Meditation #39: Let go of your thoughts before sleep.

At night, when it’s time for sleep, don’t be afraid to let go of your thoughts in order to drift away.

Sometimes I literally say goodnight to the different thoughts and mental projects that have followed me to bed. I often visualize a shelf in my mind on which I place each thing, one by one, as I say goodnight. I can rest easy knowing that each thing will still be there to greet me in the morning. It’s not like you are going to forget that you wanted to research online schools, or study Chinese, or figure out how to crack that plot point in your new novel.

Those thoughts came to you once, and they will come to you again. By putting them to bed at night, you aren’t saying goodbye to them forever.

And if you are worried, like I often used to be, that if you don’t think about a certain thing right now then you might miss out on some tremendous insight into it–well, let that notion go. Odds are, given the overwhelming similarities between your brain today and your brain tomorrow, you will still have that insight whether you think about the thing now or later. And, as I said once before, it’s always prudent to go with the odds.

Lucid Dreaming

I’ve taken up lucid dreaming, again.

About fifteen years ago I got heavily into it. Read lots of articles online, found different techniques for inducing lucid dreams. It was fascinating stuff. (And it’s funny to remember the internet back then. It felt like you could find anything, but it wasn’t nearly as sleek and streamlined as it is now.)

I remember reading about dream signs, and that just blew my mind. If you don’t know about them, or lucid dreaming, let me explain this: You pick something to be a dream sign. Say, crows. Every time you see crows in your waking life, you make a mental check if you’re dreaming. You ask yourself out loud if you’re dreaming. You try to fly. You try reading text or digital clocks (neither of which work right in dreams).

You do this throughout the day, every day, and eventually it becomes such a part of your routine that pretty soon you’ll start seeing those crows in your dream. And when you do, you ask yourself if you’re dreaming. You try to fly, and it works. You try reading text or digital clocks, and you can’t. Suddenly you’re lucid dreaming.

You’re conscious while your mind is asleep. You’re in control of your dream, now.

That’s lucid dreaming, and it’s amazing.

I’ve done it a handful of times. Maybe less. And the feeling is incredible. Imagine real life, and all the experiences you have, but your body doesn’t exist. Your sensory experience is direct. You don’t feel things through your fingertips and your neurons; you feel them directly. You don’t see light filtered through your eyes; you see it directly. You don’t feel the clothes on your body or the air on your skin, because you have no body, only the visual illusion of one. It’s something that has to be experienced to be believed. When that switch happens and you go lucid, everything becomes brighter and more solid.

And, best of all, you can do anything.

Or you can try to, anyway. That’s another reason lucid dreams are so cool. It’s not just like daydreaming, using your imagination. It’s more like reprogramming a video game. Remember Inception? “There are rules,” as Leonardo DiCaprio said, and it’s true. When you’re conscious that you’re dreaming, you can make changes but it takes effort and willpower, and some things just can’t be changed. Dream characters will still behave with apparent autonomy; structures and roads are solid and can’t just be changed with a thought.

This may seem nonsensical, since everything in a dream is happening inside your own head. How can people in your dreams have their own will, if you’re the one creating them? It’s because it’s not your conscious mind that creates them, it’s your subconscious. Yes, it’s still your brain, but it’s a part of your brain that isn’t fully under your control. (If any part of your brain can be said to be under your control. But that’s for another blog post.)

It’s all about expectations, that’s what the articles say. If you open a door and expect to see a unicorn, you will see a unicorn. If you jump off a roof and expect to fly, you will fly. (Remember The Matrix? “Free your mind.” Neo fell off that roof because he didn’t expect to be able to make the jump.)

So people act like people, and buildings are solid, and water flows downhill, because these are all things you expect to be true. If you want people to act differently, you have to expect them to. If you want buildings to change shape, or water to flow uphill, you have to expect it.

Anyway, this was all fifteen years ago that I first stumble upon lucid dreaming. I got heavily into it, had a couple of (brief) lucid experiences, and then sort of left it behind. Frankly, I’m not good at sticking with things. Even things I’m super into. When something else comes along that gets my interest, I always follow it at the expense of previous things I’ve been interested in. (This is the single, fundamental aspect of my personality that led me to develop the Five Things philosophy!)

So here I am all these years later, and suddenly getting back into it. I was listening to a philosophy podcast a couple of weeks ago about…well, honestly, I don’t remember the topic. But they mentioned lucid dreaming, in passing. It reminded me how interesting a subject it is, and I realized that I’m in a much better place in my life right now to dive back into it, thanks to the Five Things.

I can easily fold lucid dream study into my daily routine, and I have.

For the last three nights (and at least one nap) I have made attempts to induce lucid dreaming. It’s been mostly unsuccessful, but that’s not to say it’s been without progress. The first night I had a few minutes of lucidity where I walked on water, but upon waking I couldn’t be sure if I was actually lucid or just dreaming I was lucid. (It’s a fine line, and a fascinating one that leads into all sorts of crunchy conversations about free will and such.

I will continue to practice every day and night, and I feel confident that within a few weeks I’ll be much better. Even people who have been doing this for decades still don’t have lucid dreams every night. As you can imagine, it takes a bit of practice to even get yourself to become aware that you’re dreaming, let alone get yourself to stay asleep after you do become aware.

I believe this is an area of mental study worthy of my time, and that can prove very fruitful in the study of philosophy, as well as the betterment of the mind. If you want to build a better mind, I can’t think of a better place to start than in dreams.

Now I need to go watch Inception again. Excuse me.

Links:

http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/wake-induced-lucid-dreams.html
This is the best method I have found so far for inducing lucid dreams. What it says about “kinetic movement” helping to solidify the experience is definitely true for me. The first time I had a truly lucid dream, years ago, it was because I felt myself falling asleep and imagined I started spinning around in place. When I stopped, I was fully immersed in the dream. My personal theory is that forcing my mind to keep track of the visual field as it spins around me forces it to step up its game, so to speak, and really make sure it’s consistent and believable.