Walking in Diagon Alley with Harry Potter or flying in the Star Wars universe is not a novelty for lucid dream (LD) practitioners. The theory of “reality shifting,” which is gaining popularity on TikTok and YouTube, differs from LD in that the “reality shifter” is in fact convinced that they have actually been transported to a parallel world. According to one of the active followers of this trend, Kristin Dattoo: “Any reality you can possibly think of exists somewhere out there in the universe.” All you need to do is “shift reality,” i.e., switch your consciousness in the right direction.
The Washington Post reports that videos with hashtags on this topic have already gained billions of views. And practitioners of reality shifting maintain that you can spend an unlimited amount of time in any chosen world. Although, you must be careful not to die there, otherwise it will be impossible to return to that world.
The definitions of the practice itself, however, are varied. Most people go into a kind of meditative state between sleep and wakefulness. Some combine reality shifting with lucid dreams or out-of-body experiences – that is, with phase states. There are also those who claim that you can transfer your physical body to a parallel universe – but most do not go that far.
According to Dattoo, she first learned about this idea in 2015, but at the time reality shifting was relegated to the realm of witchcraft. Years later, the young woman came across this practice again on TikTok and began to practice meditation. For a long time, she saw no results, until one day Kristin woke up in her “waiting room” – a term used by shifters to refer to an in-between state. Now, according to Dattoo, she literally wakes up in another universe.
The new trend has also caused a wave of criticism. For example, psychotherapist Laura Rosser Kreiselmaier believes that practitioners’ experiences may be the result of self-hypnosis: young people are facing an existential crisis, including as a result of a pandemic, so it is not surprising that they are trying to somehow cope and escape to a more pleasant reality. Another critic, popular YouTuber James Rallison (TheOdd1sOut), claims that reality shifters are just sleeping. One has to wonder just how does their experience actually differ from lucid dreams and other phase states?
Have you ever practiced “reality shifting”?
