The connection between lucid dreaming and spirituality is something you must have heard about if you’re interested in both of these domains. The fact that it has been proven that with the proper guidance, like the method that Andrew Holecek has developed, you can even master lucid dreaming to the level of harnessing lucid dreams for unleashing the healing forces of your subconscious mind is not the most fascinating thing about lucid dreaming, as the spiritual aspect of it is; and its relationship with contemporary spirituality. It’s a connection that is hard to ignore.
Even while learning about spirituality, many questions related to lucid dreaming come up. They’re mostly asking about the spiritual benefits of lucid dreams or how they can help with spiritual awakening. However, even within this topic, there is a lot to be learned. When venturing into this area, it is important that you know all the basics first. Feel free to use this article as a guide to lucid dreaming spirituality, it will cover many aspects of this fascinating subject.
What Is Lucid Dreaming?
The first basic to cover would be what lucid dreaming is. Many people are unaware that this concept even exists. They assume that dreaming is simply dreaming. Lucid dreaming, however, is when you’re conscious during a dream. In more simpler terms, it means that during a dream, you are aware that you are dreaming.
When a person is experiencing Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. That is the moment when you are dreaming. And when you’re in that phase, yet you are still aware of the fact that you are dreaming, you are experiencing something that is both surreal as you are in a dream, and both intriguing, as you are being connected to your awareness in an environment where everything is possible.
Does that sound like something that you’d like to live and feel on a daily basis?
History Of Lucid Dreaming
Psycho-physiologists have been studying lucid dreaming for years and assessing how it could help people. There has been a great amount of research that suggests that lucid dreaming can have many psychological benefits. Many lucid dreaming techniques have been developed that lead to advantages in tackling mental health problems.
It increases mindfulness, helps with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and anxiety. Even if you don’t have these issues, just simple nightmares, that’s not a problem either. This is because lucid dreaming can help reduce the effects of those too. These techniques can enable you to control your dreams, and influence the psychological effect they have on your life.
The Steps For Lucid Dreaming
Though lucid dreaming is and its history is fascinating, it is a concept that is hard to grasp for many people. They are confused at the possibility of this as it seems hard to believe. After all, how could a person be conscious during their sleep? However, there are certain techniques that can help you with lucid dreaming. These were designed by physio-psychologists to help people deal with their mental health problems.
And, as we’ll address later in this article, we’ll discuss whether these techniques can even help you connect to a higher spiritual nature of who you really are, while you’re dreaming.
Reality Testing
Reality testing is one of the most basic ways you can have lucid dreams. This includes training your mind to always ask if you are dreaming. Whenever you’re awake, check your surroundings to confirm if everything is real. Be mindful and notice how you interact with every object. This could mean looking in the mirror, touching objects, looking at your hands or the clock. Another technique is through checking that you can breathe properly.
Wake Back To Bed
This is another psychological trick that you can use to trick yourself into lucid dreaming. All you have to do is go to sleep normally, however set an alarm for after a long time when you’re asleep. Later, when you wake up, perform an activity that requires your full attention. This will bring you to a wide awakening. However, go back to sleep after half an hour. Though it’s obviously not easy to practice, it can increase your chances of lucid dreaming.
Apart from these two techniques there are many other ways you can have lucid dreams. This would further include that MILD technique which stands for the Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams. Additionally, there is also a WILD technique which means Wake Initiated Lucid Dreaming. All these techniques have been proven to be helpful in inducing lucid dreams.
But how can lucid dreaming awaken your spirituality?
Lucid Dreaming And Spirituality
When you’re aware in your dream, lucid dreams can also enable you to control your surroundings in the dream. This means you can see where the dream goes and make your own decisions consciously. However, many people consider lucid dreaming as a part of spirituality.
Initially, traditional Tibetan dream yoga used to be a prior version of lucid dreaming. Buddhist monks firmly believe that spirituality can be the essence of lucid dreaming. How? Because it merged the two worlds. It is a bridge between two spheres of your brain, that connect to something that is greater than how we are experiencing life.
When your mind is aware, it has all the knowledge of the world you are in currently. However, in your dream, you are not in the real world but the dream dimension, which might even be a gate to a higher spiritual dimension of reality. This convergence can lead you to explore spirituality. In other words, many monks call it the road to spiritual awakening.
How Do Lucid Dreams And Spirituality Connect?
There is a simple explanation for this. Think of it like this, many people consider that when in a dream state, you have no control. Whatever is happening is happening automatically. Similarly, when you do not practice mindfulness, you also experience the same thing in real life. You do not consciously make decisions in your life but simply go with the flow, acting according to a set of habitual programs. This can lead you to live your life on an auto-pilot mode. This isn’t an ideal situation for anyone.
When you are aware in your dream world, you can consciously control things. When you mindfully control things in your mind, there is the reality of anything being possible. There are no limitations in a dream. This causes people to broaden their perspective. When they explore the dream state, it gives you a better understanding of the real world. This often leads to you being more focused on the present in the real world.
Hence, when you are present in your world, it can cause you to experience a spiritual awakening of sorts. You will have the ability to differentiate between an illusion and reality in solid terms. This will lead you to introspect more often. And this introspection often leads to a great deal of extrospection as well. Making better decisions becomes a part of this process. Not only will you be more present and have a better outlook, but you will also feel how you are at more peaceful and sharper mindet.
Spiritual Impact Of Lucid Dreaming
The most important spiritual impact of lucid dreaming that every person who seeks spirituality stresses upon is how to be present. Living in the moment is all what spirituality is about. Being present and aware has numerous advantages where people can identify and observe many incidents. It gives you more access to solutions that you would not have thought of before but can think of after lucid dreaming. This state of being present can help with being enlightened to a greater extent.
When in reality, everyone is aware that their actions have consequences, that is not the case with dreams. With dreams there are endless possibilities with no consequences. It gives you the complete freedom to decide anything and do anything. This helps in increasing creativity for many individuals. It also leads to a higher degree of fulfilment where you can experience everything you have wanted to feel. It is a different type of blessing.
Additionally, lucid dreaming spirituality also helps you realize your dreams. It is an entire process of manifestation. With so many possibilities in a dream, you can realize what you like or don’t like. What works and doesn’t work. This means it can lead you to understand your own self better. This realization is a great tool in moving forward in life as it builds a growth model for you, and even transcend your ego and connect to your true spiritual nature.
If that’s not enough, there are a lot more spiritual benefits of lucid dreaming. The most crucial one is that it gives you a wider perspective. It offers you a view of yourself and to explore your own behavior. More than often, people project their own views on how other people behave towards them. This is common in the world. You can prevent this, through lucid dreaming. It can cause you to experience honestly how you have interacted in the past and how this behavior affects your relationships.
With this renewed spirituality, you can move forward to changing your actions and your behavior towards other people. This alteration will cause internal and spiritual growth where you can understand everything better. It really gives you an opportunity to spiritually enlighten yourself, by sensing how everything is connected and is a part of something bigger.
People might suspect that if someone can experience lucid dreaming, they are running away from living in the real world. That rarely happens. Most people who have lucid dreams tend to feel the opposite, they actually feel more alive. They relate that the more they lucid dream or the more aware they are in their dream state, the better connected they are.
What Else Is Possible?
Lucid dreaming does not initiate separation, but it does bring a feeling of connectivity. This connection helps in spiritual enlightenment as it really joins the two worlds together. It brings a feeling of something bigger than your own being. That something is beyond both you and this world that brought these two worlds together. This is a true spiritual awakening.
The lucid dreaming journey is one of the most beautiful ones, as it touches the very core of who we are and what we are made of, by connecting to your deep subconscious mind and soul. Despite its beauty, this journey can also be frustrating, as you often get stuck for long periods of time with no breakthrough in sight. If that is the case for you, or if you wish to get to know your true self better than ever before, you can always make a decision and properly learn how to master it, to dive deeper into what is possible for you.
