Lucid dreaming or Desire dreaming ?

 

I had read a lot about lucid dreaming but never experienced it or made an effort to do so. However on once occasion, I was experiencing a normal dream and suddenly I realized that this was a dream and I decided to have some fun. I was standing by a road side, so I thought to myself, since this is just a dream, I cannot die in this, and stood in the middle of the road, waiting some vehicle to hit me !! Unfortunately none come along and I awoke from the dream.
However recently I have begun to realize, that on several occasions, during the past several weeks, I am experiencing different kind of ‘lucid dream’. It usually happens in the morning when I am about to wake up. I would call it a lucid dream created purely by my suppressed/unconscious/latent desires – a Desire Dream
For instance one of my passions, as a child and teenager was to become a dancer. I would often dance behind closed doors and imagine getting a big applause from an imaginary audience!! I am still fond of dancing, and do indulge in it sometimes in the privacy of my home.
Recently I dreamt that I was with someone, not sure who it was, I was filled with a desire to dance, and next I was wearing traditional dress and dancing, I wanted an audience, and the next moment there were some people looking at me with admiration. I was half awake during this entire experience, the conscious mind then took over, became got slightly embarrassed by the self-indulgence of this ‘desire self’ and the ‘dream’ ended. I think that this is different from the lucid dream I had about the road, because this dream was created and spurred on purely by desire with no thinking brain involved. It was very spontaneous, as if I was thinking into existence what I desired. Almost like magic !!

I feel we acess different levels/dimensions of consciosness or sub-consciousness during normal dreams, lucid dreams, desire dreams and hypnogogia. The contents of which are probably determined by the state of our minds during waking consciousness.

Notes:

“In Kabbalah dreams are divided into three categories.

The first is concerned with immediate events. This means those involving the three triads centred upon the Yesodic-ego that often carry over into sleep the momentum of mundane activities, such as dreaming that one is still driving a car after a long journey.

The second order is of a deeper nature and is focused upon Tiferet-Self. Here issues of the soul and the individual’s integrity are brought out of the unconscious and projected into the screen of Yesod during sleep so that the ego’s attention is awakened to the problem. …

The third order of dream, in Kabbalah, is called prophetic. … The greater prophets were considered to be awake when they were given these visions. … According to tradition, the soul, during sleep, is free to wander in the World of formation, although the physical connection is never broken. Many dreams have the quality of ‘astral travel’ …

Individuals of a greater development ascend to the upper face of Yezirah and the lower face of Beriah or the transpersonal realm of the Spirit. Here the most highly evolved individuals commune with the Divine during deep sleep and receive revelations ‘face to face’, as the Bible puts it. However, as in everything Kabbalah urges balance, for to become too preoccupied with dreams is to live in the wrong world … and therefore only those dreams that are naturally remembered should be noted. This was the psyche’s original intention. To examine every dream can become obsessional, like X-raying our alimentary canal every time we have a meal.” – Zev ben Simon Halevi, Kabbalah and Psychology, Gateway Books, 1986

According to P.D. Ouspensky, “it is necessary to understand clearly that sleep may be of different degrees, of different depths. We can be more asleep or less asleep, nearer to the possibility of awaking or further from the possibility of awaking.

According to Paul Burnton -

Our waking life is really a kind of sleep, from which we need to wake up.Wakeful life represents only the peak of an iceberg which thrusts itself above the surface. We must study the iceberg as a whole if we would understand its meaning adequately. We may by watching the workings of our own mind in its three phases of sleep, dream and wakefulness, and not by limiting our investigation to the last phase alone, arrive at better understanding of its profounder problems.

The condition which lies between sleeping and waking is not only extremely interesting … but also extremely important, for it is very receptive to suggestion. This infinitesimal intermediate point on the verge of sleep offers a unique opportunity for the practice of concentration. … The final trend of thought held firmly and clearly in consciousness whilst one falls asleep is taken up by the deeper level of mind, which then works upon it in its own mysterious yet effective way. This strange mental power may be utilized to exercise control over dream life. The opportunity to develop it and to free it from foolish or even evil experiences exists within the ante-room of the nightly return to sleep, particularly for those who are more or less habitual dreams.