The phrase “Lucid Living” intentionally draws inference from “Lucid Dreaming.” The goal of Lucid Dreaming is to awaken in the dream coming into an awareness of self — with operational presence and attention.
Lucid Living has a similar goal: to awaken coming into an awareness of self with operational presence and attention. Only in Lucid Living one is wakening while in the walking around sleep state rather than the horizontal sawing logs sleeping state.
Your dreaming carries on with or without your awake presence. In the same fashion your life carries on with or without your awake presence.
If you have ever experienced Lucid Dreaming — even if only for a moment — then you know with sharp clarity the before and after — the difference in experience when Lucid Dreaming kicks in and you are no longer in a “normal” dream.
There is a similar — equally distinct — transition which can happen between the walking around sleep state and Lucid Living.
Waking does not change the isness of where you are. It strips away the dream that has been smeared over the crystal clear isness like vaseline over a camera lens — or steam on a mirror. This could be called the uncluttered world — the clutter of supposition, expectations, and baggage stripped away.
Questions such as “What will the world be like?”, “What should I be doing when I get there?”, and “Is there a dress code?” are all part of the clutter that will be stripped away.
So, for the moment, let’s work with the intention to wake from the dream and gather personal experience personally experienced. Once you get there, rack up “Lucid Living” flight time. After you have accumulated a few hundred hours of flight time you will have the personal experience personally experienced necessary to address questions such as “Is there something I should be doing?” However, until you do accumulate those few hundred hours the goal for the foreseeable future is to gather as much flight time in the Lucid Living state as possible.
How do you get into the Lucid Living state? This is not a good question — at least not for our current purposes. Rather than try to figure out methods of getting from sleeping to waking, let’s concentrate on taking advantage and expanding our beachhead at those moments when we suddenly find ourselves in the waking state.
Even without special effort you will slip into the waking state many times a day. It’s simply a question of noticing these moments and making efforts when you do find yourself in a moment of waking , lucid living.
For myself, I find the simple act of paying attention and “taking in the landscape” to be a good beginning method to expand my beachhead when I find myself in one of those waking moments.