Leswan – This needs a lot of explanation, because there is more to learn about what you are capable of if you become lucid. For instance I must have said to you that everything you dream about is an aspect of you and not an objective outside person or environment. If we can acknowledge and admit that our terrors we dream are actually our past hurts that we have not faced presenting themselves for us to heal; that the ghosts and demons that can rampage about our night are embodiments of our fears and ideas presented to us as truths; that our wonderful visions and insights are an expression of our own infinite potential, then we can walk a pathway to finding what we really are.
So I am saying that you can use this to deal with the part of you in your dream that is a writhing in agony. But you cannot do it as a external observer, but by indentifying with it and therefore understanding its pain.
Also you can identify with the ‘unseen intelligence’ so that it is a part of you that you can use.
The abyss you mention is also a wonderful tool or ability it you can really drop into it. But here is an example in action.
Before waking this morning I had an extraordinary lucid experience that involved some imagery. One of the clearest of these images was of myself in a maze. The walls of the maze were made of hedges, as the whole thing was outdoors. But I realised, because I was lucid in the experience, that I had purposely created the maze as an experiment.
The point of the experiment was that the maze was complicated enough to make it difficult for me to find my way out. So, confronted by the difficulty of emerging from this dream maze, because of the lucidity, I could understand that this was a dream image, and in doing so I simply realised myself as pure awareness and transcended the maze.
I then experimented again and again with this, moving beyond the imagery into pure awareness. This was such an extraordinary experience and realisation it is difficult to put into words with enough impact to make it real.
What it led me to become clear about was that all dreams involve our personal awareness in an environment or imagery of one sort or another. Usually we feel the dream imagery to be so real, and the feelings we experience because of the imagery to also be real, that in a very concrete sense we are trapped. So if we were in a prison cell in a dream, then there would be no way out of that cell without a key. But realising oneself as pure awareness means there is no prison; there is no entrapment; there are no walls to hold you. The imagery of the dream is then seen as simply that – imagery – stuff of the mind that we have conjured and become identified with and lost or trapped in. Even imagery with positive feelings are a form of trap if we identify with them.
I repeat again, this was an extraordinary experience. And of course it relates to everyday life. The more I look at the experience the more I realise that virtually everybody on our planet is trapped in a prison of their own emotions, thoughts and ideas. To recognise this in any reasonable degree leads to an extraordinary sense of freedom. To see that we live our life trapped in the world of thoughts, of emotions, of sexual drives, of fears or beliefs, is astonishing.
This is not a totally new insight for me. I have experienced it in various ways over many years. But never before have I been able to lucidly extract myself from the imagery of dreams, or to carry this so fully into my waking life.
To use this more effectively try the following.
One of the most important things about actually understanding your dream rather that interpreting it is to become the dream person or object - to actually completely identify with it. This needs to be practiced as most people feel the dream person or object is something other than themselves and are often hesitant to become it. For instance the Devil in a dream is simply your own emotions and fears given an exterior image. And also Christ in a dream is the same thing. In doing this you can step beyond the imagery of the dream into direct experience of yourself in all its variety and wonder. The Christ for instance becomes an actual experience of the highest in you.
So to do this the dreamer next chooses one of the characters or images in the dream to explore. The character can be themselves as they appear in the dream, or any of the other people or things. It is important to realise that it does not matter if the character is someone known or not, or whether they are young or old. The character needs to be treated as an aspect of their dream, and not as if they were the living person exterior to the dream.
In choosing an image to work with, such as a person, a tree, cat, place, or an environment like the street in the example dream, it must again be treated as it appears in the dream, not as it may appear in real life. One can take any image from the dream to work with.
Stand in the Role of Character or ObjectThe dreamer stands in the role of the character or image they are using. So if they chose to be a person they would close their eyes, imagine themselves as stepping into the body of the dream character and describe him or herself as the person they now are. As this is done notice any changes in how you feel as that person - or object - speak as them in the first person. Do not say, "I feel as if this person is ..." but say, "I feel I am and am doing .." As this happens watch any realisations or insights that arise and explore the person. Ask question of this dream character until you feel you have realised what it is of you that is being revealed.
So you could be the writhing body and the unseen intelligence.
Tony