Lucid Dreaming – Waking up within the dream

Charlie Morley 0:00

So I became lucid and I caught up on is the nature of compassion or the essence of compassion. And then suddenly, this hand like the hand of God came down through the dream and picked me up by my legs, and I went through the sky, and then above the sky through the universe, and then I realized it was taking me to this space beyond time. And then in this space beyond time, this scroll appeared. And on the scroll, it clearly said, Charlie Morley certificate of lovability, and then it listed in reverse order, every kind thing or compassionate thing I had ever done, you know, the universe is is watching every living being has this list, that every kind of thing they've ever done has been noted by the universe.

Jannecke Øinæs 0:46

Hello, Charlie, a warm welcome back to the show.

Charlie Morley 0:49

Thank you. Great to be here.

Jannecke Øinæs 0:51

I'm really looking forward to our conversation. Because I interviewed you many, many years ago, it was the beginning of my career or journey on wisdom from north. And I think also, you had been just been starting doing what you're doing. And you are a lucid dreamer, teacher, lucid dreaming teacher. And we met each other I think was last year at this conference. Mindvalley. And I heard this two hour talk with you on lucid dreaming, and I got so inspired, and went home and practice. And I got a lucid dream that night. And I just wanted to share this information. And I'm really grateful that you're here to share more about what lucid dreaming is today. Great. So I'm curious, before we dive into the details of it, how did you get into this in the first place?

Charlie Morley 1:42

I was into dreaming from a really young from, I mean, I'm my mom said I used to tell her my dream since I was like five years old. I mean, I have no no proof of that. I do remember telling her dreams when I was young. But the first, that kind of youngest memory I had that is proved is when I was 11. For my 12th birthday, I asked for this thing called a nova dreamer, which is like an electronic sleep mask, which you strapped to your face. And it's got a computer that recognizes rapid eye movement. And when it sees rapid eye movement, it flashes these red lights, which are bright enough to penetrate your eyelids but not bright enough to wake you up. So they say. And I saw this advertised in this little gadget thing in the newspaper. And I remember saying to my dad, I know what I want for my birthday. I want this mobile dream. I never got it. But I know that at 11 years old, I knew what lucid dreaming was. And I wanted to have more of them. And at this mask so that I could have more. So I guess that means I was already having lucid dreams then. But the time when I kind of taught myself to do it was as a teenager. So I was like 15 years old. And as many young people at that age, I was getting interested in consciousness and what happens with the mind and psychedelics and smoking weed. And you know, Buddhism seemed cool, but it had too many rules. So I kind of put that on a shelf for a little bit. But lucid dreaming, I was like, ah, that thing I used to do as a kid. So I got these books, I taught myself how to do it, because it is a learnable skill. And it's it's probably the first takeaway for your audience. It's a learnable skill. It comes factory installed. Children do it naturally. So they had a study from Harvard, and a study from a university in the UK actually, on children that basically concluded that lucid dreaming is frequent among children, ages six to 16. So it comes factory installed. But it's also something you can relearn or remember, as an adult. So I got these books, I taught myself how to do it, I started having loads of lucid dreams. And I wasn't doing anything spiritual. I was just using it for literally sex and skateboarding. It sounds like a metaphor, but I'm not being metaphorical. That's literally what I spent my lucid dreams doing. And then later, a few years later, that Buddhism thing popped up again. But this time, I had more discipline. So I thought I'm ready for some of those rules. And then I formally became a Buddhist at 19. And then I started learning the Buddhist lucid dreaming stuff, because there's a whole tradition, 1000 year old tradition in Tibetan Buddhism of lucid dreaming on the spiritual path. So then when I met that, then stuff really started to happen.

Jannecke Øinæs 4:09

I've been a bit of a fan of you because I discovered lucid dreaming in 2006. I went to this course I did this techniques, like you just said, this is a learnable skill. And I never thought that was possible. I thought it was for the chosen ones. learn the skills, and I managed to lucid dream. And then I put it aside for many years until I met you again last year and I started lucid dreaming again. And Charlie, I'm sure many who are watching or somewhere watching are wondering what are they talking about? So let's just do the basics first. What is lucid dreaming?

Charlie Morley 4:45

Yeah, so a lucid dream is any dream where you know that you're dreaming as the dream is happening without waking up. So if you've ever had a dream where you're in the dream are totally asleep, but in the dream you go oh wow, this is all a dream. And then you can choose what to do I can choose the Fly, I can choose to, you know, have sex with movie stars, you do all that stuff first if you like. But then you realize, Wow, I'm inside my mind. So this is like the state that a hypnotherapist would bring me into, I'm conscious within the unconscious mind. I'm literally inside a virtual reality simulation in my own psychology. So you can now do serious work, you can do all the work you can do through hypnotherapy, you can do through lucid dreaming, but in many cases actually works a bit deeper, simply because you can't get more unconscious than asleep. So a lucid dream is any dream where you know that you're dreaming as the dream is happening. What is it not, it's not just a really vivid dream, though, sometimes people are like, I have really lucid dreams. And when use really is kind of like, you know, isn't that an adjective? Dyslexia, you know, if you use it in that way, the descriptor, I kind of know, they're probably talking about vivid dreaming, you know, it's not just a vivid dream. It's not a dream, where you see future events, and they come true, although that can happen in lucid dreams. And it's not an out of body experience. It's simply any dream, where in the dream, you go, Wow, I'm dreaming. And many people of your listeners, your viewers will have had that, and many won't. And for those who haven't had that, or don't remember having it, I'd ask them, have they ever had a nightmare, where in the nightmare they've gone? I've got to wake up. Because if you have that was a lucid dream, too. Because the moment you acknowledge, oh, there's somewhere to wake up to, you had indirectly acknowledged Well, then I'm asleep. And of course, that's missing a real gift. Because if you wake yourself from a nightmare, the unintegrated trauma that caused the nightmare remains an integrated, and that's why our nightmares recur. Whereas if you can become lucid in the nightmare, oh, I've got to wake up, wait, no, I don't go to wake up. I've got to stay in here and witness this nightmare, then the act of witnessing in the same way, as a therapist in the waking state says, Tell me what happened. And then by speaking it out loud and witnessing it from the point of safety of the therapy that dyad trauma could be integrated. So two in a lucid dream. So if you do ever get lucid and the nightmares don't wake up, just stay there and witness. Okay, I'm safe. I'm not really back in this nightmarish situation. I'm simply dreaming it. I'm just witness.

Jannecke Øinæs 7:17

Well, that's very interesting that you're saying and it was actually one of my questions. What about nightmares, because I've had all sorts of, or not all sorts of but many different lucid dreams. And in the beginning, there were a lot of wonderful experiences, like I experienced, experienced realities that I haven't experienced here that were much more magnificent than I've ever experienced. But then I also had some so called negative experiences, which frightened me a bit. And then I got so fearful, and I lost some inspiration to do it again. And again, because I sort of couldn't get past that. And there would be some entities or energies that was come up and try to distract me. So could you take us a little bit through how this can be experienced? Because it can be quite not a shocking experience, but an extraordinary experience to be loosened for the first time. And you can meet anything, but what you're saying is that don't be afraid. Observe whatever is coming.

Charlie Morley 8:29

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you use the term negative to describe the dreams, I would ask you to reframe it and say, Actually, the dreams are you had these amazing experiences, that was the warmup. The real work happened in those, those seemingly negative dreams, because that's where the work happened. You know, if I get lucid in a dream, let's say I'm having a dream, I'm sunbathing on the beach, and then my dead grandma comes out the water and I go, Oh, wait, I'm dreaming. And then I become lucid, and the spectrum sunbathing. It's kind of a cool, lucid dream. And wow, the beach is so real, I can feel the sound. This is so cool. But there's not a lot happening. I'm not integrating a lot. I'm not developing a lot. Whereas if I get lucid in like a zombie apocalypse, or if I get lucid in this nightmare, where like a murderer is coming to get me and then I realize I'm dreaming. That's the gold. Because what is that murderer? Well, everything in the dream is me or 99% of everything. The dream is me. So then what is that murderer? Well, it's a murderous part of me. It's a wounded part of me. It's a part that is so traumatized from something that happened in my past, that it is now using violence and aggression against itself. So suddenly, in that lucid dream, where you're being chased by a murderer, you can do more in one lucid dream than hundreds of hours of therapy. Because if you see that, that murder is not an external energy, it is a murderous because of trauma, traumatized parts of yourself and you turn on that murderous aspect and embrace it with love. Don't fight it, don't push it away, but show it love. Then you can do powerful integrative work. I realized because I use the 99% Comment, I'm now gonna have to mention what the other one was. So this may be, you know, these percentiles, I'm using kind of flippantly, but what I'm saying is the vast majority, almost everything in a lucid dream is your mind. In the outer body experience, those percentages are flipped in a genuine out of body experience. It's 99%, not your mind, you know, but a lucid dream you're in here, you're not out there. So it is your psychology. Most of it. However, there is a crucial 1%, maybe it's 1%, maybe it's 10%, who knows, but a small, very, very much, a minority percentile, which might not be you, and that might be made up of aspects of the collective unconscious, it might be made up of aspects of, of your ancestors, your blood and bone ancestors, it might be made up of the aspects of enlightened beings who have the ability to enter your dreams. So the next thing comes up well, what if I'm in one of those nightmares? And this big like devil appears? Or Satan? And what if it's actually say, what if it is the collective unconscious archetype of Satan, it's in my dream, then I can't hug it. Surely, no, the same rule applies. If you're not one in a gazillion chance, you're in a lucid dream. And actually, some kind of presence of evil, if you want to call it that, of course, it's not it's just trauma, there is no evil, or that is the Buddhist view, there is no evil, there's simply traumatized energy that that plays out in in ways that are very disruptive. But let's say that you were lucky enough to be in a lucid dream. And actually, you did meet this presence of evil in the lucid dream, then God, if you try and fight that thing, you're in a very difficult situation. But if you use love the most powerful energy in the universe, you could do transformative work. I mean, imagine if you were able to send love and hug the archetypal shadow the archetypal Satan, in your lucid dream, you might wake up to world peace. So even in that case, the same rules apply. Now, I've been teaching this stuff for like 15 years, right using the same example. But just last year, or maybe the year before. My own Buddhist teacher, I managed to get him to come and talk to a group. In this online course, I was doing called Super lucidity with like, advanced lucid dreaming course. And he got asked this question, and as it came up, I felt myself like blushing like, oh, shit, I hope he says the same answer. Because what if he completely contradicts me? And I've been telling people? What if he goes, you know, never hug it and it's evil. And he got her to repeat the question, you went. So you're in the dream, and you're definitely sure it's not your mind. It is that tiny, tiny possibility that it is some archetypal evil presence. And she goes, yes. And I'm like, Oh, God, what's he gonna say? And he goes, then you show the biggest love you can then and he said, to recite the certain mantra of love in Tibetan Buddhism, or Manu, Pema Hong or Mani Padma home. So yes, this is the Buddhist view. And I know this is very different. There might be, you know, shamanic practitioners watching this go No way. If you mean anything that scary and the lucid dream, you fight it, you push it away, you you do a circle of energy around yourself. That's just not the Buddhist view. The Buddhist view is that there is no evil energy. There's just traumatized people, and traumatized energy. And the only way to integrate trauma is with love.

Jannecke Øinæs 13:11

I mean, it does resonate, that you meet everything with love and not you know, fight and war. Like that makes so much sense to me. And it was interesting that you said that it's diff it's a difference between out of body experiences. Yeah. Dreaming because I've interviewed Jay Shaw.Yeah.

Charlie Morley 13:33

My ex wife Jade.

Jannecke Øinæs 13:35

Seriously? Yeah. I didn't know that. Oh,

Charlie Morley 13:38

I didn't know you had broken up. I was you know, it was a long time ago.

Jannecke Øinæs 13:41

Did you know that? Friends? Ah, yeah. Money. Ah, that's so nice. Okay, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 13:52

We're on the same page with that. Did she's What did when she did she get the same question about if you meet an entity.

Jannecke Øinæs 13:59

I know, I don't know about the entity part. We didn't speak about that. We spoke more about what the astral realm is and what you can do. But I just get curious because I thought it was the same thing. I thought it was just the way you get into the astral world. Like either that you wake it up in a dream or you just move consciously out of your body. But you're saying that it's actually in your mind and out of your body?

Unknown Speaker 14:24

Yeah, the places are definitely different. It's like a lot of the techniques for getting lucid dream to get into lucid dream state and the outer bodies, they start the same way. They're often certain affirmation, you do energy work you do in the hypnagogic or hypnopompic, which is falling asleep and waking up states. However, at the point of entry, the lucid dream goes in and the outer body goes out. So they're similar techniques, but in a genuine out of body experience. You are not in you're not in your mind anymore. Like I mean, I used to. I know this because I used to think out of body experiences were bullshit. When I was writing My first book, I had the chapter on out of body experiences riff now just saying it's just people having a lucid dream who don't know it, you know, because it's old, but it was so real. And I was flying over and I could see my body. I'm like, Yeah, you're just dreaming, you're seeing your body, you know, it's just a very powerful, lucid dream. And I thought, Oh, I better go on a loose on a out of body experience workshop before I write this chapter. Because otherwise, I'm been a hypocrite. But in my mind, I had made up my mind out of the body experience with just people who didn't know about lucid, you know, this is like 20 years ago. And then I went on this out of body experience workshop, so I had no placebo, I had no faith, I had no, I thought it was all bullshit. And you'd I turn up at this workshop, and in the middle of the day, at midday, before lunch, we do this exercise. And the teacher said, Of course, this won't give you an out of body experience. We're just rehearsing for tonight. So we'll go through the same practice. And it was a thing we had to imagine energy coursing up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, and then up, and then boom, at the top of your head. And he's leading us in this thing. And we're doing this practice. And then when it goes out the top of your head, eyes open, I'm awake, I'm not even, like, in the hypnogogic. I'm awake sitting there. And everything in my body went up by not lat by about two inches when both like everything. And even my head was because we're in a circle. And I could now see over the top of the guy's head who was in front of me, so I physically shifted, and it went up and boom, back down. And I freaked out. I thought this guy had put something in the T. Because I'd been saying on the email to him. Yeah, I'm coming along, but I really don't think it's real. So I thought maybe he's he's like, you know, I don't know, he didn't like me. So he put something in the T. Classic denial. Of course, I was in full denial of experience. I got up, I went into the kitchen and the workout space. And I was like, Oh, this fucking this is crazy man. Like, what's he done? And then he came in, he asked me, I was okay, we calm down. And I realized now it's nothing in the team. Man, this is for real. And then that night, it was it was sleep over workshop. And I then did the same practice and the hypnogogic and had a sleep based out of body experience. And I've had like 500, lucid dreams up to that point. So I knew lucid dreaming very, very well. I knew that tasted the smell of I knew the feel of it. What I had in both the daytime and the nighttime experience of astral projection was not lucid dreaming. I don't know what it was. I can't prove it. And of course, scientifically, it hasn't been proven out of body experiences. But it wasn't a lucid dream. Definitely not.

Jannecke Øinæs 17:29

It seems different to me as well, there seems to be a slight difference. Like I feel like out of body experiences are more real in a way like that. I'm actually in another realm, but everything is the same like my apartment. For instance, when I in my last apartment, when I was astral projecting out of my body, I could see everything as it was, but there was so much more. But in a lucid dream. I've always been different places like sort of fantasy places that I've never actually

Unknown Speaker 18:01

Yeah, and then lucid dream, you know, you're in your imagination. And of course, you can test stuff in a lucid dream, you cannot make anything appear. In a lucid dream, your fears are very specific to you. You know, if I'm in a lucid dream, I know I'm in a lucid dream, because it's like, you know, my fears will pop up, or my inner child will look like me, it's very clearly Oh, I'm in my mind. Whereas an out of body experience, you try and change something, nothing happens. Because like you're in a shared space, you know, it's not just one mind. It's many minds. And you try and like, do reality checks, which are ways to tell if you're in love, zoom, they don't work. You're like, This is nuts. Like, again, I don't know where it is. But it's not in here. Or maybe everything's in here, right? If you look at that big Buddhist view that everything is a dream, maybe you're just different layers in the dream. But yeah, all I know is I really had to eat my words. I really had a very set view and experience view away.

Jannecke Øinæs 19:00

I think that's part of the journey to constantly question things and question our own beliefs and be open to that it might be different, like, I know that now. But that might be different tomorrow. Yes.

Unknown Speaker 19:13

Yeah. And sometimes we get to rectify that. So I'm writing at I've just finished writing actually, the 10th anniversary second edition of my first book. And that first book is the one that has the chapter on OBS, and I give a lot of space to the scientific view against OBS, and then a little bit saying, Oh, I actually had one and I think they're real. Whereas now I've completely written rewritten that chapter, mid like, No, this is what I believe now. 10 years later, and I'm so glad. You know, imagine if you rewrite a book 10 years later, and you'd have the same opinions, no evolution, no change. So I'm very glad that I will, you know, they asked me to change like 2000 words, I've ended up changing 10,000 words, because I'm through the book and no, I don't agree with that anymore. No, that's changed. This is better, blah, blah, blah. Yeah.

Jannecke Øinæs 19:59

So for people to understand like the potential in lucid dreams, like what it actually can do for us, would you like to share one amazing experience you've had that really made a difference for you in your life and a lucid dream?

Charlie Morley 20:13

Yeah, let's not be one. Let's do let's look at many. So anything you can treat through hypnotherapy, you can treat to lucid dreaming because you're in a similar state, you know, conscious in the unconscious mind. So let's think of that. Well, you can use hypnotherapy for trauma integration. You can use hypnotherapy for increasing your confidence. You can use hypnotherapy for increasing athletic performance. You can use hypnotherapy for past life regression, you can use hypnotherapy also just for fun, how people get hypnotized and the you know, the nightclub shows where they get people to say hypnotize and make them be like a chicken. Same with lucid dreaming, you can spend your lucid dreams being a chicken if you want, but I wouldn't advise and advise doing the beat work. So some of the new case studies actually that I put in the book, amazing stuff. So okay, physical healing. So this is one we're very little science on it. Although we intend to do a scientific study on this next year or the year before with the same group that I did the PTSD study with the Institute of Noetic Sciences in San Francisco. We intend to see if we can improve physical healing in the lucid dream. But for now, the anecdotal reports and most of them are described as it's simply the placebo effect. Yeah, great. You know, if the placebo effect is the mind affecting the body, then when you apply placebo effect healing within a lucid dream, which is 100% mind that placebo effect works with 100% efficacy. So you can do very interesting stuff with physical healing. And some of the case studies there was a woman who had a recurring knee injury, she went into lucid dream, she did a hands on healing in the lucid dream colored light came out of her hands. She woke up in the knee injury was was better, she could walk again. You know, she was kind of sorry, she'd walk upstairs, and she could walk along normally, but going upstairs really hurt her knee. I had one. You know, in lockdown, a lot of people started jogging, myself included. And I got the single plantar fasciitis, which is something where your foot base, your foot really hurts or your heel becomes really, really painful from running in an incorrect way. I became lucid, I remembered my plan. I'm in a lucid dream what I want to do, oh, I wanted to heal the plantar fasciitis. So in the lucid dream, I put my dream hands on my dream heel of my foot. And I remember the affirmation because it was a funny one, I went, my heels are healed, my heels are healed, my heels are healed. And as I was doing this white light came up my hands. And I remember there was only a couple of years ago, but I remember thinking like that's so cool. Like, I'm not choosing for white light to come out, but it just happening. And then I was like whoa, something's happening. Something's happening. And then I woke up and of course my heel was better. Now we asked, we can ask a skeptic and I say oh, it's just because you believe in lucid dreaming so much. It just because you saw this healing energy go into your heel. Yeah, so what you know, I don't, I can't explain how it works. No one really can explain how the placebo effect works. In fact, wonderful Buddhist philosopher, or Buddhist scholar called be ALAN WALLACE. He has said until we can explain the placebo effect. Reality is up for grabs. One can explain the hard question of consciousness until they explain the placebo effect. It is an outrageous finding. And yet it's the finding applicable to every medical trial ever done. And we say Oh, it's just a placebo effect. So we can do physical healing. You could be mental healing. Another great example in the new book, this guy Matt Humphries, no waffles. So I will adopt Nope. Sleep, sleep like it Moses. He used lucid dream to cure his depression. He had 15 years of treatment resistant depression. In the lucid dream. He became lucid and he called out to the dream, what is the source of my depression? And the dream suddenly presented him with his grandmother who died when he was 10 years old from Alzheimer's and his grandmother's they're kind of shaking and scared with Alzheimer's. And then in the dream is like how is my grandma linked to my depression. And then in the dream, he had this lightbulb moment he went, Oh, wow. I was so guilty when she died. Because when he was 10 years old, he didn't want to visit her and hospice early, never went to visit her in the old people's home. You know, it's kind of scary and smelly, and he didn't want to go and then when she died, he had this real feeling of guilt. And as a child, he never fully integrated that guilt. And in the lucid dream, he acknowledged it. And then he went and hugged his grandmother in the dream. And then his grandmother, like was kind of changed. She didn't have Alzheimer's anymore and became, became useful. And he was like, wow, something shifted, something shifted back and then he wakes up. And within a couple of weeks, he was actually off all medication. He had stopped going to therapy. And then two years later, he emailed me. He said he wanted to be able to say I'm two years with no medication and no therapy, so that I would know that it was a real healing and not just a flash in the pan. And that's case studies in the new book too. So you can work with the with mental illness, you can work with physical illness, spiritual practice. You know what have Tibetan Yogi has been using this practice for for the last 1000 years, preparation for death and dying spiritual practice while you sleep, and exploring the empty nature of reality. So big work can be done in there, you know, to go in the lucid dream and actually transform yourself into a deity, transform yourself into a Buddha, and then do your spiritual practice in this form, is a very powerful way to leave big traces in the mind body connection. And in the brain. Actually, the new subtitle of the book is rewire your brain while you sleep through lucid dreaming. Because we have all of these studies that show neuroplasticity is engaged through lucid dreaming. So we know you can actually learn you can literally change your brain through lucid dreaming, so much so that there's a certain part of the brain that is bigger in people who regularly have lucid dreams. Lucid Dreaming has such a powerful neurological effect. It doesn't just change your psychology, it changes the gray matter density in the part of the brain that deals with insight. That's nuts. Like I should call the new book, lucid dreaming to make your brain bigger. I think that would probably sell some more copies.

Jannecke Øinæs 26:10

Wow. You know, I love that story where that guy that was rid of his depression, because I've heard you tell it before. And it made such an impression on me.

Charlie Morley 26:20

Especially for the first time at the talk. You were up at Mindvalley.

Jannecke Øinæs 26:24

Ah, yes. Right. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 26:26

Oh, Lucas emailed me that. And that was a couple years ago. Yeah. Yeah.

Jannecke Øinæs 26:30

Now, I'm curious about how this has changed you. Like you mentioned so many ways. Lucid Dreaming can change our lives. But how has it changed you?

Unknown Speaker 26:44

It's that's a difficult one to answer. Because I've been lucid dreaming for so long. I don't know who I am without it. Like, I don't know. So whoever I am now is because of lucid dreaming. I mean, I can think of the last big kind of really big change that I felt, which was, my mom died recently, like nine months ago. And because it was such a long journey. It was like a seven year journey into death. My adult was kind of actually quite integrated when she died, because I'd had so much build up to it. But my inner child wasn't, you know, the inner child didn't have the rationale to go, oh, it was a good death. You did everything. You could do it with the inner child, but just like my mom's dead, and that's terrible. So although outwardly, my grieving seemed quite integrated, I was having these flashes of childlike rage in the daytime, like proper rage, like not like adult like how toddlers, you know how they get rageful. And then I'd have these dreams, these really like, crazy kind of angry dreams. And I realized, whoa, that's the child, you know, when you have that real kind of childlike rage. So I made a dream plan. I thought, Okay, my next lucid dream, I need to meet the inner child, because little chuck, which is the name I get my inner child is wounded and has lost his mum, and I need to work on this. And I became lucid. And I was actually in the Buddhist center that I used to live in and the lucid dream. And I was with the Lama Allama zango, who runs the center, and I was walking down the corridor that leads to the reception. And I saw the back of her head, and it had little cuts on it. And I thought, oh, when she shaved her head this morning, maybe she got cuts. And I thought, hang on, no, she's been shaving her head for 40 years. Why would she have cuts? And I started to think, Oh, I think I might be dreaming. And I said, I was like in the dream at Loma, I think we're dreaming. And she went, Oh, no, I don't think so. And I was like, oh, so I became semi lucid, but not fully lucid. And then the dreamer, which is the kind of the the intelligence of dream sent in a horse, like a horse just appeared in the Buddhist center, and I looked at the horse and went, Okay, I'm definitely dreaming 100% And I said the llama llama. Come on, where this was coming from. This is a dream. And she went, Oh, okay, we're dreaming. So now I'm lucid. As soon as I'm lucid, I remember my dream plan. So you can have this level of direction. You know, you become lucid, you can remember your past, you can remember what you plan to do. So as our inner child, so I stopped calling her inner child, I love you inner child, I love you just sending love sending love. And then the alarm actually turned into my inner child. And I was then hugging the inner child like that. And then I thought, okay, I know she's turned into the inner child. But I'd quite like to meet the actual personification of the inner child too. So I then did a second part of the healing. I said in the dream, I said, inner child come to me. And then suddenly through the door, my inner child appeared and like merge into me at the front and it was this amazing experience. And I was hugging my inner child but I love you. I love you. I know you're hurting me. I know your mom is dead, but I love you. I love you. I'm still here. And it was this really like not only emotional experience, but the feeling in the dream, I remember was so unique. Do you remember when you used to believe in Santa Claus? And on Christmas just for Christmas, you had that feeling of magic, where you were like, wow, Santa Claus is real. And that feeling I just call it like the childhood magic feeling that I probably haven't felt in, I'd know. 30 years, I felt that. And it was such a unique, specific feeling. And I woke up with that feeling in my body. And, you know, a cool story be I woke up and I had no more grief over my mom. Of course not. But that specific aspect of grief, where the inner child was so angry and so distraught at the loss of my mom that went, and those particular nightmares went straight away. And that's the cool thing about lucid dream healing. It's not based on faith. There's no one to believe in. There's no guru to ask, you know, did that work, if you want to know if the healing has worked? The next day, you feel different? You know, if you use lucid dreaming to heal your fear of spiders, the next day, when you see a spider, you won't be as scared. So for me, it was like the next day, do I still have those outbursts of rage? Do I still have that feeling of deep childhood loss? No had gone greatly great, not fully, but greatly greatly decreased. So yeah, and that was the last one. And then actually, the sounds like a tragedy, this work. And this year I've had, but I have had a crazy year. And then two months ago, my Buddhist teacher died, like a few months after my mum. So this this year has had so much loss. And again, I use lucid dreaming for that. The grief was different there, though, because my Buddhist teacher was the literally the man who wrote the book called Living, dreaming, dying, which is a book about conscious dying. So the grief was different, because I was like, If anyone is going to die consciously, it was wrong. So it was a different grief. But of course, I had lost my father figure, my, my guru finger, my Buddhist teacher. So in this one, I became lucid. And I was in the Buddhist center where he used to teach in South Africa. And suddenly he appeared, and it was almost kind of like, not cheesy, but you know how people always say, oh, in the dreams, they look so much younger. And you think, like, Oh, does that actually happen? He did. He looks like in perfect shape, how when he was at his peak, which was, you know, maybe about 10 years ago, or something like that. He was at his peak. And he appeared, and the first thing I said to him, I just started crying, I went, the final teaching Rob, give me the full concept, like the final teaching. And, and he said, the final teaching is kindness. And then I just read the emotion with too much and I woke up. And I don't know that dream. Maybe that was the 1%. Right, that within a few weeks of him dying, and it felt, maybe that was my mind, maybe I just want to feel that it was him. But I think maybe that was an aspect of him.

Jannecke Øinæs 32:50

I just felt that that might be that 1% that he was really there.

Charlie Morley 32:54

Yeah. Who now you say that in the Bardo, which is the period after death, you know, there's all these Buddhist teachings. And they said, there's like a 49 day period after death. And they say in the lucid dream state, the lucid dreamer has seven times the power of consciousness, select 700% more conscious power, which is of course, their explanation. But of course, you can heal in the lucid dream, you have 700% more power. Of course, you can send love to another and live stream. But they say, the person in the Bardo. So the person who has recently died has nine times the power of mind, meaning, literally the best place to communicate with a recently dead person is through the lucid dream, because you have 700%, broadband, you know, increased broadband, they have 900%, better broadband. So the connection is so, so strong. So in that one with Rob Yeah, maybe maybe that was an aspect of the 1%. Who can tell.

Jannecke Øinæs 33:50

Now, I've had an experience where I think I was in the same dream as my father, because we started sharing our dreams. And we were like, but this is the same place. And we explained it in the same way. And we saw the same thing. It was so peculiar. Now, how could that be possible? If we sort of are in my mind, and he's in his mind? Yeah.

Charlie Morley 34:14

So strange. You said this, I was on a solitary retreat last week. And I was going through notes from different Buddhist talks had been to and there was a retreat I was at with this guy, Alan Wallace, who was the same guy who said until we true prove the placebo reality is up for grabs, amazing Buddhist scholar and practitioner. And I found in the notes his answer to this, and he basically used the equivalent of quantum entanglement. He said that when someone is like your mom or your dad or your lover or your brother, you know someone you have a very, very close relationship with. Your karma is so close, that it's almost like an element of quantum entanglement, that even when you remove the people, the ability to psychically Connect is greatly increased compared to someone who's just a friend. And or strange or something like that. So it could be that. And the fact that you were having shared dream content doesn't mean that you were in his dream or he was in yours, it means that you are sharing this like psychic aspect together. And Carl Jung's it, we don't need to call you. Let's keep on the on the Buddhist thing here. So I don't confuse the two philosophies. But it's absolutely possible. You know, again, you have 700, you're gonna have seven times the power of Arnason, a lucid dream. So in a non lucid dream, who knows, but it's definitely possible. Again, I've heard over the past 15 years, way too many examples, people who I completely trust, they were not trying to impress me. In some cases, I saw their dream report with a date because they were on a retreat when it happened. So I've seen the proof that they had the same dream as this other person who was also on the retreat. It's possible. It's possible again, I don't know how, but it's, I know, it's not impossible.

Jannecke Øinæs 35:57

So if I'm in a lucid dream, because I have to rephrase everything, because I actually thought that when I'm lucid, I'm in the astral realm. But you're saying that I'm actually not I'm in my mind. But if I want to go to the pyramids, and I've never been there, is that then not possible for me, because..

Unknown Speaker 36:20

we're having astral projection. I mean, you could have a lucid dream by going to the pyramids. And of course, every, every piece of information you've ever read, been told about seen on TV, see it on social media, about the pyramids, all of that is stored, that the unconscious mind is a huge hard drive. I mean, we're talking like, way bigger than any AI generation, right. So actually, the AI is quite a good metaphor for here, how the AI has access to everything ever written on the internet. And because of that, I can make pretty good predictions. Not that good yet, but I'll give it a few years, right? The unconscious mind has access to everything you've ever experienced every book you've ever read in this life and possibly previous lives, right? So if in a lucid dream, you choose to go to the pyramids, you will absolutely you could go to something that looks exactly the same. And you could even go into the certain door and it will open the same way. And you're I went left and I was in the king's chamber. And then you wake up in the morning, you Google it, and it says yes, you go left to the king's chamber. Yeah. Oh, my God, I was really their astral projection. Maybe? Or maybe when you were 10 years old at school, you watched a documentary about the pyramids, where the present is that oh, now we walked down the king's chamber, we turn left and it was stored. So who knows? Who knows? But I think you know, the reason I say this isn't as a skeptic. I think the fact that we can have that experience in a lucid dream, in our own mind is more impressive than actually going there. Because if we went there, it's like, yeah, of course, we can see the pyramids were absolutely projecting. I mean, it's an amazing skill. But it's obvious. Of course, we're literally going there, right. But in a lucid dream, if we can create a direct replica of the pyramids, based on this algorithm the mind creates, I think that's more impressive. So I'm not being skeptical. I'm just, I'm just, you know, there's just my opinion.

Jannecke Øinæs 38:06

Amazed by then the mind because it begs the question, what is the mind then?

Charlie Morley 38:15

That's beyond my paygrade.

Jannecke Øinæs 38:19

Right. So what what is like the deepest insight that you have received, like spiritual insight from one of your lucid dreams?

Charlie Morley 38:28

God these questions, it's like, no, they're brilliant questions. It just made me think it's like asking a chef, what is your favorite meal? And the chef's like, What?

Jannecke Øinæs 38:37

Or me, like, what is your favorite interview? I'm like.

Unknown Speaker 38:40

Oh, yeah, I bet. Yeah. I mean, okay, let me think of an a big insights that I might have had. Or the compassion one's a good one. This is from Dream A long time ago, but is a very nice insight. And I think it's helpful for people to hear this. In lucid dreams, you can ask big questions. So you can become lucid, and you can call out to the lucid dream. You know, what is the nature of reality? Actually, I did that in a lucid dream. And I call that what is the nature of reality, and this big, like in a game show, you know, they have those big screens on TV game shows, this big screen appeared. And it said, the nature of reality is and then dot, dot dot, and I was like, oh my god, it's gonna tell me. And then it said, obtainable through lucid dreaming, and I was, ah, what a joke. But then I told my Buddhist teacher that and he went, you got the correct answer. So anyway, you can ask these big questions. So I've thought, All this talk about compassion and Buddhism, right? I wonder what happens if I asked the dream the lucid dream I asked my wisdom, my own inner wisdom. What is the nature of compassion? Now what is the essence of compassion? So that was it? So I became lucid, and I call up what is the nature of compassion or the essence of compassion? And then suddenly, this hand like the hand of God, like in a cartoon, this big, huge human hand, came down through the dream and picked me out by my legs and I went and pulled me out like a rag doll and I was like, Oh my God, you know, what is this? This is God like what is happening? And I went through the sky and then above the sky through the universe, and through these like layers of reality of Papa Papa, Papa papa. And I was thinking about God, am I still in the lucid dream? Or is there some astral you know, maybe it is an exit to an astral plane? Who knows? And then I'm in this huge space, like outer space, everything completely black, like some stars but completely black? And I'm like, how what? How is this answering my question about compassion? Like, how is this compassionate being pulled out? And then I realized it was taking me to this space beyond time to show me the answer. And then in this space, beyond time, this scroll appeared like you'd like the paper scrolls like the scroll appeared like that. And then the scroll drop down. And on the scroll, it clearly said, Charlie Morleys, certificate of lovability, Charlie morning certificate of lovability. And then it listed in reverse order, every kind thing or compassionate thing I had ever done in reverse order. Because I remember the first one said, opening the door holding the door open for the woman on the train. And I was like, oh, yeah, I didn't do that earlier in the day. I was, Oh, that's cool. And I had all the list of things. And it was went on infinitely, like to my birth. And I was like, wow, it's like the universe is keeping a tab. So compassion is the fact that universe is the everything counts, you know, the universe is, is watching. And it's so glad that you're doing this thing. And then these other squads a bit of scroll there, scroll the scroll bar, and they went and had these people's names on them. I didn't know the names, but they were human names, like, I don't know, whatever, you know, human name. And then it also had a drop down. And then the universe became full of these scrolls with names on these lists. And then I woke up, and I was like, whoa, okay, so what's it telling me? It seemed that, to my mind, again, it was personal, I was, in my mind, I think, might, to my mind, the essence of compassion is that every living being has this like list, that every kind of thing they've ever done has been noted by the universe. And that's the essence of compassion, not actually what it is. But the fact that everything counts, everything from holding a door open to someone to saving a life, everything is written down, everything is witnessed by the universe, and that the essence of compassion that you're being witnessed, and that that's the compassionate act of the universe, and encourages us to do more compassionate acts.

Jannecke Øinæs 42:33

That's a beautiful message, and a beautiful knowing. Wow. I mean, lucid dreaming, to me is just magical. And I wish everybody could do it. Because then I think we would be better human beings, and we would call much quicker. And we would basically a peace on earth. Because when you use lucid dreaming, like you've been inspiring us to do, and sharing knowledge about today, we could develop ourselves like so much faster. So imagine what that could do to the world.

Charlie Morley 43:04

The comment you made about evolution. Famous sleep scientists call Professor Matthew Walker, he wrote a very famous book called Why We sleep. He comments on lucid dreaming just once in the whole book on sleep. And he says some ways, he says, Could it be that lucid dreaming displays the next step in human evolution? And that our biology has evolved to wake up within the unconscious mind as a way to aid human evolution. I was like, Oh, she, because I've read the whole book. And otherwise me mentioning lucid dreaming then right at the end, he has says this comment, and I was like, Wow, man. I mean, I don't think it's true me out of the overvolt Very much. But I think for human beings, yeah. This could be the next step in evolution.

Jannecke Øinæs 43:44

Yeah. And I think more and more, we'll actually just experience it naturally. It seems like it's happening all over the place, Charlie, this it's been a thrill. And I know you gotta take the dog out. So before that, I have questions for you. And my first one is what is self love to you?

Charlie Morley 44:01

Wow, what is self love? Well, what is love, I mean, if we I, again, I fall back on these Buddhist definitions, but I'll only use a Buddhist definition if I agree with it. The Buddhist definition of compassion is wishing another not to suffer. The Buddha's definition of love is wishing another to be as happy as you're even happier. So then what is self love, a wish for me to be happy. And in that happiness, you know, if we could all love each other fully, we will be such kind of human beings. You know, we see this this isn't a big philosophical point. When you've had a really good day, and you're full of energy and you have an abundance of happiness in you, you are more likely to stop and hold that door out for another person. Whereas when you're having a really shitty day, I mean, there's a lack of happiness and there's a lack of love within yourself or a feeling of shame, you are less likely to open that door for another, you know, physically, literally and metaphorically. So what is self love? I wish for for myself to be happy. And with that, let's expand it to universal love a wish for all beings in all the six realms of existence to be happy, and to be free of the causes of suffering.

Jannecke Øinæs 45:12

And what is happiness to you?

Charlie Morley 45:18

In such difficult questions, What is happiness? I think that point of rest, where you don't need to change anything. I know that sounds like quite subtle, but you know real happiness is contentment. When you're just like, nothing needs to be changed. I don't need to scratch my face. I don't need to sip of water. I don't need to fill a silence. I'm in this present moment and nothing needs to be changed. I think that's really happiness. And

Jannecke Øinæs 45:52

What is the deeper meaning of life from your perspective?

Charlie Morley 46:02

Yeah, to be kind kindness. It's, especially as last year the loss I've had this last year. I really think like so much of life is bullshit. So much of life, like everyday life does not matter. It doesn't matter. But we feel that it does. But when you strip away everything, the only things that truly matter, our love and kindness to ourselves and others. And everything we do is in some way searching for that happiness for that love for ourselves and kindness for others. Yet we get stuck in this in this mud of samsara, which we believe matters so much. And I think often death is the great way to wake ourselves selves up from that, when it's like bam, hit by death and bomb hit by death again, it's like, whoa, what matters? What's the meaning of life? Why are we here? We're here to show love and be loved. Like, what else?

Jannecke Øinæs 47:02

Beautiful. Um, Charlie, where can people find you? And what are you working on these days?

Charlie Morley 47:08

So I am working on the new book or the second 10 year anniversary second edition on my first book called dreams of awakening, which again, is now fully updated, not just a little update, a full full update, or they'll be coming out in the summer. And the next year, I've got a full, not full I'm actually doing like 50% Less next year, because of the year that I've had has made me go fucking this doesn't matter. So I'm only going to do what brings greatest benefit. So I've said no to most things and said yes, the only things that I feel fully aligned with and will bring the greatest benefit. But that does mean Yes, I will still be doing retreats and workshops and talks, but not as many as usual. Next year, particularly. And yeah, you can find me online on Instagram on Charlie morley.com. My website. Someone said recently if you use the athlete, if you forget my last name, if you just Google Charlie, lucid, apparently all my stuff comes up. So maybe that should be my surname.

Jannecke Øinæs 48:04

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for taking time for coming to this show today. And thank you so much for your lovely teaching and for helping the world with lucid dreaming. My

Charlie Morley 48:15

Pleasure. Thank you for giving me the time to talk with me. It's been a pleasure.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai