Lucid dreaming as an Imaginal Research Method

When visiting Ometepe Island in Nicaragua to study prehistoric rock art, a lot of thoughts and assumptions were swirling around in my mind about ancient peoples, abstract geometrical art and altered states of consciousness. When I was there, I hoped to induce lucid dreams about the rock art to learn more about my own assumptions. But what surprised me was how calling lucid dreams about the rock art helped me become a more effective archaeologist. You can read that piece here.

This article is part two of the exploration, and is more focused on my actual lucid dreaming practice as it relates to landscape and sacred sites in general.

Lucid dreaming, the art of self-awareness during the dream, can be an opportunity to investigate the local landscape where you are embedded in relationship. It’s not about dream control, but about directing your focus, and then watching to see what happens once the wish is planted.

What comes up in the dream space? What emerges?

In an ecopsychological context, I see lucid dreams as much more than a simulation of the landscape or the “real world.” They are real moments in time, existentially speaking. They are real exchanges that take place in the shared imaginal space between my awareness and the landscape as it reveals itself. To say it again: these dreamed exchanges take place. They are rooted and embedded, just as we are.

That’s why I say full-on dream awareness—lucidity—is really about sense of place. It’s an understanding about where you are rather than who you are. In fact, dream scenery can often determine your self-construct and corresponding dreambody, as well as the way you think, react, and make choices. When I’m lucid, even if I don’t think “This is a dream,” I know that here, in this place, the rules are different.

This grounded approach is how I began to use lucid dreaming in archaeological field research. Lucid dreaming in this light is an example of what late anthropologist Iain Edgar called imaginal research methods, which he defined as:

“An active process in which the person ‘actively imagining’ lets go of the mind’s normal trail of thoughts and images and goes with a sequence of imagery that arises spontaneously from the unconscious. It is the quality of spontaneity and unexpectedness that are the hallmarks of this process (2004:7).”

While Edgar defined these methods as occurring in waking life, of course, lucid dreaming still fits as long as one does the central practice of letting go and attending to emergent imagery and experience. I asked him about this once sitting in a bar at a dream conference, and he agreed enthusiastically.

As I practiced it on Ometepe Island, my method called for the incubation (or intentional calling) of lucid dreams about the concept of ‘‘rock art’’ so that I could interact with this theme in imaginal space.

A spiral petroglyph on Ometepe Island.

Simply by walking through a dream wall or through a bizarre threshold like a mirror, I would enter a chaotic space known as imageless dreaming that is void of representational imagery, including my own perceived dream body. When I moved into imageless lucid dreaming, I began to practice the phenomenological èpoché. This meditation, based on the work of Edmund Husserl, is centered on receptivity, the present moment, and openness of heart.

I understand èpoché as an embodied practice in which I note my expectations, thoughts, and emotions without “hanging on” to them, similar to many forms of Eastern meditation practices. Mostly, it is a period of waiting in the dark, a practice in patience and inner trust. By developing this attitude of receptivity and openness in this inner space, I found that the dream would often re-emerge spontaneously, and always in surprising ways. I began to question who am I? in this process of spontaneous emergence, and what are the associations between my re-emergent self and the new dream ecology (that’s a story for another time).

I am lucky to have lucid dreams spontaneously, but still, only occasionally. If I want to increase them so that I have several lucid dreams a week, then I have to do some practices. There’s an entire industry built around teaching folks how to lucid dream, and when I have my lucid dreaming expert hat on, I’m part of that industry, although I take a lot of care to build safety as lucidity can be destabilizing for those who are not psychologically healthy.

Still, lucid dreaming is learnable and safe, and the methods are not gated. Most folks can figure it out after reading a book, or even a blog post about it. That said, there’s no one foolproof way to induce a lucid dream. So what I recommend is to create an immersion effect, by practicing several lucid dreaming induction methods simultaneously. I wrote a whole book about this but you can keep it really simple.

Here's how I incubated lucid dreams on site:

On Ometepe Island, I journaled or read about rock art and Nicoya archaeology before bed, priming my mind. During the day, I had a reality check practice, in which I would say ‘‘I am aware’’ when I gazed at rock art features in my daily visits, followed by doing a practice that confirmed if I was in the dreamworld or not. One of my favorite of these so-called “state checks” is holding my nose and then trying to breath. In a dream, I can still breath. I waking life, I feel a bit like a moron as I wheeze through my fingers.

In the middle of the night, after about 6 hours of sleep, I would wake up and do some meditation (about 30 minutes) or some journaling about my intention to go lucid. My alarm clock for this was howler monkeys braying in the pre-dawn, but you could just set a timer.

That was it—except maybe also culture shock—but it was enough so that the cognitive links between dream awareness and rock art sites were established and ready for when my vigilance kicked into during REM sleep.

When I would successfully get lucid in a dream, the research entered into what Charles Tart used to call a “state specific science.” I would remember to visit a rock art site and would essentially wander around in the dream until I found myself in contact with the images or on the scene of a boulder site.

I kept the focus loose, as sometimes overly specific intentions can create frustration and a game of cat and mouse. Rather, I set the intention and accepted what showed up.

From there, I would attempt a soft stance of dream witnessing and participation, my applied interpretation of phenomenological epoche. This process is about becoming aware of one’s beliefs coupled with an attempt to suspend these beliefs in order for observable phenomena to arise. In this respect, phenomenology is actually a Western meditation method.

Waking up takes a little work too. The dreams were jotted down on scrap paper as soon as I awoke, sometimes by flashlight, and then more fully fleshed out when I had time, usually in the mornings before breakfast or other free time during the day.

This is a crucial point: as an imaginal research method, the value of lucid dreaming is really on the spontaneous and the emergent imagery. Trying to control the imagery of a dream is really antithetical to the whole practice. Set your boundaries and intentions, and then, accept what shows up. When we respect the landscape of the dream, autonomous figures and forces (the animals, the shadows, the emotions) really do come out to play within the dream.

Rather than pushing them away, or trying to control these Others, we are given opportunities to face this emergence in the dream, which psychologist Michelle Stevens called “autonomous visionary material.” It’s that a better term then the grab-bag term the unconscious? What emerges may feel completely unrelated to the site you are researching, but that’s ok. Journal the dreams anyways. Often we are processing our own biases and fears about this place, and using metaphors from other times in our lives. It’s messy but stick with it, it’s a cleansing process.

Forging these relationships is how we can regain our place in the wilderness of dreams, not as conquistadors of consciousness but as tenders of the meeting ground.