Lucid dreaming is active dreaming. Not just knowing you're dreaming, but dreaming also with intent. Dreaming is a very important part of many Pagan spiritualities. Ancient lore is full of the messengers of God(s) visiting people in their dreams to give advice, commands and general knowledge. If dreaming wasn't important to the people who first began to repeat these stories, there would be no story, or at least, the messenger wouldn't come in a dream but would knock on the door.
Dreaming is an Astral state. Your soul leaves your body and experiences things in other places. Sometimes in other worlds, and sometimes in this world. I have had several dreaming experiences where my spirit was drawn into that of someone who was experiencing pain, and so I had the nightmare of their pain while their spirit fled. Remember also that the dream world is part of the Astral Plane and it is is not limited by linear time, so your spirit can experience things that happened years ago or that have not yet happened. Also, you are able to speak with spirit beings while in a dream state that your material senses can't even detect.
You are asleep when you are dreaming, rather than a sort of semi-consciousness you might experience with other Astral States. This makes your dreams very difficult to control. The point of Lucid Dreaming, however, is not so much to control your dreams as to experience them fully. Once you've accomplished this you can move on to Dreaming with Intent or simply use Trance to accomplish your Astral Work.
Step 1 Remembering Your Dreams
The first step in Lucid Dreaming, that is fully experiencing your dreams, is learning to remember them. If you remember them you can look for patterns in them and this will help you realize you are dreaming later. Some people say they never dream, but everyone dreams all the time, unless some drug is preventing them (which you should quit right now because addiction and magic are not a good mix). Most of us remember some of our dreams, or at least little snatches.
The goal here though is to remember at least one dream a night.
In order to remember your dreams you'll need to write them down, so get a notebook. This will be your dream journal. You will keep it and a pen next to your bed. Every night before you go to bed, set the intention of remembering your dream by turning to a clean page in your journal and writing a heading on it. It should say "On this date (the next morning) I dreamed… "
Many people forget their dreams immediately upon waking up because they are quickly distracted with material things- like children, radio, television, the dog, etc. So, we must try to avoid these distractions and give us time to emerge from our dream and write it down before we are faced with day to day distractions. Once it's written down we can forget it.
To avoid these distractions, do not allow other people (or pets) to be your wake up call. Get an alarm and set it to 10 minutes before everyone else gets up. Do not use a clock radio. You will be immediately distracted by the words of the music or the conversation of the DJs. You can, however, use a recording of classical music, jazz or some other wordless music to wake you up. The alarm on my cellphone with preset musical ringtones works well for this. A harsh beeping or buzzing will only jar your poor brain into wakefulness, potentially wiping out all memories. Your waking should be gentle and solitary. There are new alarm clocks out now that begin with a low tone and get gently louder and louder. These are great, gentle, and unnecessary. You decide how you're going to wake up.
Once you're awake, before you get out of bed, while you're still in that fuzzy half-sleep state, grab your journal and write about everything you experienced in the night. Even if your entry looks like "There was something about a dog, and I think it was raining. I wasn't in my own identity, I was in my house, or whosever house I was, but it wasn't the house I live in." If that's all you can remember, that's fine. Don't use statements like "I can't remember anymore." or "I don't remember much". Making those statements makes it so. You may find once you start writing what you can remember, you will remember more and more. If you have trouble with the writing part, you can use a tape recorder instead. Don't try to interpret your dream while you are recording it. Just stick to the facts. You can leave space on the page to go back and interpret it later. Trying to interpret the dream while you write it down is a distraction in itself and you may end up forgetting bits of it.
If you wake up during the night from a dream, write it down right away. Don't think you'll remember it in the morning. You absolutely will not.
Step 2 Experience Your Dreams
Once you've started remembering your dreams, you can work on experiencing them. The key to this is noticing the difference between dream life and waking. You will find these differences in your journal. You will start seeing entries that say, "I was an old man" "I was in a house that was my house, but it's not really my house" or "I was a child" or "My friend Joe who died two years ago was there". Remember these and when you are dreaming you will start saying to yourself "Oh, this isn't really me, it must be a dream." At first this might wake you up, or you might start trying to change the dream. Resist this urge. Just relax and enjoy it like a movie.
It is also helpful in your efforts to realize you are dreaming (and thus to dream lucidly) to set it as your intent before you go to sleep. You may create a short ritual before you go to bed and declare as part of it your intent to remember your dreams. My boyfriend at this stage had a ring I gave him that he put on before he went to bed at night. He always noticed it on his hand because it felt funny. If he was wearing it (which he wasn't always in his dreams, of course) he knew he was dreaming.
Hopefully these few tips can get you started with Lucid Dreaming and eventually Dreaming with Intent and Astral Projection.
