Sleep states are fun to consciously control for various reasons. They can be used to view and analyze our memory and sense of self in an indirect way. The feelings and ideas produced by sleep feel profound and vivid, and can be used for creative inspiration.
The characters and places we encounter in our dreams are reflective of the things we have experienced and imagined. We have dedicated systems of memory for things like our stereotypes of people and places, as well as our relationship to our environment and to ourselves. When we are in a dream state, we see the boundaries between ideas contained within our memory distort and change, leading to the experience of a world created entirely from the contents of our knowledge and memory.
Sleep is essential for functioning. Contrary to what one would expect, the brain is active even during sleep. When we sleep, the brain goes through a process of regulating physical and mental functions. Sleep is essential for memory consolidation. It is difficult to retain and recall information that hasn’t yet been consolidated during sleep.
There are several distinct stages of sleep. Older psychological texts used to break these up into five stages of sleep. Today, most researchers divide the stages of sleep into four stages: NREM 1, NREM 2, NREM 3, and REM sleep. REM stands for rapid-eye movement. During REM sleep, the eyes move back and forth quickly, hence the name. NREM stands for non-rapid eye movement. In these stages of sleep, the eyes are still, unlike in REM sleep.
Staying lucid during the different stages of sleep is an interesting experience that many enjoy and find thought provoking. Each stage of sleep is experienced by the dreamer in a different way. Studies have been conducted on participants who were woken up during the different stages of sleep and asked what their dreams were like. People who were woken up during light sleep felt as though they had entered an immersive daydream but hadn’t quite fallen asleep. People woken up during deep sleep (NREM 3) reported feeling fully immersed in their mind, but that the dream felt more thought-like and involved mundane subjects, activities, and places. People who were woken up during REM sleep reported vivid, surreal, and fantastical dreams.
Different mystical traditions delineate between three distinct types of dream-work which map onto lucid dreaming during the three stages of sleep. Hedgecrossing occurs during NREM 1 and NREM 2 sleep. During this stage of sleep, if the dreamer is lucid, their thoughts become random, vivid, immersive, and contain spontaneous events that feel profound. Their thoughts feel out of their control. Spiritual traditions use this stage of sleep for the purpose of contacting spirits or interpreting some aspect of their lives.
Lucid dreaming during deep sleep is experienced as astral projection. Astral projection stereotypically involves the perception of leaving the body and walking into the world just outside of the self. Traditionally, the world becomes more random and mystical as the person moves further from their body, which maps onto the idea that the change in sleep states causes a subjectively perceived change in experience while lucid dreaming.
Lucid dreaming during REM sleep is what people traditionally think of when they think of lucid dreaming. REM sleep dreams depart from the normal laws of reality the most severely of all of the stages of sleep. Because of this, lucid dreaming can easily be used to generate creative ideas or to explore themes from one’s life through the vivid feelings produced by the dream. In addition, it is possible to attain some degree of psychological healing through dreams because of their connection to our memory, and because dream experiences feel vivid and thus their content and our reaction to them can significantly impact us even when we are awake.
I will describe how to attain each dream state in the next section. In a subsequent section, I will explain how spiritual practitioners approach dream work. I will then explain how to use dream experiences in a constructive way (such as through dream analysis, creative inspiration, and overcoming traumas and internal conflicts through dream role play) as an alternative psychological technique.
Hedgecrossing refers to the state of mind that occurs when one is lucid during light sleep. This state of mind is useful for spiritual and psychological work. People who subscribe to a mystical belief system may use this state of mind to contact spirits or perform a ritual or detect something about the world. People who see these states of mind as psychological tools may use this state of mind to access parts of their memory - similar to using hypnotherapy techniques.
The general procedure for hedgecrossing is to meditate in a comfortable position until the mind begins to enter a sleeping state. There are certain tells that the mind has entered such a state - the thoughts that automatically come to us become random, nonsensical. As with all dream-based work, it is important to try many times to attain and work with these states. It is very easy to fall asleep or to fail to enter into a dream state at all and this can be discouraging for many people. Hedgecrossing is the easiest lucid dream state to attain because it takes place in the first stage of sleep, so it is the first dream state entered. People don’t feel as though they have left their body but they do feel like their imagination has taken on a mind of its own and it can surprise them with moments of insight and inspiration.
We will be creating a specific mental place inside for each of the three lucid dream states. Eventually, our brains come to associate this internal mental space with the state of mind provoked by each type of dream state. Over time, as the association becomes stronger, this helps us enter into a particular dream state more easily.
Lay down in a comfortable place that you ordinarily sleep in. Practicing good sleep hygiene, especially the step where you only sleep in the room/area you sleep in so that your mind can associate that area with sleeping, can help. Beginning at a time where you are naturally tired and normally go to bed helps. This state is prompted by entering the first stages of sleep, light sleep.
Clear your mind as though you are meditating. Enter your mind’s eye and focus solely on the experience of being inside of your imagination. Ignore external thoughts and sensations as they come up, letting go of them and turning back inside. You are free to develop your own set of visualizations. The general framework for developing your own system of visualizations to distract you until you enter light sleep is, more or less, this: enter the first of your visualizations and ground yourself in your 5 senses; leave the area to a second room associated with hedgecrossing; leave to a third room where you engage in a repetitive (hypnotic) motion; then leave to a final room where you can walk endlessly until you enter a hedgecrossing state/light sleep state. I will give an example below.
Enter your mind’s eye at the foot of a blue cliff with the opening to a black cave. Feel the blue grass beneath your feet. Drink from a nearby pool of clear water above pastel blue sand. Look at the deep blue sky above and listen to the wind blow through the blue leaves coming off the black trees behind you, smelling the cool, chilly, evening air. Enter the cave.
Enter a black room with blue steps leading down. Blue stars line the walls of the cave, approximating the complexity of the universe. Look at them as you continue downwards. At the bottom of the stairs is a glowing blue number one on the walls instead of stars. This mental state, hedgecrossing, is associated with the star symbol as well as the color blue and the number 1. Giving specific symbols meaning like this helps make entering this state from this mental location easier in the future. There is a door with a large blue A glowing on it. Walk through the door, feeling the texture of the doorknob in your hand.
Enter a room with blue crystals and a pool of water with a waterfall. Watch the waterfall flow endlessly into the pool of water, feeling the cool water wash over your hands. Listen to the sound of the water flowing into the pool. Dive into the water.
After entering the water, enter a room without water. This area is a maze. Ankle deep water and blue crystals and stars line the walls. Walk through the cave, taking random turns, until the area begins to randomize and things begin to change outside of your control. You will have entered the state informally called hedgecrossing (lucid dreaming during light sleep) when the area and things inside of it are partially outside of your control.
Some people find it helpful to take a small amount of caffeine; others find this does not help at all. Stimulants can make it easier to maintain lucidity, but also harder to fall asleep. I have narcolepsy and I’m prescribed Ritalin and I accidentally lucid dream on it all of the time because of this.
Soul retrieval and hypnotherapy both force the practitioner into a trance that is similar to light sleep or near light sleep in order to enter into and manipulate the mind in a deeper way than is normally possible in a waking state. This allows us to cross mental barriers, such as the barriers that keep memories repressed, and view normally forbidden materials in our mind. This also means that, since our emotions are more vivid, the things that we think and the way we interact in our mind leaves a stronger impression than is normally possible during a waking state where our emotions are more repressed. The increased emotional vividness serves as a flag to our mind that what we are thinking is more important than normal.
The following techniques can be practiced in other sleep states, although the form they take may differ between stages of sleep. Because it is difficult to remember information between a waking and sleeping state, it is essential to keep a journal nearby in order to write down important thoughts. Get into a habit of writing about the contents of every lucid dream, regardless of which stage of sleep it occurred in, as soon as you wake up. Write down every regular dream, as well.
Symbols are important elements of our mind. Symbols serve as associative cues to different places in our memory. When we hedgecross, we enter into a state of mind where we are closer to our memory, almost living in it as we do when we are deeply sleeping. We can use symbols to interact with our mind. When we are hedgecrossing, we can call up a symbol. Say, the color red. We visualize this color, and because our thoughts have become more random, they will warp and respond to the introduction of this cue. We could randomly remember a memory connected to the color red. Or we could spontaneously imagine a character or the beginning of a story prompted by thinking about the color red.
We think about the world in certain ways that are connected to our different types of memories. We have special neurological processes dedicated to processing things like narratives, relationships, time, other people, cultural stereotypes, and places. These elements become easy to notice when we engage in dream work. We become immersed in the components of our memory, and the types of components we can think in become obvious quickly. Elements that frequently recur in dreams often have some significance, and it is worth it to interact with these symbols - doing so can reveal old memories and can allow us to interact with these ideas to inspire or change the self. This is the process of dream analysis. By interacting with these symbols, characters, and other ideas, we can see their meaning. Dream analysis books offer interpretations based on cultural symbolism. This is helpful to some extent, but personal symbolism is what matters the most, and it can be quite contextual and idiosyncratic. It is possible to interact with an idea or symbol in a dream and to talk to it, touch it, see what is inspired by interacting with it. The ideas that spring up from interacting with this element can be used to analyze its meaning.
Interacting with symbols in the mind can be used as a hypnotherapy tool. If someone has a troubling thought loop or memory, they can interact with it in a dream state to learn more about it and to gain mastery over the memory. However, it is possible to trigger nightmares in doing so. That is the risk of good dream work - there is some element of difficulty to it, and one must be willing to face and master difficult thoughts to proceed. This can be used to identify core thoughts and traumas and integrate with them in the course of dealing with difficult personal experiences and thoughts.
Astral projection is the act of lucid dreaming during deep sleep. Qualitatively, this state feels more mundane than a traditional lucid dream, and it feels more thought-like. As we enter deep sleep, we finally feel ourselves leave our body. Paradoxically, we are actually entering our memory, completely cut off from the external world. For a moment, we haven’t yet forgotten the rules of external reality or the context we fell asleep in. Our short term memory takes a short amount of time to clear, and in that time when we first enter an astral state we experience ourselves as leaving our body where we left off before we forget where we were when we fell asleep as our previous circumstance is cleared from our short term memory. Some people feel vibrations; other people feel nothing at all as they transition from light sleep to deep sleep.
The general framework for astral projecting is as follows: lay down in a comfortable location; focus on staying awake as you slowly fall asleep. Eventually, you will become overwhelmingly tired that it is almost beyond your capability to hang on to your conscious awareness. Continue to stay focused and eventually, your body will feel strange in some way. Different people experience this change differently. It can be difficult to get up and to exit the body; no longer being able to move the body means you are in an astral state. Eventually, if you stay awake and keep trying to interact with the world, you will leave your body.
This is a good framework, although to properly associate this state of mind for your deliberate use later, I recommend a slight permutation to the classic technique. Before laying down to astral project, enter into your mind’s eye. See a green glowing 2 in the middle of a field of green roses. The sky above is filled with green petals. Turn around and see a door with the letter B glowing green. Reflect on your intention and enter the door; it should be dark. This signals to your mind that you are beginning to focus with the intention of astral projecting. Some people might want to stay immersed in the mind’s eye and imagine a green landscape beyond the door; a green hedge maze with infinite twists and turns, and green marble fountains and benches. You will completely enter your internal landscape when you fall into a deep sleep. This is similar to hedgecrossing, and it is easy to get stuck in a hedgecrossing state and it can be hard to transition to an astral state, although some do it this way. It is important to fall asleep in astral projection, whereas in hedgecrossing it is important to stay aware as you are near sleep. In an astral state, you completely lose touch with the external world and your internal world becomes your entire reality.
Astral projection is fun. The vivid emotions provoked by this state of mind can be entertaining. It is interesting to watch the changes in cognition that accompany the different stages of sleep. It is possible to use lucid dreaming states in order to solve or work on personal problems. As in hedgecrossing, analyzing and interacting with the content of dreams can be highly meaningful and symbolic.
Some people use dreams to help deal with psychological issues. Profound visions, such as religious experiences and positive dreams, can be used to help improve mood even if one isn’t spiritual. It is possible re-enact difficult memories or scary situations and to master them in dreams, which leads to one feeling more comfortable with that memory or situation in waking life.
Because of the way we think, we often encounter certain types of forms when we astral project. These forms reflect the way our brain encodes and interacts with the world around us in our memory. We have specific types of memory rather than just one unified type of memory; we have memories for knowledge, behaviors, habits, associations between ideas, and events. We also have further subdivisions in our memory for our perception of ourselves, others, places, cultural stereotypes, objects - and our relationships (which can take the form of opinions, a perception of personality, narrative plots, and themes) to these things. We can interact with these elements of our mind in a literal way in dream states and understand how our memory itself is structured.
People often encounter elements of our memory- and its ability to create novel versions of things it has introjected- in specific forms in our dreams. Some people refer to these constructs as deities or spirits, others see them as thoughtforms depending on if they subscribe to a spiritual belief system or not. We can perceive other people or ideals as characters that feel emotionally profound; we can perceive otherworldly places that feel as though they are beyond us. We can perceive the elements of our memory in a vivid way that is highly creative because of the memory shuffling that is occurring during memory consolidation which happens during sleep. I am convinced that dreaming is people watching the process of (some part of) memory consolidation in a literal way.
Lucid dreaming takes place during REM sleep. In a normal person who isn’t sleep deprived, REM sleep sets in after about 90 minutes. This makes entering a lucid dream through the traditional way of meditating through the previous sleep states difficult, although it is possible. Some people attempt to enter REM sleep directly by waking themselves up and then going back to bed again; because their mind is interrupted mid-sleep cycle, they may enter REM again quickly.
The best way to attain lucidity during REM sleep, in my opinion, is to engage in reality checks. Reality checks train us to check during dreams automatically to see if we are sleeping or not. We pick some detail about dreams that sets them apart from reality, and during the day we check several times to see whether or not we are sleeping. Eventually, this habit carries over into dreams and we naturally question whether or not we are dreaming - which prompts us to enter a lucid dream if we ask this question while we are dreaming.
Here are some examples of reality checks: dreams constantly change and shift, so if you look at something, look away, and then look back - if you are dreaming, it should have changed. If you aren’t dreaming, it will stay constant. In dreams, you can manipulate things with your mind; try changing some element of the scenery as you would in a dream, or try to fly. Trying to do these mental exercises from a waking state feels silly and doesn’t work, but in a dream it can trigger you to realize you are dreaming if you check to see if you can do these things and you can. Regularly check to see if you are dreaming during the day, and check for these properties found only in dreams. Eventually, you will ask the question during a dream and will become lucid.
Intentions are helpful for the attainment of lucid dreaming. Before bed, enter into your mind’s eye and find yourself on a red beach with a large red 3. A door with a glowing red C awaits you. Enter it, holding your intention to lucid dream that night as you allow yourself to fall asleep. When you attain lucidity, think back on the red C and the red 3. This will associate these concepts with sleep. You can think on these red concepts in order to help with dream recall. These is called an anchor. Anchors can be used to help keep you present during the dream and remind you that you are lucid. Regularly think back on the red room with the C; create a glowing C or 3 in your hand. The action of doing this grounds you in your dream and prevents you from losing your lucidity or from waking up.
Additionally, you can check your dream journal for patterns you are encountering during your natural dreams. These should be your REM sleep dreams as these are the easiest to recall if you weren’t lucid during them. Recognizing common types of dreams and dream locations can help you recognize that you are dreaming.
Lucid dreaming is fun. REM sleep dreams are vivid and highly creative. Lucid dream states can be used to flesh out story ideas or to obtain inspiration. The emotional vividness and the surreal ideas encountered in this state of mind are ideal for creative inspiration, like to get inspiration for an otherworldly landscape to draw or for a fictional place or character for a story.
If you are going to use a lucid dream state for some purpose, set your intention ahead of time. It can be fun to explore dreams without an intention, but for goal directed purposes it is important to set your intention or else you will forget while you are maintaining your hold on your lucidity. Do you want to work on a story idea? Okay. Do you want to focus on the plot, the setting, the theme, or the characters?
You can focus on one element of your story that you want to flesh out, or several. You can focus on them one at a time, or all at once. It is difficult to hold many ideas in mind at once. Reminding yourself of your story world, or the characters, or a scene will cause it to manifest in your dream. Because dreams constantly shift and evolve, it will immediately come to life and go in a direction you barely control. This can be used for creative inspiration. That is how one uses dreams - anything that manifests in the dreams suddenly comes to life and takes on a mind of its own during a dream state. Interacting with it intensifies this effect, leading to interesting ideas and feelings.
