I’ve been interested in lucid dreaming since I had three such dreams myself. It’s like waking up in the dream — I suddenly found I was able to do what I wanted. At first I just wanted to experiment with sensual pleasure, I’m ashamed to admit, but by the third dream I at least attempted some spiritual practices.
Meeting the man
So I was intrigued when I saw Charlie Morley’s books on Lucid Dreaming in the bookshop at Samye Ling monastery while I was there at Christmas. Watching him on youtube, I saw he is unusually young to be giving spiritual teaching (he was 25 in 2006 when he started to do so). He has a smiley, stubbly face and wears psychedelic t-shirts and trainers, a wooden mala around his neck or wrist. He talks about his love for rap music and skateboarding. But I trust him (and I’m really fussy who I take instruction from) because he has a lineage. Lama Yeshe, the abbot of Samye Ling, has given him permission to teach. Also Charlie’s experience of lucid dreaming chimes with mine. The first time he sought sensual pleasure too (sex and skateboarding in his case), and he describes it as happening just before waking up, which was my experience — I was aware I could wake up any minute. He uses the metaphor of tightrope walking: it’s easy to topple into the waking state.
When I saw that Charlie was giving a talk in Bournemouth, near where I live, I had to go along. Books and videos are fine, but nothing beats dharma given directly. Charlie looked and spoke exactly how he appears on youtube. He has the panache of a practised speaker: with stories and anecdotes to interest the audience. But most importantly, he has real knowledge. Throughout the talk a picture of his guru, Lama Yehse looking like Confucius with his long beard, was on the table.
The essence of lucid dreaming
Lucid dreaming is about dialoguing with your unconscious, he says. We are not controlling the unconscious, but engaging with it. Everybody and everything that we encounter in our dreams is just a illusion generated by our minds. This rather beautifully echos how an enlightened person sees the waking world, he explains. “If you do enough lucid dreaming, you wake up to the illusion of this [waking] dream.”
Stages in the lucid dreaming process
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Dream planning
Firstly you must set your intention. “If you have a good reason why, how is not important,” says Charlie. This can be about either about what you want your dream to be about, the desire to have a lucid dream or to remember your dreams. Two ways you consolidate your intention are:
- drawing pictures/creating a vision board
- before sleep repeating your intention either three times with feeling or 21 times (the Tibetan Buddhist way). On the threshold of sleep you are in a hypnagogic state: a natural state of hypnosis where the mind is highly receptive to suggestion. Intentions should be framed in the positive and in the present.
2. Dream recall
Often people don’t remember their dreams because they don’t try to, says Charlie. Once you start paying attention to dreams, the content changes. They know you are listening, so they start telling you things. The way to remember them is by keeping a dream diary: jotting down a couple of sentences after waking.
3. Dream signs
There are two types of dream signs that you can recognise and prompt you to realise you’re dreaming, bringing you into lucid dreaming state:
- patterns you can see by getting to know your dreams.
- incongruities that don’t appear in your waking life, e.g. meeting a famous people or a fantastical creature.
The power of the lucid dream
Charlie says you can use the lucid dreams for healing (yes, it’s the placebo effect he says, but the placebo effect is real) and to ask for guidance. I haven’t had any experience of this, or even any lucid dreams recently. It could be that my meditation practice isn’t strong enough at the moment. (I only started to have lucid dreams when I was regularly meditating). Or perhaps at the moment I don’t need them: my dreams are showing me what I need to know, without me manipulating them.