Dear Robert,
I hope this message finds you well
I still having lucid dreams quite often, but I’m facing great difficulties in stabilizing them and would like, if possible, to receive some advice on this.
My dreams have been happening in a curious and fascinating way. After waking up spontaneously at 5:30 am, meditating for half an hour and reading for another half an hour, I return to bed and focus a strong intention: “I will have a lucid dream now.”
After about two hours lying in bed and progressively relaxing, seeing a beautiful sequence of hypnagogic images, I feel that I finally “crossed a passage.” It is hard to describe it in words, but it is as if my “dream body” has finally broken free of my “physical” body. However, this “dream body” is still lying in my bed (it’s a strange feeling, as if I’m having an Out of Body Experience).
In order to “transport” this dream body to a lucid dream scenario, I put my palms close together and mentally say: “Chi” (I don’t know where I got the idea to do this; it occurred to me spontaneously once, as if “I knew I had to do it”; I also remember that I’ve read in your books about the relationship between life energy – “Chi” – and lucid dreams).
Then something fantastic occurs. I start to feel a very strong “energy ball” between my hands. My “dream body” floats, flies, enters a kind of luminous tunnel and, after crossing it, finally “lands” in a dream.
And at that moment the problems begin. Although rubbing my hands, keeping calm, modulating my emotions, the dream collapses as soon as I try to move or talk to dream figures.
Since I have no impression that I am nervous, I cannot say what would be the causes for this collapse. Would you have any ideas?
All the best,
Krishna.
Hi Krishna,
Thanks for sharing your experience.
As a fundamental rule, we learn that ‘dreaming’ reflects the mind (and its beliefs, expectations, focus, intent/will, etc.). In lucid dreaming, we have the ability to see ‘how’ this process of reflection occurs.
In this particular case, there are a few things that may be behind the issue of the dream collapsing:
- You have come to believe that creating an energy ball and saying “Chi” will transport you from regular dreaming into the lucid dream state. This is your belief. The problem with this approach is that it may “reflect” or help to create too much ‘energy’ in the mental atmosphere, which makes the lucid dream more unstable. (For others reading this, if you have too much energy in a lucid dream, then it often becomes unstable and collapses.)
- Therefore, you may want to ‘move into’ the lucid dream by simply pulling yourself into it, stepping into it, or something visually appropriate to the lucid dream situation (and not perform the ‘chi’ approach). If that results in a stable lucid dream, then you have resolved the problem.
- The next issue may be the general approach, since you lay in bed for a couple of hours, relax, and then see hypnagogic imagery and then “cross the passage” into dream awareness — basically you are doing a Wake Initiated Lucid Dream approach to lucid dreaming (meaning that you are moving from the waking state into a lucid dream). I would suggest that you not spend two hours of relaxation (after a half hour of meditation) — it’s far too long. I would suggest that immediately after meditating, you then tell yourself that your next dream will be lucid, and fall asleep. I say this because your ‘mind’ will be much more in the sleep/dream state naturally (after 30 minutes of meditation), and you will move into a deeper sleep state, where your lucid dream will be more stable.
So those are my ideas. Lucid wishes on your journey of awareness,
Robert