The dream yogis put it simply: “upon waking in the morning, think to yourself, ‘I am awake in a dream.’ When you enter the kitchen, recognize it as a dream kitchen. Pour dream milk into dream coffee. ‘It’s all a dream,’ you think to yourself, ‘this is a dream.’ Remind yourself of this constantly throughout the day.
The emphasis should actually be on you, the dreamer, more than the objects of your experience. Keep reminding yourself that you are dreaming up your experiences: The anger you feel, the happiness, the fatigue, the anxiety-it is al part of the dream. The oak tree you appreciate, the car you drive, the person to whom you are talking, are all part of the dream. In this way, a new tendency is created in the mind, that of looking at experience as insubstantial, transient, and intimately related to the mind’s projections. Every sensory encounter and mental event becomes a reminder of the dream like nature of experience. Eventually, this understanding will arise in dream and lead to the recognition of the dream state and the development of lucidity.”
-The Tibetan yogas of dream and sleep, p.90-1
A technique which has withstood the test of time. I think that it brilliantly describes the feeling and practice of lucid living. What do you think?
I think that’s a fitting definition, though I’ve found this a hard notion to bear in mind. Sometimes I feel that I really comprehend it, and I say, “Ah, I understand! Everything is created in my mind, so essentially it’s all a dream!” Most of the time, however, I feel that I don’t have a good sense of what that means.
Something that helps me regain a sense of the concept (and is amusing in addition) is to touch myself somewhere, such as my leg, and think about how even though I seem to feel that sensation of touch down on my leg, it’s actually processed in my brain. Without my brain, I wouldn’t perceive that touch. All these physical, visual, and audial sensations I’m experiencing that I regard as external are actually in my brain. That sensation of touch on my leg is in my brain, yet I feel it on my leg, a few feet down from my brain.
See, the problem with that kind of thinking is that it still grounds you to a reality, maybe one not as immediately percievable as the one in which you see this post on your monitor, but nevertheless one in which at least your brain is real and exists somewhat independently from yourself. What you have to ‘realize’ is even that brain with all its complexity is part of that same dream, and that nothing is real but consciousness and that physical reality is but a product of it, not the other way around. It helps to think of it this way because if the basis of your perceptions is physical in nature, it can’t really be a dream, can it?
I think Lucid Living is really not getting enough love here because for me, that is the main purpose of becoming lucid in my dreams: it is a step to becoming lucid in real life. Not to act in your life as you do in a dream, but to realize that life is a dream.
In my on again off again quest for lucid dreams, the switch is now flipped up. I’m back to practicing lucid living/dream yoga of sorts, and I can always do really well when I’m by myself. Then people enter the picture and everything goes to purgatory. I was wondering, for those of you who practice these techniques, how do you keep yourself aware of the dreamlike qualities of waking life when you’re trying to have a serious conversation? This is a key problem for me because my dreams consist of almost nothing but ordinary interactions with people and I feel that if I can overcome this IWL that it will help tremendously with lucidity. Thanks for reading
Try drawing something on your hand, like an open eye. Everytime you see it, even out of the corner of your eye, it will subconsciously remind you about dreaming, even if you don’t consciously think it.
Could you please explain your problem more concretely? Why does it become like purgatory when you meet DC’s? Why do you think that enhancing the awareness of dreamlike qualities of RL serious conversations could modify something? There is something in your post I don’t understand at all.
interacting with people in real life is pretty dreamlike to me.
realize that you are controlling their reactions to you based upon how you choose to communicate with them (which is hopefully completely and totally honest).
in this way, they cannot exist without you there to perceive them (although they will any way) and the conversation cannot take place without you bearing witness.
I believe she means “everything goes pear shaped” when she says purgatory, as in it all goes to hell, her concentration is broken.
The basis of Dream Yoga is to spend your entire waking life ‘realising’ that everything around you is a dream, or rather, you have to perceive it to be a dream 24/7. The goal being that you will be dreaming one day and just spontaneously become lucid because you know everything around you is a dream. Sort of like how we currently walk around thinking we’re awake all the time, so we do the same in dreams. She’s saying that since conversations occur frequently in her dreams, if she could make conversations become more dreamlike in her waking life, she could get lucid much more often in her dreams.
I see what you’'re saying! Of course it is natural to want to treat other people like they’re other people in real life. It would be rather self centered to be talking to people while thinking they’re not real. This habit would transfer to the dream world, so maybe you’ll just have to stop paying attention to your friends and responding to them as if they were real people =P
I doubt it. Unless you already dont have a firm grasp of reality its very harmless.
You are just perceiving the world to be a dream, you arent giving yourself totally over to the belief that it IS a dream without consequence. Its all about training your mind to always believe you are asleep instead of always believing you are awake. Ironically, believing you are asleep increases your average level of daily awareness of the world. Funny how that works.
I have been thinking that for quite some time now, starting with the bells at my school. Sometimes I’m talking to a friend when the bell rings and although it definitely doesn’t force me to stop talking to my friend, it does create a strange urge to start walking to my next class if I continue talking to my friend. I, however, could never have put it as eloquently or in depth as you did.
I was walking back to home from my friends home just twenty minutes ago, I just came home. And while I was walking I was thrown right into a lucid living situation. I was listening to hypnotic trance-music while I walked with my jacket’s hood on in the rain, with a dark sky. But a beatiful sky because the holes between the clouds were letting through light, wich was a beatiful thing to see. As I was walking on trance under the beatiful sky in the rain I noticed the neigbourhood I was walking is was abandoned. There was noone to see. All of the sudden I realised it looked just like a dream. I did some checks to test reality when I got confirmed it was all real. I lived lucid.
buddy let me tell you somthing theres no secret, thats how the universe works. We have so much power. So much drama. Every living soul has unimaginable power. How do you use it? Its allways been there! You is who has been holding your self back all this time. So stop living under conditions, and just start living, plain and simple. Thats what “lucid living” is. simple as that, nothing more nothing less
Just throwing in my two cents without reading every post on this thread…
Tibetan Buddhism and dream yoga take this same approach to Lucid Dreaming. That is, rather than executing a number of techniques mechanically, they develop the mindset, the thinking that will lead to lucid dreaming, and that is a heightened awareness of self and surroundings and always recognizing that the world as we perceive it is the substance of dreams.
Awesome thread! I read through several pages. One idea that kept popping up was that of lucid living and also that we are very powerful beings who are able to control how we feel, and therefore what we create.
I’m not sure if anyone has suggested this or brought it up before. But the movie and/or book “The Secret” is a great introduction for those looking to learn how to use their own unimaginable power in order to better their lives and the lives of others. The secret, in a nutshell, teaches that thoughts are things, therefore we create EVERYthing in our lives. If we learn how to control our emotions, then we can control our lives. Most people think that the Secret is a load of sh*t, so I don’t tell too many about it- only my closest friends, however I assume that since this is a dreaming forum, that most people are open minded enough to at least consider it.
All I have to say is, the Secret is simple and true and it truly has changed my life, which I am finally now in control of. Plus, I did notice that when you are not in control of your life, your dreams become much harder to control as well. Anywho, this movie has helped me and my family so much that I recommend it to anyone who is interested in finding out how to live lucidly, in other words, how to become aware of how you are feeling, and thus what you are creating, each and every moment of the day (and night).
Has anybody else seen this movie/read this book? I’m curious to know if it has changed others’ lives as it has mine.
buddy let me tell you somthing theres no secret, thats how the universe works. We have so much power. So much drama. Every living soul has unimaginable power. How do you use it? Its allways been there! 