Lucid,Dreaming,personal,develo DIY Lucid Dreaming a personal development perspective

When starting a new work at home business it is very easy to become consumed by it. We spend so much time trying to get the business up and running that we may end up becoming burned out and lose our motivation. There is so much to learn and Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in

Personal growth or development and self help as terms do not seemto hold the ‘spirit’ of what is truly involved close to heart. Maybe selfimprovement as phrase is a bit softer on the tongue but still does not capturethe true essence required. Self help and self improvement is many things tomany people but in essence looks to “qualityof life” as an assessable yardstick by which to develop, measure andimprove personal performance and awareness. Happiness& PurposeNow quality of life, again, can be many things to many people. Butlets just say for those of us sitting in front of a screen reading thiscommentary probably looks more to the elements around happiness and the meaningof life rather than the quality or quantity of the food, clothes or shelter inour lives. Now you may ask what has this got to do with Lucid Dreaming, well the answer is not quite yet forthcoming, but pleasebear with me a bit longer.Wikipedia reflects on happiness as follows:“Happiness is a mental state ofwell-being characterized by positive emotions ranging from contentment tointense joy.  A variety of biological,psychological, religious, and philosophical approaches have striven to definehappiness and identify its sources.”I personally would replace the word religious with spiritualto mean inclusive of religious. Not everyone adheres to a specific spiritualreligious traditions but everyone certainly has spiritual needs and a soul thatneeds to be fed whether they know that or not. This is true in the same way ahealthy body and mind is required if interested in longevity. Regardless, lookingat any of these areas of happiness andits development its clear that the mind is a key element in each.If the gurus are correct and self improvement looks to increasedself-awareness and self-knowledge to developing strengths and talents, themind’s role needs to be emphasized more than stated above. Then of course thescientist and experts on the brain suggests we are only using 0.0001% or is it 0.1%or is it 10% of our brains (sorry, details is not my biggest strength; I’vealways wondered how they calculated that figure anyway). The point being, alsoconsidering the unused potential of our ‘pips’ it is staggering to consider towhat level of happiness or contentment we could possibly rise using the mindonly if we knew how.Looking at meaning itseasy to get totally lost in the significance of it when trying to understandthe purpose of one’s existence. Mankind has made this a central theme forthousand of years. Lets just say most would agree that a person who strugglesto understand the meaning of life or lacks purpose at times in their lives isakin to a yacht traveling out in the oceans without a rudder.  If the yacht was placed in the middle of theIndian ocean it probably will be fine for awhile but it certainly is not asustainable approach. Most personal development gurus or anyone who is unsure of theirpurpose but actually makes the effort to find answers will surely reach a stagewhere they realize they have to exercise mental effort, thought and reflectionto guide them through this process. Again the mind features very prominently.You may ask again what does this have to do with Lucid Dreaming. Well we are getting closer to this answer but weare not quite there yet.As obvious as it sound, if we all agree that the mind is centralto personal growth we need to try and understand, even at the most simplisticlevel, how our minds work and how it can be used to progress our lives. Letsface it, if you have an amazing tool but you do not know how it works, you arenot going to go far.Power of theSubconscious Mind(I would highly recommendlearning more about this in detailed)In a nutshell  we use our consciousmind to program our subconscious mind. Once consciously programmed in our subconsciouswe act out those programs automatically without “thinking” about it. Regardlessif they are good or bad. Lets say you are influenced as young teenager by your environmentto think consciously that smoking is cool. You start smoking and becomesubconsciously programed to “think” it is acceptable for you to smoke andcontinue for years without “thinking” about it. While you keep on smoking,driven by your subconscious program that “believes” it is fine to smoke,although we consciously know its not good for you.So how is it possible for us to keep on doing something we know isbad for us? Why do our minds work in such a manner? The answer lies in the design of our minds. To think consciouslyabout something takes a lot more time, energy and effort than to think aboutsomething unconsciously. Our subconscious mind is not designed to think stuffthrough properly or to judge, it just acts out based on its already consciouslyapproved programme. This feature is crucial for survival, lots of programs likethe “keep the heart pumping program” and millions others will overload ourconscious mind because they are required to run constantly. Also this featureserves to feed the learning process.Once you learn something you do not need to think about it consciously anymore.Another very important design feature of our subconscious mind tobe aware about is the fact that our subconscious mind knows everything!Everything you have ever read, seen heard, experienced etc. is stored somewheredeep within. Yes all that knowledge is in there and is available for you toaccess. Many gurus who write books about the power of the subconscious mindtalk about this infinite intelligence of the subconscious. The more spirituallyinclined gurus also believe the subconscious mind is the gateway to thecollective consciousness as well as to our Devine Creator.Now the question becomes, how does one reprogramed yoursubconscious mind to effect personal growth and how does one access this incrediblewisdom within. The answers to these question can kick off a whole new life’sjourney and in my view can shed some light on one’s purpose and is thefoundation for personal growth.So why is it so important to try and understand this? Firstly ifyou want to grow personally regardless at what area in your life spiritually,physically (such as in the quality at which you practice a sports discipline),emotionally, psychologically, changing habit, learning new skills orcultivating a talent and many more, you need to realize that if you want tochange behaviour or improve you need to figure out how you reprogram yoursubconscious mind through conscious effort. Secondly, although it is crucial to learn from our society andthat you need to go out there and search for answer from experienced people,know that you have many answers available yourself, you just need to learn howto access it. This involves a longer life’s journey and the practice ofconsciousness where you become aware of how you feel and what you think all thetime and the realization that you actually have full control over this becausethis is how you are motivated and that you are ultimately responsible for yourthoughts and feelings. You are what you think! If you realize and accept that you are one hundred percentresponsible for your own thoughts and feelings (programed in your subconscious)and that these thoughts and feelings effectively shape your reality because youbelieve them to be true, you are able to change your reality if you reprogramyour subconscious mind with “new” thought and feelings aligned with the realityyou want to create or new position you want to grow into.Now how do I go about using this new realization.LucidDreamingThere are many methods or ‘tools’ one can use for personalgrowth  and creating awareness(conditioning your subconscious mind) such as:meditationpersonal reflectionself studylucid dreamingreligious guidancestudying expert opinions (self help books)therapycoachingexperiencespiritual growthall of which are worth exploring. The rest of this writing willlook at lucid dreaming (yes! at last, good on you for making it to here) The link between the subconscious mind and dreaming has beenexplored only recently. Sigmund Freud probably was the first to look at therole of the subconscious mind in dreams and explored the unconscious elementsthat drives our motivation. Now imagine being able to get a clear view of oursubconscious mind and understand beter how and what motivates each of us in ourunique ways. You might find that there are unknown , to your consciousness, elementsthat are actually motivating you counter to what you are trying to achieveconsciously. I also like to refer to them as mental blocks. A very frustrated smoker trying to stop does not necessary realizethat he subconsciously believes that it is fine to smoke and that its thereason why he can not actually get himself to stop consciously. Not justbecause of the physical addiction. If he does realize this he then has discovereda mental block and if he also realizes how powerful the subconscious mind is hemay be beter prepared mentally to change this habit by working on releasing theblock.Not sure if you know what lucid dreaming is and or how to lucid dream but theability to be dream aware while dreaming with the ability to control yourdreams is a magnificent gift than could be used to access your subconsciousmind. Lucid Dreaming can also be used to help recondition yourself as required.It may sound like a brave new way to ago about it, but as Einsteinsaid ”You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it.You must learn to see the world anew” How is that for a powerful problemsolving ethic.Lets say you have a personal development goal to become amotivational speaker but have a fear of speaking in front of people. Imagineyou can create a save place where you can motivate yourself and practice role-playingas much as you need to to overcome this challenge. In a similar way luciddreaming can give you the ability to deal with any such fears.What if you need to change your feelings and thoughts around howyou few humanity and need to cultivate a more positive view, because you mayhave realized it is keeping you back in other areas in your life. You couldcreate a new dream character, Nelson Mandela and then have an insightfuldiscussion with him about how he was motivated and driven to be so forgivingand the ultimate humanitarian after everything that was done to him. What if you could create a dream character that represent yoursubconscious mind and ask him or her:why do I get so frustrated with my wife or children or,is there something specifically you think I should know about whatis keeping me back in achieving my goals or,why do I get so unhappy or frustrated when I am in certainsituationRemember after all your dreams are created by yourself so allthese techniques is an attempt to learn more about yourself to help you figureout what you need to change.This gift can be use in so many different ways. Your creativeimagination is the only thing that will keep you back, but then lucid dreamingcould be used to help you be more creative………….