Hello everyone
i was just thinking about more ways to act while awake to influence the sleep and have even more lucid dreams, reality checks and techniques while asleep are things i integrate as a daily routine, but from what i learned from this site, a great tool to increase lucid dreams is community!
technically speaking the more attention you put into the subject, the more you fill your mind with thoughts on this subject, the greater are the chances to experience a lucid dream - that’s the overall idea in reality checks as well.
i was hoping to use this post to raise questions about lucid dreams, the nature of them, share ideas or insights and delve deeply into the subject.
right now im developing the skill of influencing the physical body through a lucid dream - as far fetched as it sounds, it is something that has been done before by other people.
im beginning to understand that unlike flying or walking through walls, between other acts, that can be done pretty naturally, in order to accomplish certain acts in a lucid one must have a certain amount of presence/higher lucidity for them to be done, a certain stability the dream needs to possess.
im also thinking about experimenting with energy manipulation in the dream state as a means to achieve this end, though… im not sure about this since there are “easier” ways to balance a dream.
another thing to be mindful of are thoughts and how easily they can effect the dream, which calls for a certain amount of thought control by the dreamer, although it might be that once lucidity is tightened and the dreamer is stable with the dream, the idea of uncontrolled thoughts so easily effecting the dream is diminished. point being, the more stable you are in the dream the more you can think freely and choose specifically which thoughts will manifest without your thoughts acting out so fast and out of your control.
so it seems it all comes down to balancing yourself first before acting.
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so that’s me right now - (this was helpful already ^^)
what about you? what do you think about this? what do you think about yourselves? what do you experience? what is lucid dreaming for you?
I certainly agree with the point you made about being mindful and awareness of thoughts. How often has a lucid dream been ruined by one negative little thought… you know the one where you think, ‘that won’t work’, and then suddenly you can’t fly or phase, or do any of your usual abilities.
It counts in RL as well. You might think, oh I’ve got no chance of being lucid because I forgot to do my RCs today… we’re setting ourselves up for failure. How often do we think negative things such as ‘my dreams are boring’, ‘my recall sucks’, ‘I failed to notice this dream sign’, ‘I didn’t do this technique right’ etc etc.
In truth, none of that matters. Your dreams are not boring. Your recall is excellent. Instead of thinking, oh I missed that really obvious dream sign, laugh and think to yourself - my SC put that in my dream to help me become lucid. Subconsciously, I want to become lucid… so that dream sign is proof that my SC is helping me! My SC wants me to be lucid.
It’s all down to mindset. Thoughts. Belief. Self assurance.
I totally agree with you.
I am just getting into lucid dreams and figured that if I fill my day with the topic of lucid dreaming, it will inevitably raise my chances of becoming lucid while dreaming.
As for mindfulness of thought, that I agree too. It is why I adopted meditation into my daily routine; it raises general awareness both in and out of dreams and allows one to be mindful and not be carried away mindlessly by spontaneous thoughts.
Though I have never really heard / thought about the energy and effecting the physical body part, would be interested to learn more about it. Could you link a thread or a article? thanks!
Some very good points from both of you here. Particularly about having a defeatist mindset in waking life!
I found this site shortly after Inception came out. My cousin and I cycled home from the picture-house on the same bike, chattering away about how exciting it would be to control your dreams. We both remembered being able to do it occasionally when we were children. We were talking and thinking about it so much that I had a whole spate of LDs right off the bat, before I’d looked it up online. The endless freedom was intoxicating - every character in every book, anyone I’d ever wanted to talk to at my fingertips!
That initial rush of discovery is by far the most powerful “technique” I know. It just blows the others out of the water, because it keeps LDing constantly in your mind like a new crush. In a way, finding out more about LDing just made it seem as if it “ought” to be more difficult. And voilà, it was. How you can recapture that overwhelming enthusiasm I don’t know. Making plans is the best way I’ve found. I can no longer feel so strongly about LDing in itself: it’s a tool. But as a tool to some specific adventure, it can get me going. If I write down in precise detail what I want to see and do that night, I can sometimes work up the excitement that carries me along just as it did in the beginning.
I’d be interested to know if other veteran dreamers have felt the same thing.
EDIT: Being a good dreamer is a bit like being a good writer. You have to have had enough experience of and fascination with life to put together a story full of adventure and curiosity. You also have to have practised writing, and the trouble is you don’t always have time to do both! If you spend your whole day thinking about LDing, that will in the long term give you less material to work with to make your dream-worlds compelling and rich. It’s a tough balancing act and I’m not sure how best to pull it off.
Ah! fellow dreamers, great to hear from all of you.
i always like to say, concerning thoughts in general, that when people come to a choice, a lot of them imagine the outcome being negative, as if its easier for people to believe something bad is going to happen instead of something good. you can say the cause for this is due to society’s influence on the people or maybe something else but i dont think youll completely figure it out, more than that, i dont think its important to do so, rather start now to change your approach.
the facts are we dont know the future, so why do we tend to believe something bad would happen when truly the events can go both ways?
when its a 50-50 chance, why choose to believe the negative side would come true? - well, stop, start living your life the other way, see what happens.
practicing lucid dreams is a great way to understand this and change that thought pattern since this is something that stands out very much in the dream world. in a world where thoughts and emotions manifest instantaneously, doubts and fears are hard to miss.
using the LD state is another chance to better yourself in this matter. the dream plane is based largely on reflecting our beliefs and as you doubt yourself you wont be able to accomplish that which you can do when you have faith in your actions.
as for the reference, i would suggest “Lucid dreaming gateway to inner self” by Robert Waggoner this recounts a lot of experimentation and achievements people have accomplished by pushing the limits of lucid dreams. since your into meditation as well, you might want to check out the knowledge of the east, since they have been practicing lucid dreams for thousands of years before it became known (or at least scientifically proven) in the west - “The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep” by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is the book for that.
have fun
i very much like your point of view 001, i like writing as well. excitement is key to life as a whole it seems. a point that should interest you - from what i learned (and experimented with) from the Tibetan yoga is that you should be mindful of the way you feel, you can use it as to project an overall theme to the dream. excitement in itself is a feeling, by knowing how to project your feelings you can effect the dream, by keeping a clear mind before the falling asleep / as you are falling asleep, and also in the middle of the night, you “spill” that awareness into the dream giving you much more probability to have a lucid dream (this is mainly my technique for having lucid dreams).
im happy to hear from you all.
what is your goals as dreamers? do you just use lucid dreams for fun? do you have specific goals you wish to accomplish?
Expect the worst, hope for the best. Prudence does require us to prepare for anything that could go wrong: that’s the other side, of course, to what you’re saying. But you’re right- we mustn’t let that fear dominate us. You have to clean your rifle, but you may not have to fire it.
Interesting to hear about the Tibetan yoga. The funny thing is, it’s easy to think of lucid dreams as a refuge from life when the real world is tough. But often they come only when you are contented and calm during the day - you can’t expect to go around worried and anxious from dawn till dusk then in the last five minutes of the day summon up the excitement and childlike wonder to go on a miraculous adventure.
Lucid dreams and waking life are a continuum - that’s the healthy way. LDs are a way to explore further the landscapes which awake you can only glimpse as they rush by the car window. You can try out a path you didn’t have time for on your afternoon walk, or follow up an interesting character or setting in a book or film, or interview your childhood hero. They make a full life fuller - but when they become an escape from an empty life then they aren’t the solution. It’s always good to know that LD4all has always been firmly on the side of sanity where that’s concerned!
I actually wonder whether we shouldn’t have a support topic for LDers? There are bound to be some people who come here because WL is getting to them - perhaps this community is a strategic bottleneck for an “are-you-ok?” Reality Checkpoint.
exactly, its about believing the positive outcome yet understanding that there is no real “bad” outcome, being able to deal with every situation that presents itself, even if its just emotionally, and by that eliminating the disappointment “effect”.
and wow, nonono, of course not, waking life is just as important as dreaming, people should work out their problems not ignore them, its why theyre there in the first place.
the Tibetan support what you are saying 001, that for them its all about continuing to stay conscious as the night comes, instead of loosing consciousness for a third of your life. youll also be surprised to hear that the actual goal of dream and sleep yoga is the end of dreams
it sounds that for you a lot of what lucid dreaming is all about is to create those new story lines, but you can also move away from the plot and look deeper into your own self and existence in general.
I wasn’t really conscious of having taken sides in the divide between reflective or exploratory dreaming, but now that you point it out I see you’re right: for me dreaming is very much about what is “out there”, rather than in here. I’m very introspective by temperament, but outward-looking by intellectual conviction. Other people will see it differently, but I agree with G.K. Chesterton when he says:
“I do not, in my private capacity, believe that a baby gets his best physical food by sucking his thumb; nor that a man gets his best moral food by sucking on his soul”
I suppose I understand myself in terms of my actions, just I come to know others by what real fruits they bear in the world. I may be overwhelmed with pity for someone or with anger, such that those feelings shape and dominate my inner life entirely: but if they don’t lead me to practise mercy or revenge, I’m not sure they say anything lasting about me. If a man treats me well, I don’t condemn him if he happens to hate me passionately: actually I respect him more if he does. So as far as dreams are concerned I could plumb the depths of my subconscious and listen to a dream guide telling me “you’re a kind person; your deepest fear is loneliness etc.”: but for me that doesn’t mean anything if, the next day, I lock myself up in delicious solitude and turn everyone from my door like a miser. Being alone with yourself induces a particular mindset, just as is romantic connexion, or group laughter. I’m wary, for myself, of privileging that mindset as a special “mode” of being which can judge the reality of all the others; of thinking I’m truer to myself when looking inward.
I do think I can learn things from dreams - by observing how I act them, as I would in real life. So although my experience is action-driven, it is that way because I think actions reveal me better than introspection. As I said, others will feel differently.
I’m not surprised to hear that about Tibetan yoga, actually! As I understand it Buddhists seek to escape the suffering inherent in human experience, and eliminating dreams must get rid of a whole set of the most arbitrary sufferings - transcending and abolishing dreams is a precursor to transcending waking life in enlightenment, perhaps? But I’m speculating.
ohh… more or less, youre somewhere around those lines, using dreams as a means for enlightenment. generally speaking, dreams are reflective and by changing the types of dreams you change yourself, this is in some form the beginning of the way to end dreams. i dont want to say to much about it to mislead others since i dont remember exactly how they put it right now, but its a very interesting topic.
it doesnt have to be all “alone”/inner, to me its just another thing to explore, see the possibilities! consider this - one of the things that got me so excited about dreams is that realization, that while you are lucid, in the dream world, you get the unique chance to directly interact with your thought patterns in a visualized form! thats just amazing!
When I first read about lucid dreaming. I had amazing enthusiasm and it only took me four days of doing reality checks to have my first lucid dream. and I had another one a couple of days later. I think something that really helps if you’re not an expert dreamer is to set easily achievable goals that way when you achieve them it will give you more confidence and enthusiasm to go after more daunting goals. like you could pretend the ground is a trampoline and just keep jumping really high one dream and then say ok maybe in my next dream I can fly and so on. Brainstorm on experiments for you to do in your dreams that will confirm to you how infinite the dream world is. Break the laws of physics and time. There are no limits
I actually wonder whether we shouldn’t have a support topic for LDers? There are bound to be some people who come here because WL is getting to them - perhaps this community is a strategic bottleneck for an “are-you-ok?” Reality Checkpoint.