Stabilizing the dream world: "not staring" tech.

Lucid Adventures
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This is about a technique to stabilize the dream world - I’ve had the occasion to try it only once (yet successfully), approximately I have the feeling that it makes it possible to prolong the dream and increase its realism. For information, it’s inspired from the Castaneda’s books - though I would’nt recommend to read them. :tongue:

In real life, when we look at the world, we never fix a long time a precise point but we throw brief glances here and there. According to my LD’ing experience, we don’t do the same in lucid dream, but we tend on the contrary to obnubilate ourselves and focus on details. It may happen that we start to focus our attention on a ridiculous detail, say a DC’s face because he has a funny nose, and the consequence is that the face starts to change. :wow:

The technique thus consists in voluntarily adopting the same “glance” on the dream that we have in reality. It consists in contenting oneself with throwing briefs glances here and there, quick glances in the same way we do in real life, without concentrating on anything - the natural tendency in LD’s. As I mentioned above, I tested it just once hence it is rather difficult to me to explain. At the beginning, I didn’t understand very well what was written in the book (I don’t think it’s very well explained BTW) thus I forced myself to look successively here and there, here and there, etc. but I felt it wasn’t really the good technique.

IMO saying “here and there” is a way of speaking, it shouldn’t be taken literaly. In fact, I think a good way of considering things that makes it possible to understand the principle of the method is, “taking the dream for granted”. I believe that what leads us to concentrate like crazymen on dream details, is the fear to lose the dream world. Hence, we exaggerate the efforts we put in keeping attention and we fix our gaze on things. In real life, we never fear that reality changes or disappears, then we use our attention in a softer, less exaggerated maneer.

I think this is an “advanced” technique because the beginner problem is not stabilizing the dream world by “diluting” their attention, but on the contrary to manage to concentrate their attention on it. Thus a priori, this technique is not very useful for somebody who starts to learn lucid dreaming. :neutral:

If you do not understand… well… it’s normal, me neither! :lol: So don’t hesitate to ask questions, it will perhaps clarify things. And if you have the occasion to test this method in a lucid dream, don’t hesitate neither to give your feedback in this topic! :happy:

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so what are you saying exactly? stabilize the scenary by not paying too much attention on one particular area of the scenary? could you just elaborate on what you mean by this?

something interesting to note is that one of the manifestation techniques is to imagine it behind you, and this applies with dream scenary too. You could be inside a shopping mall but imagine there is a forest behind you, and when you turn around thats what you’d see if you put enough visualisation and intent and expectation into it. The point i’m making here is that if you expect the scenary to change, there is a greater chance of it happening. But also, the reverse is true if you expect the scenary to be stabilized, then it will be.

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The scenery changes by default. To stabilize things in a dream requires more attention and practice, because while in a dream we are flowing opposed to being fixated like in a normal state.

As for the “looking around” and not concentrating on anything - at least for me it has worked. And if you remember about don Juan saying to concentrate on hands (or any other reference point) - this really gives you energy and focus. So look around without fixating - hands - look around - hands… etc. it helps.

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Very helpful post Basilus, will definately try it out and come back to you.

Eonn, you are a strong advocate of your particular method. However, as far as my own experience has taught me, it’s not that simple.

Obviously you are very skilled but I think you need to realise what is affected by one’s expectations and what isn’t. There’s also a line between what works best simply through intent and what works best through a mind tricking technique.

The reason I’m bringing it up is that I know for a fact that merely expecting stability is not enough. Expecting instability is definately bad but it does not translate the other way to the extent that you suggest.

No offense intended, just pointing out something.

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So do you think we should pay more attention to our peripherals in dreams? IWL I don’t usually look “here and there” by shifting my focus like that, rather I use peripherals…

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Lol, I see some of you are answering in the same time I’m writing my post. It’s too hard for me, I’ll answer later to you, MatrixManNe0. :lol:

I agree with Freeborn. Fixing things in LD’s to make them change is a well-known technique. It has been described first by Hervey de Saint-Denys and since this time it has even been given as a trick again monsters (I think it can be found in Garfield). It’s quite true IRL (for instance, you can remember the funny experiment with a mirror when you fix your reflection and it changes; here the basis is certainly retinian persistence, but it doesn’t explain the whole thing). The principle in real life is, we never fix things, eyes always move.

In LD’s, we tend naturally to pay a lot of attention and concentration on our surroundings. That’s probably the reason why we often feel tired and lose lucidity. We never pay such attention on our surroundings in real life. Now instead of having abstracted glances to the people and to the scenery like IRL, in lucid dreams we grasp things with our attention as if we would like they don’t disappear. Paying more attention makes sometimes the details of the scenery look like more vivid than IRL. But they are more instable too.

Not fixing things, but just having brief glances here and there as IRL leads to the same feeling than reality. Castaneda describes the result as a “incredibly clear composite picture”. I find it’s correct : IRL, we just have an “incredibly clear composite picture” of our surroundings.

Now Freeborn points out quite a fondamental notion. Focusing on something (like your hands) will put more attention in your dreams: the process of accumulating attention in your dreams creates or boosts lucidity. That’s what is first tought to beginners, focusing attention on dream content, so that they have LD’s instead of ND’s. No more focusing, no more fixing things, will sort of build reality but this dilution of attention may makes you lose lucidity. Hence the trick of fixing hands until they transform, looking around, fixing hands, looking around, etc. (fixing hands is not always necessary in some cases BTW).

Some things are due to beliefs and expectations in LD’s, some others aren’t. For instance, WILD experiences are the same even if the dreamer didn’t read anything about them before. I think that what I describe has nothing to do with expectations, it’s just the functioning of attention.

The only time I remembered this and tried to “take my dream world for granted” (don’t know if I’m expressing this in a comprehensible way), i.e. perceiving it as I would do IRL, I got about 10 minutes of completely stable and realistic scenary in my LD, and I could even close my eyes during minutes to try and meditate without any problem.

Now I would be glad you try it and give your feedback on this method. :smile:

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MatrixManNe0, just walk in the street and observe how your eyes do. :smile: I don’t think it’s a question of paying more attention to the peripherals, I think this impression comes from the way your eyes are moving inconsciously and then you’re memorizing what they have seen here and there.

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None taken. I wasn’t so much trying to point out how expectations work, but moreso about the manifestation technique. If you imagine a gun on the counter behind you, theres a good chance it will manifest. If you imagine the scenary changing behind you into something else, then once again, theres a good chance it will happen.

Maybe its just me, but when i came to this forum, i had no trouble with lucid dreaming at all. As soon as i started reading about how people wake up from sex, or they’re dream fades and things like that… it started happening to me. I found myself having much shorter LD’s and encountering many problems i’d never had before. After a while, I decided to just not worry about that stuff so much, and not try to stay in the dream but just let whatever happen, happen. If it were going to end very shortly, so be it. If i were going to wake up during sex, so be it. After a while with this new frame of mind, all the problems started going away and I am back to enjoying nice long LD’s with no power struggles.

The only thing about this technique i find perculiar, is that if your glancing around so much, how will you even know if the scenary has changed?

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Lol! This is perhaps the point of this technique. In real life, by glancing around so much, how do we know if the scenary hasn’t changed? :wink:

More seriously, by stable, I didn’t mean permanent. I just meant things were not everchanging. For instance, when I practiced meditation and closed my eyes, I was in a building, in the campus of an university. Two minutes later when I opened them, I was in the same place and could walk back in the building and find the same corridor and stairs. But it’s not really the point: I had the feeling that something was clearly different from my other LD’s. Now I just tested this once: I’m perhaps wrong. But this feeling was special enough so that I found it interesting to make this post.

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i know in real life if im walking through the mall, i will glance around a lot. But there are things we do spend a lot of time staring at such as the computer or TV.