This week I want to talk about dreaming. More specifically I want to discuss lucid dreaming. For anyone who doesn’t know, lucid dreaming is where you become conscious of the fact that you’re dreaming, while dreaming. While you are dreaming away, something clicks with you and you suddenly have the thought – this is a dream. This is an incredible experience as immediately you become aware that you can do ANYTHING.

I recently bought a book called Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D., and Howard Rheingold and have been reading it with interest in the last two weeks. I came across it on www.amazon.co.uk while looking for something completely different. It caught my attention and so I bought it. I’m not sure whether those of you who are reading this have had any personal experience with lucid dreaming, but I know I have.

When I was a very young boy I can recall having my very first lucid dream. It was an intoxicating experience to say the least. I was walking down a familiar road when all of a sudden I stopped and looked around. I realised that I was actually dreaming. I won’t go into any detail about what followed but needless to say being a hormonal teenager heavily influenced what I chose to do! I woke up reeling from the experience and couldn’t believe that I was able to take control like this. Anyway, fast forward to the present and here I was with this book that gave you the skills to ensure frequent such dreams. I was gripped.

My goal in having these lucid dreams was in meeting my Craig again. The third night after reading this book I couldn’t believe it when I had a lucid dream. It was only a fragment of one but it was enough. In the dream I was crossing a field when i noticed some rabbits in a hedge. I walked over to investigate and was surprised when the rabbits began to play about my feet. In an instant it occurred to me that this was so unusual .With that thought I then wondered if I was dreaming. I decided to see if I could fly, which would prove it was a dream, and was overwhelmed by excitement as I began to rise off the ground. The excitement, however, caused me to wake up. In those last couple of weeks I’ve had another couple of similar experiences, whereby the excitement has always woken me up.

However, three days ago I had a lucid dream that I’ll never forget. In the dream I was flying up above the clouds and all around the skies. I could see through a cloud break below, that the open sea was thousands of metres below me. For a second I thought how terrifying it would be if I began to fall toward the murky waters below, but for some reason I wasn’t scared. I knew that I could control the flight. It was just then that I realised that I was dreaming. But this time I didn’t wake up. I stood hovering in mid air and both thought and said aloud, “I want to see Craig”. Just then, with my arm extended to the left, I watched as I could see Craig’s hand and arm appear and then reach into mine. He grabbed my hand and we flew together. I instantly pulled him toward me and held him in my arms. I asked him was he ok and he smiled saying he was ‘fine’. I kept touching his face and his head as I drank in his presence. I remember spending some time with him then and asking him so many questions, but that part of the dream, to my deepest despair, I cannot recall. But even so – the time I did have, and what of it I can recall, has been such an inspiration to me.

I have been sufficiently inspired by these experiences to know that I am going to further investigate lucid dreaming and see where it takes me. I want to investigate its meaning and its nature – and I want to find my Craig again.