The Book of Magick Power

by Jason Augustus Newcomb

  The first thing that you need to do to start exploring dream work is to start recalling as many of your dreams as possible. You will sometimes remember five or six in a single night once you get the hang of it. If you are one of the many people who do not remember the majority of your dreams it is a very simple matter to start remembering your dreams, even tonight. The key to recalling your dreams is really just to start keeping a dream journal. Once you are starting to remember at least a dream or two each night you will be ready to start setting up lucid dreaming and dream programming.

  Exercise 24 - Dream Journaling for Recall

  Time Required: must be performed when retiring for the night

  You will need a journal for this exercise. If you have taken my advice and started keeping a journal of your practices, you can use this same journal for your dreams. You can also keep a separate journal for dreams if you wish, but you may find it useful to keep all your work together. This will alert your subconscious to the fact that you are considering dream journaling to be a part of your magical work.

  Not all of our dreams are particularly interesting or magically enlightening. Many times dreams are quite dull and ordinary; they are just a sort of shuffling of events and thoughts that we've experienced recently. However, we must endeavor even to record and remember these dreams too, so that our subconscious minds will really get the idea that we are wanting to have access to this part of our lives.

  1. As you are getting ready to go to bed, open up your journal to the next blank page, and write at the top a sentence describing your intent, such as, “Tonight I will remember my dreams.”

  2. Look at those words on the page and repeat them to yourself a few times.

  3. Pick up your pendulum, and consult with it about whether it understands your intention, and is willing to play along. Your subconscious houses your memory access, so you will need the support of your subconscious in order to succeed. Consulting with the pendulum will make your subconscious really understand that you are considering this important.

  4. Close your journal, and keep it close by your bed as you lay down to sleep. You may even keep it under your pillow. Be sure you have a pen with it!

  5. Close your eyes, and start drifting, as you are relaxing, repeat to yourself that you are going to recall your dreams with the same words you wrote in your journal. Do this in a relaxed and pleasant way, and do not obsess over it.

  6. Go to sleep.

  7. Immediately upon awakening, write down all you can remember of any dreams you've been having underneath the statement of intent you wrote in your journal. Do this even if you awaken briefly in the middle of the night. You will often wake from a dream about 5 or 6 hours into your sleeping and this is an excellent time to recall dreams. You may also simply awaken in the morning, in which case you should again endeavor to remember anything you can. Do not get up or move around much at all until you've written something down from your dreams. Just getting up and stretching can cause you to forget things you remembered vividly moments before. You do not have to write huge essays, even just brief notes and images so that you can remember later what the main points of the dream were.

  8. If you are not recalling anything, or very little, close your eyes again in the position you were in when you were sleeping. Try to recall what you were just doing. Try to remember a scene, an image, or anything that might jog your recall Don't struggle, just simply relax and think back quietly on where you just were…

  This is a very simple and extremely effective way of starting to remember your dreams. But you may not remember anything at first, in which case you should calmly and patiently repeat this exercise until you do start remembering your dreams. It will come eventually, and you will be grateful, once you start remembering powerful and evocative dreams.

  Exercise 25 – Throw Out Your Alarm Clock

  Time Required: must be performed when retiring for the night

  One of the biggest hurdles to remembering your dreams is the disruptive wake up created by your alarm clock. This fast awakening and irritating noise will cause you to forget your dreams more than anything else. In order to set up dreaming most effectively, you must really try to stop using your alarm as much as possible. But, at the same time, you don't want to start being late to work because of me. You'll end up getting fired and then you'll throw this poor book out in disgust!

  So to prevent this calamity, please use the following tool to teach yourself to wake up automatically. Your subconscious mind has an excellent built in time clock, and can wake you much more effectively and peacefully from your dreams than an alarm. It is just a simple matter of setting it up.

  1. Choose a night when you do not have any pressing business the next day, such as sometime over the weekend, so that there is not too much pressure. Pressure is sometimes useful to jog the assistance of your subconscious, but you don't want to mess up your life.

  2. Take your pendulum, and ask your subconscious mind if it will wake you up at a specified predetermined time.

  3. Get a “yes” response from the pendulum. If it says “no,” you will have to inquire why. Usually you will receive an impression, feeling or thought that will indicate the reason if you direct your attention to your belly and ask.

  4. Once you have figured out the reason, come up with solutions and find out if your subconscious finds the solutions acceptable.

  5. Once you have received a definite 'yes' answer from your subconscious that it will wake you, set a particular time, and get approval. Choose an appropriate time. If you don't allow yourself enough rest, your subconscious may rebel and not wake you, even if it says it will with the pendulum. Your subconscious is responsible for your physiological well-being, and this may supersede your conscious desires. Also, make sure that you give yourself sufficient time to record your dreams before you need to be somewhere.

  6. Once you have agreed upon a time, you may go to sleep. In all probability you will wake up within five minutes of the time you have set with your subconscious.

  7. If you have not woken up at the correct time, do not get angry at your subconscious. This will inhibit, rather than help your progress. Simply consult with your subconscious why, using the pendulum, and receive answers from your belly. Try the practice again and again until you get it to work.

  Once you have set this up you will be able to recall your dreams much more easily.

  Exercise 26 - Dream Programming

  Time Required: N/A

  This is a simple process for encouraging yourself to dream about a particular topic. It can be used any number of ways, and various modifications will be found throughout this book.

  The following exercise is very flexible and useful, but you must keep in mind that it will not always work, because dreaming is an important function of consciousness, and sometimes you will need to be dreaming other things aside from your conscious desires.

  1. First, you will need to pick a topic that you would like to dream about. This can really be anything from a particular place, to a person to some sort of scenario. Gather together some objects or pictures that remind you of this subject that you'd like to dream about, and look at them repeatedly throughout the day, thinking almost obsessively about the subject you'd like to dream about.

  2. In fact, think about this subject constantly throughout your day.

  3. When you are getting ready for bed, write at the top of a blank page of your journal, “tonight I will dream about…(your subject).”

  4. Consult with your subconscious using the pendulum about whether it understands your intention, and is willing to play along. Consulting with the pendulum will help your subconscious understand that you are considering this important.

  5. As you are drifting off to sleep, continue thinking about this subject, letting images relating to this subject play through your mind until you fall asleep.

  6. When you awaken, write down any dreams whether they relate your subject or not.

  You may have to do this
exercise for several consecutive days in order to really program your dreams successfully.

  LUCID DREAMING

  The next step in our process is to become aware that you are dreaming while in the midst of a dream. This has been popularly named, “Lucid Dreaming.” It is far easier to accomplish and commonly occurring than its detractors might have you believe. You may have had lucid dreams that you don't even remember, strangely enough. I have had numerous experiences upon awakening where I thought I had not dreamed lucidly, only to discover as I was writing out my dreams that I'd been lucid earlier. The amnesia effect seems to affect even the lucid state.

  There are many varieties of lucidity as well. It is possible to have the conscious and clearly lucid thought, “I am dreaming now,” and yet still react to elements of the dream world as if they were real. I consider this a sort of pre-lucidity, and once you are recalling your dreams and familiar with your dream world you will have experiences like this constantly. In some ways, I think this state is the one preferred by your subconscious because it still allows the information processing of your unconscious to go on while you are a more active witness than usual.

  All your lucid and pre-lucid dreams will have a much more vivid and powerful quality than your usual dreams. By this I mean that your “physical” and emotional reactions to things will be much stronger. Many lucid dream books describe these sorts of dreams as being particularly colorful and detailed, but I have found in my experience that while they will sometimes be more visually vivid and colorful, it is the dramatic, emotional impact that is the strongest. This may of course just be me.

  There are three main methods of accomplishing lucid dreaming. These are becoming lucid in the midst of a dream, waking up from a dream, and going back into the dream state immediately to experience lucidity, and going from the waking state directly into a lucid dream. There are numerous tricks and techniques that people have come up with over the years, but I will just cover the three that I think are best and easiest.

  Exercise 27 - Reality Check

  Time Required: N/A

  I'm not sure where I first heard of this exercise, but I think it may have been created by Dr. Stephen LaBerge. My version is slightly different from those I've seen elsewhere. A similar idea can be found in Tibetan dream yoga practices, though with somewhat different intentions. Generally this process is the best way to begin the process of becoming consciously aware in the dream state.

  The way in which this works is that you will regularly check in with yourself throughout your entire day, asking yourself if you are dreaming. By doing this constantly and repeatedly over the course of a week or so, it will become a habit, and you will eventually find yourself asking this question in your dreams.

  This may in fact not happen exactly in this way for you. Personally, I never say to myself, “Am I dreaming?” Instead, I just seem to have an, “aha,” where suddenly I recognize that I'm in a dream. At the same time, this happens far more frequently when I'm regularly doing the reality checks throughout the day, so I know it is related to this technique.

  1. Carry some object with you that will constantly remind you to check in regularly. I personally write the letter “c” on the back of my hand, to remind me that I am conscious. Some people simply check in with themselves at certain times each hour. Some people use a ring or some other piece of jewelry. The nice thing about writing on my hand is that people regularly ask me what it is. This gives me another stimulus to do a reality check.

  2. Every time you notice this object, or notice the time, or whatever device you choose, mentally ask yourself, “Am I dreaming, or am I awake?” Really ask yourself, and examine your environment. This is your reality check. Who knows, you may actually be asleep. Do this religiously, as often as possible. Ask yourself at least once per hour.

  3. Eventually, you will find yourself checking your reality in the midst of a dream.

  This method will lead you naturally into lucid dreaming. It may take a little while, but your focused effort will eventually pay off. You may also wish to combine this effort with the next technique, to jumpstart the process. However, do not omit the reality checking. It will help your consciousness to be more alert in general, and a number of later techniques will require this alertness.

  Exercise 28 - Wake Up Return

  Time Required: must be performed in the middle of the night

  This is an exercise you can use to enter into lucid dreaming in the middle of the night when you've woken out of a dream. It is very simple and effective, but it is easy to fall back asleep without succeeding, so don't beat yourself up if this happens. Just keep trying.

  1. As you are going to bed, write on a new page of your journal something like, “Tonight I will recognize I am dreaming while dreaming,” or, “Tonight I will dream lucidly.”

  2. Consult with your subconscious using the pendulum about whether it understands your intention, and is willing to play along.

  3. As you are going off to sleep, repeat the words you wrote, affirming your strong intention to dream lucidly.

  4. In the middle of the night or early morning, as you rouse from sleep, remember what you were dreaming. Without getting up, close your eyes and think about the dream, repeating your words from your journal, and firmly intending to be lucid. You may begin dreaming the same dream again, or enter a new dream. In either case, stay alert and you will become lucid.

  This technique may best be tried in the early morning at first. I find this the easiest time to dream lucidly.

  Exercise 29 - Directly Into Lucidity from Waking

  Time Required: 40 minutes to 2 hours

  1. This technique begins just like the Delta state pattern except that you will attempt to remain fully aware throughout. It's probably a good idea to do this at a time other than bedtime.

  2. Enter the Alpha then Theta states.

  3. From here, simply allow yourself to drift even deeper. Try to remain focused. Focus on the sensations in your body, and try to follow your inner stream of thoughts and images. You may eventually black out entirely, or get lost in a dream briefly, but as soon as you become aware again, you will be dreaming lucidly. Try to relax and stay with the dream, and try to stay alert.

  With either of the preceding techniques, you will probably find your lucidity interrupted by waking up at first. You will be excited that you have succeeded, and this will bring you up to waking consciousness. You must endeavor to remain relaxed and simply enjoy the experience. Time will make you expert in this.

  DREAM SCHOOL

  Before leaving the subject of dreams I want to mention a few final things. There is a popular notion in certain circles that we are actually involved in some sort of consciousness school when we are dreaming at night. While it is not possible to say whether this is technically true or not, I have had too many experiences of working with dream teachers and even being involved in specific and useful dream lessons to totally disregard this notion. I have had many experiences in which dream adepts have taught me something about consciousness, or worked with me on astral projection, or initiated me into a new level of consciousness. Perhaps you too will find your own dream lessons. You will certainly notice recurring themes and recurring settings, and with any luck you will learn a tremendous amount of important material in your nightly sojourn into the unseen world of the mind.

  It is also supposedly possible to experience shared dreaming, in which you are having the same dream as another person. I have never had such an experience, so I cannot write about it from first hand experience. When I am lucid, I tend to get so fascinated by the experience itself and the enhanced abilities of my consciousness that the idea of trying to contact my friends or lovers has just never come. If you wish to experiment with this, simply try to find one of your friends when you become lucid. They may or may not remember the experience, so you might want to call them as soon as you awaken.

  As a final thought on dreams and sleep I highly recommend the following simple practic
e. Each night, as you close your eyes, send out love and forgiveness to everyone in the world when going to sleep. You will enrich your life tremendously.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Psychic Receiving

  “Generally speaking, clairvoyance means the second sight as it is popularly named, or the power of seeing, without the use of the eye, events taking place at a distance, actually or in the future or having taken place in the past, or seeing deceased people.”