Butterfly Dream

This is a story about a dream that I had a few years ago.  I was doing dreaming work, trying to get some control over my lucid dreams.  I had been reading one of Carlos Castanada’s books and was attempting to look at my hands in my dream.

I found myself “waking up” in a dream where I was in a spring-fresh grassy field with green rolling hills and blue sky with puffy clouds floating overhead.  I stood there for a little while just breathing in the beauty of the place and then remembered to look at my hands, which I could do easily.  The action of shifting my attention to looking at my hands seemed to ground the whole event so that it became so real that I found it impossible to determine if it was a dream, or if I was actually standing in the field.  I could hear, smell and see normally – but I still knew that it must be a dream because I had no knowledge of how I got there, or where “there” was. 

I then had the thought that if it was a dream, I should be able to do anything that I wanted.  I decided to see if I could “create” a butterfly.  I held my hands out in front of me, closed up as if cupping a small, precious animal within my closed hands.  I then “intended” that a butterfly be in my hands.  I felt it move, and opened my hands so that I was holding it on both of my hands.  It was a very beautiful, rather large, brightly colored, butterfly that spread it wings - holding them open for me to see clearly for a few seconds, and then flew off across the fields.  I am not sure what species of butterfly it was, but it looked similar to a big monarch butterfly that we see every spring in Northern California.

I then continued exploring the field for awhile, and finally just woke up with the feeling of having spent a nice afternoon in a warm, comfortable field.