What makes lucid dreaming relevant and relatable at an archetypal level…
You’re human.
You are a dreamer. Whether you remember your dreams or not, it’s a basic biological function of the brain. And you spend about 1/3 of your life asleep. So why would we let a third of our lives pass by us without tapping into the full potential. Lucidity gives us a unique access point into this time. Human nature makes us instinctively hungry for new adventures, peak experiences, and ways to further our self-awareness. Lucid dreaming is built in with all the above.
You’ve got 99 problems.
You’re quite the dreamer. The biological function of dreams is still mostly unknown, but if you didn’t dream, you wouldn’t survive. Also, hello Life: insert being awake, and this means you have an endless supply of challenges to overcome. A great hero needs a great villain to be a great story, so the harder your challenges, the more set up you are for great innovation. The state of lucidity gives you access to conscious capacities beyond the everyday mind, so you can wield your lucidity to infuse some practical genius into your life. Want to start a new business? Incubate the idea in a lucid dream. Want to heal your trauma from past relationships? Ask a lucid dream to show you how. How about you want to learn a new craft? You can learn it directly from your dreams. The applications are literally endless.
You like to feel good.
Wonderment. Awe. Tangible Magic. Love. These are what we live for, experiences that keep us going. Tiny sensual explosions of exuberance. The rapture of beauty. Many report their lucid dreams to be some of the most beautiful experiences they’ve ever had. And once you open your capacity to experience that level of wonderment, it begins to seep into the everyday life. Lucid dreams make us more attuned to higher states of gratitude and wonderment. Start your day with a good lucid dream and you’ll probably have a bangin’ day.
“although Western psychology views lucid dreaming as an interesting anomaly of sleep, with implications for the nature of consciousness in sleep, Eastern thought places considerably more importance upon [it] but within a broad context of various practices designed to develop consciousness.”
-Jayne Gackenbach
You’re down for a little enlightenment.
The good news is, you don’t actually have to spend years learning to meditate (though it wouldn’t hurt, ’cause we could all use a slice of humble pie). Lucidity is an access point into some seriously transcendent states. Lucid dreams be dealin’ spiritual epiphanies like it’s nothin. Tibetans have wielded lucid dreaming as one of the six pathways to Enlightenment for hundreds of years, so you could say it’s kind of a big deal. Whether it’s the ultimate state of enlightenment, or a soft and gradual commitment to becoming less of an asshole, the dream is bellowing with innate wisdom from beyond the ego personality. A lucid dream is the perfect playground for learning about the true nature of existence.