Navigation in Dreams

Original video by Stephen Berlin. Official website of Stephen Berlin's Lucid Dreaming Discourses: here, YouTube account here. The following text in this entry is a transcript.





Hello, everyone. I’m Stephen Berlin, and thank you for allowing me again into your consciousness. I’ll try my best to be a good guest. Today I’m going to talk about navigation in dreams, and because it’s navigation, we need to get moving, you know? When you become lucid in a dream, where do we start? We start with the scene you are in. And of course, we don’t know where that’ll be—it might be inside, it might be outside, you might be on a beach, your might be on the moon! We don’t know. Now, the good thing about lucid dreaming is when you become lucid, the scene you’re in, suddenly, by becoming lucid, takes on this extraordinary vividity, this mystical beauty. And when that happens, also very often, something in your scene will immediately grab your attention. There might be this, like, magnificent archway that’s saying, “Come Through Me”. I mean, you don’t know. And if that happens, if something compelling happens that’s drawing you in, well, follow your dream and go with that, because you need to get involved with your dream, because in the short course of any indecision, you might wake up or fall back into non-lucid dreaming.

Now—I recommend, however—ground transportation has its disadvantages, so, if you don’t immediately see something in your current dream scene when you become lucid, that really kind of fascinates you and calls you, then I recommend—if you can do it—flying. If you’re inside, and you need to step outside to fly, fine, but of course if you have the confidence you can fly right through the ceiling. The great thing about flying in a lucid dream is it is so exhilarating, so enthralling, that it tends to get your mind off any anxiety, and as you’re flying along, it gives you time to collect your thoughts. “Did I want to do anything in my next lucid dream? What did I want to do? What do I want to see? Where do I want to go?” And as you’re thinking these things, at the same time, your unconscious mind is delivering you all kinds of its own options. You know, pastures and swimming pools and everything. So, flying is a great option.

Now, I need to leave flying, because we have so much to cover. Let’s go back to what the hazards of ground transportation are. If you decide, in a dream, to walk to a destination—or run to a destination—notwithstanding the cardiovascular benefits to your dream body… If you decide to do that, and it’s not in your current dream scene—forget it! It’s an exercise in futility! Because by walking to something that’s not in your current dream scene, you are going to be accosted by ruffians, all kinds of hazards and obstacles will appear, you will have sexual temptations, weather events, you name it—all kinds of things will happen in your emerging dream surroundings, that will lead you astray long before you ever get to where you don’t even remember where you were going! So, try to rule out ground transportation unless it’s just a dream adventure in and of itself, and you can be lucid doing that, of course, but I just demonstrated the pitfalls.

Now, in ground transportation, we also have cars, bikes, boats, trains, and planes—and I’ll talk about cars for just one example, and it applies to each, you know, a lot of—Almost everyone that drives will say, “Gee, I was in my car, in a dream.” Well, of course you were, but usually, you’re already in your car when you realize it, or you’re just outside your car (it’s already in your dream) and you get in it. But, the reality is if you’re in your living room and you say, “Hey, honey, I’m going to go out and get in the car,” and the car is supposed to be in your garage, or the driveway, or the street, it’s not going to be there. If you’re in a mall, and you go outside, you’re not going to be able to find your car in the parking lot because (emphatically) your dream has not yet created the car.

So, I’ve wasted entire dreams looking for my car, or looking for a bathroom, or looking for a classroom! It’s the same phenomenon. You’re wasting your time, on foot, looking for something that hasn’t been created. Now, you can, if you’re lucid, by an act of will, have it created, but in the case of a mechanical instrument like a car, it’s going to be created in a faulty fashion. The wheels will be off. The windshield will be gone. The gauges inside just register and record levels and degrees of mocking you. So, that’s the issue on vehicles. So, consequently, I would say try to fly, when you do land. Be aware of the hazards and pitfalls of ground transportation in your dreams.

Now, what about when you have a lucid dream and it starts to fade? Well, when your lucid dream starts to fade, there’s a well-known technique often talked about in lucid dream forums on the internet: start spinning. You spin around, maybe it’s an inner ear thing, I don’t know, and suddenly, you go from whatever scene you were in—on a mountain, or whatever—next thing you know, you’re in Turkey. You know, I mean, it really teleports you to some other distant, completely different, scene. That’s cool, you know, but I have issues with spinning, and this is one of the limitations of lucid dreaming that you need to understanding. If you have issues with sex, there are going to be issues in your dream. If you have issues with flying, that could be an issue in your dream—and I have issues with spinning! For example. You know. And I won’t spin. Why won’t I spin? Well, in my last discourse, The Dynamics of Dream Emergence, I talked about how your dreams move forward by association, pattern recognition, homologous variation, and transformotion. And knowing how that works, how the principles of that phenomenon take place, I know that if I work myself up into a good spin, I’m going to look down and discover that I’m in leotards and a tutu. And then, with my luck, I’ll look up and see that I’m performing for a penal colony. And I don’t want that to happen. So, spinning’s out for me!

So, I had to come up with a workaround. Now, in this day and age of movies and television and video and video editing, you know, there’s all kinds of transitions that take place, and when your dream fades out, it’s just like a transition you see a thousand times a day in our society, you know? There was a transition in this video. The Cursive Serpent, you know, at the beginning—and it fades in, and then it fades back into me. You know, a transition. And don’t think your unconscious mind doesn’t recognize this. It’s day residue, and it sees it so many times, it knows it! So, when my dreams starts to fade, I don’t assume I’m waking up and have to work myself into a spin. I assume I’m in a scene transition, and I wait, and sometimes (snaps fingers)—boom! I’m in a new scene, sometimes it takes a few seconds, sometimes it’s a little longer than I would like, and sometimes it doesn’t happen at all—but sometimes spinning doesn’t work either! So, you know, it’s a good way to look at it—assume you’re going to keep dreaming, not wake up. One thing you have to be aware of is very often you will dream and move into a different dream scene, and that new dream scene is going to be you dreaming that you’re awake in your bed. So, you need to do a reality check every time you wake up.

Okay, and the find thing is moving forward in your dream by acts of will. Now, you can play a wizard in your dream. Now, since I’m the cursive serpent, I wanted to make an apple appear. So, I was a serpent, I put my hand out— (aside) A serpent with a hand. Almost sounds Hindu, doesn’t it?

But then, I put my hand out, and an apple flashed in my hand, and (clucks tongue) then I had a solid apple. And it was even cold, like it just came out of the fridge. So, that was kind of cool. So, you can play the wizard, you know, but then you can do more elevating things of willing in your dream, and I was flying along like Superman, and I willed for a master to appear. An ascended master, or a guru on the ground. I just wanted a master, someone I could talk to who was enlightened, and I figured, you know (chuckles) I’ll probably look down and see Ramana Maharshi’s mule. That’s what I would get! But nevertheless, I’m flying along, and suddenly on this twilight on this hillside, I saw this miniature Taj Mahal.

You see how beautiful dreams are? I’m looking for a master, and my ream presents me with a temple glowing on a hillside! So, I flew over there. But I made a mistake! I was so enamored by the temple grounds, I landed on the ground… (shakes head, gives an emphatic reminder) Ground transportation! And somewhere I took a left-hand turn and I never got inside.

(makes a gesture of evident finality)

So, you live and you learn. Okay, well, I better transition out of here pretty quickly, so, thanks for watching. I love all of you.