By now, you hopefully have attained lucidity and managed not to wake yourself up immediately. What next?
Anything you can possibly imagine.
That's the truth, but as with most things involving our amazing minds, it isn't quite that simple. While we can call any state of awareness of being in a dream "lucidity," you will quickly discover that your level of lucidity will vary wildly. There will be times when it is all you can do to remember that it is a dream while you wander through it in a state very much resembling inebriation. Other times you will find things crystal clear and your mind working similarly to how it works in waking life. Most lucid dreamers seem to experience the former condition much more often than the latter!
Having goals and tasks in mind is essential in accomplishing goals during lucid dreams, as the ability to make decisions while dreaming is often deficient. Tasks and goals are great motivation to work on lucidity too; for many, efforts to accomplish tasks seem to increase lucidity rates. Using a task or goal as a mnemonic while trying to WILD can serve double-duty; even if the WILD attempt fails, you have set up a classic MILD opportunity and the task will have been the last thing on your awake mind.
The types of goals and tasks you might come up with are infinite. While dreaming, you are occupying a world in which you can have nearly complete control. (There are some things in lucid dreams that most dreamers seem unable to control no matter how much they believe and think it should be possible. Trying to understand why this happens is crossing the boundary into questioning the nature of what is really going on while we dream.) Here is a short list of some goals our members have accomplished in their dreams. Many more ideas are presented in our Challenges forums;
- Asking questions of Dream Characters (DCs) and getting responses
- Playing musical instruments that they cannot play In Real Life (IRL)
- Performing before huge audiences and with celebrities
- Flying
- Passing through mirrors
- Teleporting
- Changing yourself into other people, animals or objects
- Passing through walls and other solid objects
If you can imagine it, you can probably do it in a lucid dream.
If these short tutorials have been helpful to you, please consider registering here at Mortal Mist and reporting your successes in the "Lucid Dreaming Experiences" forum. You might even consider starting your own Dream Journal (DJ) here so others can enjoy and benefit from your experiences.