Read A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming Online
Authors: Dylan Tuccillo,Jared Zeizel,Thomas Peisel
Feel the Power
Superpowers can be a lot of fun, but they do serve a purpose.
Spend an hour shooting energy balls into the night sky and
you’ll probably wake up feeling powerful and confident. After
you’re able to move cars with your mind, what insignificant day-
to-day problems can stand in your way? If you’re capable of doing
the impossible in a dream, don’t forget that the waking world is a
place of possibility too. Be sure to take that feeling of confidence
and empowerment with you. Remember that under your modest
work clothes hides a pair of tights and a cape.
I think I was in a store, being attacked by evil-satanic witches. I
told them they couldn’t hurt me because this was a dream, and
I have superpowers. They laughed at me.
“Suuure you do,” said one of the witches.
“Watch me prove you wrong!” I said. I created a fireball in my
hand and threw it at them. I did this repeatedly, and the witches
were all jumping around trying to avoid the flaming balls. Next, I
shot ice from my hands onto the ground where the witches were
standing, and the witches slipped on the ice and collapsed in a
heap. This time, I was the one who was laughing. —celeSTe F.
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WHITE MAGIC
energy can be used to create as well as destroy. It can be used to fight off
monsters, but it can also help power your lucid dream creations. Say you’re
building a rocket ship that just won’t take off. direct all the surrounding energy
toward the rocket ship and give it the push it needs. And what about healing
yourself? By manipulating the energy around you, you’re becoming aware of
the fabric of the dream.
I parted ways with the ground and soared into the clouds above. one of
the bolts of lightning struck me but had no effect. I held out my hand and
gathered the lightning into my palm. I proceeded to collect lightning from
all around me, all coalescing into a luminous little ball of energy. It sparked
and glowed with a soothing blue hue. rIchArd V. W.
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Summary
• Superpowers are totally possible inside dreams.
• The limits of your abilities directly relate to your focus and
confidence.
• Your dreams can be a place without gravity, where the
definition of “you” is unstable and where your mind can control
objects and energy at will.
• Take your sense of confidence and power into the waking world.
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P a r t F i v e
Mastering
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terrain
You know the land. You know the people. You’ve worked
hard and it’s paying off. Very likely the landscape has
already revealed some amazing wonders. The dream
world is no longer the foggy memory of a foreign world but a
destination you visit with complete clarity every night. The barrier
between possible and impossible is rapidly blurring. Your adven-
ture has only just begun.
You may not be there yet. Perhaps you’re still working on
remembering your dreams, or giving a go at the wake-back-to-bed
technique. Not to worry, you’ll have plenty of time to practice, a
few hours every night in fact.
The dream world is vast. In the upcoming chapters, as we leave
the lush grass and rolling hills, your surroundings transition to a
sparser, rocky place. The road ahead is more challenging to navi-
gate, the map is harder to read, but the rewards are greater than
before.
Here, you will come face-to-face with aspects of yourself.
It’s time to tackle those hopes and fears that have been waiting
patiently (or not so patiently) on the cusp of your subconscious.
Like Odysseus, you will battle monsters, overcome challenges, and
learn to heal yourself. And all before breakfast.
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15
Defusing Nightmares
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Fear has its use but cowardice has none.
—Mahatma Gandhi,
nonviolent activist, lawyer, walking enthusiast
Evil gremlins, masked psychopaths, satanic witches,
mutated zombie brains, little girls climbing out of wells.
We’ll happily pay good money for one of these popcorn
flicks, to feel like we’re getting chased by a chain saw–wielding
maniac or some other monster. We love to get the crap scared out
of us. But when these dark figures show up in our dreams, it gets
a little too real.
Nightmares are the dark underbelly of the dream world, bring-
ing out intense feelings of fear, terror, distress, or anxiety. And
they don’t just happen when we’re young; about 5 to 10 percent of
adults have at least one or more nightmares a month. In a study
of 439 German students, an average of about two nightmares per
month were reported, a statistic backed up by a separate study of
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Chinese students. Whether you’re being chased, attacked, intimi-
dated, or find yourself suddenly naked in public, nightmares are
always emotionally charged. Even after you wake, your heart is still
racing and your stomach is twisted in a tight knot. You may tell
yourself “it was just a dream,” but the physical and emotional toll
it takes on you is very real.
Dreams serve as internal status reports. They reflect how we
are feeling in our waking life. So it makes sense that stress, illness,
The town is happy. The people are happy. The sun is out and
everything is good in the world. All of a sudden about a half a
dozen
Mad Max/Devil’s Reject
–esque thugs come cruising into
town. They start trouble and then knock me out. I awaken in a
dark and dirty jail cell with the door open. As I leave the jail,