Charlie Morley - Lucid Dreaming: Beginners Guide To Becoming Conscious In Your Dreams

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Text Charlie Morley, 2015

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-78180-343-1 in print
ISBN 978-1-78180-443-8 in Kindle format
ISBN 978-1-78180-444-5 in ePub format

For my teacher, Akong Rinpoche (19392013),
a man of few words, who once told me,
Lucid dreaming? Yes, learn the
basics, that is best.

For information about Akong Rinpoches humanitarian projects around the world, see www.rokpa.org

It all started a couple of months before my 12th birthday. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was bored as 11-year-olds often are when its raining, its Sunday and theres nothing to do. I started sifting through the weekend newspapers, looking for the mail-order gadgets brochure. Once Id found it I spotted a full-page advertisement for something called a NovaDreamer, a computerized sleep mask that helped induce lucid dreams. As soon as I read about lucid dreaming something clicked, and I called out: Thats so cool! Dad, I know what I want for my birthday!

I never did get the NovaDreamer, but the seed had been planted nonetheless, and it began to sprout a few years later when I became fascinated with lucid dreaming once more and decided to learn how to do it.

When I became a teenager, the free accessibility of lucid dreaming was one of its major selling points. There was no equipment to buy, no initiation to be done, no club to join. The only requirements were sleep and determination. Also, it was a great place to have lots of dream-sex, which, as a teenager, seemed like a very good reason to learn how to lucid dream!

A few years later, when I got into Tibetan Buddhism, I started to learn about something called dream yoga. This is the term given to a collection of lucid dreaming, conscious sleeping, and what we in the West refer to as out-of-body experience practices aimed at spiritual growth and mind training. Within the context of dream yoga the lucid dream state is used to go way beyond sexual fantasy its a way of doing spiritual practice while we sleep. At 19 years old I became captivated by this possibility.

Once my lucid dream practice became my spiritual practice things really started to take off. I spent the next five years reading everything I could find on both lucid dreaming and dream yoga. I received teachings on these practices from the rare few who were offering them, and went on Buddhist retreats with dream yoga specialists such as Lama Yeshe Rinpoche the man who would eventually suggest that I start sharing my experiences with others. Lucid dreaming soon became an essential element of my spiritual path.

But how does all this relate to you? Well, after more than six years of teaching and 15 years of practice I can now confirm with certainty what Ive always believed: lucid dreaming can change your life.

We sleep for a third of our lives and through lucid dreaming we can start to make use of that 30-year blackout for psychological and spiritual growth. What better practice could there be for todays busy lifestyles? We dont all make time for meditation every day, but almost everybody goes to sleep every night and so lucid dreaming is always accessible its the meditation practice you can do in your bed. Thats some pretty effective time management.

But how does lucid dreaming actually benefit us? So many psychological problems have their source in the fact that we dont know ourselves. We dont know our minds; were often unmindful and unaware. Through lucid dreaming we get to truly know ourselves, and to become more mindfully aware in all states of day and night.

Our unconscious minds hold a wealth of wisdom both about ourselves and the world around us. This treasure trove is rarely accessed in the waking state but once we become lucid we gain access to a library of insight that resides in our dreaming mind. Through lucid dreaming we become conscious within the unconscious. This opens up the possibility of directly communicating with our own divine potential, and witnessing just how limitless we actually are.

Studies from Harvard University in the USA concluded that most people are unaware and not in the present moment for 47 per cent of their lives. Through lucid dreaming we can change that statistic, for lucidity in our dreams leads to lucidity in life. We can learn to wake up in our daily lives, just as we can in our dreams. Bringing lucid awareness into even just a few moments of our nightly blackout is such a powerful de-conditioning tool that it can lead to a remarkable enhancement of clear-seeing awareness while were awake. Suddenly, we find ourselves lucid in situations that wed usually sleepwalk through.

We wake up to our negative projections, our doubts and our illusory limitations. We begin to dream our destiny into existence by becoming the full potential of what we could be, if only we dared to dream.

So, fluff up that pillow, get ready for bed and buckle up, because youre in for a ride.

If youre looking for an in-depth exploration of lucid dreaming within the context of Tibetan Buddhism and mindfulness meditation, you might prefer my first book for Hay House, Dreams of Awakening, but if youre after a light-hearted guide to the how, why and wow! of lucid dreaming then you have the perfect book in your hands!