I took a few months, taking it easy concerning my efforts in lucid dreaming. No techniques, no reality checks. I didn't even bother to remember my dreams. I kept track of my dream journal, but most of the time I only recorded the date and time going to sleep and waking up again. A sort of mental reset.
I had made this decision because I had little in return. All the reality checks, techniques, dream recall, etc., took quite a bit of energy and concentration. The desire to dream lucidly had made way for disappointment and my motivation was gone.
Since the beginning of 2020 I am trying to get back into it and was immediately rewarded with three lucid dreams in 4 weeks (as opposed to one or two lucid dreams every two months in 2018/2019). The third, and most comprehensive lucid dream of this series I describe below.
I had read the call for submitting articles about the experiences with the awareness behind the dream in the 2019 December edition of LDE Magazine. This seemed like an interesting dream goal since I had never experimented with that before.
I got up around 5:15 a.m. to feed our 2-month-old daughter. I went back to bed at about 6:00 a.m. and used the MILD Technique upon falling asleep. The dream went as follows:
I was in our own house but before the renovation. I stood with my son at the back door. The door connects to the terrace. Next to the door was a switch and in the garden there was a very large crane on a large column in a typical old-fashioned turquoise-like machine color. I saw the axis of the pump running at the bottom of the crane and said to my son, "Look T, the hydraulic pump works!"
I pressed the switch next to the door and the crane started turning towards the house and rammed the gutter with it's lifting hook. I tried to turn the crane back, but I lost control. Soon the whole crane fell over in the garden.
Now suddenly the crane was on a flat barge and I was a little distance from it on board the ship I normally work on. We were moored on some mooring poles and busy unmooring the ship. As I wanted to sail away, I had no control over the ship at all. It went zigzagging through the port. I gave way too much gas on the throttle and looked like a complete amateur on the rudder.
At one point I ended up in a rectangular leveling basin next to the port. The water was dark in color and the ship was gone. I swam to the other side back towards the port and climbed ashore there. I stood there on a mooring bollard and jumped from one bollard to another although these normally stand 20 meters or more apart. All in all, this was rather remarkable. Everything seemed very dreamlike to me. At that moment I became lucid and decided to fly instead of jumping.
All the time I tried to not fix my sight on any object and let my eyes go back and forth all the time to avoid any awakening (as described by Paul Tholey). I then remembered my dream goal and stopped at a port basin.
I called for the consciousness behind the dream and asked, "What blockade should I break through to make further progress in my personal development?" There was no answer. It was dead quiet. However, I no longer waited for any answer because I was far too enthusiastic and was in a hurry to further explore my lucid dream world.
I flew further (or was brought by the awareness behind the dream?) to a young lady on a balcony. I immediately felt sexually attracted and immediately thought, "Oh no, not that dream sex thing again." So I decided to only kiss her like sort of greeting her.
All the time I still tried hard not to fixate on any object and let my eyes go back and forth. When I was standing on the balcony I did a reality check and tried to push my right index finger through the palm of my left hand. But that didn't work!
The young lady and I went through a door inside a stairwell. We went down some stairs. This is probably where I lost my lucidity. At the point where we were supposed to go upstairs again, I woke up. The lady standing at the stairs in front of me, inviting me to go upstairs is the last thing I remember.
The next two days after this dream, I was wondering what this all meant. Why didn't I receive an answer of the consciousness behind the dream and who was the young lady on the balcony? It was quite an achievement that I didn't have dream sex with a dream figure of the opposite sex, because this is what I would normally do. Well, probably I did have an answer as the awareness behind the dream presented me this young lady on the balcony.
These were my thoughts on that:
I found the lady on the balcony to be the archetypal Juliet. Which should be loved by her Romeo instead of falling prey to his lust. Descending the stairs is usually the symbol per se for exploring the subconscious mind. Did Juliet invite me to explore my subconscious (going DOWN-stairs) and take stuff on the surface from there? Then... could it still be per accident that I was waking up at the point of going back UP-stairs?
I look forward to meeting Juliet in my lucid dreams again and letting her guide me, experiment, and ask her questions that can level the way to my unconscious. In my view, our state of consciousness in the dream is a state in which we can connect with parts of ourselves that we don't normally have access to and can meet ourselves on a very different level; as a sort of mirror that is talking to us in a language full of symbolism and allegories which only the individual himself is capable of understanding because they are a reflection of his own mind. Or to put it in other words: Lucid dreaming gives us opportunities to shake hands with our own psyche.
Five questions I would like to ask the awareness behind the dream:
Your lucid dreams can educate and inform others about the joy, potential and practice of lucid dreams. Plus, you get to see your lucid dream printed in a lucid dream magazine!
