The cost of lucidity
For many a sudden boost in lucidity is the end goal. It’s a noble enough notion, wanting to bring a certain level of awareness into your present, and by extension, develop some level of control and self-determination. However, problems arise when you begin to experience a level of lucidity but have yet to establish habits that allow you to move through your day to day with an air of authenticity.
One of the major advantages to dreaming lucid is the ability to actively integrate displaced energies from daily traumas. It’s not until you've moved into this state of awareness that you realize how many seemingly unimportant things create tension in your being. Every time you’ve chosen to spare someone a potentially devastating response, or chosen not to act for fear of alienating another, every time you’ve chosen not to say what needed saying to spare the feelings of a loved one you create choke points in your energy.
Now, I’m not saying to go around verbally detonating innocent bystanders. We create these temporary stops to channel energy in more acceptable ways. Unfortunately for many people moving through their lives unconsciously, the unconscious is exactly where this shadow stuff ends up. These bits of sand eventually form a beach as they settle in the depths of your being without resolution. In time you find yourself on an island isolated by all the things you never said and should have done.
By living lucidly, I could avoid getting stranded on that island. But, I wasn’t living honestly. I still had trouble with finding the courage to exist in a state of authenticity and because of that I was creating a nightly ritual with no end in sight.
It’s not uncommon for an individual to experience five to seven dreams a night. I know how, for those of us that struggle to recall a single nightly excursion, the idea of having seven in one night may seem farfetched. However, it is not the frequency of dreaming that is in question but rather our ability to clearly recall it. During these dreaming states, people have been known to experience the deep and often unsettling depths of the unintegrated shadow as well as ecstatic extrasensory experiences that have the power to reshape our perspective and breathe new vitality into our existence.
Many dreamers who identify as lucid, or at least on the higher end of the lucidity spectrum, seem to be searching for these ecstatic experiences in their nightly activities and daily meditations. The problem is that when you are highly lucid and living in a way that creates dissociation in your waking moments, you end up spending the first part of your night reintegrating what you repressed during your day. So, often times you begin your spiritual journey in the realm of nightmares and trauma. Here, the dark shadow cries out for attention and love. This is natural and beneficial but extremely wasteful when you think that the reason you continue to have this particular set of dark shadow dreams is because you are just not living in an honest way.
For students of the shadow and savants of dream, the time we take to sleep is sacred and the energy we expend in preparation for this catharsis is deliberate. So, spending the first three out of five lucid dreams integrating issues that you could be resolving in your day feels like pouring water on the desert sand. Becoming lucid is not set in stone. We develop the skills and train in techniques that increase the chances of us becoming aware of our dreaming state and thus lucid. All of the preparation, training, and intention is designed to change something like a 20% chance to an 80% chance. Each dream is an opportunity to become aware. So, squandering 66% of it can grind your mind training down to a screeching halt.
Moreover, encountering the shadow in a non-lucid state normally puts us at odds with it as we digress to our base nature of lashing out, struggling, and trying to destroy the monsters in our closet. Engaging the dark shadow with anything less than compassion and love can only lead to repressing the energy further. At the very least, we end up investing more energy into the unresolved trauma as it gains momentum from our fears and rejection.
This next part is going to be difficult because I’m asking you to do something that is completely life changing. If you’re serious about being healthy and gaining a mastery of your spiritual experience, you have to protect your dreams from yourself. You have to find the courage and conviction to stand in your truth and bear it without shame during your day. Every time you tell half-truths you are telling a lie, or rather, creating a deliberate illusion. The truth of what you are, how you feel, and what you desire is simple. You can doll it up to make it fit better into the expectations of others because every doll is a shallow imitation. If you truly value the vast expanses of your highest vibration, you have to use your days to safeguard your nights.
