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Clear Dreams - Definition, Techniques and Guidance
Dylan Tuccillo, Jared Zeizel and Thomas Peisel provide a handbook for lucid dreaming. Just as there are white spots on the map, today we are again "on the border to a new unknown world", our dream world. To explore these and to be able to work with them is the topic of the book.
Clear dreams (lucid dreaming) refers to the ability to know in the dream that one dreams. Dreams could be explored and changed when free will, imagination and memory were preserved. Her book is intended to be a travel guide into this world, the authors bring together techniques, develop them and bring them to simple forms. They want to show how people can come back to their dreams, experience lucid dreams, and what to do when they appear.
contents
- "The journey starts"
- What is a lucid dream?
- The benefits of lucid dreaming
- What are dreams?
- Everybody dreams
- Understand dreams
- Theory 1) The computer brain
- Theory 2) Samples for the future
- Theory 3) Random events
- The dream experience
- A story of dreaming
- Greeks and Romans
- Hindus, Tibetans and Chinese
- Indigenous people
- Christians
- Freud and Jung
- Who is right?
- Pack the bags
- The power of autosuggestion
- Remember dreams
- Healthy sleep habits
- Wake up
- write down
- Conclusion
"The journey starts"
The authors first discuss the discovery of the phenomenon of lucid dreams in modernity by British scientists Keith Hearne and Alan Worsley in 1975.
Clear Dreaming is the ability to control one's own dreams. (Image: pathdoc / fotolia.com) Worsley and Hearne uttered a sign: If Worsley was deliberately dreaming, he made a certain eye movement to signal this to his colleague: eight times from left to right. The results were clear.
Hearne wrote: "The signals came from another world - the world of dreams. It was as exciting as coming from another solar system out in space. "The EEG confirmed that the brain activity was in line with consciousness.
Further tests consolidated the knowledge: The scientific proof for lucid dreaming was provided.
What is a lucid dream?
In a lucid dream the sleeping man realizes that he is dreaming. Often the one who realizes that something is wrong, so he has to dream: He goes through walls, he is in a foreign country or talking animals.
Those who gain this clarity can fall back on the memories of the waking state, so the authors. He can therefore think logically, make decisions and "move in the exploration of the dream world as we would in the physical world."
Lucid dreamers can directly influence the entire dream and its content, according to the authors. In contrast to a normal dream, the mind is awake enough to determine the event itself, for example "talking to dream figures, flying over a mountain range, breathing underwater, effortlessly stepping through walls ..."
The sensations of our senses are just as alive as they are in awake life: "We feel, smell, see, taste and hear just as well." The setting seems real, although it is a pure projection of the mind. Even more: "This place brings wisdom and guidance that can change your life.
Clear dreams would be perfect for the authors to live out unbridled fantasies. (Image: Orlando Florin Rosu / fotolia.com) The benefits of lucid dreaming
"Some say that lucid dreams are the best they've ever experienced," the authors write, and many would indulge in pure adventure to do things that are normally impossible. The first thing to try out is to fly and have sex often.
Lucid dreams are perfect to live out unbridled fantasies. The participants could "jump to a giant summit in one go, encounter mythical creatures, talk to dead celebrities ..."
They could defuse nightmares by getting the victim to the root of the horror and deliberately looking the monsters in the face.
They are also the playground for creative people. Those who are aware of their dreams will have access to "an incredible body of knowledge and inspiration." The authors write, "If we assume that the dream world is a product of our subconscious, it is the ideal place to unleash our creativity allow. Since she knows no limitations, we can create pretty much anything in her that comes to mind. "
Tuccillo, Zeizel and Peisel themselves are good examples of the connection between lucre dreams and creativity: They work full-time as scriptwriters and filmmakers, where one or the other Klartraum certainly provides them with ideas.
These could be a test field to test skills, help and advice for everyday problems. The authors point out that dreams have been used for millennia as a means of mental and physical healing, this has been documented since the ancient Egyptians.
They are a means of self-knowledge, like a mirror to see ourselves. Clear dreams are a journey of exploration to ourselves and allow us to "deepen the connection to our inner being"; These are thus a "practical instrument for spiritual exploration" and "a possibility to get in touch with the deeper levels of our self".
Lucid dreams allow a deep connection to our interior. (Image: amino2003 / fotolia.com) What are dreams?
The next chapter is about what dreams are, what science knows about them (not much, according to the authors), which linked historical cultures to it, generally about the nature of mental activity during sleep.
These were, according to the authors, always part of our lives and inspired us in almost all areas. Therefore, almost all cultures at any time "analyzed, appreciated and practiced this particular form of experience in their sleep" as an art. Scientific breakthroughs, novels, inventions and works of art are due to them.
That's how Elias Howe dreamed that cannibals would attack him and that their spears would have a hole below the top. This was the template for the sewing machine invented by him.
Mary Shelley was also inspired by her dreams. In fact, on the night of a legendary meeting on May 13, 1816, she dreamed with her lover Percy Shelley, poet Lord Byron, and Giovanni Polidori of a student bowing over a corpse that begins to move. This inspired her to write her 1818 published novel "Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus", one of the great works of the Gothic novel.
Everybody dreams
Everybody dreams, on average, about two hours every night, according to the authors. This is about six years pure dreamtime in a life. Even so, in our scientifically advanced time, we do not really know why this happens, what happens while we sleep, and where we go in the meantime, the authors say.
Each person dreams, according to the authors, about an average of two hours every night. (Image: fizkes / fotolia.com) Understand dreams
The following chapter shows individual explanations. A classic was the "interpretation of dreams" by Sigmund Freud, who considered dreams to be a form of wish fulfillment that arose out of suppressed desires and conflicts. They are, according to Freud, an attempt by the subconscious to resolve old conflicts.
To this day, there would be no consensus about what dreams are all about. Science does not even know exactly what purpose sleep is for.
Theory 1) The computer brain
These theories assumed that dreams organized memory content so that we could process new information in the morning.
Theory 2) Samples for the future
According to this theory, dreams provide a framework for establishing connections between different thoughts and emotions; in them we would prepare for future events and play them through.
Theory 3) Random events
The activation synthesis theory, developed in 1977, suspected in them of a brain reaction to biological processes that take place during sleep, that is, meaningless. Literally, the researchers Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley wrote: "Dreams are a byproduct of random bombardment with neural signals ..., and our cerebral cortex tries to make sense of the information it generates:"
The dream experience
According to the authors, it is fundamentally wrong to regard dreams as "children's stuff" or "waste of time". However, this view is widespread in Western societies. Those who decide to do so could develop their dream skills.
What we kept in mind was not this self. Experiencing in sleep, like real experiences, has a now-moment. With clear dreams, it's about becoming aware of this now-moment. To understand dreams, we would have to experience the experience at the moment of its unfolding.
Dreams should not be dismissed as a waste of time. (Image: Dmitriy Sladkov / fotolia.com) A story of dreaming
The authors explain that in shamanic cultures, dreams were the key to realities that were hidden from the normal senses of waking state. These other worlds considered people real worlds overlapping with the physical world.
They represented in these cultures a connection to higher realities, a dream journey was the journey into the spiritual world. Those who did not have access to his dreams were considered cut off from his soul by Native Americans. They were existential for the life of humans.
The Sumerians already documented in the 4th millennium BC. u. Z. Dreams as prophecies that allowed mythical heroes to be guided in the watch world. The ancient Egyptians considered it a direct access to the spiritual world. As a result, Freiseele Ba was able to break away from her body while sleeping and travel. Dreams served the realization and gave insight into otherwise hidden realities. The Egyptians had special dream temples in which they believed to experience enlightenment.
Greeks and Romans
The ancient Greeks also saw sleeping as a spiritual practice. They were sent directly by the gods, for example by Zeus, but also by Hypnos, the god of sleep and his son Morpheus, from whom derive the terms hypnosis and morphine - a proof that also noise and trance states as with dreams were considered related.
Aristotle, however, who founded the scientific thought of later times, denied that they came from gods and denied them meaning. Artemidor of Daldis finally published a five-volume work, in which he not only examined individual dream symbols such as the crocodile (murderer) or the tomcat (adulterer), but also captured the individual meaning of these symbols.
The Romans took the Egyptians and Greeks in their dream interpretation as a model and also founded dream temples. They believed in the conscious transmigration of souls and the ability of spiritual masters to communicate with dreams - over time and place.
Hindus, Tibetans and Chinese
The Hindus, after all, considered the physical world to be a dream of the god Vishnu, and humans, like other beings, were figures of this dream. The world, as we know it, then goes under when Wischnu stops dreaming. Dreams view Hindus as more essential states of consciousness than the waking state.
According to the authors, the Tibetans have practiced trauma yoga for at least 1000 years, a method of lucid dreaming. For this they developed techniques and learned to accomplish tasks during this state, the challenges increasing with the skills of the performer.
Among the tasks were the change in shape, the conversation with various animal beings and with other dream figures. The goal of this dream yoga is to realize that life itself is just a dream. The more clearly a yogi dreams, the more he approaches this goal, to understand the dream state means to gain absolute awareness.
The Chinese already sat down in 2000 b. Chr intensely with their sleep experiences apart. These dream trips shaped on the one hand ancestor worship, on the other hand the belief in gods. In ancient China, there was the body soul and the spirit soul. The spirit soul went on a journey at night, when the body slept, communicating with other souls and with the spirits of the ancestors. The Chinese believed that if the experiencer awoke abruptly, the spirit soul would be able to return to the body.
Indigenous people
Furthermore, the authors use the term "tribal cultures" to compile countless dream practices of indigenous peoples, who believed that everything in the world was permeated with spirits and enabled dreams to travel to these usually invisible parallel worlds. These spirit worlds were as real as the material world and accessible to everyone.
Interpretation of dreams was fundamental to all questions concerning the individual and the community, whether hunting, healing or war.
In Europe, dreams were banished to the realm of the devil. (Image: PhDreams / fotolia.com) Christians
In Europe, both the Catholic clergy and Martin Luther exiled sleep experiences in the realm of the devil, according to the authors. Only the church should be able to spread divine messages, but dreams send the devil. By contrast, the Christian scriptures are full of those that were considered to be messages of God.
Freud and Jung
In modern times, dreams played a shadowy existence, as not measurable and unprovable, they came in the vicinity of mental disorders. This changed, according to the authors, first with Sigmund Freud, who sought to fathom the "unconscious" through the analysis of dreams.
Freud's pupil Carl Gustav Jung, had gone even further, in which he had seen dreams not only as a work-up of the past, but also as concrete clues for the present. However, Jung would have accepted Freud's theories about the dream language in general. Jung followed the shamanic beliefs and believed in a "collective unconscious," dream symbols that reappeared collectively, the "archetypes" and synchronicities that were not coincidental but meaningful in people's lives.
Who is right?
After this brief outline of the assessment of dreams in different societies, the authors ask which approach is the right one. They do not answer this question, but look at the different viewpoints on the subject as thought aids and call to open ones own dreams and find out for themselves "what these really are"..
Pack the bags
Consequently, Part 2 "Packing a Suitcase" is about preparing for the daydreaming. The authors try here, from their own experience with dream literature, to develop a common thread that serves as a kind of travel guide.
First of all, they explain the Rapid Eye Movement Phase, the part of our sleep in which our eyes move quickly, and in which we experience our epic dreams.
In these REM phases, our brainwaves are similar to the waking state. But instead of reacting to external stimuli, the memories and thoughts now create the experience worlds. This is immensely important for lucid dreams, because if we actively enter the REM phase, we could trigger lucid dreams.
The power of autosuggestion
For this, autosuggestions are decisive, that is, thoughts that aim at very specific actions. Here is the goal, to become lucid in the dream. To do this, you should formulate your intention as precisely as possible in the present, for example, by saying before falling asleep, "I am lucid and aware of my dream state."
You can recall recurrent dreams and imagine them with all five senses. They should also imagine a lucid state, that is imagining that they are dreaming and gaining clarity while doing so.
You should also expect to have a lucid dream and prepare yourself for it. They have, according to the authors, two hours each night to practice.
Before falling asleep, the intention of lucid dreaming should be precisely formulated. (Image: Lars Zahner / fotolia.com) They should give top priority to the aspired state of lucidity when falling asleep, that is, to feel that they are clear in the head while they are falling asleep. Thus the desire could reach into the dream world and could produce exactly what you wished for.
The authors conclude the autosuggestion in the sentence: "One of the biggest paradoxes is this: Just what we're looking for is crucial to finding it at all."
Remember dreams
It is crucial to remember his dreams. The better that works, the more lucid dreams we would have. It was therefore about building bridges that strengthened the dream memory. There are strategies for that.
These begin with the intention to say when falling asleep, "I remember my dreams" and to get distracted thoughts back to this point. They can visualize how they wake up in the morning and remember their dreams in plastic details. For this you can have a dream diary in which you write down and paint your dreams.
You should also try to imagine the feeling that you have when you wake up from a vivid dream.
Healthy sleep habits
To dream clearly, healthy sleep rituals are necessary. For example, you can take a shower before going to sleep, do stretching exercises, meditate, write a to-do list and, at least an hour before you go to sleep, stop watching TV.
Going to sleep at the same time is just as important as a bedroom as a place of silence and peace, in which it is dark, comfortable and quiet. Alcohol, nicotine, marijuana and coffee all had a negative impact on dreaming by suppressing the REM phase or extending the deep sleep phase.
Wake up
As important as a healthy sleep rhythm is, according to the authors, a slow awakening without moving, a picking up of the fragments floating in her head from the last dream, a change in sleep position, if you feel blocked in her dreams Pay attention to their emotions when waking up and writing down what they have experienced.
write down
Systematically writing down dreams and re-reading, associating and interpreting what is written is so important to the authors that they wrote an entire chapter about it.
They give hints on how to make a meaningful dream diary and compare it with the travel diaries of researchers. For example, in the first 5 minutes after waking up, more than half of his dream content would have been forgotten, and even 90% after ten minutes..
The remembered dream images are best captured directly after waking up in a diary. (Image: geargodz / fotolia.com) Therefore, in the first few minutes after waking up, you should write down in keywords what you are dreaming about. This is the best way to remember her. So it often happens that people remember long and vivid dreams just when they kept a dream diary.
You should put the dream diary on the bedside table in order to be able to write directly when waking up, enter the place and time at bedtime. This would subconsciously prepare you for a diary entry the next morning. If you wrote in the present, you could better put yourself in the dream.
When reading again, you could give the dream a title that summarizes the content. This helps with the interpretation and makes it easier to find older dreams in later dream work.
You should also make a note of whether the dream was lucid, what triggered this lucidity and how long it lasted.
The following three parts are about "exploring a new world," "mastering the terrain," and "new shores." How can defuse nightmares, how to achieve healing and wholeness, how to help lucid dreams of self-knowledge? In the end, there is even a vision for the future.
Conclusion
The great strength of the book is the understandable introduction to dream techniques that can be implemented chapter by chapter. Anyone who wants to dream lucidly can see how he achieves this, and if he clearly dreams of how to improve it and which results he can come up with. These exercises convey the authors in a vivid way and show time and again that dreams are not a compulsory exercise but an adventure.
Anyone who reads this book from start to finish can immediately begin to optimize their sleep patterns and write a dream diary and, with a bit of discipline, will soon have lucid dreams and remember them.
Practical exercises are also recommended for people who have already trained in yoga, shamanism, creative writing, or other methods to activate pictorial thinking.
But the book is especially suitable for beginners who are confused in the labyrinth of dream theories and finally want to work with their own dreams. The great advantage of this work is that it creates a guide undogmatically. So it's not about what dream symbol means, but about what a person can do with his very own dreams and how he recognizes them. The authors do not act as strict overseers, but take the dreamer by the hand to explore a nocturnal kingdom.
The authors help to recognize and understand one's dreams. (Image: pgottschalk / fotolia.com) A weakness lies however in the scientific basis. So our knowledge of dreams today is by no means as thin as the writers portray it. Although a solid foundation such as Darwin's evolutionary theory for dream research is still pending, neuroscience and biology are constantly gaining new insights into the meaning of dreams.
Thus, it is clear in the brain structures that the REM phases probably occur primarily in mammals and in humans are much more coupled to individual experiences than in other animals, while the particularly dramatic patterns of nightmares in evolutionary history reflect age-old situations: danger, attack or escape.
However, such a differentiation between the processing of individual experiences and tribal-historical training of survival or the interplay between the two would be necessary in order to adequately recognize specific lucid dreams. Is this a personal "fantasy story" or does a dream become particularly clear because the potential danger is so dramatic?
The authors do not respond to this point and leave the interpretation to the dreamer himself. Despite these critical aspects, the book is fully recommended for anyone who wants to develop and work with their dreams. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Dylan Tuccillo; Jared Zeizel; Thomas Peisel: Lethargy. Control dreams consciously. Inspiring creativity. Solve problems. Munich 2016.