid.”

I’d like to ask Robert Waggoner to take a couple of minutes to describe his view of dream characters or “entities,” which I believe he will speak on in depth during our panel on Sunday from 2 to 4 in Cooperage 2. On this panel, I will focus on Interactive “Dream Healing” and Ed Kellogg will delve into “Demons”!!!

The next topic asserts that we:
CAN’T PROVE WE ARE NOT DREAMING***

We can think of having lucidity as not getting fooled, or not having the “illusion” of existing in a physical reality.

If you remember any dreams, perhaps you have gotten fooled by a dream that seemed real while it took place.  You may have even said, “I can’t be dreaming, this seems too real.”  Maybe you find that you couldn’t fly as you could in other dreams. However, when you wake up, you realize that you got fooled and you really were dreaming.

We can say that lucid dreamers don’t get fooled. They know, at some level, that a dream does not have to follow physical laws. Non-lucid dreamers assume that the physical laws hold because they lack lucidity.

I believe, then, that you can not know with absolutely certainty that you are not dreaming at any time. As in the case where you got fooled, you may just not have enough lucidity to question or notice that you might be dreaming. Even after you wake up, you may not  remember that you dreamed.

Now a little about        CONNECTING TO THE DREAMER***

We can also say that, when lucid, your dream character’s mind connects with the mind of the dreamer, or that the mind of the dream character has expanded. The dream character can now remember and act upon the goals, memory, and thoughts of the dreamer.

For example, the dream character can remember goals that your mind, the dreamer, may have set up to do in the dream before you went to sleep.  The dream character and the dreamer can then co-create the dream, although the dreamer may still have intentions that the dream character does not have awareness of, even in lucidity.

Who here has become lucid in a dream and remembered and carried out a goal?

As a lucid dream character, I do not detach myself from the dream environment, but rather I see myself as equivalent to the environment, the other characters, and more. Also, detaching from the dreamer would mean that I forget, at some level, that I help create the dream scene. I would then lose some level of lucidity.

To summarize, in a lucid dream, I feel more present than in a non-lucid dream, bringing my whole self into the experience. I experience myself as more than just my dream body. I know  that the source of myself also exists outside the dimension of the dream, or inside the dreamer.

I have gotten a better sense of my “source,” or what we can call “God” or our “higher power,”  through lucid dreaming, than by my metaphysical or religious training. These often seemed to infer that God existed either inside my body, or somewhere out there, up in the sky.

With this background, I now feel that I can talk about looking at life as a dream or what I call:

LUCID LIVING***

When I view my waking life as a dream, a dream in which I know I am dreaming, to various degrees, of course, I call this lucid living. Waking life may feel ‘real’ and unlike a ‘dream,’ merely because I lack lucidity, just as non-lucid dreams can feel like physical reality, until I become lucid.

I try to view life as an “actual dream” and not to merely use lucid living as a therapy or philosophy. The assumptions that come from viewing life as a dream can give us power and can expand our possibilities in life.

If I look at waking life as a dream, then I can also use lucid dreaming techniques which I learned from my sleeping dream experiences, to more easily become lucid in my waking life. One of the most valuable techniques I use involves looking for unusual or recurring scenes in my life, as I do in my sleeping dreams.

When lucid in waking life, I  know  unlimited possibilities, feel safe and connected to everyone, and sometimes even experience magic in my waking life, as I have in my sleeping lucid dreams. Next, I want to tell you how I developed:
MY IDEAS***

I had the idea of lucid living many years ago. First, I had a long series of validated precognitive dreams in 1982 that made me question the solidness of time and space, or what we call physical reality. I described these in a talk at Bridgewater for IASD2006.

About the same time, I participated in many television specials on lucid dreaming.  In one, we filmed an experiment at the Stanford sleep laboratory, to determine which part of my brain seemed most active while I sang a song in a dream.

On a commercial for a national television special, which played over and over again for weeks, I appeared on the screen in my bathrobe, with electrodes all over my face, practicing the song, “Row, row, row your boat … life is but a dream.”  I watched myself and thought, “maybe life is a dream, and I do not have enough lucidity to know this for sure.”

This led me to teach the benefits of calling what some call “waking physical reality” a dream. I wanted to help myself and others to become more lucid in life, which I called lucid living.

At first, I  had a lot of trouble convincing others, and myself at times that while awake, we can still exist in a dream. False awakening dreams helped me practice questioning if I was dreaming, even when I thought I had woken up.

In false awakenings, you think you wake up from a sleeping dream, for example, in your bedroom. You keep thinking this until either, you become lucid and know that you are still dreaming, or you wake up to what you might call waking physical reality.

Because I have remembered an average of six dreams almost every night of my life, I have gotten tricked many times by mistaking a dream for my waking life, or what we might call waking physical reality.

I finally convinced myself that I can easily tell when I do not exist in waking physical reality. This might occur when I can float, fly or interact with someone whom I know has died. I say that I am dreaming.  Of course, not everyone would find these tasks easy. Some may even say that we can fly or interact with the dead in other realities besides dreaming.

For purposes of this talk however, I will discuss and assume only two different realities, namely, dreaming and waking physical reality. Then, I will try to convince you that both of these may have the same properties, in other words, we can think of them as them as a single reality and say that their differences stem from our own level of consciousness, or lucidity.

I believe that we cannot prove that we are not dreaming. Therefore, why not assume that we are always dreaming,  look at what that implies, and use lucid dreaming techniques to become the more lucid in our waking lives.

If you prefer to consider many realities with different laws, so to speak, then you could still say that all these realities make up one single “experiential” reality. I don’t like to think this way, however, because I like to view life as having the powerful and beneficial “magic” that I find in my own dreams, and use dream analogies to explain how life may work. I suppose you can consider my views similar to traditional Buddhist or Hindu beliefs, which may call life a type of dream, but in their case, they see life as “unreal” as a mere “dream,” and they promote yet another different “true reality.

I’d like to ask Ed Kellogg to take a couple of minutes to describe his view of “realities.” !!!

We now need to ask an important question. If we view life as a dream, then who serves as the the dreamer?  In other words, if we become “dream characters” in the dream of life, who do we connect to when lucid?  My answer:

THE DREAMER OF LIFE***

In my view, there exists, outside of the dimension of life, or what we sometimes call “waking physical reality,” an all-encompassing mind is dreaming the dream we call life. I call this mind the Dreamer of Life. In one sense, we can think of this Dreamer of Life as our combined and expanded mind.

We could also use terms such as our Higher Self, God, or Source in place of the term “Dreamer of Life.” I feel that we can break down this Dreamer of Life into many levels, as well, forming a type of “Tree of Life.

Sometimes, I really do feel as though I am dreaming while awake and in what some call waking physical reality.  At these times, I feel connected to the Dreamer of Life. I even notice many synchronicities in my life occurring during these times.

However, I often get caught up in my life and forget that I might be dreaming. Because of my experience in sleeping lucid dreams, I try to never assume that I am not dreaming.

We can compare the process of connecting to the Dreamer of Life in lucid living with traditional forms of prayer or meditation.  In practicing lucid living, I first stop my train of thought and imagine that I am dreaming.  I try to come from the perspective of this Dreamer of Life, or our expanded self. I see others as aspects of it, trust it, and surrender to its wishes.

With lucid living I feel that we can deal with our fears,  see unlimited possibilities, and experience the connectedness of everything, So, I will go into each point in more detail.

First,
EXPERIENCING EMOTIONS AND FACING FEARS***

In my sleeping dreams, I have found power in surrendering and fully experiencing my emotions.  For example, I have brought the scary witches into my body, and I have gone with them to the place where they originate.

When I find situations in my sleeping lucid dreams that seem impossible or terrifying, such as jumping into fire or merging with a black void, I challenge myself to tackle them head on. Sometimes, in my sleeping lucid dreams,  I find myself falling faster and faster down an endless slide.  I have learned to surrender to this sensation of increasing speed.

Has anyone here taken such “risks without risk” in a lucid dream???

I see a parallel to surrendering and facing our emotions in life. When I practice facing my fears in life and surrender, as I do in my sleeping lucid dreams,  I usually have positive results.

When I have strong feelings, such as sadness, grief, or fear, I do not necessarily have to express them outwardly in reaction. I can surrender to them deep within myself, and try not to push aside or hold back my feelings.

By calling life a dream, I do not mean to imply that in my life, I take what one might call “unreasonable risks” or necessarily expect instant magic, as I often do in sleeping lucid dreams.  I never take dangerous actions unless I feel positive that I am dreaming, and I have evidence that normal physical laws won’t apply.

In a sleeping dream, I usually figure that if I can fly, then I can jump off a cliff.  I realize, however, that I could lose lucidity, and dream that I have broken all my bones.

In any case, when I have even a small amount of lucidity in my life, I feel safer because I believe that I am more than just my individual body and personality.

In waking life we may have the habit of thinking of our “body” as our “self.”  Similarly, in non-lucid dreams we might think of our dream-body as our “self.” Of course, we wouldn’t use term “dream body” because we wouldn’t recognize that we were dreaming.

In a non-lucid dream, we believe that if the body we currently inhabit dies, we die, because we do not have awareness of our expanded self, or the dreamer. We continue to feel this way until we wake up out of the dream.

We might think, after the fact, that we could have responded differently had we realized sooner that we were dreaming. We could have become lucid and experience ourselves as more than just our body before we “wake up” out of our dreams or in the case of lucid living, out of our lives! In lucid dreams, I have often let myself die, knowing that I exist as more that just a dream-body.

Has anyone here let their dream-body “die” in a lucid dream???

I also know that in sleeping dreams, when I dream that someone dies, I don’t necessarily expect that they have died in what we might call waking physical reality. From the perspective of the dreamer they could still be living.

I imagine that even non-lucid dreamers feel this way after they wake up.  So, I have to assume that when someone dies in my life, that they haven’t necessarily died from the perspective of the Dreamer of Life.

Second,
UNLIMITED POSSIBILITIES IN LIFE***

I also believe that I co-create my reality with the Dreamer of Life. As in sleeping dreams, I recognize that the Dreamer of Life may have intentions that I do not know about even in lucidity.

Whenever I feel myself in a dream, I believe that anything can happen, in mysterious, or even magical ways. I can experience the joy of helping make things happen more often in my life, by learning to become lucid in waking life and set upon accomplishing tasks with a new outlook, believing in unlimited possibilities.

At the very least, I can probably gain an understanding of how I may block myself and try again, knowing I have endless possibilities.

An example, from an early stage of my sleeping lucid dream development, illustrates this point. In my dream, I could not fly to my destination because I  kept hitting telephone poles.

When I eventually determined one time that I was dreaming, I could fly right through the poles. I also realized that my mind may have created the telephone poles to begin with!

A therapist once told me about a patient who could not get through a block in his life, which the therapist related to his dream block of not feeling able to fly through walls. After he suceeded in flying through a wall in a lucid dream, his “related” block in life actually disappeared.

Third,
CONNECTEDNESS OF ALL IN LIFE***

With lucid living, I experience everyone in my life as equal characters in one dream. I see us all as aspects of the Dreamer of Life.

When I have lucidity in my life, I want to understand the Dreamer of Life. I listen to others and try to see where there opinions come from, and what they can teach me, without judging them.

Now I will focus upon:
LUCIDITY TECHNIQUES AND RECURRING SCENARIOS IN LIFE***

As I have mentioned, I have developed techniques for becoming lucid in my sleeping dreams, that I can also use in my waking life. In my main technique, I look for unusual or impossible situations or recurring scenarios.

Has anyone here let their dream-body “die” in a lucid dream???

A great example of using a lucidity technique in my waking life occurred when I noticed recurring scenarios  during my love relationships before I got married.  With many different partners, I often found myself in an argument in a similar physical position and location.

My partner would be hovering over me looking scary and not unlike the witches from my childhood dreams.   During these arguments, many times my partner and I actually stood in the same place in my living room at the intersection of the couches that formed an L-shape.

The last time this scenario ever happened, right in the middle of the argument, I suddenly thought, “This seems like a recurring theme. What if I am dreaming?”

I immediately decided to see my partner as an aspect our expanded self, or the Dreamer of Life.  I thought about his point of view and what he had to teach me. I had less fear.  Internally, my reaction changed.  With trust and surrender, I stayed in the moment. You could say that I faced up to my partner.

Exactly as the witches did when I faced up to them, my partner froze, stopped yelling, and then turned and walked away.  It seemed as though I no longer needed to play out this drama.  I  had solved it, as I did my childhood nightmares. In my next relationship, my marriage of almost fourteen years, this scenario has not occurred.

By the way, my childhood nightmares took place in the same physical location each time also, at the bottom of the back porch stairs of my childhood home.

I used this method that I just described in many other situations. Once, during a heated discussion with my cousin in the waking state, I suddenly stopped to think, “If I look at this as a dream right now, then my cousin actually expresses a part of our expanded self, or the Dreamer of Life, which I want to understand.” At the exact moment I had this thought,  she actually started to explain how our points of view seemed related instead of opposed.

Another time, while in a hospital, a doctor merely said something that reminded me of a dream, and I immediately let go of my fear and accepted the situation, which seemed so scary only moments before.

SETTING GOALS***

to accomplish in my lucid dreams serves as a wonderful technique to motivate me to become lucid in a dream.

Sometimes after getting lucid in my nighttime dreams, I decide not to change the direction of the dream, in order to carry out a goal. In this case, I go with the flow of the dream. When I do have an interesting goal, and feel that the situation calls for it, I get motivated to become and remain lucid so that I can accomplish the goal.

In my lucid dreaming classes, I suggest that my students start with a simple goal to accomplish in their lucid dream. I ask them to decide the first steps of the goal ahead of time, while awake. They also must think about how they can perform the steps from wherever they might find themselves in the dream. I have discovered  that a goal of “becoming lucid” does not work as well as a goal of doing something fun in the limitless world of dreams. We must remember this in life!

I’d like everyone to think of a goal that they would like to try in a lucid dream which they can practice in waking life???

Now let’s move on to:
GOALS FOR LUCID LIVING***

In my waking life, I often “go with the flow,”  but I still form goals. When I determine my goals, I strive for them to conform with the goals of the Dreamer of Life. This usually happens when I experience great passion.  In my life, I have gotten through many potential blocks, while getting my Ph.D., enjoying an exciting and prosperous career, and having an excellent family life.

———–

I took this approach when I had a goal of having a family. A series of dreams helped me see that my life was proceeding appropriately, whenever I seemed to let go of hope. I dreamed of going into my past and several possible futures to communicate with myself at various ages. I also dreamed of my future child and took actions in my sleeping lucid dreams to try to help the process.

Most importantly, I also had a belief while awake that things would work out, even if they took longer or didn’t proceed as I imagined. This belief came from trusting my concept of lucid living, or seeing life as a dream.

I acted with lucidity in my waking life when I met my husband. I noticed him across the room at a party, went up to him, and talked to him. Although much younger than me, I recognized him in some kind of deeper sense, and I felt him playing a part in my future. I would call this moment the most lucid in my life so far.

I felt that I completely surrendered to the Dreamer of Life, or our expanded self.  I stayed in the present moment continuously, without fear, and with total trust. I remained with him and totally focussed on him, while part of me observed our interaction.

I believed in magic and totally accepted whatever happened.  I listened to him, as if he truly formed part of my higher self. Married for almost fourteen years, I still view him as my perfect mate.

I also used lucid dreaming and lucid living to overcome the tremendous odds we had against bearing a child, as well. We now have a son who just turned twelve years old.

————

Now, I would like to share a few
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS***

I believe lucid living can have a profound effect on all our lives. Of course, as in our sleeping dreams, we can easily go on automatic and lose lucidity.

However, the more we practice lucid dreaming skills, whether while asleep, or during our waking life, the more lucid we will likely become at all times. In this way, we can live the most illuminating, clear, and conscious  life as possible.

I usually suggest that you ask your self if you are dreaming everytime you do some regular daily activity, such as walking up or down stairs. Look around and perhaps even practice carrying out our goal, if you can. Eventually, you’ll do this in a dream!???

If every person viewed life as a dream in this way, I believe that the world could heal.  Even if people simply opened up to the possibility to seeing life may as a dream, the Dreamer of Life would become more lucid.

Also I feel that, if any one person consistently believed they are dreaming in life, then amazing healing of the world could take place. I have this as a goal and it motivates me to make the effort to write and present my ideas.

The Dreamer of Life needs to have more lucidity in order  for us to experience magic. We need to remain open to lucid living and look for evidence that we are dreaming for this to happen. Then, when we see the magic, our beliefs would strengthen, and we would see ourselves as co-creators of our reality.

—————-

Like puppets, who think they act separate from the puppeteer, we often feel disconnected. Using the puppet analogy, we can begin to identify more with the puppeteer, or the Dreamer of life.

As in sleeping dreams, the dreamer can only speak through a dream character. When a dream character connects to the dreamer in lucidity, and the dream character doesn’t get in the way, the dreamer’s goals and thoughts can get manifested.

The Dreamer of Life, our Higher Self, or our Source needs us, its dream characters, to connect to it so it can speak through us and get heard.

One can say that while we exist in life, because life seems real, we can only call it a dream from an outside perspective, or after we die.  However, since we can know that we are dreaming while in a sleeping dream, and remain in the dream, then why can’t we also know that we are dreaming in the waking state while remaining in it.

As a sleeping lucid dreamer, I learned how to remain in a  dream, to wake up out of it, to change it, to go back into it, and to become more lucid and accomplish intricate goals while in the dream. I would like to do this, and more, in my waking dream as well.

So remember, I say we are dreaming now. View every situation in your life as a dream, experience and let go of your fears, see unlimited possibilities, including the connectedness of everything, and make your own dreams come true.

In conclusion, I will present a list of

OTHER VIEWS***

I have discovered that ancient traditions and religions, as well as modern best-selling authors, movies, and songs talk about concepts similar to lucid living.  Some of these include: the Hindus and Maya; the Buddhists and Connectedness; the Christians and Resurrection; The Course of Miracles and the Happy Dream; plus Jane Roberts and SETH;

I would also add: Deepak Chopra; Wayne Dyer; Don Miguel Ruiz; The Wizard of Oz; Star Trek; The Matrix… The list goes on and on.

Let me share my favorite: “Row, Row, Row, your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream!”

Thank you.

For more information or a copy of this presentation see my website:  http://www.durso.org/beverly

For the first time in public, I plan to share my very personal experiences with psi dreaming. This includes my precognitive dreams, my experiences with dream telepathy, and my attempts at mutual dreaming and dream healing.

I will discuss relevant examples and talk, in particular, about my feelings in the middle of such dreams, when I wake up from them, and during their manifestations in waking physical reality. I also plan to speak about the value of using and sharing these dreams, as well as what occurred when I tried to avoid a manifestation.

Although I have had various psi experiences since childhood, I will go into the details of an extremely intense, documented, and verified precognitive dream that I had in 1982. This dream occurred during the time when I was researching Lucid Dreaming at the Stanford Sleep Laboratory, and when I found myself at a crossroads in my Ph.D. work. The experience turned my view of the world upside down. My scientific training did not prepare me for this ability to personally know a future event in amazingly rich detail. I had precognitive dreams and waking experiences almost every day following this dream, until I finally ignored them to focus on completing my Ph.D.

I still have precognitive dreams when I pay attention to them. After high placement in many psi dreaming contests at the annual online IASD PsiberDreaming conferences, I decided to focus on how to record all of my dreams so that I could best capture psi information. I record only what comes easily out of my mouth as I describe certain dreams in the middle of the night into a digital recorder. I try not to add words and descriptions to my dream reports after I feel fully awake because I have noticed how my mind tends to change images and phrases that may have unrecognized meaning.

At the last three regular IASD conferences, I participated in the dream telepathy contests with great results. I dreamed an excellent match to a non-target picture in 2003. In 2004, I served as the telepathy sender, and we got an amazing, exact hit of the picture I focussed on. Last year, I won the contest. I paid close attention to my physical reactions when first seeing the target picture. I felt a rapid tapping sensation in the center of my chest just above my heart. This seems similar to how I feel whenever I have a precognitive experience.

Finally, I will share more about how psi dreaming works for me, and how I use lucid dreaming to attempt mutual dreaming and dream healing. I go into detail on this last topic in my other paper at this conference.

INTRODUCTION

Good afternoon.

Today, for the first time in public, I plan to share my very personal experiences with psi dreaming. After some brief background information, I will focus on an important and verified precognitive dream that I had in 1982, which changed my view of the world upside down.

I will also share what happened when I once tried to avoid a manifestation of a precognitive dream, as well as a case where sharing my dream and trusting my guidance seemed to benefit another person.

I will talk about my feelings in the middle of such dreams, when I wake up from them, and during their manifestations in waking physical reality. Finally, I will share some of my success with dream telepathy, and how I learned to best record and share psi dreams.

I will not have time to get into dream healing, which I presented in a symposium yesterday. However, you can find this material on my website: beverly.durso.org.

MY BACKGROUND

I will begin with a brief description of my background.

People know me as mainly as a lucid dreamer. I define a lucid dream as one where I know, at some level, that I am dreaming while I am dreaming.

Starting in the late 1970’s, I helped do research on lucid dreaming at the Stanford Sleep Laboratory. These experiences of monitoring my physical conditions and later seeing how they changed, as I attempted various tasks with my dream body, proved to me that what I dream can affect my waking life. Most of my precognitive dreams, however, occurred in non-lucid dreams.

BEACH DREAM

Although I have had various psi experiences since childhood, I will go into the details of an extremely intense, documented, and verified precognitive dream that I had in 1982. It occurred during a time that I felt at a crossroads in my personal life and in my Ph.D. work in Artificial Intelligence.

The experience turned my view of the world upside down. My scientific training did not prepare me for this ability to personally know a future event in amazingly rich detail.

In the interest of their privacy, I’ve changed the names of the characters in the following dream. One night, in the summer of 1982, while living in Palo Alto, CA, I woke up from a dream screaming. In the dream, I find myself going to a house where a girl, named Darcy, from my high school years, supposedly now lived. I went to high school over ten years earlier in the Chicago area.

I enter the house from the left. I talk with Darcy in her kitchen area under an archway. I ask her if she knows the whereabouts of my high school boyfriend, Geoff. She tells me he now lives in the mountains of New Mexico. At this point, she reveals something else that affects me very deeply. After awhile, I leave the house on my own. On my way, some people ask me for directions. Then the dream ends.

This dream had such a different feeling to it, as if I just had to pay attention to it. It seemed both shiny and loud.  I couldn’t get back to sleep after having it. I spent a long time recording the dream and drawing sketches of the dreamscape.

Whenever I thought about the part of the dream where Darcy talks about Geoff, my brain seems to freeze in pain and I can’t remember what she told me. The pain seems so severe that I focus on it for days, not even going in to work.

When a coworker acts concerned, I insist on telling him the details of this dream. I do so over and over again, showing him the sketches I made. In response to my overreaction, he invites me to come with him on Saturday to a beach in Santa Cruz which I had never been to, so I can relax.

Therefore, four days after the dream, in physical reality, I go to an unknown beach with my coworker. He brings along a friend, a dark haired guy I do not know, but who eventually plays a larger role in my life. The guys play some frisbee, while I sit on a blanket about thirty feet in front of the ocean waves. They eventually sit down, on both sides of me, exhausted.

At this point, I barely notice a woman walk in front of me, holding the hand of a child. As she passes me, I look down and then up again. I see her looking backwards toward me. In total shock, I say, “Darcy?” She responds with, “Beverly?”

My coworker looks at me confused, wondering why I am saying the name of the girl from my dream. I say, “It’s her!” and get up to greet her. She seems amazed to see me in California after all these years. I feel even more flabbergasted that I am seeing her now right after the dream I just had of her.

I want to talk to her more and try to get her phone number, but I don’t have a pencil. I begin to scream out to everyone around us, “Anyone have a pencil?” No one does. Darcy then says “I have rented a place near here for the summer. Why don’t you come with us?”

Our walk seems very surreal. In a manner of minutes, I recognize the street and the house from my dream, and although I know I am in waking physical reality, it feels very dreamlike. We enter the house on the left, as we do in the dream, and go into her kitchen.

As she talks, I look up and see the archway above us, exactly as in the dream. I can hardly focus on the present, but I find myself asking the question, “Do you know what happened to Geoff?” She tells me he’s living in the mountains of New Mexico, just as she did in the dream.

Then she continues with the part that my mind could not bring to waking physical reality. She says that she just got his number from a private investigator she hired to serve him papers so that he would give up rights to their child. Geoff was the father of her five year old girl. He had left her before her baby was born.

I feel as if I am exploding. Not only do I have to face the fact that Darcy had Geoff’s child, which I did not seem able to remember after the dream, but I also must face the fact that I dreamed all this four days earlier.

Darcy writes down Geoff’s number on a small slip of green paper that I take with me as proof that this experience really happened. When I finally leave her house, still in shock, I walk back towards our spot on the beach. Some people ask me for directions, just as in the dream.

When I get back to the guys on the beach, I desperately want to talk about my experience, especially to my coworker who had heard all about the dream before it manifested. I expect him to feel as amazed as I do. However, both guys seem preoccupied with leaving in order to get back in time for a party.

I realize that the physical experience of my visit with Darcy may not have happened if I had not had such as “upsetting” dream and needed to go to the beach to “relax.”

I will share only a few of the many interesting side notes concerning this adventure.  First of all, I have since figured out that Geoff must have gotten Darcy pregnant a few months after he and I met up again after finishing college. I once again refused to “be intimate” with him, as I did in high school,  and he took off quite upset.

Secondly, as I started preparing this presentation a few months ago, twenty-four years after the 1982 dream, I surprisingly got an email from someone who found me on the internet and sent me Geoff’s current phone number. I still have not called him because I don’t know what I’d say to him.

Amazingly, just a week ago Sunday, I went to a party that started on a “Beach in Santa Cruz!” The dark haired guy from the 1982 precognitive dream turned up. We talked about that day, and I told him that I would present my dream at this conference, but once again, he didn’t seem very amazed.  He took off to talk to other people.

Finally, I discovered, over a decade after I’d last seen him, that my coworker has a son in my son’s school classroom.

Well, after this intense and verified precognitive dream, I started having precognitive dreams almost every night. Their manifestations occurred within days.  After having these intensely personal psi experiences, anything psi related now seemed possible. I started reading books, such as Jane Robert’s Seth material, and other channeled works which earlier made no sense to me.

Around this time, I also formulated my philosophy called “lucid living” in which I truly believe that “life is but a dream!”

Eventually, I felt compelled to pay less attention to my psi experiences so I could focus on completing my Ph.D., and afterwards on having a family. However, I would like to share a few other psi dreams from this time period which I felt I had to act upon.

ACCIDENT DREAM

In this next precognitive dream, I got involved in an accident. I felt confused and upset about the way I handled the situation in the dream. I woke up feeling awful. I wanted to avoid the accident, which I decided would probably happen on the way to work. Therefore, I went out of my way to take a very indirect route to work that day.

On this route, which I never took before, I, indeed, got involved in an accident. In the flurry of activity, I still felt unsure how to handle it. Afterwards, I realized that I may have handled it just as badly as I did in the dream. In fact, that seems one of the reasons why it felt so similar to the accident in my dream. The dream and the manifestation had many elements in common, especially emotional ones.

I often wonder if the accident needed to happen in physical reality no matter what I did to try and avoid it. Would it not have happened if I didn’t try to avoid it, which I tried to do because of the dream? Surely, the particular event could not have occurred had I not driven the new route. Why didn’t I act differently having the knowledge that I seemed to handle it badly in the dream?

The event caused more questions than answers. It did, however, teach me that sometimes we can  not solve problems just because we have “inside” information. At times, we might make matters worse by trying to avoid disasters. Perhaps we even help bring them into existence. In this case, I especially regret acting out of fear.

AUNT DREAM

I’ll share another case where I think I did a better job of handling a precognitive dream. This dream essentially told me that my aunt should not have a procedure done that would change her from being a woman. I didn’t get the meaning of the dream until my mother told me, later that day, that my aunt’s doctor told her she should get a hysterectomy. I casually told my mother my dream and she took me seriously because she knew that I had other verified precognitive dreams.

My mother decided, on her own, to call my aunt and suggested that my aunt get a second opinion. My aunt did so, and ultimately she did not have the surgery.

Twenty-four years later, my aunt, unlike almost everyone else in my extended family, still lives and has relatively good health at the age of ninety.

Many other women in my family had problems due to hormonal imbalance.  Keep in mind that these days, the decision not to have an unnecessary hysterectomy seems more common sense than it did years ago.

My dream information may or may not have played a major role in my aunt’s life. Still, it seems to me, a good example of how to share precognitive information in a guided and gentle manner. The conversation seemed natural and quite easy. In contrast, my actions concerning the accident seemed based upon fear and uncertainty.

PARTY DREAM

I’ll share one more thing I notice about precognitive dreams. Other people who get involved don’t seem as shocked as I’d expect about the detailed information that comes from my dreams.

One time I dreamed I went to a party at someone’s house I didn’t know. In the dream, I went up to the attic and looked at the owner’s artwork. I tripped on the second to the last step going up.

A few days later, in physical reality, I unexpectedly went to a party. I recognized the house, only from my dream, and asked the owner if I could see her artwork. Not knowing me, she didn’t seem surprised that I knew about the attic. I followed her up the stairs and asked her if she had fixed the broken step. She merely answered without any apparent suspicion, “Not yet. Be careful.”

I won’t get into them today, but I also began having waking state precognition in physical reality as well. Usually, this involved a type of “hearing” or “knowing” something before it happened, such as the name of a person I would encounter.

PSI CONTESTS

I still have psi dreams when I pay attention to them. Recently, after some success in several psi dreaming contests at the annual IASD online PsiberDreaming conferences, I decided to focus on how to record all of my dreams so that I could best capture psi information.

I record only what comes easily out of my mouth as I describe certain dreams in the middle of the night into a digital recorder. I try not to add words and descriptions to my dream reports after I feel fully awake because I have noticed how my mind tends to change images and phrases that may have unrecognized meaning.

At the last three regular IASD conferences, I participated in the dream telepathy contests with great results. I dreamed an excellent match to a non-target picture in 2003. In 2004, I served as the telepathy sender, and we got an amazing, exact hit of the picture I focused on. Last year, I won the contest.

I paid close attention to my physical reactions when first seeing the target picture. I felt a rapid tapping sensation in the center of my chest just above my heart. This seems similar to how I usually feel waking up from precognitive dreams and during their manifestations.

MANIFESTATIONS

I will offer one suggestion to help you understand what the manifestation of a precognitive experience feels like. When you find yourself away from home, clearly visualize your bedroom. Imagine that you are lying down in your bed looking around at the room.

Later, when you really do lie in your bed at home, focus on what it felt like to have had a similar experience in your mind while away from home doing the visualization. The visualization acts as the precognitive dream and remembering it while actually in bed acts as the manifestation. To have a precognitive experience we must remember both of these aspects.

A similar process can occur with lucid dreams, where the manifestation occurs in our dream. While in waking physical reality we can visualize what we’d like to do in a dream. When we later remember to act out in our dream what we merely visualized earlier, we often create a lucid dream. This lucid dream now serves as a type of manifestation of the original visualization.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, my psi experiences often have  highly charged emotional content. I often wake up from them with a rapid tapping sensation above my heart.  I feel that it definitely helps to learn to recognize the difference between dreams that have a precognitive element and those that represent something else.

Psi dreams usually feel different from regular dreams. To illustrate this difference, use the analogy of how a regular sentence looks very different from the same sentence in an unusual font and with boldface or italics style.

I have also learned, from the examples I described earlier,  that I need to pay very strict attention as to when and how I record and share these dreams. Finally, I especially feel that I need to pay attention and trust a guidance that I believe follows such psi dreams.  I think we are guided to do things with our psi dreams when our actions come easily, naturally, and without stress, or at the very least we feel compelled to share them.

Thank you.