Dream on

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How would you feel if you could fly without a plane, or run a marathon without ever having to train for it? No, you wouldn’t be dead. In fact, experiencing a life with no limits happens every night of your life. At night, people dream about four to six times, and the idea that we have the power to control these dreams is remarkable. If we could live out our wildest dreams every night, then why wouldn’t we?

Lucid dreaming is just that. A lucid dream is one in which you’re aware that you’re dreaming and can control everything around you. On numerous occasions, I’ve experienced lucid dreams, and the more they happen, the more I want to have them all the time. For some reason, I can always remember my lucid dreams. For instance, I once dreamt that my brother and I were being held captive by an axe murderer. I knew I was dreaming, so to escape the dream, I ran out onto my driveway and, just before I saw the axe connect with my head, woke up.

After this experience, I was curious to know if I could control my dreams in a positive manner. It would be crazy for me to subconsciously have the ability to lucid dream and not exploit it to its full potential. I don’t see why anybody wouldn’t want to lucid dream if they could.

It definitely takes effort to practice the art of lucid dreaming. You have to constantly do reality checks such as looking at your hands, or a digital clock, or looking into a mirror. Why these particular things you ask? Well, your hands will be disfigured in a dream, a digital clock will always drastically change time quickly, and your reflection will be blurred in a dream. It also helps to keep a dream journal. A dream journal will remind you of the difference between reality and a dream. It’s also used as a reminder that your dream actually existed.

My own greatest dream in life is to be a successful musician. The realistic odds of that happening are slim to none, but in my dreams anything is possible. This is why the art of lucid dreaming is mind-blowing. With practice and time, although it’s not necessarily occurring in reality, I could live out my dream of being a musician.

Sure, it will be a short-lived dream occurring only in my imagination, but haven’t you ever had a dream that has affected your mood for the day? You dream about a boy or girl in class and then when you see them you feel weird around them? Or have you ever dreamt about driving a race car, then when you wake up you feel an incredible adrenaline rush? The scenarios can go on forever. Dreaming about playing a sold-out show at Wembley Stadium puts me in the most amazing mood when I first wake up in the morning. Who’s to say I couldn’t also experience that amazing feeling on a daily basis?

There are so many qualities about dreams that are similar to reality. Like reality, you can experience all five senses in a dream. You can forget dreams, but you can also forget things that happen to you in reality. So why is dreaming that much different from being awake? You might smell, see, and taste your mom’s home-cooked meal in a dream as if you were really eating it, so dreaming might not be so far from reality.

The only disappointing difference between a dream and reality is, unlike reality, we can’t control where we’re going to end up in the dream itself. Whether it’s the Alps, Mexico, Wembley Stadium, or Wal-Mart, it’s a matter of how we control the scenario our mind has given us. But, within those confines. the amount of control we have is nearly endless. In a dream, even if I couldn’t control where the rock concert was taking place, I could still put on a sold-out show and wake up with the same feeling of being a rock star.

The art of lucid dreaming is something most people rarely experience, but for those who can, it is incredible. I’ve always wanted to live in a world with no boundaries. And every night, little do most know, we have this opportunity. Some embrace the nightmares and terrors of dreams, while some can completely manipulate the situation they’re in to their own personal liking. How you chose to dream is something you can exercise a lot of control over. To quote the movie Waking Life, “They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn’t you say the same thing about life?”

Colton Hordichuk
Contributor

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