I once knew this guy who became amazing at lucid dreaming. He thought if he could lucid dream, then he could do all sorts of cool stuff he couldn’t in real life. 

He said he practiced every day. He journaled his dreams in the morning, looked at his watch every hour throughout the day, and asked himself if he was dreaming. Clocks don’t look right in dreams, so he knew if the numbers were ever fuzzy or bendy, he was in a dream. That’s the key to lucid dreaming—once you’re aware you’re dreaming, you’re free to control it as you wish. 

Eventually, he became exactly what he wanted. An amazing lucid dreamer. He could fly around in the skies, sleep with beautiful women, and do whatever he wanted to in his dreams.

But after a few months, he said he got bored of lucid dreaming.

“I miss my old dreams,” he said to me. “The kinds where I can just let go.”

But the problem was he couldn’t just go back. He was in too deep. He had become so aware of his dreams that he dreamt lucidly every night. His brain couldn’t shut it off. His mind couldn’t rest like it used to. He said it took him years to finally get back to dreaming normally. 

I think our desires work like that, too. We have all these dreams of how we want our life to turn out. We try our best to get certain things and manifest the life of our dreams. But whenever we finally get what we want, it doesn’t take long for that thing to wear off and for us to want something new again. Such is the cycle of desire. If all we do is choose our dreams, we end up becoming enslaved to our own mind.

Who are we to think we know what is best for our lives? If arriving at our desires feels empty and fleeting compared to how we imagined them, maybe then there’s something to investigate regarding our relationship to our imagination.

Here’s what I’m experimenting with. While it’s great to follow our dreams, what would happen if we let go of relying on our chosen dreams and desires? What if we didn’t know what we wanted or what was best for us? What if we stepped away from our life to see it more clearly?

By admitting to not knowing ourselves fully, by questioning our desires and their expected outcomes, we soon discover a newfound excitement in the unknown.

If we let go of desire, we find that there’s so much more that awaits us in the fantasy and wonder of not knowing.

It’s in this moment, a moment empty of expectation, that we grant ourselves a life far beyond the limitations of what our mind can construct for us.

Wishing you well today.

Love,
David