Thread: 2015: Year of the Breath, meditation, WBTB, confidence and dedication

Originally Posted by Memm

You're doing awesome FryingMan!

Thanks!

Clearly the only thing to do is more, more, more.

Yes, yes, but …. more of WHAT!? I'm basically trying a little bit of everything. I suspect that the answer also includes being awake more during the night, which I *do not like*. For now I'm putting my eggs heavily in the day-work basket, and hoping I can build strong enough awareness over time that I can get good, high-frequency DILDs eventually by punching through the fog of the dream state. The "hammer" approach.

The double bind is that those associated with lucidity through day work (yoshi, hukif) wake up throughout the night :/

But Hukif always goes immediately back to sleep. He's told me that if he's up for even 5 minutes, he never gets back to sleep. So he doesn't do WBTB, and doesn't do WILD. Is he just naturally a light sleeper? Perhaps. Not sure what to do about that.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

But Hukif always goes immediately back to sleep. He's told me that if he's up for even 5 minutes, he never gets back to sleep. So he doesn't do WBTB, and doesn't do WILD. Is he just naturally a light sleeper? Perhaps. Not sure what to do about that.

Play the hand you're dealt. I may be a deep sleeper, but I also have a good memory. Others may have vivid imaginations, or high confidence. Your dream recall is way above average, especially given your aversion to waking during the night.

Well, yeah. But how? About the only thing I can think of is just keep trying really hard, without stop. And turning recall into lucids: lots of daytime MILD? What comes to mind is continual focus on "is this situation like my dreams?" By now I know pretty darn well what is dream-like, and what is not. And that comes through sometimes in dreams, when I get a jolt, but not always. My waking memory's pretty good and my recall is great at times, but I think my access to memory in dreams is just average, meaning: pretty piss-poor. I suppose more day-recall might help here.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Yes, yes, but …. more of WHAT!?

I was referring to meditation. =]

Without seated (or walking / slow movement) practice of meditation I think it's very, very hard to keep up mindfulness during the day. I've been trying but unless I take time off to do my practice the rest of the day just does not pay off as much. 30 minutes to concentrate on just yourself seems to matter much more than all the other hours of the day.

This will of course change with more practice, but day practice just seems like little paper cuts at the issue of mindfulness while taking the time to do it with more focus is like driving a car into it.

^^ Yes. I think it takes more of everything. I hear you that "everything" is better with more meditation.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

^^ Yes. I think it takes more of everything. I hear you that "everything" is better with more meditation.

I know it's hard to find time for it though, at the very least I try to do it as I'm falling asleep, but it's not as effective and doing it with full alertness. But you can do things like walking meditation to your car in the morning or something like that to fit it into the day schedule.

I've been calling the stuff we do in the day and night "work" but maybe I should re-label them "play" or just "practice." I've slipped into doing day practice very seriously. I think a more appropriate attitude is one of fun/lightheartedness. View each lucid moment as a fun time, building towards future LDs.

There's lots of things I'm doing in the daytime, I listed some of them (the rhythmic walking mantra for one), but I think it's safe to summarize everything with just "paying attention" (with the subtext of recognizing the dream state). It's easier to think of it that way, too, instead of trying to keep a long laundry list of things I "have to do" during the day to promote lucidity.

Just pay attention! Enjoy/have fun doing it!

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Just pay attention! Enjoy/have fun doing it!

A nice gem of wisdom here, thanks!!

Originally Posted by FryingMan

I've been calling the stuff we do in the day and night "work" but maybe I should re-label them "play" or just "practice." I've slipped into doing day practice very seriously. I think a more appropriate attitude is one of fun/lightheartedness. View each lucid moment as a fun time, building towards future LDs.

There's lots of things I'm doing in the daytime, I listed some of them (the rhythmic walking mantra for one), but I think it's safe to summarize everything with just "paying attention" (with the subtext of recognizing the dream state). It's easier to think of it that way, too, instead of trying to keep a long laundry list of things I "have to do" during the day to promote lucidity.

Just pay attention! Enjoy/have fun doing it!

I definitely agree that it should all be playful, at least that's what the Buddhist nun I know keeps telling me haha, apparently I'm too serious a lot.

But I feel like maybe you shouldn't take on so much at a time as well, what I mean is when you practice you're just working on developing your mindfulness and concentration skills, don't worry about LDing while doing that, it's later in the day you turn from practising the skills to using them and directing your fortified mindfulness / concentration onto the intention of getting an LD. I think giving all your focus to one thing at a time will develop it faster.

Perhaps. But I'm wary that the result will be mindfull non-lucids where I'm really tuned in to what's going on but still have no notion that I'm in a dream. I remember Hukif telling me when I was working on ADA-RC stuff, that he told me "not only keep your mind on the <RC of your choice>, but remember *why* you're doing it: to recognize the dream."

I'll see how it goes. I'm not super happy with progress (seems little to none so far?), but maybe I just need to wait, or maybe I need to do fewer things at the same time as you suggest.

one thing that has helped me is that "why" part you mentioned above. part of it initiating from seeing or experiencing something weird. I see weird things in my dreams all the time, things that make no sense. these are in my non lucids. so for me when i see stuff weird sometimes i do a rc in the dream and nothing changes in it and my mind thinks my environment is still IWL a lot of the time. i have to understand that i am doing it because something seems weird. so now when i rc i make sure it has a purpose, or it doesn't do me any good. now it seems i dont use rc at all when i am lucid. i just start becoming more aware when my mind starts picking up on strange things and hopefully comes to the conclusion that i am in a dream, and that usually gets me lucid. so make sure every questioning you do in reality has a "why is this this way?" moment. I am only a beginner but i hope that can be of some help. i can be a bit unorganized in my writing so please ask me to clarify better if it made no sense.

On second thought, I think you may be on to something, Memm. Your point has been echoing around in my head for a while and it resonates well. Someone/thing "upstairs" in my head definitely agrees with you.

I'll give this more focused, pure "playfully paying attention" the next 3 months. I'll then need to add an evening "ramping up" and gathering of focus on lucid dreaming for the night. That's probably a good thing to do, anyway.

If you're recalling your dreams, your already paying attention. You need to pay attention to something in order to recall it, right?

In your dreams, you want pay attention to things dream related-conflicts with reality or actions/thoughts about dreaming. So, if you're doing day work, you should to pay attention to do those same things that you need to while your dreaming. You're practicing for the dream world.

For your night work, you should continue your day work as much as you can until become lucid in your dream. Your dreams occur at night so it doesn't make sense to do something very different.

You'll know you're making progress when you find yourself paying attention to the topic of dreaming in your dreams.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

but remember *why* you're doing it: to recognize the dream."

To me the why isn't to get lucid, it's to develop better concentration / sati. If your sati is strong enough you should theoretically simply go "my intention is to LD tonight" at bed time and you'll continue to remember that intention during your dreams, because your memory / mindfulness has been practised to the point where it is strong enough to do that. Otherwise it'll never be something you can control (get LD whenever you want), you'll always be at the mercy of what your state of mind just happens to be that night, if you're highly focused, well rested and feel good you get an LD and if you had a bad day and your mind is all over the place you don't get an LD, the point is to have some degree of control where your intention = what happens, rather than having an intention but the rest of you doesn't really feel like following along.

It's cliche but this is about merging body / mind / intention, so what you think is what you get. If you take martial artists as an example, the feats they do is because they control their bodies through intention, they want to do something and the body follows instantly, for most people the brain and the rest are almost two separate things that argue with each other. Similar with LDs, just because you want to remember to have an LD tonight doesn't mean the rest of your brain is going to agree, it takes meditation to calm the brain down until it accepts any and all commands you give it without fuss.

This I think is also why Stephen LaBerge's most successful technique in his book wasn't dream signs but doing prospective memory training.

dolphin and Memm, I think you're *both* right. My mind is far from my control -- e.g., the many times I can't get back to sleep after a WBTB. And I frequently follow daydreaming thoughts when I should be getting back to sleep. But for me the goal *is* lucid dreams. If I can just get the thought of dreaming to appear in my dreams a lot more, I know I'll get lucid a lot.

Memm, you mentioned memory with regards to mindfulness, how does memory training come out of mindfulness practice, or should one do other things focused on memory? PM exercises, or something else?

So for now I'll continue with focusing on *paying attention* more, both during waking and during dreaming. Without scatting my thinking around too much, more focused.

I actually had an amazing string of very vivid, very present dreams last night. I was just too involved with what was going on to remember to recognize I was dreaming.

An interesting side note, I actually remembered a fact (after a long struggle) in the dream that I frequently struggle to remember when awake (the name of a composer of a piece of classical music I heard in the dream). I was really happy with that accomplishment. Until I realized upon review of the dream I was thinking of another piece (not the one I actually heard) ….haha. But still I did recall the name correctly in dream: "B….B….B…[Oh come on, my son played a piano piece by him…]..B…Bar…BARTOK! Bartok…woohoo!"

The piece I "misremembered" (but correctly recalled eventually the composer: "Romanian Folk Dances" by Bartok)


The piece I actually heard an excerpt from:
(I particularly recommend from 00:00 to 1:23 and 14:46 to 15:25 [this latter excerpt is what I heard in my dream])
You can probably guess where my instrumental allegiance lies from these excerpts (but I'll never tell ).

Originally Posted by dolphin

For your night work, you should continue your day work as much as you can until become lucid in your dream. Your dreams occur at night so it doesn't make sense to do something very different.

What I call "night work": recall, WBTB, (M/W/DE)ILD, surely you don't mean not to do these things…?

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Memm, you mentioned memory with regards to mindfulness, how does memory training come out of mindfulness practice, or should one do other things focused on memory? PM exercises, or something else?

In a lot of ways mindfulness is memory training, but older languages tend to encompass so much more meaning in each word. There is a similar issues with Chinese words for martial arts, for example we say "turn the waist" in english but the Chinese word "kua" (that I read) really means waist / hips and much in between. Similar with "sung" which is often translated to "relax" but really means a whole bunch of other things. Getting off track but my point is don't think "mindfulness" is just "being aware" or something only to do with awareness.

Anyway.

I probably don't know all the ways but here is everything I can think of:

- Focusing on the breath calms down the mind, removing extra thoughts, this trains concentration, meaning you can zip from one object of attention to another and not get sidetracked

- The second part is the act of returning to the breath when you do get sidetracked, without memory, as in remembering what you were just doing, you would never come back to the breath, so this trains memory / PM

- The mind not getting sidetracked means it can spend more power on whatever your current attention is on, it's not just that though, the mind "opens up" and relaxes so whatever you focus on you remember much better

- It also I think trains the "inner eye" or "little spy inside the mind" (read this description somewhere) also known as "mindfulness", which is not something that ever really goes away, it's that ability of noticing what your current state is, or noticing that you're currently noticing, honestly I don't know how deep this rabbit hole goes


The trick is if you simply get rid of all thought (which you can force to do) you get higher focus, and this trains concentration but not memory per se (although it affects it), so it needs to be a balance between concentration and coming back to the breath.

I'm not an expert but in my experience it's good to start with the focusing on just the breath and later when you've relaxed to let your mind wander to the noises you can hear, or the feelings in the body, or whatever else you can get distracted by and then returning back to the breath and then repeating that. The only warning with doing this is that it can make you hypersensitive when your mindfulness of the surroundings start to outweigh your concentration. I once got up from meditation and every light in the house seemed like the sun and even the ticking noise the clock on the wall was making made me dizzy, I had to pick a spot and just stare at it with all my focus for a few minutes to return to normal.

So imagine what a highly focused mind could do for getting you lucid. That was like an hour long meditation though and I haven't done anything similar since.

Anyway, have fun, the mind is very powerful and mysterious.


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It occurred to me some things might be difficult to understand without having some degree of experience with meditation, or at least how deep it can go. I am by no means an expert and I encourage everyone to read as much as possible on the subject to gain a full understanding but I want to share what my own meditation session might feel like and maybe it might help a bit. I doubt I've even scratched the surface but personally I think breath meditation is pretty safe so you can experiment a bit, there are other subjects that you can meditate on (such as death) which I have never done and I definitely think should never be done without supervision from somebody very well trained.

So here is a break down of what I do / might happen, take it all with a grain of salt, just my experience, maybe somebody can admonish me for some of these. This particular example would be single-pointedness / calm abiding meditation.

1. I sit down on a chair (I can't sit in half-lotus or any lotus for long enough yet to really get anywhere, but on a chair I can easily sit for 30 mins or more)

2. Make sure my back is as straight as possible, don't hunch over

3. Close my eyes and focus on the breath going in and out of my nostrils, it might be hard to get the location at first but gets easier with practice, try not to move the "location" of your breath detection because it messes with your focus

4. At first my mind is still having thoughts but I just keep focusing on the breath as much as I can and relax

5. The more my mind calms down the more I also relax, relaxing also helps fix your posture because everything sinks downward the way it should

6. Mind quietens down more and more, still some stray thoughts here and there but it's getting better, the better it gets the more focus there is

7. At some point I'm relaxed enough that I stop controlling the breath and simply pay attention to it, if you try to force yourself not to control the breath then that won't work, but if you simply have the intention of not controlling it then that will eventually lead to not controlling it

8. I don't think about whether I am successfully not controlling the breath or not, I don't think about how long I'm sitting for or if I'm doing it right or anything like that

9. At some point the focus on the breath going in and out is all there is

10. At some point I might lose the breath, I might control it a bit just to find it again

11. At some point (if you sit long enough) the focus is so great that you lose your body and the breath going in and out at the point of your focus is all there is

12. When you "lose" the body you feel light and floaty, at this stage the focus is quite extreme, it's the kind of focus where you could probably track the beating wings on a fly

13. I stay like this for a while, it's a great feeling, I don't want to get up anymore

14. I decide I've done enough and start coming around

15. Feeling returns to the body (if you lost it), the focus does not go away, I'm still highly focused

16. Slowly open eyes, take it easy

17. Massage face / head / ears / eyes / legs and anything else

18. Get up slowly and move around a bit (walking around helps)

19. Done! The focus gained is still with me, still highly focused, anything I look at is crisp in detail, I'm not distracted by any thoughts, I can sit down and do assignments or anything else with complete concentration


Don't worry about the senses thing, basically somewhere around #10 you can pay attention to your body and any sounds. For example let's say you meditate near your computer, you let the noise of the computer drag your attention from the breath for a moment, you "note" that your attention is no longer on your breath and when the noise is no longer of interest you return back to the breath. Other things you might "note" is the air, smell, your current feelings (emotional or just the body) etc...

Another way to practice the mindfulness part is to loosen up the focus and let your mind wander again then return to the breath.

Reaching #13 does take some practice and it's harder on some days than others, but once you get there once or twice you basically know "the path" your mind / body takes to get there and you can do it fairly quickly (like ~20 minutes).

Disclaimer: take with grain of salt, if you have a bad feeling stop, don't do anything stupid like meditating on a heavy subject (like death) without serious guidance / supervision, keep warm, don't get up too fast, and just generally take care of yourself

Hey, Memm, you're meditation practice sounds like it's going great! I've only dipped into the kind of state you're describing a handful of times. So I have to say in regards to this:

11. At some point (if you sit long enough) the focus is so great that you lose your body and the breath going in and out at the point of your focus is all there is

12. When you "lose" the body you feel light and floaty, at this stage the focus is quite extreme, it's the kind of focus where you could probably track the beating wings on a fly

13. I stay like this for a while, it's a great feeling, I don't want to get up anymore

14. I decide I've done enough and start coming around

Don't get up! You're actually developing a good degree of absorption here, maybe jhana even.

Awesome stuff with your in-dream recall , Frying (I also like Bartok) Last night in a dream I actually started recalling both my UK and Australian mobile numbers when I was giving them to a DC!

Originally Posted by FryingMan

What I call "night work": recall, WBTB, (M/W/DE)ILD, surely you don't mean not to do these things…?

What I meant was don't completely disregard your day work at night. Continue your day work during your WBTB and include your intention to continue your day work during your dreams in your mantra.

Originally Posted by dolphin

What I meant was don't completely disregard your day work at night. Continue your day work during your WBTB and include your intention to continue your day work during your dreams in your mantra.

Yeah, this^

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Don't get up! You're actually developing a good degree of absorption here, maybe jhana even.

Haha, still have to get up eventually, that's why the jhana's are not enlightenment, they're still temporary (even though some monks can stay like that for weeks) you still have to get up eventually and eat or whatnot.

From what I understand it is the first jhana yeah, but not perfected. Even if you don't reach this kind of focus you're still already working on your concentration / mindfulness, don't worry about the jhanas.