Continuing my story of how discovering lucid dreaming changed my life forever and how a new major avenue of learning opened itself up to me. Read up on part 3 of the series here
Sarah learning skills
A somewhat cosmic "coincidence" happened shortly thereafter - I met a girl at the occupy camp in my hometown who told me about HER lucid dreaming experience. And naturally I was quite excited to hear her story having tested lucid dreaming successfully for myself.
I had no reason to doubt her.
Sarah told me that she had always wanted to learn how to play the guitar but that she had never picked one up. She had heard from a friend at a rainbow gathering that people can allegedly learn all sorts of skills in the dream state and then UTILIZE those skills in the waking state without any physical practice efforts.
I know, a freaking mindblowing proposal! Who doesn't think of Neo going throuhg his martial arts training in the matrix movie?
The cool thing was, some time later Sarah told me she had finally picked up a guitar at a friend's house after having dabbled with the instrument in her dreams only, for a year or two. And guess what: She could play it. Instantly.
She had no reason to lie to me as we were really good friends and my own experiences with the lucid state opened the doors to all sorts of formerly "ridiculous propositions" such as this one, plus I had read from the beginning of my research that some people claimed they had successfully learned new skills entirely during their sleep time without ever having practiced them in the waking state.
This in itself seemed like another coffin in the nail of the materialist worldview - it just seemed too freakin' odd to be explained away by brain chemistry and evolutionary pressures of natural selection in a random universe. Especially because I had never heard this discussed by established people and institutions... you would think this is the greatest thing ever that humans could learn about but all I find out there is... utter silence. Unless you know lucid dreaming exists and you purposefully go look up the term on the internet from someone describing his experience, like you are doing right now ;)
I heard and saw Sarah play in the following weeks as she became the girlfriend of a very good friend of mine, and from listening to her play and seeing her chords form I could see NO difference to other people who play chords having learned it the "classical" way with lots of effort. I play the guitar myself and was quite amazed!
I was beginning to see how this lucid dreaming skill alone could encompass immense amounts of growth for human beings in general.
My rational mind had the brilliant idea of: Wow, being able to make use of one third of our lives otherwise "wasted" to unconsciousness. What an utter breakthrough!
And my rational mind was right, this would have huge impact on my ability to learn anything without investing any time, energy or "effort", if I was able to induce a lucid state whenever I felt like it.
I have to tell you that I stopped lucid dreaming shortly thereafter due to a somewhat traumatizing experience which I will get to in the next part of this series. But even so, I am waiting for a time in my life when I can dive into the lucid world once more with a prolonged focus and to keep exploring where I left off.
Paradigms shifting
It was never about the gains from the experience for me, for the moment I was completely satisfied with having proved to myself that
a) lucid dreaming is real and possible for anyone who devotes some time and effort into getting there, and who is able to suspend his programming about "how this is all illusionary whoo whoo stuff" just long enough to experience the lucid state firsthand.
b) there are effects of the mind on physical reality and vice versa that are utterly silenced in certain academic, political and cultural circles despite the unspeakable potential of this state of consciousness on life, health and prosperity for all of humanity, as well as for rediscovering our place and relationship to the grand cosmic scheme of things.
c) I no longer had any reason to take ANYTHING other people claimed with certainty for granted. This largely came from my further experiments in simply asking people "Have you heard about lucid dreaming?" and describing it to them. Most of those people would not only doubt that it is possible but outright deny any positive effect it could have on your waking life without ever having tried it or even having heard about it. It's both hilarious and sad to hear people claim to know the absolute truth when you know from your own experience they have NO CLUE what they are talking about.
I realized that those who claimed to be the most open minded were some of the most close-minded people I had ever met. And I had to realize that I was one of those close-minded people not long ago when I almost told Wilfried to shut up about his "weird dreaming stuff, we are doing important real-life activism here!!" ;) I'm glad I never said that to him.
And while there are some articles and videos about lucid dreaming today, I still find it very telling that this area of human activity is somehow reserved for those daring to find their own way instead of teaching this stuff broadly to any- and everyone in school, the media and our culture.
Lucid dreaming - like psychedelics - can have so many drastic FIRSTHAND experiences that would simply override the centuries old metaphysics that pass as "science" these days.
Magic exists. It only took one experience of this caliber to cast doubt on my entire worldview, and I had many more transcendental experiences since then, just to be sure there is something major there under the surface of waking-life consciousness^^
If lucid dreaming doesn't qualify as magic after you have experienced it firsthand, I really don't know what to tell ya :)
Pt. 1 - An Unlikely Proposition
Pt. 2 - Basic Techniques for Achieving Lucidity
Pt. 3 - Implications & Test Flight
Pt. 5 - "That's Quite Far Enough"
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