Definition of a dreamsign: Objects/events that are impossible or improbable In waking reality, or highly unusual.

You are more likely to have lucid dreams if you can recognize the strangeness of dreamsigns. They happen everyday all around you in waking life, and they happen in your dreams even more. Dreamsigns are "anything that is unusual or out of the ordinary." You can find several of them in your daily life and transfer that mental environment of observance into your dreaming reality. These things that happen out of the ordinary go unnoticed, for the most part, by the average person. However, you can train yourself to be looking for these things at all times. Once you train yourself to look for these in waking life, within a month or two this attentiveness will translate to the consciousness of the dreaming self, and the dreaming self will then look for these unusual occurrences.

The trick to using dreamsign awareness is to always ask yourself the question, "Am I dreaming?" every time that you notice something out of the ordinary. And the answer to the question is always, "Yes!" As you answer this question, look around you and experience everything in your environment as if you have just woken up in your dream and become lucid. (This is also excellent training for becoming present in the moment, and stopping the mind, less inviting an enlightened state to be your natural setting for your awareness. After all, living a lucid life is the gift that enlightenment offers.) You will notice that immediately upon resetting your awareness to "wake up" in your reality, all colors become more vibrant, reality itself becomes more intense, and things seem more liquid and illusory than they did just a moment ago. Your daily life will eventually seem much like a lucid dream once you live in an enlightened state rather than the automatic programming of the human mind. You will feel as if you are a human no longer, and you will realize the dream that life is rather than perceiving earth reality as your only vehicle for experiencing consciousness.

You might ask what it is that would be considered out of the ordinary. Even very small details could be considered to be out of the ordinary. For instance, you could be sitting in your office at work and your boss comes in wearing a really outrageous tie or a strange outfit. You might be looking out your window and see someone ride by on a unicycle or doing a wheelie on his/her bicycle. You might hear someone speaking in a foreign language. At a stoplight you might notice a purple car. Your pet might have gotten some grease on its fur from the driveway. Your partner might be coming home from work late, which may be unusual. Perhaps you even burned your dinner. As you can see, dreamsigns do not have to be absolutely outrageous for them to be unusual, and thus trigger you to ask your question, "Am I dreaming?" This is how dream signs serve you and can be found in your everyday life.

Things do not have to be out of the ordinary to serve as a dream sign, either. You can use quite commonplace events as dreams signed as well. For instance, you can program yourself to ask yourself the question, "Am I dreaming?" every time you open a door, every time you see a flash of light off a computer or the windshield of a car, every time you drink a glass of water, or every time you pick up the telephone. You can use ordinary events to trigger this question in your mind as well. You can even put notes around the house that ask you the question, "Am I dreaming?" I also recommend using the Motive Aider device, which was discussed in the affirmations course and which I will discuss shortly, again. This can trigger you to ask the question as well.

The goal of this exercise is to use whatever it is that you can to trigger this question in your mind during waking life. You are trying to get yourself to question your reality and ask if what you are seeing is really real. If you do this long enough, your mind will be trained to ask this question even in your dreaming state. What becomes part of your ego condition and waking life carries over into your dream life. You may notice that if you're typically depressed in your waking life, your dreaming self is also depressed. If you typically have the habit of asking yourself if you are dreaming in waking life, this will carry over into your dream self. This is your fastest route to developing the ability to have lucid dreams. Even if you use other methods in conjunction with this, the mental habit of questioning your reality is what is most necessary for the success of this endeavor.

There are many types of dreamsigns. I have described a few of these dreamsigns but let's get more specific. Dreamsigns are classified into four specific types. These are: inner awareness, action, form, and context. Dreamsigns that fall in the category of "action" have three further categorizations. They are: ego action, character action, and object action. Dreamsigns that fall in the category of "form" have four further categorizations. They are: ego form, character form, setting form, and object form. Dreamsigns that fall in the category of "context" have six further categorizations. They are: situation, setting time, setting place, object place, character role, and ego role. Each of these categories are described below:

Examples Of Dreamsign Types