So when a lucid dream is successfully incubated intentions can be brought to mind using a verbal affirmation This is a ritual of evocation in which is saying a prayer or a spell, manifest changes in consciousness and the natural environment. This change involves magical thinking because there's a blending of the borders between subject and object or self and other and yeah, so that's, I mean, right? That's, I think that that's that definition of ritual is important. And I'm quoting the anthropologist Jack Hunter here whose work I really recommend. He's been doing some really cool things. Looking at anomalous psychology and extraordinary experience from an anthropological perspective. He even coined a phrase called para anthropology. And he's been very prolific as a writer. He wrote a book called Think, Gods spirits and magic, perhaps, the anthropology of the supernatural. And that's, that's a really nice entryway into hunters work that incorporates this, this concept of how ritual brings us into a world of Magical Thinking and that's not an insult, right, like magical thinking is used as an insult in our rational world. But it's a superpower when it's used correctly in in the right state of consciousness. So other magical and ritualized actions within the dream can be used to extend the length of a lucid dream and to clarify one's vision, or to transform specific dream content to one's liking. Asking remembered questions is yet another ritual act. It's timely, it's repeatable, and it's done with a specific outcome in mind, in this case, to dialogue with an autonomous source within the dream. So you know, autonomous, seemingly autonomous, it's got its own agenda. It's not being controlled. We're giving it room we're really trying to create dialogue. I'm reminded of the ancient travelers who visited the temple of Apollo in Delphi, descending down to the cave to ask their deeply considered questions to the Oracle. So why bother reframing lucid dreaming as a ritual complex so when we do two things happen? First, we take the calling of lucid dreams more seriously, because rituals require focus. They require repetition, and you have to set the stage so we can then revision in techniques as prerequisites set the stage right they're not just a bunch of random or chores. And I think this is really helpful from a motivational perspective is like this isn't a chore this is I'm actually setting a ritual I'm, I'm you know way of thinking and being so getting enough sleep remembering more dreams and taking time to relax and focus before bed. These are essentials we know these are essentials for lucid dreaming, so is waking up naturally recording dreams as soon as possible. And reflecting on past dreams. All of these can be ritualized. So second, the second thing is, is that we take lucid dreaming more seriously in itself as a gateway to extraordinary experience that has a long and storied history. As soon as you begin invoking the rituals of lucid dreams, you're invited to go deeper into your own mind, no matter if you're seeking healing, self understanding, or knowledge about the universe, and the real transformation ends and so those three things healing, self understanding and knowledge about the universe, those are sort of the classic aims of shamanism as well. This is what healers and mystics use altered states for in client settings when they're dreaming for a community when they're employed to sort of be the gatekeeper between the other world and a community. Also, navigating sort of like the flip side of the ecosystem mean gaining information and understanding how plants can heal for instance, and getting getting that kind of Uncanny information. So that's why ritualizing lucid dreaming is important and basically gives us some focus and we start taking it more seriously. But I want to say that it's also super important that we still be playful about our inductions and we'd be playful about our dreams themselves. Because if we get too serious, we take ourselves too seriously. We it kind of all falls apart in the other direction, basically. And so dreams are playful, right? Dreams are a environment for possibility for the past and for the present and for future possibilities and it's very playful the way that they are their dreams aren't showing us things that we can't deal with and that we that are just too much of a burden to not just showing us trauma. They are playing with possibility. And so keep that in mind. Even when we're talking about the most serious of things. You can still have that sort of playful witness to it. So I've seen a couple of comments here someone had mentioned they've got a their dream talisman is a very smooth, egg shaped sky balloon stone that I find attractive and I'm keeping next to my bed. It's nice. That sounds like a magical stone. And then another comment about using the big dream amulet that I gave you last week experiencing some vague dream recall is so I forgot about the big dream amulet and so if you weren't here last week, we'll make sure to share the link for that. Because that's a really easy way to get into this practice. Where you can simply print out this one page PDF and set your intention into the paper he can draw it. You can make it a haiku. You can do whatever you want with it. And then you fold up the piece of paper and you put it under your pillow for a few nights and see what comes and so we'll make sure that that you have access to that and notice that a for a few nights, right because I want to push back a little bit against a culture of trying to call a lucid dream. Like it's a dog like it has to happen just tonight and no other night like It's like we're under the wire and the pressures on because this is an artifact of lucid dreaming induction that came through the laboratory. It came through the pressure of sleep scientists needing to have super awesome induction strategies because it costs $10,000 A night right to be in the lab. And in there booked up for months solid it's very difficult for a sleep researcher especially someone studying something esoteric, like lucid dreaming to use a sleep lab. And so folks like Stephen LaBerge really had to get tight with their methodology and that's where Steven came up with with with mild with you know, mnemonic induction of lucid dreaming. It was a game changer for him and for many of us. However, when we relax that a little bit when we realize we're not in a laboratory setting in our own lives we can relax and call a dream and let that call. You know, just splash over a few days of your life and see and see what comes. I think it's much more naturalistic and I think we lead to less frustration as well in the process
so, we're gonna move on. We're now going to read the chapter called intention. So why do you want to go lucid? Let's talk about motivation. This is an often missed step.
It's crucial to success and lucid dreaming. Why bother anyways? What do you want to do when you realize hey, this is a dream. There's no one right answer to this question. But it's important to put a little thought into it because lucid dreams highly correlated with having a strong personal desire or an intention. And it needs to be more than idle intellectual curiosity. Your desire to have a lucid dream needs to buzz not just in your mind, but also in your heart, right? It's gotta have some punch to it. In order to remember your intention. In the dream world it needs to crackle with electricity. So the purpose of this chapter is how to help you craft your own personal intentional statement that can be easily remembered when it matters the most in the dream world. So we all have wildly different experiences and our lucid dreams based on our interests, our personalities, our backgrounds, and our core beliefs about the cosmos. That individual aspect of the lucid journey is crucial for understanding how lucid dreaming unfolds through years and the decades and helps us kind of wake up to new levels of self understanding. Like we're basically we're not all on the same trip, right? We're not. So as we age and mature, lucid experience begins to take on distinct trajectory or trajectories as our lucid worlds evolve. We discovered that we gravitate towards certain ways of being in the lucid space, patterns of the mind that are much older than our own specific bodies. We may find that our remembered action plans and the rational awareness in the dream gives way to other forces. Yet we don't lose the lucidity. We enter vivid realms of emotional and sexual vibrancy and sometimes nightmarish realms that give way to healing and to rebirth. Or we enter abstract realms of geometrical wonder where words become multi dimensional portals to new worlds. We may shape shift into animal forms and see through their eyes learning new information and perspective about our current land where we draw water or we can enter into spaces of Numinous light and our sense of self integrates with the larger environment right towards non duality beyond subject and object. So some applications for lucid dreaming that many people find valuable and exploring the dream world safely engaging in sexual fantasy, finding direct inspiration for the creative arts. composing music, solving mathematical or scientific problems. Flying Of course, I should have put that out first, or other super human possibilities, improving a difficult athletic skill contacting deceased loved ones and ancestors, recent and deep ancestors engaging in meditative practice or prayer and meeting others in a mutual dream. And there's therapeutic applications for lucid dreaming as well and the research is pretty solid on this. Facing the past facing generational wounds, developing courage for sexual assault victims experiencing bodily freedom for the wheelchair bound, overcoming post stress disorder for soldiers or abuse victims visualizing physical therapy improvements and near and dear to my heart reducing nightmares and sleep practice because that was pretty much the that was the my Forge. So all of these experiences are possible. But here's the interesting part. They may not be possible to experience unless we've learned to slip into forms of conscious awareness other than this default identification with waking rational thinking. While we're dreaming. It seems that sometimes waking style of thinking in the dream can actually squash invitations to go deeper into some of these other imaginal ways of being and we run risks of colonizing our own dream world. It's kind of heavy at the end. And honestly, again behind it, I think it is kind of heavy. If you look at even the last 100 years that the way that dreams are talked about, it's clear that they're talking about from a space of colonization about how can we extract How can we? Yeah, mine, Sigmund Freud used to talk about mining the dream. You used to talk about it to effect Freud used to talk about draining the swamp. You know, this is what the dream work was draining the swamp and so really just like transforming and tear escaping the dream world in all this kind of comes from this perspective that that the dreamer, the dream ego, is the only real thing going on. Right. And I think that this, when you kind of go deeper and deeper into this, you sort of see that the Colin colonization that is behind this that that you know those who live there in the dream world aren't granted agency. Right. And so so we're just noticing these patterns of thinking. This is very much a Euro American thing. It's very much a Euro American attitude towards lucid dreaming. And in an American attitude on top of that would be the sort of manifest destiny aspect that you know that it's our right and to go into conquer this land. I mean, just the conquering landscape that is often talked about with lucid dreaming about you can do anything you want. Like it gets really gross sometimes. And so. All this is to say is they this is the water we swim in because we live in a Euro American over culture. And that steeps into the way that we see and perceive dream work, and I think what lucid dreaming offers is a chance to to listen right and to grant agency and to make space for other voices in the dreamscape and in the landscape. And this I think is really powerful work in its ancestral work. And it's Yeah, I think it's ultimately it's justice work, frankly. So So I have a lot of strong feelings about about how lucid dreaming and all kinds of conscious you know, work can be done in the service of justice. So that's no Aaron thought that that's something and in fact this. If you're interested, I have a paper I wrote about this long ago. It's I think it's called the wilderness of lucid dreaming and I explore basically the Eco psychology of lucid dreaming from this from his perspective and I can share that link with y'all Yeah, so um, if you have if you have a question if you have put it into the chat and we'll we can we can go there.
Meanwhile, keep cruising. This is the part where we create our intention. So here's the second piece. Here's the second piece to intentionality. Having a targeted intention is not enough. You have to remember the intention in the dream you have to build your perspective memory right? You have to which is the skill of remembering later what you've decided that you want to do. As memory recall of daily life is impaired when you're in the dream state. The realization that you've become a hit and this is another thing that let me just say that we I think we owe Stephen LaBerge a debt for his for really bringing this concept of memory into how important it is for lucid dreaming. In that perspective, memory is a thing. It's a concept. It's sort of it's a little odd and it's tough to to on at first. Like what does it mean to to remember what I said I was going to do in the best way to think about it is to notice it when it fails. My for myself my perspective, Emery fails like often like in best for me is all this step out of the office to go into the kitchen because I Oh, get my keys walk down the stairs and I'll get into the kitchen and I'll have no idea why and in the kitchen. I just like I kind of look around and I'm like what why am I here and I literally have to walk back up the stairs back into the office before I remember what my intention was to do. And so and so there's that's prospective memory. It's just it's failing. It's not making it through the portal through the Consciousness Portal from my OS. And that sort of share of consciousness down the stairs into the kitchen where apparently my cognition is so differently that that I can't even recall what I wanted to do. So this is what happens when we are trying to recall an intention in a dream as well. It has to make it through that portal from waking life into the dream and some intentions or make it to the boardroom easier than others. So the only way to make the habit stick is to practice and intentionality. Is mercurial and I found that personally journaling is really effective. So I write down my desire as well as my plan when I find myself in the dream. So do this right before bed. And if you wake up in the middle of the night, turn on a book light and review your intention again, journaling concretizes it the ink and the paper makes it real. And then later of course the journal provides a record for which intentions are strong enough to some days you may find your intention is stronger than usual for unknown reasons. And you may feel a strange certainty that it's going to happen as you lay down to sleep. So, notice that notice how the intention like ebbs and flows right. You can further leverage the energy by doing some lucid activities before bed just go with it and remember later what it feels like. A strong intention is an inner certainty rather than a hopeful question. Be certain and know that you want it. So now that you know in general the range of applications of lucid dreaming, ask yourself this question. What will I do when I realize I'm in a dream tonight? Imagine yourself in the stream, looking around, marveling at everything you see and feel that it's happening in the dream world. Hey, we're here. So what is it that I wanted to do? Imagine yourself completing this task whether that means flying up into the air like a rocket or opening a door to a spiral staircase that ascends to an unknown stone tower. It's really go through it. And then write down your intention in your dream journal. Keep it simple, so it's easy to recall. And so this takes some work and you'll find that the more you practice creating these these intentional statements, the easier these your kids right? And so here's some examples of some pretty good ones. When I realized I'm dreaming tonight, I will explore a gallery of paintings or I will say, show me a solution to my problem about XYZ, right? What's the problem? I will ask the dream. How can I go deeper into my spiritual practice? Or I will surrender to the dream in a spirit of trust and confidence. I'll see where the dream takes me. Right and so intentions can be have different levels of focus. And they can even be about surrender that surrendering to the dream, but there's Goldilocks zone with them where they need to be heart centered. They need to be more than idle curiosity. They can wake in life problem. It's got to be something that's tugging at you energetically, right? The same thing with like creative scientific solutions. If you're really grinding on something from a creative perspective, like what's where is the heart of the blockage, right and how can that be made into an intention? And so and so that's how that's how to craft them and those are the kinds of intentions that are short and sweet and heartfelt. Those are the ones that get remembered. Those are the ones that when you realize you're dreaming, you're able to pull it up because it made it through the zone. The other ones won't they just you'll note you'll find out because you won't be able to recall them, which of course, you're still in a lucid dream, you still get to have the experience. So I'm going to take a look then at some of these chats with the ancestor work with justice work, do you feel it actually heals our ancestors as well as us and so I think I love the poetry of that. And I'd love to think about sending love back to my ancestors to give them some resilience. And I think that the healing focus on now for the future is probably more important. Like I'm trying to become a good ancestor essentially by doing this work. And so I tend to focus more on the present and forward. Seeing a question, do you have any thoughts about a person's age and lucid dreaming? Some of the seniors have had memory problems. Yeah. It doesn't seem like many lucid dream teachers address age related issues. Very interesting. Yeah. So there is a lot of demographic information on this stuff. It seems to be easier for younger people to have lucid dreams spontaneously. At least that's what the research seems to show. There's a lot of things that happen to us as we age, especially over the age of, I'd say moving into the 50s and 60s. For one thing, the architecture of sleep breaks down a little bit. So a lot of people don't get enough sleep. They sleep less. And it's not because when you're older, you need less sleep, you're just tired, right? It's not that you just need glasses, it's just you're not getting it. And in particular, what really seems to break down is those last cycles of REM, the really nice, long 45 minute cycles of RAM that were easy to get when we were younger, they tend to begin breaking down in that stage of life. And so to this, I say maybe it's time to try Galantamine. You know, and other sort of cognitive nootropics looking into, you know, safely ways of supplementing our memory with supplements. And it's something Galantamine is something that we can talk about, really, it anytime in the next few weeks. I've done some research on Galantamine, personally as well as published peer review on it. And it's really kind of the best shot we've got for lucid dreaming from a supplement perspective. But even if you don't take it in the middle of the night for taking my into me and during the day, a lot of my friends who are in their 60s and 70s say that they just express basically quality of life because of the of memory, how it just sort of, because because of it and it's a very safe supplement as well. So I can provide a link for that. They have a bunch of information about Galantamine.
Okay, yeah, yeah. So talks are having sound problems. Sorry. All right. Well, yeah, we're caught up it looks like Well, thanks for these questions. This is great stuff. I take supplements really seriously, by the way I you know, it's part of, as you might imagine, with, you know, with a ritual induction, we're thinking about lucid dreaming as a ritual, like taking taking a supplement is a sacrament. You know, think of it with the same energy that you would think of engaging with plant medicine with plant allies. And you can have a much better time with that attitude. What is the set and setting right, like, have I done some cleansing? Do I have a strong intention, all this fun stuff that we know is helpful for psychedelic sessions? is helpful for lucid dreaming with supplements well. So in the one last question is do I think an OBE or out of body experience is a form of lucid dreaming or do I think that they're completely different kinds of experience? So this is a really interesting question. You know, the phenomenology of the two of the two things are different. So when I look at narrative accounts of out of body experiences versus dreams, there's just different elements to them. And I think that the elements of difference are greater than just someone's paradigm, or someone's perspective. So I do think that it's it deserves a classification that is different. Just from that phenomenological perspective, you know, I'm not saying whether or not we're really going out of body, but from how it feels and what manifests and what the experience is like. They're clearly like there's demarcation zones there. James Shaw just came up with a new paper on this topic. Honestly, that is a great paper and check it out. I think Katha SunBreeze is the co author. And they were looking at out of body experiences and its transformative effect on personality, on motivation, on confidence, these kinds of these kinds of mood enhancing qualities. So I thought that was really interesting. And what else can I say about out of body experiences we need more research is isn't what we need. And so I'm seeing one last question with Galantamine. Yeah, there's no question is, how do you know that it really is what it says it is because there's not FDA approval? There's no good way to know what's in the pill. I tried it over the counter, but it had no effect of any kind. Yeah, so I think that we have to go on, on some word of mouth with these issues, and looking at trusted branding, and hopefully the folks that say that doing third party testing is accurate. And, and yeah, the Galantamine has been having a lot of really interesting movements in terms of FDA in the last year it got it actually was accepted and rejected and then within a six month period, and nobody really knows what was going on with that. I have a feeling. There's some of the name brands of big kind of Big Pharma is getting into the Galantamine market. It's very big with Alzheimer's, right? It's very big for cognitive decline. It's super effective, and it doesn't have a lot of really any counter indications. It's quite safe. And so So yeah, yeah, in fact, folks who take it, take it for cognitive decline are taking like 60 milligrams at a time for taking quite a lot of it much less than you need to take for loose for a lucid dream, which has been tested for micro micrograms and are eight so that's that's a lot. Less it's like a quarter of a dose and it will we will we see using for for other others. I'm enjoying the questions and we can take a live question to you. Let's see Stephanie has their hand raised.
Hi, there. Can you hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you.
Okay, great. I'm enjoying this. I, I haven't. I'm waiting for my book to arrive. But anyway, you were just speaking about prospective memory and the experience of walking into the kitchen and totally forgetting what you walk in for. I do that all the time. I started and I've had lucid dreams before I've had them spontaneously and I've had them I was one of the ones who started with the looking at the hands the Carlos Castaneda thing from you know, that was way back. But I haven't and then I kind of dropped the whole thing and, and I've reconnected with it through reading Andrews book and all that stuff. So most recently, but it's been hard for me to it's been hard for me to I haven't I've very rarely had them at will sometimes but rarely. So I started practicing. I got this an old Stephen LaBerge book, and I just in the last few like two weeks started practicing this day time, prospective memory practice where he has you. Each day of the week, you have four things that you're supposed to remember. And the first time you remember them. I don't know if you know this particular exercise or not but for things that he gives you and time you're supposed to remember it's a different for each day so it's not like always the same for but each day you remember four different ones in the first time you remember him means you've remembered successfully and any other time you remember and that's great, but it doesn't count. So basically it was a fail if you don't remember the first time I guess that would be like dreaming. If you miss the cue, you miss it. But I am failing. So much. It's it's like I'm being nice to myself about this. I'm like you know what, just keep doing it and see if you get better. You know, every once awhile and I'm like, and I succeed sometimes too, but it's just it really puts in my face. How quickly I forget and it's shocking, and it's no mystery why I am not becoming lucid more often, and I guess I'm just wondering if, if you've had experience with that particular exercise or if you have any favorite exercise to practice throughout the day that can help with this issue.
Yeah, so this to kind of back up a little bit to say that your experiences like in is quite normal and it is shocking how terrible our memories are. It's shocking how non lucid we are in our waking life. And I think that when you kind of get into the study of lucid dreaming dawns on you that we're asking a lot of our dreams when we can not even do this in a way or awake. You rattle and completely on top of things and we're not we're a hot mess, right? Like we have like circadian rhythms that move us through the day and we're daydreaming half that time we're like on automatic man. We're you know, we are rats in cages in depth, normal life, and so and so. Just to take a step back to say this is this is cognitive domestication and this is normal, right? And so what we're trying to do is kind of under domesticate our cognition you right you have to do it using habits, or it's one way to do it. And one of my favorite ways is the attempt to do a reality check after I passed under a doorway, so as to call it the threshold technique. It didn't invent this is probably ancient, but it really works for me because there's just a lot of doors in my life. And the first thing you realize is yeah, like you're not going to be able to get them all. You'll but you'll notice like what happens is how unconscious are we as we move from space to space. But when we become aware when we notice ourself from moving from space to another through a doorway, we also become aware of how architecture in space infuses with our quality of awareness like how we think differently when we're in the shower versus you know, when we're in a cathedral, right, like, how does space confine and, and refine our conscious experience is super profound. It's something that architects think about a lot. But we do the simple practice, we see it, we really begin to feel it and you won't catch near all of your doorways, but they're always there. And you know, that's one that that I love because it's just it's just got to it keeps on staying Interesting. Yeah, so I would recommend that and try it like 10 Try to try to get 10 A Day is a sort of general benchmark. Okay, actually do the reality check where you actually, you know, really say am I dreaming and and then really really question it and then try to write how do I know that I'm not dreaming?
Right. I follow up on that actually question which is, I'm I live in Los Angeles and I do a bit of driving. And I've a couple of times, I've had to figure out like how do I do one of those reality checks while driving? It's not easy. I can do it with signs, but signs I've also found in a dream before it was I became lucid because I had to do more than just one reality check within the dream like I checked, looking at signs and because because how writing changes if you're dreaming normally. But the writing wasn't changing, but I still had a suspicion that I was dreaming even though the writing wasn't changing. So I tried another reality check and I was definitely dreaming. So it makes me suspicious of only doing one form of reality check I feel like I should do more than one form. Is there anything other than jumping up and down or looking at your shadow? Or looking at a sign that you can think of that a person can do while driving?
Yeah, so my go to one is for reality check is to hold my nose and try to breathe. And that's a really nice one. Because never in the dream. If you try this you'll be able to breathe it you know but in waking life you can't and there's very low amount of like false negatives basically with the right Rimworld cool. I don't think any of them are foolproof because their habits but but I really like that one. I find that to be the most effective one for me, but everyone kind of goes lucid in their own ways, right? Like it's it's in that's why dream science can become more potent and we can talk about that later too. And we get into what the book says about this. Okay, but um, yeah, right. Like, for instance, I often become lucid in my dreams because I realized that I'm really emotional. Like I'm really angry, or, you know, just having a really slick, super intense experience. And I'll be like, Whoa, I this is unusual. And that's what spurs me on to realizing that I'm dreaming and so it's my it's the altered state itself. It's the emotionality that comes from and so we all have kind of our, our way. Okay. Yeah. Thank you for that. That's great. Yeah, you're welcome. In and I just cycled back on the day Galantamine. Its milligrams, I was blanking, not micrograms, right, but milligrams. And see a comment in the post about saying, I use four milligrams as well of galantamine and I've noticed in effect, sometimes it does produce a lucid dream. It also seems to enliven, even my regular dreams too, and he seems stronger, longer and more in number. And that is great. And that is really, I think, the full picture of what Galantamine does. It's not just about lucidity, it's actually strengthening. REM sleep itself. It's strengthening the, the state of being in the dream, but what it's doing in the brain with making acetylcholine more available essentially, through through all of its different ways. It also creates vivid dreams. And so one of the things that we found out with our research that I did with Scott Sparrow was that a lot of people had a lot more intense emotions in their Galantamine dreams, and they can be negative to experiences even in but they still wake up and say that they had a positive effect, even though there was negative emotionality happening in the dream itself. They wake up and they feel better. And so there's a potential that Galantamine is, perhaps. I mean, it's too early to really say but perhaps it also has a healing potential. And itself where it's sort of potentiate ing a tension or conflict and it could provide even a resolution by creating the strength Taner to be worked through with the dream itself. So, so I think it's a it's a really interesting plant is interested in plant medicine. So let's go on let's I'm looking at the top of the hour, we can read some more, right. We're gonna go for some more. This is a section calls, ultra liminal zones. That's where I kind of really get to nerd out about the archaeology of belief. So using a talisman as a dream tool is an efficient strategy because the dream world is where magical thinking works. It's the dominant logic, creating an increased fusion between subject and object that we rarely see in the waking world. It may reek of New Age sentimentality, but the ability of talisman to transverse the worlds it's just effective. These objects hold the space even for those of us whose default worldview is skeptical, and kind of you know, a scientific materialism. The night demands a different kind of logic and older cognitive strategy. It's not so much superstitious as it is appropriate. It's appropriate to the task at hand which is feeling relaxed and inspired so that we can dance with the wall. Street provides some helpful analogies for centuries in Europe in the British Isles. magical objects have been placed in the threshold spaces of homes, so above lintels and doorframes under a window sills, concealed inside chimneys, and in Smoke halls. Common examples are horseshoes, children shoes, sacred words. Either say in a clay tablet or scroll, or placed in a bottle right? In Iron Crosses, sometimes these objects are hidden and other times they remain in plain sight. The practice is nearly universal because thresholds, those spaces between places have their own magic. Paradoxically, openings into the home provide the ability to move freely and to welcome guests to heat our dwellings and to let in fresh air but at the same time, they're opening the home to unwanted guests and to foul smells and to harsh elements. Right. It's the Gateway it's the gatekeeper. So here's an example of a practice hidden in plain sight. Christmas decorations. wreaths of pine and spruce are evergreen amulets, they protect doorways for bringing in disease. Garlands tied with red cloth had been used to ward off evil spirits for centuries. And even Carolyn has an ancient ritual history that began with people blessing apple orchards to keep them free in malicious spirits for the next year's harvest. All ancient objects and rituals used in liminal spaces to combat those uncertain terrors of the night. However, to protect protection are placed by the chimney on Christmas Eve. All the other openings to the house are guarded. All the spiritual potentials of the non dark night are funneled and focused into this sooty opening. And what's more, the old European use of children's shoes as which traps is subverted, as children are told that the stockings that are held hung by the chimney with care there's filled with gifts and so like the woods people of Northern Europe had been doing long since time immemorial, and offering a food is left at the table. And in this way, modern Christmas decorations are part of an ancient focused practice for inviting a very specific demigod into the home. And that's Santa Claus, right. It's so interesting. It's so interesting to me. So anthropologist see ology, Riley. She's an expert on the archaeology of belief suggests that threshold openings like doorways and windows and chimneys, they have a secret dimension beyond height beyond with this is liminality. supernatural forces arrive and congregate here in these spaces between and they exist, quote in a temporal and spatial sector. That separate from mundane reality. So it's between and betwixt, right. As Riley suggests, liminal zones are precisely where magical objects are most effective. That's really what it comes down to. liminal zones are where magical objects are most effective. And so in this slide, we can see that lucid dreaming is another kind of threshold. It's another kind of liminal zone, where the conscious and the unconscious mind meet. The dream is a magical place where spirits congregate. And all sorts of characters visit with us in the intimacy of the night. So we should not be surprised to discover that dream amulets are quite common throughout history. For example, in eighth century China that back who was a mythological animal depicted on charms, this was a nightmare eater. It looked like a tap year it's a small force like animal that's home to the Malaysian mountains. The creature became popular in the 14th century in Japan and today, many still follow a tradition of putting a wooden carving or a printout were scrawled under their pillow to bring good dreams. This carving depicts a picture of a sailboat, it's loaded down with treasures, and you can see the character buchu still on the sail
and another case in point and we talked about this last week, actually, was the Bijoya nation, the great plains of Canada and United States, and now it's absorbed into pan, pan Native America, talking about the dream capture, right? It looks like a spider web catches bad dreams and it lets good dreams through. So you can find plastic versions that corner gas stations, but American Indian crafts people also make dream catchers that are blessed and specifically for use by tourists. For settlers. Right. So it's a gift. It's, it's, it's a ritualized gift. So finally in chapter 11, which we'll read later, another dream talisman tradition is discussed at length and these are the cabbalistic amulets that protect against nightmarish spirits that are depicted in Babylonian and in Hebrew contexts. I think that this is about sleep paralysis entities. We'll get into that another time. It's super spooky fun stuff. So suffice to say that dream amulets have been popular for ages I'm not saying objects are inherently magical. We can't prove or disprove this line of reasoning in the waking world. What I'm saying is is that amulets are effective when applied in altered states of consciousness. Because probably, probably we are neurologically primed to recognize objects with liminal properties like we recognize them. As chaos magician, Peter Carroll says beliefs are not seen as ends in themselves, but there are tools for creating desired effects. Yeah, so that is the end of that chapter in this piece about Yeah, this piece about about liminality when it comes to dreaming and this is where intentions were is I think, very, very important to wrap our heads around because when we craft an intention, we're generally in a waking, rational state of mind. And so it takes a little bit of work to be able to create something that will still be able to translate that has juice and power when we're in the dream world. Right. And so that's sort of the trick is to create something that can make that bridge into that into that state of consciousness. And liminal objects are objects that for whatever reason they make it through the bridge as well. And so, our magical stones are iron, right? The horse skull buried under the floor, like these are objects that in liminal states were aware of. Even if we're not aware of what our social security number is, or even like, what our address is, you know, so it's not that memory is deficient. In a lucid dream. I hear this a lot. You know, this is something that I think Alan Hopson used to say this a lot. The dream the dream researcher, the famous Harvard sleep researcher. That memory is deficient in dreaming, and it's not that it's deficient. It's just that it's altered. It's different. It has its we're on a different trip. So think I will leave you with that reading off with that tonight. And we can take some more questions that have coming up what's coming up for you, you know, and if you have to head out right now. Focus your your intentional statement that would be that would be worked on. If you can come up with an intentional statement that has that has juice that has an emotional edge to it. That is easy to remember. And begin inserting it into your before bed incubations. In let it sit, sit with it for a few nights and then let it rest and then see what comes and just be natural about it. And this you can have a lucid dream tonight, right? It can happen tonight. But we will put the wrong pressure on ourselves to do so. We kind of we make it we make it more difficult for ourself and we end up getting frustrated. So yeah, soften that intention. Dreams are cats, right? They don't come like dogs do become in their own speed in their own time. If it's if it's in their best interest
some great comments about limit of about limit or places here in Mexico. They paint the edges of the entryways and a Windows a certain blue for good luck and protection. That's right, and that's in yellow in the European context. That's the red door right. The red door is liminal and liminal space. Doors of Jewish homes. Yeah, of course, the inversion, you know, we always had a horseshoe where I was growing up above the door because I come out of Irish American family. And I feel it when it's not there, like when it's not there, I feel I feel unprotected. So see you next question. How do you create a strong belief and I'm not really sure the context of that question. If you could, give me some more context, belief for in the dream a belief that you're going to have a lucid dream
Yeah, hello, can you hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you. Yeah, hi,
sorry. You're just saying like the leaf is not in it. And that is actually a tool for a desired effect. So how do you create a strong belief within whatever it is you're choosing? To that will take you to that? effect,
I suppose. Great. Yeah. So so i i One of the reasons why I think these liminal objects are so effective is because they are ancient and we've been doing humans a really long time. And so I think that certainly leafs are easier to eat for the cyborg. As we move into the dream world and we move into these ancient spaces.
And so it's not so much creating a belief as it is anchoring to the beliefs you already have. noticing them, being flexible with them, questioning them perhaps.
But, but you know, we all come from a cultural context. How can we integrate that with a liminal and it might be for instance, I know I'm speaking really vaguely here, but for instance, some people are concerned about having nightmares. And so they say from a Christian perspective, a Christian home bow, they're an atheist and you know, believe in science and our humaneness right, and yet plagued by nightmares, and you find out that it's still very comforting to have say, across in the bedroom to protect a space at night and people can, can feel really conflicted about that. That sort of disassociation or that cognitive dissonance and yet, it's okay. Because what happens in the dream world, especially when we're scared is we can kind of contract into the way that we saw the world. And our paradigm of reality can contract especially when we're scared. And so we come back up against these worldviews that we thought we no longer hold. And we have to sort of begin a new process of integration right? Of how do we like take the good from from these paradigms and use them and transform them into how we see the world now, in luminal objects are one of the ones that that you really can basically draw from you know, images or sculptures of saints, for example. Or special stones or whatever your tradition is that you grew up around. This can have special power for before you or it could be that you haven't resonance for it from another culture. And I think that that this can be done respectfully, and isn't cultural appropriation if it's done respectfully. There's there's a resonance that we have some cultures who have a you're right who have a connection still to spiritual worlds that maybe are blocked for our from our own upbringing or on Ancestry are open in this way and they can hold the space for us until we rediscover our own ways, our deeper ways. And so part of that constructing the belief is actually about rediscovering the beliefs that we already unconsciously hold.
And then working with them. Not to say, does that make sense? I mean, no, that's a lot.
Yeah, no, it's perfect. Thank you.
And just to tie that up, not to say that every childhood belief that you have is quote unquote, right, right. That's not what I'm saying. either. It's, you know, noticing how our beliefs, our paradigms, and that we can question our paradigms and we can enlarge our paradigms and create safe spaces in that way. And that's, I think, I think that's the work that takes our whole lives. I think that's sort of the spiritual journey. My horseshoe is facedown, by the way. Jerry, has their hand raised. Jerry, hi.
Well, you know, almost everything you just said.
I kind of agree with when I was younger, starting before I was 10 years. Old. I was I was having lucid dreams. And some of them were really, really transformative in terms of life situations are really helpful. But the older I get, the fewer and fewer and fewer dreams I have like I haven't had a true lucid dream for two years now and I'm in my 70s and I've listened to everything just said it makes sense. But that just doesn't work. I mean, this statistics about how often people have lucid dreams according to their age.
You know, I don't know them offhand. What about about this? You know, I know that we talked about this a little bit earlier. I have some anecdotal evidence of a lot of folks in their 60s. And 70s, who lucid dreamed a lot as young adults sort of lost the ability in midlife and then came back around to it in you know, in older age, and so part of that may be that you know, that life circumstances made it easier to invest the time energy again, it might also be it out we talked about circadian rhythms and it could be simply honestly, like, the fact that
having to get up to go to the bathroom once or twice a night creates more opportunities to do intention work, right. And that's not something that that younger folks generally think about. And so, so how can we work with what is is is important. And yet Galantamine for sure in supplements can can certainly effective. And sometimes it takes a long time and it takes it it takes some patients as well. And in so, but I don't have any any hard pet stats about success. Rates for older folks when it comes to lucid dreaming success. But that's a it's really a good question. I think it shows how we need more research and that.
More shoe up to hold the luck in Yeah, it's good. Yeah, yeah. Any more parting parting thoughts or for tonight? For we go off onto our own ways?
Yeah, Darryl.
Yeah. So you were going to send a post the link for the 29
Let me put it into the chat right now. Thanks.
Yeah, Galantamine, it's so cool because, you know, Stephen LaBerge and his associates, came up with a peer reviewed study pretty much the same time that Scott Sparrow and I did, and our methodologies were really similar. And So taken together, the two studies really show a lot of promise. There, it's an it's in the chat now. And so it's just a review that talks about the research talks about Galantamine effects, and some of my own personal experiences with it as well. And I think the most important thing that people should know with Galantamine is that you have to take it in the middle of the night if you take it in the beginning of the night. Essentially, it's not effective for dream recall, or dream vividness.
Lloyd, yeah. Um, in regard to I didn't quite catch all of what you were saying about the the mining like the like, how we were like trying to get something out of the from the lucid dreaming, and then how that would relate to your, your intention, you know, like, Is there is there an ethic there something or is there a way that that sort of you need to keep that in mind as far as your intention is concerned?
Thank you. Yeah. So I'd say probably for y'all, with your, you know, education being part of this community. It's probably not as big of a concern as the kind of thing that I see in some lucid dreaming forums with folks who shouldn't lucid dreaming, but who aren't interested in dreams themselves. And so there's a lot of sort of poisonous dream culture where people are essentially just using lucid dreaming as if it's a as if it's a virtual reality. You know, and just essentially, plowing the dream world, right? In more ways than one. And so So I think there are ways that we harm ourselves with that kind of perspective. But I think that we can absolutely ask the dream about, you know, our dream or dreaming awareness, bring up issues, creative problems, and all that kind of thing. in ways that are fruitful. For me, personally, it's just about meeting the dream halfway and so I'm not interested in necessarily in quote unquote, controlling my dreams I'm interested in. Float the dream with self awareness. And I facilitate this dream to express this experience, how can I improve it? Most of the way like permaculture improved natural ecosystems, like how can I take what's already there and refine the lines and sometimes that means getting out of the way, right? Surrendering in a lucid dream, surrendering my control. So something spontaneous emerges. I think that's really radical. And I think that I mean, it's not a new idea. Now, but it's a it's a radical idea when we when we try it in the moment if we're coming from a paradigm of lucid dreaming as control, lucid dreaming is taking what I want from the dream and extracting it. James Hillman, some of the source material here is James Hillman who in the underworld of dreams, talks, he's not even talking about lucid dreaming, he never even I think mentioned lucid dreaming and his entire career as a union. Psychologist, yes, these attitudes of trying to mine the dream and for reducing dream figures to predictions of parts of a personality and it's kind of these this kind of thinking, rather than giving dream figures, their own autonomy, their own identity, their own, you know, like we are in relationship with this and what, what does that relationship feel like and what can we learn from it? And so to go down to the dream the underworld of dreams is what James Hillman would say, is to go in to to try to learn rather than to take rather than trying to steal from the underworld, how can we, what can we learn? So yeah, nuances there, right.
So it's kind of a back and forth thing of, like, you're kind of distilling some heart thing and you're trying to also work with, with what you're being what people are bringing, or what, whatever is being brought to you at the same time.
Right. Yeah, and that's it right. And so like when we ask a question, right, to a dream, we just make, how do we make sure we make space for the answer, and accept the answer that shows up when it could be very unexpected or challenging right. You know, and I, and we see this often in, in sexuality and lucid dreaming, where it can get very weird very quickly. Unexpected characters and figures show up and in so, like, when we have our waking sort of literal mindedness on it can be it can be very disturbing what happens when we relax in I'm assuming that we're not in traumatized spaces in the dream and right but what happens when when boundaries and self and other emerge and what happens when identity flows in and it can be it can be really interesting. But if we have a very specific thing in mind, and then the dream just sort of flips it because the dream can be like a trickster and just be like, here's something weird for you. And we are real. Suddenly uptight about that. We just kicked kicked out of the dream. It's just like, that's it a game over right? You didn't flow with it. What's so it did? It's a it's about being on the wave. I think Robert Wagner says something about that about being lucid is about staying, having to, you know, not controlling the ocean but just staying afloat. The ocean is deeper and bigger and older, right.
Thank you. That's good, inspirational. Words there, I think.
Great. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you all this was, this was really fun. We'll continue next week with a chapter on immersion. And yeah, keep working with your dream amulets.
Download the lucid dreaming. Dreaming amulet. We'll get a link for you. Is there anything else Alyssa that I was supposed to?
Have Okay, great. Well, thank you.
Let me get everybody unmuted and they can all say bye
bye.
Recording stuck. You're right. Next time.
Take care. Wonderful program. Ryan. Thank you. Great.
It's great meeting with you. I'll see you next week. Okay, see you next week.
