1.

reality sandwich:
http://realitysandwich.com/57338/lucid_dreaming_shamanic_consciousness/

Thanks to movies like Inception and Avatar, lucid dreaming has become a household word.
Although definitions vary depending on your culture and the strength of your resistance
towards the transpersonal, most call lucid dreaming the experience of dreaming with
awareness, and sometimes dreaming with control, while the body sleeps. With the buzz
around Inception, there have been more news articles about dream research in the last month
than Ive seen in the last two years combined, with every local journalist asking dream
researchers the same questions: Is dream control possible or is it science fiction? Will
technology ever let us share dreams like virtual reality? What fool-proof methods or pills can
we take to wake up in our dreams?
The truth is, these themes were perfected thousands of years ago by our ancestors, and are still
practiced today in dozens of indigenous cultures around the world. And this work is done
without pills, headsets, VR goggles, and dream machines. Lucid dreaming is actually a
shamanic skill, a method of heightened awareness in the dream that allows healers, medicine
men and soothsayers access to information, insight and energetic powers. Lucid dreaming
doesnt require technology: it is the technology.
Conquistadors of Consciousness
But this is a far cry from how we as Westerners are taught about lucid dreaming. More often
than not, lucid dreaming is discussed as a fantasy realm where we can indulge our private
fantasies, seeking entertainment and pleasure. Not that theres anything wrong with this
perspective, limited as it is. Its simply a marketers dream seeking the lowest common
denominator, neatly paralleling the adolescent cravings that drive the main engines of
distraction and consumption in Western culture.
The fantasy of all the sex you want, as a creepy punk rock character from the movie Waking
Life promises, has a darker side though. The roots of the idea reach straight into the colonial
paradigm of Western civilization, where it is our noble right to seize what we want because
our own desires are the only thing that matters in the dream the dream ego is the only thing
truly alive. Its just a dream, after all.
The dream as wilderness awaiting our plunder is an old myth that played out in the scientific
West. For those who do grant that dreams have meaning at all, the meaning is seen as a
resource to be extracted for our waking life goals. Even the father of modern depth
psychology, Sigmund Freud, discusses dream interpretation as the work of culture to drain the
swamps of the psyche to build monuments for the ego.[i] On the other hand, Freuds younger
colleague Carl Jung warns that, Any efforts to drill (the unconscious) are only apparently
successful, and moreover are harmful to consciousness.[ii] Unaware of this divide, but still
caught in its net, many lucid dreaming 101 books promise unlimited potential: and all the
possibilities sound vaguely like newspaper ads from the 19th century trying to call new
frontiersmen into Indian country.[iii] Explore, manipulate and conquer the manifest destiny
of lucid dreaming. This myth places the dreamer in the center of the world, the creator and
arbiter of the dreaming landscape, and by default, before we even know its happened, we
have become conquistadors of consciousness.

Beyond the Wilderness of Dreams

Of course, when explorers come to a new world, they quickly discover they are not alone.
The ecologies of today, for better or worse, have been shaped by human hands for millennia.
The wilderness myth comes with civilization. For all intents and purposes, the concept of
wilderness has been useful politically, by allowing for the preservation of vast tracts of land
(most of which were inconvenient to exploit in the first place, just sayin), but the wilderness
ideal has also sustained the dualism that humans have no place in the natural world. The
dualism here therefore casts any use of nature to be ab-use, denying us a middle ground in
which responsible use and non-use might attain some kind of balanced, sustainable
relationship, according to American historian William Cronon.[iv]
This myth continues to obstruct our view of dreams and other intuitive states of
consciousness. For those in the scientific West who do grant that dreams have meaning at all,
the meaning is seen as a resource to be extracted, captured or sold to Hollywood.
Yet we do belong in nature, and we have an opportunity to belong in the dream as well with
our analytical minds, self-awareness and active manifesting abilities fully intact. While at first
the autonomous dream figures duck into the shadows due to the blinding light of lucidity
(lucid comes from the Latin word for light, luce), they eventually emerge when the dreamer
loses the adolescent drive to completely control the dream, and when the dreamer is ready to
meet the dream on equal grounds.
Dream Control
To clarify, in my opinion, it is natural and healthy for beginning lucid dreamers to attempt to
control aspects of the dream, just as a child tests limits with his parents. Early dreams of
control can be empowering and ecstatic. Personally, I took to flying at the age of 14, and had
my fair share of sensual lucid experiences too. There are other instances when dream control
is culturally and psychologically appropriate, such as in the advanced Dream Yoga practices
of Tibetan Buddhism or in the lucid dreaming therapy of trauma victims who use the lucid
dream to rescript the damaging narrative that robs them of vitality.
But lucid dreaming is not the same as dream control. You can have meta-cognition without
control, and you can manipulate the dream without any awareness youre in a dream at all.
Both lucidity and control shift in quality at all times too, so a lucid dream can have some
pretty un-lucid moments and a control dream is always full of material not consciously
selected by the dream ego.
Anthropologist Michael Winkelman describes a more appropriate model of the sort of
consciousness highlighted during lucid dreams. He calls it shamanic consciousness, in which
we are capable of holding the emotional vibrancy of the dream simultaneously with the focus
and volition that marks our waking lives.[v] Remember, the dreamstate is still running the
show despite having self-awareness, or what psychologists call formal self-reference, and this
is the fuel for the shamanic fire.
From a scientific perspective, REM dreaming has a pretty specific neuro-phenomenology.
Activation of the limbic system brings strong emotions, and this is combined with an
enhanced access to long-term memory and a depression of short-term memory so we dont
tend to question who or where we are. The parts of the brain that bring mental imagery are
also actively firing away, creating symbolic structures for all this content. In a nutshell,

dreaming is a potent mix of visual-emotional-linguistic metaphors that link to our deepest

memories and experiences.[vi] So being aware during this intense process, a little activation
of the prefrontal cortex, does not necessarily pull rank.
In the long run, dream control has a more limited role then suggested by the self-appointed
gurus of lucid dreaming 101. Dream control, once it is integrated into a shamanic paradigm, is
necessary to set intentions, to assist in dream body transformations, to make choices that are
presented, and sometimes, to manifest what is missing in a dream narrative that asks for
creative solutions. Remote viewing, distance healing and animal transformation (of the
dreambody) are concrete expressions of the shamanic paradigm.
It is in this paradoxical state of consciousness, awake when asleep, that a second paradox can
be achieved: to use the rational mind to invite mystery, and to use dream control to surrender.
Only then do the deeper, more ancient possibilities of lucid dreaming reveal themselves.
Lucid Dreaming in Other Cultures
In many indigenous cultures around the world, dreaming is practiced as a shamanic art.
Lucidity is not often discussed directly, but in many cases, the lucid-control dimension is
evident in the dream reports collected by anthropologists. For many of the first people on the
planet, being aware of being aware is not a trick for its own philosophical novelty, but a
prerequisite for undertaking a dangerous dream journey. These dreams, marked by clarity,
intense imagery and emotions, are invariably known as big dreams, and in most cultures are
treated and interpreted differently than the dreams that reflect anxieties and everyday-life
concerns.
One such extant lucid dreaming culture area is located within peninsular Malaysia, a grouping
of indigenous cultures known as the Orang Asli. Anthropologist Diane Riboli suggests that
shaman in these cultures use their dreams and vision states to shape-shift and retrieve
information that they interpret as coming from outside their bodies.[vii] They transform into
animals in order to gain power, protect individuals and villages, and communicate with the
forest directly.
Dream hunting has also been reported by Hugh Brody, in his 1997 narrative Dreams and
Maps.[viii] The skill is almost lost, according to the Beaver Indians living in the Canadian
subarctic, and only a few elders still know the way. In short, the hunter dreams where the
game is located, and in some cases, can even glimpse the particular animal that chooses to be
sacrificed. In waking life, the hunters locate the game and respectfully make the kill.
Shamanic lucid dreaming is well known in South America, as well. Chilean anthropologist
Rosa Anwandter suggests that there are over 20 dream-honoring societies in the Amazon
basin and another half-dozen in Peru. One clear example is the Guarani peoples, who meet
regularly in circle to share their dreams. The Guaranis of Paraguay also recognize lucid
dreaming, and are said to move their villages based on dream warnings of future floods.[ix]
Lucid Dreaming and Entheogens
These indigenous examples point towards a possible ecological function to lucid dreaming,
similar in scope to the role of entheogenic plants in the Amazon, as reported by Jeremy Narby
in his mind-blowing book The Cosmic Serpent, in which ayahuasca is a diagnostic tool used
to discover which plants to prescribe for the shamans client.[x]

In both lucid dreaming and ayahuasca, the visionary feels lucid and self-aware while
navigating a strange and numinous world. But perhaps there is more than metaphor here.
Frank Echenhofer, a professor of clinical psychologist at the California Institute of Integral
Studies, recently collaborated with noted ayahuasca researcher Luis Eduardo Luna to research
the electrical output of the brain while under the influence of an ayahuasca brew.[xi] They
discovered a pretty amazing effect: a strong synchrony in the frontal lobe over multiple
frequency bands, specifically the high BETA and GAMMA range.
This same effect has been found recently by dream researcher Ursula Voss in lucid dreaming:
a strong blip around the 40hz (GAMMA) wavelength that is not present in ordinary dreams.
[xii] Other researchers[xiii] have found a correlation between GAMMA and high levels of
meditation.
Perhaps ayahausca and lucid dreams are leading visionaries towards the same meeting
grounds: where mind, body and spirit tether together in a bounded information exchange for
the benefit of the community, and perhaps the ecosystem, as a whole.
On the topic of lucid dreaming and entheogens, in a 2004 interview by psychologist Stan
Krippner, Native American healer Rolling Thunder suggests that lucid dreaming is a
preferable way to access the hidden realms of reality, provided the practitioner knows the
intent and direction of the journey.[xiv] Lucid dreaming is more reliable, easier to enter into,
less confusing, and does not require access to plants or substances that are only seasonably
available.
A brief aside of archaeological speculation: given that lucid dreams upwards of 10 minutes
and longer have similar kinds of imagery as do meditative states and shamanic reverie, such
as geometric imagery, mandalas, spirals, zig-zags, white light and half-human-half-animal
creatures,[xv] theres an argument to be made that some of the worlds prehistoric rock art
could be the product of lucid archetypal dreams rather than psychedelic drugs, as it is often
presupposed by archaeologists, many of whom are unaware of the spectrum of possibilities in
lucid dreams. As cognitive archaeologist David Lewis-Williams argues in The Mind in the
Cave, human beings cannot refrain from dreaming.[xvi] Its a neurological constant, our
shamanic dreaming inheritance, and has been for at least a hundred thousand years. How we
select for, use, and learn from these images, of course, differs from culture to culture, and
individual to individual.
Lucid Dreaming Shamanism for Westerners
We dont have to be indigenous peoples to appreciate the shamanic aspects of lucid dreaming,
but as Westerners we may need to let go of some destructive myths in order to participate at
the deeper levels of imagination like those cultivated in dreaming cultures. Some of these
myths include the idea that we as individuals are alone, we as a culture are owners of the
lands we inhabit, we as a species are separate from nature, and that the universe itself is a
dead, mechanistic realm of cause and effect. When we take these notions into the dream, the
stages is set, the possibilities are limited and the anomalies are stamped out before they have a
chance to speak up.
However, simply donning the cultures of others has its limitations, as well as hidden power
dynamics that derive from those same colonial attitudes that reflect our disenfranchisement
from spirit in the first place. In his book Dreamseekers, world traveler Harvey Arden writes

about the way indigenous cultures feel drained by Westerners appropriation of their healing
ways. One young aboriginal man fumes, Get your own Dreamtime. Dont take ours.[xvii]
In answer to this dilemma, Tom Crockett, author of Stone Age Wisdom, suggests a culturally
neutral framework of dream shamanism that allows us to benefit from our own intellectual
traditions as well as the pre-rational wisdom traditions.
By remembering principles from our own deep indigenous heritages and we all have one
or more we can tap into the dream directly. Some of the principles Crockett maps are that
the universe is alive, conscious, dynamic, interconnected, and responsive.[xviii] Enacted
within the lucid dream, and mirrored in waking life, these principles can help heal the wound
of the western lucid dreamer who wants to move beyond control in order to communicate
with other sources of identity, wisdom and sentience.
Researching into the cosmologies of our direct ancestors in the historical era can also provide
a quick path into dream shamanism, as these ways are still half-remembered. The road has
simply been covered by few feet of mono-cultural plastic debris whose gods are industry and
ecological warfare. But the older path is still laid, hidden in the dreams, folklore and
colloquialisms of our families of origin.
Our beliefs and expectations shape lucid dreams, including the limits of dream architecture
itself. With an attitude of awareness, humility, and a desire for interconnection with the
autonomous energies of the dream, the dream expands. Mutual dreaming, precognition and
healing become accessible.
The Military-industrial Complex and the Dark Side of Lucid Dreaming
Ominously enough, the US military has done extensive research into remote viewing, which is
the application of deep imagination, trance or dreams to discover information about a place,
person or event. Shamans call this technique soul-flight, and its also known as out-of-body
experience and astral travel. The movie The Men Who Stare at Goats is a loose adaptation of
the remove viewing work that went on in the US intelligence community for over twenty
years to determine the usefulness of remote viewing in order to receive information about a
target.
This work is now declassified. Officially the US government professed that there is no benefit
to remote viewing in 1995. However, the various programs, with names like Stargate,
Gondala Wish, and Sunstreak had some convincing documented successes, according to
ex-Stargate chief Dale Graff in his book Tracks in the Psychic Wilderness, including the
location of a downed Soviet TU-22 airplane by remote viewing.[xix]
Which brings me to the point that lucid dreaming and active imagination of this level requires
practice and competency, but not necessarily allegiance to some higher benign power like
Gaian consciousness. Shamanism is rife with healers competing with one another, casting
spells and throwing sickness barbs of retro-causality, as reported by Stephan Beyer in his
book Singing to the Plants.[xx] Lucid dreaming is no different. And as Robert Waggoner
recently pointed out, mutual lucid dreaming opens the door to not only shared dreams, but
also real dream intrusion a la Inception without the need for a narcotic dripline.
Contrary to pop-psych common sense, lucid dreams can be destabilizing for the dreamer, and
can open doors into pain and confusion. Sometimes knowing you are dreaming does not stop

the nightmare from being uncomfortably gritty. Confronting dark material of the unconscious,
the culture or beyond in lucid dreams can be a symptom of spiritual emergency, a
diagnostic category in the latest diagnostic manual for the American Psychiatric Association
that involves mental instability due to existential and spiritual distress. These dreams come at
stressful times in our lives, and also at life cross-roads as we bridge from one role to another
and take on new responsibilities. In confrontational lucid nightmares, fear is not a failure of
the dreamer. Psychotherapist Scott Sparrow, a long-time lucid dreamer, suggests instead that
the presence of fear in the lucid dream is justified: it is the first step of recognizing a worthy
adversary.[xxi]
In my own lucid journeys, I had bouts of painful intestinal cramping for weeks on end while
engaging in a lucid dreaming incubation practice for three months. These dreams involved a
lot of spontaneous childhood memories and confrontational dream figures. Metaphorically,
you could say I was having trouble digesting what I was experiencing. Veteran lucid dreamer
and psychotherapist Ken Kelzer also describes negative physical and psychological symptoms
in his classic lucid memoir The Sun and the Shadow.[xxii] The serious lucid dreaming
journeyer should take pains to establish the set and setting, just as experienced consciousness
explorers do with entheogenic healing sessions.
Ask yourself: do I have a safe living space for this kind of work? Is this a stable time in my
life to be taking these risks? Who can I turn to-a guide, minister, therapist or coach who has
walked this path as well-if I need help?
The Initiation
We really shouldnt be surprised that lucid dreaming is not all cotton candy and light once the
veil has been lifted and a respectful balance between awareness and control is met in the
dream, allowing for a true meeting with autonomous entities and titanic forces. In a real way,
these dreams can be seen as private initiations. Common themes in lucid nightmares of
Westerners involve pain, death and rebirth, as well as images of demons, dead bodies and
hell-like scenery, directly analogous to the shamanic initiation dreams that are recorded
around the world by ethnographers. These expressions are truly archetypal, coming out of the
bodys metaphoric drive to express its essence, and also connecting us to a larger community
of archetypal energies in the world-at-large.
Heres an example of what I would call an initiatory lucid dream that begun as a sleep
paralysis nightmare, shared with me by a woman dreamer who lives in the Middle East,
published in my ebook Sleep Paralysis: A Dreamers Guide.
I was reading for a while, then I noticed that the wall (about 6 feet from the end of my bed)
started to sort of wobble. My body was paralyzed, unable to move. My breathing was kind of
non-existent, though I desperately needed more air. Suddenly, it opened up into a black void.
Like a 9 ft black hole, vaguely the shape of a figure. O my god, I thought, I am dreaming.
This cant be true. The black-hole oozed into the room. I was beyond terror. I still dont
understand how my heart didnt collapse. The blackness started molding itself into a
recognizable shape. It became a 9 ft tall Japanese devil or devilish-looking Samurai.
Viciously grinning he said, You are not dreaming. You thought you could integrate me.'
He then, in one sweeping movement, stretched out his enormous black hand, grabbed me,
stuffed me into his blood-red mouth, and swallowed me. Then I fell into unconsciousness for a
moment, now a vortex pulled me down into an abyss of no dimensions. All of a sudden, I was
spat back out into his hand. Somehow, I had crystallized into a red ruby. I WAS a ruby; I felt

like a ruby. So there I was, in the big hand of a giant, looking at him, and he looking at me. In
that moment-seeing each other-something happened. We looked at each other, became truly
aware of each other, and then, there was love. I know what the mystics talk about/cant talk
about. There is believing, and then, there is knowing.[xxiii]
I am particularly delighted how the dreamers demon scoffed at her paradigm of integration.
As depth psychologist James Hillman has suggested in The dream and the underworld, our
dream figures are not simply representations of our personality traits the demon as
carnality or as power but complex self-like constellations with their own interiority and
their own sentience.[xxiv] And often, their own agendas, contrary to the dream ego. In this
case, by surrendering to the death of her dream body and facing an abyss, the dreamer was
reborn as a ruby with a profound new understanding.
Lucid Dreaming as Revolution
Dream control can be used to surrender and go with the flow. This tension between
maintaining awareness and dancing with the unknown is the thin line that connects us to the
source(s), leading us into a light brighter than our own lucidity. At this time in history, the
ability of dreamers to tap into the wisdom of the ancients and to draw from the intelligence of
non-human sources may be critical to our survival, at least for the dreams ability to make
conscious what is happening in the world, in each of our communities, due to the ecological
effects of civilization.
Anthropologist Lee Irwin has showcased how, during Native American clashing with the
colonial West in the 17-19th centuries, big dreams and waking visions integrated conflicting
paradigms and opposing worldviews, leading to the rise of healing visionary leaders who
were able to organize and lead rebellions against colonial forces.[xxv] Barbara Tedlock (1992)
also recounts this revolutionary role of dreams in Mayan cultural survival during the
Guatemalan civil war in the 1980s.[xxvi] In this case, the big dreams of indigenous
community leaders showed the path for preserving traditional ways as well as accepting new
cultural standards that are critical for participating in new economies.
Having the dream does not guarantee success, as the history of Native American visionary
apocalypticism tragically reveals, but it can provide a new template for survival against great
odds. In this techno-militaristic world culture that is coming to grips with its own limitations,
but not yet the scope of its destructive power, I have a feeling this dreaming art is on the
upswing. But only if we remember our dreams, share them, and act from them with eyes and
hearts wide open.

2.

dream

studies:

http://dreamstudies.org/articles/the-prehistory-of-

lucid-dreaming/
Lucid dreaming is best known as the experience of knowing you are dreaming while still
within the confines of the dream. The spirit of lucid dreaming is best captured by philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote:

Perhaps many a one, like myself, recollect having sometimes called out and not without
success amid the dangers and terrors of dream life: It is a dream! I will dream on!
Although lucid dreaming has been practiced for millennia, it had to come into the laboratory
to be officially recognized by modern psychology, when two scientists independently verified
it in the early 1980s using standard sleep lab equipment. Their careful work, on the heels of a
renewal of interest in altered states of consciousness, jump-started the modern dream studies
movement. While scholarly interest has cooled in the last decade, the lay public has continued
to push the boundaries of possibility within lucid dreaming.
But what of its early history and uses? Lucid dreaming does not leave an impression in the
soil, so we are left with historic writings as the earliest known cultural manifestations of the
practice. As it turns out, some of the most ancient documents in the world contain explicit
references to conscious dreaming as a spiritual practice. The history of lucid dreaming is
nearly as old as the history of letters itself.
The Promise of Cognitive Archaeology
Still, I want to go deeper. Perhaps we are too hasty to say that lucid dreaming hasnt left an
impression in the soil. Cognitive archaeologists have made some startling finds in the last
twenty years. In brief, cognitive archaeology suggests that the human mind is available for
study because no inquiry can be made without considering symbolic and cognitive aspects of
human behavior. In other words, our minds shape the world we live in, and must also shape
the material record we leave behind. Archaeology can show how not only how we dump our
garbage, but also how we structure our realities.
For example, the discipline of archaeo-astronomy has shown how some prehistoric sites
reflect back an understanding of the movement of the heavenly bodies. Most famously,
Stonehenge tracks the winter solstice with great accuracy. This map of the seasons reveals
more than careful observation, however. It also reveals what these ancient people think is
important, and points to underlying beliefs about the flow of time, the seasons, and the cycle
of life/death/rebirth that undoubtedly determined the social movements of an agricultural
people.
Similarly, cognitive archaeologists have applied this way of thinking to prehistoric rock art
sites in Europe. When modern eyes look at these painted cave walls, they see geometric
designs, sunbursts and spirals, lattices and grids, and half-human/half-animal figures that defy
explanation. Most of the abstract designs have been ignored by art historians and other
scholars, until cognitive archaeologists noticed that they occur in certain places in the caves:
along thresholds into narrow recesses, and in other hard-to-get-to places within the cave. This
is not art to be viewed, but private expressions of something truly bizarre, enacted in
solitude.
Lucid Dreaming and Altered States
This is how the concept of altered states of consciousness re-entered the discussion of the
oldest forms of human expression in the world. Cognitive archaeologists noted that the human
brain is hardwired for visions that ethnographically are coupled with certain behaviors all over
the world. The visions of abstract geometric imagery, therianthropic creatures, as well as
engorged sexual organs and images of death and decay, are cross-culturally tied to what
Mircea Eliade called rituals of ecstasy. Classically, these include the so-called shamanic states

of consciousness: trance states, pain-induced visions, reverie from rhythmic auditory driving
such as drumming or chanting, and dont forget the great bug-a-boo of the west:
hallucinogenic states from ingesting psychedelic cocktails made from plants or fungi.
Of course, what the academic West has missed but what every advanced lucid dreamer
knows: that these same vision states spontaneously arise within lucid dreams, without drugs,
hours of exhaustive dancing, or having to be buried in a anthill and left for dead.
As archaeologist David Lewis-Williams (2000) writes in Mind in the Cave, humans are
incapable of refraining from dreaming. Its not unreasonable to carry this assertion farther and
suggest that Paleolithic humans were quite capable of promoting and incubating lucid dreams.
Some of those fabulous drawings all around the world may be clues of ancient lucid dreaming
practices.
Paleolithic Projection
When interviewed by Stanley Krippner (2004), contemporary Native American healer Rolling
Thunder suggested that lucid dreaming is a more reliable source of visions than mind altering
plants, provided the practitioner knows the intent and direction of the journey. This focus on
intention is not comprehended by most Western dreamers, because we have been taught that
dreams are directionless, and we are powerless in its chaotic meander through the
deficiencies of dreaming cognition.
We also project back onto the past a belief that dreams are experiences of individuals,
reflecting personal histories. Other cultures, especially hunter-gather cultures, think (and
dream) otherwise, with a worldview that the universe is alive, responsive, and interconnected.
This is important to note, because our techno-rational worldview colors everything,
splintering the world into disjointed, unconnected moments of happenstance.
Although we may never know the exact means that our Paleolithic ancestors arrived at their
fantastic visions, lucid dreaming practices are well within the spectrum of possibility. The
tight spots where abstract geometric and archetypal imagery can be found in Paleolithic caves
could just as well have been a great place for a numinous nap in addition to being a refuge for
shamanic chanting at another time.
Dream Shamanism
The intentions that Paleolithic people placed in their lucid dreaming incubations were no
doubt very different than enacted by Westerners today. However, certain experiences of
modern lucid dreamers parallel the vision states of classic ecstasy, suggesting there may be a
neurobiological component to consider. These include visions of flight, spirit traveling (outof-body-experience), traveling through a vortex, sexual arousal, meeting with otherworldly
and sometimes terrifying creatures, explosive emotionality, and the visual light show of
abstract geometrics, mandalas, and white light experiences.
One may say that lucid dreaming naturally triggers these ancient human cognition patterns
commonly referred to as shamanic states of consciousness.
This does not mean that lucid dreamers are necessarily shamans, by any stretch. Traditionally,
the altered states are utilized for healing and increasing power in the other realms, both paths
that serve the human, animal and plant communities of the landscape within which they are

dreaming. This is very different than the atomistic view of identity for Westerners, although
sometimes the anomalies work their way through our splintered paradigm, in the form of
mutual and precognitive dreams.
Lucid Nightmares and Initiation
The ancient roots of lucid dreaming also puts the lucid nightmares that Nietzsche alludes to in
a new light, not as failures of dreamer but perhaps as a necessary part of the initiatory process
of delving into the underworld. To cross that threshold, a lot is expected of the dreamer.
Lucidity in the shamanic sense is sometimes paradoxically not about controlling the dream
but being able to surrender, to delve into the darkness of human suffering with courage, and
possibly face being annihilated by titanic forces.
The upshot of all this is rebirth, renewal, and an expanded understanding of human
consciousness. Or as Nietzsche and Aerosmith say, dream on!