Hi. I have encountered a few problems in my dreaming practices which hopefully you might be able to help me out with. My aim in lucidity, as detailed by Carlos Castaneda in “The Art of Dreaming” and “Journey to Ixtlan”, is to find my hands while dreaming, and use this to become and stay lucid. Since trying i have had one lucid dream where i saw my hands, thought, oh look my hands, i’m lucid, but then surrendered back into the enviroment without fully accepting my lucidity.
I have incorporated the castaneda approach into a MILD format: “while i am dreaming i will look at my hands and i will realise that im dreaming”. Recently i have come very close to success, both with this method and recognising dream signs. For instance last night i received a text message from a girl proclaiming her love for me, then i thought “wait a second”… i had a brief moment of lucidity but my dream collapsed. It seems from there instead of being able to look down and find my hands, it is a matter of visulisation and imagination, like i have to recreate the scene from scratch. I didn’t get excited on realising, but almost woke up. This has happened a lot
Maybe i was in too light a sleep after WBTB but i don’t think this is a problem. I have heard many accounts of waking in a dream where one can observe the enviroment, but once i become lucid there is little to observe, as it all collapses. Any technique I then try e.g. spinning, looking at my hands, is a conscious daydream-like effort to return to the environment. I am no longer in it.
This is the type of experience i get from MILD or DILD situations, especially after WBTB. I have also tried to achieve the trance state to induce lucidity, as Don Juan tells Carlos the lesson in finding one’s hands is to observe the trance state. I have tried, after muscular relaxation, the falling techniques etc. as given by Robert Bruce, and the triangle method (listening to the tinitis like frequency that you can tune into and focussing on the third eye) but sometimes tense my eyes too much. I experience some sensations from this but am not sure if i’ve reached trance. At what level of trance does one experiece HI? Are the eyes completely relaxed at this point or focussed on the eyelids to observe HI? How do body processes such as swallowing function in trance? Perhaps a simple description of what trance feels like could help me, because I’m never sure if I’ve reached it.
Welcome to the forums. I have read the Castaneda books you mentionned too and I liked them a lot! In answer to your questions, if you try to localise your hands in a dream, that’s a very good approach indeed. If the dream however seems to fade too soon when you do this, you could try the following. In stead of starting to look closely at your hands, at the moment you become aware you are in a dream, start rubbing your hands instead (and you dont need to look at them to do that, but try both looking and not looking). This should stabilize the LD, and after that you can continue. You can also try to focus on different objects in your dream (besides your hands) to increase stability.
About trance: HI can happen during any stage of trance, but as a rule the deeper in trance the more chance you get them, and the more they will appear. If the HI appear, try to relax your eyes and focus mentally on the images. Also, body processes will continue to function automatically if you are deep enough in trance, same as during sleep. Trance itself feels like you are extremely relaxed and, depending on the stage of trance you are in, you either have reduced body feelings or loose contact with the outside reality totally. For more information on trance seek out some recent posts that have been made on the forum (just use the search option on “trance alpha” or so). Good luck with it.
One of the more common experiences of beginners in lucid dreaming is the frustration. Almost making it, but then getting distracted, etc. The only solution for this is to not let it get to you and continue your efforts. You’ve had one LD and there will be more. It is also typical in the beginning for LDs to be very short. With time and experience you will learn to increase their duration.
If you remember from Castaneda’s book, don Juan picked looking at your hands but said he could have picked anything. It’s not your hands that are important but rather making the shift to lucidity. Dream Signs, RCs, do the same thing while dreaming as looking at your hands.
The first time I read “The Journey to Ixtlan” I looked at my hands and became lucid for 1 second. I’ve had many LDs since then and none of them were begun by looking at my hands. Rather I seem to be keyed to Dream Signs or simply become lucid for no apparent reason.
Also remember that don Juan gave Castaneda a lot of silly exercises to do during the day. These activities were designed to get Castaneda to wake up in real life and pay more attention to what he was doing in general. This control of attention will naturally spill over into dream time.
So do RCs and look for dream signs in your waking life. It should help a lot.
