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ABSTRACT

Panel:  "Lessons in Lucidity: Explorations in Lucid Dreaming"

Robert Waggoner(Chair) graduated from Drake University with a B.A. (summa cum laude) in psychology. An ASD member since 1995, he has been published in the "Dream Network Journal", and "The Lucid Dream Exchange" (which he co-edits). A lucid dreamer since 1975, he participates and speaks on lucid dream research. email: dreambob@aol.com

Craig Sym Webb, Director of the non-profit DREAMS Foundation (http://www.dreams.ca/), has appeared in/on The Discovery Channel, AOL, CTV, The Learning Annex, as well as numerous magazines, newspapers, and other mass media. As well as an author and researcher who's logged roughly 1000 lucid dreams, Craig is also a physicist, performing/recording artist, bio-medical design engineer, canoe guide, and Contributing Editor for Magical Blend magazine.

Beverly D'Urso, a lucid dreamer all her life, has done research on the topic since the 1970's with Dr. Stephen LaBerge. She leads her own groups and workshops on Lucid Dreaming/Lucid Waking. Numerous books, magazines, conferences, and TV specials have featured her work and dream experiences, which emphasizes living life as a dream.

4. Summary of Presentation:
Drawing upon many decades of personal lucid dreaming experience, the panel will discuss a number of their most profound and striking lucid dreams and discuss the insights, conjectures, questions and waking experiences that resulted. The sharing of their conscious explorations of dreams and the nature of reality will shed light on the nature of various waking and dreaming states of awareness, as well as the functioning of inner mental processes and their various effects upon the dreamer.

5. Learning Objectives:
Participants at this presentation should learn the following during the panel
discussion:
1) how various practical and philosophical and spiritual challenges were created and/or experienced and resolved by veteran lucid dreamers as they explored and investigated dream reality,
2) various unexpected and profound insights discovered by experienced lucid dreamers in their lucid dreams and related waking events,
3) important and unique questions, analyses, and frameworks about the nature of inner dream processes and the boundaries of inner knowledge.

Participants should be able to answer the following three questions after
attending this presentation:
1) What potential value--general, personal, and transpersonal--can be gained in understanding dreams and waking life by directing one's dreams consciously?
2) What does knowledge and experience obtained in the lucid dream state suggest about the nature of dreaming and waking experience?
3) What exploratory approaches can help a developing lucid dreamer to gain further success and benefit from their own lucid dreaming explorations?

B. ABSTRACT

This panel discussion, "Lessons in Lucidity: Explorations in Lucid
Dreaming" is composed of long-time lucid dreamers, who average more than 25 years experience in this unique aspect of conscious dreaming. Their intent is to share some of their profound and compelling lucid dreams in an attempt to distill "lessons" and insights that lucid dreaming has taught them. These lessons are not only about their own personal experience, but also hopefully lessons that may illuminate universal aspects of dreaming, awareness, knowledge, and waking life. The majority if not all of these lessons are a direct result of their own experiences, which resulted from the curiosity, questioning, dreaming and waking experiences, world views, and conclusions that their lucid dreams have inspired.

The panel will discuss the value of lucid dreaming as a vehicle for inner exploration. Namely, that the lucid dreamer is consciously aware of the dream as it happens, and can, to some degree, direct the focus of that awareness towards various tasks. A lucid dreamer can therefore directly explore, experiment, investigate, discover, and report upon dream processes, structures, experiences, and inner laws, and the relationship between dreaming and waking. In a broader perspective, the lucid dreamer may be able to provide "front-row" reporting on the functioning of the dreaming mind, which may have important implications for psychology in general.

Sparked by the extraordinary creativity of dreams when compared with everyday consciousness, Robert Bosnak begins his book Tracks in the Wilderness of Dreaming with the important yet deceptively simple question, "Who is the dreamer?" In a similar vein, this panel will give voice to the questions that being conscious within dreams has evoked in their
lives.

In lucid dreams, surprising, humorous, amazing or shocking things often happen. Some consciously sought or guided dream experiences have definite and sometimes important practical waking value or implications. When such things happen or if a lucid dreamer realizes that total conscious control of a dream (the setting, characters, action, mood, progression, imagery) is virtually impossible and also perhaps undesirable, he or she may begin to wonder such things as, 'who or what is behind this? How and why did my lucid experiences unfold as they did? What does this mean? How is this connected with others and with who I am when I'm awake?'
In our experience, analysis of powerful lucid dreams naturally leads one to question the nature of identity, consciousness, and other such key issues.

In the panel's view, an experienced lucid dreamer can also increase the likelihood and depth of their own lucid exploratory experiences by certain repeatable methods, by questioning the nature of their lucid dream experiences, and by seeking to answer fundamental questions raised by such experiences. By learning about this panel's explorations in lucid dreaming and consciousness, we hope future dreamers will be inspired and much better prepared for their own explorations into the psyche.

References:

Bosnak, R. Tracks in the Wilderness of Dreaming, (New York:Delacorte Press, 1996)