ROBERT WAGGONER

LUCID DREAMING: GATEWAY TO THE INNER SELF

Dreams Gave Me the First Hint of My Inner Author

For this blog tour I was asked to answer four questions about dreaming and writing.  Check out the questions and my responses below:

What Am I Working On Now? 

Recently co-author, Caroline McCready and I completed a manuscript for a new book on lucid dreaming, which has been accepted for publication (Conari Press) and release at the end of 2014.  See here for details or to pre-order a copy. pre-order a book.  As you can see, this book, Lucid Dreaming: Plain and Simple, focuses on helping beginning and intermediate lucid dreamers understand how to lucid dream and manipulate within the vastness of dreaming.  We’re very excited about it!

Also, I worked with a Finnish co-author, Anna Riihimaki, to complete the first lucid dreaming book in Finnish, which will be published in the fall of 2014 by the Finnish publisher, Gummerus.  Anna did an excellent job in making this book accessible to all Finns.

Finally I am planning a third book for advanced lucid dreamers to explore some of the deeper aspects of lucid dreaming, which can literally transform your view of reality.

As always, I continue to co-edit the free, on-line magazine, Lucid Dreaming Experience, with co-editor Lucy Gillis, and do various workshops in person and on-line with GlideWing.

How Does My Writing Process Work?

If you can imagine this, first I try to clarify my intent about the book.  Why am I writing this?  Why bother?

Answering that question can remove all sorts of obstacles and make writing so much easier, fun and clear.

When I worked on my first book, I literally spent months looking at a blank sheet of paper before I had a dream in which a Voice suggested, “Just start writing.”  As I began to write, I realized that I needed to understand my intent.  I wrestled with this in my mind, and finally it came to me: this first book, for me at least, was my song of love to the world.

Once I understood that my intent was to express my love for this world through helping others see the depth and potential in lucid dreams, then things went very smoothly.  What aligned with that intent was included; what did not, fell to the side.

A few years ago I was in London giving talks and a workshop on lucid dreaming.  One evening while out with others, a young guy from Italy told me, “What I like about your book is that it has a lot of love.”  He told me that reading it, he could feel the love I have for lucid dreaming and the reader. 

How Does My Work Differ From Others In The Genre?

Each year new writers appear in the field of lucid dreaming, and I sincerely wish them the best, since there are 7.2 billion people to educate about lucid dreaming.  It’s a very big pie! 

My work differs often in the depth of perspective.  Since I taught myself how to lucid dream in 1975 (before lucid dreaming was scientifically validated), I learned the ‘lessons of lucidity’ very deeply and through personal experiments.  I felt blown away when I realized other pioneering lucid dreamers had learnt similar lessons, since it suggested lucid dreaming and the psyche had common features.  

Yet even then, the depth of lucid dreaming seems so profound that it takes time to comprehend it, and put it into words.  I recall hearing a lovely lucid dream pioneer, Fariba Bogzaran, say that it took her 25 years to grasp lucid dreaming.  Twenty-five years!  That seems the kind of perspective that most of us need to write thoughtfully about lucid dreaming.

Thankfully I had 30 years of lucid dreaming experience before I started writing J.  The value showed in the first Amazon reviews of my book in which people with many hundreds of lucid dreams and decades of lucid dream experience wrote that my book was the first one to give ‘words’ to the depth of lucid dreaming.  To hear experienced lucid dreamers tell me that I had given words to what they too had discovered made me feel that this ‘song of love’ would touch millions.

Why Do I Write What I Do?

It’s what I know.  It’s what I care about.

On one level it seems completely about lucid dreaming, but on other levels, it covers the beauty of experience, the beauty of awareness, and on the deepest levels, it goes to the realm of the inter-connected Oneness. 

I write about this, since it contains extraordinary transformational potential.  Not only for me or even for you, but for the world – for science, for culture, for society, for everything.  To ‘wake up’ within the dream has profound implications that touch all aspects of life and living.

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My deep thanks to author and blogger, Tzivia Gover at www.TziviaGover.com  and http://www.thirdhousemoon.com who I believe floated this idea of the Blog Tour.  She has a wonderful blog, so please check it out.

I also need to thank author and blogger, Justina Lasley at www.DreamSynergy.org for the offer to be the next stop following her Blog Tour report.  Justina and Tzivia have both been big supporters and done wonderful work in the field of dreaming.  Learn more about Justina’s DreamSynergy™ process, certification program and books at the website above and also on twitter and facebook, accounts.

I hope to send this Tour to Sheila Asato next.  Sheila is a wonderful artist, dreamer, blogger, who has a deep and profound respect for the Japanese perspective after living there for many years.   Sheila has developed an award winning, Healing Collage process for dreamwork and assists various medical providers in the Twin Cities with using dreams to promote healing.

pre-order a copy.

You can get a preview of Sheila Asato and her work at www.monkeybridgearts.wordpress.com/about/

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Thanks for taking the time to read about me and my thoughts on lucid dreaming and the writing process.  You can check out my first book, Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, at www.lucidadvice.com and sign up for our free magazine, Lucid Dreaming Experience at www.LucidDreamMagazine.com

Also, you can follow me on Twitter at #dreambob  or https://twitter.com/dreambob