Due to the special properties of mirrors and people’s superstitious beliefs about them, they can be used to easily translocate in lucid dreaming. To that end it’s enough to jump or dive into any large mirror encountered along the way. Meanwhile, you can focus your attention on the location you want immediately being behind it. Due to the properties of mirrors, you often don’t even have to close your eyes or turn around when penetrating their surface.

Interesting Fact!

When novices at School of Out-of-Body Travel seminars are asked to take a look in the mirror during their first lucid dreaming, it is rare for two descriptions of the event to be similar, as everything happens differently for each person: some see their actual reflection, others see nothing, still others see different people, and in some cases the movements of the reflection don’t match those of the practitioner, etc. Once at a seminar, 16 were able to look at a mirror while in lucid dreaming, and no two people had similar experiences.

Patricia Garfield was born in 1934 in the United States. From the age of 14, she kept an uninterrupted daily dream journal that would allow her and all of humanity great insight into dream phenomena associated with lucid dreaming.

She was one of the founders of The Association for the Study of Dreams. Dr. Garfield holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.

She is the author of a great number of books, with the 1974 best-seller Creative Dreaming being the most widely lauded. It was one of the first pieces of literature to approach lucid dreaming state in a practical and non-specialist way, and received worldwide interest and appreciation. The book contains good practical guidelines and also describes the dreaming practices of various cultures.

Ulyanovsk, Russia

I lay on the couch and tried to directly exit. Everything was going along well when my consciousness suddenly "checked out" for a moment. When I returned, I realized that I was lying on the bed and felt a phantom body. I tried rolling out to the side, which worked, albeit with some difficulty.

Here I began to palpate the bed and myself (I did everything a bit hurriedly). I couldn’t see yet. I decided that I could deepen and I dove head-first into the floor (that is, more exactly, into the void). I flew down a little bit, and found myself in my neighbor’s apartment below. I then flew back up to my own apartment and stood on the floor. Trying to restore vision, I opened my eyes. It felt like trying to open the eyes after a long period of sleep deprivation, my eyelids were heavy and yielded grudgingly. I looked around: I was standing in my room, it was sunny outside. I decided to try to fly (well, I love flying) (M.R.: no plan of action). I was able to fly up to the ceiling, but immediately began to gently fall back down, being pulled backwards. Upon touching down on the floor, I bounced back up. This was comparable to when a balloon falls and hits the floor, springs back up, falls again, and then bounces up again. I was only able to remain standing on the floor after repeating this process several times.

Suddenly it became difficult to breathe, and I tried to go back to my body (M.R.: wrong action), but was somehow unable to. At first panic arouse, but then I realized that giving in to the fear would do me no good, and that I would have to stick it out. But as soon as I calmed down and relaxed (M.R.: no maintaining), I had a foul (M.R.: no re-entering). All of the above sensations lasted for about a minute.

Keeping a journal can be of much help while learning and practicing lucid dreaming. When properly kept, a journal can help a practitioner to develop an analysis that will increase the quality of lucid dreaming experiences. By and large, keeping a journal helps to iron out a sporadic practice, turning it into a structured discipline that can be mastered.

An effective diary should contain a massive amount of indicators that allow a statistical study to uncover patterns. It is essential that each entry include the date, time of day or night, and a detailed account of entries into lucid dreaming and lucid dreaming experiences. Descriptions of mistakes and a plan of action for the next lucid dreaming should also be recorded. During the novice stages of practice, even noting unsuccessful entry attempts is beneficial. Later on, only successful lucid dreaming experiences may be recorded.

Here is an example of a proper journal entry:

Data:

Experience No. 12

January 5th, 2008

2:13 PM

Experience:

I woke up early in the morning. After exercising, I took a shower and ate breakfast. I watched TV and read books until lunch.

I laid down for a nap at 1 PM, right after lunch. I felt like performing indirect techniques, and affirmed this intention. I woke up the first time to movement, but after trying to employ forced falling asleep (in order to negate the effects of the movement), I fell asleep. I woke up the second time without movement and tried to roll out. This didn’t work and I tried levitating and getting up. After that, I moved on to phantom wiggling. Movement occurred in my right hand. After doing this for several seconds, I decided to try listening in. Sounds started, but I was unable to make them louder. However, images appeared before my eyes and I started to view them. After they became realistic, I decided to try rolling out and it worked without a hitch.

My vision was dim, as if through a veil. But then, the rest of the sensations I felt reached the verge of reality. This is when I went to the window. For some reason, it was summer outside, and not winter. There was a red fire-truck outside the window. There were really low clouds in the sky. The sun was above them.

Next, everything quickly faded away and I found myself back in my body. Then, I got up and looked at the time. It was 2:15 PM.

Mistakes:

1. When the phantom wiggling worked, I should have aggressively tried to increase the range of movement, and not simply done wiggling, let alone change to another technique. After all, if wiggling occurs, lucid dreaming can always be entered. 2. The same with the sounds. I had no great desire to amplify sounds or even listen in. Everything was done lackadaisically. 3. I should have started with deepening and not actions, as visual sensations were not vivid. 4. I should have employed techniques for maintaining. 5. You can’t look down for long without simultaneously using techniques for maintaining, yet I took in everything outside the window and in the sky. 6. I forgot about the plan of action. 7. I should have tried re-enter lucid dreaming.

Plan of action for next time:

1. Definitely deepen lucid dreaming as much as possible. 2. I should try to go through a wall. 3. Translocate to my Auntie in New York. 4. Translocate to the Statue of Liberty and examine her crown.

For the experienced practitioner, becoming conscious while dreaming requires the least effort and attention of all. He essentially only does two things in order to guarantee dream consciousness during the middle of the night, or better yet – with the deferred method. First, he creates an interesting plan of action that will lure him into a dream. Next, while falling asleep, he simply desires to experience dream consciousness, but without dwelling on it too much or being obsessive about it. That’s all! The practitioner would be quite surprised if nothing worked at all.

Once again, everything depends on correctly forming an intention. An experienced practitioner forms an intention in a fundamentally different way than a novice. A novice would think to himself, "I want to become conscious in a dream", while a lucid dreamr would tell himself, "I’ll soon become conscious during my dream", which allows for the programming to make it much deeper into his subconscious mind. Moreover, his prior practice has already trained him for that moment, and there’s nothing else that he needs to do.