Enjoy this recording on Lucid Dreaming and Journaling Techniques followed by a guided "Laboratory in Your Mind" meditation for your night time routine.
Let me know if you enjoyed this or any thoughts and experiences with a comment below.
I will upload a new episode every week!
Audio Transcript:
Welcome to episode two of the creativity workshop.
I am your guide Kassandra,
I hope you enjoyed last weeks meditation, I love the alpha meditation because the discipline helps move my observing mind out from my thoughts and into my body.
I always have the best sleep and vivid dreams after too.
Speaking of, this weeks episode guys is one of my favorite ways of sourcing creativity and that is through lucid dreams.
I really hope you guys do these practices and check in with me about its effects because I promise you will never dream the same. I also go into a few journaling practices that help remove negative thoughts.
Ive had a few sad days recently and meditation, journaling has taught me to not meddle in feelings that aren’t constructive or spend too much time in frustration.
So I really hope you keep listening, because even if you don’t connect with one meditation you might find another that really speaks to you and at the end
it’s all about moving and expressing with intent and inner wisdom.
Before we get into it,
what is a creativity workshop without a creative prompt?
This week we are channeling our inner wisdom and writing a poem on love.
Any type of poem, haiku, sonnet, simple rhyme, no rhyme, just say what you need to say.
I have posted in the gallery submissions for last weeks creativity prompt and I was asked if there was a solid time frame for submissions and the answer is its never too late to send me your creation just title it with the prompt and I would love to put it in the gallery.
If you want to keep your creations to yourself that is fine too
but I strongly recommend you submit and inspire others to submit as well.
I hope you enjoy this episode as much as i enjoyed making it.
music fade out ~
Nowadays, it’s easy to say that there’s nothing new under the sun.
With content in our face now more than ever
we are more likely regurgitating or revolvIng our thoughts around the content that we watch.
and because we are absorbing so much Content
we are first hand experiencing our culture running on a group think or collective conscience wave,
where designs and topics seem caught in an echo chamber.
As a 90s baby I remember life before Social Media
I wondered and day-dreamt a lot, I was always inventing some source of entertainment for myself.
But as social media became more prevailing in life, I find myself being entertained by a screen consistently throughout the day,
leaving little room for imagination or thought processing.
I personally don’t think that we will be aware for a very long time of the repercussions of absorbing so much Content
and the effects that it will have on the human brain.
I strongly believe that if you want to keep your individualism and creativity in check,
then you have to also keep your screen time in check.
Content zombies will never get around to actually creating or building in their life because all of your free time is left up to an algorithm.
Anyway
some of us dissociate even off screen,
We are so clouded in our thoughts of tomorrow or yesterday,
feeling overwhelmed and without time.
Thats why I think meditation is important because it aids in living in the now.
That’s why I started this series with the 54321 Method with Mel Robbins,
because if you practice catching yourself in your waking life when you dwindle into your thoughts
you can train yourself to be more in the present and discipline in your thought.
Worrying about all the things that can go wrong, don’t bring any resolve.
The mind and body need to be in synchronicity and it’s important to express and process what your mind is thinking
with full intention and attention.
Journaling is a great way to process your thoughts and 9 times out of 10
people who have a journal practice experience better mental health
because they are focusing on self-awareness.
If you find yourself with ruminating thoughts-
I suggest trying this journaling method before your meditations this week,
Divide a paper in half and write your negative or worried thoughts on one half
and the positive thoughts you would like to replace them with on the other half.
For example, I would write on my negative side
“I will never reach a high level of success.”
and on the other side i want to replace that thought with
“Everyday I work and bring more success into my life.”
Once you are done with your list
you would practice reprogramming by reading the negative and then saying CANCEL CANCEL and reinstating the positive.
You want to transfer this practice in your waking life
so anytime you have any negative thought you will teach yourself to say CANCEL CANCEL and reinstate a positive one,
It is very important to remove our own limiting beliefs
if we ever want to express ourselves authentically in this world.
Like Lao Tzu, the second best selling author in the world said
“Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habit.
Watch your habits; they become character.”
Music Fades
Have you ever been dreaming and realized you were in a dream
to only startle yourself awake?
Most people know this as lucid dreaming, like the plot of that famous movie Inception,
actually up until the 1970s scientist struggled to prove that this was even possible -
it was categorized as woo woo phenomenon until rhythmic brain technology was created to prove lucidity in REM sleep using a very well seasoned lucid dreamer.
Before the subject was in a dream state they would agree to communicate using his eyeballs
apparently your eyes move in REM as you are in your dream world looking around,
as you would awake in the physical world.
So,
in specific side to side and up and down eye movement patterns
the dreamer was to communicate when we was lucid.
Once the subject was asleep in REM the scientist would wait and observe him,
time and time again he would replay the movements previously agreed upon with his eyeballs
proving lucidity in dreams.
Lucid Dreaming wasn’t invented in the 1970s, actually Tibetan monks studied Dream Yoga as a form of meditation centuries before.
They believed a person who can live in true awareness by day would also be aware in their dreams at night
Therefore practicing meditation in wake and sleep.
After reading more deeply into dream yoga
I flung fully into the practice, using the meditation techniques
and journaling every morning my dreams when I awoke.
After exactly 16 days I had my first Lucid Dream and after having over dozens of lucid dreams at this point
I found some interesting things about my sub conscience and brain processing.
Everything we see and experience is information for the brain to process.
I found through this practice that the content of my dreams were situations I experienced a week to two weeks prior.
Did this mean that my brain was almost 14 days behind on processing information?
This was worrisome to me and I started to find connections with technology and dreams.
- If you doom scroll at night to relax your brain then you will less likely become lucid in dreams. Thats why I implore a meditation before bed every night to just clear your mind.
- When you listen to music or watch movies, be aware of the content because it can easily sway your mood and emotions. If I watched a horror, then I am most likely dreaming of a scary situation.
- Limit idle use of technology- plan intentionally what you want before picking up your phone, remote, or playing the radio. I instilled a 1 hour social media limit and this helps me use the app with more intent.
Everything that you take in, is going to be what your brain spits out so think of that before watching an aggressive cop video or listening to a very depressing song.
I have found that my thoughts shift very aggressively depending on these factors.
Sometimes we use technology to drain out our thoughts, and I hear the sentiment of not wanting to be alone with ones thoughts very often but when we idle watch things to “quiet the mind”
the opposite is actually happening because now your brain is processing more information
PLUS your thoughts that you are avoiding.
Remember when “As it Was” by Harry Styles was trending?
That song was stuck in my head for almost a week
because i would doom scroll and every other video was that song for months!!
and Every night for a week Id lay my head down and suddenly
“You know its not the same as it was, as it was”
I felt so overwhelmed by this because I just wanted to relax
but my brain kept looping the information that I stuffed into it.
I am not kidding when i say that idle use of technology,
that is tech without intent,
will stunt your creativity and cloud your mind with wasteful bullshit.
and if it is too hard to sit with your thoughts then you need to put in the work of reprogramming them like we discussed
use the cancel cancel method and start to monitor your intake of content more closely.
Just like your heart is meant to beat,
your mind is meant to think - when you hear “you are not your thoughts”
its true, you are the observer of thought, you live in the nothingness-
it is when we confuse our being with our thoughts that we develop an unstable knowledge to self.
Animals give so much wisdom to this because of their consistent awareness of their audio and visual surroundings.
SO be like a cat that sits by the window, wide eyed with their ears shifting for sound - your thoughts won’t be so loud if you learn to shift your observer outward and be INTENTIONALLY present in the physical.
So how does being aware you are in a dream help with being creative? Well you become a literal architect in your dreams through this process.
I’ve summoned people into my dreams, Ive created portals, gone to space, breathed under water, flown, just observed my dreamscape and there are people who are so well practiced that they create entire dreamscapes that they revisit nightly. I have been practicing since 2021 and Im still not there yet but I’m working on it.
Here are some amazing inventions that came by dream
The Structure of the Atom was a dream Niel Bohr had that electrons circled the nucleus of an atom the same way planets revolve around the sun in our solar system.
The Discovery of google came to Lary Page after he dreamt the idea of downloading the whole web into some old computers with links and when he awoke he wrote this down and developed the algorithm for google.
And this one is creepy but the sewing machine was invented by Elias Howe through a nightmare of cannibals stabing him with spears that had a hole at the tip and awoke knowing he needed to put an eye at the point of the needle and invented the lock stitch sewing machine.
So dreams do play a vital role in our creations if we are willing to use and listen to them, I mean we spend half of our lives sleeping, so why not be at least curious to this side of your mind.
Here are the waking techniques that you need to practice
to remember your dreams and hopefully become lucid in them.
The first is reality checks, this means that throughout the day you need to ask yourself if you are awake.
When you confirm that you are awake, look at your hands, front and back and use your finger to touch each palm.
This will cause a recall memory that will cary into your dream state,
so when you reality check in your dream and look at your hands … lets just say you will just know.
Your dream body is very different from your awake body so your hands may appear extremely stretched,
missing fingers or not there are all.
Another reality check is jumping every time you pass through a doorway in your waking life and when you recall this reality check in your dream you will realize that when you jump you will not come down because gravity is very different in your dreams.
This waking practice alone can cause you to lucid dream
because you are intentionally calling your attention to your surroundings and self.
Every night before bed with your heart say “I will remember my dreams tonight and have full awareness of my surroundings”
this gentle reminder also reinstates your intention in your mind, helping you to become lucid.
Every day when you awake get into the habit of writing down everything you can remember from your dream -characters, settings,
this will allow you to see reoccurring themes that can signal you that you are dreaming.
For me a reoccurring theme is my dream characters are 99% of the time my family members,
so when i see them i realize Im dreaming because its impossible to be in the same room with them
when I live in Seattle and they live in Miami.
Don’t be discouraged when you wake up day after day from your dream and think “How could i not be aware that I was in a dream!”
the mind is so crazy, and when you are in a dream it is always trying to convince you that you are in reality.
Even when you become lucid a dream character can lure you back into the dreamland are you will forget your lucidity.
If you find yourself becoming lucid but then awaking from excitement, practice rubbing your dream body when you feel that you are awakening, this sensation alone can help stabilize you in the dream state to be lucid longer.
The longest lucid dream I had felt about 5-10 minutes
and it wasn’t until I was able to fully stabilize and marvel in the extremely detailed dreamscape
that i started to practice different dream manifestations I learned
like spinning in circles to switch dreams, or using a mirror as a portal.
These practices all circle around the idea of illusory form, which is practicing pure consciousness without the bounds of the body and earthly entanglements.
Some more practices that can get you into a lucid state are sleeping like the buddha,
this pose is on your side, with your knees slightly bent, one hand under your head and the other flat across your side.
You can do lions roar pose which may seem silly but its actually really effective, because when you roar you are activating your throat chakra which stimulates lucidity.
I found a whole new world in my dreams and waking life because of this practice.
The daily reminders to be aware accompanied with the imagery from my dreams have really catapulted the way I create and interpret life.
I love the morning journaling and clarityy of mind this has given me.
Speaking of clarity of the mind I wanted to share the Laboratory of your Mind meditation.
This meditation helps you solve problems to questions you have.
It uses a lot of imagination and visual pictures to aid in creating solutions.
I will be guiding this meditation for you myself, it is short and sweet, I recommend you do this right before bed because the meditation pairs so well with dreams and will also bring you epiphanies in real life.
But don’t worry about having to hear the recording every night because once you build your laboratory you can just access it by yourself without my guiding you.
Don’t forget to spend some time every night refocusing your intent and creative energies,
do your creativity prompt,
remind yourself reality checks and the cancel cancel method.
I hope you loved this episode, please keep in touch and let me know how you are feeling!
Talk next week!
Alright get comfy
and I will now play the guided meditation