I Tried Meditating in a Lucid Dream — Here’s What Happened

I’m the kind of person who gets extremely excited about everything that goes beyond the scope of what we consider to be real.

This is because I inherently don’t see things as black-and-white — I believe there is always another side to the story, another aspect worth exploring, another mind-blowing fact that just hasn’t been discovered yet.

When I heard of lucid dreaming, I couldn’t help but delve into the topic.

Soon after, I started having occasional lucid dreams. And my perception of reality has never been the same again.

What is lucid dreaming?

Do you know that feeling when you’re in the middle of a dream and suddenly realize it’s a dream?

Yep, that’s lucid dreaming.

To quote Robert Waggoner, the lucid dreaming expert and author of Lucid Dreaming, Plain and Simple:

“In essence, you have conscious awareness within a dream that you are dreaming.”

It seems to me there are various levels of experiencing the dream, however.

Many of us have influenced our dreams throughout our lives.

Freezing monsters, popping celebrity crushes into existence so you can make out with them, saving friends from a burning building thanks to sudden superpowers, you name it.

Ever since I started researching lucid dreaming and doing it more frequently, though, things have felt… different.

It’s not an over-exaggeration when I say it feels like a brand new level of existence.

Reality within reality

This morning, I found myself in my parents’ apartment back in my home country.

The morning sun was shining through the blinds, I could feel the summer warmth on my skin, and there was a freshly brewed cup of coffee sitting on the table.

I frowned. Everything felt extremely real. The weight of my body, the scent in the air, the solidity of the apartment around me… the world was as physical as can be.

I knew I’d dreamed something just a few moments ago, and somewhere deep down, I knew I was lying in my bed back in the UK.

Or was I? Things seemed blurry.

Maybe this was real? There was literally no way to tell.

I felt the sudden urge to go flying but I was terrified I’d mistaken reality for a dream and would fall down from the balcony.

My mind immediately went to all the techniques and strategies I’d read about in Lucid Dreaming, Plain and Simple.

I looked down at my finger. It seemed normal. It felt normal.

I grabbed it with my other hand and as I brushed it towards the tip, I willed it to elongate.

Oh boy, did it elongate! I could see all the white tiny bones in it as it stretched insanely far from my hand.

I let out a breath.

Alright, that’s good. This is a dream. Let’s go flying!

When I tell you flying in a lucid dream feels like the absolute best mind-boggling experience of your life, it’s still not close enough.

I was ecstatic.

The thing is, though, lucid dreams are all fun and games when you’re not asking questions.

Lucid dreaming is like being in a different version of reality that you get to explore, create, and bend as you wish. All it takes is some mental effort.

(And yes, it can be a challenge to make the dream do what you want. That’s another thing. It actually feels like projecting some supernatural mental powers onto the fabric of reality.)

Don’t question how it all works, and you’ll be fine.

Naturally, that’s not who I am. And so I delved deeper.

“What are you?”

In his book, Waggoner talks about all the different things you can do in a lucid dream.

Talking to dream characters is one of them.

A few days ago, I became lucid while standing on a staircase with my friends. I turned to one of them and said: “What are you?”

He laughed. “What am I?” Then he went on to say a phrase in my mother tongue that didn’t make much sense but definitely had a deeper meaning.

Sadly, I forgot the phrase by the time I woke up.

As I was trying to comprehend what he meant, I remembered how Waggoner had described the lucid dream of someone who’d asked the entire dream world, “What are you?”

I turned my head to the sky and shouted from the top of my lungs:

“What are you?!”

Suddenly, I found myself on top of the staircase. A rope started wrapping itself around the railings as it charged toward me.

Before I knew it, it was choking me.

And it hurt. When you’re conscious in a dream, you can feel things in a similar way you would in real life.

The best part about lucidity, though, is that you’re in charge if you know how to manipulate the dream universe.

I put a lot of mental force into stopping the pain. This is a dream, I can do whatever I want, I thought. This rope doesn’t hurt me.

The pressure immediately released.

I was shaken, though. Here I was, questioning the subconscious mind, getting punished for it with a choking rope.

And then I chose to meditate.

Meditation and Lucidity: The Ultimate Combo

I’ve been meditating on and off ever since I was about thirteen years old.

I even went to a 10-day meditation camp where we meditated 10 hours a day and were forbidden to speak, read, and write.

While I’m not super advanced in the art of meditation, I definitely wouldn’t consider myself a beginner.

I know how to focus on my breath, feel the tiny vibrations along my skin, and let pure awareness take over on those days when my mind isn’t a blabbering mess (which it often is).

So when I became lucid in a random bathroom, I plopped down on the floor, assumed my usual meditation pose, closed my eyes, and…

The speed with which I was brought into a pure state of bliss was actually mind-blowing.

I have never managed to achieve such peace, such a deep feeling of being one with everything, in my waking state.

I felt myself levitating above the ground, and as my connected fingers seemed very solid, the rest of me was blending into the world around me.

That’s the best way I can describe it.

It’s like the actual core of my essence was emanating into its surroundings, connecting with everything and vibrating in a blissful state of warmth, awareness, and darkness (because my eyes were closed, remember).

It didn’t last long, probably because I was so taken aback by the strength of the experience.

After I woke up, I found a chapter on meditation in Lucid Dreaming, Plain and Simple — I hadn’t reached that part in the book yet but I was too curious to see what Waggoner had to say about it.

His description literally made me gasp.

“I remembered my intention to meditate and sat down cross-legged on the grass. I closed my eyes, started to focus on my breath, and began to direct my intention inward.

Before I had even taken a full breath or barely began to meditate formally, I felt totally engulfed by a sensation of pure bliss. It seemed as if every cell in my body was physically vibrating with transcendent ecstasy. The feeling had such intensity that, within a few moments, I woke up!”

So, there you have it.

It seems that verbally demanding answers from the dream maybe isn’t the way to go — you’ll only get choked by a random rope.

When you meditate, though… you might actually get to the bottom of this.

You might actually experience at least a tiny fraction of nirvana.

Final Thoughts

Lucid dreaming isn’t something that just happens — there are many various induction techniques that make it so that you become lucid in the dream state.

What’s more, just reading and talking about lucid dreaming engraves the idea of it in your brain and makes it more likely that you’ll become conscious within a dream.

I’ve always questioned reality, but after meditating in a lucid dream, well…

I guess I’m not getting out of this rabbit hole any time soon.