Thread: Zödra: My World, its Rules, Regulations, and Explorations

I'm wondering if very frequent continuity/persistence in dreams is important for very frequent lucidity. I see some correlation thinking back on people like you (Sensei), Hukif, Naiya. My dreams are basically more or less random, especially location and characters, from night to night and from dream to dream. So there's almost never anything to "latch on to" for lucidity other than semi-regular dream signs and things like "dream feeling".

Originally Posted by FryingMan

I'm wondering if very frequent continuity/persistence in dreams is important for very frequent lucidity. I see some correlation thinking back on people like you (Sensei), Hukif, Naiya. My dreams are basically more or less random, especially location and characters, from night to night and from dream to dream. So there's almost never anything to "latch on to" for lucidity other than semi-regular dream signs and things like "dream feeling".

Hi FM, if it's any consolation, having repeated scenes and dream signs doesn't guarantee success, at least certainly not in my case! I did hang gliding for 20+ years, and now that I have stopped I have many HG dreams, sometimes about watching, sometimes about me flying, but that doesn't seem to help me get lucid. I also have repeated office scenes where I have a vague recollection that something is familiar, but no lucidity.

I guess a persistent realm, or world like Sensei's would come with frequent LD's and better control. I guess it's a self-fulfilling effect.

Hey Sensei,
do you ever get your Zödra memories mixed up with your WL memories? I.e. are you sometimes not sure which world a memory came from?

Hi Sensei. Thank you for sharing all that; I like seeing that "deep dive" into the dreamlives of others. I guess I have a broad and open-ended question to ponder: What do you get out of having a persistent dreamrealm?

You mentioned that it makes you more comfortable and familiar with your dreams, and that makes it easier to become lucid. Perhaps that's a topic to expand on. My experience with persistence is similar but has its own slant. In my Dreaming, it's more about "rules" like you spoke of. And those rules, for me, are more an of aid to control than induction. Like, I know where things are, how to get what, who knows whom, etc. So for me -- and this is just a first concept that I hope to build more on -- persistence is a way for me to "orchestrate" bigger and more interesting dream themes. I trust that all the small details will fall into place according to the rules, so that frees me to look at the broader, more ambitious strokes.

@FM I certainly think that it helps. I think that it is luke incubation. If I incubate something into a dream, I can do it again the second time with ease. If I keep up with Zödra, it seems to come a lot easier, having a place that I am mostly aware at and of. With Zödra being a "dream" world, all I need is some recall awareness and my mind is like "I am in Zödra... wait. I'm dreaming."

@goldenspark.
1st post.
I think that it is a little different than just "dream signs" since it is something that is persistent, not just a dream sign.

2nd post.
Nope. Sometimes I can't remember if a thought came from Zödra or waking, but that doesn't make much of a difference. My actions in Zödra and my adventures are quite a bit different than waking. Even if they are in the same place (my room, my parents house, other places I see often) the way I move and do things is much different. I don't touch doors, because in my first few lds, they always locked the second I touched them, I just use tk to open them. I rarely walk, I generally just levitate, sometimes even move with my feet on the ground without moving them. I don't care about the people near me, which is rare as I am usually vary focused on the people that I am with. I am often holding food, in waking I am usually holding a cup, sleep is usually food.
Things like this are just how I behave after becoming lucid. The knowledge seems to change a lot of my actions and reactions, even my likes and dislikes. Sometimes in a dream I will even think of my dream goal and just be like "nah, sounds boring." And find my own quest.

@ sisyphus
Things I get out of having a persistent realm is something good to add to the whole. I will write a big post about that.

Things I get out of a persistent realm.
a comfort with the dream world
This seems like a small thing, but it is actually quite huge.
Destination
Being comfortable with the dream world and knowing exactly where I am going gives me sort of a destination when falling asleep. Similar to when canis and dreamer were meeting up in their dreams all the time. Kind of a "connection" with the dream world other than just being there. I find this makes it easier to try and ld every night as it is more of a routine.
Induction
It seems to make it easier when you know exactly where you are going. Instead of "when I am in a dream I will realize I am dreaming." In your plans, it is more like "when I am in Zödra I will realize I am dreaming." A place more than a state of mind. Before I had Zödra introduced, and still now quite a bit, it seems like it is down to another level. Almost like diving "into" my brain. In the past when waking up from a lucid dream, I usually want to go "back" to a dream and then I go to sleep and continue where I left off. This persistence makes every time I sleep "going back" to my other world.
Goals
Like you said, persistence is a catalyst for different things like goals. Being able to go somewhere familiar and plan your goals accordingly is very helpful. Similar to a waking task. Talk to specific people and things.
Limits for better creativity
It might seem limiting with this next one, but being able to instead of saying "how fan I accomplish this goal using anything I could ever think of" you are going through things that are around you or things you know you could easily get to. Since Zödra is a dream world, I can constantly change and alter the rules, especially in small places, making them persistent.
Control
I have heard it called "saving" your powers. After you accomplish a feat like flying or tk or something, you are able to do that from there on, because it is something that you have learned. People often talk about not being able to do certain dream control tasks in every dream, but when I remember that I am in my realm and that I have done it before, it makes it a lot easier to just do what I have done before, since I am in the same realm with the same rules. It makes the dream control almost follow a sensible system as well, since I often use one ability to use a different ability. For instance, telekinesis to fly or something like that. I had to use it like that for a while, since it was the only way I could fly for a while. Since tk was bases on so much past experience, even though I struggled with flying, I could always fly at least a little with tk, since it was a "solid skill"
An epic vs a short story
As you said, you can orchestrate something bigger. A dream that doesn't just last one dream, or night, it could last as many dreams as I want. Instead of following a goal and then finishing it in a dream and waking, I can see the aftermath of these goals as well. When you can accomplish anything you want with a few words, the journey is the reward. I don't have to rush my goals if they aren't working like I want them to. I can just enjoy, relax, and be comfortable with the amount of time spent.
Stability
It helps a lot with stability too. As long as I can remember, if I worried about length of dream it would be short, if I just kind of ignored it, it would be longer. Why should I worry about the length of a dream if I can just continue next time I sleep? I don't have to try to restart a quest, I can just go where I left off, so why worry about time in a place that time is relative to nothing? It makes me more relaxed, and just have a more awesome non rushed dream experience. Along the same lines of stability, the comfort of being down there makes it so much more relaxing, since I am back, not just there. If that makes sense. Haha.
Nightmares
I think that nightmares are generally because people feel fear, worry, or insecurity. I feel like these things are quite easily eliminated when you know more about where you are going.
Freaking out
When staying down in a dream for what seems like longer than an hour (sometimes feeling like days, weeks, or months, but time is... wibbly wobbly down there) then I often start worrying about my body. Did I die or go into a coma? Is there something wrong up there? If I know where I am when I am dreaming, then I should understand more of what a dream is, and that my body will be fine, or at least as fine as it would be any night.

Acquisition
Moving on from comforts plusses, let's look at acquisition. I can acquire things! If I am always in the same place, it only makes sense that I would have the same items, skills, friends, houses, plans, quests, etc. I touched on this a little during the comfort, but more about it needs to be said. I bought a sword (had to acquire money first though, and they don't accept made up money there) and I just have it with me. It is mine. I keep it. I have a watch, it stabilizes the world around by pushing a button. It is always on. I only wear a watch in Zödra, so it makes my hand rc a lot more effective as well. As I mentioned before, skills stay. Friends stay. Adding someone into my phone book and calling them later. this cannot be done in a non persistent realm!

explore
Can you explore something as nonsensical as a dream? Is there such a thing as exploring when there is no persistence, what is the difference between a lucid and non lucid in exploring if there is no persistence? If you are learning how something works, it is good to have a starting point at least, even when diving into the unknown.

teachers
This is something I think might hurt some dream controllers not using a realm like mine. So... yeah putting spoiler tags.

Spoiler for lucid:

a big way that people learn things in dreams is asking dcs. How do I fly? Where is this? Can you make me control fire? And while this is very effective, for me, it makes sense since my dcs live there and know it is a dream. It does make any dc that doesn't know it is a dream practically useless, but any that does know it is a dream has powers that makes sense like mine, and of course they know how to use this this dream control and how to find such and such, they live there. When a dream is random, why wouldn't a dc respond the same. If only one dream is persistent by itself, then why would it work next dream?

Background
The background for everything makes sense, making a complete narrative for everything. Not only the background as in the past, but also the background around me. The world working in specific ways makes it easier to notice the details, like the fact that astronauts lose their shoes a lot. I don't know why they do yet, but it is a weird fact from Zödra that I will remember and since I can go to outerspace, it might come in handy to know. Just a complete and more full world and narrative.

I think this is a lot more fun things about Zödra. Let me know if that answered your questions fully, I think I might have expanded too much. Haha. However I want to keep putting everything down so that I don't forget past explorations and discoveries! Thanks everyone for taking an interest. Let me know if there are any more questions about something I have talked about or something that you want me to talk about.

Good to see you mapping out Zodra, and damn it is already growing a lot.

Very interesting read, I hope to do something like this one day. I think if I could learn proper dream incubation it would go a long way towards making a semi-persistent world like you said. Can you use any type of dream control you want, or are you limited by the world you've created? I'm basically curious if you're doing things like buying a sword (as opposed to spawning one) and hacking a mainframe to change the skin (as opposed to snapping your fingers or whatnot) because you have to according to discovered rules, or because you're roleplaying it that way.

This may be a little off topic, but do you have any tips for incubating dreams? I "know how" but I have had minimal success, usually in the form of being able to reenter some dreams on demand as I wake up between them (if that even counts). I'm trying to get back to the opening scene of one of my first LDs but I haven't been able to. That scene in itself was the result of a failed dream incubation exercise I believe, and I almost immediately became lucid.

Hi there sensei
I read abit on dream incubation which i would love to try...they say you need to set an intention and the more you want it the more likely it will happen and quicker.
I have a few questions if you dont mind...
1.What was your intension before you made this dream place in order to have this amazing place to visit? Was it to simply to make your own dream world?
2.What technique do you use in order to becone lucid?

Hope you dont mind me bieng nosey but i would love to make a place of my own as most of my lucids are DILDs which means i become lucid in the dream i was in so the setting is always random.
Thanx =)

Thanks Hukif. I am super working on it, observing my dreams more and thinking that they are connected seems to make them more connected and vivid due to the attention paid to it. Last night was an amazing dream, I will probably post here (when I get some more time to write and when I have a few more dreams connected to it, sot that the narrative makes a little more sense as a story) in a bit. It was amazingly fun and obeyed the rules I set for it really well. Basically I went to a place similar to Hogwarts (Harry Potter) and I couldn't use any dream control, only spells, I ended up using spells that I know from the movie, and altering them to be more like dream control I use. Some of the dream control I use a lot didn't work when I tried them since the spell wasn't similar enough to it to enhance it. The dream characters helped a lot since they all thought that they were students learning spells and helped me master (or remaster) telekinesis (wingardium leviosa). There were some characters from Zödra there that knew it was a dream and messed with things, but the wizards actually held their own pretty well, and with me, it is hard to lose.

DUKE.
Since Zödra is a "Dream Realm" I can use any dream control that I wish, however one of the dream controls that I have learned is "barriers", this is the ability to create a 3 dimensional shape and change the rules inside of it. I could just make an anti gravity room if I wanted to, while I could easily use some powers to make it so that I can be all Spiderman on the walls, I could also make it so that no dream control works in there, and zero gravity, making it quite fun for me or dream characters I bring in, and having a super fun fight with swords or something of the like. Funny enough, I have only met one person that can use barriers other than me.
So it is mainly role playing, but the ability to allow other dream characters to get the same abilities as any dreamer, makes it a challenge at times as well. Also, being able to have a way to change the skin, seems like it would be easier to have more skins instead of trying to snap my fingers and change it. Snapping fingers would make it easy to change between like 5, but if I want an almost unlimited number of skins, I need to have numbers and names for them, I did numbers 1-9 and a bunch of words as well as number 0246 (funny enough ALT + 0246 = ö).

Incubation, as I see it, is actually pretty on topic. There are two main types of incubation, and I have been practicing one for about 9 years, the other for about 20 years.
Incubation
Continuing dreams
So this one is fairly simple, it is what I learned when I was a kid, and I am sure that there are more ways to do this than just this one. I kind of just have to tell a story in order for you to figure out what I did. When I was quite young (around 5), I started having nightmares, probably due to scary movies that I watched or something like that. When I woke up from nightmares, I was super scared that if I fell back to sleep, I would go back to the nightmare. In fact, a few times, this actually happened. I would wake up from a nightmare, go back to sleep and slip right back into the nightmare. I then got up every time that I had a nightmare and would walk around for a bit, only once going to my parents room (another story for another time). I had stopped them from happening again. Of course, me being a lover of dreams that I am, I decided that if going back to sleep without walking around would make me go back into a nightmare, it would make me go back into a dream too. So every time I woke from a dream, I would just go back to sleep and "try to continue it" I don't know how big I am on "unbending intent" here. I think that it is important to "try without worrying about failure" or "try with confidence", maybe not the confidence that it will happen every time, but that it will happen some times. I notice this a lot with natural LDers, they just try every night and it becomes natural due to the lack or worry. Since this happened when I was very young, and I didn't compare myself to anyone or anything, and didn't even remember my dreams every night, I don't know how effective this was or how long it took to perfect. Pretty much any time that I woke from a dream, I could go right back to sleep and jump into the dream again as long as I didn't get up. At first it was without moving, then moving too much, and then it was just "don't get up".
Fast forward to me at 21, learning about LDing. I hear about this technique called "DEILD" where you wake up from a non lucid or lucid dream and then go back to sleep and are lucid. I thought that that should be easy, since I did the "dream continuing" anyways. Of course, I was so used to dream continuing, that when I woke from a non lucid and went back to sleep, not only was it the same dream, but usually the same level of awareness, or maybe a little higher, if I get up or move too much and raise my awareness, I wouldn't go back to the same dream, so I just gave up on continuing dreams until I had my first lucid. Now, I actually didn't hear about DEILD first from a website or anything, a friend of mine told me that he had once had a lucid that he woke up and when he woke in his bed he laid perfectly still and went back to sleep, lucid, into the same dream. So that is what I did. So I had a lucid and then DEILD right after. For a long time, it continued on like this, if I tried to raise awareness and go back to sleep, it starts a new dream, if I just go back to sleep, it starts the same dream with the exact same awareness. I just focused on DEILD as a lucid dream chain instead of a dream chain to lucid. This brought amazing results, especially in the forms of stabilization, but a different story for another time.
So, go back a bit to a year or so ago. I have had on and off times with LDing, even my off times are pretty on, usually I lower my day work and focus on night work and back off of DV. I realized that I was growing the amount of time that I could stay awake and then jump back into the same dream. In fact, I started having one dream almost every night if I didn't get out of bed or touch my phone for WBTBs. This didn't seem to effect my lucidity much, and it seemed to make me more relaxed and happy with my dreams since they were always so long and usually had a really good narrative. Then I started getting to a point that I could check my phone, then I could go to the bathroom and check my phone, and then I could get up with the kids for 10 minutes, and then I could be up for an hour or two hours and still go back to the same dream, as long as I wanted to, my dreams flowed from the beginning of the night to the end of the night, but it is amazing how the dream fades through a day, it is so hard to bring it up the next night. I didn't have any recurring dreams from the previous day unless lucid, and I either teleported or summoned something to make it a more flowing narrative. Or if one of the DCs, places, or things I believed to be persistent popped up. Now I think that belief is very important when it comes to this, believing that dreams don't just turn to dust, that dreams actually are a place that you can go back to. This is very similar to persistent realms, and I think that a lot of the same ideas are there, an almost belief that it is a "real" place that you can go to inside a dream. I am currently working hard on chaining dreams from one night to the next, probably harder than I am working on lucidity, this is easy since I have 1 lucid almost every night, and if I have one earlier in the night, the rest of my dreams are more than likely to be lucid (like last night, I had 3 lucids in a row). If I can chain the dreams, then the awareness should be chained as well, and I can be a step closer to one flowing narrative every time I sleep, with the gaps for waking being a place to reassess, reaffirm, and make goals. Now it is kind of funny to me that there are actually things you can do in waking to change things in the dream, for instance, lets say I have a dream that I am with a crazy person and they are being really strange, if I wake and chain, then the thoughts that I have in waking are also chained, maybe she was saving me from that weird guy hanging in the background? Maybe there was a big fight that I didn't see and she is afraid to tell me, I should talk to her about it... sleep, I am talking to her and she is telling me that she was worried that I would think that she was jealous if she told instead of me finding out. This works for lucid and non lucid, chaining and persistence.

Choosing what to dream about
When I was about 16 I realized that most of my dreams seemed to be similar to my thoughts during waking. The way that I moved and acted, as long as the dream was the slightest bit aware, was the same way that I "thought" in waking. Movies and things like that mixed in, dreams seemed to be a reflection not of our waking life, but of our thought life. So I decided that I wanted to have a bit of telekinesis in my dreams, or "the force" as I thought of it back then. Any time I was bored, I would look at an object and think "I have the force" I would raise my hand and imagine moving the object with my mind (like a Jedi). The idea was that if I thought it enough during waking, I would think it during dreams and have an awesome Jedi dream, since it was the thought that counts. A month later, BAM! I have a dream that I am about to be attacked and my mind says "I have the force" and I put my hand out and bring an item to my hand. Immediately, I start having TK in my dreams whenever I need it. I was super excited and thought that if it is in my dreams, it should be able to stay there now that I have memories of it and I don't need to do it during waking anymore, and I moved onto fire. I looked at my hand and pretended it had fire in it, I played with lighters and created fireballs, I just sat there for hours during school thinking of fire in my hand. 3 weeks later, fire!!! I had recently been watching anime and I stumbled across an anime called "Naruto", the main character does an ability called "Rasengan" where he manipulates his inner energy with his hand into the form of a ball and uses it to attack enemies. 2 weeks later. Rasengan. a week and a half later, rasengan. Then I got kinda stuck on about a week and a half, 10 days incubation time for anything I wanted to dream about, a pretty big commitment. I was pretty happy with my dreams and started writing them down, getting to a point where I would have a dream almost every night, and some nights I would even have 2 dreams. All three of these were in my dreams from then on out, I did other things, but when it came to a fight (which a lot dreams came down to) I would pull out one of these three. Then after about a year, I forgot about it and went back to having about 5 dreams a week, but fire, TK, and rasengan didn't go away, they were a part of my "dreaming self".
I then started playing guitar hero, not like I had before where I worked hard to get to expert, but I played it with my friends, my girlfriend, her brother, I looked up videos, I thought about guitar hero all the time, and then it happened one day. I closed my eyes and I could see the songs, the game was just permanently on the back of my eyelids. Every dream I had became guitar hero due to my obsession and I backed off for a week and it subsided.

Everything above is non lucid, remember.
Since starting LDing and working hard on it, I have really high visualization skills, so every night when I lay down and start to fall asleep, I start seeing many pictures and things, not quite like a dream, but usually as random as a dream, and one or two of these things come into play in dreams. I started realizing that I could use this to see almost a preview of my dreams, I wouldn't have put it into words like that before though, especially since a lot of these aren't pictures as much as they are impressions.

So 2 years ago, I really wanted to dream about dragons. I had tried summoning, teleporting, all sorts of things in lucid dreams, but dragons were out of my reach. I then remembered that stapled to my eyelids thing about guitar hero, and the things that I see before bed. What if all the "random non directed thoughts" were all about dragons, then I know that I would have a dream about dragons! I bought a book on how to draw dragons, I watched movies about dragons, I played a video game about dragons, I fantasized about dragons, a couple days later, when I closed my eyes I saw dragons! Almost like it was all my mind could think about since it knew I cared so much. That night, a small dragon took me to a floating island in the sky and I met a big dragon (5,000 feet long or so) this was a terrifying experience, especially lucid. I had not only broken the week mark, but I also got it incubated into a lucid dream. I started trying to incubate again, but I realized a couple of things, one is kind of a bummer, the other is awesome.
1) it has to be an obsession, like as soon as you have a free moment, you think about it and go to it, if you have free time you play or watch something about it, if you have free thought, you fantasize about it. As long as I could make that happen, I could get it to be the thing on the back of my eyelids. As long as it hit back of my eyelids (which it can at any point in the day) I don't need to worry, I will dream about it.
2) it had to be something that I actually could get obsessed about. I tried it with "getting lucid", but it was such a vague concept. When I tried it with "I'm dreaming" it was hard because it didn't have a visual to back it up, and this is when I tried minute checks, had some decent results, but gave me a huge headache and was impossible to keep up for more than a week or two.

So now when I have like an hour of free time before bed, I will often just try to obsess over something really fast. I can usually get it to an eyelid spot, and dream about it, no longer a week or a month, it is about an hour. I wish I could just choose, but it takes time to make an obsession, even just a little, like an hour will do now. I am hoping to make it just a decision some day, but it is on the back burner to continuation incubation right now.

When looking at incubation, it almost seems like lucid dreaming is just recall and incubating the awareness that it is a dream, but I can only speak for myself here.

@clidu
I wrote a thing for incubation! Check it out above.
People always say "the more you want it" with things like this, I do not think that that is the case, it might seem like that with the obsession thing, but it is always directed thinking without letting fear of failure cloud your judgement to accomplish things like this. I guess people saying things like "the more you want it" is almost like putting others down in my opinion, saying that they just didn't want it enough. Consistency is important in incubation just like when trying to LD. People that are isolated and not comparing themselves to others, like naturals (like I was at incubating), have the ability to try for years without getting disheartened by things, since they are not constantly bringing themselves down by looking at others. I know that is a little off topic, but I think that it is important when looking at my incubation to realize that I have been doing it for 20 years, and that it was probably extremely slow at first, maybe taking up to six months to see anything happen.

1.What was your intention before you made this dream place in order to have this amazing place to visit? Was it to simply to make your own dream world?
I am going to wait to answer this until I get my original dream journal back when I am not on vacation. It has the rules that I tried to implement, but most of these things are things that I have "observed" not things that I have put in place myself.

Some places I have made myself. I will tell you about those.

Making of
Mall.
The mall that I mentioned in the OP is something that I thought would be cool. I took all of the dreams that I had before and imagined them being connected, it helped that they all seemed to have a theater in there many times. After a little incubation and belief that it was connected, I started having dreams with similar parts in the mall and even started getting lucid from it. I created the money system outside a dream as well and that was shown later in dreams to make it make sense and work within Zödra.

Aincrad
Aincrad is a floating castle in the sky inside a virtual reality video game called "Sword Art Online". It took me an entire summer to get it to be a little persistent, and the only way that worked was having a set entrance. In the anime Sword Art Online, they have to put a nerve gear on and say "Link Start" in order for the game to start up. I have been there about 10 times, and it is the same place and characters every time, it is a pocket dimension inside of Zödra that is persistent with its own rules and all. It took a lot of work, and it took belief and persistent practice to get it to work. With my only goal to be getting there.

2.What technique do you use in order to become lucid?
This is quite a long and off topic question!!! I think that knowing what I do to get lucid is like asking a warrior what his daily routine is, and thinking that just by doing that, you would be able to get as good at fighting as he is and in as good of shape. Not accounting for the past experience or battle experience is simply crazy. Here is a thread that has the answers and threads to all questions that you might ask:
http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...-all-fish.html
If you have any questions about lucidity, I recommend you ask there, but only after reading the links that I have provided.

Thank you Sensei for the very detailed response! I'm going to have to read through that a few times and mull it over some more. I get what you mean about having more options with the codes for skins. But, are you using that to basically randomize the skin on demand, or are you thinking up each skin and assigning it a code? I had assumed you meant the first option, but after re-reading it I'm not sure Interesting idea of barriers also, I don't think I've heard of anyone doing that. So to upscale that room, you could create any rules you want in a particular world. I guess we do that to some extent subconsciously, but to control it you have pretty much created the ultimate virtual sandbox.

Some commentary on the rest, and I apologize if I jump around a bit... I completely agree about "trying without worry of failure". That's something I was starting to realize about lucid dreaming in general. I was getting discouraged by my lack of results recently, and doing my exercises (typically focused on mantras / setting intention as I go to sleep; I'm working on doing better reality checks), the whole time having this attitude of "it's probably not going to work anyway, why do I even still try" etc which would lead to doing fewer exercises. Lately though I've been trying without really worrying about whether it'll work TONIGHT, but affirming to myself that it will anyway while realizing that even if it doesn't happen tonight it'll still help overall. That's sort of where I was with dream incubation / continuation as well: "I almost never have success with this, why do I keep bothering". It's an unhealthy attitude that isn't doing me any favors, and I'm working on that. I didn't have any success for a while when I first started trying to LD, either. Since I started thinking this way, I've had two short and not particularly vivid lucid dreams in about a month, which is the best I've done since about 2 years ago. 2011 and 2013 seem to have been my best times of LD, with 2012 and 2014 up through a couple months ago being times I severely slacked off on anything to do with dreams for various reasons.

On choosing what to dream... Your comment on obsession makes a lot of sense here and fits in with an idea I had. Since my dreams are often peppered with people and concepts from whatever TV show I've been binge watching, video game I've been playing, etc I had the idea to find a wacky surreal game to play before bed. Psychonauts comes to mind. The idea was I'd dream about some surreal concept, and hopefully realize it's a dream because of that. This was to replace my concept of dream incubation. (I realize now they are the same thing but --) my concept of dream incubation was to control the visuals I often have as I'm falling asleep, and sort of step into the scene. The problem with that is the only thing I'd be stepping into at bedtime is at best, a fuzzy N-REM dream. So I think the "obsession" part is the other piece of the puzzle I was missing to bridge that gap. My original idea is probably best suited for some form of WBTB.

I realize a lot of this post is probably more rambling than conversational, but I felt the need to put some of it into words. Thank you again for your thoughts. You've cleared up some things, given me a motivation boost, and given me some ideas to run with.

Anyway, I look forward to reading more about this realm you have created. While I'm here, in your first post you said that your dad's DC "downloaded 75 years of Zödra newspapers into my head." Can you expand on that a little? Did he "create" the history of the place, just like that? Can you recall details of those papers from within the dream, or is it more general than that?

You clearly spend a lot of time and effort working on and planning your dreams. I think that plays a large part in your success, good job!

Wow this sounds amazing. I hope I could get this lucid dreaming skill one day.

Originally Posted by duke396

Thank you Sensei for the very detailed response! I'm going to have to read through that a few times and mull it over some more. I get what you mean about having more options with the codes for skins. But, are you using that to basically randomize the skin on demand, or are you thinking up each skin and assigning it a code? I had assumed you meant the first option, but after re-reading it I'm not sure Interesting idea of barriers also, I don't think I've heard of anyone doing that. So to upscale that room, you could create any rules you want in a particular world. I guess we do that to some extent subconsciously, but to control it you have pretty much created the ultimate virtual sandbox.

Anyway, I look forward to reading more about this realm you have created. While I'm here, in your first post you said that your dad's DC "downloaded 75 years of Zödra newspapers into my head." Can you expand on that a little? Did he "create" the history of the place, just like that? Can you recall details of those papers from within the dream, or is it more general than that?

I did some with just grabbing, and others with just wanting to assign a code to it. Most of the codes were pretty much just boring changes, while interesting, are kind of not really worth my time. I am probably gonna keep using words and seeing what happens, then if I like it, use the numbers like hotkeys. It changes it only a little, and a little changes in my mind on what I have done and what I want can be done in waking. Yes, I do feel like barriers is a pretty OP ability, really only beaten by my scan version of it. I only use them when I am fighting someone with very good abilities, more power than my own, or when I am struggling with a particular control.

I don't really know on the first question, as far as I know with the creation of dreams like that, it just went through my unconscious and found some of the preset rules I had as well as randomness, unconscious expectations and similar things in order to create it, but in the way that it has been presented, as well as the memories that I have "incubated" and made them stand out more than others, it seems like it has been there since before I was born, or maybe starting when I was born. It was probably just from that dream and my opinion of my dream dad.
I can recall the history, but kind of in a weird way.
Some history and newspaper clippings

On this day, we saw what can only be thought of as a miracle. After an ongoing war was stopped by a single man. Some are calling him a bender of physics or an x-man, but he refuses all of these titles and says that he just found a secret that no one else knows. When asked this secret, he replied "Doesn't matter... it would mean nothing if you learned it from me." Stories from legend seem to pale in comparison, but even though everyone is astonished and the war is over, we don't really know what he did. The fighting stopped, on all of the front lines almost simultaneously and the world leaders decided that the war was over, when asked why they weren't fighting anymore, they both agreed that they didn't think that the reason for fighting a war was worth the cost of lives anymore.

It is like I am reading it while recalling it, does that make sense? Like when you are really into what you are writing and don't have to worry about what you are writing because it is just flowing perfectly. I can still direct it a little though, which is kind of hard to explain.

All of the kings, presidents, and rulers got together and decided to be a one world government, they changed the name of the world Zödra, the world of hope. Those that were in positions of authority still have some honorary titles, but world hunger, poverty, and disease seem to have vanished by our protector. He has asked not to be involved in the whole "ruling" since he finds it boring. His direct quote is "I am the protector, not the leader, if you want my help with anything else, just ask. I am not here to erase all of your problems, but I am here to help with those that are impossible for you to fix on your own."

A few years later.

Men and women run in fear as a small time crook decided to attack his old work. With a wave of his hands, he killed over a hundred people at his old job and then continued to hit the buildings with what he called "freeze attack". By the time our protector showed up, 7 minutes later, he appeared in a flash. Grabbed the crook and disappeared. Many want to know what happened to him, but are afraid to ask if he should exercise judgement on people this way, but no one seems to be complaining.

This is still a paraphrase and a lot of long boring parts are taken out. After others started showing up, he seemed to make something change so that he could pop up instantly in order to stabilize them and make sure that they aren't gonna go mass murder people. Then the witches showed up. They seemed to find a way to change people without telling them that they were dreaming. Discovering ways to make people know or at least be able to tell when people were about to find out the truth. The newspapers didn't know exactly what happened, but went up and down from "He has solved the problem of others discovering the secret", "an alliance that call themselves witches has popped up and seem to be bent on destroying things", "thousands of people disappear over night", "Thousands found.", "over a million found dead, protector caught and questioned, but still not much emotion from the most powerful man in the world", "the world is silent now, witches are still around, but seemingly in check.", "no sign of witches for years, but protector says that they are still there, working more in secret.", "Protector seemingly disappeared, but everything stays wonderful in the world", "Protector shows up for 75 year anniversary of Zödra, seemingly not aged a day.", and that was the newspaper the day that I grabbed it. I found out later that Jason has complete control over the internet, so that helps with the regulating, there are 4 people on the team protecting the world, I don't really know their jobs very well, other than that Jason can regulate the entire internet without even thinking about it, Vixen is fast enough to make my eyes think that she is as slow as me, while still stabbing me (if she wanted to). Old man just seems to do what he wants, I have heard none of the others mention him before, so I don't bring him up, in case he wants to remain secret for some reason, though I expect the others do the same for the same reason. While all of those with powers know that it is a dream, they actually don't know the real truth, like the old man does. That I am the dreamer. They all just know part of the truth, that it is a dream.

fake memories
I am not gonna type too much now, and definitely not any of the gory ones, but if you want to hear all of the gory details, just ask me and I will PM you one of these insane dreams and memories.

Along with dreams that I have been a part of that involved torturing, by people that had powers that surpassed my own, either due to lack of experience or lucidity. Some of them seem to know that I am more important and maybe even know that I am the dreamer, of course, they may just know me as the son of the protector.

Every time that I have a fake dream memor, when I wake up... it is stronger than other fake dream memories, the ones I create. It is like remembering any other dream, so it then seems like any other dream, even though it didn't seem to exist in the past of my life. For some reason it seems to make more sense when thinking of past thoughts on dreams. There are other buried memories that I have accessed that aren't torture ones, and they all fit perfectly creepily into my childhood dreams. For instance, twice while driving down the road, I have seen old buildings that reminded me of places that the witches kept me. Sometimes torturing, other times, they would just ask me seemingly random questions.

@FM,
Yeah, it is kind of like a place that I can sneak off into during the day and enjoy the solitude if I need to. When I am with other humans I try to think about them, but when I am playing video games or trying to sleep, it is nice to think of Z♠dra.

@Alex
I honestly think that a lot of it would have been better if I had done it purposefully in the beginning, but I waited as well as trying things that didn't really lean towards my skill set. I recommend finding what you are good at and sticking to that, make sure to be super creative in solutions to problems and don't make boxes to keep yourself in.

Thanks Sensei. I always find your posts inspiring. Could you explain how your incubation process works. Is it like mild, and also do you Incubate your dreams to be in Zödra or do you just get There from a lucid.

Ah I know all to well about dream worlds. That is why a long time ago I imagined I had the ability to make my self appear to be a dream character or spirit instead of a dreamer. Now I am no longer hunter or tortured I can roam freely. Once in a blue moon I get involved with a plot and show my true form as a dreamer.

That is truly amazing Sensei. I'm really not sure what to say except you have a very creative mind and I'm envious. I think I get what you mean about the newspapers, like you "know" the history one way or the other, and they sort of write themselves because the basic story is already there. I've had dreams where there is some relatively intricate but unspoken backstory created by my mind, I'm guessing it's similar. Still the idea of all that being zapped into your brain at once is pretty crazy... I bet your dream world would make a good premise for a video game or a sci-fi book. And yes, if you feel like sharing a dream that might not be suited for the forum feel free to PM me. I can handle it

BTW, I have managed to incubate some dreams over the past few nights that relate to a game I've started playing called Creativerse, since I'm pretty much obsessed with it right now. If you aren't familiar with it, it's similar to Minecraft in that you build from different blocks and harvest materials to craft equipment etc. In this game you use a telekinetic gauntlet ("mining cell") to pick up the blocks. So in my (non lucid) dreams I have been using telekinetic methods to control the environment to an extent, at one point I was pulling blocks out of a wall so I could go through it. Even with trying to tell myself every night that telekinesis and blocky things are not normal and should be questioned, I haven't yet questioned it in the dreams. I just thought you might find that amusing, it's funny what a person will accept as "normal" in a dream.

It is interesting that witches are always evil in your dreams because they always seem to be good in mine so far. Last night a talking kitten explained to me that while some are good many are evil and asked me to help fight them. He actually persisted over at least two dreams. I am excited that I am starting to be able to chain non lucid dream stories together. I would love to have your guidance in making it persist to even lasting multiple nights. I, too, wonder about the whole male witch thing. Gandalf has shown up a lot in my dreams and he is a wizard. I wonder if he is the same class of dream character as witches. I will have to ask him or maybe that cat about it soon.

My hypothesis about how persistence works in dreams is that we all have persistent dreams it is just mostly made of stuff that is persistent in our waking life such as our homes and family members. We fully expect them to show up often. If, when we recall our dreams when we awake as illusions they immediately loose persistence. However, if we give weight to those things and see them as existing even if just in our heads they are more likely to show up again. This also goes into the whole "I can't know that I am not dreaming at any given time." thing. If you think you could be dreaming at any given time then those dream elements could show up at any moment. You learn to expect them during waking life like you would a family member or something else you are familiar with. This makes them much more likely to show up in dreams. Let me know what you think about this idea.

@Alex
http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...ml#post2195986
I explain it right here, I can't really explain it much more, it is like LDing, kind of a feeling that you have to chase.

@Duke
Video games are super good at helping creating worlds in your head. I love that Pokemon have started inhabiting Zödra thanks to video games.
Normal always changes depending on who are where you are, I imagine that to a dream character, our life would seem abnormal.

@Madmonkey
That is awesome that you are starting to see some persistence. Persistence seems to be like everything else in the fact that some people are better at it than others. I tried for a long time to make it persistent, but I couldn't get it on purpose. Now I am getting better, since I know the flow of my dreams and can slightly alter that, if that makes sense! I know when and how my dreams make themselves persistent, so I create those ideas while waking rather than sleeping, then when I sleep, the persistence pays off.

New Developments
I had an awesome lucid last night, it gave me some insight on some parts of Zödra that I had yet to see, and seems to be connecting quite well. Of course, now that I have made these insights and theories on how it works, it will work that way from now on, so let me show you what I mean.

Dream
I am playing an augmented reality game (ingress, Pokemon Go) and they tell you what to do and you do it. The game has you do a long list of things. There are three different teams, dark, light, and grey (like the Star Wars Universe, yes I know it is more complicated than that). The game is made to have you either become an awesome super hero while doing actually legal things (light), unless you don't want to do it legally (dark), or there is the "good that isn't legal" that is the grey option. Funny enough, only the game knows if you did the right thing and if you did it. First thing to do was to catch a bounty. Some rapist had a thousand dollar bounty on his head from the police, or a 4 million dollar bounty dead. I realized I was dreaming when the phone directed me to his house and I decided that I didn't need any rapist in Zödra, and since it technically just resets people when I kill them, I killed him. The phone wired 4 Million to my account (I believe I am going on a spending spree here soon). I wanted to stay grey, so I did a few more things for the app and went further in the game. It was pretty fun, but because I got so good in the app, the government noticed me and told me that they wanted my help on a secret project. It turns out that the gods that run the world created a surrogate to take over for the protector of Zödra, since they don't like him. They brought me in and showed me the making of the new protector. A few colored faces (red, green, and yellow) came down, they looked almost animated and came down from the sky, creating the new person. A lot of what they said was masked, but I could get the idea that what they were creating knew that it was a dream. When he came down from the sky, he acted like a new dreamer. Not acceptable in Zödra, killing and all. He then announced to the government, that he knew was watching, that he wanted to kill everyone and to have all the best fighters to come and fight him without weapons. The government was worried about associating with the actual protector.
The new crazy man had apparently gone mad with the knowledge that everything was a dream, and he wanted to fight all the best fighters at once in an arena. He ended up making sure that the arena was full with his dream control.
I stepped into the arena and it was just a huge dirt area and no obstacles. Me and four others stepped into the arena across from him.
The fighting starts and he starts chopping one of the guys to pieces with just his bare hands.
"You can't just kill people that you want to man, it is against the rules, doesn't matter what you know."
He quietly kills two of the others by popping their heads off. He rushes at me and I can see that he has energy swords coming out of his hands. I put up an invisible barrier around me so that he won't see the energy protecting me. He strikes down at me and I hold my arms up. His hands just slide down to the ground and create a hole. He looked super confused and the last guy used that moment to attack. He jumped on his back and threw him to the ground. I was surprised, and actually pretty sure that the other guy at least knew something about the truth, but didn't know the whole truth. As the new creation jumped up off the ground, the last of the fighters was dead and it was just me and the creation. I created a quick long energy sword without him being able to see it and stabbed him with it. He laughed as the blood spurted out.
"You are the one I have been looking for" He says. I grab him and teleport to my dream cabin.
He is stunned again "Where am I?"
"Somewhere you have no power." I tell him.
We talked for a little while, but it seemed to me that he knew the truth that I was the dreamer and he was just a dream character.

Conclusions
I think that the biggest change is the gods in charge of things. I have come to the conclusion that I have met 4 gods. My father, Old Man, Glasses, and the guy that could change awareness. I am excited to see if there are only 5 (since I saw 3 in the sky and I imagine that my dad and old man are not with them anymore since my dad is the protector).
Considering my dad has been all about protecting everyone, old man has been about learning, that the reason for the rules is not them, but the three (at least) that remain. I have met the guy that can create barriers and rules, as well as one that can alter awareness. Makes me curious as to what the other one(s) are and what powers they have that together could create Zödra. I also don't know where they came from, maybe they just came from one of the other 14 dimensions? Maybe they created all 14 dimensions? Why did they create any of it? Are my dad and old man on the run, or just too powerful to deal with? Is that why this creation was actually there?
The conclusions pretty much count as fact after thinking it and connecting it, but these questions are just things that I can look into further while inside Zödra.

Update

I just moved to Japan. My sleep schedule is all wack, but getting better. I am working a lot on the Japanese language, so I am hoping that I can use my control of the dream world to learn Japanese better as well. My plan is to change the "Skin" of the world. Basically a Japanese only skin. I have gotten a lot of negative comments about this, so I will answer a lot of questions that I have gotten here.
How
I am first just gonna go into my skins menu and put a "J" before the whole thing. That should do it in my mind. If that doesn't work, I'll improvise. I might need to use incubation to make myself believe that it has always been Japanese, or I might need to use dream control to make everyone else in the world forget any other language.
How can you "learn" something from a dream? Your unconscious should know just as much as you.
Two answers to this one! The first is that I should unconsciously know more than that. Thousands of episodes of anime, living in Japan, and other things should all be backlogged in there, but even if not, we move on to the second answer. The second answer is that knowing Japanese words and forming sentences in Japanese are two different things. I only interact with Japanese people about 30 minutes on most days, trying to form sentences and pull words out my pocket. I am getting much better at reading the Kana because that is constant and everywhere. If I could add 8 hours of sleep of me trying to speak Japanese, I could learn to make more sentences in my sleep.
Since you don't know Japanese, what will the DCs be using?
I imagine that what they say will be close to utter nonsense. Not really anything unusual for a DC. However, when I am talking to them and my attention is on them, I imagine that they will speak as clearly as a normal DC as well as only be able to understand me if I speak in Japanese. That is the main thing here. I can listen to Japanese hours and hours a day with anime or podcasts, but actually trying to talk is what I need.
Wouldn't it be better to just study Japanese?
Of course! I am doing that as well. Probably about an hour and a half a day, maybe longer. However if I can start getting an extra 8 hours of practicing conversation (the most important part) then I could see vast improvements. My main goal is to learn Japanese, so I will not skip out on it to try and get better dreams. Put the important things on top, when you are done with them, work on the more fun things, or the risky things. For instance, a lot of people that invest money will use 90-95% on very very reliable investments, but then bet the other 5-10% on super risky things. Why? Because if it pays off, it will work better than the other 90-95%, but the odds are not extremely likely.
How can you change what a world is like in non lucids and lucids?
As this thread has explained, I believe that most anything is possible in a dream. That includes changing other dreams. Even by just thinking there was a connection in my dreams, there was one, and then there was a lucid and non lucid connection with Zödra, and bam, it happens. I have seen belief in a dream world do amazing things, and I can nudge it in the directions I want it to go. Honestly with how much Japanese I am surrounding myself with, I have lots of Japanese speakers in dreams as well as times that I am trying to speak Japanese. I think that it just needs a little nudge.

I have been working hard at LDing for a while and am really good, but I haven't been able to have it really help me at anything in waking. Perspectives and creative ideas don't really count in my book. I want to see something solid come out of it. Let me know what you think!

With the goal being permalucidity, I have taken new steps to make the dreamworld more able to make me lucid.

Here is the dream that I worked on this:

DHL FIGHT! Old man, my old man, and Jason ★★★★★ - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Things that have changed:
Zödra's size and amount of people are limited to 1 million people and 10 times the size of the earth
This is just the earth, so other world creatures could come, and of course there are 14 different realms I have yet to explore much of. These being actually connected and having effects on Zödra.
Everyone in Zödra should either be gaining lucidity all the time, or having it all the time
The rules of Zödra have been pretty specific about what happens if you tell someone that they are dreaming, but with the constant reminder that they are dreaming, as well as people being told repeatedly that they are dreaming, they should be able to come to that conclusion at least once and stay that way.
Hopefully this change will make it easier for me to be lucid all the time if all the inhabitants of Zödra are lucid all the time
I have been keeping notes of this in my DJ and I see things all over that point to more characters knowing that they are in a dream. It has been quiet helpful.

Other changes
Since Doppleganger told me that my sisters were evil and one was a Zödra fighter, I decided to take her out.
Settings Change/taking out sister ★★★★☆ - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Doppleganger from here if you have forgotten:
This is why I incubate dreams. ★★★★★ - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

I killed my sister and haven't seen her since, lucid or non lucid, which considering my dreams often have my nephews and sisters in them, is quiet nice.
This is going to lead me back to my doppleganger soon, and hopefully to some cool things there. I am currently seeking out the old man again though and want to keep summoning him over and over until I have learned all I can from him.

That is all for now. I tried to get a silver key and change the settings in my dream world, but that didn't end up working, so I am going to try and use it again in the future, It is still in my stomach, but that hasn't changed Zödra, so I will talk about it later if it does.

I wonder what would happen if you would have a SD in Zödra. Since the person hast do be lucid in zödra an would be persistand than. Maybe they would become a part of zödra. What do you think?

Zödra Update
So here is an update for my world, since it has been a while since my last update, and a lot has changed. If you read the post above ^^^ you can see that I took some steps to being "omnilucid" or "lucid in every single dream" Since all my dreams happen in Zödra, I figured I could do that with dream control, the problems there are that the rules for the realm didn't really allow something like this. One rule I recently found out was that during a non WILD or when I don't chain dreams (like incubation chaining through the night, not like DEILD chaining, which would just be a type of WILD), I seem to spawn randomly, and when that happens, it is almost like a normal dream character after they die, and the rules for dying in the realm were that you spawn randomly somewhere else, sometimes really small changes happen and other times really big ones. The thing above led me to becoming lucid a lot more, but still having non lucids.

So with the idea in mind that a lot of my lucids were coming from Zodra, and that I seemingly couldn't fix Zodra without a lot of help, I decided to leave it. I stepped outside of Zödra and transformed it into a ball of hot energy and ate it. Sounds weird, but basically I absorbed all of the energy and made myself omnilucid now. I am lucid in every dream, but I am not "present" in every dream. I am working more on that right now.

I basically felt like I had plenty of experience, awareness, and many other things, but I wasn't getting lucid in every dream, so I figured that if I had something in dream to make me feel like I had achieved it and believe more, then I would be lucid all the time.

In this "new place" I am not quite as comfortable as I was in Zödra and stabilization was a problem at first and a lot of dream control was lost as well. I have been regaining abilities quickly with all my gained creativity from the previous adventures in Zödra. So probably like 5 or so abilities regained each night. I am working on using some of this energy to make a new interesting realm for my dreaming and hopefully something that will make me always present as well.

Originally Posted by Mugwort

I wonder what would happen if you would have a SD in Zödra. Since the person hast do be lucid in zödra an would be persistand than. Maybe they would become a part of zödra. What do you think?

Its hard to speculate on something like SDing, since if it is doable, it is done less than LDing, and with LDing there is soooooo much variation on what can happen at all times, so who knows. Probably would depend heavily on the two people SDing, who created it, etc. but that is, of course, if it exists.

I am proud of you Sensei, eating your own world. You make me proud /manlytear