Papers and Work of Beverly D'Urso

This paper explores the use of lucid dreaming techniques and implications in our waking life. Lucid dreaming simply means being “aware that we dream while we dream.”  Appendix 1 includes an expanded definition of lucid dreaming.  As in sleeping lucid dreams, we can learn to awaken in our lives, to live with less fear, to experience the joy of success, and to feel a sense of oneness with everyone and everything in our waking life.

I have been a lucid dreamer continuously since childhood. In my first lucid dream at age seven, I faced up to a scary witch during a recurring nightmare (see Reference 12.) Since then, I remember about half a dozen dreams per night, and I usually become lucid, to various degrees, several times a week. Numerous books, magazines, conferences, and TV specials have featured my work, originally with Dr. Stephen LaBerge at Stanford University (see References 1 – 26.) I have led  lucid dreaming/lucid living workshops and groups for years. (see my web site:  www.durso.org )

DREAM SELF and PHYSICAL SELF

When discussing a non-lucid dream while awake, I refer to my dream self as “me” or “I,” (as in: “I was flying”)  and I refer to my physical self (or part of my physical self’s “mind”) as the one who creates the dream, whom I call the dreamer. By definition then, I can not call my dream self  the dreamer, although I recognize that some people do. Note, that I do not feel my physical self’s brain contains my physical self’s mind. I also assume that a “mind” is not physical. In a lucid dream, although I also refer to my dream self as “I”, I can sense my connection to the dreamer, and I feel like a “larger, expanded self.”  Sometimes I even feel connected to what I’ll later describe as the “Dreamer of life.”

Who do you feel creates your dreams?

How would you define the “dreamer?”

Although I usually say that my dream exists in my physical self’s mind, it usually feels as though my dream and my physical self exist in separate dimensions, and when I “wake up”, I  change dimensions (or perspectives.) Most importantly, when I become lucid, I feel that my thoughts definitely do not come from my dream self’s mind or brain, but from my physical self’s mind. For example, my dream self will often have a different life, history, motivations, and goals than my physical self.

So, to summarize, in a lucid dream I usually experience myself  in a 3-dimensional, vivid world that I believe my physical self’s mind has created. Therefore, I  feel safe because I feel I exist in my physical self’s mind and not in physical reality (where my physical body resides). Because I see the dream as being created by my physical self’s mind, I also know that anything I (the dreamer) can imagine can happen. By believing that everyone and everything around me in the dream, including my dream self and other dream characters, exists in my physical self’s mind, I experience everyone as “one”, or “made of the same substance” and all “parts of a whole.”

What assumptions do you make when you become lucid in sleeping dreams?

In a lucid dream, I feel free to do whatever I please, have fun, experiment, solve problems, accomplish goals, and go wherever my imagination takes me, taking care to balance spontaneity and control. I have learned that sometimes it is better to surrender to the dream and other times it helps to take control, change things, or carry out goals.

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 be very powerful and can expand what we feel is possible in life.

If I look at waking life as a dream, then I can also use lucid dreaming techniques, that I learned from my sleeping dream experiences, to more easily become lucid in my waking life. Appendix 2 contains techniques for becoming lucid in sleeping dreams and in waking life.  When lucid in waking life, I can become more “free”, have fun, accomplish goals, feel connected, and maybe even experience magic in my waking life, as I have in my sleeping lucid dreams.

In lucid living, I think of our physical selves as dream selves in a dream called “waking life.” I also imagine a Dreamer who is dreaming our lives. Note the capital “D” to distinguish from the use of dreamer as part of a physical self’s mind.  Sometimes, I view this Dreamer  as some “Being” asleep in a bed in another dimension. Other times, I  view the Dreamer as a nonphysical “God” or an all-encompassing “Mind”.

Either way, when I am lucid in waking life, I sense a connection to this Dreamer, whom I sometimes call my  Higher-Self. I begin to respond to things from the perspective of this Dreamer. As in a lucid sleeping dream, I feel “safe,” I  believe in “limitless possibilities”, and I see everyone in waking life as “one” or “parts of a whole.”

Do think there could be a Dreamer of Life?

LESSONS FROM LUCID DREAMING

Less Fear

There are aspects of lucid dreaming that apply to lucid living and can help us live our lives more fully. In waking life, we may identify our physical bodies with our selves.  The same thought occurs in non-lucid dreams, where we identify our dream bodies with our selves. We may believe that if our dream body dies, we die. We feel this way because we are not aware of our physical self  in non-lucid dreams. We continue to feel this way until we wake up out of the dream and discover that the dream happened in our “mind” and not in “reality”. We think, after the fact, that we could have responded differently had we realized that we’d dreamed.

Of course, even in sleeping lucid dreams, we might not, for example, jump off a cliff, if we didn’t feel positive that we were dreaming, and that we could, for example, merely fly away. We might just continue to dream that we had a very bad accident.

In general, after waking up from dreams, we don’t think that our dream bodies have ‘died,’ but understand that we have merely switched focus. Will we someday wake up out of our lives and merely change focus as well?

Have you thought of death as an awakening?

Our goal, then, in lucid living, involves learning to respond differently, at times, and with less fear in our waking lives. We do not need to wait until ‘after the fact’ to realize that we could have responded more fully and with more freedom in our lives. Instead, we can ‘wake up within our waking life!’

Anything can happen

Lucid dreamers have experienced the amazing feeling of having an exciting goal for a dream and making it happen. We can experience the joy of making things happen more often in our waking state, by learning to become lucid in waking life and set upon accomplishing tasks with a new outlook that anything is possible. At the very least, we can probably gain an understanding of how we may block our selves and try again, knowing we 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 decided that “this is my dream,” I was able to fly right through the poles. I also realized that it was my  physical self’s mind that created the telephone poles to begin with!

We are all one

When we increase our lucidity in waking life, we can also feel a sense of oneness with everyone and everything. We can live as if our Higher-Self does indeed “create our own reality.” We can experience an altered state of consciousness, and at the extreme, we can have what one might call “mystical experiences.”

The next time we find ourselves in an undesirable situation in our waking life, we can take action with the belief that other people make up parts of our Higher-Self, the Dreamer. This can help us to stop and listen to what others have to say, not because we have been taught to, but because we want to understand the Dreamer. Like puppets who act as though they are separate and disconnected, we often feel disconnected. Using the puppet analogy, we can begin to identify more with the puppeteer, realizing that it is the puppeteer who makes everything happen.

Here are a few examples of how I have become lucid in my waking life. Once, during an argument with my cousin, I suddenly stopped to think, “If I look at this as a dream right now, then my cousin actually expresses a part of the Dreamer (my Higher-Self.) At that exact moment, I acted from the perspective of the Dreamer, and she actually started to explain how our points of view seemed related instead of opposed.

Another time, a friend was yelling and hovering over me like the witches from my sleeping dreams. I noticed the similarities to the witch nightmares, and I saw this as a pattern in my life. The situation actually happened in the same physical place in my house with different people. I faced up to my friend, like I faced up to the witches, and my friend suddenly stopped, walked away, and the pattern in my life ended, in the same way my witch nightmares ceased. I’ve dreamed of the witches in many more powerful ways, but that is another presentation (see Reference 1.)

My marriage, my child, my degrees, my career, and my amazing adventures, too numerous to mention, are all examples of how lucid living has assisted me in having such an incredible and diverse life.

In my experience as a lucid dreaming teacher, my students found it easier to become lucid in their sleeping dreams, once they understood the concept and believed it possible. When they began to question whether or not they dreamed and looked for evidence, they often noticed something unusual and became lucid.  Once they had experienced results, they no longer had to believe, they knew they could become lucid.  We can do the same with lucid living.

Perhaps people would accept psychic phenomena, or synchronicities in waking life, more readily if they viewed waking life as a dream. Viewing life as a dream, gave me a foundation for understanding how I could possibly have had my first amazing, precognitive dreams. Psychic phenomena could also serve as clues for becoming lucid in waking life.

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 when asleep or during our waking life, the more likely we will become lucid at all times. By practicing lucid living, we strive to live the most illuminating, clear, and conscious waking life as possible.

We can also obtain a greater understanding of what spiritual practices, great writers, movies, fairy tales, and songs have been telling us for ages.

Hindu Maya:                             Waking life is an illusion;

Buddhist:                                  Philosophy of Connectedness;

Christianity:                               Resurrection after death;

The Course of Miracles:            Live the Happy Dream;

The Wizard of Oz:                    There’s no place like home;

Shakespeare:                             All the world’s a stage and (we are) merely players;

Star Trek:                                 The Holodeck;

The Matrix:                              The world has been pulled over  your eyes to blind you to the truth.

The list goes on and on. My favorite is: Row, Row, Row, your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream!

REFERENCES

1. Witches, the House, and Grief: Developing and Avoiding Lucid Dreaming, D’Urso, Beverly, Paper at the Association for the Study of Dreams (ASD)  Conference 2003, Berkeley, CA, June, 2003 (Available as an audio tape from ASD.)

2. Lessons in Lucidity:  Explorations in Lucid Dreaming,  Waggoner, R., Webb, C., and D’Urso, B., Panel at the Association for the Study of Dreams (ASD)  conference, Santa Cruz, CA , July 12, 2001.

3. Hidden Assets, Bryant, Mark,  [Chapter 3: Reality and Lucid Dreamers(Beverly D’Urso], New Leaders Press,1998.

4. Living Life as a Lucid Dream,  D’Urso, Beverly, Bay Area Dream Workers (BADG) Presentation, Palo Alto, CA , March 21,1998.

5. The Dreamer and the Dreamtribe, Halonen, Arto, (writer and director), Documentary [includes Beverly D’Urso], A  Mandrake Productions/Art Films Production, 1997.

6. Living Life as a Lucid Dream,  D’Urso, Beverly, Workshop presented at the Conference 1997, Asheville, NC., June, 18, 1997 (Available as an audio tape from ASD.)

7. Lucid Dreaming Meeting, hosted by:  D’Urso, Beverly,  Association for the Study of Dreams (ASD) Conference 1996, Berkeley , CA, July,1996.

8. I learned to use my dreams to improve my life, about D’Urso, Beverly, First for Women Magazine,Volume 8, Issue 26, June 24,1996.

9. Lucid Dreaming, NBC’s   Next Step,  May 1996.

10. A Lucid Dreamer: Beverly D’Urso, ABC TV:  WLS Chicago 10 O’Clock News,  May 11,1995.

11. What I ultimately learned from Lucid Dreaming is Lucid Living,  Heart (D’Urso), Beverly Kedzierski, Presented at the Association for the Study of Dreams  (ASD)  Conference, Santa Cruz, CA ,  June, 1992.

12. Facing the Witches,  Heart (D’Urso), Beverly, Autobiography Paper, February, 1992.

13. Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming,  LaBerge, Stephen, Ballantine Books, New York, 1990.

14. Dream Life, Wake Life, The Human Condition through Dreams, Globus, Gordon, Page 60  [Kedzierski (D’Urso) , Beverly],State University of New York Press, Albany New York, 1987.

15. The Three Pound Universe, Hooper, Judith and Teresi, Dick, Chapter 11 –  Chuang-tzu and the Butterfly: Dreams and Reality  [Kedzierski (D’Urso) , Beverly],  Jeremy  P. Tarcher, Inc., 1986.

16. Stephen LaBerge: The Doctor of Dreams, LIFE,  October,  1986.

17. Personal Exploration of Lucid Dreaming,  Kedzierski (D’Urso), Beverly, Lucidity Letter,  Proceedings from the Lucid Dreaming Symposium  (ASD 1986 Panel), Volume 5,  Number 1, June, 1986.

18. The Representation of Death in my Dreams, Kedzierski (D’Urso), Beverly, Lucidity Letter,  Dream Lucidity and Death,  Volume 4  Number 2,  December, 1985.

19. Lucid Dreaming, New Age Journal,   November,  1985.

20. Lucid Dreaming: the power of being awake and aware in your dreams,   LaBerge, Stephen, Ballantine Books,  New York, 1985.

21. You can direct your dreams, Parade,  February ,1984.

22. Physiological Responses to Dreamed Sexual Activity during Lucid REM Sleep,  LaBerge, S.P. , Greenleaf, W. , and Kedzierski (D’Urso), Beverly, Psychophysiology,  20(1983): 454-55, Presented at Asilomar Conference, Fall, 1983.

23. You’re dreaming, but do you know it?, Smithsonian,  August, 1982

24. Design your own dreams, Omni,   March,  1982 .

25. Discover  the World of Science,  Lucid Dreaming : Television Special, 1982.

26. Two on the Town,  A Day in the Life of Beverly: Lucid Dreamer, Television Show, 1982.

APPENDIX     1

LUCID DREAMING

When we become “lucid” in our sleeping dreams, we become aware that we dream while we dream. Some people never remember their dreams, some remember them after they have been awake for a while, and some remember them just after or before they awaken. Lucid dreamers remember they dream while the dream  takes place. They do not necessarily analyze the dream, or look for symbols, but directly and consciously experience the dream, shortening the time it takes to realize they dream.

To me, lucid dreaming does not mean merely “visualizing”, “daydreaming”, “clear” dreaming, or even “controlled” dreaming, necessarily. Also, I personally believe in levels of lucidity. I would say I am partially lucid if I just remember to question if I am dreaming.  I’d call myself  definitely lucid, if I knew I was dreaming for sure. I consider myself very lucid, if I can control or change things in the dream, not that I always do.  Finally, when  I am most lucid, I often do not experience a body, but I have a very powerful, spiritual-like experience.

APPENDIX     2

LUCIDITY TECHNIQUES

Throughout my life, I have developed techniques for becoming lucid in my sleeping dreams, and I have found there are many uses for lucid dreaming. Some of these include: psychological development, trying new behaviors, healing, and more. I’ve found that all of these can apply, whether we find ourselves asleep or awake, i.e., in sleeping dreams or in waking life.

To become lucid in my sleeping dreams, or in my waking life, I often look for unusual or impossible situations. In my sleeping dreams, I will often see someone who has died and that will clue me that I am dreaming. At times, in my waking life, especially during tense situations, I look for the unusual and wonder if I am dreaming. Without knowing for sure, I begin to find more evidence, my reactions turn powerful, and I  began to relax.

Sometimes, I “act as if,” or “pretend,” I am dreaming. I often ask myself, or others, if I am dreaming. I also make sure to “test” if I am dreaming. An example of a test is when I try to float. If I do float, I know I am dreaming for sure, and I become lucid. I have not floated in my waking life, but I do not rule it out as an impossibility. I have become more open, for example, to stories of yogis levitating.

Another valuable technique is to review recurring dreams and nightmares and practice imagining myself having new reactions.  I have learned to modify my reaction to a monster in a recurring sleep-state nightmare.  I have also changed my response to friends at key times in waking life. (see some examples below.) The key involves viewing the monster as part of my physical self’s mind, in the case of the nightmare. In the waking life situation, I view my friends as part of my Higher-Self, or the Dreamer of life.

When trying to become lucid in my sleeping dreams, and in my waking life, I find it valuable to get myself motivated. For example, I can teach or take a class on lucid dreaming or lucid living. It helps to record, share, and visualize my sleeping dreams and my waking life situations.  I especially like to do exercises to help me become lucid in both sleeping dreams, and in waking life.

An example of an exercise follows.  I stop and I ask myself if I could be dreaming, several times a day, perhaps every time I wash my hands, or climb down steps, or do some activity that doesn’t happen too often or too seldom. What I practice while awake, I eventually find myself doing in my sleeping dreams, so this technique helps me become lucid both in my waking and sleeping states.

One of the most valuable tools I have used for motivating me to become lucid in sleeping dreams involves setting goals.  Sometimes, I become lucid and decide not to change the direction of the, in order to carry out a goal. In this case, I go with the flow of the dream. However, when I do have an interesting goal, I get motivated to become and remain lucid. 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 that they can accomplish from wherever they might find themselves, and I tell them to do this ahead of time, while awake. I find that a goal of “becoming lucid” does not work as well as a goal of doing something fun in the limitless world of dreams.

As a sleeping lucid dreamer, I learned to remain in my  dreams, to wake up out of them, to change them, to go back into them, to become more lucid, and to accomplish intricate goals within them.  I would like to do this in my waking state as well.

APPENDIX  3

What levels of lucidity have you experienced?

Do you feel a change in where your thoughts come from when you become lucid in sleeping dreams?

How do you feel about control  in lucid dreams?

What benefits do you find in lucid dreaming?

Do you have techniques for inducing lucidity?

What kind of goals do you set for when you become lucid?

How have you dealt with ways you block yourself in dreams where you are not fully lucid?

What can you take from this presentation and apply in your life following the conference?

I discuss how I used my childhood recurring nightmares to develop lucidity, and how these dreams changed after a period of intense grief, when I initially decided to avoid lucid dreaming. My “grief dreams”, with various levels of lucidity, demonstrate how my grief evolved in stages from denial to acceptance

This paper focusses on my lifelong development of ‘lucid dreaming’ (knowing that you dream while dreaming) and its role during a period of intense grief, in which my recurring dreams evolved. As a young child, I had recurring nightmares of scary ‘witches’ coming from the closet of my childhood home. I learned to dream lucidly and face up to these witches, after reminding myself that they only came in dreams.

These witch dreams have gone through many transformations during my life. In the 70’s, I looked for the witches of my childhood in a dream and they appeared as harmless little old ladies. In the 80’s, I thought of them as my ‘creative power’ and began to lead lucid dreaming workshops and groups. I noticed that the witch drama appeared in my waking life as well. In 1994, doctors gave me terrible odds against having a child. So, I looked for the witches in a lucid dream and brought them into my uterus. Within a year, I got pregnant with my son.

I also had recurring dreams of my childhood home. In these dreams, my parents no longer lived there or something seemed ‘out of place.’ For a long time, I hated these dreams. Eventually, I learned to use them as ‘clues’ to get lucid. Once lucid, I could face other fears, heal myself emotionally or just have fun, I would fly, visit places, people, or time periods, and generally ‘do the impossible.’ Most of my life, I have had several dreams a night, with various degrees of lucidity.

At eighteen, my best friend died. For years, I practiced using lucidity to relate to ‘her’ in my dreams. By the time my father died in 1992, I had perfected my skills, Seeing ‘him’ in a dream, and knowing that he died, would cause me to get lucid and interact with ‘him’ in ways I could no longer do in my waking life.

In 2000, I had the biggest challenge of my life when my mother had a sudden, massive stroke and never regained consciousness. I had to make the decision to take her off life support. She died on Christmas morning. During her hospital coma, I used all of my dreams to support her, as well as myself.

In the following months, seeing ‘her’ in a dream, with the knowledge that she had died, which I have when lucid, caused me pain. I didn’t want to remember that she died. I preferred simple dreams of her acting alive, while I remained in denial of her death. Therefore, I decided I didn’t want lucid dreams for a while.

At each stage of my grief, these non-lucid dreams of my mother evolved. First, I dreamed of her and I doing our usual activities. I could have enjoyed these dreams if I didn’t have to feel such shock when I woke up and remembered that she had indeed died. Next, I started dreaming that my mother did not die after all. Then, I had dreams in which she had died, but mysteriously came back to life. I didn’t question this in the dreams. Little by little, I took the knowledge of her death into my dreams and began to explain it to other dream characters. Finally, after explaining my mother’s death to my ‘father’ in a dream, I was able to interact with my ‘mother’ and actually discuss her death. At this point, I had a significant degree of lucidity, and my dreams felt more comfortable and sometimes enlightening.

My ‘house’ dreams got very disturbing during my grief period while I did not dream lucidly, and while renters actually lived in my childhood home. However, by the time I finally decided to sell the house, I could comfortably visit it in semi-lucid dreams. The week the house sale closed, I had a lucid dream where the witches found me. I surrendered to them and felt integrated, as they drew ‘me’ under the bedroom closet door where they originated. Currently, I continue my quest to live my life, as well as my dreams, as lucidly as possible.

“A Mom/Child Dialog on ‘Lucid Dreaming”
by
D’Urso, Beverly (Kedzierski  Heart,)
Article in the Preschool Family Newsletter, Palo Alto, CA., January, 2000.

Child: Mom? What happens when we sleep?

Mom: Often, we dream.

Child: What is dreaming?

Mom: When we dream, we make up a world that seems real while we are in it. When we wake up, we realize that this world existed only in our mind.

Child: Yes, I remember that last night I dreamed I was flying over some beautiful mountains!

Mom: In the dream, did you realize that you don’t normally fly? For example, did you say, “If I am flying, then this is a dream!”

Child: Gee, I never thought of that.

Mom: You never see monsters in your normal day either. So, next time you see one, why not tell yourself “this must be a dream”?

Child: If I knew I was dreaming, I wouldn’t have to be afraid. I could zap the monster with magic forces!

Mom: Yes. Also, if you were not sure that you were dreaming you could just leave. But, if you knew for sure you were dreaming, you could look the monster in the eye and say, “I am not afraid because this a dream.” You could ask the ‘monster’, “What do you want?”

Child: What can I do if I don’t usually realize that I am dreaming, while I’m dreaming? Can I learn to do this?

Mom: Yes, We call this “lucid dreaming.” You could practice lucid dreaming by asking yourself the question over and over during the day or night, “Am I dreaming now?”. If you get into this habit of asking, you will probably ask the question when you are dreaming. If you can look for ‘clues’ that you are dreaming, you will most likely find some. For example, a clue might be: ‘discovering a real elephant in your bathtub!’ If you see something strange like that, you could then do a ‘test’ to make sure you are in a dream. Often, I try to float off the ground and when I can float, then I know that I am dreaming. When I know for sure that I am dreaming, I can do anything I want. I might ‘fly like a bird to the moon!’ Often, I look for people I never see anymore, like my friend who died. I talk to them in my dreams and it can feel very real.

Child: What if I got so excited knowing that I was dreaming, that I woke up immediately?

Mom: Well, you could remember to stay calm and remain very still in the dream, as soon as you knew you were dreaming. You could stare at something near to you for awhile. That works for me sometimes. Let me ask you something. Do you believe that you are dreaming right now?

Child: What do you mean?

Mom: Well, most people don’t usually think they are dreaming, even in their ‘regular nighttime, sleeping dreams.’ Their dreams probably seem very real while they are happening, or the dreams are weird, but not viewed as ‘dreams.’ In other words, we often dream of people and places we recognize. Even when we dream of strange things, we tend to justify them. Usually, only after we wake up, do we realize that we should have known our experience was only a dream. Remember, when we recognize that we are dreaming while we are still dreaming, we call this ‘lucid dreaming.’

Child: I have done that. Is it special? Does everyone do it?

Mom: Lucid dreaming means merely that we are ‘aware’ that we are in a dream. The dream can be weird, normal, clear or fuzzy. We don’t have to study the meaning of the dream to be lucid. We just need to realize that it is a dream before we wake up. Some people dream and never remember that they dreamed. Most people dream and remember that they dreamed only after they wake up. If they don’t tell someone the dream or write it down right away, they forget it. People who remember the dream even earlier, that is, before they come out of the dream, are called ‘lucid dreamers’. Not everyone has ‘lucid dreams’, and usually not that often. However, lucid dreamers can have lots of fun with their dreams. What kind of things can you think of to do if you knew you were completely safe in a dream and could make anything happen?

Child: Wow, let me think about that!

Mom: I will tell you one more thing for now. I believe that life itself is a dream, but that we are not always lucid enough to realize it. I believe that ‘one mind’ is dreaming us all, just as when we go to sleep, our ‘mind’ dreams of all kinds of people and places. In ‘nighttime, sleeping dreams’, after we wake up, we usually believe that all of the people and places we dreamed of were in our ‘mind.’ If we become, ‘lucid in life’, we don’t have to wait to ‘wake up’ to discover that life is a dream. We realize that everyone we know, including our own bodies, and everything we see is part of one ‘dreaming mind’. We experience our lives as being created by the imagination of this ‘one mind’, of which we are part. Thereby, we might also realize, that ‘anything is possible’ in our lives! When we feel the connection to this ‘one mind’, we no longer live in fear. We know that our bodies are not all that we are.

There are many more ideas on ‘lucid dreaming’ and ‘lucid living’. Would you like to know more?

Child: I sure would.

Mom: Ok. You can contact Beverly D’Urso, beverly@durso.org

Summary of Living Life as a Lucid Dream

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

Abstract

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I was five or six years old,  gruesome witches lived in the back of my dark and scary closet.  I’d be quietly playing, and without notice, they would sneak out and come after me.  I’d scream and run through the house, making it to the back porch, and sometimes down the back stairs, but never any further.  I’d fall on the cement at the bottom of the stairs, spread eagle on my back, and just as they were about to devour me,  I’d wake up.  In an icy sweat, breathing fast, I’d be terrified of going to sleep again.  For a few weeks, the witches would leave me alone, but, when I least expected it, they’d be back.  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, they’d stop their attack and I’d wake up.  However, the dream was still very upsetting, and I always hated going to sleep, especially if I ate anything close to bedtime.  My uncle once told me that my dreams were scary because I ate my Mom’s donuts late at night!

One hot, sticky summer night, when I was seven, I was especially afraid of going to sleep. I hadn’t been able to resist having one of my mom’s fresh, warm donuts, and I was sure the witches would appear in my dreams that night.  My mom was sleeping on the living room couch, which she often did when it was so hot.  The front door could be opened to create a breeze. That was before the days of air conditioning.   So, still being awake about 2am, I grabbed an old, dark pink, american indian blanket and put it on the floor next to the couch to be close to my mom, and I fell asleep.  Soon, I found myself back in my bedroom and noticed the closet door creaking open.  I knew at once it was them, and I began to run for my life.  I barely made it through the kitchen.  As I raced across the porch and down the stairs, I tripped as usual and immediately those horrifying witches caught up to me. 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 this  must be a dream!”  Instantly, my fear dissolved.  I looked the witches straight in the eye and said, “What do you want?”  They gave me a disgusting look, but I knew I was safe in a dream, and I continued, “Take me now.  Let’s get this over with!”  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 again.

My dreams were really fun after that night.  Remembering the feeling of facing the witches, I learned to recognize when I was asleep and dreaming.  Safe in the dream, I would do things I’d never do when awake!  Being a very obedient student during the daytime, I would dream of being in class jumping wildly and carefree all over the tops of the school desks.  Whatever I desired, was possible.  Whatever I thought, would occur.  I made up ways to wake myself up by staring at street lights whenever I wanted to end a dream. Oftentimes, I would lay in bed imagining myself doing backward summersaults and float right into my dream without ever losing consciousness.  I even learned to fly in my dreams, first, by flapping my arms like the wings of a bird, and later, by extending my arms like superman and just gliding threw the air.  I stopped flying when I devised a way to merely turn around and just “be” wherever I desired:  a beach, Chicago, or even another planet!   However, I missed the sensation of flying, and soon went back to gliding effortlessly through the air, but now an invisible force pulls me to unknown, and sometimes undescribable, destinations.

I’ve had many other adventures in my dreams.  Sometimes, I’d visit and talk with my friend, Denise, who died when I was eighteen.  Once, I went back in time to the year 1974 and met myself at the age of twenty-one to tell my younger self that “everything is fine.”  I solved my writer’s block so I could finish my PhD and even let myself die to see what would happen. I’ve walked on the moon, merged with the sun, and have been a star in outer space.

It’s been 30 years since that night I first discovered lucid dreaming. I didn’t know it was called that until 1980, when I met and began working with a scientist at Stanford on dream research.  My dreams have since been featured in many books, major magazines, and television specials. Recently, I changed my career from working with computers to teaching lucid dream groups and workshops.  I’ve also used my lucid dream experiences while asleep, to view life as a dream and become lucid while awake.  When I’m really lucid, I have no fears and no unmet desires.  I just “am.”  I realize that I am the dreamer and everyone and everything is a part of my mind, including those mysterious,  and well disguised witches.

In my waking life, I am very involved in my career as a Computer Scientist. I also have been doing research in lucid dreaming for the past 5 years at the Stanford University Sleep Laboratory, with Steve LaBerge. I’ve had lucid dreams long before I knew the name for them, and I continue to have them often. The first one that I remember occurred when I was 7 years old. It is described, along with other lucid dreams of mine, in the November 1985 issue of New Age magazine. Here I will briefly, discuss one aspect of my experiences, namely, death in dreams.

I have dreamt about people that I’ve known that have died. For instance, I’ve had many dreams about a very close friend of mine, Denise, who died from a sudden automobile accident when I was 19 years old. In describing my dreams about Denise, I will refer to the dream character that represents Denise to me as “her”, and I will refer to the dream character that represents myself as “me”.

In my non-lucid dreams about Denise, I would often run into her in some typical scene where we would interact with each other. Sometimes, I would suddenly remember that she had died and scare myself awake. Using my lucid dreaming skills, I learned to let the recognition of her having died make me realize that I was dreaming. In these cases, I would try to remain silently in the dream with her, who I perceived to be the actual Denise who had died. These dreams were usually uncomfortable experiences.

After my involvement with lucid dreaming research, I recognized that I was not completely lucid in these dreams because I did not realize that I was just seeing a dream characterization of Denise.  Once I saw her in this way, I was much more comfortable, and was able to remain in a dream and talk to her about our activities. Listening to her was more difficult, however, and I would often slip back into partial lucidity and feel strange listening to someone who I viewed as being dead. I was eventually able to remain totally lucid and talk to her about Denise’s death.

In a very special dream, I asked her if she knew that she had died. She told me that she knew this now, but that there was a period of time when she didn’t. Her realization was gradual. At first she thought that she as still alive, but she eventually understood. Her response might have to do with the tact that I knew that Denise had been in a coma for quite awhile prior to her death. As the dream continued, I asked her about what she was experiencing now and we resolved some issues that had been unresolved at the time of her death. Towards the end of the dream, someone called out, “Senator Red”.

My dreams of Denise helped me deal with dreaming about other people who have died. I learned how to dream about people by deciding ahead of time that I wanted to dream about them and then imagining meeting them while in a lucid dream. If I run across someone in a non-lucid dream that I know has died, the situation becomes a clue for lucidity and the dream usually becomes very enlightening.

Lucidity Letter 4(2), December, 1985, p. 28.

This begins my new website!