Samick's Dream Toga experiences

[Sivason]

This type of image is caused by the photo chemicals in the eyes. It is different than true visualization. It is however a great way to start. You can always get this effect by standing in a dark room then while looking at where the light bulb is, suddenly switch it on and look at the light for about three seconds. Then shut the light back off. Now if you sit and close your eyes you see an image of the bulb. Try watching it as long as you can. The next time try to make it change color or shape.

[Samick]

Last night I tried some binaural beats. I listened to one from youtube (I think it was theta waves) for about 17-18 minutes. After about 10 minutes of listening (I didn't concentrated too much, the mind was mostly free) I started to enter and exit a strange state of mind, where the sound of the beats becomes more quite and I was more "inside myself". I could barely hear it. Just a little bit. The strange thing is that I was sitting upright, but with back support. I remember having similar experience when trying WILD nap. I would usually fall asleep when doing that. Do you think it's a good way to practice doing the WILD technique? What else can I do in that state?

[Sivason]

I am not familiar with the binarual beats. I would simply try a small visualization trick when in that state. The easiest would be to imagine you feel yourself moving. If you do it right you will feel movement. Slow spinning or flying are examples.

[Samick]

I am not familiar with the binarual beats. I would simply try a small visualization trick when in that state. The easiest would be to imagine you feel yourself moving. If you do it right you will feel movement. Slow spinning or flying are examples. I'll try this the next time I experiment with binaural beats. The practice of meditation and Here and Now exercise are getting better. I found a way to view everything from a different perspective. I can switch my focus to the outside of my head very easily in a relaxed manner. There is just a subtle thing which I do to achieve this. I can't describe it. The internal dialog in that "state" is more quite, the focus is more intense yet relaxed, the body is relaxed too. It is very good exercise to do while being in a boring class at school. You still listen to teacher but it isn't that boring anymore. And I felt that I can create an emotion of happiness when I'm in that state.

[Samick]

Yey! Another LD! This one was DILD I think (don't really remember how it started). It lasted about a minute. It wasn't very vivid. Everything seemed more "white". Probably because I was almost awake and light came through my eyelids. It was hard to maintain the dream and to not destroy it. But eventualy I did destroy it by shouting "Dream! Give me more lucidity!". After that I lifted up in the air and the dream became whiter and whiter. Oh. And a day before I did really intense Here and Now practice. It may be a cause of it.

[Sivason]

Wonderful! Great progress.

[Samick]

Today while meditating I started having some closed eye visuals. They weren't very vivid but were pretty distracting. It was harder to focus on sounds rather than those visuals because they were interesting. In this case should I stop focusing on sounds and start focusing on visuals or not?

[Sivason]

I would say yes. If you get visuals take some time to watch them or even play with them. Someday, you will be able to do both at one time.

[Samick]

So, it was a long ago since the last time I wrote here. I stopped doing dream yoga for sometime. But I think I will get back to it. I have a few realisations to share here which came to me during the last year or so. About a year ago I started practicing Vipassana meditation. I practiced daily for about 9 months and all of a sudden I stopped. Maybe because of laziness or maybe because I ceased to see a point in this kind of practice. Although I do now, so it is the laziness. The first realisation was that life truly IS only a dream and nothing more. We imagine ourselves, we imagine others, we imagine everything there is or ever will be. Well, maybe not everything. Maybe there is a bit of objective reality, but I cannot see it. The other realisation is related to music. I am studying music at the moment and I think I understood how exactly great players do it. And how I must do it. Though there is a long way there I really want to get there. So the main idea of the playing is that you must imagine what you want to hear before you hear it outside of your head and when playing you still must sing inside your head. In other words. During the time when playing you must be highly concentrated on the sound in your head. What sounds inside the head, sounds outside too. The whole playing proccess reminded me of Yoga. Or dream yoga to be specific. Because the only proccesses that are required for playing are only thoughts. Or mental sounds to be more specific. I came to a conclusion that playing an instrument is yoga too. Then I thought to myself. Isn't how you control your sound is the same as you control your dream? Isn't how you control your sound or dream the way how you control your life - waking dream? So here are my thoughts on dream yoga. More than after a year of break.

[Sivason]

I agree. Playing music is a form of yoga, and dream control happens in the same way you create music.

[Samick]

After finding a way to stop insomnia by listening to audiobook for almost an hour before sleeping in almost total darkness. I implemented the dream yoga exercise (listening to the noisy world by listening to the tone, breathing and other sounds that come with the audio recording of book). I think this kind of practice may have something relevant with extreme vividness of the last night's dreams and a lucid dream as well. It was quite long. Lasted about 5 minutes of dream time. I also made it extremely stable with the touch exercise. In the dream I felt my dream body and took notice of gravity. But as soon as I jumped from a tall building I made the dream colapse. I actually thought I could handle the jump but unfortunately I didn't. These exercises are really powerful.

[Sivason]

Thanks! I am glad they are helpful.

[Samick]

Last night I had another LD! And this makes me wonder about the induction of them. About that part of realizing you are in a dream. Before going to sleep I only intended to have a lucid dream. During the day I did a bit of non formal meditation of tactile senses of the body, but I doubt that this little practice would make a big difference. So I think that the intention caused the LD. I would like to hear your opinion, sivason, about this. At first the LD was a very low level one. I started to be aware that I cannot fully understand where am I and who am I. The night before I read this post and during the dream I remembered to try to remeber where I was sleeping. Because of the vague memory of the dream I don't remember if I remembered right but it definately raised my awareness to the point where the dream colapsed. It is really hard to maintain stable LD. I need a lot of practice on this and would like to get some suggestions.

[Sivason]

Practice is the key. Intention does make a huge difference. I can LD most nights if I focus a large amount of intention, but go days without one if left to chance.

[Samick]

Ever since my acid trip things about meditation has changed. Meditation helps me enter quite different states of conciousness and even lose myself sometimes. Afterwards I most often have visuals which are not very vivid but definately there. It sometimes seems that I can see the energy around me which was invisible until now and the auras of things show up. I just want to ask if this is normal? These things only happen when I actively let go of myself, my thoughts. Maybe certain brain filters come off. Anyway, should I be worried about this?

[Samick]

I think my meditation practice has gotten to the next level. About a month (or more, I can really say) ago I started meditating all the time. Started being mindfull all day long. Although it wasn't the deep state I would get if I meditated while sitting, but still, it was kind of deep. I practiced like that for a while and it really changed my life for the better. It was quite challenging to go through things I really wanted to run away from but I didn't stop. Well, I stopped a few times for a little while but then I saw that this way of living is better than that which I was living before. The thing is, I want to get back to lucid dreaming, but my sleep schedules are awful because of massive amount of work I need to do for school and music. My dream recall is almost non existent. I don't really know what to do. My awareness capaticity increased dramatically but it doesn't help with recall. Sometimes it seems that it even makes it worse. How can I regain my recall?