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 Castaneda’s books and was attempting to follow don Juan’s instructions for Carlos to look at his hands in his dreams. Looking at your hands in a dream is a practice that helps to open the possibility of lucid dreaming where it is possible to “wake up” in a dream, fully aware and able to take action and create whatever is desired.

I found myself “waking up” in a dream where I was in a spring-fresh, grassy field on green rolling hills, with a blue sky with puffy clouds floating overhead.  I stood there for a little while just breathing in the beauty of the place.  I then remembered to look at my hands, which I found 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 cupped hands.  It was a very beautiful, rather large, and brightly colored butterfly that spread it wings – holding its wings open for me to see clearly for a few seconds.  Then it flew off across the field. 

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