Daniel Love

´m extremely interested in lucid dreaming, but I only got halfway through this book. I just didn´t find it particularly exciting or readable, though I might have persevered more with it, had the library not been pestering me to return it.

But I concede that the author writes well and gives us a comprehensive and detailed account of the various aspects of the subject, including an interesting “brief history” of lucid dreaming.

One of the aspects the author finds important is reality testing. We are instructed that if we keep testing whether or not we are awake or dreaming in our everyday waking life, then this will eventually affect our dreams, so we will find ourselves doing these checks there too, with perhaps a positive result, i.e. provoking lucidity.

Though, as far as I´m concerned, it all seems rather ludicrous, since when I´m awake I always know that I am, since my dreams are always very vague and “dreamy”; In dreams I rarely see anything clearly or focus on people´s faces. I had a dream the other day featuring the well-known American physician, Dr. Mercola. I had some coconut oil with me in a gym, and he suddenly came over and started using it without asking my permission; I didn´t see his face, just knew it was him. I did see the coconut oil, first in one place, then in another. Daniel Love has various strange, but presumably effective, tests, morphing text test, digital watch test, and the nose pinch test, he advises us to use several times throughout the day.

He declares that the reality test is the “core of lucid dream practice”.

He divides lucid dreams into two categories, DILDs and WILDs.

DILDS (Dream Initiated Lucid Dreams) are by far the most common form. The experience is of discovery that you are dreaming whilst dreaming. “ – they are triggered by the dreamer noticing an inconsistency (a dreamsign) during the dream, which brings them to the realization that they are dreaming”. Ha, ha, I can dream about all sorts of strange things, but they all seem perfectly normal to me in dreams, and I certainly don´t realize I´m dreaming for this reason. Last night I dreamt that I was sitting at the back of a minibus with Bill Clinton and Helen Mirren sitting together at the front, It didn´t seem strange to me that I was in a little bus together with these famous people.

WILDs (Wake initiated lucid dreams) are more elusive, and are experiences where you fall asleep “consciously directly into a dream”. You slip “with full awareness into a dream world”.

He informs us of the substance galantamine which can help to elicit lucid dreams. The net tells me that it is a substance given to Alzheimer`s patients!; I´m not sure how safe it is to take, or where I would get hold of it. Fortunately, I´m not sure that my doctor would give me a prescription for it!

He doesn´t mention guayusa tea, which can apparently help tremendously, if you drink enough of it. It is also marketed under the name “lucid dreaming tea”. It hasn´t helped me at all, but then I only drink a single cup of it, since it contains a lot of caffeine, and I don´t want to have to keep drinking it so as to avoid withdrawal symptoms. However, I have found that drinking a single cup of mugwort tea greatly improves dream recall.

I found the chapter on lucidity techniques rather boring and this is where I got stuck in the book.

I can´t recommend the book, though readers who persevere may well find many interesting or helpul things in it.… (meer)