Often Lucid Dreamers affirm their experience of Lucid Dreaming within the dream by letting other dream characters know what they’re experiencing is a dream. The Lucid Dreamer may say things like “You know that this is a dream don’t you? That you are a dream character…”

​When we say things like this often there is a slight bias in favour of the supposedly real physical waking life. But why do we often assume that our physical reality is any more REAL than their existence? Or that in some way they also need to wake up the nature of their dream?  

When we talk to Dream Characters like this, how often do we actually honour the existence of all these beings that populate our dreams? And significantly how often do we reflect on the important work that they are doing?

On a slightly different note it can also happen that when people journey into the spirit worlds and inform people deceased people that they meet that they are in fact dead, a typical response might be something like “Ok I am dead but do I look dead to you? I’m pretty active and alive in my own world”.  

​Coming back to dream characters how do we even know what these beings really are? We may think they are just insignificant animated figures of our own personal psyche but perhaps there can be more too it than that…

A couple of days ago I had an illuminating lucid dream experience that really made me reflect upon this. I was in the midst and throws of quite an intense dream narrative with characters streaming around. They seemed almost like office workers who were seeking to meet a tight deadline, with one figure assuming a kind of managerial role. Suddenly intuitively some kind of message that the dream was seeking to communicate to me dawned in me and I said “Ah, everyone at some point wants to be King”.

At this point all the intensity and restlessness of the dream dissolved and to my surprise and amusement all the dream characters suddenly stopped and very warmheartedly began to congratulate each other. They embraced each other and patted each other on the back, agreeing that they had played their roles well in the dream narrative.

This was so interesting to me! as it was a very vivid expression of the feeling that once we get the lesson…. The feeling tone of the drama can dramatically change. It is actually very current neuroscience to suggest that our dreams are often seeking to help us process certain feelings, hang ups, challenges and emotions.
So, what happens when the purpose of a dream has been fulfilled? Perhaps we can see it like music where a strong dissonance that was seeking to help us evolve comes to a wonderful resolution. And we can all feel a sense of release and satisfaction.

Again the refrain, what really is a dream character? Sometimes saying that they’re ‘just’ dream characters can feel like it totally misses the point. Perhaps there are animated beings that the greater system of consciousness sends to help us evolve in our dreams. Perhaps they are sometimes animated aspects of our own psyche that deeply want to help us evolve. Perhaps they are sometimes independent beings that have walked into our dream space who have their own agenda. Helpful for us or not. I have had edgy characters show up to me sometimes who have made it very clear that they are not a part of me and that I had better
honour them by using their own name.

As ever we are simply explorers on the great sea of consciousness, and any answer to these types of questions about say the nature of Dream Characters is really only a provisional theory, that we ideally hold lightly until we grow and learn more.       

We are all part of the process of creation. With our actions, thoughts, emotions and intentions we influence the collective whole. And this process of creation can be very noticeable during our night journeys. While in the OBE and Lucid Dream State I have sometimes noticed the structures and you could say domains of Being that others have helped to create. I’ve seen the teaching mansions of well-known teachers in the spiritual world and and how their disciples on the other side carry on the work embedded in their teachings.

A couple of nights ago I had an Obe that made me very aware of this in terms of my own work. Lying in that familiar state of the Mind Awake Body Asleep State I received the call of the Vibrations. This time like the feeling of all of the body being plugged into a cosmic electrical current. Allowing the Vibrations to grow in intensity I tried to roll out but seemed a little stuck. Of course, being patient with the process in the end from lying on my side I sat up with my Astral Energy Body and began to walk through my Astral Bedroom.
Going to the window and looking outside at the large drop below and knowing I would soon fly out into the vibrant Astral air I tested the state by seeing if my fingers would push through the glass window. Moving through I knew I was not in the physical and so jumped through the window and flew out into the radiant early morning night sky. I was quite content to fly around in the starry sky and then thinking how it seemed so quiet without others around I soon heard my name being faintly called off in the distance.

​Looking to where the voice came from, I saw a man begin to beckon me with this hand to follow where he was moving to. I began to fly in his direction. As I did so I felt the warmth of a hand holding my right hand.  Looking to my side I saw a graceful woman full of love helping to guide me to where I needed to go. She seemed concerned I focus on the destination rather than her and she beckoned me to keep focussed on where we were flying to.

I whooshed down in my flight to an open door and moving into a room I was met with around 30 people in something like a classroom setting. I was told that these people had been my students and as I began to talk to them it seemed to be intimated that at least some of them were humans that had died and were now on the other side. One man of around 65 in appearance said something like “well unlike you I will not be waking up the next morning”. I began to ask them as they had come together with this shared focus what they were working on and exploring and they began to show me what they had been developing in an adjoining room that seemed to be in a state of decoration/manifestation. After waking from this experience, I felt my physical body pulse with vibrant energy. Moved by the emotion of the experience I began to reflect on the responsibility that teachers like myself hold in the world. With thousands of people following our courses or/and reading our books a small proportion will be transitioning into the other world on a regular basis. So, in a very real sense we could say that we have responsibilities to our students both in this physical word and the world of Spirit.

Perhaps our students that have passed over do congregate in groups around our teachings and we can go to them in our journeys, and that even now with the physical and non-physical in their interpenetrating dance, our work supports their growth and evolution across worlds. 

Across last year we’ve been keeping honey bees in our garden. It’s been a very meaningful journey for us. I built a Kenyan Style Horizontal Bar Hive out of an old Oak Futon which after many years use had become irreparable. The Futon was reborn as a wonderful hive but it was our first ever year keeping Bees and perhaps I did not adequately think how to minimize the onslaught of the dreaded Varroa Mite. Our focus over Christmas and New Year was on family commitments and I should have listened because I did sense once or twice that the Bees were seeking to communicate something to me…. Sadly when we checked the Hive the second week of January the colony had not made it. Weakened by Varroa Mites and inspecting the inside front of the Hive near the entrance I found a huge, nearly 3cm long Common Wasp. At first I thought it was a Hornet and so capturing it I took it inside for closer inspection. Later that afternoon I was at a Tree Meditation Event communing with the energies of Nature and that night I had a dream…

In the dream my partner called to me from another room in the house “Tom you had better come here” and going out into what seemed like a conservatory I/we were confronted with a huge 7 foot man. He seemed very pensive and ominous like a kind of intruder and was dressed in poor clothes and looked sad, something like a Somalian Pirate.

I felt fear and his fear but somehow being able to still access Love I was able to hold my hand to my heart and say to him “We are people of the heart”. He seemed to feel and understand what I meant and relenting he put what looked like a razor blade down on a table behind him.

He then shape-shifted into a magickal dance of a Spirit of Nature. At this point in the dream I properly realised that what I was witnessing was the energy of the Spirit of the Common Wasp that I had wounded and captured awaiting proper inspection and was currently in an airtight plastic container in our store room.  
As it Shape-shifted in my dream it was almost like a mating dance…. First the spirit becoming paler started to remove it’s clothes, revealing breasts and then the dance became even more erotic showing geometric shapes of great pulsing symmetry.   

Earlier in the dream the form manifested in a form I could understand as a poor huge man something like a Somalian Pirate. A pirate that had sought to take over or take advantage of a weakened ship of my Honey Bee Hive. That was aggrieved that I had taken it captive and had actually wounded it with knife. A wound was dealt from a feeling of grief, anger revenge for killing so many of our honey bees. I had seen dozens of their dead bodies torn apart all near the entrance of the Hive.

Later that morning after I had had the dream I went into the store room to collect the Wasp and release it back into Nature. It had been very docile for a while but it started to buzz and flap its wings with delight as if it knew I was about to release it. When I released it flew with tremendous purpose on its homeward course, back to its brother and sisters. Perhaps its children…  

Later the morning after the dream reflecting, I also felt the symbolism of the dream had to do with taking sides… why did I so favour the honey bees over the huge common wasps? Don’t they all have a valid and sacred place in the Dance of Nature? Do we treat other spirits and human in a similar way? Endlessly taking sides and mindlessly deciding what is better or worse?  

A little while ago I was dreaming and becoming lucid entered a huge open field of grass. Wondering what to do I decided to ask to meet the great mystic and teacher Pythagoras. I am not sure why in that moment his name came to mind but I had recently created a course on Ancient Greek Mysteries so perhaps it was fitting that his name emerged into my mind with a sense of purpose.
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Walking around I intuited that I'd need to visit the Underworld to find him. In Ancient Greek thought the Underworld was the home of the dead, both the unwise and the wise, the hero and the ordinary citizen. And so, I let myself fall and descend down through the crusts of the dream earth. After travelling through the darkness, I found myself in a set of dark rooms. The walls were tiled with clear black material that looked like a kind of hardened resin. There were circles and symbols on the tiles and what looked like mathematical equations. I began to peer into the tiles and the dream narrative, like quickly drying resin began to slow down, and then eventually pause. I feared this could signal the end of the lucid dream in that the mental juice that was fuelling it seemed to have run out. But then I just relaxed and becoming absorbed into gazing at the tiles I became open to possibility... What happened next while literally took my breath away.

Suddenly the Lucid dream got going again in a big way and a hidden door to the dark room opened up and I walked into an environment that felt completely stable and almost indistinguishable from physical reality. The shift caused me to literally gasp for breath as I sought to balance and adjust to the new scenario. I often tell people on my lucid dream workshops that although dreams may often seem like a very visual, impalpable, ethereal experience actually all the senses can come alive in lucid dreaming, touch, taste, smell, hearing and yes, the sixth sense as well! And although some environments may seem fleeting some can feel very stable  indeed! To experience it emerge so unexpectedly and dramatically though really took my breath away.

And so now I found myself in what seemed like a doctor’s waiting room with a magazine sitting on a coffee table. I went outside and I met a friendly woman who pointed me towards a group of horses that looked strong, passionate and wild in a kind of stable and paddock like setting. Maybe there was some kind of teaching here in the other meanings of the word ‘stable’ and a nudge to find a kind of stability that is able to alchemically mix with all the strength and passion of a powerful horse? Or perhaps the vegetarian animal loving Pythagoras had a love of horses?              

​We all struggle sometimes don't we? Even gifted facilitators, teachers, everyone comes up against suffering in this life. A couple of nights ago I was in a lucid dream and I simply offered up a question into the space like "Is there someone I can help?".

It's easy to always be asking for guidance but it's in many ways more useful to ask what we can gift for someone else. At least we want some balance and remember what we already know.

Interestingly the person that appeared in my lucid dream was my love and partner Lena. At that moment of asking into the dream-matrix it was my 'nearest and dearest' that most needed support and I'm in a position to help.

Lena simply manifested into the lucid dream and telepathically I asked what she needed. She called out strongly for her mum. In waking life, sadly Lena's mum died a few years ago. Of course she is still alive in spirit and in the dream someone appeared on the horizon and Lena rushed off to meet her and embrace.
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In waking life Lena was due to start a new job this Jan teaching music to children, but the organization changed their mind and decided on someone else at the very last minute, and so Lena was badly let down. Just that... 'suffering' we sometimes all feel, and the response of life that can come through conscious dreams.

According to recent scientific folklore the human body will replace all of its cells every seven years, and certainly if we look closely we will probably see that during certain times in our lives we will feel like very different people indeed.

I remember times in my life when I was in my early twenties when I felt like I had literally been reborn, with a completely fresh appreciation of everything around me. But yet seven years before that in my early teens, like many of my generation (that's my excuse anyway :)) I was probably dulling my mind and spirit playing some computer game.

Around 30 I remember feeling completely exhausted and alienated in a full time office based job, even to the point where sitting in a park one day, someone asked "Are you ok?". But yet a few years later I was vibrant full of energy, having Kundalini Awakenings, with people saying "you seem like a completely different person". Now six of so years later again I'm in a different space...

Of course as the sages have always said we tend to make an identity out of these changing states and say yes I am like this... not so bad in the high points but not so healthy in the low points, as then we can reinforce the downwards spiral...
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One constant we can take from all of this is there will always be change. And in a real sense we are always changing, re-shaping ourselves out of the same soul template and set of tendencies... So wherever we are let's remember that change is always possible and in fact inevitable. So let's begin each day, hour, minute and moment afresh believing that anything is possible, let's remember that an upwards spiral is always possible, and not let ourselves be held prisoner by expectations and familiarity...

And hopefully my courses will help you in your own inner process of transformation. For more info on my online courses visit: Tom's Udemy Online Courses Page

Have you noticed when your dreams offer you the next chapter in the worlds of the imagination you are living through and creating in your lucid dreams and astral travels?

A couple of weeks ago I was in an OBE state and as I was testing I was really there by placing my hand through the non material side of my boat, I decided it would be interesting to explore more this pliable substance that we often find in the lucid dream and obe state.

I moved my hand through the wall scooping up a handful of the non-physical astral material and I begin to play with it in my hands. It seemed to have the feel of dry yet wet sand. Dry in my hand but with the consistency as if it was wet.... I then had the thought it would be interesting to sculpt something from this sandy substance....

The following night I was in a dream and I was surrounded by Celtic looking figures who were pouring water down the grooves of a sculpted face that looked like an ancient totem green man figure. The substance of the face looked like dry carved sand stone. The figure didn't have leaves like the typical green-man but yet felt earthy, ancient and of the forest. The material that the face was sculpted from looked like it had been sculpted from of the astral material I'd felt in the OBE the night before.
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It felt like what I had begun in the OBE through a simple thought of wondering about sculpting with the pliable sand like astral material had been carried through in the dream of the next night...
Have you noticed when your dreams pick up the thread of where you left off in your inner journeys?
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"Do we not live in dreams?" Poet Alfred Lord Tennyson

What are your current goals and do you remember to keep them in mind? As a regular lucid dreamer and astral projector I find it very useful to keep a running list of 'what I will do next when i'm there'...

I find this very helpful to help me from going down well mind trodden paths of for instance asking for Guidance etc and I was just thinking about this yesterday, before having an intriguing lucid dream in the early hours of this morning. Although in the lucid dream I did at first ask for appropriate Guidance etc I quickly remembered my new 1 mission on my 'do to list'..

I have for many years had an interest in our ancient sacred landscape and of course this includes the great stone circles of Britain and Ireland and it's always intrigued me as to how these sites where originally used or appeared in their early days... clearly travelling back 5000 years may be a challenge even in the highly responsive and and intelligent lucid dream environment but I gave it an initial whirl.
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Soon flying down a landscape at dark I saw a wonderful stone circle off to my left. Flying over to it I saw that the stone had carved wonderful ridges all the way through them similar to the stones inside the great long barrows on Gavrinis in Britanny France. Perhaps some of our weathered stone circles originally where much more symbolically carved.

​Techniques to activate Lucid Dreaming

Intention-  Intention is very important for lucid dreaming. Your subconscious and deeper mind need to know that you want to bring lucid dreaming into your life. One of the best ways to have this intention is through the use of affirmation, so when you go to sleep and night repeat to yourself that ‘You will become lucid and conscious in your dreams tonight!” Another wonderful way is to recite a prayer before going to sleep. An example of a lucid dreaming prayer that was developed on a recent event is as follows. You can use this or better yet, write your own!

Example of Lucid Dream Prayer “Our purpose is to develop deeper clarity and to reconnect with our inner child. May we tune into the world of dreams, go for deep adventures, and solve the timeless mystery of love. May we kindle the song of life and humour within us and make good life decisions. May we do all this through awakening to lucid dreaming and the wonders of the dream world.”

Meditation- Regular meditation is one of the best ways to build up the one pointed awareness, concentration and mindfulness that is necessary for lucid dreaming to open up. Never forget.. lucid dreaming will arise when you begin to tap into and release the deeper levels and potentialities of the mind. So meditation is wonderful for this. If your mind is very distracted, then this distraction will play out in your dreams and lucidity will be very hard to attain. Also seek to go to sleep with a relaxed body and mind. For suggestions for meditations see Tom’s book The Initiation

Dream Recall and Dream Journal- All lucid dream teachers agree , you need to be able to remember your dreams in order to have lucid dreams and if you can consistently remember a few dreams every night it shows that the door in open for you to begin to put the final parts in place to order to open up the world of lucid dreaming. So when you wake up, before you move ask yourself the question: What was I dreaming? Where have I been? How does that dream feel to me?

Begin to coax your memory and soon the dream narratives will begin to come back to you. Keep a dream journal! Tom and Lena are preparing a new dream journal which will be available soon! Keep a note in your dream journal of the moments in dreams that you could have used to trigger lucid dreaming… Underline or highlight these things. If you don’t want to write out your dreams, or in addition to writing them out you can also experiment drawing them or speaking them into a voice recorder.  

Reality Checking- Frequently throughout the day ask yourself the question: Am I dreaming? What is going on? Who am I? Am I awake? Test to see if you are dreaming by placing your hand against something solid. If you are dreaming it will eventually go through… if it stays solid you are awake!  Other reality check techniques include looking and looking back at a clock or your hand, in a change it will change.  

WBTB Technique- After 4-6 hours of sleep get up in the middle of the night, interrupt your sleep cycle and begin to do some practice, meditation and/or yoga and breath-work works really well. See Tom’s book The Initiation, available on amazon for lots of meditation and breath-work techniques.

Recommended Reading List

The Initiation By Tom Llewellyn

Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen Laberge

The Gateway to the Inner Self by Robert Waggoner 

A few night ago I was in that wonderful creative, liminal zone that lies between sleep and wake, and I felt the vibrational state begin to dawn in contracting waves around the skull and third eye. They began to build up in intensity and speed, and as they did I noticed a very curious phenomenon. As the vibrational waves came, I was lying with my head cupped in my right hand and I could feel my temples physically contract and pulse. This was so interesting to me as sometimes the vibrational state is often solely talked of as occurring in the subtle energy body with little physical vibrational movements being noticeable in the physical body, but here, as the vibrational waves came, I could notice my temples physically pulse and contract. The waves built up to their perfect pitch and then after a little energy body spinning I rolled out of bed and my physical body. Getting up I felt a little heavy and tangled up in energy cords so I asked for them to be cleared and they were! I turned to my girlfriend who was lying in bed, and as she is currently developing her lucid dreaming I asked her ‘Lena are you dreaming?’. Her energy body immediately got up and she said ‘I’m not just dreaming, I’m right here’. I looked into the face of energy body and it became full of subtle depth and wisdom, as if it contained the wisdom of a million years. After this, I teleported into another astral journey and explore an urban landscape.

​Please if there are others that notice physical symptoms and changes when they are in the vibrational state please let me know...