April 23, 2025 • 55 mins
This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Lindsey Medenwaldt about her article, “Consciously Dreaming: A Look at Lucid Dreams”. https://www.equip.org/articles/consciously-dreaming-a-look-at-lucid-dreams/
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Don’t miss an episode; please subscribe to the Postmodern Realities podcast wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Please help spread the word about Postmodern Realities by giving us a rating and review when you subscribe to the podcast. The more ratings and reviews we have, the more new listeners can discover our content.
Related articles and podcasts by this author:Episode 434: Another Book About Cults? A Review of J. W. Ocker’s ‘Cult Following’“Another Book About Cults? A Review of J. W. Ocker’s ‘Cult Following’”Episode 409 When Physical Therapy Gets Spiritual: Should Christians Avoid Holistic and Alternative Medicine?When Physical Therapy Gets Spiritual: Should Christians Avoid Holistic and Alternative Medicine?Episode 399: A Review of Dancing For The Devil: The 7M TikTok CultEpisode 390 Enhancing Your Energy the New Age Way: Understanding Auras, Chakras, and QiEnhancing Your Energy the New Age Way: Understanding Auras, Chakras, and Qi
Don’t miss an episode; please subscribe to the Postmodern Realities podcast wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Please help spread the word about Postmodern Realities by giving us a rating and review when you subscribe to the podcast. The more ratings and reviews we have, the more new listeners can discover our content.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hi everyone, Thank you for tuning in to the Postmodern
Realities podcast, brought to you by the Christian Research Institute
and the Christian Research Journal. I'm Melanie Cogdill, Managing editor
of the Christian Research Journal. It's April twenty twenty five,
and you're listening to episode four hundred and forty two,
which is a conversation about Lucid Dreams. On this episode,
(00:45):
I'm joined by Lindsay Metdenwald, who is the director of
ministry Operations at Mama Bear Apologetics and the author of
Bridge Building Apologetics. Lindsay holds a Masters in Apologetics and
Ethics from Denver Semoni, a jd from Saint Mary's School
of Law, and a master's in Public administration from Midwestern
(01:06):
State University. Lindsay has written an exclusive online feature article
for the Christian Research Journal. Her article is called Consciously Dreaming,
a look at Lucid Dreams, and you can read it
for free at equipped dot org. That's e quip dot org. Lindsay,
it's good to have you on the podcast again.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I am excited to be here to talk about a
very interesting topic.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yes, I have found this topic to be very fascinating
and I will say that on our YouTube channel and
just when people contact us. What has become really popular
is just people wanting to understand dreams, and specifically something
called lucid dreaming, which seems to be a phenomenon that
people are interested in exploring, just generally, like maybe in
(01:56):
the last decade or so, maybe last fifteen years, it's
become a thing. So of course we're all curious to
know what do dreams mean? Why do I have them?
What's this? Is there any significance in them? And I
just wanted to find out a little bit more about
the subject. And I know you've done a deep dive
on it, So why don't you tell our listeners what
is a lucid dream and how's it different? Then you
(02:18):
know the garden variety dreams that we have a lot
of times, we don't remember our dreams when we wake up.
We just remember, oh, I felt scared, or I was
being chased or something happened, and we don't necessarily remember
the content of our dreams. But dreams seem to be
mysterious to people.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, they're certainly mysterious to me. Even though I've done
this study of it, I'm still kind of not confused,
but uh, it's just been really an interesting thing to research.
And I already told you this off the air, but like,
my dreams have been impacted since I started studying this.
And interestingly, in the several books that I read in
(02:57):
preparation of this podcast and a company article, the author said, hey,
if you start studying this, your dreams might be impacted.
And I want to be clear, like, I haven't had
a lucid dream, so I'm not speaking from experience here,
but it has been a really interesting thing. Yeah, dreams
are a part of everybody's life. Sometimes people can really
(03:20):
remember their dreams. Some people keep dream journals because their
dreams are so vivid. Other people they don't remember any
of their dreams. But all of us dream in one
sense or another. I think some dream studiers have said
that we on average dream about two hours a night,
(03:41):
and I watched another YouTube video yesterday that said there's
probably five times during the night that you're having active dreams.
So a dream is just really taking all of your
life experiences from the day or the week, or you know,
even life in general, and putting them all into a mix.
Which is why sometimes our dreams are just so weird
(04:04):
and we wake up and we're like, well, that was odd.
Lucid dreams are when somebody is dreaming and they know
that they're dreaming. So you're looking around in your dream,
and you are conscious that you are dreaming, and you
can consciously control what happens in your dream, who you
(04:24):
interact with, how you behave, and you can in some
cases decide when you want to wake up. In other
cases you don't really have control over that, which we'll
get to in a little bit. But not everybody has
lucid dreams. Some people do just naturally. And then as
we'll talk about, there is a large group of people,
although I don't have a specific number, who are proponents
(04:47):
of trying to instigate or create lucidity in our dreams
as a regular practice. So that's kind of the basic
idea of the difference between regular dreaming, which pretty much
everyone does, and lucid dreaming. In regular dreaming, you're basically
unconscious and you're not in control, and in lucid dreaming,
(05:08):
you are conscious and in control of what happens in
your dreams.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
That is really fascinating because I know, like you said,
some people are keeping dream journals now one thing I
saw in my very limited prep for this, you know
I didn't do the deep dive that you did, is
that it's not very common that people have lucid dreams. Now,
this is according to scientists who study dreaming and sleep cycles,
(05:34):
and I one of the videos that was an interview
of such a person. They said maybe thirty percent of
people have lucid dreams, so it's not a common occurrence.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
But they.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Claim that they have scientifically proven that people have lucid
dreams and this is a percentage of the population that
does that. So can you explain how you told us
what they are? But can you explain how lucid dream
are induced? How does somebody who can supposedly have a
lucid dream actually make a lucid dream happen while they
(06:11):
are sleeping.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
There are a couple of ways that you can do
this that. Like I said, I read a few books
on the topic, and I've watched so many YouTube videos
I've lost count. I've also watched other films and listen
to a few podcasts about the topic to really kind
of just absorb myself in it. But it seems like
(06:37):
a common thread is meditation and really trying to think
about lucid dreams a lot while you're awake, and then
meditating before you fall asleep, telling yourself, okay, I'm going
to have a lucid dream. There is this acronym that
was created by a guy in Aim, Stephen Laberge, and
(07:02):
it's called I think he's the one who created it.
It's MILD is the acronym, and it's basically just mnemonic
induction of lucid dreams. And what it does is if
you wake up in the middle of the night or
like at three o'clock in the morning, so you've had
a good amount of sleep already. Now you want to
(07:25):
try to induce your lucid dream because you're much more
likely if you're awake for about a half an hour
or so. Once you fall back asleep, you're more likely
to have a lucid dream. So when you wake up,
you tell yourself over and over again until you fall asleep.
The next time I'm dreaming, I will remember that I
am dreaming, and then you begin to visualize yourself having
(07:48):
a lucid dream and being in a lucid dream. So
it's a combination of meditation and kind of almost obsessively
thinking about how having a lucid dream. Another common thread
that I found in the proponents of lucid dreams is
that you should think about lucid dreaming all the time,
(08:09):
and every time you have a dream, you should dream
journal and write it out and remember specific details of
your dreams because that will help you have lucid dreams.
And so you're obsessively thinking about it. And that can
be a danger, right, because if we obsess about anything,
it means we're probably letting something slide in our lives.
(08:30):
But that is one way that apparently you can trigger
lucid dreams is by thinking about them all the time,
which I guess sort of makes sense.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Some of our listeners. And I was thinking about this topic.
It sounds a little bit like some occulting and new
age practices like astral projection. So is lucid dreaming astral
projection or are they related in any way?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yeah, I was just talking to somebody about this and
she told me that he thinks that lucid dreaming is
sort of a gateway into astral projection. And I hadn't
really thought about that, and honestly, I haven't thought about
it enough to talk about it intelligently at all. And
I'm not an expert on astral projection, but I think
there are some similarities at least in desired outcomes. Right, So,
(09:20):
in looser dreaming, you want to be involved in the
dream for certain things that we'll talk about later, but
basically so that you can have personal growth or spiritual
insight or some sort of expanded consciousness. An astral projection
which is essentially an out of body experience, that is,
(09:41):
basically when your consciousness separates from your physical body, the
same goals are involved as in lucid dreaming, So in
astral projection, we also want to achieve personal growth, spiritual insight,
or expanded consciousness. Now, I would say that not everybody
who does lucid dreaming is involved in the New Age
(10:05):
or the occult, but with astro projection that is definitely
much more. Of the common theme with people who practice
that is that they are very likely involved in the
Occult and the New Age.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
If you're enjoying this conversation today with Lindsay Medenwalt on
lucid dreams, I hope you'll head on over to equip
dot org because not only will you find this article
that she's written for us called Consciously Dreaming. A look
at Lucid Dreams, you will find a wealth of different
articles and related topics that Lindsay has written for us
(10:43):
that are quite popular on our website, including all of
the articles she's done on the ancient Aliens. And she
has also handled for us witch talk and tarot cards
and other things that are kind of interesting that you
might not have known about, like Skinwalker Ranch. So you
might want to check out equip dot org. And the
great thing about all of the Christian Research Journal content
(11:06):
there's it's completely free. There's no paywall at all. And
because of that, we would like for you to consider
partnering with us in some very easy ways. One is
just please tell more people about our content and this
podcast and share it, you know, through a text or
email or on your social media accounts. But also if
(11:27):
you could write us a reviewer rating, that really helps
us with the Internet algorithms. It just means that more
people can find our content. And there's a lot of
people that have some questions about these topics, especially things
that Lindsay's done for us, for example on the Fallen
Gong cult or even David Wilcock. He's huge on the
(11:48):
History Channel and we have so many thousands of views.
I think we're more than fifteen thousand views on her
podcast with us years ago on David Wilcock. So you
won't want to miss more of Lindsay's content, as well
as all kinds of content that you can find on
equip dot org, from our articles to videos, to other
(12:09):
podcasts that we have like the Bible answer Man. All
of that is on equip dot org, so please head
on over there. And now back to my conversation with
Lindsey about lucid dreaming. We're just talking a little bit
about astral projection and just new Age practices. But it
seems like maybe the introduction just culturally to lucid dreaming
(12:31):
has come in the form of just pop culture media.
In fact, years ago, someone I know watched Waking Life.
I didn't watch it. It came out in more than twenty
years ago, in two thousand and one, But in preparation
for this podcast, I did watch Waking Life, and I
(12:51):
didn't really realize back then it was about lucid dreams.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
We both watched it. In preparation of this podcast, I
also watched clips from Vanilla Sky and Inception, And you're right,
sometimes we're watching these things and we have no idea
that they're involved in a certain perspective. I honestly had
no idea about.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
The creative thing about dreams. I didn't think I had
anything these lucid dreams. Although everyone, I mean, spoiler alert,
it's been so many years. But you know, everybody at
the end, even if you don't know anything about lucid dreams,
I mean, every viewer is like, Okay, that top was spinning.
Was it real life or was it a dream? We
don't know?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Well, yeah, and Inception is a wild one, but I
thought I thought Waking Life was well. I had to
step away from it. Made me a little nauseous at
times because of the way that it was filmed, which
is actually a really creative film style. It's basically animating
human actors robo. I can't remember exactly what it's called
(13:57):
robo animation. Maybe so it's a cool way to film
a movie. But I also got a little bit seasick throughout,
so I had to say a couple of breaks. But
it starts with this little boy and this little girl
playing a game. It's one of those fortune teller games
that I think I did in high school and middle school,
(14:18):
right where the paper fortune teller games where you pick
a number and then you move the hands and then
you pick another number and then you get a fortune.
And in this particular film it said his fortune, this
little boy's fortune was dream is destiny. And then you
(14:38):
go into this whole film of basically a dream sequence,
different conversations about existentialism and free will and different There
was a discussion Ethan Hawke's character was talking about a study,
a real life study that happened about cross word puzzles,
(15:01):
and of course, you know, I went to go look
up the study and it does exist. But the film
touches on it a little bit because it's talking about
collective consciousness, which is a big theme when it comes
to lucid dreaming. And had I studied loocid dreaming when
I first watched things like Inception, I would have understood.
But since I was already primed with what lucid dreaming was,
(15:23):
it totally made sense when I heard this conversation between
the two characters in the film talking about how in
this study, people who did crossword puzzles if they were
given the daily crossword puzzle on the day it came out,
they were tested and how long does it take you
to answer that particular crossword? But if researchers gave them
(15:46):
a crossword puzzle a day later, like they still hadn't
seen it, it was the first time they'd seen it.
The researchers discovered that they could actually solve the crossword
puzzle faster, and they that researchers to start talking about
this thing called a collective consciousness, which was this idea,
and it's sort of a new age idea, but this
(16:08):
idea that we're all connected our minds, in our minds,
and if somebody solved the crossword puzzle yesterday and then
it's given to me to solve, I can solve it
faster because somebody else already solved it and were connected together.
And so I thought it was really fascinating that Waking
(16:28):
Life attempted to tackle such difficult topics in two hours.
And it's all a lucid dream at the end. I'm
not going to give away the full ending, but the
end sort of mirrors the beginning, right Melanie, where he
flies off in a car at a car, he's sort
of flying and it sort of ends in the same way,
except now he's older and you're just wondering, like with
(16:48):
the whole thing a lucid dream, And I don't know,
but it does make me think about films like Inception
a little bit differently, or Vanilla's Guy, which isn't necessarily
a lucid dream, but it does make me think things
a little bit differently now that I've studied lucid dreams.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
So I think there's also not just these pop culture
artifacts of films, But aren't there people in history that
we're very interested in trying to participate or actually, do
you know, create lucid dreams of themselves for themselves so
(17:28):
that they could be inspired to invent something or create
something because they were artistic.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yeah, I read this thing. It was like a list
of people who created things based on lucid dreaming. Although
I'm wondering if their definition of lucid dreams is different.
A lucid dream isn't just a vivid dream, right, Like,
it's not like you walk into a lucid dream and
(17:56):
it's everything is beautiful and clear, and and that's a
lucid dream, which we can't think of. And maybe that's
what people think of when they hear the term lucid dream.
A lucid dream is that you are conscious while you
are dreaming. But there are claims that certain artists and
(18:16):
creatives have used lucid dreams to create their works. So
one example that I read yesterday was John Lennon and
the song Yesterday. Apparently he dreamt it and then the
next day wrote it. And I don't know if that
was a lucid dream or if it was just a
regular dream. I have had regular dreams of things that
(18:39):
were creative, right, and then I wake up and I'm like, oh,
I need to write that down. And I've heard of
like the author, I'm not promoting this book at all,
but the author of the Twilight series, she wrote the
whole series based on a dream she had and that
wasn't a lucid dream, and she's never claimed that it
was a lucid dream. And I'm reading about these creatives
(19:01):
like Stephen King or the artist Salvador Dali, or even
Nikola Tesla. I'm a little bit skeptical as to if
those people are actually lucid dreaming or if they're just
having regular dreams. And I can't speak for them, and
answer that question. I don't really know. Not a lot
of people, I think know the actual definition of lucid dreaming.
(19:23):
So I'm just a little bit more skeptical now when
I hear somebody say, oh, I had a lucid dream.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah, it might just be something that they're thinking. Is like,
like you said, my dream was very, very vivid. Now,
we've seen lucid dreams in movies, like you said, if
you've watched Inception. Now that I know about this topic,
I think there's some element to lucid dreaming because there
is the kind of suggestion, could this person wake up?
(19:50):
This is very real? Is this happening to them? And
we talked about Waking Life that we watched. But I
guess it's not just an artifact of pop culture. Like
I said, is it really real? We were mentioning scientists
in sleep study centers that are promoting the fact that
people do have lucid dreams, and so what is the
(20:12):
scientific backing for lucid dreams? Before I prepped for this podcast,
I just had a hard time believing that there were
any scientists who claimed that these are real, But in
fact there are.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah. I typically approach this kind of topic with a
healthy skepticism too, So you were not alone in that
at all. I am married to a psychologist. He's a
scientist and studies the brain, and so I was lucky
enough to talk to him a little bit about this.
He mentions to me that even in the textbooks that
he teaches from, he thinks that there's a section about
(20:46):
lucid dreaming, not a huge section, but has to do
with the brain and sleep, right, so they give mention
to that. But this idea of lucid dreaming didn't start
as a science necessarily, although it's like science has sort
of proven its existence. It was more of a religious practice.
And I say that because, as many of these things do,
(21:08):
it started in the East, right, not the West, don't.
We did not invent lucid dreams in the West. It
started with it seems like Tibetan monks. Now, dream yoga
is really common with Tibetan monks. It's not exactly the
same as lucid dreaming, but basically, dream yoga is when
(21:31):
a practitioner learns how to have lucid dreams, so they
practice it while they're awake, so that when they're asleep
they can engage in lucid dreams. Hinduism has something similar
called yoga nidra. I'm not entirely sure I'm pronouncing that right.
Apologies if I'm wrong. I'm a reader and sometimes I
(21:51):
don't hear how things are pronounced. But yoga nidra, which
is kind of priming the pump again to have lucid
dreams when they're sleep. In the West, lucid dreams became
sort of a thing in the early nineteen hundreds. In
nineteen thirteen, there was a Dutch psychiatrist who wrote a
(22:14):
paper called a Study of Dreams. His name was Frederick
von Eden, and he wrote this paper called a Study
of Dreams, and in it there was a section, just
a small section about lucid dreams. Now, it seems like
his definition of lucid dreams was you have clarity while
(22:37):
you're dreaming. He didn't really say it had to do
with being conscious that you're in a dream, but he
sort of coined the term lucid dream It has since
become more of a discussion of consciousness. I think in
the nineteen sixties it really kind of picked up in
the scientific psychology community. There was a British psychologist Celia
(23:03):
Greene who started doing research on lucid dreams, and she
really was convinced that you could tell if a person
was having a lucid dream based on rapid eye movement,
which is what happens when we're dreaming in a dream
state at night. And she never proved that, but it
was proven later on in the seventies by another psychologist
(23:28):
in Britain, and so she was right. And then there
started to be a little bit of an uptick in
the number of psychologists who started talking about lucid dreams.
And in the nineteen eighties we get to a guy
named Stephen Leberge who is considered the godfather of lucid dreams.
And I don't think he's even necessarily the biggest name
(23:52):
when it comes to lucid dreaming, right, We've got other
names like Keith Hearn and Scott Sparrow. Keith Hearn is
the guy that proved that Celia green was right when
she was talking about rapid eye movement. He also invented
this thing called the dream machine, which is apparently in
London in their Science Museum, so if you're in that
area you can actually go see this instrument that he
(24:15):
created that was supposed to help trigger lucidity in dreams.
But Stephen Leberge is probably the biggest name. He is
an American and he studied at Stanford, and he has
talked a lot about how to achieve lucidity in dreams
and really has said, Okay, we know they're real, how
(24:36):
can we achieve them? And what are the benefits of
doing that? And so I think it's important for us
to kind of look at the history of it so
that we understand, like, Okay, it's not just religious, although
there are religious aspects to it, and there, of course
are New Age aspects to it, because we can get
to those in a minute. But that often happens when
(24:57):
we're talking about consciousness. We get into the New Age.
But there are people who are not associated with religious
thought who are talking about lucid dreams as well.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yes, but hasn't Stephen Laberge and the things that I
saw from him. It's true he's a scientist, but it
seems like he's embracing some of the New Age elements
to it, Like he promotes dream yoga for example.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
He does. Yeah, so he created this thing Melanie called
the Lucidity Institute it's in Hawaii, which if you're gonna
have some an institute that talks about dreaming, why not
go to a dream location like Hawaii. But in those
retreats that he offers at the institute, it seems like
they focus on dream yoga. Now, I couldn't get like
(25:43):
a full line by line schedule of what they do there.
I don't know. I tried to find. He talks a
lot about achieving higher consciousness. He had some weird things
to say about demons. I don't think he's a Christian,
but I don't know that he is full fledged practicing
the New Age either. There are other people who are
(26:05):
are full fledged doing that. I think one that I
maybe didn't mention just now is Scott Sparrow. He is associated.
He's a psychotherapist who's associated with and you'll know this name,
Edgar Casey Association for Research and Enlightenment. He actually created
the Dream Star Institute and wrote a book about lucid
(26:29):
dreams related to Edgar Casey's psychic readings. So for listeners
who don't know who eder Casey is, he is called
the Sleeping Prophet, and he claimed that when he fell
asleep he could he could make certain predictions or prophecies
about particular people and heal them of their ailments while
he was sleeping. And that association of Research and Enlightenment
(26:52):
still exists and Scott Sparrow is associated with that group.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
So that's really interesting. And then also the professor some
kind of dream institute at Stanford, who is I think
from the UK. He was featured on a lot of
videos just describing the fact that lucid dreams exist. So
what are claims of the you know, the people who
(27:19):
promote lucid dreaming, what are their claims about why it's beneficial,
Why should someone pursue in their you know, world view,
trying to pursue actually practicing lucid dreams and getting better
at that.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Yeah, so there is I'm actually going to reference a
cultural thing and then come to that. So there is
a song and I oh, the name of the artist
is escaping me at the moment. It's called Lucid dream
and I think it's I think his name is Juice World,
but it came out in twenty seventeen. And in the
(27:59):
song he's talking about heartache that he's experienced and one
of the lines is I have these lucid dreams where
I can't move a thing thinking of you in my bed,
and then I know it's all in my head, right,
And I thought that was really interesting because one of
the benefits that I came across that proponents of lucid
dreams say will happen if you can lucid dream is
(28:22):
that you can overcome things like grief by interacting with
the person who has died in your dream, who's not
actually visiting you. You're just again consciously creating the interaction
in your brain while you're dreaming, while you're sleeping, but
you're having a conversation with somebody who has died, and
(28:42):
it makes you feel better in the morning because, Okay,
I talk to that person, I don't feel so sad anymore.
Another one is that I saw was that it could
promote memory and learning. So the more that you work
on practicing your loose dreams, apparently that can help with
your learning retention, because when you wake up from a
(29:04):
lucid dream, you actually remember more of it than you
would your regular dreams, and you write those down and
that skill translates to your everyday awake life. Right. Another
one is overcoming fears and I thought this one was interesting,
and I sort of explained it like it would take
(29:24):
a series of lucid dreams for you to accomplish this.
But if you had a fear of flying, maybe in
your first lucid dream, you would put yourself in an
airport and you would just sit in the airport and
you would watch the planes take off and land, and
you will watch the people move, but you wouldn't do
anything in your lucid dream. That's all you would do
(29:44):
is sit and watch the planes take off and land.
Maybe in the next lucid dream, you get yourself to
the hallway that leads to the plane. Then you get
yourself in a seat on the plane, but you're not
taking off, and eventually you'll get to a point where
the plane takes off. The idea being that your lucid
dream makes you feel safe and you overcome this fear
(30:07):
of flying in the real world. That feeling translates over
so you're no longer afraid of flying in the real
world while you're awake. And that's what scientists are studying
right Scientists are looking at benefits like can lucid dreaming
help veterans who are struggling with PTSD. Can lucid dreaming
(30:32):
help people overcome anxiety. Maybe you're really afraid of and
this is one instance I heard about, I think on
a YouTube channel, was maybe you're really afraid of having
a conversation with your boss about getting a raise, and
you don't know how to have that conversation, so you
have a lucid dream about it so that you can
(30:53):
have a conversation in your dream, and when you go
and do it in real life, it's easier because you've
already experienced it consciously. I think it's you know, I'm,
like you, a little bit of a skeptic when it
comes to these things I struggle with, like I don't
I mean, I haven't experienced it. And that's not to
say that it's not real. I mean I haven't experienced
(31:14):
having a million dollars, and I know there are people
who are millionaires, so I'm not saying that just because
I haven't had the experience, others haven't. But I can't
speak from personal experience on this one. And that leaves
me to look at science and other things, and it
seems like scientists are kind of on board with this.
If we can separate from the New Age stuff. But
(31:36):
for the most part, the benefits are for self improvement
and that's good. And in some cases, I think it
becomes a little bit of a negative.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Is there any kind of speaking about negatives? What would
be as you've done your research, potential drawbacks for people
trying to engage in the practice of lucid dreaming.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Yeah. I think one of them is this obsessive desire
to have a lucid dream. All you're doing is thinking
about it, and it can impact your sleeping time because
you're either disappointed when you wake up because you didn't
have it or whatever it might be, or obsessively thinking
about it. And like I said earlier, if you're obsessively
(32:23):
thinking about anything, it's probably taking you away from thinking
about things you actually need to get done. The other
thing is I saw that there were some things about
sleep paralysis that were a little bit disturbing actually when
I was reading them, and one was in a book
called The Awake Dreamer, which is by a woman named
Samantha Fay. She's a rieky master and she teaches about
(32:48):
crystals and intuition, and she's got a podcast called Psychic
Teachers and Inlighted Impaths but in this book she addresses
sleep paralysis. She says that it's when we become partially
awake during our rem cycle, but we can't fully wake up,
(33:08):
so you're unable to move any part of your body
except your eyes, and it comes with overwhelming feelings of
fear and dread. And apparently this is when terrifying entities
that exist on astro planes that can only interact with
us during the dream state arrive. Now. I spent a
good amount of time on the Reddit page of lucid
(33:32):
dreams and this idea of scary entities. So many people
claim to have demons visit them in their lucid dreams,
and that is disturbing. It's say the least. I think
we can't minimize that because one of the things we've
(33:53):
talked about frequently on this podcast, not just with me
but with others and others who have written for the
Christian Research Institute have said, you know, demons are not
to be toyed with, and going into a lucid dream
with a desire to interact with demons, or even getting
stuck in a lucid dream with demons is not good,
(34:13):
especially if you are susceptible to that kind of thing, right,
Like some people have opened themselves up to being visited
by spirits of some sort, and so to hear to
read that from Samantha Fay, and she's sort of she
doesn't minimize it in her book, But there were a
couple of other people that I watched that were like,
it's no big deal if you're visited by them, because
(34:36):
ultimately it's not real. But you've spent all this time
telling me that lucid dreaming is just as real as
real life because you're conscious. So which one is it?
So that is I think maybe the biggest drawback is
this idea of encountering demons while you sleep and being
conscious and aware of it. How terrifying must that be?
Speaker 1 (34:58):
So we've kind of alluded to it because some of
the things that I asked you about are adjacent, you know, like,
is this practice of lucid dreaming like for example, astral projection?
So are lucid dreams associated with an occult worldview or
any kind of New Age practices which you've written on
(35:20):
so many of them for us? Is it kind of
in that kind of Eastern worldview? I guess column I.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Would say yes, maybe not for everyone, right, I think
there are some people who can probably do lucid dreaming
and not have it be connected to the New Age
or the occult. But essentially you've been asking, you know,
what's the point of lucid dreaming? And I think for
(35:49):
some people it is about spiritual exploration and how can
they connect with their higher self or the Divine Creator.
Not everybody calls the Divine Creator God like Christians do,
but how can we explore our minds and expand spiritually?
(36:11):
And apparently that's what we can achieve in lucid dreams.
As I said, you know, dream yoga is that spiritual
discipline where we can achieve certain type of awareness while
we sleep. Tapping into that collective consciousness is a really
interesting part of it as well, because it's not real
(36:36):
and having this idea of I can tap into Melanie's
mind when she doesn't live anywhere near me, and we've
all had moments right where I'll call my mom and
she'll say, oh my gosh, I was just thinking of you.
Does that mean that we are connected consciously? No, it
just is coincidence, because not every time I call her
(36:57):
is she like, oh, I was just thinking of you.
It's just coinci sidence that I'm her only child. Of course,
she's going to think about me from time to time,
and it might just coincide with the time that I
call her. But we take those experiences and we're like,
oh my gosh, we're totally connected. And I don't think
there's a lot of scientific backing to this collective consciousness.
The other aspect is this higher dimension idea. One person
(37:21):
that we've talked about frequently on this podcast and sort
of started me on the in the realm of tapping
into the higher dimensions and vibrations and UFOs and all
of that has been David Wilcock, who is also associated
by the way with Edgar Casey because he claims to
(37:42):
be the reincarnation of Edgar Casey. And so David Wilcock,
who some of our listeners might know from Ancient Aliens,
has written a book called Awakening in the Dream and
I read it. I think it came out shortly after
the pandemic started in twenty twenty. I could be getting
my dates wrong, but I need to go reread it
(38:03):
now that I've actually studied lucid dreams, because that's literally
what his book is about. It is about having lucid
dreams and the benefit. According to him and other new
agers like til Swan, who we've also talked about before
on this podcast, they believe that dreams can help us
raise our vibrations, and vibrations are basically everything that we're
(38:27):
created with in our bodies and our souls and our minds,
and the higher our vibrations, the higher the vibration of
the earth, and then we can all ascend into this
higher consciousness once we've reached this perfect level of vibration.
And he David Wilcock claims that lucid dreams can help
(38:48):
us achieve higher vibrations faster, and so we can achieve
ascension faster. And I kind of went down the rabbit
hole again on him because his podcast has only gotten bigger,
his YouTube channel has only gotten bigger, and he goes
on like five hour rants about all sorts of things,
(39:09):
and there are several videos where he talks about dreaming,
and it's really interesting to hear his perspective about this
this higher consciousness, and I don't think that he is
alone in the way that he views how lucid dreams
can contribute to our raising our vibrations and being a
(39:31):
better humanity, I guess, is what his purpose is when
he's trying to have a lucid dream.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
So in the movie that I watched, Twaking Life, I
thought it was interesting. It was a little bit of
a stream of consciousness of different philosophical ideas as this
main character moves through just random situations. All of a
sudden he's talking to some other person or this philosophe
or that philosopher, and one of the people that he
(39:58):
comes across late in the film, I don't know who
that person was supposed to be. He was talking about, Oh,
I think I'm in a dream, and this guy's like, oh,
I dream all the time. I do a lucid dream
all the time, and this is what I like about it.
And one of the things he says in there, I
can have sex with whoever I want to, and that's
what I like about it, among other things, I'm considering
(40:18):
the meaning of life or whatever. Are there any kind
of like you said, it's an awake state in a
dream situation, is what the claim is? And are there
potential moral issues? Could people go like this guy was saying, well, hey,
I wouldn't go have sex with whoever I wanted to
in real life, but I can, actually, because I'm awake,
participate in this thing in my dream. And so is
(40:40):
there a question of ethics and morality inside of a
lucid dream?
Speaker 2 (40:46):
This is the topic that I am wrestling with the
most when it comes to lucid dreams. Melanie, I don't
have a solid answer to this, but I'll kind of
give you my stream of conscious thought on this because
when I saw waking life and when I started thinking about, Okay,
(41:06):
if if lucid dreams are real, and we're really conscious
while we're dreaming, and we're choosing to do the things
that we're doing in our dreams with knowledge that we're
doing these things like having sex with anyone we want,
or flying, that's a that's an easy one, Like I
want to fly, Okay, so you're going to go fly?
(41:27):
Or there's one you know, if you want to have
a conversation with Aristotle, poof Aristotle is in your dream
and you can have a conversation with him. But my question,
and I think this is one that Christians need to
wrestle with too, is how far is too far in
lucid dreaming? Does morality matter when we're dreaming. I don't
(41:52):
think there's this argument for regular dreams, right, Because we're unconscious.
Our brain's going to do what it's going to do.
It's a cleaning out system, the way that dreams work,
and it's just going to be a bizarre combination of
a whole bunch of things put together. Maybe it's a
movie that you watched combined with something in real life
and you're like, WHOA, I can't believe I had that dream.
(42:14):
But lucid dreams are different because you're conscious and you're
making choices. So are you going to be held accountable
for the choices you make in dreams? So some would
say no, because you're dreaming and it's not real. You're
not really having an affair with your neighbor. If you
have an affair in your dream, you're still being faithful
(42:36):
to your wife or your husband. Right, But then my
question is all right, great, But one of the perceived
benefits of lucid dreaming is that it improves our mental health.
It helps us with clarity of mind, it helps us
with memory, it improves learning retention. So then when we
(42:58):
are constantly doing evil and sinful things in our conscious
dream state, in a lucid dream state. What is that
doing to our psyche in our waking state? Are you
lusting after your neighbor? Maybe you haven't had an affair
with them, but now because you're having an affair with
(43:20):
them when you're lucid dreaming, now when you were awake,
every time you see your neighbor, you can't help but
have lustful thoughts about your neighbor. And that's sin. Right,
So maybe you and this is taking things to the extreme,
but instead of asking your boss for a raise, you
go and you murder him in your dream? Are you
(43:42):
creating in your psyche this feeling of hatred and anger
toward a person that then plays out in real life
where you're no longer treating that person as an image
bearer with the character of Christ. Right Like, So, as
a Christian, we need to take sin seriously. And one
(44:03):
of the things that I really have been ruminating on
and I think it's relevant And listeners might say, no,
you're on the wrong path and great to help me
figure out exactly how to get through this line of thinking.
But Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, if
your right eye causes you to stumble gouge it out
and throw it away. It is better for you to
(44:23):
lose one part of your body than for your whole
body to be thrown into hell. And when I take
that into the lucid dream world, So, if the lucid
dreams are causing me to stumble, maybe they're creating lustful
thoughts in my mind, or I'm sinning in some other way.
Maybe it's a spirit of pride that's created or a
(44:46):
spirit of greed that's created in my lucid dreams, and
now in my waking life I'm experiencing that as well.
We need to gouge out what's causing that, and for me,
that means gouging the lucid dream.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
So, if lucid dreams are real, and while we said
there are a few scientists who are in the sleep
study field, I don't know that it's a widely held
position that lucid dreams are real. Let's say, based on
some of their research where they can they And by
the way, I don't know if you mentioned this, but
(45:23):
they did say in the YouTube videos that they were
like they had their brains hooked up and they could
tell they were speaking to them in their dreams. And
then they could tell that they were dreaming because there's
a way to measure dreams. So supposedly this is happening.
What are the ramifications for Christians? In two ways? So
first I wanted to ask you, you know, some Christians
might be very fascinated by this topic and think, wow,
(45:46):
this is really interesting. Should I try to have a
lucid dream? What would you say to them if they
thought that maybe they should pursue trying to actually have
be awake while they're dreaming.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Yeah. I don't know that there's necessarily anything inherently wrong
with trying to have a lucid dream. Full disclosure, I
did attempt to do this this week and failed miserably.
I have not had a lucid dream. And maybe it's
because I don't engage in meditation and so it's really
like not something that I'm able to do because I'm
(46:19):
not getting to that point. I'm also not obsessively thinking
about it, which is another recommendation to have a lucid dream.
So I don't know that there's necessarily anything wrong. But
the question then, is is it something that's going to
actually be fruitful in your life? Why? Why do you
(46:39):
want to have a lucid dream. What is the purpose
for you? Is it so that you can live a
hedonistic life in your dreams, which is, you know, basically sinful.
Are you going to do all the bad things, all
the immoral things in your lucid dreams so that when
you're in waking life to take the name of the movie,
when you're in your awake state, you've already sold your
(47:04):
royal oats, so to speak. Right, I just don't know
that each Christian is going to have to ask that question,
why do I want to engage in lucidity? What is
the purpose behind my desire? And what would lucid dreams
achieve for me? And I don't know that we can
say it's not aligned with scripture, although I think there
(47:27):
are some clear indications that it might not be. But
I think every Christian is going to have to answer
that on their own.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
And then are there dangers or cautions? Like you said, well,
I don't know if there's any kind of prohibition to
have a lucid dream, let's say, in scripture. What should
they be thinking about if they try to pursue it.
You tried to see if it would work, What are
the dangers they may face.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Yeah, one of the things that I think hand Cantagraph
has talked about this quite free and I couldn't find
a video, but I'm fairly certain I've heard him talk
about it on Bible Answer Man, but essentially opening the
door to evil spirits and maybe, Melanie, you know off
the top of your head, if he's done something like that.
I hope I'm not making it up in my brain.
But basically the idea is, if you know that there
(48:19):
are potential dangers to encountering demons, maybe you shouldn't participate
in that. Right. I'm a little different in that I
research these kinds of topics, but I need listeners to understand,
like I have people actively praying for me when I
research these topics. I don't do it for fun. I
do it because I want to be able to equip
(48:41):
other Christians with information so then they can make a
decision based on the information that's been presented. And I
guess opening the door up to Satan is a really
bad idea, and Scripture tells us we should resist the devil.
And my concern with lucid dreams, especially when we're getting
into the New Age idea of consciousness and interacting with
(49:05):
divine beings and whatnot. Is opening yourself up and not resisting.
And that makes me a little bit leery about maybe
a lot of bit leery about Christians engaging in lucid dreams.
I honestly, unless there is a mental health professional who
has engaged in research or is very familiar with lucid dreams,
(49:28):
and as you noted, there aren't a lot of them
who can help you through a particular issue that you're having.
I don't know that there's a lot of benefit to
lucid dreaming. I see more problems with them than I
see benefits. That doesn't mean that for everyone they're bad
and that you shouldn't absolutely do them. I just think
that we need to proceed with caution.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
The other question I have for you is the Christian apologist,
let's say they know somebody, because it's kind of become
a thing, especially on YouTube, and you mentioned sub reddit
forms and so forth, that people are fascinating with dreaming
and lucid dreaming. So how does the Christian apologist answer
the person who is pursuing lucid dreaming and then also saying, well,
maybe I should pick up meditation or other new age
(50:15):
practices that maybe they would think are related or would
help them with lucid dreaming.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Well, what concerns me is that not a lot of
people understand definitions of the words that they use, or
we have these ideas about what we think things are,
and so asking the question like Riy cocol says, what
do you mean by that? Right? What do you mean
by lucid dreams? Maybe it's the original definition of lucid dreams,
(50:43):
which is basically just clear dreams, and that's what the
person means. The next question is what I as if
I was having a convers and I have a lot
of conversations with people on airplanes, That's why I'm using
this as an example. But if I was having a
conversation with someone on the airplane, I would say, so,
(51:03):
what is it that you want to achieve with lucid dreams?
And then if they ask the follow up question about
getting involved with meditation or in some cases crystals, which
we didn't even really talk about, but some proponents of
lucid dreams encourage the use of crystals to help you
dream better, like put this particular crystal under your pillow
(51:27):
and you'll have better lucid dreams. So if somebody were
to ask me that, the biggest question is like why
why do you want to engage in that? And then
if the Christian apologists has actually studied this topic, and
Christian apologists are specialists in most cases, so they may
not have right, but if they have, the question would
(51:50):
then become how far are you going to take this?
When do you stop? Do you lucid dream every night?
How is it going to impact your waking? And then
you can ask questions about interacting with untoward spirits demons? Right,
how will you deal with that if some of a
demon shows up in your dream? How will you deal
(52:12):
with sleep paralysis? If that happens to you and then
you wake up terrified? What will you do? And I
think it would be better if the Christian Apologists were
to encourage something different like Hey, instead of lucid dreaming
or worldly meditation where you're focusing on achieving your higher
(52:33):
consciousness or a higher state of self, maybe you should
engage in what Cantagraph calls biblical meditation, which is focusing
on the Word of God and reminding yourself of all
of the good things God has created here on earth
for you to enjoy. And you don't have to go
into a lucid dream state to see God's beauty in
(52:54):
the creation that He's made for us, and reminding them
of the goodness of Christ and all to if we're
trying to achieve some state of freedom in our elucid
dreams that we don't have in real life, reminding that
person that freedom is truly found in Christ, and once
we've given our lives to Him, that's when we can
find true freedom.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
Well, this has been a very fascinating conversation about dreaming
and lucid dreams, but I want to lighten it up
a little bit and on a much lighter note. It's
going to be summer soon, and would you say you
are an ocean person for the summer, you'd rather swim
in the ocean or would you rather swim in a lake?
Speaker 2 (53:35):
Do neither? I hate water, so I will not be
swimming in either one of those. I will be going
to Yellowstone is what I'm actually doing. We're going to
canyons and staying on dry land.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
Well, thanks Lindsey for being a guest again on the
Postmodern Realities podcast.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Thanks Melanie, you've.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Been listening to episode four hundred and forty two of
the Postmodern Realities podcast. Today's guest was Lindsay Medenwald and
we've been discussing lucid dreams. She has written an exclusive
online feature article for the Christian Research Journal. Her article
is called Consciously Dreaming a look at Lucid Dreams, and
(54:17):
you can read it for free at equip dot org.
Speaker 3 (54:20):
You won't want to miss out on subscribing to the
other podcasts from the Christian Research Institute.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
We have the Bible.
Speaker 3 (54:28):
Answer Man podcast, which is published Monday through Friday, with
the best of the week on Saturday. It's hosted by
CRI President Hank Handagraph and is available wherever you get
your favorite podcasts. In addition, Hank has a podcast called
Hank Unplugged. Hank takes you out of the studio and
into his study to engage in free flowing, essential Christian
(54:50):
conversations on critical issues with some of the most interesting,
informative and inspirational people on the planet. And you won't
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the Christian Research Journal. Christian Research Journal Reads presents audio
versions of Christian Research Journal articles. It was a print
(55:12):
incarnation of almost forty five years it's now on the
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so you won't want to miss these audio articles of
some of our most popular and most accessed articles on
our website equip dot org.
Hi everyone, Thank you for tuning in to the Postmodern
Realities podcast, brought to you by the Christian Research Institute
and the Christian Research Journal. I'm Melanie Cogdill, Managing editor
of the Christian Research Journal. It's April twenty twenty five,
and you're listening to episode four hundred and forty two,
which is a conversation about Lucid Dreams. On this episode,
(00:45):
I'm joined by Lindsay Metdenwald, who is the director of
ministry Operations at Mama Bear Apologetics and the author of
Bridge Building Apologetics. Lindsay holds a Masters in Apologetics and
Ethics from Denver Semoni, a jd from Saint Mary's School
of Law, and a master's in Public administration from Midwestern
(01:06):
State University. Lindsay has written an exclusive online feature article
for the Christian Research Journal. Her article is called Consciously Dreaming,
a look at Lucid Dreams, and you can read it
for free at equipped dot org. That's e quip dot org. Lindsay,
it's good to have you on the podcast again.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I am excited to be here to talk about a
very interesting topic.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yes, I have found this topic to be very fascinating
and I will say that on our YouTube channel and
just when people contact us. What has become really popular
is just people wanting to understand dreams, and specifically something
called lucid dreaming, which seems to be a phenomenon that
people are interested in exploring, just generally, like maybe in
(01:56):
the last decade or so, maybe last fifteen years, it's
become a thing. So of course we're all curious to
know what do dreams mean? Why do I have them?
What's this? Is there any significance in them? And I
just wanted to find out a little bit more about
the subject. And I know you've done a deep dive
on it, So why don't you tell our listeners what
is a lucid dream and how's it different? Then you
(02:18):
know the garden variety dreams that we have a lot
of times, we don't remember our dreams when we wake up.
We just remember, oh, I felt scared, or I was
being chased or something happened, and we don't necessarily remember
the content of our dreams. But dreams seem to be
mysterious to people.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, they're certainly mysterious to me. Even though I've done
this study of it, I'm still kind of not confused,
but uh, it's just been really an interesting thing to research.
And I already told you this off the air, but like,
my dreams have been impacted since I started studying this.
And interestingly, in the several books that I read in
(02:57):
preparation of this podcast and a company article, the author said, hey,
if you start studying this, your dreams might be impacted.
And I want to be clear, like, I haven't had
a lucid dream, so I'm not speaking from experience here,
but it has been a really interesting thing. Yeah, dreams
are a part of everybody's life. Sometimes people can really
(03:20):
remember their dreams. Some people keep dream journals because their
dreams are so vivid. Other people they don't remember any
of their dreams. But all of us dream in one
sense or another. I think some dream studiers have said
that we on average dream about two hours a night,
(03:41):
and I watched another YouTube video yesterday that said there's
probably five times during the night that you're having active dreams.
So a dream is just really taking all of your
life experiences from the day or the week, or you know,
even life in general, and putting them all into a mix.
Which is why sometimes our dreams are just so weird
(04:04):
and we wake up and we're like, well, that was odd.
Lucid dreams are when somebody is dreaming and they know
that they're dreaming. So you're looking around in your dream,
and you are conscious that you are dreaming, and you
can consciously control what happens in your dream, who you
(04:24):
interact with, how you behave, and you can in some
cases decide when you want to wake up. In other
cases you don't really have control over that, which we'll
get to in a little bit. But not everybody has
lucid dreams. Some people do just naturally. And then as
we'll talk about, there is a large group of people,
although I don't have a specific number, who are proponents
(04:47):
of trying to instigate or create lucidity in our dreams
as a regular practice. So that's kind of the basic
idea of the difference between regular dreaming, which pretty much
everyone does, and lucid dreaming. In regular dreaming, you're basically
unconscious and you're not in control, and in lucid dreaming,
(05:08):
you are conscious and in control of what happens in
your dreams.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
That is really fascinating because I know, like you said,
some people are keeping dream journals now one thing I
saw in my very limited prep for this, you know
I didn't do the deep dive that you did, is
that it's not very common that people have lucid dreams. Now,
this is according to scientists who study dreaming and sleep cycles,
(05:34):
and I one of the videos that was an interview
of such a person. They said maybe thirty percent of
people have lucid dreams, so it's not a common occurrence.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
But they.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Claim that they have scientifically proven that people have lucid
dreams and this is a percentage of the population that
does that. So can you explain how you told us
what they are? But can you explain how lucid dream
are induced? How does somebody who can supposedly have a
lucid dream actually make a lucid dream happen while they
(06:11):
are sleeping.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
There are a couple of ways that you can do
this that. Like I said, I read a few books
on the topic, and I've watched so many YouTube videos
I've lost count. I've also watched other films and listen
to a few podcasts about the topic to really kind
of just absorb myself in it. But it seems like
(06:37):
a common thread is meditation and really trying to think
about lucid dreams a lot while you're awake, and then
meditating before you fall asleep, telling yourself, okay, I'm going
to have a lucid dream. There is this acronym that
was created by a guy in Aim, Stephen Laberge, and
(07:02):
it's called I think he's the one who created it.
It's MILD is the acronym, and it's basically just mnemonic
induction of lucid dreams. And what it does is if
you wake up in the middle of the night or
like at three o'clock in the morning, so you've had
a good amount of sleep already. Now you want to
(07:25):
try to induce your lucid dream because you're much more
likely if you're awake for about a half an hour
or so. Once you fall back asleep, you're more likely
to have a lucid dream. So when you wake up,
you tell yourself over and over again until you fall asleep.
The next time I'm dreaming, I will remember that I
am dreaming, and then you begin to visualize yourself having
(07:48):
a lucid dream and being in a lucid dream. So
it's a combination of meditation and kind of almost obsessively
thinking about how having a lucid dream. Another common thread
that I found in the proponents of lucid dreams is
that you should think about lucid dreaming all the time,
(08:09):
and every time you have a dream, you should dream
journal and write it out and remember specific details of
your dreams because that will help you have lucid dreams.
And so you're obsessively thinking about it. And that can
be a danger, right, because if we obsess about anything,
it means we're probably letting something slide in our lives.
(08:30):
But that is one way that apparently you can trigger
lucid dreams is by thinking about them all the time,
which I guess sort of makes sense.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Some of our listeners. And I was thinking about this topic.
It sounds a little bit like some occulting and new
age practices like astral projection. So is lucid dreaming astral
projection or are they related in any way?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yeah, I was just talking to somebody about this and
she told me that he thinks that lucid dreaming is
sort of a gateway into astral projection. And I hadn't
really thought about that, and honestly, I haven't thought about
it enough to talk about it intelligently at all. And
I'm not an expert on astral projection, but I think
there are some similarities at least in desired outcomes. Right, So,
(09:20):
in looser dreaming, you want to be involved in the
dream for certain things that we'll talk about later, but
basically so that you can have personal growth or spiritual
insight or some sort of expanded consciousness. An astral projection
which is essentially an out of body experience, that is,
(09:41):
basically when your consciousness separates from your physical body, the
same goals are involved as in lucid dreaming, So in
astral projection, we also want to achieve personal growth, spiritual insight,
or expanded consciousness. Now, I would say that not everybody
who does lucid dreaming is involved in the New Age
(10:05):
or the occult, but with astro projection that is definitely
much more. Of the common theme with people who practice
that is that they are very likely involved in the
Occult and the New Age.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
If you're enjoying this conversation today with Lindsay Medenwalt on
lucid dreams, I hope you'll head on over to equip
dot org because not only will you find this article
that she's written for us called Consciously Dreaming. A look
at Lucid Dreams, you will find a wealth of different
articles and related topics that Lindsay has written for us
(10:43):
that are quite popular on our website, including all of
the articles she's done on the ancient Aliens. And she
has also handled for us witch talk and tarot cards
and other things that are kind of interesting that you
might not have known about, like Skinwalker Ranch. So you
might want to check out equip dot org. And the
great thing about all of the Christian Research Journal content
(11:06):
there's it's completely free. There's no paywall at all. And
because of that, we would like for you to consider
partnering with us in some very easy ways. One is
just please tell more people about our content and this
podcast and share it, you know, through a text or
email or on your social media accounts. But also if
(11:27):
you could write us a reviewer rating, that really helps
us with the Internet algorithms. It just means that more
people can find our content. And there's a lot of
people that have some questions about these topics, especially things
that Lindsay's done for us, for example on the Fallen
Gong cult or even David Wilcock. He's huge on the
(11:48):
History Channel and we have so many thousands of views.
I think we're more than fifteen thousand views on her
podcast with us years ago on David Wilcock. So you
won't want to miss more of Lindsay's content, as well
as all kinds of content that you can find on
equip dot org, from our articles to videos, to other
(12:09):
podcasts that we have like the Bible answer Man. All
of that is on equip dot org, so please head
on over there. And now back to my conversation with
Lindsey about lucid dreaming. We're just talking a little bit
about astral projection and just new Age practices. But it
seems like maybe the introduction just culturally to lucid dreaming
(12:31):
has come in the form of just pop culture media.
In fact, years ago, someone I know watched Waking Life.
I didn't watch it. It came out in more than twenty
years ago, in two thousand and one, But in preparation
for this podcast, I did watch Waking Life, and I
(12:51):
didn't really realize back then it was about lucid dreams.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
We both watched it. In preparation of this podcast, I
also watched clips from Vanilla Sky and Inception, And you're right,
sometimes we're watching these things and we have no idea
that they're involved in a certain perspective. I honestly had
no idea about.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
The creative thing about dreams. I didn't think I had
anything these lucid dreams. Although everyone, I mean, spoiler alert,
it's been so many years. But you know, everybody at
the end, even if you don't know anything about lucid dreams,
I mean, every viewer is like, Okay, that top was spinning.
Was it real life or was it a dream? We
don't know?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Well, yeah, and Inception is a wild one, but I
thought I thought Waking Life was well. I had to
step away from it. Made me a little nauseous at
times because of the way that it was filmed, which
is actually a really creative film style. It's basically animating
human actors robo. I can't remember exactly what it's called
(13:57):
robo animation. Maybe so it's a cool way to film
a movie. But I also got a little bit seasick throughout,
so I had to say a couple of breaks. But
it starts with this little boy and this little girl
playing a game. It's one of those fortune teller games
that I think I did in high school and middle school,
(14:18):
right where the paper fortune teller games where you pick
a number and then you move the hands and then
you pick another number and then you get a fortune.
And in this particular film it said his fortune, this
little boy's fortune was dream is destiny. And then you
(14:38):
go into this whole film of basically a dream sequence,
different conversations about existentialism and free will and different There
was a discussion Ethan Hawke's character was talking about a study,
a real life study that happened about cross word puzzles,
(15:01):
and of course, you know, I went to go look
up the study and it does exist. But the film
touches on it a little bit because it's talking about
collective consciousness, which is a big theme when it comes
to lucid dreaming. And had I studied loocid dreaming when
I first watched things like Inception, I would have understood.
But since I was already primed with what lucid dreaming was,
(15:23):
it totally made sense when I heard this conversation between
the two characters in the film talking about how in
this study, people who did crossword puzzles if they were
given the daily crossword puzzle on the day it came out,
they were tested and how long does it take you
to answer that particular crossword? But if researchers gave them
(15:46):
a crossword puzzle a day later, like they still hadn't
seen it, it was the first time they'd seen it.
The researchers discovered that they could actually solve the crossword
puzzle faster, and they that researchers to start talking about
this thing called a collective consciousness, which was this idea,
and it's sort of a new age idea, but this
(16:08):
idea that we're all connected our minds, in our minds,
and if somebody solved the crossword puzzle yesterday and then
it's given to me to solve, I can solve it
faster because somebody else already solved it and were connected together.
And so I thought it was really fascinating that Waking
(16:28):
Life attempted to tackle such difficult topics in two hours.
And it's all a lucid dream at the end. I'm
not going to give away the full ending, but the
end sort of mirrors the beginning, right Melanie, where he
flies off in a car at a car, he's sort
of flying and it sort of ends in the same way,
except now he's older and you're just wondering, like with
(16:48):
the whole thing a lucid dream, And I don't know,
but it does make me think about films like Inception
a little bit differently, or Vanilla's Guy, which isn't necessarily
a lucid dream, but it does make me think things
a little bit differently now that I've studied lucid dreams.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
So I think there's also not just these pop culture
artifacts of films, But aren't there people in history that
we're very interested in trying to participate or actually, do
you know, create lucid dreams of themselves for themselves so
(17:28):
that they could be inspired to invent something or create
something because they were artistic.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yeah, I read this thing. It was like a list
of people who created things based on lucid dreaming. Although
I'm wondering if their definition of lucid dreams is different.
A lucid dream isn't just a vivid dream, right, Like,
it's not like you walk into a lucid dream and
(17:56):
it's everything is beautiful and clear, and and that's a
lucid dream, which we can't think of. And maybe that's
what people think of when they hear the term lucid dream.
A lucid dream is that you are conscious while you
are dreaming. But there are claims that certain artists and
(18:16):
creatives have used lucid dreams to create their works. So
one example that I read yesterday was John Lennon and
the song Yesterday. Apparently he dreamt it and then the
next day wrote it. And I don't know if that
was a lucid dream or if it was just a
regular dream. I have had regular dreams of things that
(18:39):
were creative, right, and then I wake up and I'm like, oh,
I need to write that down. And I've heard of
like the author, I'm not promoting this book at all,
but the author of the Twilight series, she wrote the
whole series based on a dream she had and that
wasn't a lucid dream, and she's never claimed that it
was a lucid dream. And I'm reading about these creatives
(19:01):
like Stephen King or the artist Salvador Dali, or even
Nikola Tesla. I'm a little bit skeptical as to if
those people are actually lucid dreaming or if they're just
having regular dreams. And I can't speak for them, and
answer that question. I don't really know. Not a lot
of people, I think know the actual definition of lucid dreaming.
(19:23):
So I'm just a little bit more skeptical now when
I hear somebody say, oh, I had a lucid dream.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah, it might just be something that they're thinking. Is like,
like you said, my dream was very, very vivid. Now,
we've seen lucid dreams in movies, like you said, if
you've watched Inception. Now that I know about this topic,
I think there's some element to lucid dreaming because there
is the kind of suggestion, could this person wake up?
(19:50):
This is very real? Is this happening to them? And
we talked about Waking Life that we watched. But I
guess it's not just an artifact of pop culture. Like
I said, is it really real? We were mentioning scientists
in sleep study centers that are promoting the fact that
people do have lucid dreams, and so what is the
(20:12):
scientific backing for lucid dreams? Before I prepped for this podcast,
I just had a hard time believing that there were
any scientists who claimed that these are real, But in
fact there are.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah. I typically approach this kind of topic with a
healthy skepticism too, So you were not alone in that
at all. I am married to a psychologist. He's a
scientist and studies the brain, and so I was lucky
enough to talk to him a little bit about this.
He mentions to me that even in the textbooks that
he teaches from, he thinks that there's a section about
(20:46):
lucid dreaming, not a huge section, but has to do
with the brain and sleep, right, so they give mention
to that. But this idea of lucid dreaming didn't start
as a science necessarily, although it's like science has sort
of proven its existence. It was more of a religious practice.
And I say that because, as many of these things do,
(21:08):
it started in the East, right, not the West, don't.
We did not invent lucid dreams in the West. It
started with it seems like Tibetan monks. Now, dream yoga
is really common with Tibetan monks. It's not exactly the
same as lucid dreaming, but basically, dream yoga is when
(21:31):
a practitioner learns how to have lucid dreams, so they
practice it while they're awake, so that when they're asleep
they can engage in lucid dreams. Hinduism has something similar
called yoga nidra. I'm not entirely sure I'm pronouncing that right.
Apologies if I'm wrong. I'm a reader and sometimes I
(21:51):
don't hear how things are pronounced. But yoga nidra, which
is kind of priming the pump again to have lucid
dreams when they're sleep. In the West, lucid dreams became
sort of a thing in the early nineteen hundreds. In
nineteen thirteen, there was a Dutch psychiatrist who wrote a
(22:14):
paper called a Study of Dreams. His name was Frederick
von Eden, and he wrote this paper called a Study
of Dreams, and in it there was a section, just
a small section about lucid dreams. Now, it seems like
his definition of lucid dreams was you have clarity while
(22:37):
you're dreaming. He didn't really say it had to do
with being conscious that you're in a dream, but he
sort of coined the term lucid dream It has since
become more of a discussion of consciousness. I think in
the nineteen sixties it really kind of picked up in
the scientific psychology community. There was a British psychologist Celia
(23:03):
Greene who started doing research on lucid dreams, and she
really was convinced that you could tell if a person
was having a lucid dream based on rapid eye movement,
which is what happens when we're dreaming in a dream
state at night. And she never proved that, but it
was proven later on in the seventies by another psychologist
(23:28):
in Britain, and so she was right. And then there
started to be a little bit of an uptick in
the number of psychologists who started talking about lucid dreams.
And in the nineteen eighties we get to a guy
named Stephen Leberge who is considered the godfather of lucid dreams.
And I don't think he's even necessarily the biggest name
(23:52):
when it comes to lucid dreaming, right, We've got other
names like Keith Hearn and Scott Sparrow. Keith Hearn is
the guy that proved that Celia green was right when
she was talking about rapid eye movement. He also invented
this thing called the dream machine, which is apparently in
London in their Science Museum, so if you're in that
area you can actually go see this instrument that he
(24:15):
created that was supposed to help trigger lucidity in dreams.
But Stephen Leberge is probably the biggest name. He is
an American and he studied at Stanford, and he has
talked a lot about how to achieve lucidity in dreams
and really has said, Okay, we know they're real, how
(24:36):
can we achieve them? And what are the benefits of
doing that? And so I think it's important for us
to kind of look at the history of it so
that we understand, like, Okay, it's not just religious, although
there are religious aspects to it, and there, of course
are New Age aspects to it, because we can get
to those in a minute. But that often happens when
(24:57):
we're talking about consciousness. We get into the New Age.
But there are people who are not associated with religious
thought who are talking about lucid dreams as well.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yes, but hasn't Stephen Laberge and the things that I
saw from him. It's true he's a scientist, but it
seems like he's embracing some of the New Age elements
to it, Like he promotes dream yoga for example.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
He does. Yeah, so he created this thing Melanie called
the Lucidity Institute it's in Hawaii, which if you're gonna
have some an institute that talks about dreaming, why not
go to a dream location like Hawaii. But in those
retreats that he offers at the institute, it seems like
they focus on dream yoga. Now, I couldn't get like
(25:43):
a full line by line schedule of what they do there.
I don't know. I tried to find. He talks a
lot about achieving higher consciousness. He had some weird things
to say about demons. I don't think he's a Christian,
but I don't know that he is full fledged practicing
the New Age either. There are other people who are
(26:05):
are full fledged doing that. I think one that I
maybe didn't mention just now is Scott Sparrow. He is associated.
He's a psychotherapist who's associated with and you'll know this name,
Edgar Casey Association for Research and Enlightenment. He actually created
the Dream Star Institute and wrote a book about lucid
(26:29):
dreams related to Edgar Casey's psychic readings. So for listeners
who don't know who eder Casey is, he is called
the Sleeping Prophet, and he claimed that when he fell
asleep he could he could make certain predictions or prophecies
about particular people and heal them of their ailments while
he was sleeping. And that association of Research and Enlightenment
(26:52):
still exists and Scott Sparrow is associated with that group.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
So that's really interesting. And then also the professor some
kind of dream institute at Stanford, who is I think
from the UK. He was featured on a lot of
videos just describing the fact that lucid dreams exist. So
what are claims of the you know, the people who
(27:19):
promote lucid dreaming, what are their claims about why it's beneficial,
Why should someone pursue in their you know, world view,
trying to pursue actually practicing lucid dreams and getting better
at that.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Yeah, so there is I'm actually going to reference a
cultural thing and then come to that. So there is
a song and I oh, the name of the artist
is escaping me at the moment. It's called Lucid dream
and I think it's I think his name is Juice World,
but it came out in twenty seventeen. And in the
(27:59):
song he's talking about heartache that he's experienced and one
of the lines is I have these lucid dreams where
I can't move a thing thinking of you in my bed,
and then I know it's all in my head, right,
And I thought that was really interesting because one of
the benefits that I came across that proponents of lucid
dreams say will happen if you can lucid dream is
(28:22):
that you can overcome things like grief by interacting with
the person who has died in your dream, who's not
actually visiting you. You're just again consciously creating the interaction
in your brain while you're dreaming, while you're sleeping, but
you're having a conversation with somebody who has died, and
(28:42):
it makes you feel better in the morning because, Okay,
I talk to that person, I don't feel so sad anymore.
Another one is that I saw was that it could
promote memory and learning. So the more that you work
on practicing your loose dreams, apparently that can help with
your learning retention, because when you wake up from a
(29:04):
lucid dream, you actually remember more of it than you
would your regular dreams, and you write those down and
that skill translates to your everyday awake life. Right. Another
one is overcoming fears and I thought this one was interesting,
and I sort of explained it like it would take
(29:24):
a series of lucid dreams for you to accomplish this.
But if you had a fear of flying, maybe in
your first lucid dream, you would put yourself in an
airport and you would just sit in the airport and
you would watch the planes take off and land, and
you will watch the people move, but you wouldn't do
anything in your lucid dream. That's all you would do
(29:44):
is sit and watch the planes take off and land.
Maybe in the next lucid dream, you get yourself to
the hallway that leads to the plane. Then you get
yourself in a seat on the plane, but you're not
taking off, and eventually you'll get to a point where
the plane takes off. The idea being that your lucid
dream makes you feel safe and you overcome this fear
(30:07):
of flying in the real world. That feeling translates over
so you're no longer afraid of flying in the real
world while you're awake. And that's what scientists are studying
right Scientists are looking at benefits like can lucid dreaming
help veterans who are struggling with PTSD. Can lucid dreaming
(30:32):
help people overcome anxiety. Maybe you're really afraid of and
this is one instance I heard about, I think on
a YouTube channel, was maybe you're really afraid of having
a conversation with your boss about getting a raise, and
you don't know how to have that conversation, so you
have a lucid dream about it so that you can
(30:53):
have a conversation in your dream, and when you go
and do it in real life, it's easier because you've
already experienced it consciously. I think it's you know, I'm,
like you, a little bit of a skeptic when it
comes to these things I struggle with, like I don't
I mean, I haven't experienced it. And that's not to
say that it's not real. I mean I haven't experienced
(31:14):
having a million dollars, and I know there are people
who are millionaires, so I'm not saying that just because
I haven't had the experience, others haven't. But I can't
speak from personal experience on this one. And that leaves
me to look at science and other things, and it
seems like scientists are kind of on board with this.
If we can separate from the New Age stuff. But
(31:36):
for the most part, the benefits are for self improvement
and that's good. And in some cases, I think it
becomes a little bit of a negative.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Is there any kind of speaking about negatives? What would
be as you've done your research, potential drawbacks for people
trying to engage in the practice of lucid dreaming.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Yeah. I think one of them is this obsessive desire
to have a lucid dream. All you're doing is thinking
about it, and it can impact your sleeping time because
you're either disappointed when you wake up because you didn't
have it or whatever it might be, or obsessively thinking
about it. And like I said earlier, if you're obsessively
(32:23):
thinking about anything, it's probably taking you away from thinking
about things you actually need to get done. The other
thing is I saw that there were some things about
sleep paralysis that were a little bit disturbing actually when
I was reading them, and one was in a book
called The Awake Dreamer, which is by a woman named
Samantha Fay. She's a rieky master and she teaches about
(32:48):
crystals and intuition, and she's got a podcast called Psychic
Teachers and Inlighted Impaths but in this book she addresses
sleep paralysis. She says that it's when we become partially
awake during our rem cycle, but we can't fully wake up,
(33:08):
so you're unable to move any part of your body
except your eyes, and it comes with overwhelming feelings of
fear and dread. And apparently this is when terrifying entities
that exist on astro planes that can only interact with
us during the dream state arrive. Now. I spent a
good amount of time on the Reddit page of lucid
(33:32):
dreams and this idea of scary entities. So many people
claim to have demons visit them in their lucid dreams,
and that is disturbing. It's say the least. I think
we can't minimize that because one of the things we've
(33:53):
talked about frequently on this podcast, not just with me
but with others and others who have written for the
Christian Research Institute have said, you know, demons are not
to be toyed with, and going into a lucid dream
with a desire to interact with demons, or even getting
stuck in a lucid dream with demons is not good,
(34:13):
especially if you are susceptible to that kind of thing, right,
Like some people have opened themselves up to being visited
by spirits of some sort, and so to hear to
read that from Samantha Fay, and she's sort of she
doesn't minimize it in her book, But there were a
couple of other people that I watched that were like,
it's no big deal if you're visited by them, because
(34:36):
ultimately it's not real. But you've spent all this time
telling me that lucid dreaming is just as real as
real life because you're conscious. So which one is it?
So that is I think maybe the biggest drawback is
this idea of encountering demons while you sleep and being
conscious and aware of it. How terrifying must that be?
Speaker 1 (34:58):
So we've kind of alluded to it because some of
the things that I asked you about are adjacent, you know, like,
is this practice of lucid dreaming like for example, astral projection?
So are lucid dreams associated with an occult worldview or
any kind of New Age practices which you've written on
(35:20):
so many of them for us? Is it kind of
in that kind of Eastern worldview? I guess column I.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Would say yes, maybe not for everyone, right, I think
there are some people who can probably do lucid dreaming
and not have it be connected to the New Age
or the occult. But essentially you've been asking, you know,
what's the point of lucid dreaming? And I think for
(35:49):
some people it is about spiritual exploration and how can
they connect with their higher self or the Divine Creator.
Not everybody calls the Divine Creator God like Christians do,
but how can we explore our minds and expand spiritually?
(36:11):
And apparently that's what we can achieve in lucid dreams.
As I said, you know, dream yoga is that spiritual
discipline where we can achieve certain type of awareness while
we sleep. Tapping into that collective consciousness is a really
interesting part of it as well, because it's not real
(36:36):
and having this idea of I can tap into Melanie's
mind when she doesn't live anywhere near me, and we've
all had moments right where I'll call my mom and
she'll say, oh my gosh, I was just thinking of you.
Does that mean that we are connected consciously? No, it
just is coincidence, because not every time I call her
(36:57):
is she like, oh, I was just thinking of you.
It's just coinci sidence that I'm her only child. Of course,
she's going to think about me from time to time,
and it might just coincide with the time that I
call her. But we take those experiences and we're like,
oh my gosh, we're totally connected. And I don't think
there's a lot of scientific backing to this collective consciousness.
The other aspect is this higher dimension idea. One person
(37:21):
that we've talked about frequently on this podcast and sort
of started me on the in the realm of tapping
into the higher dimensions and vibrations and UFOs and all
of that has been David Wilcock, who is also associated
by the way with Edgar Casey because he claims to
(37:42):
be the reincarnation of Edgar Casey. And so David Wilcock,
who some of our listeners might know from Ancient Aliens,
has written a book called Awakening in the Dream and
I read it. I think it came out shortly after
the pandemic started in twenty twenty. I could be getting
my dates wrong, but I need to go reread it
(38:03):
now that I've actually studied lucid dreams, because that's literally
what his book is about. It is about having lucid
dreams and the benefit. According to him and other new
agers like til Swan, who we've also talked about before
on this podcast, they believe that dreams can help us
raise our vibrations, and vibrations are basically everything that we're
(38:27):
created with in our bodies and our souls and our minds,
and the higher our vibrations, the higher the vibration of
the earth, and then we can all ascend into this
higher consciousness once we've reached this perfect level of vibration.
And he David Wilcock claims that lucid dreams can help
(38:48):
us achieve higher vibrations faster, and so we can achieve
ascension faster. And I kind of went down the rabbit
hole again on him because his podcast has only gotten bigger,
his YouTube channel has only gotten bigger, and he goes
on like five hour rants about all sorts of things,
(39:09):
and there are several videos where he talks about dreaming,
and it's really interesting to hear his perspective about this
this higher consciousness, and I don't think that he is
alone in the way that he views how lucid dreams
can contribute to our raising our vibrations and being a
(39:31):
better humanity, I guess, is what his purpose is when
he's trying to have a lucid dream.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
So in the movie that I watched, Twaking Life, I
thought it was interesting. It was a little bit of
a stream of consciousness of different philosophical ideas as this
main character moves through just random situations. All of a
sudden he's talking to some other person or this philosophe
or that philosopher, and one of the people that he
(39:58):
comes across late in the film, I don't know who
that person was supposed to be. He was talking about, Oh,
I think I'm in a dream, and this guy's like, oh,
I dream all the time. I do a lucid dream
all the time, and this is what I like about it.
And one of the things he says in there, I
can have sex with whoever I want to, and that's
what I like about it, among other things, I'm considering
(40:18):
the meaning of life or whatever. Are there any kind
of like you said, it's an awake state in a
dream situation, is what the claim is? And are there
potential moral issues? Could people go like this guy was saying, well, hey,
I wouldn't go have sex with whoever I wanted to
in real life, but I can, actually, because I'm awake,
participate in this thing in my dream. And so is
(40:40):
there a question of ethics and morality inside of a
lucid dream?
Speaker 2 (40:46):
This is the topic that I am wrestling with the
most when it comes to lucid dreams. Melanie, I don't
have a solid answer to this, but I'll kind of
give you my stream of conscious thought on this because
when I saw waking life and when I started thinking about, Okay,
(41:06):
if if lucid dreams are real, and we're really conscious
while we're dreaming, and we're choosing to do the things
that we're doing in our dreams with knowledge that we're
doing these things like having sex with anyone we want,
or flying, that's a that's an easy one, Like I
want to fly, Okay, so you're going to go fly?
(41:27):
Or there's one you know, if you want to have
a conversation with Aristotle, poof Aristotle is in your dream
and you can have a conversation with him. But my question,
and I think this is one that Christians need to
wrestle with too, is how far is too far in
lucid dreaming? Does morality matter when we're dreaming. I don't
(41:52):
think there's this argument for regular dreams, right, Because we're unconscious.
Our brain's going to do what it's going to do.
It's a cleaning out system, the way that dreams work,
and it's just going to be a bizarre combination of
a whole bunch of things put together. Maybe it's a
movie that you watched combined with something in real life
and you're like, WHOA, I can't believe I had that dream.
(42:14):
But lucid dreams are different because you're conscious and you're
making choices. So are you going to be held accountable
for the choices you make in dreams? So some would
say no, because you're dreaming and it's not real. You're
not really having an affair with your neighbor. If you
have an affair in your dream, you're still being faithful
(42:36):
to your wife or your husband. Right, But then my
question is all right, great, But one of the perceived
benefits of lucid dreaming is that it improves our mental health.
It helps us with clarity of mind, it helps us
with memory, it improves learning retention. So then when we
(42:58):
are constantly doing evil and sinful things in our conscious
dream state, in a lucid dream state. What is that
doing to our psyche in our waking state? Are you
lusting after your neighbor? Maybe you haven't had an affair
with them, but now because you're having an affair with
(43:20):
them when you're lucid dreaming, now when you were awake,
every time you see your neighbor, you can't help but
have lustful thoughts about your neighbor. And that's sin. Right,
So maybe you and this is taking things to the extreme,
but instead of asking your boss for a raise, you
go and you murder him in your dream? Are you
(43:42):
creating in your psyche this feeling of hatred and anger
toward a person that then plays out in real life
where you're no longer treating that person as an image
bearer with the character of Christ. Right Like, So, as
a Christian, we need to take sin seriously. And one
(44:03):
of the things that I really have been ruminating on
and I think it's relevant And listeners might say, no,
you're on the wrong path and great to help me
figure out exactly how to get through this line of thinking.
But Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, if
your right eye causes you to stumble gouge it out
and throw it away. It is better for you to
(44:23):
lose one part of your body than for your whole
body to be thrown into hell. And when I take
that into the lucid dream world, So, if the lucid
dreams are causing me to stumble, maybe they're creating lustful
thoughts in my mind, or I'm sinning in some other way.
Maybe it's a spirit of pride that's created or a
(44:46):
spirit of greed that's created in my lucid dreams, and
now in my waking life I'm experiencing that as well.
We need to gouge out what's causing that, and for me,
that means gouging the lucid dream.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
So, if lucid dreams are real, and while we said
there are a few scientists who are in the sleep
study field, I don't know that it's a widely held
position that lucid dreams are real. Let's say, based on
some of their research where they can they And by
the way, I don't know if you mentioned this, but
(45:23):
they did say in the YouTube videos that they were
like they had their brains hooked up and they could
tell they were speaking to them in their dreams. And
then they could tell that they were dreaming because there's
a way to measure dreams. So supposedly this is happening.
What are the ramifications for Christians? In two ways? So
first I wanted to ask you, you know, some Christians
might be very fascinated by this topic and think, wow,
(45:46):
this is really interesting. Should I try to have a
lucid dream? What would you say to them if they
thought that maybe they should pursue trying to actually have
be awake while they're dreaming.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Yeah. I don't know that there's necessarily anything inherently wrong
with trying to have a lucid dream. Full disclosure, I
did attempt to do this this week and failed miserably.
I have not had a lucid dream. And maybe it's
because I don't engage in meditation and so it's really
like not something that I'm able to do because I'm
(46:19):
not getting to that point. I'm also not obsessively thinking
about it, which is another recommendation to have a lucid dream.
So I don't know that there's necessarily anything wrong. But
the question then, is is it something that's going to
actually be fruitful in your life? Why? Why do you
(46:39):
want to have a lucid dream. What is the purpose
for you? Is it so that you can live a
hedonistic life in your dreams, which is, you know, basically sinful.
Are you going to do all the bad things, all
the immoral things in your lucid dreams so that when
you're in waking life to take the name of the movie,
when you're in your awake state, you've already sold your
(47:04):
royal oats, so to speak. Right, I just don't know
that each Christian is going to have to ask that question,
why do I want to engage in lucidity? What is
the purpose behind my desire? And what would lucid dreams
achieve for me? And I don't know that we can
say it's not aligned with scripture, although I think there
(47:27):
are some clear indications that it might not be. But
I think every Christian is going to have to answer
that on their own.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
And then are there dangers or cautions? Like you said, well,
I don't know if there's any kind of prohibition to
have a lucid dream, let's say, in scripture. What should
they be thinking about if they try to pursue it.
You tried to see if it would work, What are
the dangers they may face.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Yeah, one of the things that I think hand Cantagraph
has talked about this quite free and I couldn't find
a video, but I'm fairly certain I've heard him talk
about it on Bible Answer Man, but essentially opening the
door to evil spirits and maybe, Melanie, you know off
the top of your head, if he's done something like that.
I hope I'm not making it up in my brain.
But basically the idea is, if you know that there
(48:19):
are potential dangers to encountering demons, maybe you shouldn't participate
in that. Right. I'm a little different in that I
research these kinds of topics, but I need listeners to understand,
like I have people actively praying for me when I
research these topics. I don't do it for fun. I
do it because I want to be able to equip
(48:41):
other Christians with information so then they can make a
decision based on the information that's been presented. And I
guess opening the door up to Satan is a really
bad idea, and Scripture tells us we should resist the devil.
And my concern with lucid dreams, especially when we're getting
into the New Age idea of consciousness and interacting with
(49:05):
divine beings and whatnot. Is opening yourself up and not resisting.
And that makes me a little bit leery about maybe
a lot of bit leery about Christians engaging in lucid dreams.
I honestly, unless there is a mental health professional who
has engaged in research or is very familiar with lucid dreams,
(49:28):
and as you noted, there aren't a lot of them
who can help you through a particular issue that you're having.
I don't know that there's a lot of benefit to
lucid dreaming. I see more problems with them than I
see benefits. That doesn't mean that for everyone they're bad
and that you shouldn't absolutely do them. I just think
that we need to proceed with caution.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
The other question I have for you is the Christian apologist,
let's say they know somebody, because it's kind of become
a thing, especially on YouTube, and you mentioned sub reddit
forms and so forth, that people are fascinating with dreaming
and lucid dreaming. So how does the Christian apologist answer
the person who is pursuing lucid dreaming and then also saying, well,
maybe I should pick up meditation or other new age
(50:15):
practices that maybe they would think are related or would
help them with lucid dreaming.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Well, what concerns me is that not a lot of
people understand definitions of the words that they use, or
we have these ideas about what we think things are,
and so asking the question like Riy cocol says, what
do you mean by that? Right? What do you mean
by lucid dreams? Maybe it's the original definition of lucid dreams,
(50:43):
which is basically just clear dreams, and that's what the
person means. The next question is what I as if
I was having a convers and I have a lot
of conversations with people on airplanes, That's why I'm using
this as an example. But if I was having a
conversation with someone on the airplane, I would say, so,
(51:03):
what is it that you want to achieve with lucid dreams?
And then if they ask the follow up question about
getting involved with meditation or in some cases crystals, which
we didn't even really talk about, but some proponents of
lucid dreams encourage the use of crystals to help you
dream better, like put this particular crystal under your pillow
(51:27):
and you'll have better lucid dreams. So if somebody were
to ask me that, the biggest question is like why
why do you want to engage in that? And then
if the Christian apologists has actually studied this topic, and
Christian apologists are specialists in most cases, so they may
not have right, but if they have, the question would
(51:50):
then become how far are you going to take this?
When do you stop? Do you lucid dream every night?
How is it going to impact your waking? And then
you can ask questions about interacting with untoward spirits demons? Right,
how will you deal with that if some of a
demon shows up in your dream? How will you deal
(52:12):
with sleep paralysis? If that happens to you and then
you wake up terrified? What will you do? And I
think it would be better if the Christian Apologists were
to encourage something different like Hey, instead of lucid dreaming
or worldly meditation where you're focusing on achieving your higher
(52:33):
consciousness or a higher state of self, maybe you should
engage in what Cantagraph calls biblical meditation, which is focusing
on the Word of God and reminding yourself of all
of the good things God has created here on earth
for you to enjoy. And you don't have to go
into a lucid dream state to see God's beauty in
(52:54):
the creation that He's made for us, and reminding them
of the goodness of Christ and all to if we're
trying to achieve some state of freedom in our elucid
dreams that we don't have in real life, reminding that
person that freedom is truly found in Christ, and once
we've given our lives to Him, that's when we can
find true freedom.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
Well, this has been a very fascinating conversation about dreaming
and lucid dreams, but I want to lighten it up
a little bit and on a much lighter note. It's
going to be summer soon, and would you say you
are an ocean person for the summer, you'd rather swim
in the ocean or would you rather swim in a lake?
Speaker 2 (53:35):
Do neither? I hate water, so I will not be
swimming in either one of those. I will be going
to Yellowstone is what I'm actually doing. We're going to
canyons and staying on dry land.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
Well, thanks Lindsey for being a guest again on the
Postmodern Realities podcast.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Thanks Melanie, you've.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Been listening to episode four hundred and forty two of
the Postmodern Realities podcast. Today's guest was Lindsay Medenwald and
we've been discussing lucid dreams. She has written an exclusive
online feature article for the Christian Research Journal. Her article
is called Consciously Dreaming a look at Lucid Dreams, and
(54:17):
you can read it for free at equip dot org.
Speaker 3 (54:20):
You won't want to miss out on subscribing to the
other podcasts from the Christian Research Institute.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
We have the Bible.
Speaker 3 (54:28):
Answer Man podcast, which is published Monday through Friday, with
the best of the week on Saturday. It's hosted by
CRI President Hank Handagraph and is available wherever you get
your favorite podcasts. In addition, Hank has a podcast called
Hank Unplugged. Hank takes you out of the studio and
into his study to engage in free flowing, essential Christian
(54:50):
conversations on critical issues with some of the most interesting,
informative and inspirational people on the planet. And you won't
want to miss out on the brand new podcast from
the Christian Research Journal. Christian Research Journal Reads presents audio
versions of Christian Research Journal articles. It was a print
(55:12):
incarnation of almost forty five years it's now on the
web as you know, with new articles every single week,
so you won't want to miss these audio articles of
some of our most popular and most accessed articles on
our website equip dot org.
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