There is a wide range of skills we can learn as dreamers. Some of them are useful for dream exploration and facilitate our interaction with the world of dreams. Some of them are just fun. None of them is a part of our usual experience (without paranormal abilities, anyway).
Although anything is possible in dreams, dream control is not so easy to achieve. It needs a lot of effort and concentration. However, lucid dreaming can be mastered just like any other skill.
The following tips will help you to avoid some beginner mistakes and show how to approach the tasks ahead.
Tip 1 – Don’t Multitask
The possibilities in dreams are countless. There are a lot of skills you’d like to learn, but the thing is, your resources aren’t limitless.
First of all, you don’t have lucid dreams every night, which means you can train deliberately only several times a month.
Second, you have to know perfectly well what skill you are going to work on in a particular dream. This is a part of the mnemonic lucid dreaming technique: you are more likely to remember that you have to practice transformation than about practising transformation, telekinesis, flying and character summoning. Not to mention, all of them are very energy-consuming tasks.
Third, working on one certain skill, you condition your mind, and the skill becomes your dreaming second nature. Most of dream skills, even flying, won’t need a high level of lucidity afterwards.
Tip 2 – Find a Manual
Dream skills are something we’ve never performed in our daily life. Sometimes it’s hard to decide how to go about certain task.
For instance, what is the best approach to flying? Should I jump? Should I flap my hands? Or just do it “superman style”? The try and error method will help you to figure it our in the end. But wouldn’t it save a lot of time and effort if you had a manual?
When I was working on evasive techniques to escape the monsters in nightmares, I happened to read a fantasy novel, in which the main character was taught how to walk through walls. “Hey, I could use that” I thought. It was very simple: just believe the wall is an illusion (which it is, in dreams) and go through.
I wondered, how I’ve never thought of it before. Magic and paranormal abilities may be a work of fiction, but anything would work in a dream. And now I had a good and thorough manual on walking through walls.
I’ve mastered that skill in about a month, and still can walk through walls, ceilings and closed doors and windows. I don’t even have to be lucid for that.
Bottom line: you can get useful hints in unexpected places. Keep your eyes open for anything you can use in dreams.
Tip 3 – “Seeing is Believing”
I can’t stress enough the importance of visualization and self-persuasion. If you can see yourself doing it, feel you doing it, believe you can do it, than you most certainly can do it.
Beside the motivational aspects of visualization, we are talking about conditioning too. Our dreaming mind recreates any experience, whether real or imaginary. If you plant imaginary memories into your brain, the more is the chance of them to become a part of your dreaming experience.
Tip 4 – Ask the Locals
Dream characters are a good source of knowledge and often provide good tips. For example, I’ve learned a telekinesis technique from a little witch named Gemma.
She explained how she was moving objects with the power of her gaze. The trick was to “hook”, as she put it, an object with your eyes. I’ve tried several times and then felt that my eyes are “glued” to a bowl on her table. I felt a slight resistance when I tried to look away from it. Then I moved my eyes, and the bowl moved too.
Tip 5 – “A Journey of a Thousand Miles…”
Begins with a single step
Any complex skill is better learned if you divide it into simpler tasks. Simpler tasks are easier to concentrate on and less exhausting, which means you are less likely to slip back into unconscious dreaming or wake up.
Don’t go for barrel rolls if you’ve barely learned how to take off the ground. Don’t try to move large rocks, unless you can easily move pebbles. Instead of trying to jump up a mountain, take the steps one at a time. They are sure to bring you to the top.
Learn, enjoy and good luck!