Movies to Inspire Lucid Dreams

Movies often shape our dreams. As a part of our waking lives, they fuel our dreaming minds with characters, camera angles, action plots, and twisty endings. Our lucid dreams can easily become fast-paced cinematic experiences.

Here are some sci-fi movies and TV shows to spark your next lucid dream. From traveling to alien planets, to performing impossible physical feats, these are a fun source of entertainment when you're next frolicking in your virtual reality playground.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Earth is a desolate wasteland in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Humanity has been decimated by an invasion of Phantoms, insubstantial aliens that extract and devour the spirits of living things. The few remaining humans have retreated to a handful of cities that are protected by massive bio-energy shields.

Dr Aki Ross and Dr Sid have discovered that the energy signatures of eight key Earth spirits can cancel out and destroy the Phantoms. With the help of Captain Edwards and his band of marines, they must scour the globe for the last two remaining spirits before General Hein manipulates the refugee government into attacking the aliens with an orbital laser that may also destroy the Earth.

After watching this movie, take a cue from the Phantoms' ability to pass through any kind of solid material - even human beings. This is how you can travel inside a lucid dream. Just think of your form as spiritual or ghost-like, and you will find it easier to pass through solid objects and travel at the speed of thought. I also like this movie for lucid dreaming because of its realistic animation. In particular, check out the scene from Dr Aki's vivid recurring dream where she meets the phantom aliens.

The HitchHiker's Guide to The Galaxy

Don't panic! After twenty years stuck in development (a mere blink compared to how long it takes to find the answer to life, the universe, and everything), The HitchHiker's Guide to The Galaxy has finally been developed into a movie.

As a faithful HitchHiker's fan I love the magic of this movie. The narrative takes us from a boring British man in his dressing gown struggling to get up on a Thursday morning ("Thursdays. I never could get the hang of Thursdays") to whizzing across the galaxy in a spaceship crewed by a charismatic, two-headed alien and his best friend who was, it turns out, an alien-in-disguise all these years. Our pyjama-clad protagonist then embarks on a goofy jaunt across the galaxy accompanied by his trusty Hitchhiker's Guide.

Despite its classification as a comedy, this is also a sci-fi flick with lots of delicious special effects to unravel in your lucid dreams. There is a particularly handsome scene when we discover that God as we know Him doesn't exist at all - and the solar system is really a creation of a construction firm that builds custom planets. Our befuddled hero learns that the Earth was entirely hand crafted by aliens, right down to the red painting of Ayres rock.

So if you have a God complex - now's the time to air it. Lucid dreamers have reported building entire planetary systems and controlling the advanced civilizations that live on them. Establish yourself as a formless entity floating in space - an overseer - with focused awareness on the task at hand.

And since we're looking for lucid dream inspiration... This formlessness itself is an interesting experience, so when you finish your manipulations, lucidly declare your desire to enter hyperspace and see what happens. (Hint: hold on tight.)

This movie has a wonderful and mysterious score and makes a great accompaniment to a lucid dream set in space.

The Matrix

Ever noticed how The Matrix offers multiple references to lucid dreaming? Set in the not-too-distant future in an insipid, characterless city, we find a young man named Neo. A software techie by day and a computer hacker by night, he sits alone at home by his monitor, waiting for a sign - from what or whom he doesn't know. One night, a mysterious woman named Trinity seeks him out and introduces him to that faceless character he has been waiting for: Morpheus.

A messiah of sorts, Morpheus presents Neo with the truth about his world by shedding light on the Matrix - a reality beyond reality that controls all of their lives, in a way that Neo can barely comprehend. Unleashed into "the real world" Neo learns how his whole life has taken place inside a computer simulation, and with willpower he can bend the rules of the Matrix.

He can jump from a skyscraper, slow down time, and make a soft landing. He can instantly know how to fly a helicopter, and even control the behaviors of other virtual reality figures. Like a lucid dream world in so many ways, The Matrix inspires a new type of dream reality, one where you can't walk through walls or dodge bullets - until you question that very notion. As lucid dreamers soon learn, dream control is all about knowing what to believe - then doing it.

Sliders

Sliders is an intriguing concept from the nineties in which a genius college student accidentally discovers a portal that allows him to slide between alternate dimensions. With the help of his physics professor, his girl friend, and a washed up soul singer, Quinn Mallory encounters a host of strange parallel Earths, including a British-ruled United States and a world where dinosaurs roam a national park.

This notion provides infinite potential for creating new lucid dream scenes. Next time you're lucid, reach into your pocket and pull out your inter-dimensional remote control. Point it at the space in front of you and it will open up a portal. Now - jump in.

If you already have your destination in mind, there is a very good chance you will end up there. For instance, you could visit a world where humans are super advanced and live in technological utopia. Or how about a world where everything is made of candy?

Without a destination in mind, you can leave it up to your unconscious dreaming mind to produce the next dream scene. Ask the dream out loud to take you somewhere really exciting, or to see something you have never seen before. You may find uninhabited planets with brilliant blue skies and green oceans. Or maybe a world where dinosaurs evolved into smaller intelligent creatures with big brains.

Whatever you find, explore these alternate worlds with a playful attitude in mind, and you will discover the boundless power of your own imagination.