Note to Sentient: Check your threads more often!
The first thing I thought when I saw your post was: “Could this BE any longer?!”
Hehe, lol. You know I like to give you a hard time. 
LOL yeah they just stop for a while and then boom they pick up again and i come over and am like ‘woa wha!?!? what happened here omg!!!’
LOL was just exaggerating a bit there. 
As for me nightmarishly long posts. LOl i think that one took the cake, check out me subject lines
LOL ive been meaning to post about that in that popularity poll lol who wants to nominate me for Nightmarishly Long Poster? but wait i i didnt come here as often, i wouldnt be able to post such long horrendous posts tho! 
…
JJ 
I don’t know about being nominated for “Nightmarishly Long Poster” but you SHOULD get a prize for being weird enough to title each and every post you make. There should be a poll: “How many people actually READ Sentient’s post titles?” *I may be the only one! JJ.
*Didja notice mine?!?!?!
LOL wow i never wouldve thought of that, lol to be honest when i first started posting i thought that putting something in the subject lines was normal, kind of like a summary of what youre talking about. Of course i have long veered off that course.
LOL I didnt notice your subject line till i read that, lol its just so natural to start reading the post, and the subject line is so hidden! I can say from that that you are probably the only one.
As far as mine subject line goes, thats another ‘Jay Jay’
Ya, lol, im trying to conjure stuff as well. I failed the first time. But, I think the easy way to do it is to imagine it behind you, cause your brain is not use to things just popping out of thin air you know.
Also, what techniqu are you using to induce lucid dreams? Would it by any chance by a WILD?
That is a good idea, the expecting to be there when you turn around. Sort of a variant of expectation technique of LD. That vs the direct observing manifest technique. I think the former is easier, i’ll probably try that first.
The two main techniques i use to attempt LD’s are WILD and ‘noticing of dream feeling’
Dream feeling discussion here
https://community.ld4all.com/t/dream-feeling/10157
Too bad im in a dry spell right now LOL. should end tonight (hopefully), pull a mix between mnemonic and wild. In fact its not just WILD as i stated above but a mix between belief i’ll have one and then pulling a WILD to get there. (not terribly successful, i’ll prob post a new thread about my current WILD troubles)
Hi,
No, what I call intermediate state is absolutely not a warm and pleasant state. It is FEAR. Or at least, very unpleasant. It is what astralists call “low astral”.
I will copy here a part of an email I sent to Dreambob :
Right from the beginning, my idea was doing meditation in dreams. I had 2 kinds of LDs :
- DILDs
- WILDs, which other people would call OBEs. For all my WILDs, I go out of my body, so they all begin in a half intermediate state (dark image of my room, and sometimes nothing).
To simplify, let’s say there are 2 different states : dream / pitch black
Experimenting the 2 of them, I tried meditation in the 2. And I immediately noticed that there was good results in pitch black and no results in dreams.
What I call result, is “flowing energy” or “vibrations” (the same as OBE or sleep paralysis vibrations). So I spent more and more time not only meditating, but explorating the intermediate state (you can believe there is nothing to explore in a pitch black ? Wrong !)
There, I had many problems, because intermediate state is not as safe as dream (many people call it “low astral”). The energy of dream imagery being “free”, all your fears become immediatly true. In fact, fear seemed to be the main characteristic of this state (another reason of the inability of LDers to stay in it. Maybe they don’t feel always fear, but anyhow, they don’t feel very good !).
Well, after years of problems, I found a way to clean it from its bad contents, and then I could stay calm in it, observing how dreams appear. Because they appear, in front of you, or all around you, and take you. And then my problem was “How to avoid being taken by dreams”. I wanted to stay calmly meditating, but there was always something falling upon me, trees, books, demons… anything. And impossible to ignore them, because of the pain. A dog biting you in a dream can be very painful. Or it could be demons putting their fingers in my eyes. As if the dream wanted me to consider it.
After some other years, I found a way to fly through entire dreams (moutains, houses, trees, oceans, trains, anything) without being touched. In fact, I didn’t fly through them. Dreams were flying through me, but they were no more solid.
Question of Dreambob : It happens to me occasionally, and normally I simply wait for the next dream to begin. Sometimes, I have wondered if this is the state, called “dreamless sleep” – do you think it is??
Answer : This is not it.
Now, after several other years, I have the whole theory.
At the source of all, there is clarity/emptiness (non dual). With ignorance, it is transformed in duality. The solid objects (matter) are the materialization of clarity, and the void is the materialization of emptiness.
So, objects and void are equal in this regard.
When you look around you, you see objects. When you close your eyes, you see nothing. But this nothing is not emptiness, it is something : it is void. It may seem strange, but the void is an object. A black objet, but an object.
So, pitch black is an object. It comes from the grasping of the absence of dream. This is the materialization of the absence of dream. In a word : a mental construction. Like dreams.
There is more free energy in pitch black because it takes less energy to create it, than to create a dream. And on the basis of this energy, one can begin a work (that’s how meditation works).
So, you understand that clarity/emptiness can only come from the reunification of dream/void.
What is called dreamless state in tibetan buddhism is clarity/emptiness.
If you want the room to be brighter, just say “i shoulden’t be wearing these stupid sunglasses” and they will appear to be there.
then just take them off
Flo-- Thanks for explaining in more detail. Your post was fascinating. Your control gained through meditation is admirable. I now understand that your Pitch Black “Intermediate Area” is, of course, different than the dark beginning-of-journey place to which I was referring. I was speaking of an experience closer to Sentient’s (Sentient: BTW, interesting that you’ve read about the University representing the beginning of other people’s dreamscapes- thanks for sharing!).
I think I’ve had a few experiences with the “low astral” through what I thought were OBE 's , but they were so completely horrifying that I stopped remembering dreams altogether for months afterwards. And those experiences are the reason that I began conjuring weapons to defend myself a the beginning of all my LD 's: Fear.
flo
You should read some of jeff’s posts. He does some work with meditation and self hypnosis in LD’s. I have not tried it yet but it sounds interesting. I beleive that Dm7 can do it also.
Thessaly,
a dark place in a dream is not far from intermediate state. A little different but not far. For me, even a dream could be called “intermediate state” now, because the 2 states are merging. But for a “normal” LDer, yes, dark place and OBE are perceived as different. For example, at the beginning (my 200 first LDs), I was not able to get absolutely dark places in dreams. But after doing many OBEs, I noticed that my dreams could turns the same “horrifying way”, turn into OBEs, some of them being very frightful… In 1996, I even stopped 6 months because I had too many problems with an “astral entity”, which I called the mattress demon (this sonofab… was under my bed). In 1999 only, I managed to swap consciousness with him (yes !) and after several times he disappeared. After this, dream and OBE-state began to merge.
That was good to remind me that perception and dream phenomena change with practice… and that helps me to understand why Sentient did not understand the similarity between his dark dreams and OBE-state.
Milod, I will try to find Jeff. I read many posts since 2 days but don’t remember who is Jeff…
I have prayed in LD’s which is another form of meditation too. The results were impressive. I found myself travelling as a result.
I still have to try things like praying in tongues, or christian meditation on scripture etc.
I don’t get your point of ‘fear’ though. I haven’t ever had fear in an LD, or in dreams (not even when I was ‘shot’ in an ND). I have never carried weapons in an LD, too.
Your experience though reminds me of Dark night of the soul, somehow.
Hi Clarkkent,
if I believe what I see in your signature, you have 33 LDs now. According to my dream journal, half-intermediate-state appeared rather quickly, but strange phenomena linked with OBE-state appeared dream 83, and bad trips appeared dream 153. Problems took time to come.
The Dark night of the soul is not exactly this. It is replacing phenomena by their absence. For example, a guy becoming monk will leave the worldly life and replace it by the absence of distractions. This absence is a mental construction, it has the appearance of void. Everyone experiments void in meditation. Intermediate state in the equivalent while dreaming.
As I said in another post, void is not emptiness (what buddhists call emptiness is what christians call God).
In takes much time before void is replaced by God. The Dark night is the void, as mental construction.
Fear is different. It is dynamic. Void is depressing.
Not exactly - dark night is something which applies to all Christians at some point or another (or may apply) not just monks… 
Never mind… (mind you emptiness is not God and the latter isn’t a mental construction - far from it! but let’s not get into that…)
Wouldn’t Laberge and other experienced oneironauts have encountered the same thing if it were something which applies to everyone? I suspect it may not apply to all. Has it been reported in the literature?
Did you suffer from nightmares? Have you tried talking to these things, considering they may be mental constructs? Reality checks where you mention obe’s ? because WILD is not normally an OBE, just an LD (I subscribe to Laberge’s idea that most likely it’s an LD)
Are you on any medications? Sorry if I ask these questions, but they may be related… who knows…
They did. My best friend wrote a 2000 pages thesis on LD, he had 100 subjects. There is a whole chapter about intermediate state in his work. He discovered the thing several years before me and used the same name.
In literature, what I am speaking of is well documented under the terms “low astral”.
How many dream diaries did you read ? Are you really interested in other’s stuff ? It is reported in many places, but you have to see it.
The reality you see is a mental construct, you know.
I know. I speak of OBE, because many people don’t agree with you. If I say WILD, OBErs will say I am not speaking for them, if I say OBE, LDers will say I am nuts. So I say “intermediate state”, and nobody understands.
Never.
I feel you lack information about other people’s experiences. How many other’s dreams did you really read ?
For example, you will find one of these intermediate state’s bad trip right here, in this forum :
ld4all.com/forum/?https://www.ld4 … key=e486a6
I forgot :
Just a technical question : have you been buddhist ? What do you know of buddhism to tell this ?
Same technical question : what do you know about mental construction ? About mind ? How much time did you spend to this ? Would you say that you know mind better than a monk who spent 30 years in a cave ?
Don’t take it badly, but I have the feeling that you are talking about things without experience. Really, how much can you know about LD with 33 LDs ? It makes no sense.
flow
I think the thread was called advanced lucid dreaming. If I can find it again I will post a link to it.
You have a good friend! 
I think that link isn’t going to work…
Very clever idea, I did that once and it made the dream almost TOO bright.
r3m0t
Yep, you are right the link does not work. 