It seems like everyone tends to define lucid dreaming in their own way. Some define lucid dreaming as “realizing one is dreaming while they are still dreaming.”

Others say you need more than that: “when one realizes one is dreaming while inside the dream and can control the dream.”

Another one I’ve heard: “you must realize you are dreaming, and also know you have a physical body back in your bed.”

The closest to the “real” definition of lucid dreaming is the first: “realizing one is dreaming while they are still dreaming.”

There is no “Real” Definition of Lucid Dreaming

What definition is real depends on the person. There is no one real definition as even if one defines lucid dreaming in the most popular way “awareness that one is dreaming while inside a dream,” there are many levels of that awareness.

1^st Level: Low Level Lucidity

For example, you can have a certain level of realization, what I call a lower level lucidity where you simply find yourself doing things that you can’t normally do in waking life.

You just accept it without question and don’t even really try to explore it with any thought or experimentation, you just do.

2^nd Level: Intermediate Lucidity

The next level up from that I call intermediate lucidity and that is when you are also doing things you can’t normally do in waking life, like flying, or jumping high, or putting your hands through walls.

But this time there is a sense of more conscious exploration. You find you can jump a bit higher than normal, so you try to jump even higher, then higher, and you see how much you can push it.

Or you start running fast, then realize if you try you can run as fast as the cars next to you.

There is a type of conscious exploration where you are experimenting with the laws of this new world, but there is not yet the high-level cognitive understanding that you are dreaming and this is why you can jump like superman.

3^rd Level: High Level Lucidity

The next level I call high level lucidity. Here, your critical mind activates inside the dream and you realize you are in the dream world. You might say “this is a dream” out loud, or simply think it.

You may or may not think about your body back in your bed. On the upper end of high level lucidity you remember the intention you set for yourself when going to sleep. You remember the action you want to take. Whether it is to fly, to ask your subconscious questions, or to improve your skills in waking life.

4^th Level: Advanced Lucidity

The highest level I call advanced lucidity. This is where you can completely control your dream. This is a very wide spectrum.

This goes from being able to manifest a simple object like a spoon, all the way to multiplying your consciousness into a thousand dream characters and perceiving from all of them at once.

In this arena one has the thorough understanding that they are in the dream world and therefore the only limits are those they put on themselves.

Most of us are so conditioned by living all our lives in our physical bodies, that when we start to spend more time conscious in our dreaming body, the laws of the physical world seem to get imprinted in our dream world.

Maybe we take off to fly and bounce off the ground. Or we simply can’t fathom or don’t think of doing something, simply because we are conditioned everyday in the physical world that it isn’t possible.

The possibilities are infinite.

How do you define lucid dreaming? Let us know in the comments below.