Lucid dreams, "Dreams of Clarity" and delusions

Humble · November 2010

Has anyone else experienced things like this?

 Throughout my life I have had many lucid dreams, the more often I meditate the more it happens, the more often I dream journal the more it happens.

I reached a point a few years ago where I was recalling 3-6 dreams every morning in great clarity. The problem was that some of the dreams were quite disturbing. In one dream I saw a coworker of mine having sex with my wife (at the time) I actually stopped dream journaling for this reason. I simply was not ready to see everything that was going on in my subconscious mind. I am considering starting again I already recall a couple of dreams vaguely every morning but I know I can get back to almost full recollection with a little practice.

The dreams I have described so far are mostly "normal" or average dreams based largely on subconscious thought processes. I have also experienced lucid dreams and what some may call dreams of clarity. There was a time when I thought that some of these experiences were out of body experiences. I now think they probably still fall under the lucid dream category. I will describe a couple here.

So two nights ago I was laying in bed. My girlfriend was sleeping with her head on my chest and I drifted into some sort of altered state. I heard my subconscious stream of thoughts (which happens often when I am drifting off to sleep or waking up) so this did not seem strange. What was strange is that I started to hear my girlfriends subconscious stream of thoughts and it sounded like our subconscious thoughts began to have a conversation. It was completely unstructured, more like expressions of pure emotion coming at random and bouncing off of each other. It was as if you flipped to a random page in a book read a random sentence or two then flipped to another random page and repeated this for a few minutes.

Now this alone is very strange but what happened next was simply mind blowing. I saw in the upper right corner of my eye (my eyes were closed) a distant bright light. I focused on it and it rapidly surrounded my vision. Then I felt as if I was suspended in infinite white light and the only way to explain this would be that I was floating in an infinite void of white light surrounded by love and warmth. My body felt as if it was filled with energy and at that moment I b believed I was in the presence of god. I began praying and thanking god for this wonderful gift and for his love and patience.

Then after some time I became curious, what if I could float out of this cocoon of light and love and explore what was outside. As I began to float out of it I was back in my bedroom and to my surprise I was not alone. My girlfriend or at least my mental representation of her was there trying to hold me back from floating out of the window to explore. I told her there was nothing to worry about it was just a dream and I would be right back. She finally relented and I gently flew out the window. I was immediately confronted by a giant vulture who loomed ominously over me. However, I was empowered with boundless love from the experience I had previously and as I held out my hands and generated a feeling of loving kindness the vulture turned into a tiny bird that lay helplessly in my hands.

I told the bird that I would grant it back its previous body if it would let me ride on its shoulders for a while. It agreed and I went for a rather uneventful flight around the block, it was dark and the details were not very clear so I returned to my body and then began waking myself up by saying my girlfriends name over and over until I heard myself say it out loud. At this point I awoke and told her this incredible story.

The thing that strikes me the most is that I experienced this during a time where I had not been meditating or practicing any religious actions. I have not been praying, or reading. There was such a long time when I meditated diligently, prayed and read, and attempted to stimulate some sort of altered state where I could commune with some higher entity, God, or enter a divine abode. But for the most part all of my previous efforts had been fruitless. In this time where I have not tried at all I have had one of the most important altered state experiences of my life. Of course I have no idea what it all means.

That was an example of a dream some have told me constitutes an out of body experience here is an example of a lucid dream.

I had a dream last night in which I became aware I may be dreaming. I stopped moving for a moment and closely observed my surroundings. I noted that it looked like a fairly normal suburban area. There was grass to my right. A chain linked fence to my left and I was standing on a cement walk way. I knelt down and felt the grass and side walk thinking that surely if this was a dream they would not feel like they should. The cement felt rough like cement. The Grass felt bristly like grass and as I stood and ran my hand across the chain link fence I was surprised to find that it felt just like a chain linked fence. Somehow I still knew that despite appearances and what my senses were telling me something did not seem right. I called a friend of mine and explained the situation. "I think I am dreaming, and just wanted a second opinion." I said. My friend replied "Maybe we are the ones who-" then the dream ended and I woke up. I was somewhat alarmed to find that it was pouring down rain outside and my girl friend must have left in a hurry because there were groceries out as if she had just sat them down and left. I began putting the milk in the fridge as I noticed the ceiling was leaking and became concerned. I noticed something in the mirror that caught my eye. The reflection was backwards, when I looked in the mirror I saw the back of my body. Then I woke up...

The main distinction between the first and second dream is that in the first type the dream is usually preceded by seeing a light move towards me and/or feeling as if I am floating out of my body. The feeling is very bizarre it is like if you were sword and your body a sheath and someone were to pull the sword from the sheath slowly... It ranges from pleasant to disturbing and there have been many times that the jarring experience of being pulled from my sheath caused me to immediately "resheath" myself and go into a normal dream sequence.

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Lucid dreams, "Dreams of Clarity" and delusions