Posts Tagged ‘lucid dreaming’
Friday, May 13th, 2011
Dream Interpretation… NOT an exact science. But there’s so much our minds are trying to do and tell us while we sleep, we can’t afford not to listen. Look at it as work. How well do you understand the issues you’re consciously and subconsciously dealing with? Your sleeping world(s) might just know more than you do.
Since my psychic twins’ books launched and their dream adventures become fan favorites, I’ve gotten a good bit email and questions about dream interpretation.Now first, a disclaimer. I’m not a dream scientist, but I do play one on TV… No, I’ve been studying and fascinated with dreams my whole life, and I’m fascinated with my own and others’ dream worlds. I’m happy to chat with anyone about what they’re remembering of what their sleeping minds explore, and about how to use and access even more of that valuable insight.
It’s hidden gold, what we don’t see until we turn the rest of the world off. This is the first of three Dream Theory posts about some of the ways that I look more deeply into my own and others’ dream memories.

Anna Faraday, in her 1970’s books, Dream Power and The Dream Game, pioneered much of modern dream work. She believed dreams have three potential meanings, on three different levels of understanding, that all should be explored.
Level 1, Looking Outward:Does the dream and its symbols or setting or actions tell you anything about the dreamer’s world? I’ve talked about this a good bit in Dream Theory and Psychic Realm blog posts and comments. If we don’t deal with external events while we’re awake, they (or some symbolic reflection of them) are likely to show up in our dreams. Voila! There you have the simplest explanation for the basis of my first to Legacy books.
The key? Looking outward from a dream, especially when the outward meaning is a direct one, can serve as a warning or a reminder. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, Dark Legacy, dream color, dream emotion, dream interpretation, dream programming, dream science, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, Legacy Series, lucid dreaming, Secert Legacy
Posted in Dream Theories, What About Everything Else? | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011
The emotion in our dreams is the key. Not what you see, or even what you remember when awake, but what you feel. Emotions are the common thread between the waking and the sleeping worlds. In my psychic fantasy novels, this is how scientists and psychics develop the brainwashing techniques that threaten to become global weapons. In real life, this is merely the power of our minds leading us through the work we need to do.

I’m on an emotional rant this week–most of my posts will touch on the psyche, I’ll just be coming at you from different directions. So be warned ;o)
Longing and disappointments and fear and hope and anxiety and excitement…and all of that is all of who we are, in our waking an sleeping worlds.
Think about it–what’s the one dream you can remember most? Why is that dream so easy for you to recall, when others have slipped away? Was it frightening? Special and supremely happy? Were you seeing someone again for the first time in a long time, or travelling somewhere meaningful, or facing your sworn enemy or struggling through your worst nightmare come true, etc.?
All of that is about the emotion still lingering, and bout how it was still scaring or thrilling you when you woke.
It’s been largely accepted by scientists that dreams are a method for us to process emotional information (among other things). Some go so far as to suggest you write a dream report immediately upon waking–and that you focus on feelings and emotions first, before getting to the lingering visible sights and symbols that remain.
The most common emotion experienced during a dream?
Fear.
Does this mean we’re being threatened by either the sleeping or the waking world. Not at all. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, Dark Legacy, dream color, dream emotion, dream programming, dream science, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, Legacy Series, lucid dreaming, Secert Legacy
Posted in Dream Theories, What About Everything Else? | 3 Comments »
Thursday, May 5th, 2011
I’m psyched (pun intended) to be guest blogging at SCIFIGUY today. I’m equally psyched to have Chris Keeslar joining us in Publishing Isn’t for Sissies here tomorrow. I’m getting to talk about a creative passion and a passionate colleague the last two days of this week. Excellent!

Here’s a bit of the scifiguy post to wet your appetite. Come out, come out, wherever you are and hang over there with me a bit today… Then PIFS with Chris and me tomorrow, before we all hang with the mom’s this weekend.
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Sci-fi/Fantasy…I’ve had more conversations about the term in the last few years than I did in my entire geeky, Trekkie youth. On KindleBoards, on fantasy forums, through GoodReads networks, in person etc. Everyone has an opinion. Some are purist. Some enjoy variety. But everyone who digs what’s now considered speculative fiction is searching for more of what they love, and there so much variety on the market there’s little chance of the genre boring you.
Coming from a romantic suspense background already makes me an odd duck in many circles, including my growing involvement with International Thriller Writers. Especially there, since my thrillers are more psychic fantasy than mystery/suspense.
Well, they’re contemporary fantasies with a strong scientific basis for my world building that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Three-fourths of the action in my latest release, Secret Legacy, takes place in dream sequences shared between the protagonist and the scientists and psychic warriors battling for control of her mind. Think of the movie Inception, and you’ll get an idea of how the lucid dreaming and shared dreaming science behind these books plays out. Though, let me just say that Dark Legacy was written and published long before the movie hit theaters ;o)…
Read more here!
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, Dark Legacy, dream color, dream emotion, dream programming, dream science, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, Legacy Series, lucid dreaming, Secert Legacy
Posted in Publishing Isn't for Sissies, What About Everything Else? | No Comments »
Monday, May 2nd, 2011
Since Secret Legacy’s out today (Yay!) and Dark Legacy’s a FREE EBOOK ALL WEEK, let’s get down and dirty about what makes this Psychic Fantasy series so different from other thrillers you’ve read. Yes, you’ll experience more of the dream theory you loved in Inception. But more than that, my psychic twins are being hunted and haunted by and eventually must stand and fight against covert government scientists who’re determined to turn their family’s Legacy of gifts into a direct-strike psychic weapon. How? Well, that’s the really cool part!

Long before Inception hit theaters, I turned my life-long fasciantion with dreams and the very real possiblity that lucid dreaming can be a learned technique into the beginning of a series of mainstream novels built around psychic talents. Of course I’ll write about other gifts, but the first two Legacy books were destined to spook me and everyone who read them about the potential and power of dreams.
What if dreams could be harnessed and programmed and ultimately harvested, triggered at exact moment in which they could do the most harm? What if psychics could train us through our dreams, unbeknownst to our conscious minds, to behave in uncharacteristic ways in our waking lives? What if, once that training was triggered in say a daydream state, there was nothing we could do to stop ourselves from carrying out our programming?
How exactly are the Temple Twins’ minds and psychic talents being manipulated to accomplish this? In case you haven’t had the chance to read Dark Legacy yet, let me catch you up:
- Sarah and Maddie Temple are powerful empaths.
- More than merely feeling others’ emotions, they can take on all the emotions of that person, to the point of taking over the person’s subconscious and through it their reactions/actions to the world around them. As their powers have grown over the years, they’ve unknowingly developed the ability to project emotion and associated behavior/perception as well as receive it.
- Pair that with advanced training in mind and body modeling using lucid dreaming techniques, and you’ve got a psychic who can design, embed, and target dream realities (which aren’t remembered by the “host” mind once it wakes) that prepare the dreamer to perform waking tasks when triggered.
(more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, Dark Legacy, dream color, dream emotion, dream programming, dream science, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, Legacy Series, lucid dreaming, Secert Legacy
Posted in What About Everything Else? | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
Our minds deal with powerful emotions as we dream. Or is it that our lives play out the realities our dreams feed? And is all of this just “every day speak” for a psychic connection we don’t consciously accept?
Think about it, if you accept my premise–which is supported many dream scientists and those who immerse themselves daily in the fringe science and parapsychology that my Legacy series is based on. Just like Sarah in Secret Legacy (well, not just like her, because we’re not full-on, sometimes psychotic psychics so powerful we’re seen as a threat to national security ;o), when our minds are in turmoil, they respond by trying to relieve the pressure of that turbulent state. How do they do that without interrupting the day-to-day living that keeps us going? Dreams.

When negative emotions and moods surge, our dreams are an outlet we should embrace. Subconsciously at first, until you master some of the lucid dreaming techniques we’ve discussed, your dreams allow you to surrender to what you fear or resist in the everyday. They give you a stage on which to work through conflict, and they equip you with the tools you need face a looming crisis in your waking life.
It’s a type of roll playing that’s more intellectual than psychic. Well, okay, it, takes on a sinister roll for Sarah Temple in Secret Legacy, when her gifts grow so powerful she and those she loves and the little girl she’s searching for could actually die as the result of the toxic dreams government scientists are inflicting on her mind. But for us, not so much. For us, it’s how many scientists are beginning to believe our psychological minds work.
So, relax when you realize you’re having emotional, vivid dreams that are challenging and slightly scary. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, Dark Legacy, dream color, dream emotion, dream programming, dream science, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, Legacy Series, lucid dreaming, Secert Legacy
Posted in Dream Theories | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
What do you dream? How much do you know about what you know, when you’re dreaming? And if you know…does that mean you’re still really dreaming?
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t, on a regular basis, conscious on some level when I was dreaming. Maybe it’s because all my life my imagination has crossed easily from the not-quite-there into my reality and back again. Maybe it’s that sometimes my dreams seemed more real than my awake–like my novels do when I’m heavy into plotting and drafting and revising them. Maybe it’s just that when I was little and began learning how to see the world, I was too young to know that seeing that way wasn’t normal. That everyone doesn’t so enthusiastically embrace the same escape from the here and now.

I’ve always remembered flashes of dreams, some more than others. And the ones I could remember, I’ve at times found myself slipping back into again and again.
Cool?
Odd?
Either way, that’s not really lucid dreaming. That’s not bringing conscious intention into a dream, the way my psychics do in the first two books of my Legacy Series.
It’s nowhere near the techniques dream scientists like the Stephen LaBerge, Ph. D. have developed (using relaxation and autosuggestion and hypnosis) to target the mind to be aware and focused on predetermined concepts, and then to empower the mind to remember what has been dreamed. If you’re truly intent on knowing more about your dream world and interacting more with that reflection of your waking life, I highly recommend checking out his book, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming.
Of course I took creative license with the science behind the world building I did for Secret Legacy and Dark Legacy, creating their Psychic Realm. I had to, to solve some of the trickier challenges I faced with the dream modeling my characters do (targeting and projecting dreams). Otherwise, I’d have had to get too technical explaining the science everything was based on.
But I was able to work in some of the really cool stuff I learned along the way as I researched lucid dream science.
Things like:
Choosing that the projected dreams would begin as DILD (Dream Induced Lucid Dreams). And then as the Center’s fictitious Dream Weaver program progressed the dream “host” whose mind was being targeted would be programmed to perform behavior in a daydream state–a variation of WILD (Wake Initiated Lucid Dreams) that I took creative license with. Both terms, WILD and DILD, are based in scientific reality, then I let my imagination take a stroll while not getting too technical within the boundaries of my fictional world–though setting up the basics in Dark Legacy without losing the reader was definitely a challenge.
Playing with the basic principles of muscular paralysis, sensory stimuli blockage and activation of the key areas of the brain while dreaming in REM state: the fact that you shouldn’t be able to move while dreaming that you’re falling or whatever; that what’s happening around you when you sleep shouldn’t be breaking through to a conscious state; and that you should break free of the dreaming world’s model once you leave REM state. But, of course we all know people who sleep walk, we’ve probably all had something from our environment bleed through into a dream, and who hasn’t jerked himself from a dream a time or two, limbs flailing, or woken suddenly and been unable to move for a few terrifying seconds (something known as sleep paralysis, where your mind is on the verge of REM sleep and ripped away)? I had fun with all of these, doing my own thing with real scientific concepts. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, Dark Legacy, dream color, dream emotion, dream programming, dream science, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, Legacy Series, lucid dreaming, Secert Legacy
Posted in Dream Theories | 3 Comments »
Thursday, April 14th, 2011
Dreams are windows into the unconscious mind–into the knowledge within. Sharing that wisdom and knowledge, shared dreaming, is a breathless connection few have experienced. But there are studies that tell us that people who are close enough to one another and share a deep enough bond can indeed find themselves linked to one another’s dream patterns.
We’ve talked before that dreams communicate with us and the waking world through emotions. Waves of feelings feed the dreams and flow back into our lives from them. These same emotions speak to others in our waking lives. When things are particularly challenging and chaotic or amazing and wonderful, those close to us share part of our experience, as feelings surge through us and our lives. So it’s no so far fetched to imageine that someone who understands us deeply (a close sibling, a mate, a nurturing parent) might at times carry something of our emotional patterns into their own dream states.

Taking it one step further, let’s assume that you discuss some of the images you see in the dreams you remember with those who wonder what’s troubling you, or perhaps they’re as excited as you are by something wonderful that’s occurring in your life. Since our dream symbols and settings are touchstones that often reflect a portion of our everyday reality, those images will seem as familiar to those close to us as the emotional states that drive them. Making it possible, when you think about it, that some of those same images might become shared experiences with others dreaming alongside our lives.
Pretty reasonable, right? You know me better than that.
My psychic twins in Dark Legacy and Secret Legacy don’t just compare notes and realize they’re seeing and feeling some of the same things when they sleep. They’re often driving each other’s demented dreams, and when they’re giving each other a break, someone else even more demented is pushing their sleeping minds to the brink of insanity. Oh, and their magical family legacy gives them the ability to channel theirs and others emotions, and those feelings give Sarah and Maddie Temple access to others unconscious minds through their dreams, both sleeping and day dreams. Enter the government scientists determined to turn the Temples gifts into direct-strike psychic weapons that can be remote programmed and triggered at will, with the dreamer never knowing their mind has become a host to another…
So, what’s up with that? Surely something like that is total make believe.
Except there are dream scientists like Montague Ullman working in laboratories to understand the mind’s ability to dream share. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, fantasy author, Legacy Series, lucid dreaming, precognition, psychic, Psychic Realm, psychokinesis, shared dreams
Posted in What About Everything Else? | 2 Comments »
Monday, April 11th, 2011
Can we impact our waking worlds through dreams? Does being conscious while we sleep make us more aware when we wake? Does what we imagine challenge what is real? According to lucid dreaming concepts–yes. Dream stories reflect our waking emotions and hopes and fears. Embracing our fantasies inspires us to resolve our real-world challenges. It’s all connected. It’s all “truth.” It’s all us.
In Secret Legacy and Dark Legacy, I take this concept to the extreme. I send psychics into unsuspecting innocents minds to program and test dream behavior the sleeper is unaware is taking place, laying the seeds for homicidal daydreams to later be remote-triggered, making the “host” mind a walking, untracable time bomb.

Not so uplifting a concept, but it was a totally cool variation to write ;o) And in both books, Sarah and Maddie Temple’s dream work is not only personal, but spinning out of control. They can’t save their waking minds, their legacy, or an innocent child whose gifts are being manipulated by government scientists, until Sarah confronts and conquers the deadly dream images she’s run from since she was a little girl.
Luckily, the challenges we face are less dire, but there’s still power in our dreams. There’s power in being aware and in control of our sleeping minds’ journeys and messages. Realistic or normal or fantastical, there’s the potential for great revelations waiting for us in our sleeping worlds. Plugging into our dreams more lucidly can be exhilarating.
I’m one of those people who realized early in life that I could be conscious in dreams. There were times, even as a child, when I knew I was thinking and feeling in an altered, virtual place that was only a reflection of my waking life, and all the while I somehow knew I was asleep.It started out as fun. Freeing. There was a dreamlike quality to everything, and for a girl with a vivid, overactive imagination, what could be better!
Then, around the time I was in college and my computer programming and math classes kept me up late most nights with advanced algorithms and problem sets to puzzle through, I realized that my dreams were working overtime for me even after my conscious mind turned off.I’d fall asleep with an unsolved problem on my mind, and too often to be a coincidence would wake the next morning with the next piece of the puzzle waiting for me.

Not every time, and at this point I was too tired and over scheduled to be aware of what my mind was doing. I didn’t remember the dreams, but that part wasn’t important. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, Dark Legacy, dream color, dream emotion, dream programming, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, Legacy Series, lucid dreaming, Secert Legacy
Posted in Dream Theories | 2 Comments »
Monday, April 4th, 2011
Do we dream in color? Can the colors in our dreams function like an internal mood ring? My research writing my new sci-fi / fantasy Secret Legacy tells me so. So much so, that color becomes an important clue to revealing the Temple Legacy’s volatile, potentially deadly secrets. Because color reveals mood in our sleeping worlds.
Whether you remember them or not, most agree that we see our dreaming realities like we do our waking ones–in color. So why do so many people believe they only see things in black and white while they sleep? Since dream images fade quickly, unless we work on remembering them as quickly after waking as possible, the colors just as easily disappear with them. Also, how often do we actually stop and notice color in our daily lives? How aware are we of the hues in our environment while we’re awake? The answer tends to be “not often” for most people. Why would our dreaming awareness of color be any different?

Plus, there’s the emotional tie between dream colors and our awareness of a sleeping vision’s meaning. Remember from past Dream Theories posts that emotion is the single, strongest, most universal tie between a dream and the dreamer’s reality. Our feelings and emotional reactions to what we’re seeing are often our only “real world” connection to the crazy stuff our minds obsess about while we’re asleep.
When I encourage people to work on techniques that allow for more lucid dreaming, I always start with making you more aware of your feelings before you sleep, while you’re dreaming, and immediately after you wake. Many people are uncomfortable at first, connecting with the strong emotion that feeds the creation of our sleeping realities, but making the conscious decision to do it can be an exciting step toward understanding what our dreams are trying to tell us. Color works the same. Color is your mind’s way of reflecting emotion and mood within a dream. Which in turn can mirror the emotion and mood of our waking reality, and how we feel about things we need to do to make our lives better. Things we often avoid or resist or are too worried or scared to attempt.
Think about it. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, Dark Legacy, dream color, dream emotion, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, Legacy Series, lucid dreaming, Secert Legacy
Posted in Dream Theories | 1 Comment »
Friday, March 25th, 2011
It’s easy to forget our feelings. In fact, many of us prefer it. Except… Our dreams tend to take their own path when we sleep, and often they time travel–as my psychic twins experience all over again in Secret Legacy. Things that we’ve forgotten we’ve thought or felt in the past come back to us in our dreams. Something in life turns our mind back, and our sleeping world follows. There’s something we haven’t dealt with, something we must feel from that time.

In Dark Legacy, yesterday dreams were how one twin (the psychotic one ;o) finds her sister again and begs for her help. You know, while she’s trying to kill her and everyone she feels has abandoned her to her terrifying gifts and the government scientists experimenting on them. In Book 2, Secret Legacy, now that Sarah Temple’s free of her mad scientists and her mind is healing (or so she thinks), dreams from the past come for her again–only this time under someone else’s control. Discovering who’s using a secret child to send Sarah to the brink of madness once more becomes an odyssey in facing the past and the emotions and the near childhood breakdown she’s forgotten all these years is the only way she’ll save herself and her twin, the child whose amazing mind is being weaponized, and every dreamer that could become the next dream target.
Lucky for us, others aren’t driving what we remember in dreams (at least, most of the time they’re not). Unlucky for us, we don’t have a brotherhood of watchers helping us decode the symbols and images, the clues, our sleeping minds leave to help us figure out what we need to deal with so we can see more clearly how our past is forming our future.
Our dreams are, more often than not, showing us what’s happening in our subconscious minds when we’re awake. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, Dark Legacy, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, Inception, Legacy Series, lucid dreaming, parapsychology, precognition, psychic, psychic children, Psychic Realm, psychokinesis, Secert Legacy
Posted in Dream Theories | 8 Comments »