Using Lucid Dreaming to Manifest Your Reality with Robert Waggoner

Lorne Brown 

Today on our Conscious Fertility podcast, we have Robert Waggoner. I was introduced to him from a friend of mine, John Kruth, whom I believe Robert has taught some lucid dreaming courses on his platform, at his institute. Now, my understanding and how I came to after the introduction, what interests me in learning more and interviewing Robert is that he’s a lucid dreamer and he’s written a book called Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, which I have read recently. And I got this impression that this is another way to tap into consciousness to find that peace of mind. And in the book, Robert, you talk about people that are using lucid dreaming to do some inner healing and even possibly healing others. And so welcome to the podcast. Can you give us a little bit of a background of you? Who is Robert Waggoner and how did you get into this lucid dreaming? So much so that you wrote this book, Lucid Dreaming Gateway to the Inner Self.

Robert Waggoner 

So as a child, I had a very lively dream life. And as I grew up, I noticed on occasion I’d have precognitive dreams, just little snippets of day-to-day interactions that later came to pass and all. But it was back in 1975, I was a junior in high school and I was reading a book by Carlos Castaneda called Journey to Lin Carlos Castaneda, of course was a U-C-L-A graduate student in anthropology who was studying psychoactive plants like peyote and mescal, and he wanted to find a shaman. So he found a shaman named Don Juan. And in this book Journey to Iel, Don Juan suggested to him that he find his hands in the dream and become aware of dreaming. And I didn’t know that that was possible. And so I kept looking for the technique, but there really wasn’t a technique. So I invented my own little technique and within three days had my first lucid dream. So I became aware within the dream that I was dreaming. So if you fast forward five or six years, then you get to 1980, 81, and that’s when the scientific evidence for lucid dreaming came out. And so I was so happy to have this scientific evidence come out because now I could finally talk about it with my friends. But what I didn’t realize at the time is that lucid dreaming is an extraordinary journey into the nature of the self, the nature of things. And I’ve just been on that path ever since.

Lorne Brown 

And you mentioned the scientific evidence. So there is, what is the scientific evidence? What is it telling us about lucid dreaming?

Robert Waggoner

Right. So El Lucid dreams, of course you realize within the dream that you’re dreaming. And so it was back in 1975, there was a graduate student researcher, Keith Hearn at the University of Holland, England, and he met a gentleman who said he could, lucid dreaming, could become aware within his dreams that he was dreaming. And so Keith Hearn thought, well, how could you validate that? And so he began to think that in normal dreams we have rapid eye movement. And so he thought, if I bring this lucid dreamer into the sleep lab, and I put rapid eye movement, polygraph pads on his eyes and tell him, when you become consciously aware in the dream, move your eyes left to right eight times, and that will be such an unusual signal and get recorded on the rim readout that then we can have evidence for lucid dreaming.

And so in April of 1975, Alan Worsley was the lucid dreamer and he signaled with his eyes from within a lucid dream that he was consciously aware and dreaming. And the researcher Keith Thorn said philosophically and scientifically, it was mind blowing. It was like getting messages from another dimension. And so that’s how the scientific evidence came out. People are able to become aware within the dreams, then move their eyes left to right to say, Hey, I’m consciously aware here. Then they might move their eyes left and right again to say, oh, now I’m beginning the experiment that the researcher wanted to conduct, and they’ll move their eyes again. Now I’m ending the experiment. So you can actually conduct real time lucid dream experiments in the sleep laboratory.

Lorne Brown 

And why would we care about lucid dreaming or want to know about how to do lucid dreaming other than what I think of today? Because in 1975, that’s a while ago. Today we have virtual reality games. So other than entertainment to kind of escape this reality, to go into this dreaming reality that you now have some control over, I’ll use that word loosely. I know it’s not a full control. So for entertainment purposes, great, but is there any benefit? And the reason I’m asking this, and for our listeners, I am asking Robert this question because I’ve learned, myself included, everybody wants to be happy. That’s what I’ve realized. And some people think that comes from us externally. So if I just have more money or I get this promotion, this job, then I’ll be happy. Or if I have this relationship or my person who I’m in a relationship with was just this way, then I would be happy. Or if I had this type of health or healing, then I would be happy. And for a lot of our listeners, if I just could have this baby, then I’d be happy. So the question I’m asking is because I think there’s more to lucid dreaming than entertainment. So the question is why would people want to know about it and learn how to do lucid dreaming?

Robert Waggoner 

That’s a perfect question because lucid dreaming can be so entertaining. You realize within the dream you’re dreaming, you can fly around, you can walk on water, you can interact with anyone, you can just have fun. But as you go deeper into it, you realize that you can use lucid dreaming to access inner creativity, and I’m talking creativity at a phenomenal level. Then you can also use it for emotional healing. Already some therapists use lucid dreaming to help people deal with recurring nightmares from post-traumatic stress disorder. And anecdotally, lots of lucid dreamers have used it to deal with phobias, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorders, and had some extraordinary success besides emotional healing and accessing creativity. You can also, it seems, use it for physical healing. There’s wonderful stories of lucid dreamers who have focused on healing their physical body in the lucid dream state. But when you move beyond that one reason I call my first book Lucid Dreaming Gateway to the Inner Self, I discovered that by ignoring the dream figures and just relating to the unconscious, you can actually begin to have a conversation with your unconscious mind or your inner self if you prefer.

And that blows people’s minds when they begin to have those kinds of lucid dreams. And then finally, lucid dreaming comes from a long history of spiritual practice in Buddhist dream yoga. Lucid dreaming is the primary technique coupled with Buddhist philosophy to explore the true nature of reality in the self. And they consider lucid dreaming our dream yoga as one of the six paths to enlightenment. Also, it’s been used in Sufism, Taoism, shamanic and native spiritual traditions. And so it’s truly an open platform from which you can do virtually whatever you desire and intend as long as you’ve figured out the techniques and the proper way of approaching things.

Lorne Brown 

Alright, I want to kind of touch on each of those points that you shared. So when you said inner creativity, it makes me think of manifestation, people looking to create their destiny. Is that what you mean by tapping into your inner creativity?

Robert Waggoner 

Well, there’s inner creativity and just dealing with what you would like to create at that moment. For example, there was an artist who wanted to discover the best art he could create, and so he’d become lucidly aware and he would announce that. Now when he goes around that corner of the building on the other side, he’ll see the most incredible art he can create, walks around the side of the building and what’s hanging on the wall, just incredible art. And he said the thing that was amazing is that he had been an artist for many years, but when he woke up and replicated that lucid dream art, it was the art that sold the best. And he said sometimes it was the most simple and the least deep and kind of a basic sense, but he found that it sold the best. But you also have other examples of people using that inner creativity to solve software programming problems, engineering problems of novel writing. Music writers have also used lucid dreaming to tap into that inner creativity.

Lorne Brown 

I want to go down that path a bit more then I think that’s going to be interesting to my audience. Definitely is to me. But the other thing you mentioned is the emotional healing, which in this day and age, there’s so much collective trauma it seems like. It seems like nobody’s escaping it, the anxiety that people are experiencing from the news and just world events. So this is nice that there may be another noninvasive tool to, as I call it, transform suffering and anxiety to peace of mind. That would be great. So hopefully we’ll touch on that. You talked about physical healing, I want to go there for sure. And then you talked about conversations with that unconscious mind. So I’m going to ask you what that really looks like, what that means. And then obviously you talked about spiritual practice and again, it seems to be connected to that unconscious mind where people get enlightened.

So let’s start with this where you just were with this idea and maybe define some terms because when I was reading your book, you used a term called conscious unconscious. And for our listeners a lot of the time, so I’ll give you the language that I’ve been using, and so you can kind of bridge it for us with your book and the Lucid Dreaming. So I’m always sharing how we have this, the subconscious programs, and the subconscious doesn’t live in your brain, it’s in every cell of your body. It’s your autonomic nervous system. In the example of just the basics, your heart pumps and your blood circulates while you sleep, while you’re unconscious because the subconscious is doing everything. When you play a piano the first time you’re learning it, it’s a complicated piece. You’re kind of really having to concentrate, look at the keys, nobody talks to me.

But once it’s been habituated, once it’s been imprinted on the subconscious mind, your hands are moving so fast, nobody can see how fast they’re moving, right? They see them, but they’re moving too fast and you’re not even looking at the keys and you’re having a full conversation while you’re playing this complicated piece. So I’m calling that the subconscious part conscious. Our conscious mind is this small little computer that we use to imprint on. The subconscious can only hold so much information, but once it’s on the subconscious, it runs the program, whether it’s a good program or not, it’s running the program a lot. And so the whole idea is can we use our conscious mind to change or engage your subconscious? So it’s running the program all the time for us. So that’s kind of my idea of the subconscious. One last point here for our listeners that may have not caught up on all our podcasts and for you as well, the physical part of it is that when you’re in this fight or flight, when you feel alarmed, you don’t feel safe.

You talked about the trauma and the anxiety. When you’re feeling stressed, your energy simply is being mobilized. You go into that fight or flight nervous system and the energy is being mobilized, which means your resources aren’t as available for healing, for creativity, for reproduction. But when you bring that sense of relief, peace of mind, it frees up those resources. It engages the parasympathetic nervous system, which is known as the rest and digest, breed and feed nervous system. And when you engage that nervous system, then you free up resources for creativity, healing, and reproduction. So that was a long-winded story for me to tell. What do you mean when you say the conscious unconscious in your book?

Robert Waggoner 

Right? So besides lucid dreaming, I’ve also kept a dream journal for many decades. And what you begin to realize is that this unconscious mind that we enter into in the dream state, it’s not chaotic, it’s not random, it’s not unprincipled, not the mind and the junk of the mind or the psychosis of the mind as some scientists said many decades ago. But what you really begin to see is that this unconscious mind of dreaming actually is quite conscious and supportive. Now, when you become consciously aware within a lucid dream, you have the capacity to engage the unconscious mind and relate to it and see how it functions with your lucid awareness intact. And so that’s why I call the unconscious of dreaming. It’s actually conscious. You realize that there’s more going on there and it’s supportive of the organism. It’s trying to help the self, but sometimes the self is unaware of what’s really going on.

Lorne Brown 

And going back to your story of somebody who did lucid dreaming, he wanted to create the best piece of art in the dream, and set the intention that when I go around the corner, I’m going to see it. And they created this beautiful piece of art that they saw in their dream, and it was a great seller. So now that you’ve been doing this for decades, what are we tapping into then? How do we get this information? And who’s giving us this information? What are your ideas behind this? Because there’s linear time that we think of, and I’m curious what you think we’re tapping into. And again, I don’t say that, but what do you think based on the lucid dreaming that you’ve done over these decades?

Robert Waggoner 

So after 10 years of lucid dreaming, that’s when I discovered that there was an awareness behind the dream in a way you could say. That’s when I came to understand that the unconscious was actually conscious. And so just to tell the story of how it came about, I was part of a lucid dream explorers group. Every month we had a goal to achieve in a lucid dream. And that month in 1985, it was to find out what the dream figures in the lucid dream represent. And so I became lucid, followed a woman into an office, stepped up to a man, and I asked him, excuse me, what do you represent? And instead of the dream figure responding, a voice from high above boomed out a partial response, and it didn’t exactly make sense. And so I looked up into the space and asked what? And it’s like it had to think about it, and then it boomed out a full response to what this gentleman represented.

And so I woke up, I thought, well, I’ve gotten my answer, so I’m going to wake up and write this down. But the next day I began to think, why didn’t the dream figure respond? Why did this non-visible voice respond? And so after that, in my lucid dreams, I began to interact with what I call the awareness behind the dream. So I’d become lucidly aware, I’d ignore the dream figures, ignore the dream setting, and I would just ask questions of this larger awareness. And what was incredible is suddenly sometimes the entire lucid dream would change in response to the question. Sometimes the voice would give an answer. Sometimes one dream object, dream symbol, would appear. That was an answer to the question. And it just began to stun me how deep and wise and creative and responsive and caring this inner awareness was. So as I talked to others about it, other lucid dreamers, they began to find the same thing too, and they went on with their own experiments. So that’s why I’m saying that we’re tapping into something deeper. You can call it the awareness behind the dreams. Some people call it the inner self. Some people can even take it further than that. But normally I’ll call it the larger awareness or one’s inner self.

Lorne Brown

And it sounded like you said in our dreams, it’s always listening, responsive and supportive.

Robert Waggoner 

That’s what I’ve seen. It’s interesting what you’ll see lucid dreamers play around with it. One lucid dreamer, she became consciously aware and she asked, now, show me the beginning and end of the universe. And suddenly this non-visible voice replied, the universe has no beginning and has no end. The universe is an everlasting cycle. And so here you have a case where it basically refuted the assertion of the lucid dreamer and reframed the response. In another case, a gentleman was exploring modern physics ideas. So there’s like string theory as part of quantum physics. And so he announced now by the power of Alka Hest let a super string manifest in the lucid dream. And suddenly this non-visible voice told him that he seemed too distracted and unfocused at this time to deal with a request of that magnitude. So basically it told him that he wasn’t prepared for the magnitude of what he was requesting, because occasionally you’ll make a request and the energy and the intensity of what happens next is truly profound.

But for example, I’ve suggested to people, if you want to have a spiritual lucid dream experience, become lucidly aware and just announce Now let me experience unconditional love. Just ask it of the larger awareness and sometimes the resulting experience of experiencing unconditional love in this lucid dream. It’s so powerful and intense and amazing. People have told me they’ve woken up and they’ve cried tears of joy for 15 minutes to realize that love could be just that profound. So again, you see this kind of caring nature. You’ll see it refute the requests sometimes, and then sometimes you’ll find the experience is just so far outside of your conscious self, imagining that you really feel like you’ve touched something much deeper.

Lorne Brown 

I think this would be so interesting for everybody in our listeners, because often I ask why you want to grow your family? What’s going to change? How is it going to fulfill you as part of the manifestation process? And a common response is they want something to love so much. They want something to care for, to be loving and to love it. And so this idea of unconditional love, that vibration, that frequency, I think would be nice in somebody’s body because that idea attracts like you want to practice that feeling. And so that would be a nice thing to experience, whether you’re trying to grow your family or just you take a break from the news today, it would be really nice just to feel relief for me would be great, but geez, this unconditional love, having experienced that in the past, that bliss, that joy that’s quite profound makes us want to learn how to do this.

Robert Waggoner 

That’s the beautiful thing about it. It’s an open platform, and so whatever your intent or goal is, you can direct it in that direction. And it is interesting. On occasion, I’ll talk to lucid dreamers who became pregnant and in their lucid dream began to interact with this little bean that’s growing inside of them and kind of learn sometimes what name it wants to be called or what its interests are. It’s interesting to have that occur in a lucid dream because I know in other cultures around the world the idea of naming dreams, like naming a child, should come to you in the dream state, and that’s how you should determine the name of your child and all that kind of thing. As part of the cultural realm

Lorne Brown 

Have, are there any rules to this lucid dreaming, like you said, naming a child, talking to your child, but are there any do’s and don’ts that people should become aware of today as we’re talking about this topic and we will get into some tips and more resources for lucid dreaming? And the reason I’m going to ask, I’m going to just back this question up. So there is, I just want to know what kind of procedures you would have or safety procedures, right? But I was just wondering. I don’t recall lucid dreaming in the recent times. When I think about it right now, and I have done a few of the intentions, it hasn’t happened yet, but I’m expecting it to happen. I’m going to keep practicing. The idea I have though is I don’t always remember my dreams, but sometimes I do remember my dreams. That’s different from lucid dreaming, just remembering your dreams. Sometimes I don’t like my dreams. So you’re saying it’s always supportive, so is there a difference between having a dream and remembering it and a lucid dream? I want, again, our title is Conscious, right? Conscious Fertility podcast. So I’m tapping into that conscious part that I’m going to say for assumptions purposes, it is always listening, it’s and supportive.

Robert Waggoner 

So when you remember a dream, at least you have enough awareness that you were engaged in the activity and you’re recalling it and you recall it upon waking. So you at least had that much awareness to recall that something happened in El Lucid Dream. Of course you realize, wait a second, this is too strange. This has to be a dream. For example, I had a spontaneous lucid dream when I was probably 10 or 11. I was in the public library, I was looking at the books, and all of a sudden I saw little tyrannosaurus wrecks walking around through the book stacks. And even at age 10 or 11, I realized something’s wrong here that dinosaurs are extinct. So how can this be? And it took me a moment to process that. The only explanation was this has to be a dream. And so that’s why I’m seeing this.

So in a lucid dream, you have that awareness that, oh, this is a dream. I know that I’m dreaming of this, dreaming this. I’m relating to dream figures relating to a dream environment. Now, the one thing that people have to understand is awareness fluctuates just like it does in the waking state. So you and I might be very aware and engaged in our conversation, and then you might say something that makes me think of something in the past, and all of a sudden my mind is drifting off in a memory and I’m really not even listening anymore. So we know that our focus, our awareness changes during our daytime interactions, and that’s how it is in lucid dreaming too. So you have to learn how to maintain your focus in that awareness and sometimes even elevate your awareness within the lucid dream. But in terms of any concerns I would have or want to address, normally what I say to people when I go to universities to talk about lucid dreaming, my general rule is if you can’t handle waking life, then don’t get into lucid dreaming. So you have to feel secure and comfortable and accepting enough of waking life. Before I would venture into lucid dreaming, you have to have a good relationship with waking life before you want to become consciously wearing the dream state.

Lorne Brown 

Can you elaborate on that? Because I would think some people are doing this because their waking life isn’t so good.

Robert Waggoner 

Here’s where my concern would be: normally in a lucid dream, I’ve realized that our mental energies become projected into some sort of form. And so let’s say in the waking state, I’m in a really dark place. I’m really depressed when I become lucidly aware, probably that mental atmosphere of that depression and darkness will create some scary figure that will then frighten me. And so that’s why I would say that normally you want to be in a pretty good place mentally and emotionally speaking when you start to get into lucid dreaming, just so you have a more simple and less complex environment to deal with when you become lucid.

Lorne Brown 

Okay, thank you for that. You had shared in your book there were times where some of the lucid dreamers couldn’t wake up. It seemed like they kept on being in this dream, and then they would try and get out of it and then learn another story and another story. Oh, and I’m sorry guys for jumping around here, but thoughts are coming to me as I’m talking to Robert. Maybe can you clarify the control

Robert Waggoner 

Of the dream? You use a beautiful analogy of the sea and sailing on the sea because it’s not like you get to be a total director, choreographer, et cetera, in the dream, in lucid dreaming, it sounds like. So can you share a little bit about how you’re involved in the Lucid dream? So one point I’ve always tried to get across is that lucid dreaming does not mean control. You relate to the lucid dream. You direct yourself within the lucid dream, but you do not control the dream. The dream is larger than you. And the metaphor I use is the sailor does not control the sea. Neither does the lucid dreamer control the dream. So when you think of a sailor on the sea, you think of someone who has to deal with the waves and the wind and the condition of their boat and their own sailing skills and all of that, but eventually they’ll probably make it de port. That’s how it is with lucid dreaming. You have to relate to unexpected things that the unconscious mind presents to you, interesting situations that surprise you. And so you relate to things with greater awareness, but control is just too much of a big word,

Lorne Brown 

And you use the word control here. And it seems like in consciousness work something that is so powerful in this process of awareness and getting to that present moment is surrendering, is letting go, is really being able to accept and surrender to what is. And so it seems like in lucid dreaming as well, you are not in control and there is a bit of a letting go surrendering process in this lucid dreaming,

Robert Waggoner 

Right? In fact, there’s even people who use that as a practice. They call it lucid surrender. So they become consciously aware within the dream, and then they announce that they’re surrendering any influence or direction, they’re surrendering to the highest. For example, and this is something that Stephen LaBerge talked about in one of his first books on Lucid Dreaming, but what he said was that when he would surrender with a lucid dream and let go of any control or any directing influence, those were some of his most profound lucid dreams that he ever had. Because then I feel like the larger awareness, the unconscious mind now because you’ve surrendered, can take you someplace to show you something important for you to see or to give you an experience to help harmonize yourself or balance yourself in that moment.

Lorne Brown 

So how has Lucid dreaming changed your perspective on the world? Literally, we were growing up, we have our common Judaic Christian religions of our time, and then you’re now tapping into something that seems to have some great good wisdom. It’s good intuition to give you some guidance. There seems to be a movement on, there’s consciousness. There’s this thing called consciousness that we’re all connected to where there’s a big C and small C, some of our experts that we’ve interviewed talk about. And when you are certain, I have techniques in my clinics, each speaker has a kind as a technique. This again, lucid dreaming to me is another tool to get you into this place of connecting into your higher self, your inner self. And I love the analogy somebody used. It’s like when you’re whole brain, it’s like you have access to this massive computer versus a little compartment, which sounds like Lucid Dream is doing.

And it’s like you’re connected to the internet, so you connect to all the computers, which is all of consciousness. I’m curious, it’s a two part question. How do you view the world then? Is it based on the materialistic world, the Tony world that we have been taught and still dominates or this new quantum idea that goes from I think time, space to space time and that there’s more to life than what we can measure? I’m curious what your experience is since you’ve been, you and your students and colleagues have been tapping into this process and having some profound experiences, it sounds like.

Robert Waggoner 

I would say my view of the world has changed radically. Now I see that I exist, and I believe we all exist in an interconnected oneness, that we seem like we’re separate and apart, but actually we’re behind the scenes connected in a oneness of profound proportions. So that’s where I would say it’s kind of led me to go. But also what I’d say is lucid dreaming has also led to lucid living or living more lucidly. And that’s because in lucid dreaming, I see the importance of my beliefs, my expectation, my focus and intent. Because in Lucid dream, if I believe something’s impossible, then it becomes impossible. If I expect trouble from that dream figure, then I get trouble. If I expect that dream figure is going to be a great interesting person, then they become a great interesting person, and you begin to see how the mind shapes the dream experience. But if you transfer that to the waking state, you’ll begin to see how your mind and the responses and reactions that you habitually engage in also begin to shape your waking reality as well. And if you become more lucid about that, then it can begin to change your waking life and how you respond to things. So it goes very

Lorne Brown 

Deep. I’m really excited about this part, so I want to repeat it because this is new to me, the lucid dreaming part, but the idea of your thoughts creates your reality. I subscribe to, and Gandhi has that beautiful quote where it starts with your beliefs and ends with your destiny, right? Your thoughts and then your feelings, feelings, actions. So your actions are always congruent with your beliefs, and these actions become habits, and eventually that’s your life, right? And what you said was really interesting. You shared your expectations and your intentions, and you didn’t say this word, but your mindset influences your dream. And you’re saying, Hey, in my waking reality, if I work on my thoughts and my feelings, my expectations, my beliefs, then I will get a different reality. Is that what I’m hearing you say?

Robert Waggoner 

Right, exactly. And so for example, in my first book, I have a chapter on people who have used lucid dreaming to promote physical health or to try to heal themselves within lucid dream. But I know because I can see now how the mind is so engaged in our personal experience. I decided to do this in the waking state and not try it in a dream state. So this is what happened. I had developed hay fever, and so I live in the middle of America, and every August and September, there’s so much pollen in the air. Oh, my sinuses would all swell shut and my throat hurt, and I could barely sleep at night. But I thought, wait a second, I know that the mind matters and the unconscious is always listening, as Milton Erickson said. So this is what I did. I became mindful of every time I thought about hay fever or any of those fears.

So first I noticed they happened. Then the second thing, I stopped, I stopped and said no. And then the third thing, I told myself what I wanted to experience, what my true intent was, and I decided my true intent was to breathe easily and naturally. So as we’re headed towards August and September, every time I think about hay fever or how much I was going to suffer, I say, no, not this year. This year I’ll breathe easily and naturally. And I want to tell you, the first year of doing this, my symptoms, probably 70% of them went away. So I had a much easier time with hay fever that year. The next year after continuing to do this process, 90% of the symptoms went away. Third year, 95%. Now I don’t even think about hay fever anymore, but I noticed it. I stopped it. And then the most important thing, I told my unconsciousness, my larger awareness, what I wanted to experience, which is I breathe easily and naturally. So again, this is taking the ideas of what I’ve learned in lucid dreaming, transferring them to the waking state, and becoming more conscious of these thought processes that are going on and how to work with them to get a desire that I really want to achieve.

Lorne Brown 

Well, I think you’re going to like what I’m going to share with you and my listeners who’ve been listening, check this out. So I’ve been sharing with my listeners that I have observed from all the scientists and authors and experts on conscious work and on manifestation that they all have the same structure. Some have 10 steps, some have 20 steps, some have three steps, and I’ve been able to Google it to organize it into a process, and I’m able to bring each of their techniques into this process. They all follow the structure. And what you just said is the closest link. So check out what I say and what I’m again reminding my listeners, all I’ve done is I found a map to overlay. And the reason I like this map is whenever somebody shares something, if it aligns with this, I get really excited.

I’m always open to learning new things, but I’m like, yeah, this is what everybody’s doing. So I call it NAC, no matter what, what’s going on, notice it. Notice what you’re feeling, just bring awareness. It’s that pause. We know from science now there’s scientific studies. There’s 90 seconds for that activation, that negative chemical experience to go through the body. Obviously if you keep reactivating it, it stays in your body, but if you only have it and you can shut it down, it’s 90 seconds. Notice it. Don’t take it personally, observe it. Step one, you said notice step two, you said, stop and say no to it. My step two is accept what the A surrenders to it. Don’t fight with it. What you resist persists. So rather than fighting with it, just observe it so you notice it, you surrender to it. Doesn’t mean you resigned to it, doesn’t mean you like it, but you’re just going to take up a relationship with it as part of the observation and just feel when you feel you can heal.

So that’s accepting what is surrender. And I have these present moment tools, EFT, I’ve done the Milton Erickson Hypnosis, rapid transformational Therapy, psyche, all these kinds of tools to help get us into surrendering. What is basically what I think is happening is it’s putting us into the present moment. We’re just fully in the present, and that’s when you become the whole brain. So that’s your stop, no, now just accept it, surrender. And then my C for NAC is called Choose again. How would you like to feel? How would you like to be? And you said, communicate to the mind what you want. And the key for the choose again is it’s an inner experience. Imagine as if you already have it. It’s not a wish fulfilled, I wish I want. It’s imagine what it would be like if you had that already now. And so I call it NAC, notice, accept and choose again. And you said, notice, stop, say no to it. And then what do I want? I mean that I can’t get any closer to that. So I love it. And now I have a new tool that I’m going to introduce people to lucid dreaming.

Robert Waggoner 

It’s wonderful that you brought that out, but I think that final thing is what is it that I really want to achieve? What is my intent here? And I’ve boiled it down so I want to breathe easily and naturally. That’s it. And when I began to give those kinds of ideas and mental energy to my mind, then that’s what I began to experience. So that choosing part though, that’s the important thing because sometimes people choose to hang on to their anger or they choose to, oh, somehow they’re going to get justice by being vindictive or whatever. I’ve just realized that you really got what is my true intent here.

Lorne Brown 

And so for those that want to explore their lucid dreaming, and again reminding ourselves, it’s like we’re on the sea so we can play with the sale. We don’t always get to choreograph the dream, but we can get involved in it. And we want to tap into that intuition, that supportive inner self. Again, I don’t know the right terminology, but that knowingness that has our best interest at heart. What are some of the tips when people go to sleep to prepare themselves for lucid dreaming?

Robert Waggoner 

One thing I’d say, first, you want to get into the habit of good dream recall, because some of us have fallen out of the habit. And so as soon as you wake up each night, the first thing you should think is, what was I just dreaming? And normally if you do that practice, then you’ll begin to recall your dreams. But for lucid dreamers, probably the simplest approach is just the power of suggestion. So think of a normal dream and a normal dream. We’re outside, we’re walking around, oh, here comes the queen of England pushing a grocery cart down the sidewalk. Why is she doing that? I don’t know. And we just keep on going. So we lack any sense of critical awareness or any sense of questioning. So here would be a suggestion to help with that. Tonight in my dreams, I’ll be more critically aware, and when I notice something strange, I’ll realize I’m dreaming. So tonight in my dreams, I’ll be more critically aware. And when I notice something strange, I’ll realize I’m dreaming. And so this time when we see the Queen of England pushing the grocery cart down the sidewalk, we think, wait a second. The queen of England doesn’t shop here. And what’s she doing in my town? Anyway, this has to be a dream, and you’ll become lucidly aware. The power of suggestion is probably the easiest way to get into lucid treatment.

Lorne Brown 

What do you do once you become aware then, Hey, I’m dreaming right now. What’s the next step? I would imagine that I would get excited and wake myself up because I think I’m

Robert Waggoner 

Dreaming in all of my workshops. That’s number one, especially for new people. You have to stay calm, so you reduce your emotions normally, whatever you say within a lucid dream or whatever thought you think comes to pass very easily. So if you tell yourself, calm down, then you’ll calm down. Or if you are looking at something exciting, just look at the floor, look at your hands as something boring and that’ll help calm you down. But you’re right, you have to learn how to stabilize the lucid dream so you don’t get so excited. You pop out. And you have to also learn to maintain your focus such that you don’t return to regular dreaming, because sometimes people would get so caught up, they’ll become lucid, but then they’ll go exploring and get so caught up in what they’re seeing and engaging with that they forget that they’re dreaming and just return to regular dreaming.

Lorne Brown 

And you used the term like focus. So a big part of this is, again, setting your attention, suggestions. This focus has to happen and you have to surrender into the process. Is that what you’re suggesting? When we lose a dream and then set an intention, I want to know, I’m going to think of somebody’s looking for abundance in their life, right? Is there an intention they’re supposed to ask? Or for people that want to grow their family, want a, most of the conscious teachers I’ve come to know, a lot of them have a theme of keeping it playful. And some say there’s no rituals, as in there’s some flexibility to what you’re doing, but yourself, you think that way as well.

Robert Waggoner 

Well, here’s what I would say. What I encourage people, when you become consciously aware and stabilize the lucid dream, then what you might want to do is just ask your unconscious mind or the larger awareness, just look up and say, Hey, show me something important for me to see. Show me something important for me to see. Because then you’ve opened it up, you’ve opened it up to that larger awareness to show you something of importance. And sometimes when people do this, they have some of their most profound lucid dreams because the big issue out there, and oftentimes the big issue is what you’re ignoring suddenly appears and they come to a new understanding of it because they’re elusive and can engage it. So show me something important for me to see.

Lorne Brown 

And then I have a specific question for you from my listeners. I’m thinking of them and in this conscious work and this idea of creating a reality manifesting when there’s a lot of tension, hence there’s not that surrender letting go. It doesn’t seem to work so well. And when you really want something they use attached to form an outcome, it doesn’t seem to work so well. And so I’m thinking of the people I see that are wanting to, for example, grow their family. They’re going to, how do I get pregnant? What do I need? I can see that maybe their first question. And is that okay, they should go there or should it be to work your way into it and just say, show me something important versus do I need to take this supplement? Should I do IVF? Should I do that? Should I keep thinking that?

We’re always looking for answers, and sometimes we want that quick fix. And there’s a little bit of tension behind the intention, and I’m just thinking of them. And I thought I would ask on behalf of my listeners what kind of advice you’d have for those wanting to grow their family and using lucid dreaming and tapping into their inner awareness to give them the best chance. And I’m always a fan of healthy babies, so what can we do to set that health blueprint for the mom to be and the child? So I just thought I would ask you that question.

Robert Waggoner 

So it helps sometimes to have a relatively neutral request. Show me something important for me to see where you don’t have this tension of expectation already involved in it. Because I’ll tell you, we’ll want to maneuver it towards one direction, and then we don’t benefit from the inner advice or the inner wisdom that we’re trying to access. But you could, what it helps to do is to plan in advance what you want to ask. Show me how I can improve my physical health. And then all of a sudden you might see, oh, there’s all these foods appearing. Well, why are these foods appearing? Oh, you’re being shown healthy foods that you should put into your diet in order to improve your health. So figure out the question you want in advance. I like an open-ended one. Show me something important for me to see just because sometimes even though our ego wants X, Y, and Z, sometimes our larger awareness has an idea that first we have to resolve this issue before we can even start to talk about X, Y, and Z.

Lorne Brown 

Robert, I’m really enjoying this conversation with you and hope we can continue to have these conversations with you. I like this as another tool. And the thing that I wasn’t expecting today, that kind of my aha moment was this lucid dreaming idea, how you’ve brought this into your waking life and how this is affecting your quality of life. Then because you are very attuned or aware of what beliefs you have, because you’re aware that your limiting beliefs will affect your experience expectations. So that would be your expectations too, right? Like you said, be very clear on that. I always say these conscious tools, I’m calling this another conscious tool. They’re simple, not easy, simple. Anybody can do it, not easy. Otherwise, everybody would do it. And I think that comes to, and I remember in your book when you’re saying keys to lucid healing, one of them was focus. So focus takes practice, it takes discipline. I think that that’s where the work is in the conscious work. And then you talked about having intent and will for that. So I encourage people to check out your book. I’ve read one, do you have other books? It sounds like you said your first book. So what books have you written since and where would you recommend our readers go today who are listening to this?

Robert Waggoner 

Right. So my first book was Lucid Dreaming Gateway to the Inner Self, and that’s when I kind of show the entire spectrum of all the areas that you can get into in Lucid Dreaming. But then people ask me to write a book on techniques on how to become lucid, how to stabilize the lucid dream, how to relate to things that you’re going to find in the lucid dream state. So I wrote a book, Lucid Dreaming Plain and Simple, with coauthor Carolyn McCrady. And there, if you don’t mind, I have one other example of something that anyone can do. They don’t even have to be a lucid dreamer, but it’s to show them how their beliefs help to create the reality that they then experience. Do you have time for this, Lorne?

Lorne Brown 

We’re going to make time for this. This is what this podcast in my mind is about, is using your thoughts, your feelings to create your reality and how your beliefs influence that, and how we’re looking at changing those beliefs. And I’m talking on that subconscious level, on that deep imprinted level. So yes, please take your time.

Robert Waggoner 

So again, you don’t have to be a lucid drinker to do this technique. What I ask is that you find within yourself a neutral belief. So a neutral belief is you’re not for it, you’re not against it. You really don’t even think about it that much because you’re neutral about that belief, that idea. So for example, it might be how funny you are. Well, you’re not funny, but you’re not unfunny. You’re just kind of in that neutral area. So find a neutral belief. Then what I want you to do is for one minute, 10 times a day, supersize, energize that belief. I’m the funniest person in this town. No one’s ever been funnier than me. I’m the most incredible funny, just imagine in yourself how funny you are, and begin to energize that neutral belief and do this day after day. And as you energize that belief in how funny you are or whatever it is, what’s going to happen is you’ll find yourself three, four or five days later at the grocery store in the checkout lane, and you’ll say something and everyone roars with laughter.

They can’t believe it. And you’re thinking in your mind, that wasn’t even funny. I wasn’t even trying to be funny. And people are roaring with laughter. You’ll go around throughout the day, you’ll be at your office. People will scream with laughter at things that you do or say, or even books you make, and you’ll realize how you’re projecting because you have energized a neutral belief. It’s being projected out there, and the world is reflecting that energy back to you. But for example, in one of my workshops, a woman decided to do this. She was in her mid fifties and she decided that she was the most attractive woman on her island, that no one was more attractive than her. She said after four days of doing this exercise, a guy in his thirties asked her for her phone number. She said that hadn’t happened to her in like 30 years or whatever.

But here’s what I’ve realized: In lucid dreaming, in a dream, I see that my emotions, beliefs, ideas, intent, feelings are projected out there for me to relate to them. But what we don’t realize is the same thing is happening in the waking world. Our inner beliefs, feelings, ideas, emotions are being projected out there and they’re being reflected back to us. The problem with a lot of things like the law of attraction and some of these things is oftentimes we work on the most difficult belief area, and this belief already has tons of energy around it. And so when we try to, oh, now I’m going to attract wealth to myself or whatever, no, we already have these beliefs that we don’t deserve wealth or wealth is bad or whatever. It’s already a conflicted area. But when you take a neutral belief, supersize it, and then you see that belief return to you, that’s when you realize my beliefs are projected out there.

Lorne Brown 

That’s a fun idea to take something neutral. And like you said, if somebody’s looking for abundance, but they have a belief that they’re not worthy, don’t deserve, or they hate the 1%, there’s a conflict. Right? Exactly. And that’s where you can use lucid dreaming to start to clean up that old program, that old belief that’s not working for you.

Robert Waggoner 

Exactly. And it’s so powerful when you see your neutral belief reflected back to you. The first time I developed this technique and saw it work, I cried. It was just so amazing to see this little neutral belief that I’ve gotten all energized, people reflecting it back to me without me saying anything or even doing anything. It’s truly profound.

Lorne Brown 

And that’s been the message I’m hearing from the conscious teachers that I’ve surrounded myself with and I’m interviewing is life is constantly reflecting back to you what’s going on in your inner world. And so if you don’t like what you see in the outer world, change your inner world. So it’s all inner world work, right? Inner work. And so it’s just data as in, remember I said notice except choose again as my pattern notice. Don’t take it personally when you get reflected back on something that you don’t like, rather than taking it personally, it’s just noticing where in me do I have a lack? Where in me do I not deserve that person who doesn’t respect me? Where do I not respect me? Everything’s reflected back. So that image, the example of I’m the most beautiful woman on that island, when she wasn’t feeling worthy or attractive, then that’s what she got reflected back, people not interested in. And when she changed that program, now she got reflected back. I like that. Right? I like that, and that’s what I’m hearing. It seems to be a common theme that don’t take things personally, and when things happen, take it as data and see where you can clean that up inside.

Robert Waggoner 

When you mentioned that, it reminded me that oftentimes in my workshops, I tell people in a lucid dream, if you meet an aggressive dream figure or a troubling dream figure, send it what it lacks. So one time I had this doberman pincher growling at me in this lucid dream, and I thought, what does it lack? And I sent it the kind of love and acceptance that I felt that it lacked, and all of a sudden it began to shrink and it turned into this little wiener dog, this little dachshund like I had when I was a child. And then I took it flying around. But in my daily encounters with people, if I meet someone who’s aggressive or angry or whatever, in my mind I try to send them what they lack. Is it acceptance? Is it love? Is it understanding? What is it? And oftentimes when you do that, you’ll see that suddenly they change and the reflection no longer is like that.

Lorne Brown 

And you had mentioned that you’re kind of always putting things out there. I consider it like wifi. And so again, some therapists, local therapists have said here that everybody wants the same thing to be seen, heard, understood, and loved. And so that sounds like what you’re doing. If people feel seen, feel heard, feel understood. By the way, that doesn’t mean you agree with them, right? It’s just you’re giving them what they need. Doesn’t mean you agree with what they’re saying, but you realize their behavior is acting a certain way because of what they’re lacking. So that’s beautiful. Robert, again, thank you very much. Check out his books that he has on Lucid Dreaming, and I hope to have you back on the show again in the future for some more stories and ideas.

Robert Waggoner 

Great. Thanks for your time.