I conceived this as an article for Cracked.com, one of my favorite websites. However, I am choosing to jack their format and post it here as the first entry of my blog. Hope you enjoy.
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5 Tricks That Will Make You A Lucid Dreamer
Dreams always seem real. That's why when you're being chased by a hungry monster, or getting rejected for the hundredth time by your high-school crush, it seems so intense - because you think it's actually happening. If you knew it was just a dream, you could split an anchovy pizza with the monster, thus satisfying both of you; and you could take your crush's rejection in stride instead of writing godawful poetry about how nobody loves or understands you.
Once in a while, though, something tips you off that you're dreaming ("Hey, monsters don't dress like that in real life!"), and then you're able to exert some control over events. When that happens, you're experiencing something called a lucid dream. Going lucid is one of the most unique and interesting sensory experiences you can have. It can defuse a lot of tension, and once you know you're dreaming, you can do anything you want to do.You can passively wait for lucid dreams to happen, or you can practice the following steps and make lucid dreaming a regular occurrence in your life.
1. Look for dream signs
The first step in going lucid is to look for and document your own personal dream signs. Dream signs are people and events that consistently show up in your dreams, but not in your real life.
They can be common dream tropes like having no teeth, or going to school naked (unless that was your deal in school). They can be fantastical elements like witches and wizards and dragons, all usually trying to kill you.
Unless you're Harry Potter, in which case this is really happening - move!
Or they can be as mundane as running into old high school friends you haven't seen in 20 years; or taking 8 freaking tries to type a simple sentence on your phone. When any of this happens, it almost always turns out to have been a dream.
You likely have some dream signs that, when they occur, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are smack in the middle of a dream; and those signs have likely popped up with some regularity over the course of your dreaming life.
Your job as an aspiring lucid dreamer is to become conscious of those dream signs: think about them; commit them to memory; write them down; tattoo them on whatever body part you stare at most often; basically, as much as you can, associate them with dreams. Eventually, when you realize you've worn your custom-tailored birthday suit to the prom, you will start to wonder if things aren't as real as they seem to be.
However, once you become curious about your strangely dream-like surroundings, then you will have to...
2. Beware of your brain!
Unfortunately, your biggest nemesis in learning to lucid dream is......your own brain. That's right. Your brain is your Skeletor, your Moriarty, your Valley High School. It does not want you to realize that you are dreaming.
Why does your brain want to keep you from having such an awesome dream-sperience? Sadly, your brain is an unambitious sack of crap that will do anything to preserve its lazy status quo. To that end, it will go into hyper-rationalization mode in order to make even the weirdest stuff seem totally normal.
If you start to wonder, "Why am I back in high school?", your brain will instantly start rationalizing: "That's right, I traveled back in time in order to make sure my parents fall in love and get married. That's why I'm in high school. Makes perfect sense." Only when you wake up will reality hit you: "Hey, I never even went to high school!"
"Don't worry, I got my Middle School GED."
Or picture a dream where you're missing all of your teeth. It's understandable that you might wonder, "Why am I missing all of my teeth?" But then your brain will rationalize: "Hmmm, I did disrespect Chuck Norris to his face yesterday. That's why all my teeth disapeared." Or your brain will invent a backstory about your lifelong meth addiction, so you'll stop questioning why your teeth are suddenly gone.
The bottom line is that unless you train yourself to look for dream signs, your brain will never make it obvious to you that you're dreaming. Because of your brain's asshole obstinacy, you will have to do more than just be conscious of your dream signs. You will also have to...
3. Do reality checks.
One of the best ways to fight your brain is to ask, "Am I dreaming right now?" Yes, it's that simple - sort of.
The reason we rarely catch ourselves dreaming is that we almost never question the reality around us. In lucid dreaming, a little skepticism goes a long way - so simply asking "Am I dreaming?" is a huge part of the battle.
Once you've asked the question, you answer it by testing the world around you to determine whether you are dreaming. There are plenty of ways to do this - just try to do anything that wouldn't work in real life.
In the movie Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio tests reality by spinning a small top. If the top keeps spinning indefinitely, then he's in a dream; if the top obeys the oppressive laws of physics and stops spinning, then he's awake in the real world.
If they end the movie before we see what happens, then.....ooh, deep, I guess we'll never know.
Other reality tests include trying to move your hand through a wall; jumping and hoping you'll stay airborne; or trying to set random objects on fire just by thinking about it. Basically, anything that wouldn't work if you were awake.
Be persistent with these tests. Like we said, your brain does not want you to realize you are dreaming. Sometimes one particular test won't work; but try another, because it just might. Often, reality needs a few hard pokes before it will crumble all around you like a delicious piece of halvah. If you're serious about figuring out whether you're dreaming, don't give up right away. And don't just wait until you're sleeping before you do all of this. You also have to...
4. Practice while you're awake.
Testing your reality is easy when you're dreaming. The problem is that you will never question or test your reality during a dream unless you build the habit of questioning and testing your reality while you're awake.
That's right: in order to drive this pattern of thinking into your brain, you're going to have to stop every now and then - sometimes in public, in front of people, real people - ask yourself whether you are in fact dreaming right now, and then test until you find your answer.
At first, this sounds stupid. Of course you're awake! Of course everything around you is real! How do you know? You just freaking know, okay?
But wait - isn't this the same trick your brain pulls to keep you from figuring out that you're dreaming? In a dream, you might come home to a pet platypus; but as weird as that is, you never question it. You lazily decide that it's real because it feels real. Besides, you remember buying him the other day at the local platypus store.
Sit, Rover, sit!
To become a lucid dreamer, you have to be skeptical of reality - even when you're totally sure everything around you is real. So, when you see anything that resembles a dream sign - unlikely nudity; the inability to type simple words; searching frantically for your 9th-grade biology classroom before the bell rings - take a chance, ignore your common sense, and ask yourself whether you're dreaming. Then, perform a few different reality tests until you are satisfied with your answer, or at least until everybody around you is staring at you. If you're embarrassed, you can be sneaky about it: quietly try to push your fingers through a solid surface, or try to levitate out of your chair.
If you follow the Stop/Question/Test sequence several times per day, no matter how dumb or counter-intuitive it might seem, it will become a habit, something your brain just jumps to every now and then.
Trust me, it will pay off: do this enough times and eventually your hand will go through the wall; or you'll jump and stay in the air; or your crush will actually laugh at your jokes - and bam, you'll go lucid. Suddenly you'll be able to do anything you damn well want to. And trust me, after you experience your first lucid dream, you will realize how important it is that you...
5. Never give up - it's worth it.
Lucid dreaming is not an exact science, and that can be massively frustrating, especially for those who are just starting out. There is no equation that always ends in a lucid dream, and it may take days or weeks of practice before it pays off. Even at your best, you might only manage to have lucid dreams every few nights, or once a week, or even less frequently than that.
The good news is that despite the inexact science involved in lucid dreaming, it's totally, totally worth it. On the most basic level, once you go lucid, you can do anything, and it all feels 100% real even though you're fully aware that it's not. Dream flying feels like flying, which is to say, freaking awesome. Dream swimming feels like swimming, and you can breathe underwater.
Dream-snozzberries taste like real snozzberries.
Studies have shown that you can even study for tests, practice for sporting events, or do all sorts of other useful things in lucid dreams. I can't personally vouch for any of that, though, because I've never used my lucid dreams for anything even remotely useful.
Secondly, just knowing you're in a dream - that you're conscious and lucid, while on some other plane your body is snoring and aggravating your partner - is mind-blowing in itself. You can explore your dream landscape and marvel at the bizarre complexity of the imaginary world your brain creates for you every night.
Finally, going lucid isn't just a slight change in perspective; it's like flipping a switch that makes your dream glow and sizzle in a way that's different from any other experience you might have, awake or asleep. It's shiny and intense and memorable, and you will often wake up feeling starry-eyed about the awesome thing that just happened in your brain.
Just remember that learning to have consistent lucid dreams is a haphazard process: you jam all the stuff I've mentioned into your brain, hope for the best, and trust that it will happen for you soon, and then with more and more regularity. I've listed a few of the more effective ways of making it happen, but the internet is full of other methods: some as simple as repeating "I intend to have a lucid dream tonight" before you fall asleep; and some as bone-chilling as staying conscious while your body falls asleep and leads you into dreamland. Basically, the more you think about lucid dreaming, the more likely it is that the thought will occur to you in the middle of an actual dream - and then you're off!
