I so enjoyed this interview and I learned so much about lucid dreaming, which I thought I knew a fair bit about. Well, I didn't. I'm also very excited because Charlie and I talked after the show, and we actually decided that we are going to do a 30-day challenge around lucid dreaming, where he will coach a select group of listeners into lucid dreaming and how to actually use it to make an impact to their life. If you want to learn more about that and get involved in the challenge, you can go to
Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host, Jonathan Levi.
Jonathan Levi: Before we get started, I want to tell you about an absolutely crazy idea that I recently had. You see, every single week on the Becoming SuperHuman podcast, we share with you some incredible idea that can change your life. Whether that's meditation or the paleo diet or Tai Chi or lucid dreaming. But the thing is, how much do you actually implement in your everyday life? 10%, 20%, and you're not alone. I mean, even I, as the host of the podcast am lucky if I implement 20 or 30% of what we talk about on this show. Why is that? Well, first off, in order to implement, we need more than a week. We need more like a month or even two months. We need a community of people supporting us, cheering us on and we need actual guidance from the experts beyond just a one-hour podcast.
So I had a crazy idea. What if we got everybody together in a members-only group, and then we committed to one another that we were going to take on a new challenge every month? One month we would all commit to lucid dreaming. Another month, we would all commit to improving our willpower. Another month, we might all try to wake up at five 30 in the morning. So I put this idea out there and we got over a hundred people committed and involved. And here's what it looks like. In addition to a regular monthly challenge, we also send out all the gear, all the books, all the whatever that you need to complete that monthly challenge in the mail and in your email. We then have an expert, one of the 200 world-renowned experts that we've had on the show, come into the private group and teach a lesson every single week for a month so that we can actually implement what we're learning. We already have started developing the first challenges we're working on a lucid dreaming challenge or working on a willpower challenge and many, many more.
So I want to invite you to come to try this out. Join us. There are over a hundred of us doing these challenges and we would love to have you participate with us. So to join this new, crazy experiment that we're calling the Becoming SuperHuman Mastermind, please visit JLE.VI/mastermind. We can't wait to see what you achieve.
Greetings Superfriends and welcome to this week's episode. You guys, I am really, really excited because I so enjoyed this episode. You're going to see, you're going to see why you're going to understand why today we are joined by Charlie Morley. He is a best-selling author and teacher of lucid dreaming and shadow integration.
Now, if you don't know what lucid dreaming is, it is having dreams where you know you're dreaming, but not just that, where you can control your dreams, and as I learned, it's a lot more than flying and skydiving and, you know, sleeping with supermodels. It's actually a deep, spiritual practice that you can use for psychological recovery, for accelerated learning, and for much, much more. In fact, Charlie was actually authorized to teach within the cog new school of Tibetan Buddhism by Lama Yesha or didn't pushy in 2008 and he has since developed a holistic approach, which he calls mindfulness of dream and sleep, he's written three books, which have been translated into 13 languages, he spoke at Cambridge, the houses of parliament, and as a regular contributor to the guardian. He also was awarded the Churchill fellowship grant for his work in mindfulness-based PTSD treatment, he runs workshops, he lectures all over the world, and as you'll see, he's an absolutely awesome guy. I so enjoyed this interview and I learned so much about lucid dreaming, which I thought I knew a fair bit about it.
I didn't. And I'm so excited because Charlie and I talked after the show and we actually decided that we're going to do a 30-day challenge around lucid dreaming, where he coaches a select group of listeners into lucid dreaming and how to actually use it to make an impact in your life. If you want to learn more about that and get involved in that challenge, you can go to JLE.VI/mastermind, and it will be around the time that this episode comes out so don't delay now without any further ado, let me introduce you to my lucid dreaming super friend, Mr. Charlie Morley,
Jonathan Levi: Really, really good. I'm so excited to talk today about lucid dreaming it's something that I've tried many, many times and never succeeded. So I want to give a big shout-out to our mutual friend, Stephan Spencer, who connected us.
Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. So Charlie, tell us a little bit about who you are and your background and the reason I ask is I really wonder how one becomes known as the lucid dreaming expert.
I mean, I got into God I got into lucid dreaming when, I guess maybe when I was 12, like for my 11th birthday, I asked for one of these things called a Nova dreamer, which is like this computerized sleep mask that you strap to your face while you go to bed and it recognizes rapid eye movements and then it flashes red lights and gives you lucid dreams.
And when I was like 11 before my 12th birthday, I remember reading about this thing in a gadget magazine and the Sunday paper. And I was like, dad, dad, I know what I want my birthday and I read out the whole thing and then he asked how much it was and you know, it was like $300 or something. And he's was, he said, no. In your dreams, maybe.
Charlie Morley: Yeah, exactly. You know, I guess I was interested in it then, but I taught myself to do it when I was 16. As many 16-year-olds, I was interested in kind of mind expansion and getting high, and Buddhism kind of seemed cool cause of like Shaolin, monks, and stuff, but I didn't actually really get the Buddhism lucid dreaming connection till later, but lucid dreaming seemed cool because you could gain access to this virtual reality simulation of your own psychology in which the rules of society didn't apply.
So I could fly about, I could have loads of sex that I wasn't having at 16 years old, it'd be like, like really, really good at skateboarding and all this kind of stuff, so I just got into the kicks and then when I was about 18, 19, I got really into Buddhism and I took refuge, which is like, where you fall, you become a Buddhist and you know, they take a bit of your hair and you get a new name and all this kind of stuff, and then once I got into Buddhism, people kept referencing this thing called dream yoga. And when I first heard it, I literally thought it was some sort of stretching that you did before bed or something. I kind of didn't get it. And then I asked this monk. I was like, what's dream yoga? And he said, Oh, dream yoga is a series of practices within Tibetan Buddhism to have lucid dream training at their foundation.
So I was like, Oh dude, I know how to lucid dream. And I remember the monk went, Oh really? What do you do in your lucid dreams? And I was so embarrassed. I was like, ah, skateboarding. Yeah, just skateboarding. I didn't want to talk about the sex stuff. And then I asked him, I said, why do monks lucid dream? Why do Buddhist monks lucid dream?
And he said, Oh, we use it for preparation for death. We use it to explore the nature of reality, we use it to do our spiritual practice while we sleep. And it was one of those penny drop moments you know, where you realize that you've kind of learned this thing for all the wrong reasons, but at the same time you realize shit, I learned this thing, and maybe there's a possibility here. So then I kind of got obsessed with learning all the lucid dreaming stuff within Tibetan Buddhism, I started going to all these Lamas, and getting teachings and doing the practices, and then when I was 25, one of these teachers asked me to do a talk at one of his talks.
And this guy called Robin. And, uh, he said, Oh, you know, you're really enthusiastic about lucid dreaming. We need some, you know, young blood, you should give a talk. So I thought it was like a one-off talk. And I spent ages working out this talk. I, I script it every minute from like, hello, my name is Charlie, all this kind of stuff.
It was totally wooden. And then the end of this talk, without asking me it was this like karate kid moment where he turned to the crowd, I went, who thinks Charlie should run a six-week lucid dreaming course starting in two weeks time? And they will put their hands up, and that was it. And then I had a couple of weeks to try and put together this lucid dreaming course, which I'd I dread meeting anyone who says we're on that first course cause I'm sure it was a complete shambles as we say in England. But whatever, and it went from there and then I got the authorization to teach, and then I did the book and, but yeah, that's the Genesis myth and I'm sure it is just a myth, but that's how I remember it.
Jonathan Levi: That is an incredible, incredible story. And I guess I should have asked first, you know, I'm hoping people know what lucid dreaming is, but I suppose I should ask the master to define it for anyone who's scratching their head and going, isn't this just having really clear dreams?
Charlie Morley: Yeah, exactly. And we often get that is people assume because the word lucid really means clear doesn't it? It means something clear, something with light, something that's with clarity, so people often think that lucid dreaming is just having really vivid dreams, but it's not, they should really be called conscious dreaming because the definition of a lucid dream is reflective awareness within the seemingly unconscious dream state. So what does that mean? It means you're in a dream, sound asleep, but within the dream, you go, Oh wow. I'm dreaming. So you don't wake up, you're not half-asleep, you're not just having a really vivid dream, you are completely blacked out in the dream asleep, but you wake up within the dream, knowing that everything you're experiencing is a projection of your own mind.
7fc3f7cf58