We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
T. S. Elliot

A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming

THIS IS THE ABSOLUTELY COOLEST BOOK I HAVE READ IN FIVE+ YEARS!!!!!

Let me just get that out of the way, and I read a lot! I don't know about you, but I always thought that "Dream Interpretations" were kind of bland and dumb. Maybe I'm wrong, I'm actually wrong about lots of things...but Oneironautics is NOT a book about interpreting dreams. It's a book about learning to SOAR, about setting your imagination on fire!

The average person spends 25 years sleeping.

That is a LOT of time. Would you want to just forget about 25 years of your life? Sleeping is important. It's when our body heals and recharges itself. Have you ever had a dream were the feeling 'lingered' with you for days or weeks afterwards? Dreaming, for many of us, is undeniably important, yet...

How do we learn to come awake in our dreams?

*This is THE focus of this book. Last night, I came awake in a dream for maybe the 3rd or 4th time ever in my life...and after I realized I was dreaming(using a reality check habit I'm cultivating in the waking life), I immediately stabilized the dream (if I don't stabilize, I tend to wake up immediately after becoming lucid) by spinning around in a circle, focusing my eyes on everything around me. Sometimes yelling 'STABILIZE!' at the top of your lungs can help too. The dream world became more clear, everything became sharper, and I was in a brick building with a man in a turquoise jacket, and big glassy bug eyes. I did something that I've always wanted to try, I started running across the room as fast as I could, and I ran straight into the wall, through layers of insulation, wiring, steel supports, more walls, I ran straight through all them in a big rush walls/rooms/and dust...and I came out the side of the building.

WOW!!!! I'm yelling to myself, THAT WAS INCREDIBLE!!!

Oneironautics is the art of dreaming, it's not about trying to "read" your dreams, but instead learning to bridge the realms of consciousness, and carry your memories between both worlds. It's really hard. I've been practicing now for months, and only managed to become lucid a handful of times. But those times are also the first times in my life I've ever become lucid (realized I was dreaming, and also managed to not wake up at the same time). Considering I am 31, that is still REALLY cool.

This book falls under the category of DEEPLY COOL for me. I wish I would have discovered it sooner, but alas, it's never too late to fall in love with yourself again. Again, it's a FIELD GUIDE, it's about how to train yourself to wake up inside your dreams, and explore them with your conscious memory intact. Believe it or not, this can be pretty tricky for some of us. The first time I became lucid, it only lasted what seemed to be 5 or 6 seconds. Even remembering your dreams can be really difficult, but there are a LOT of ways you can improve. It's awesome, like the fucking coolest video game I ever tried :P

Here's the table of contents

A few choice excerpts from the book

For as long as there have been blank spots on the map, there have been pioneers--those unafraid of the fringe, who relish the untamed, the unknown, and the undiscovered. These individuals are inspired by the adventurous impulse to survey new ground, to chart new territory, or to discover new ideas. They are the innovators, creators, visionaries, and explorers. Today we find ourselves on the brink of yet another frontier. You, holding this book, are about to enter this unknown world.

You're not a stranger to this land. In fact you've traveled there every night of your life, whether you realize it or not. You leave your familiar world and experience this place, which has it's own rules, customs, laws, and native population. You can traverse this frontier just like you'd walk through a forest, here, you can learn, discover, heal, and awaken to different realities.

When to anchor your dream.

1. Upon becoming lucid. The first moments of a lucid dream are the most crucial, so perform these stabilizing techniques directly after becoming lucid. Before jumping into your dream adventure, always pause for a second and anchor yourself in the dream by performing the techniques that follow in this chapter. If you're too hasty, you won't go very far anyhow.

1. When the dream starts fading. When the lucid dream is in danger of becoming a normal dream again, you'll actually see it happen. You'll notice that the first of your five senses to go is often sight. Visual elements begin to fade and corrode. As if you stood up too quickly from a chair, the world in front of you will blur and darken. We have a big, fancy, hard-to-pronounce word for this phenomenon: fading. If the dream begins getting fuzzy or lacks richness, you'll know you're fading, and it's time to stabilize.

Flying

It isn't a surprise that flying is the primary form of travel amongst dreamers. Most people report that this is their favorite thing to do when they find themselves self-aware in their dreams. The feeling of the wind rushing across your face, the freedom and exhilaration of moving in any direction, free of all limitations, is quite an intoxicating experience. Although flying is one of the easiest ways to travel while dreaming, it is a skill that takes confidence and practice to master. You don't have to be an angel to earn your "wings", but developing a capacity to fly with control takes trial and error and some practice.

Think of the following as a flight manual in Aerial Oneironautics. It will teach you the basics needed for dream air travel. As you develop more control, you'll gain new skills and maneuverability. You'll find yourself flying at incredible speeds, or at unreachable heights, performing aerial acrobatics that would make any superhero green with envy.

Takeoff

When you become lucid, take a second and ground yourself with some stabilizing techniques before jumping right into flight. It's important to begin modestly. Take it slow, start off by jumping up and floating back down. You'll quickly find out, gravity only exists in the dream world if we want it to exist. At first it will seem as if gravity and other physical laws are present, but soon as you focus on drifting up toward the sky you'll see your toes gently lift off the ground. Think "float" and see yourself floating. That's all it takes, it's that easy.

If you still need help getting off the ground, use one of these visualizations below; images of wings or devices will help trick your logical mind accept the "impossible" reality of flying. These visualizations are, of course, unnecessary, but they can serve as "training wheels" for first-time fliers.

Remember, it's all about your thoughts and expectations. Believe that you can fly and you can, fear that you'll fall and you will. Like Peter Pan and Wendy, think happy thoughts.

Quick Note

I made this post to clear up an accidental double post from my feed. I was hoping to make a much more comprehensive introduction to this book, so I'll probably keep posting about it later...it really is top of it's class!

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Thankyou for your support and thoughts! Wild Earth is a series about strange and wonderful aspects of the nature world. I will continue publishing the Story of Money series as time goes on, also feel free to check out my Exercise Anywhere series for those of you who like to get a workout in unconventional(yet practical!) ways. If you've enjoyed this post, please upvote!

Wild Earth

#1 -Flatworms Can Store Memory Outside Their Brains
#2 - The Untold Majesty of Flowers
#3 - Dog People, Language, and Death

The Story of Money

The Story of Money 1: Introduction
The Story of Money 2: Work, Wage, and Labor
The Story of Money 3: The Myth of Barter
The Story of Money 4: Markets, Metals, Coins, and Military