Could meditation really help?

[bro]

Hi poiples,

Yesterday, I went to sleep, after spending perhaps 1/2 hour meditating. I did not follow a SET method but rather, a loose version of Gothlarks method for meditation. Basically just relaxing, by thinknig of anything that will do that, and keeping in the back of your head what you want to accomplish, while letting all random thoughts float by with disinterest, but observation.
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So, I did this by laying on my bed, lighting some candles (I was later forced to blow them out due to fire hazard), and doing exactly as I stated above. Many different thoughts came into my head, people from my old elementary school, feelings and impressions from people in my old high school, and in particular, one girl I used to like...

-Yesterday, I also got into a brutal verbal fight with my parents over many different issues

-Yesterday, I took no supplements for vividness/recall/lucidity

-Yesterday, I went to bed somewhat hungry

-Today, early morning time, I woke up, had an early breakfast, and went back to sleep.

-Yesterday, I went for a rather intense 15-20 minute jog with my dog, up and down hills near my house. (She can run fast)
There were a few other circumstances yesterday that were different from my normal daily routine.

I have 1 major statement, with 2 questions that follow,

Last night I dreampt about the girl I told you about, who popped into my head during my first attempt at meditation.

Q- Do you think that the meditation mentioned above, directly influenced the content, of this ONE long, fairly vivid dream I remembered last night?

Q-Do you think that any of the circumstances I mentioned could have helped produce such a result? (Dreaming of virtually the same thing that I meditated about), and if so, how much of a role do you beleive they played? More, or less than the meditation?

Thanks people for your imput, and you attempt to help me answer this question, I will greatly appreciate it!

;)

[KuRoSaKi]

1) Yes I do think that the meditation is what caused her to pop into your dream. More often than not what you are thinking about before you go to bed is what your dream will be loosely based off of or include within it.

2) Meditation is always a good way to clear the main and gain focus. So yes I think meditation played a good part in what happened.

[bro]

Thanks Brandon, I appreciate the response. I know nothing is foolproof, but perhaps this is something I should try to get better at, though usually, I get discouraged if it doesn't work twice:shock:.

But I definetly will try again, the vividness, and connection to my meditative thoughts seemed quite promising.

[bro]

Well, I did a bit of (should I even call it meditation?) meditation yesterday again, for about a half hour, and towards the end I even fell asleep!

Basically, what I call my meditation, probably is not entirely accurate at all.

I layed there, and let all of my thoughts wander through my head, passively observing them, whatever they may be, even if there's none!
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Occassionally I would remind myself of my goal to become lucid, practicing becoming lucid in a dream, passively, by letting random thoughts come in, spacing out for a while, watching the thoughts, then reaffirming my goal.

Last night, after doing this meditation, only once during the day, I dreampt

I had lost my DJ in a large convention center-like place, and a kid had found it, he had read some, and became interested in dreams

I was teaching a kid to dream vividly in a big practice room place.

I was having a bad experience, going on a trip I didn't want to go on, and was trying to see if it was a dream, by trying to wake up. Unfortunately, I didn't do an R.C, that was the extent of it.

I have been doing this meditation in combination with switching my position/sleeping place throughout the night...

Q-Perhaps, some of my meditative thoughts on dreaming are getting through, even though my meditation technique is far from the best? Since the dreams listed above seem to reflect them somewhat.

Keep in mind, these were vivid, vivid dreams, with quite alot of emotion, a bit out of my normal/everday dream that drag on. This seems to have followed a trend since I began meditation

...I'm busy trying to figure out what could be promoting such vivid dreams..that hint occassionally at lucidity, but are not quite there...without giving myself bad luck:shock:.

[Alex D]

No idea what's promoting the vivid dreams, but I'm quite sure it's the meditation which caused you to dream about dreaming. I found when I used to meditate (in a similar way to how you do) that my thoughts often influenced my dreams in some way.

[Richter]

In my humble opinion, not only does meditation influence what one dreams about, provided they enter REM fairly quickly after meditation, but it also makes dreams more vivid. It does this I think by allowing a "smoother" transition from waking consciousness to dreaming... "unconscious". When you dream you operate at a slightly lower brainwave frequency than waking; meditation seems to lower brainwaves to a dream-like frequency. Dilligent meditation is almost like "dream-practice" to me, and thus makes the details of dreams easier to recall. Just my personal thoughts...

[bro]

Richter, I agree with your thoughts.

Meditation is like a practice-run a bit for me.

I find it is like a way to tie a cord from waking to dreaming, as you said, while in a dream-like state.

[bro]

Yet again people, I'll tell you what happened last night.

Throughout the day, as a few of you recomended, and I had been practicing, I "tied" a cord to my subconcious.
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I did this by imagining myself in the dream state throughout the day, almost "pretending I was in a dream" to ease the transition at night, and hopefully, carry some of my intellect with me.
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I imagined becoming lucid in some of the dreams I had the night before, and told myself "There's really no reason why I shouldn't be able to become lucid"
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I meditated, mid-afternoon time, let my thoughts flow loose, and occassionally reminded myself how easy it really can be to become lucid, and indirectly visualized this happening in some of my previous dreams I would have liked to control.

THE RESULTS AGAIN

Well, unlike previous nights, I did not dream of dreaming, however I did have quite a few chained-interesting dreams.
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There were many points after woke up, I thought to myself skeptically... "Hmm, I may have known something was not quite right" almost on a level right below lucidity, though I can't be sure.
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At approximately 4:20 am (I woke at 4:25 for a short time, so this is a bit of estimation) I had a lucid dream. I dreampt I was wandering outside a large mansion, on a path, very nicely landscaped, plenty of floor-ceiling windows, getting sprayed with sprinklers. Ironically, I saw TweaK and Artelis in a window having quite the laugh at soaked bro. Bro would have the last laugh though. I began to run quite fast around the house for some reason, while Artelis and TweaK were still amused by their little joke,:p and took off into the air, to do a series of dives. It was at this point that I realized I was dreaming and proceeded to drop to the ground, to try to use my tactile sense in order to prolong the dream. I did this by sticking my foot in the pool in the backyard, but unfortunately, even though I did feel the water, I woke shortly after.
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Thrilled, not moving, attempting to perform a DEILD, I layed there, only to get up a few seconds later, for the urge for a piss was overwhelming.

Anyway, my conclusions

I can't help but conclude that the meditation has helped in my attempts. Even if not influencing directly, or not controllable, the relaxed, visually-focused meditation, hand in hand with the excercises I stated above, seems to have helped give me vivid dreams, and even one lucid dream about my fellow DV members:cool:.

Any thoughts are welcome, I'll be sure to report back with any other results I might get.

[TweaK]

How did you picture me and Artelis? :D

[dreamscaper22]

i think meditation will help because what meditation is finding peace and calming your inner self, its also about self reflection and reflection of events that happened to you and understanding...sorry i went a little overboard...i meditate alot