Lucid Dreams

First, this:

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Next, this:

Ok, so a friend of mine was asking about lucid dreaming the other day. He recently acquired the Supernatural Assistant (SA), and had been through some intense Solar initiations. He's also been through the planetary initiations, and is going through what I interpret as the Green Phase of the Work, where the magic comes to life and you really start doing it and learning about how to use it effectively. It's my favorite phase of the Work, personally.

The first thing he wants to do is Lunar Work. Specifically, he's got a hard on for Lucid Dreaming. He conjured up all the spirits of the Moon and his SA and asked for a lucid dreaming experience. He was serious about getting that lucid dream. His SA confidently assured him that he would be successful, and that this kind of thing was right up his alley, no problem providing the experience, it will happen. So he went to sleep.

No lucid dream.

So he came to me with his concerns that it might not be the SA he's actually contacted, because he didn't get the results he wanted instantly as promised. I explained that what he asked for was a skill that takes a while to develop, and that means it's going to take discipline and practice to get good at it.

People don't generally believe they can conjure a spirit and it will transform them immediately into a Banker, with a degree, experience, wardrobe, and position in a bank they've held for years. Yet when it comes to spiritual attainments, we sometimes think they can just instantly transform us into Ascended Master Priest Kings overnight. I do it myself, all the time, in spite of my experiences.

So I talked him through the process I went through to attain the ability to dream lucidly, explained the things I learned from my experiments, gave the tips and tricks I could. I encouraged him to do the work that results in lucid dreams, and to let his spirit do its work, give it a couple weeks before jumping to conclusions. I "level-set his expectations" so he would get the most out of his experience.

Sort of like Patrick Dunn, Aaron Leitch, Otter, and Jason Miller did for me after I made contact with my SA. It made me feel good to be able to help.

So after talking to him about his plans and his goals in Lucid Dreaming, I found myself getting a little wood over it too. A little teak. I've been doing an ongoing lunar rite for the Astral Warrior Talismans (which should be shipping this weekend), and my sphere's abuzz with the powers of the Moon in general. Why not? I thought.

And then things got weird.

In good ways.

I tuned into a dream the first night, opening an Astral Vortex and stepping through after saying the Magic Words, and it was epic. As soon as I stepped into myself, I remembered the dream had been going on for months. I've been leading an entire life in a dream, doing things that I didn't know about while awake because I haven't been paying attention. I was fully aware of all the plans I'd made in the dream realm, and I remembered everything I had done over the last few months to accomplish those plans. I remember it now consciously, and I've been busy.

I felt a bit like Tyler Derden, but without the confusion and amnesia phase.

I remember now that the reason I've been so tired lately when I wake up is that I've been working my ass off in the Dream. I remember doing some specific things that fucked up my back in the dream, and I had this excruciating back ache for three days afterwards. This happened twice in the last two months. In my waking life, I've felt distracted, tired, and unfocused. I couldn't seem to get my shit together long enough to make any headway on several important projects. I was annoyed in general, but I wasn't really aware of it enough to address it as an issue. I was stressed, but it was a background stress I couldn't put my finger on.

It's irritating to have spent so long in a fog. This morning, I woke to dense fog all around, except over the highway where fast cars had cleared the air. I drove through a tunnel in the fog bank all the way to work. It was fascinating. In the midst of the fog there's a current of motion and activity that has cleared the air, but to participate in clarity, you have to keep in motion.

In the Dream, things are always in motion, and I'm directing things like a conductor or an electrician conducts the flow of sound or electricity. It's sort of like plumbing too. And weaving. Only all at once, keeping time to a beat and a rhythm that's been going since the beginning of time. The tides are echoes of the heartbeat of the World.

In the waking world, things are always in motion too, but sometimes I feel a lot less like a conductor, and a lot more like someone coming into an art film student's movie in the middle and trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.

Things are making a lot more sense now than they were. I can sense more of how things are interconnected between the activities in the Dream and the experiences here below. The flow of manifestation between the realms sounds a lot like the flow of blood through vessels in the brain.

The Moon sphere on the Tree of Life is Yesod, meaning the Base. She is the consort to all the planets, receiving each of their seeds and bearing them to fruition in her womb, manifesting the things Above here Below. Things emerge into being, attain fullness, and pass slowly away, returning to the realm of the Unmanifest.

It's our base of operations. Our astral realm is the Idea that is represented on the Altar. Our elemental tools, our spiritual assistants are there to be worked with. When we do the rites down here, we're doing them up there at the same time, in more detail and purity.

Being aware of what's going on up Above isn't something that comes without work and exercise. When we conjure the spirits and ask for initiations, we receive spiritual exercises to perform. For lucid dreaming, you don't even have to conjure the spirits, they've already been recorded in lots of different places. Conjuring the spriits will help, of course, but it doesn't replace doing the exercises that lead to mastery. Meditation, Contemplation, Rituals, and the mundane task of remembering to write shit down every morning for a few weeks, or in the middle of the night when you wake up. The exercises build connections in your brain so you can remember what's going on and interact with it more directly. It's training for the mind. 

And watch out for the Shadowlurker.