By guest author Harumura - 春村
About a month and a half after I had started to pursue lucidity in a more or less consistent way, an entry in my dream journal reads as follows:
Hypnopompic stage. Disembodied voice. A male's husky voice said: “You are to earn it!” He sounded grumpy and angry. A bit scary. No dream associated; just the voice.
A lot of lucid dreamers talk about the role that expectation plays in lucid dreaming, mostly referring to dream control. But I think that expectation, and more specifically, belief has a broader role when it comes to the dreaming mind's behaviour ( and the awake mind too, for that matter).
I hold the belief (at a conscious level) that anything that is of any worth in this life takes effort and dedication. The bigger the goal you set, the larger the dream, the more effort, time, sacrifice and commitment it takes. That is what I believe. And therefore, my dreaming mind creates this authoritative figure (the masculine, husky,scary voice) who will keep me on my toes. Probably I was setting too big a lucidity goal for such an early stage in the lucid dreaming practice, and the voice was just warning me: “this is not in alignment with your expectation/belief, therefore it cannot happen”.
I think that consciously and even more so, unconsciously held believes can become invisible obstacles (if they are negative ones) or aids (if they are positive) whenever we set off to all kinds of pursuits, including lucid dreaming; and like a self-fulfilling prophecy, what you believe, you will see. In my case, that achieving the lucidity goal I was after was going to take a lot more than I had bargained for at that particular moment in time.
I wonder, had I not held that belief that worthwhile things do take time and effort, would I have had an easier faster journey into lucidity? Maybe not, maybe there is a portion of my mind that is wiser than my conscious, rational thinking mind, and knows better. Maybe it was just a random occurrence, to me imbued with a sense of meaning (a synchronicity of sorts) . Maybe I was tapping into something else altogether... who knows?
About the Author:
Harumura - 春村 - Having lived in four different countries (Spain, Canada, United Kingdom and Japan) and speaking three different languages, Harumura identifies herself only as female, human and citizen of this beautiful planet we inhabit. All other labels are transient. In addition to writing articles, she contributes to The Lucid Guide with video caption translations for it's YouTube channel.