Lucid Dreaming Benefits
It’s truly an incredible experience to have a lucid dream. The lucid dream state is when one becomes fully aware they are dreaming and can exert control over the dream. Lucid dreaming benefits us in many ways, whether it’s facing our fears, exploring our consciousness, or analyzing our dreams. In your dreams, you will also come across many different dream characters; some seem fake, while others may be incredibly intelligent. You can even communicate with dead loved ones in dreams. Lucid dreams are a great way to explore your consciousness!
Exploring Consciousness
Every night we have many dreams, and yet we may only remember one of them or none at all. What happened in all those dreams we forgot? This is where lucid dreaming can help you to learn more about yourself. One of the main things required for lucid dreaming is to build up our capacity for dream memory. Every time we awake from a dream, we must recall as many details of the dream as possible before we do anything else. Keeping a dream journal is an essential tool for this, as we will otherwise quickly forget the dreams.
Once we understand our dreams better and the content of them, we can use that as triggers to become lucid within the dream. There may be certain scenarios that commonly happen or people or items we regularly see in dreams that can act as signs for us that we’re dreaming. You can learn more about inducing lucid dreams here: how to lucid dream.
One of my Experiences
In one of my dreams, I found myself lying on the floor in the living room of an old house where I grew up. I laid there flipping through a boring magazine — it was kind of bizarre because that was never something I did in that part of the house, and I was never a big magazine reader. As I was looking at the magazine articles, I noticed in the corner of my eye that other images on the page were changing. This became more and more obvious as I looked at a few more pages. Becoming utterly confused, it eventually led me to realize I was dreaming, and then suddenly, I became fully lucid.
Being fully lucid now, this was a great time to try some experiments. The first thing I tried was to see if my subconscious remembered all the words of the first chapter in the Book of Genesis, in the Bible; I had been a regular reader of the Bible at the time. There was a Bible nearby, and I quickly opened it up. To my surprise, when I turned to the first page of Genesis, there was only one sentence in it, and it was written as if a 5-year-old wrote it — the letters were written big and messy. The sentence started something like, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was besit (or besot).” The rest of the two pages were blank.
This led me to question as to how ‘mature’ or immature my subconscious was. I had often heard people say that the subconscious remembers all of our experiences, etc., so I was somewhat disappointed. Lucid dreams can play tricks on us, though, so nothing definitive can be drawn from these types of experiences. It may take further experiments to determine how much our subconscious remembers.
Analyzing Dreams
Just like regular dreams, lucid dreams often have a plot, so this is an opportunity to examine our dreams in a fully conscious manner. These dreams may also reveal personal struggles, fears and unresolved issues of the past. It is a way to see what our subconscious is playing out while we sleep, and provides us with an opportunity to resolve any issues we discover.
Keeping a dream journal is an essential tool. It allows us to keep a record that we can refer back to. Over time you will discover patterns in your dreams. A dream journal is a great way to preserve all of your amazing, perhaps even profound, dreams you’ve had.
Nightmares
Have you had recurring nightmares? Many people suffer from nightmares and don’t realize they have the power to stop them. Lucid dreaming is a great tool to deal with that, and after you’ve learned to become lucid — you can face them head-on! Beginners to this will still be quite afraid to face any monsters or demons in their dreams but rest assured it is only a dream, and they can’t hurt you. For me, nightmares have never been a problem after I gained the ability to lucid dream. Whenever I get attacked in a dream or feel in extreme danger, it usually causes me to become lucid. It’s almost as if the brain recognizes this and tries to avoid such scenarios. On a side note, I’ve always felt there is resistance from the brain when we have lucid dreams.
Lucid Nightmares
Although I’ve never experienced this, there is a scenario where people have lucid nightmares but are unable to control the dream. I imagine this could be terrifying, giving how ultra-real lucid dreams can be. There have been times where I’ve fought terrifying demons in lucid dreams. These demons were huge and looked something like totem poles, dark charcoal in colour, and their only power was to induce incredible fear within me; it was some power they exuded that caused this. I stood up to them and projected a blast of energy back to them with all of my might; they quickly lost power and slowly drifted away — this happened in some type of void reality.
Communicating with Dead Loved Ones
Lucid dreams allow you to visit and communicate with the dead. Whether this is truly happening or it’s just something your brain makes up — that’s for you to decide. It’s better to question every experience there and to take nothing at face value. The dream world is a mysterious place, and unfortunately, we may never find concrete answers there. You can read about my personal experiences here: Dreaming of a Dead Loved One.
Conclusion
There are many more lucid dreaming benefits. Some have used it to get over phobias, such as public speaking or a fear of individual animals or insects. Lucid dreams are also a great chance just to have a fun experience.
