Lucid Dreams and OBEs

Lucid Dreams and OBEs

by Diane Linsley

Lucid dreaming is a powerful spiritual practice. There are various

degrees of lucid dreaming ranging from dreams in which you are

vaguely aware that you are dreaming to fully lucid out-of-body

experiences.

My First OBEs

I started having spontaneous OBEs in my early forties. Sometimes

I would find myself wandering around the house in the dark, trying

to turn on the lights and thinking that the electricity had gone out

because the light switches didn't work. Then I would go back to bed,

hoping the electricity would come back on by morning. I didn't

realize that the lights didn't work because I was out of my body,

and you can't turn on a physical light with a non-physical hand.

One time, I ended up in the living room, sitting on the couch. I was

afraid of the dark, and I started to freak out. I didn't know how to get back to my body. (The secret is to say, "Take me back to my body.") I thought I was having a vivid nightmare. So I screamed and cried until the OBE ended by itself.

Most of my spontaneous OBEs were not that dramatic. Sometimes I just rolled out of bed and fell on the floor. Other times, I kicked off the covers. But when I woke up, I was still in the same position as when I went to sleep.

Eventually, I began to wonder if I had a brain tumor or some other dreadful disease. So I researched sleep disorders. I learned about sleep cycles, lucid dreams, sleep paralysis, and OBEs. That was the answer! I bought a large stack of books, the best of which are listed at the end of this article.

Facts About OBEs

I learned that lucid dreams and OBEs are common side effects of meditation. The awareness I was developing through meditation was spilling over into my dreaming life.

Some people are scared or confused by the sensations that accompany an OBE. What exactly is happening? To be clear, your soul does not leave your body (or you would die). It's just your focus of awareness expanding beyond your physical senses.

I learned that everyone has OBEs, but most people don't remember them. In a national survey, 20% of Americans recalled having at least one OBE in their lifetime. But those who are able to do it intentionally are less common. A conscious projector has to train himself to remain lucid during the OBE, control his emotional impulses, and recall the experience after he returns to his body.

Lucid Dreaming Practices

One lucid dreaming practice involves asking yourself periodically throughout the day, "Am I dreaming?" Then look at your hands. If you see all of your fingers clearly, then you are awake. Once this becomes a habit, you will start doing it in your sleep. When you look at your hands in a dream, they will look strange, and you'll know that you are dreaming.

Full lucidity requires a great deal of self-control. Before I started having fully lucid dreams, I experienced a long series of semi-lucid dreams that seemed to be testing my ability to control my emotions. These dreams gradually increased my awareness until I could maintain self-control during the dream state.

One way to trigger a lucid dream is to meditate before going to sleep. Listening to audiobooks while sleeping can also trigger lucidity, but I don't recommend it if you want a good night's sleep. I once had an OBE in which I floated around my bedroom while listening to a book on CD. In the heightened awareness of the OBE state, I could clearly hear and analyze the recording, and I remembered what was said after I woke up.

Dreamwork for Positive Change

Dreamwork can help us integrate shadow material. All types of dreams are valuable, including the non-lucid ones. The main difference is that in lucid dreams we face the shadow with conscious awareness. The shadow can be dealt with right there in the dream, instead of waiting until we wake up to analyze it.

Andrew Holecek says that lucid dreaming has been shown to be more effective than psychotherapy for creating permanent, positive change in one's life. I'm not sure how this is measured, but I have noticed changes in myself, including more awareness and control of my waking thoughts and emotions.

Whatever else the OBE experience does, it certainly helps a person overcome the fear of death. Even if you don't think you have a fear of death, all it takes is the strange sensation of floating out of your body to scare the living daylights out of you. At least that was my experience until I read my first OBE book. I learned that what was happening to me was normal and could even be positive.

Initially, I measured the success of any dream by how lucid it was and how much control I seemed to have over the dream. I have since learned to let go of the illusion of control (It really is an illusion, even though it seems like you are doing it) and simply watch the workings of my unconscious mind. I've stopped valuing lucid dreams and OBEs more than regular dreams. I trust that whatever type of dream my unconscious mind gives me, I can interpret it in a way that will be beneficial for my growth.

You may wonder why an experienced lucid dreamer would have this attitude. It's because I have found that what I really need from my dreams is insight and inspiration for my life. I can get that from any type of dream, depending on how I interpret it. I take responsibility for my meaning-making.

Are Lucid Dreams and OBEs Real?

Obviously, this depends on what you mean by real. The authors of some OBE books insist that out-of-body experiences remove the need for religion, scriptures and doctrine. They claim that you can find all the answers to your spiritual questions by OBE-ing. I strongly disagree.

Before the days of OBE-ing, I believed that the soul continues after death. Having an out-of-body experience didn't change this belief. But I imagine it would be shocking for an atheist.

Exploring the workings of my mind in various stages of sleep neither proved nor disproved the existence of God. It didn't discount Jesus's teachings or the need for a moral law. Furthermore, my near-death experience (which is a type of out-of-body experience) did not prove what happens after real death. At best, it showed me something that people may experience before actual death. The mysteries of God and death remain intact.

My daughter began having lucid dreams and OBEs at the same time I did, which was 18 years ago. Between the two of us, we've had thousands of these experiences. In recent years, we have become more interested in the structure of lucid dreams than the content.

The content is different in every dream and is subject to personal interpretation. But the structure is basically the same. If you go far enough in any dream, you will eventually encounter a barrier that you can't cross.

My daughter and I have spent many dreams ignoring the content and focusing on trying to get past the barrier. If we do manage to break through it, we immediately wake up. We finally decided that dreams exist in a sort of container, and if you leave the container, you leave the dream.

We found that we could end an unwanted dream by closing our dream-body eyes, going into "gray space," and just hanging out until the old dream dissolved and a new one appeared. The new dream usually had different content, but the underlying structure was still the same. We've tried other tricks like rewinding segments of the dream and watching them over again. Sometimes the dream replays with no changes, but this isn't always the case.

You can think of the structure as the grid of a holodeck in Star Trek. If you don't like the story, you can change the holoprogram. But if you exit the holodeck, you go back to physical reality.

The long-term lucid dreamer eventually becomes construct-aware. This raises the question of where dreams come from. Who creates them? What is their purpose? My dreams sometimes feel like training exercises. Is it training for life? My waking life often parallel my dreaming life in how I perceive things.

Lucid dreaming changed my perception of both the physical world and the dream world. Just as I can use my awareness to manipulate some aspects of a lucid dream, I can also use my awareness to change my interactions in the physical world. But my degree of control is limited in both worlds because I have to operate within the structure.

I cannot change the underlying structure in either world because I didn't create that structure. Someone else (God) created it and placed me in it. I can't change the law of gravity in the physical world or stop my body from aging. And I can't change the underlying structure of the dream world. I can only choose how I respond to events in either world as they arise.

As I continue to work in both physical and non-physical realities, I develop more skills for operating within these structures, but I cannot remove myself from the pre-set structures.

I still have many unanswered questions.

Here are some books that I recommend as possible resources. That doesn't mean I agree with all of the authors' beliefs and interpretations. Use your own discernment.

Lucid Dreaming and OBE Resources

Dream Yoga by Andrew Holecek

Astral Dynamics by Robert Bruce

Demystifying the Out-of-Body Experience by Luis Minero

Lucid Dreaming by Robert Waggoner