Although I'll never be able to go back and enjoy my simple years as an adolescence, I have found a doorway in the night that has opened up further and further for me in the last several years. On the other side of this door is a whole other world that waits for me, a secret world of lucidity, where I step into my dreams at night and take charge. This is a place where I can go back in time and throw that ball around in my back yard again. I can take back those truths that were last left and have a second chance to right my wrongs and the opportunity to leave someone better than when I found them. Welcome to the world of lucid dreaming.

 I often find myself thinking, traveling back to a simpler place in time watching old memories unfold in front of my mind's eye as a young child somewhere around the age of four. Back then no fences or boundaries had been placed on what I thought was possible in my mind. None of my ambitions or passions were limited by the reality that had been imposed on the adults around me. My parents were all grown up, I couldn't comprehend the thought that they too had once been young in their past just like I was. My dad was my hero, right up there with the likes of Super Man. My mother was, in my eyes, the best mom in the world and the love that I shared with the two of them along with my big sister was unlike what any other little boy ever had. What I had was special, it was my own unique wonderful world that belonged only to me. The restrains of life through use of simple mathematics, logic, reasoning and reality were among the many things that had not been imposed on my innocence.

Even after all this time, I can still remember the smell of the dirt and the taste of my own tears. I can vividly hear the sound of my moms voice as she yelled out from the front porch to me that it was time to come in for dinner. I've packed on thirty plus years and a few wrinkles since I was that little boy playing in the back yard throwing that ball around. I've also had countless friends and family members that have passed on throughout the years. I've since learned to function successfully, at least by my standards, with all the restrictions that reality has placed on my adult life. I now have a family of my own and both of my children are much older than that little boy in the back yard that I remember so fondly.

We've all have heard the saying that "you never know what you've got till it's gone". With little effort, we can all can tie those nine words back to a vivid memory, strong emotion or even a loved one from our past and would all fully agree that it's an absolute understatement. The closer we become to someone has a direct impact on the risk we're willing to take in our interactions with them knowing full well that chances of forgiveness for our actions will be almost endless. The reality of life is that all second chances come to an end sooner or later and are replaced with the truths of how things were last left. With even the slightest passage of time as we begin to age, we often begin to see and recognize the patterns of life as they come full circle around us. My thoughts on life and the importance of those who I love has evolved much over the last ten years, just as it had changed in the ten years prior.

Although I'll never be able to go back and enjoy my simple years as an adolescence, I have found a doorway in the night that has opened up further and further for me in the last several years. On the other side of this door is a whole other world that waits for me, a secret world of lucidity, where I step into my dreams at night and take charge. This is a place where I can go back in time and throw that ball around in my back yard again. I can take back those truths that were last left and have a second chance to right my wrongs and the opportunity to leave someone better than when I found them. Welcome to the world of lucid dreaming.

Although dreams can seem real, they normally lack any level of self consciousness that would normally tie us down to reality like that of when we are awake. With lucid dreaming however, there exists a level of consciousness that allows us to realize with absolute clarity that we're dreaming. Once you've experienced a dream where you are fully aware you are doing so, you've started down a path that some people will never get to experience in an entire lifetime, pure dream control. This path, if you choose to follow and develop it, can be just as rewarding if not more so than anything you can achieve during your waking hours.

You can do or see anything that you wish, you're not even limited by your own personal experiences or memories. If you want to fly over a city that you've never visited before you can do so with such detail and clarity that you will be utterly amazed. You can admire with detailed precision every building's unique architecture and count the number of bricks on any wall. You can see and follow the cracks in the sidewalk and can fly down low and look into a window. You can walk into any home and navigate effortlessly throughout while recognizing the familiar smells of breakfast being cooked in the kitchen. You can read the writing on the shirt of a person relaxing in the park or read a page out of the book that the person is holding in their hands. The detail is amazing and as you're aware that you're in a dream you will be able to think and reflect on how vivid and detailed everything is at the moment. It's not the same as watching a movie and following the focal point of the camera, you are the one in control of which direction the camera is pointing and the speed of which it moves.

You can spend time with or have a conversation with anyone you wish. You can ask someone questions about anything and get complete and comprehensive insight on that person's point of view. You can talk candidly with a loved one who has been dead for a number of years. It will be so real that you will most certainly shy away from certain topics or questions just as you would in real life.

Imagine the power of harnessing an experience like this. What would your life be like if you could look forward to this almost every night? You already have the brain for it which is the only tool that is required. It is all truly within your reach. There are certain things that you can do to slowly program your mind to open itself up and let you take charge.

PART 2

What can Lucid dreaming do for you? There are a countless number of things that can be experienced and accomplished during lucid dreaming. When in control of our dreams we can face our fears, improve our self confidence or maybe use the experience for creative problem solving. It's and endless opportunity for us to explore our unconscious minds or simply an infinite source of pure entertainment. It is what we make of it and as unique as the limits of our imagination.

For Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein, harnessing the power of their dreams helped them visualize their ideas progressing them from concept to reality. Einstein was able to visualize all the moving parts of whatever project or invention he was working on at the time. He could do so with such clarity to determine how the different parts and pieces would mechanically interact with each other. He was able to troubleshoot and work past potential problems in his mind well before his ideas had materialized. Paul McCartney claims that the melody to the hit song "Yesterday" came to him in a dream. Although superior intelligence and natural artistic talent played a part in these examples, it does give relevance to the power of one's mind while dreaming.

There's a significant difference between our normal dreams and lucid dreaming. It's not my opinion that Einstein, Nicola Tesla and Paul McCartney were experiencing lucidity when using their dreams to achieve these impressive feats. It is my opinion however, that the same level of clarity can be reached by those of us possessing just normal levels of intelligence and artistic ability once we've gone lucid during a dream.

Have you ever bought a new car and then began to notice how many more of them were out there? Even the same color as yours? Logic tells us that there are about the same number of cars now as there were before you bought yours, you've just never noticed them before. That's just the way our minds work. The vast majority of the activity happening around us is not noticed, processed or stored on a conscious level. Unless it has a significant meaning to us, it gets purged with all the other useless information we encounter. It's not necessarily gone, it's just not readily available in our brain's memory bank.

We've all had that moment where we struggled to remember the name of someone from our past, the name of a song , or phone number that we've dialed many times. When someone tells you that name or number that you couldn't remember there's instant recognition, suddenly you remember it. This is not a learning experience by any means. That name or number was on the tip of your tongue and you just couldn't remember it. You didn't learn anything, you only bridged the connection in your brain to what was already there.

We all carry with us a lifetime of experience and information. Tucked away in our mind is all the smells, sounds, tastes, visions and physical sensations of all that we've ever encountered. Lucidity is the key to tapping into all your faded memories. Creativity may be nothing more than bridging old connections in your mind.

The importance of remembering your dreams is imperative and is the key to building a strong foundation toward your journey into the world of lucid dreaming. Remembering your dreams will not turn you into a lucid dreamer, but it will lead you down a path to recognizing features and patterns in your dreams. This awareness will ultimately be instrumental in training your mind to realize that you are dreaming while it is actually happening.

Memories of our dreams begin to fade almost immediately when we wake up. Many experts suggest keeping a dream journal which is a great idea, but let's be practical, most of us will not even make it to the first step of obtaining a dream journal. I suggest you figure out a way to use your smart phone. Your phone typically will be within arms reach at any given moment, day or night. They all have notes applications and speech to text technology built in. Simply start a note and talk to your phone. It will document everything you say with enough accuracy that it can be deciphered at a later time. Make this the first thing you do in the morning even before you even get out of bed.

Get as much information into that phone as you can. Even if the memories are fragmented or don't flow well it's okay, just document everything. You will find that browsing through you notes later will help bring out other details of the dream that you didn't remember before. It's also likely that new memories will be triggered hours later in the day.

No matter what they say about teaching old dogs new tricks, we're highly trainable creatures. One of your new habits will be to perform reality checks. You're awake right now reading this and there should be no doubt in your own mind that you're awake. Well, we need to throw the obvious out the window and begin to question things. You need to ask yourself "am I dreaming?". You need to ask this question of yourself constantly, make it a habit. Am I dreaming? This habit will carry over into your dreams eventually.

Now, here's where you need to be careful. Before you arbitrarily answer no, make sure that you really are awake. Proving this to yourself should only take a few seconds at most. Find something tangible that you can use, such as a clock. Look at what time it is and then look back at the clock again. Did the time change? Studies have found that repeated attempts to read something while dreaming will almost always result in a change of what is being read. Something as simple as a clock will not hold true time in a dream. The point is to convince yourself that you really are awake before you answer no. You must always use logic before answering that question.

Reality checks performed while dreaming will have much different results than what you're used to seeing during the day. This is where you will begin to recognize and become aware during your dreams. This is why it's important to not just automatically tell yourself "no" when asking "am I dreaming". The first time that you answer that question with a "yes", it will be a true moment of deep significance to you.

In time, you will develop the ability to recognize patterns or things that only happen in your dreams. For instance I have never been able to successfully dial a phone in my dreams. The buttons will not press correctly, I can't seem to remember peoples names, or I will have forgotten how to navigate through the contact list in my phone. After several unsuccessful attempts to make a call, I will usually realize that I am dreaming. At that point, the urgent need to make that phone call will lose all significance and I may ask myself if I am dreaming, but usually by this point I already realize that I am. I'll usually take a moment to look around, for me, it's typically a 360 degree look around at an empty room. Gathering my thoughts for a moment I'll decide what I want to do and see. Then I'm off into whatever world of lucidity that I choose. There really is nothing else in reality that can match that feeling you experience when you realize you've become lucid in your dreams.

AUTHOR: Jonathon Byron

To view more of my work please visit my web site www.helpmegroup.com

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