On the surface, all it takes is a few easy steps to find yourself in a lucid dream. While in reality, a lifetime of practice awaits. Let’s break down lucid dreaming across three categories:
1) Remember your dreams.
Before you do anything else, step one to lucid dreaming is to remember your dreams. Maybe you had the most fantastic dream ever, but then forgot it with your alarm clock. Maybe you traveled to space, swam the rings of Saturn, and forgot it when you blinked your eyes open as you turned on your left side. Maybe you discovered the meaning of life in a lucid dream, only to forget it when thoughts of work flooded your mind.
From all my research, the most consistent and useful suggestion is to keep a dream journal. Write down anything you remember once you wake up from a dream. Even if you already forgot what happened, write. Write emotions, write anything, just write. Writing will stimulate memory. After a while, and it could be quite a while, so stick with it, your brain will form a habit of dream recall in preparation to writing out your dream.
Once we awake in bed, or wherever you sleep, the dream fades with every thought and movement. Therefore, limit movement to not lose any details. Open your eyes, reach for your dream journal, and write. Don’t go to the bathroom, don’t talk with anyone, don’t plan your day. Your dream journal should be within arm’s reach next to your bed, with a pen, and nightlight (in case you wake in the middle of the night). No cell phones, no technology, just pen and paper. Hurry up and write. Think later, move later. You only have 1 goal. Write.
2) Awaken in a dream.
The next step is to realize you’re in a dream. Question reality. Don’t make excuses for the illusion in front of you. Don’t assume what you saw or heard didn’t make sense because of some misunderstanding on your part.
Look around yourself right now. Is this a dream? Find numbers, look away, look back to them, did they change? Find words, read them, look away, look back, did they change? Did the dog ask you about your day? Did your deceased relative take a sip of coffee? Are you in mid-flight? Are you in a dream?
The goal is to build a habit of questioning your surroundings multiple times per day. You walk into an elevator, a room, a car. Is this a dream? Did the colors shift? Did I just appear here? How did I get here? Who am I with? It only takes a few seconds. Why is there a flower in my backpack?
Once your practice of questioning reality takes hold, you’ll question reality in your dreams. At some point changing numbers, space travel, time travel, repeated events, overdue assignments from the past, or a hike with a deceased relative will seem odd. A bit out of place. Perhaps this is a dream? And now you’re lucid.
3) Stay lucid.
The most difficult part for me is taming the excitement of waking up in a dream. All the possibilities, all the adventures, all the learning, all within my grasp, if only I didn’t awake in bed the moment I became lucid. Back to sleep, back into the dream, back into lucidity. Nothing.
It comes down to emotions. Fear, anxiety, excitement. They all need to go. Look at your hands, look at the ground, take a breath. You won’t miss anything. The dream will be there when you look up again, but with the calm to stay with it, to stay within your lucid dream.
Learn something new, travel somewhere new, figure out the future, figure out the past. Be present, be alert, take mental notes, and look at your hands anytime anything other than calm bubbles inside. You’ll write it all down later. Now experience the lucid dream.