In the practice of Active Dreaming, we do many of the things involved in what is popularly called "lucid dreaming", and a great deal more. However, I confess I have never been enthusiastic
about the term "lucid dreaming" because it has often been associated
with notions of "controlling" or "manipulating"
dreams. This is why I called my first book in this field Conscious Dreaming.
Through dreaming, we have access to a source that is infinitely wiser and deeper than the everyday ego, and we want to be available to that source. I am in favor of learning to choose where we go and what we do in dreams, as in waking life, but that requires discernment, not the fantasy of control.
Through dreaming, we have access to a source that is infinitely wiser and deeper than the everyday ego, and we want to be available to that source. I am in favor of learning to choose where we go and what we do in dreams, as in waking life, but that requires discernment, not the fantasy of control.
Another problem I have
with the term "lucid dreaming" is that it is most often associated
with techniques for waking yourself up to the fact that you are dreaming while
you are asleep. However, the easiest way to become a lucid or conscious dreamer
is to start out lucid and stay that way: in other words, to enter conscious
dreaming from a waking or semi-wakeful state.
My preferred name for
what I teach and practice is Active Dreaming. As the phrase suggests, we can be
active in embarking on conscious adventures in dreaming, and we want to be
active in bringing the energy and insight of our dreams into waking life.
Since I am often asked
whether Active Dreaming is a mode of lucid dreaming, I am going to borrow a
phrase employed by one of my friends in the lucid dreaming fraternity who refers
to my "shamanic lucid dream adventures." I am using the adjective
"shamanic" here to describe a method for shifting consciousness to
enter nonordinary reality for purposes that include the care and recovery of
soul.
How do you become a
shamanic lucid dreamer? You start out conscious and you stay that way. To
accomplish this, you only need three things: a clear intention, an image that
can serve as a portal, and a means of focusing the mind and fueling the
journey. All these things can become available naturally, in the twilight zone
of consciousness that researchers call hypnagogia. You are between sleep and
waking. Images rise and fall in your mindnd any one of those images can become
the gateway for a conscious dream adventure.
An equally simple and
natural way to become a shamanic lucid dreamer is to use a remembered dream as
the portal for a journey. In your night dream, you went to a place, which may
resemble a site in ordinary reality or may be a locale in a separate reality
where the physics are utterly different. Either way, because you were in a
certain place, you may be able to find your way back there, just as you could
return to a house you once visited in regular life.
Why would you want to do
this? Maybe you've been running away from something in your dream world that
scares you - from the Bear, or the Tiger, or an unknown intruder or pursuer. If
you can find the courage to go back inside one of those nightmares and face
what frightened you on its own ground, you may find power and healing waiting
for you on the other side of the terror.
You may want to go back
inside a dream because you were with your dream lover in a tropical paradise
but were interrupted by the alarm clock. You may want to talk to someone who
appeared to you in a dream. You may need to clarify whether that auto accident
could take place in the future, as either a literal and symbolic event, and
what you need to do with that information (once you have it clear) in order to
avoid an unwanted development. You may simply want to know more about a
dream. The best way to understand a dream is to recover more of the experience
of the dream. A dream experience, fully remembered, is its own
interpretation.
Through the technique of
dream reentry, you can pursue any of these agendas, or simply enjoy the fun and
adventure of using a personal dream image as a portal to the multiverse.
The best time to attempt
dream reentry may be when the dream is fresh and you are still closely
connected to it, lingering in bed after waking. But if the dream has energy for
you, you can go back inside any time, even decades after the original
dream.
Shamanic drumming - a
steady beat on a simple frame drum, typically in the range of three to four
beats per second, but sometimes faster - will help you to shift consciousness
and travel into the dreamspace. The steady beat helps to override mental
clutter and focus energy and intention on the journey. The rhythms of the drum
correspond to brain wave frequencies in the theta band, associated with the
hypnagogic zone and its dreamlike imagery. If you want a physiological
explanation of why shamanic drumming is such a powerful tool for shifting
awareness, you could say that the "sonic driving" of the drum herds
our brain waves into the theta band, opening us to its characteristic flow of
imagery. I have made my own drumming
recording for shamanic lucid dreamers.
The drumming will also
help you to synchronize and focus shared adventures in dream travel. You can
invite one of more partners to journey with you through the portal you have
chosen and act as companions and trackers who can support you and bring you
extra information. In my workshops, we frequently have 30 or more active
dreamers traveling together on group adventures of this kind. Often we keep
group logs, and you can read samplings from these in my book Dreamgates and
in the epilogue to Dreamways of the Iroquois, where I describe how
I led a group of frequent flyers on a group journey to meet the shaman-priests
of the Kogi, on their sacred mountain, at the invitation of a Kogi elder.
Through such experiments, we assemble truly scientific data on the reality of
the dreamworlds, and what is possible within them.
Shamanic lucid dreaming
is an adventure in navigating the deeper reality that we can share with a
partner, with a group, or a whole community. Through practice, you can develop the ability to shift consciousness at will, travel in nonordinary reality, and bring back gifts, with or without drumming.
Photo: Leading a fire ceremony for a circle of active dreamers. Photo by Jeanne Cameron.
