By becoming more mindful, it is possible to make all your wishes come true while you are asleep.
As you progress on the path of meditation, the mindfulness you acquire doesn’t just operate when you’re awake but it remains with you even when you’re asleep.
The incredible thing about being mindful in your dreams is that you begin to slip into what is known as lucid dreaming. Since you have practiced the act of checking in on your mind so many times during meditation, you retain this habit even in your dreams. You can encounter a moment where you consciously realize that you’re dreaming and that’s when a lucid dream begins.
I used to believe that lucid dreams were quite rare. But after talking to many people, I’ve realized that they’re not at all uncommon. It’s just that most of us forget our dreams and therefore can’t remember whether they’re lucid or not.
If you have powerful mindfulness, you can not only realize that you’re in a dream but you can also take control of that dream. You can choose to stay in it or wake up from it. Moreover, you can manipulate the dream in order to experience anything that you like. You can fly, you can breathe underwater, you can travel to a different planet, you can meet anyone you like such as the president or the Buddha or God.
Another intriguing aspect about dreams is that they are not time-dependent. It can seem like five seconds have passed in your dream while in actuality a whole night has gone by. Conversely, you can feel like you’ve been in a dream for weeks or months while you’ve been napping for only one or two hours. So you can have many diverse experiences in a single night or nap.
There are two ways I use to check that I’m in a dream so that if I am, I can transition into a lucid dream. If there’s a clock nearby, one way is to look at the clock, check the time, look away and look back to see the time again. If you look at the clock and it’s say 1 o’clock and you look away but when you look back it’s three-thirty, then you either have a very bad clock or you’re in a dream. Another way is to count your fingers. If you look down and have your usual 5 fingers, you’re probably awake. But if you look down and you’ve got 7 or 8 fingers then you’re in a dream.
Once you’re confident you’re dreaming and have gotten used to the landscape, you can start to create whatever experience you wish to have. I’ve found that it can often be hard to alter the dream scenery drastically. Something that works well for me is to spin around and hold the intention of what I want strongly in my mind. When I stop spinning, I find myself in my new, desired landscape.
There are many tips and tricks to induce frequent and stronger lucid dreams but the most fundamental and effective way is to develop a strong mindfulness. Apart from making you happier and healthier, meditation can help you experience all that you wish to – an incredible reason to get on your cushion more frequently.
