From the beginning of my lucid dream explorations, I liked the idea of just ignoring the current dream scene and then speaking aloud out my desired goal. Most times, the awareness behind the dream created a new, unexpected dream scene in a surprising way for me.

At I first didn’t pay enough attention to my wording; I even got funny answers. For example, once I requested, “Dream, show me a picture that I could paint!” I was transferred to a stormy dream scene with a printer, non-stop printing cartoon-like paintings on paper so fast that I was not even able to see the pictures.

Sometimes, if a dream figure is next to me, I get a verbal answer from it instead of a new dream scene from my ‘dreamer behind the dream.’ These answers never were profound and not very helpful. Other times my awareness behind the dream denied my request and responded in a voice like a speaker behind the dream why it’s not possible to fulfill my wish.  These answers were not always very logical, and the voice was different each time: male, female, or my own voice. 

Another time, I wished for healing energy for my inflamed heel. Two blue light beams appeared in the sky above me and entered through my feet. This impressed me so much that I was convinced that it could heal - and so it did!

It also happened to me that as soon as I turned lucid in a dream, I got the answer in the form of a dream movie before I had time to shout out my request. I only realized that after waking up.

At the beginningof my lucid dreaming practice, as I began to hope for lucid dreams after a WBTB, I sometimes had strange spontaneous hypnagogic hallucinations like vibrations, and feeling lifted out of my body, etc. Therefore, I thought my subconscious or Larger Awareness wanted me to move lucidly from the waking to dream state. But I always woke up again before I could enter a lucid dream. Until, one night, my ‘awareness behind the dream’ sent me a big hand that lifted my dream body up and out of the bedroom towards a wonderfully decorated door. It opened, and I was in a dream scene with long hallways.

These experiences helped me to try to engage my awareness behind the dream directly from  a WILD technique:

After a WBTB  while lying in my bed on my back without moving my body, I repeat my request in my thoughts until I can enter a dream lucidly. It’s not the perfect technique, I usually need several attempts until it works, but it’s fun and different each time. As I don’t use visual imagery for the transition from wakefulness to the dream state, I have sensual experiences during the liminal state of hypnagogia, as I mentioned above. The produced phenomena were a bit weird, but I was curious enough to try to find out why they happened. 

Once, as I had another ‘hypnagogic dream helper’ that appeared and pulled me up with his hand from my bed, I asked, “Who are you?” He responded with ‘Tarzan,’ which I found too funny and woke up again.

As I had some other experiences of being helped into a lucid dream, I wondered about the nature of these ‘dream helpers’ and tried a WILD with “Please show me the world of my dream helpers!” until five or six shadowy ‘beings’ appeared (probably in my hypnagogic, liminal dream state), took my hands and flew me into a dream scene. During the flight through the darkness, I asked again “Who are you?” One of them tells me a strange name like ‘Karakuri’ or ‘Kuriakiri,’ and another one responded with ‘Dolly’. Dolly reminds me of the cloned sheep, which could be a symbol for my ‘Inner Self’, I think. I interpret these liminal dream figures as symbols from my Larger Awareness to help me enter a lucid dream. 

Later, as I began reading books about dream work by C.G. Jung and others, I found an explanation for my experiences in the liminal state between awake and dreaming. I relate them now to the active imagination and dream incubation techniques. 

In his book, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, Robert A. Johnson writes:

“In Active Imagination, you go to your unconscious to find out what is there and to learn what it has to offer to the conscious mind. The unconscious is not something to be manipulated to suit the purposes of the conscious mind, but an equal partner to engage in dialogue that leads to a fuller maturity.”

Dreams I learned, are a way of our unconscious to speak to us through their symbols. And in lucid dreams, it fascinates me that, when engaging the awareness behind the dream, I can consciously dialog with my subconscious as if using active imagination in the waking state. But I feel more confident not to manipulate it.

A dialogue with my unconscious, my awareness behind the dream still feels a bit abstract to me, and therefore I had the idea that I could try to ask ‘it’ if it has a name that I could apply for our connection.

Therefore in a fun DILD, I shout into the dream, “ Hey, dreamer behind my dream, thank you very much for this wonderful lucid dream!” and add, “Do you have a name?”

An enchanting djinni woman’s head appears and bows, but then transform into an advocate’s figure during my name request. He holds his forefinger in front of his mouth and shakes his head. I start to ask, “ How would you like me…” before I can finish, “to call you”, the dream is fading out, and I wake up. 

Inside another DILD, I try again and ask, “Larger Awareness, dreamer behind my dream, how would you like me to call you?” This changes the dream scene into a grayish ‘void,’ and a male voice begins to tell me why it is not possible. I respond that a unique name would simplify our dialogue. As an answer, I suddenly have a baby in my arms.

I hope to get other opportunities in lucid dreams to explore this interesting topic in more depth.

My current top five questions to the awareness behind the dream are:

What are you? How would you like me to imagine you?

Please let me experience a lucid dream each night I wish for it!

Please let me experience what I truly am, my essence!

Please let me have an experience of lucid light!

Please show me something wonderful to paint!


The second one is very important for me as it is a bit frustrating that lucid dreams don’t seem to become natural for me 😉 and I wonder if it will be fulfilled one day!

This article was released in issue from

March 2020

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