{"id":57,"date":"2010-03-17T15:20:57","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T23:20:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wedreamnow.info\/?p=57"},"modified":"2011-10-28T16:30:20","modified_gmt":"2011-10-29T00:30:20","slug":"witches-the-house-and-grief-developing-and-avoiding-lucid-dreaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wedreamnow.info\/?p=57","title":{"rendered":"Witches, the House, and Grief: Developing and Avoiding Lucid Dreaming"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Witch“Witches, the House, and Grief: Developing and Avoiding Lucid\u00a0 Dreaming”<\/big>
\nby
\nD’Urso, Beverly (Kedzierski Heart)<\/p>\n

Paper at the Association\u00a0 for the Study of Dreams (ASD)\u00a0 Conference 2003, Berkeley,\u00a0 CA, June, 2003\u00a0 (Available as an audio tape from ASD at http:\/\/www.asdreams.org\/subidxcontapes.htm<\/a> <\/a>)<\/p>\n

<\/big><\/div>\n

Summary<\/div>\n

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<\/p>\n

Abstract<\/div>\n

\nThis 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedreamnow.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedreamnow.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedreamnow.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedreamnow.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedreamnow.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wedreamnow.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337,"href":"https:\/\/wedreamnow.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions\/337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedreamnow.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedreamnow.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedreamnow.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}