Another 'Holy Grail' Theory

Quest for Lucidity General Lucidness
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I have some thoughts regarding a potential alternative to the current line-up of LD induction methods. I haven’t developed a method in detail - at this point, it is just an idea.

MILD, WILD and other such ‘ILD’ methods are one-off methods that, for most people, may or may not work on any given attempt. I say one-off in the sense that achieving WILD on one night won’t help you attain lucidity the next night - you’ll have to use the method again for another chance at lucidity.

What if there was a way to adjust your mind, so that the conscious mind would naturally activate at the beginning of each dream state? Instant lucid dream, without having to wait for the inspiration of a reality check that may or may not come. No WILD effort required either.

Lets start with a relevant examination of what happens when you go asleep at night. Conscious mind turns off, and the subconscious comes out to play. Dreams begin, and the creative subconscious takes great pleasure in generating reams of nonsense to keep us entertained (or terrified if its a nightmare this time round) until morning. So wheres the conscious mind when you need it? Its off. It is programmed this way by default for most people. It flicks off when we go to sleep, and back on again when we wake up.

So heres what I’m curious about - would it be possible to reprogram your conscious mind to flick on as soon as a dream state begins? If you made a habit of this, then chances are the habit would stick and the behaviour would remain - which would mean plenty of lucid dreams without the need for induction methods. The problem is, how do you make a habit of this when you have no control over your conscious mind by default while you’re asleep?

I’m not experienced with meditation, but I do think it could potentially hold the answer. By concentration (and perhaps some binaural beats), one could attempt to emulate the subconscious state as closely as possible during meditation. A deep state of relaxation, random creative thoughts and binaural beats in the theta range could do the trick. Then comes the important part. Once a pseudo-subconscious state is achieved, one could subtly introduce some logic to the chaos. You could consider some simple mathematical equations, or perhaps time itself - where were you yesterday, and so on.

With more meditations, you could gradually increase the level of logic introduced, until you attained a form of balance between the logical conscious and creative subconsious. Then when you went to sleep, your mind may recognise the onset of the subconscious state and respond by introducing a slice of conscious logic, just as was done in the meditation while you were awake. If this were to occur, the lucid state should immediately be achieved upon entering the dream-state. It is possible that more meditations would be required to sustain the changes, since the mind may revert to its factory setting otherwise.

So, in summary: by training the conscious mind to activate upon the onset of subconscious activity, one could perhaps attain instant lucidity every night.

I feel that it is relevant to explain how I was originally lead to consider this possibility. I know someone with extraordinary lucid dreaming abilities - she essentially attains instant lucidity every night, and has long lucid dreams with no problems in maintaining control. She doesn’t require the use of MILD, WILD etc (though she does meditate, and she claims it is helpful). To her, lucid dreams are as natural as normal dreams are to most of us. Unfortunately, she had no ‘holy grail’ technique to share with me - it appears to be a natural ability.

However, my idealistic side tends towards thinking that while some people may naturally be tapped into this level of ability, others could potentially develop the same mental prowess. Methods such as MILD strike me as ‘hacks’ - quick and dirty methods of attempting to trick the mind into allowing lucidity. Instead of trying to beat our own system, why not change it to suit our purposes?

I open the floor to opinions :smile: Do you think this line of reasoning has any practical merit? Any thoughts on the matter are welcome…

-Xine

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Wow. You’re awfully optimistic. I like that.

I heard somewhere that you can’t go a certain amount of time fully conscious. LIke, you HAVE to lose consciousness for some time. But I don’t beleive that. I think your ideas are perfectly logical and ideally suitable for lding every night.

The problem is in practice. If you can do it, you WIN! If you can’t, whats lost? So keep trying yo. I may not be able to do it, but you can I’m sure.

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I know about someone that wher lucidity is normal. She does it everynight. I dont belive that, mark, I dont belive that :wink:

  1. She cant know that she does it all the time, for instance, if she most of the time dreams and then maybe achieves lucidity at some points, but she only remembers those.

  2. I dont personally think, tho I hope its possible, that you
    can achieve lucidity and maintain it for a veeeery long time, as it seems, (what I read that is), that to sleep, you are supposed to rearrange thoughts, heal your self etc when you dream. If you do lucidity in a very large scale, it would be the same as living another life. I dont think the mind would like that. Not to talk about body. You would probably be tired when you wake up… Thats just my opinion on the matter, sorry If i didnt stay on topic :smile:

I hope you are right tho! :smile:

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Hmm… Most people already live multiple lives. One on the internet and a completely different one offline. I’ve always thought that if you had enough willpower you could be conscoius through the entire night. Maybe not easy… but, I’m sure its possible.

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Having a lucid dream everynight wouldn’t be any different from having a normal dream everynight, so you wouldn’t be tired when you wake up. In REM sleep your mind is just as active in a ND as it would be in a LD. It’s not like your gonna wake up tired from a ND with running or a LD with running. Unless your like me, then you’ll always wake up tired. But you get the point.

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I’ve had similar thoughts about MILD and WILD being ‘hacks’. Buddhist monks apparently use lucid dreaming as a form of practice in preparation for death - though their means of achieving lucidity seems much more natural and spontaneous than do any of the methods currently in use by most lucid dreamers. Perhaps when we’re truly ready to be enlightened, we will no longer need to even try for lucidity.
I think part of the problem is that lucidity serves the needs and wants of our ego, instead of serving a higher and more spiritual purpose.

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It may be cultural. We are the hack society. We play life as if it were a game, but we can cheat—and that’s our hacks, our techniques.

If you are to have LDs spontanously, you first have to face them differently. Not as a reward, but as something natural. You have to change your inner culture, the way you see your dreams.

I mean: you won’t have just to reason as-if you were a buddhist monk, you’ll have to be the buddhist monk.

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Precisely :yes:

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To sum this all up, I’d say this is basically changing your habit.

I don’t really think that you would need to be in a pseudo-subconcious state. That would logically work, but it would, in my opinion, be more effective if you meditated down to about delta. I wouldn’t consider it pseudo-subconsious if you did use binaurals to get there. You can be subconcious and be aware. One of the most common confusions is that when people say being “concious” during subconsious, they think you mean awake concious. Thats not the case. Here, they mean aware. I wouldn’t consider anything here pseudo.

I can see what you would consider dirty there, but I can also see the opposite side. Let’s use driving as an example. People that have been driving for years can drive with ease. It becomes a “habit”, so to say. They don’t really think about it, and it becomes easy without putting effort forth. They weren’t always like this though (for most people). When they started, they were probably nervous and unskilled. They needed to practice with a lot of focus. They try to do everything they can to make themselves better drivers. By doing so, they develop the habit of the skill. Now, reread that, replacing the skill of driving with lucid dreaming. You will see that they are very closely related. It is with the use of the methods such as mild, wild, and such that we learn to become concious during dreams, which is what you were hoping to accomplish. You also say

You’re concious mind never flicks off when you do a technique like wild. The whole thing is intertwined.

This all pretty much makes me come to this statement, and a very true one.
The most effective holy grail is practice.
For example: If you are tired, you can drink coffee. Sure, it makes you not tired, but it doesn’t conquer what needs to be done. If you sleep, you deal with the whole problem directly. Most people, unfortunately, look to the holy grail as a quick fix. If you really want to get consistent lucid dreams, the solid way to take it on is practice.

I really love your thinking, keep it up and you’ll be very lucid in no time. Good luck!