meditation in a lucid dream

I’ve been a 95% or more lucid dreamer in my entire life, as far back as I have autobiographical memories, which start around my second birthday. I also have an incredibly vivid imagination. Reading a book or daydreaming is a much more vivid and interesting experience for me than watching a movie or playing a video game. I never realized that that’s not the case for everyone until this year (2020). Perhaps that gives you some idea of what my usual dreams are like?




In 2009, my partner of 12 years was killed in an accident. This was one of the most traumatic events of my life, and I was having a hard time coping. My dreams were scrambled and nonsensical. I just kept flying away from everything or going through doorways and gates to change the scene again and again.




Finally, in my loneliness, I conjured my husband in a dream, in his full physical manifestation. (The only sensation ever feel is my body in the bed unless I force it.) I forced myself to feel the contours of his face, his stubble, the cleft in his chin, the feel of his collarbone beneath the skin… I kissed his lips, feeling the scar on his upper lip where he’d accidentally hit himself with a wrench a few years earlier. The sensation was overwhelming, and I awoke in my empty bed, under a wave of crushing grief.




I desperately wanted a break from the grief, a break from everything. So when I finally managed to get back to sleep, I removed nearly all sensory input from my dreamworld. My dreamworld setting was just me, floating in a dimly lit gray fog. (I have always found walking in fog to be incredibly serene. I feel safe, cocooned.) I could feel my body, completely relaxed in my warm bed. I could feel my breaths going in and out, beyond my control. Just happening. I dreamed this way for several nights in a row.




This dream meditation was very restful, but I had a lot of work to do on myself, a lot to process, and it wasn’t happening in fog land. So I flipped a switch in my brain and stopped myself from lucid dreaming, after being a lifelong lucid dreamer. It took a while for me to allow myself to lucid dream again. I still sometimes NOPE when I become lucid, and make myself forget I’m dreaming. Some nights this happens many times.




I’ve only used that lucid dream meditation technique infrequently since then. I feel that it is more useful to dmy mental health to let my subconscious led me where it may.