Lesson 11: True Dreams vs. Lucid Dreams

Okay, having gone over the difference multiple times, now comes the time when we separate them out and give you the tools to help you determine what is what.

As stated in former lessons, a true dream is one that comes from your own little subconscious, and a lucid dream is one that is an AP episode. This is not, by the way, the definitions that you will find in a dictionary, but it is the set of definitions that I am using for this class.

Since the environment of these are essentially the same, how can you tell?

The best rule of thumb is "What color is it in?"

By this I mean that a "true" dream will usually be in black and white, while a lucid dream will be in color.

Why the difference? I don't really know, but I have an idea and I will share it with you.

In a true dream, the reason it is in black and white is because the subconscious mind is busy trying to integrate the information it has accumulated into some kind of order, and it simply doesn't have the time to put color all over the scene. Generally that is to the good, since having color in a dream would serve to distract you from what you are looking at.

I mean, think about what the subconscious is doing while it is trying to assimilate that data. It is not only taking the actual events that happened during the day and storing them, but it is also cross-indexing them to the memories that are already there, plus throwing up an environment for you to look at that represents what it is doing. Add to that the normal function of running background "programs" that you have asked it to, like answers to questions, finding an idea that you had, developing an idea out of the cumulated data, looking for correspondences to other days (in relation to what happened today) along with generating things like songs to distract you and other nuisance activities.

Small wonder that in that environment it doesn't have time to put color all over something, just so you can look at it and forget about it in the morning.

I believe that this is why most people forget their dreams in the morning. The Subconscious has no orders to remember them for later, and so it discards all that activity upon waking so that it can start fresh.

So why are Lucid Dreams in color? Most things are in color, and an environment is in color more often than not. I have yet to see a world where everything is shades of grey. That being said, how do you know when you have a color dream or a B&W dream?

Well, you have to remember them. That's where the dream journals come in handy. Telling everything to it's electronic memory, in the case of microcasette recorders, or scribbling till your hand is tired and an hour and a half has passed comes in handy once in a while. If you note down the fact that you had a dream and that it was in color, you may start seeing patterns in your Lucid Dreams, just as you see patterns in your true dreams.

So, what do you use if you can't remember if your dream was in color or B&W? Well, that's when your judgment comes in.

Understand something, it is possible to wake in a true dream just as easily as it is to do so in a lucid dream. The only difference is what you make of it. You can turn a true dream into a lucid dream, simply by willing yourself to another place. It's like when teleporting in a Lucid Dream or an OOB. You just think yourself there.

I have found, in my experiences, that in true dreams, there is a "pre-echo" of what will be happening. Meaning that you KNOW, a split second before something occurs what will happen. This makes sense since your own mind is supplying the images and environment for you. You are yourself, and your subconscious is everyone else. Given that, knowing that this person you are talking to is going to raise his hand and sweep his hair back out of his eyes before he does it can be an indication of a true dream, rather than a lucid dream.

When talking about dreams, it gets confusing. You have the Lucid Dreams, True Dreams, Presentient Dreams, Fantasy Dreams, the nothing Dreams, Nightmares and so on. How can you tell the difference between a scary Lucid Dream and a Nightmare?

To put it simply, you can't. You can't tell the difference with 100% accuracy between any of those dreams. There are some indications that make things easier to identify them as one or the other, but ultimately you won't be able to tell the difference between them until you have a LOT of experience with OOBE to give you a "feel" for what a Lucid Dream is.

That's the long and the short of it. I know it's not much comfort, but that is all that I have to give you.

One other thing is "how long does the feelings in the dream stay with you?" When you go back and re-read the entry in your journal, do you remember the smells and the terror or hope or fear you felt? Does it come back to you or is there noting?

If the answer is yes, then chances are that you had a lucid dream. True dreams tend to NOT have an emotional content, and if they do, it's transient and fades with time.

I'm going to share with you a dream I had last month. There were feelings noted, but for the life of me I can't remember any of the emotional content now, only 28 days later. At the time I say that it is a lucid dream, but I don't know about that now. As I wrote it out, I started getting those same feelings, and even now I can feel an injury I took while in that state, which confirms my supposition that it was a Lucid dream.

Keep in mind that as you project more often, you will get a feel for what is a Lucid and a true dream simply from experience. That instinct is buried inside you and you will know when you are out of your body, rather than just think you might be having a true dream.

My advice: Go with the flow. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, chances are that it is a duck rather than a Canadian Goose. No matter what is going on, act in a way that you have decided to act, and you won't go much wrong in this area.

If you want more on the science of dreams and dreaming, I can give you some resources, but as I'm not a researcher in that area, that's about it.

Here's those resources:

http://www.greatdreams.com/drmrdr.htm Dream Reader's Ultimate Page, and it really is too.
http://www.spiritonline.com/files/messages/15/15.html Spirits online section on OOBE, but they have some good info on Dreams there too. http://www.boudicca.de/files/91/files.htm Boudicca's Bard file area. Mostly dealing with OOBE, but some dream info there too.

Unfortunately, I know only too well how little I know in this area, so this is it. That's all for this lesson. Sorry about that. I'll answer your questions in the email list, but not until Monday when I get back from out of town.

So, let me share a Lucid Dream with you all that I recently had.

"Approximately at 5:30 in the morning, the moon was full, or close to being full.

Mostly it consisted of me in a building that I can only assume was some kind of housing. It felt like an apartment... no, it felt like a school of some sort.

What happened was I started out on the ground floor with my orange backpack on and I began walking through as though I was supposed to be there, which apparently I was. It was an interesting place because it was completely grassed in and it was like an indoor park. Now the building itself went up something like 10 stories above me, and I was walking one of the miniature paths that went through this.

As I'm walking along the path, a guy who was 20-21 or something like that comes along and starts talking to me except I ignore him and I continue along my way. Then a girl comes up, grabs my pack and pulls it together and makes it narrower because it's supposed to be narrower. That's the current fashion. The pockets on my pack were unzipped and there were two additional pockets besides the main compartment and there were things in there, but I'm not sure what.

(let me digress here for a bit. The Orange backpack I have is a remnant of my school days. It has one huge main compartment for books and such, while on the outside there is a smaller pocket sewn on the front of the pack for storage of smaller items. There is a snap pocket on the left side, and a pencil/pen holder on the right. All of it is nylon and I still have it. It's a strong pack.)

There was a secondary pocket on the front, and there was also a document pocket on the from of that which doesn't exist on the real pack. It was just a piece of material that was sewn down that had a zipper on it.

Anyway, she starts talking about how she can make it narrower since that is the fashion now and I got this strong impression of her making my backpack look like my daughter's backpack (same general shape as mine, but with no outside pockets at all, and a bungee cord that goes in a shoestring pattern up the outside of her pack to cinch it smaller.) I didn't want that and I told her politely to go away or I would do something that she didn't want me to and that she would regret.

She took this to heart and went away and then placed herself directly in my path as I am waking this path to get to the other side. I got the impression that she was of the opinion of 'Oh, YOU'LL do something I'LL regret? We'll just see about THAT.... Fine, I'll just irritate the shit out of you since you don't like being touched.

I walked around her twice trying to avoid a confrontation, and she kept placing herself back in my path. The second time I said, 'You do that again, I'm calling the police.' getting really irritated with her. Her friend was standing off to my left, the guy from earlier, She was standing on my right almost on the path and she kept creeping in, and trying to crowd me off the path, where he waited or where I would have no choice to run into her.

I wasn't too thrilled about walking in the grass for some reason.

She then asked me 'How would you like it if I called the police?' and I told her to go ahead, I hadn't done anything.

Next thing I know, I'm up on the 10th floor landing. Now these are metal floors, like ornamental ironwork used in chair seats. The landings only exist around the corners of the building, on the 10th floor. There were two doors, one on each wall of the corner and they connected the doors to each other. I don't know what else was down there, but you could see all the way down to the floor.

These platforms were not connected to each other, they were just a square corner piece. They were away from the walls by about a foot or foot and a half (1/3 to 1/2 meter for those metric friends). There was a narrow bridge connecting the platform to the doors.

The outside had a walkway that went all the way around the building, 10 stories up, and you could walk from one door to another.

Somehow I had gotten up on these platforms and was in the process of taking off my shoes because I didn't want to make any noise. I walked over to one of the doors to get outside. I realized that I would need my shoes outside and I tried to get back inside to get them, and found out the door was locked from the outside.

About this time, another girl who was apparently with this first girl, came outside and picked up a very small stone, about 1/2 inch across (2 cm) and threw it straight at me, hitting me in the cheek, just below my right eye.

It hurt like crud, so I try to get back inside and find that the door is locked, try the companion door to get back on the same platform, and it's locked too. I go down a ways to get inside from one of the other doors. The first door is locked, but the second door to get on that same platform is unlocked. Open it up and find out that the bridge to the platform is rusty and rotting away and really unsafe to walk on.

There are two police officers on the first platform, looking like Georgia State Patrol officers, just without the "Smokey" hats and now I'm feeling very persecuted so I'm really grateful to see them. I tell them "I'm so glad you are here, you won't believe what I'm going through." Then I woke up.

I got the distinct impression as I woke up that the officers were there to arrest me for harassing that first girl and her friend, even though I wasn't doing anything.

My wife says that this was a very lucid dream, and I tend to agree. I was getting feelings emotions colors and many other things like touching, smelling and hearing which normally don't happen in regular dreams."

Now, since I am in no means an expert in dreams, other than where it touches on OOBE, I'll end this part of the lesson before I get you really messed up.

I'll give you your assignment in another email.

Assignment:

To turn in: Using your journals, I want you to find an example of a Lucid Dream and tell me what may be different if it was a true dream instead. What might your subconscious be trying to work out in this case if it was a true dream instead of a lucid one?

To do: Keep up the journals as best as you can. In every part of the literature that I have ever seen on this subject, every single one of them stress how important it is to remember the dreams in order to be able to control them, and the best way to remember them is to write them down. I'm doing this too, and I know how hard it is.

To read: Pick some pages and articles from the above resources and take a look at them. Read over those and decide which are worthwhile and which are trash. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO READ THEM ALL, but get a good sampling of the material. This is for your information. I would say that 3-5 different articles, about the size of my standard lessons would be good, or 8-10 smaller ones.

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