The Dream Sourcebook: A Guide to the Theory and Interpretation of Dreams (29 page)

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Authors: Phyllis R. Koch-Sheras

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BOOK: The Dream Sourcebook: A Guide to the Theory and Interpretation of Dreams
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order to promote lucid dreaming during sleep; this technique was proven successful by Gregory Scott Sparrow, a psychotherapist and the author of
Lucid Dreaming: Dreaming of the Clear Night
.
How will you know you're moving closer to lucid dreaming? Again, having an active relationship with your dreamworld will encourage more active dreaming: better recall, more vivid imagery, less fragmented images. It will also lead to more exploration of the dream environment while you are dreaming. You may not know you're dreaming, but you will begin to recognize people, places, and things that have appeared in other dreams, and you may ask yourself what one of these symbols means while in the dream. While learning to use dream language, one novice dreamworker had a dream with no apparent plot in which characters and objects appeared one after the other, each with some ostensibly symbolic meaning, in a somewhat disjointed fashion. As he was dreaming, he was aware that each had "meaning," though he was not sure what the meaning was. When a child who looked like neither boy nor girl appeared, and he said to himself in the dream, "This must represent the not-boy, not-girl part of me," he became frustrated and woke himself upa typical prelucidity experience, and one that perhaps reflects his own difficulty feeling comfortable using dream language.
If possible, avoid waking yourself up; instead, move with the dream, following it where it leads. In time, you may begin to make choices and take actions within the dream. But remember, to get the most out of this opportunity for active participation in the dream, you should take care not to dismiss or destroy any dream characters or objects. Allow yourself to remain in their presence, no matter how disturbing, in order to receive their
 
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message completely. Otherwise, you could end up using lucidity in your dreams as a defense to avoid the full impact of your dreams. Experience and explore, rather than control. In time, and especially with practice, you can learn to welcome lucidity and to maintain it when it occurs. Dream researcher Jayne Gackenbach puts it this way: "The focus of dream control should be on learning how to control one's response to dream events, not on controlling the creation of those events."
Lucid dreaming has many usesanswering questions, resolving conflicts, and even helping to heal physical or psychological wounds. Perhaps people find success in this way because the dreaming mind is less threatened and more in control during the lucid dream state than during the waking state, and therefore more capable of confronting difficult issues. Further, the dreamer may have increased access to creative insight, healing effects, and problem solving during a lucid dream. Whatever the reasons, lucid dreaming offers the serious dreamer a fertile ground in which to cultivate dream techniques while dreaming. It can also make it possible to experience a sense of mastery and control in the dream world that can transfer into waking life. One dreamer, who had suffered a serious physical assault while living in Moscow, used a recurring lucid dream to build back physical strength in her broken bones and muster up the emotional courage to move on with her life. Here are some excerpts from her dream commentary:
[In the dream,] I am lying in my bed in my apartment in Moscow, my knees piled high on four Russian pillows. I am aware of the limitations of my body and become afraid. I canvas the details of the room . . . and the black of night outside. I hear noise and picture a man climbing up the drainpipe outside. I actually see him through the lace curtains
 
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and the glass doors, climbing onto my balcony. He is the very large man who assaulted me, dressed in dark clothes and holding a gun. It is clear to me that he intended to shoot me, to finish his job.
Then I direct it all: What options do I have in this dream? What can I do to protect myself? I slide across the sheets, and begin to roll to the left so that I can slide between my mattress and the wall. Only now I am stuck. I feel fear. If the man comes in, I have no place to go.
So I tell myself to start the episode over.
As she continues to have this dream, night after night during the first month of her recovery, this dreamer chooses to fortify herself in various ways against her intruder; in one dream, she has herself roll in a different direction, toward an exit. In another, she added more "props."
I started to see myself lying in bed with a particular nightgown, but this night I wore my body brace to bed so that I was stronger, first crawling and then over successive nights, finally getting up and running toward the living room to break a window (one night) and the front door (another night).
In reality, she says, she never wore that brace to bed, and was no stronger physically than she had been before. But in the dream, even as the danger increased, she was better equipped to deal with it, because her lucidity enabled her to prepare more and more each time she replayed the dream. She began to see this as a way of increasing her will to get well. Interestingly, even without knowing why she took a particular action (wearing her body brace, heading for the front door, and so on), she was still able to experience a feeling of growing emotional strength and healing.

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