Lucidly Dreaming
“I walk for nights on end, I dream or talk to myself interminably.”
“We are making progress and yet nothing is changing. It’s not navigation but dreaming.”
The Fall, -Albert Camus, p. 11,72 Justin O’Brien translation
Every day before I close my eyes and go to sleep I try to do a little prep for lucid dreaming (LD). I got into the practice some time ago, and have doing a pretty good job of keeping it up or having success at entering a lucid dream state since I began. That’s not to say my dream quality doesn’t vary. I’m not 100% successful at LD, and although I’m not sure that’s even what I want, I could probably do better with a little self experimentation. I got into lucid dreaming about the same time as I started meditating, and heard about those who meditate while in a lucid dreaming state. It sounded like a cool concept, sleep AND meditate at the same time, even if a bit fantastical.
I went looking for sleep meditation mostly because I was having (and still do, even with the lucid dreaming) continued difficulty sleeping, and was looking for new approaches after having unsuccessfully tried all the more environmental and physical things recommended for getting good sleep. Like most people who get started on this, I first found some more new-agey stuff, that was unappealing, and then discovered mainstream religious texts focused on Tibetan Buddhism. There they call it “Dream Yoga” and there’s a few decent books on the topic, primarily from Tenzing Wangyal Rinpoche (Wikipedia), Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep (Kindle is like $2.99 but also available free if you dig around online. It’s also a REALLY good kind of book to listen to if you’re not doing screen time prior to bed -Audible link). Now, I don’t promote getting involved in any religious activity or organization, but it is a path for some. Rinpoche runs the Ligmincha International organization, where you can do retreats and classes, and also listen to and participate in free online courses. I haven’t the time or money for one of these retreats or in-person classes as of yet, but would like to, he is very sympathetic on his videos, and an engaging speaker.
That being said, I had to find some more on this that explained the “science” and process behind lucid dreaming and dream meditation. A friend pointed me to Evan Thompson’s Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation and Philosophy. (I have it on Kindle). I can’t recommend this enough. He details not only the science behind lucid dreaming and dream meditation, but also dispels myths about it, and a host of other things, like out of body experiences (which has its own acronym in the community… OOBE). He also offers some practical advice about LD. Thompson has a lot of great works out there on related topics in general, and although the physical books are pricey, Kindle editions are pretty reasonably priced, and the content is EXCELLENT for skeptics and non-religious or spiritual people interested in these subjects.
What does all this have to do with Absurdism? Well, it is little “a” absurd, to think about OOBE and LD/dream yoga/meditation as tangible things. A lot of absurd things happen in our dreams, and a lot of absurd dream translators and interpreters exist now and in the past (maybe a follow-on post about Freud and Joseph in Egypt etc.). Dreams exist purely in the mind, and have no meaning, not unlike our “regular” daily lives. Thinking back to the Matrix post I did, and the philosophy surrounding those issues, we can see how the lines between dream states and reality get blurred fast. If you’ve ever done LD, you especially know how real they can be, and at advanced stages how you can manipulate your dreams as Neo would the Matrix.
Like Neo in the Matrix, Lucid dreams can be manipulated to fly or to meditate, or just walk about endlessly (maybe my favorite?). But none of this makes it any more real or filled with meaning and purpose than our daily lives. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t continue to exist, or pay attention to our dreams, and as Camus points out, there may be value in both just as they are. In this case, like using sleep to also meditate, even without some higher meaning or purpose for doing it.
Camus discusses dreams a lot in The Fall, and so I picked a couple (I think) relevant quotes from it. These quotes were chosen because I think they reflect two important things. The first,
“I walk for nights on end, I dream or talk to myself interminably.” is something most people can relate to, and sets the stage and even invokes that dreamlike state. It’s one I relate to for sure, and at more than one point in my life I’ve done it. The second quote, “We are making progress and yet nothing is changing. It’s not navigation but dreaming.” is really where the Absurdism comes into play. It reflects not only the punishment of Sisyphus and the Absurd man, e.g. making progress up the mountain but nothing changing -the daily grind, but also the state of lucid dreaming. You can navigate your lucid dream, you can navigate the challenges of life, but in the end it still has no meaning, and it’s all just a dream.
-DA
For additional resources on lucid dreaming beyond what I posted above there’s a pretty active Reddit community https://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/ and even a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream with a ton of references and resources. Not to mention endless hours of YouTube content of varying quality — but I haven’t explored that too much outside of the authors I mentioned above.
I found the one thing more than anything else to help get into the habit, was to think about it before bed and as I fall asleep try to “seed” a scenario, and keep a dream journal, even if only a few words of every dream you wake from.
