Pause now to ask yourself the following question: 'Am I dreaming or awake, right now?' Be serious, really try to answer the question to the best of your ability and be ready to justify your answer.

Dreams are a reservoir of knowledge and experience yet they are often overlooked as a vehicle for exploring reality. In the dream state our bodies are at rest, yet we see and hear, move about and are even able to learn. When we make good use of the dream state it is almost as if our lives were doubled: instead of a hundred years we live to be two hundred -- Tibetan Buddhist Tarthang Tulku from

Although the events we appear to perceive in dreams are illusory, our feelings in response to dream content are real. Indeed, most of the events we experience in dreams are real; when we experience feelings, say, anxiety or ecstasy, in dreams, we really do feel anxious or ecstatic at the time.

Dreams and waking life are both the same kinds of things. The difference is that dreaming is perceiving free of external constraints, whereas perceiving otherwise is dreaming true. Meaning what you dream about actually happens.

If the experience of reality matters, than nothing is going to be better than dreaming. Because dreams feel real to everybody while they are happening. Some people have vivid imagination, some not so vivid, but everybody has vivid dreams.

In most of our dreams, our inner eye of reflection is shut and we sleep within our sleep. The exception takes place when we seem to awake within our dreams, without disturbing or ending the dream state, and learn to recognize that we are dreaming while the dream is still happening.

Lucid dreaming has considerable potential for promoting personal growth and self-development, enhancing self-confidence, improving mental and physical health, facilitating creative problem solving and helping you to progress on the path to self-mastery.