Lucid Dreaming

Since I was quite young I have off/on kept journals in which I record my dreams when I remember them and if I think about them soon enough to write them down. When I was younger I taught myself how to have lucid dreams--dreams in which I recognized at the time I was dreaming and could therefore have some say in what happened next in the dream. I haven't done that in a while and so I have decided to take a more active approach to all of the time I spend asleep dreaming. Considering one-third of the average human's life is spent dreaming, I am surprised that more people don't take more of an interest in recalling and trying to understand their dreams.

The best way to get to the point of being able to be lucid while dreaming is to record your dreams. So I have a book by my bed and a light that I write in whenever I can force myself awake just enough to write down what I remember of the dream before getting out of bed - by that time my memory of the dream is typically already gone. I also have a book in which I will record certain data relating to the dreams I remember most fully, especially any I wish to analyze. I am gradually entering certain information about the dreams I record into a spreadsheet to help me make sense of the patterns I observe and I have started a blog about dreaming that I may later link to my Home Page: Dr Pongo's Dream World

I have a few books about lucid dreaming that have been very helpful. Two of the best are Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold's classic "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" and "A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics" by Dylan Tuccillo, Jared Zeizel, and Thomas Peisel.