Class 2 - Dream Control : Part I - 6th June, 2011
Class 2 - Dream Control : Part I
Hello and welcome to the second class of this semester. :)
~ Check-up on homework.
Did you do your homework? ^_^
Yes? Good! Extra points!
No? I KEEL YOU.
~ Basics of Dream Control (Already covered in previous class)
- Small revision of the good ol' basics.
As I covered in the previous class, you must stabilize and/or clarify your dream when you first enter it. Anchoring, exploring, activating your senses, anything will work. Just make sure you are properly 'connected', that is, in full control of your dream body.
IMPORTANT - Believe, and it WILL happen.
This is my whole experience summed up into one sentence. It speaks for itself. In dreams, there are no limits, except your imagination. So as long as you believe, it WILL, I repeat, certainly WILL happen. Never lose that confidence.
What does this mean? Well, for starters, you can change your dreamscapes. You can go to a different location. You can grow wings. You can even modify the behavior pattern of your DCs, to control them.
Let's move on.
~ Flying.
Most new comers and experienced LDers alike find flying to be one of the most attractive aspects of LDing. Since it's a widely demanded topic, we will cover it here.
- How to fly.
There is no one way to fly. Like I said, you are only limited by your imagination. I will start off with basic flight. While in a lucid dream, you can pretend the air around you to be a fluid. And then, you can start to 'thrust' around that fluid. This is the most basic type of levitation. You can alter your thinking to change your pace, direction, and altitude. Try to feel that 'lift' from the inside, imagine yourself flying, freeing yourself from the humanly laws of physics.
After a few tries, you will find that you can lift off a few feet, hover around, depending on your success. Don't be disappointed if you don't get it right the first time. There is no certain method to flying, so experiment and do what feels best.
- The common methods.
There are a variety of methods to fly, all of which vary in difficulty. You can try:
1. Basic Levitation
Already explained, you just try to propel yourself from the ground. Works fairly quickly, but it's not very impressive.
2. Altering Gravity (Hard)
Since there are no laws of physics in the dream realm, you can turn off gravity completely. But that will leave you bouncing! Well, you can keep altering gravity by different amounts. This will lead to a 'floating' type of flying, which is, while hard to do, still not very satisfying. You can try this for fun, but I don't recommend starting with this.
3. Pill in your pocket.
Step 1: Look in your pocket. Go ahead, check it out! Bam! There's a mysterious pill inside!
Step 2: I wonder what it does. I know! It gives me flying powers!
Step 3: NOM NOM NOM.
So basically, you can look for a pill in your pocket, and imagine that, when you eat it, you will have a certain type of power. In this case, the power to fly.
It's a really fun method to learn flying. It's always a surprise!
My number one recommendation. Try this out next!
4. Morphing (Harder)
When you get the hang of LDing, you can morph into a bird, human with wings, bat, anything that can fly. How do you do that? Answer is, again, imagination. You can use another pill and imagine it giving you a pair of wings, you can 'feel' that cursed blood running through your veins and alter your cells, morphing you into a winged demon. When you start to imagine how wings on your back will feel like, you will notice a peculiar 'tingling' sensation on that spot. Allow it to grow, and after a while, wings will suddenly shoot out. (It feels a little weird at times. O-O)
But learn to trust your wings. If you just flap them, they will not be able to carry your weight. You have to, again, believe you can fly with them. Trust in them. Try to feel how the air flows between the feathers, the lift, everything that goes on.
This requires a lot of training, and a decent amount of control. But once you master it, it's loads on fun! And the best part, it feels absolutely AMAZING!
5. Advanced Levitation (Hardest)
This is the most advanced form of 'flying', if you can call it that. When you reach a high amount of dream control, you don't need to have wings, morph, or eat a pill.
When everything is under your command, you can order reality to bend. To fly without support. You can turn into mist, and make the wind carry you. You can solidify air beneath your feet. Just expect solid ground when you lift a step in air. If done right, you will be standing in mid air. Again, belief is the key. You can even put your hands in your pockets, and make your dream carry you. Imagine yourself sky diving, the feeling of falling. You will start to fall. Imagine rising in a plane, you will start to rise. Imagine turning left or right suddenly while driving a car, remember the 'jerk' you feel due to inertia. You will turn left or right.
This method uses previous 'feelings' to recreate the effect. Ever got slapped? Well, feel that slap again, and chances are you will get slapped in your dream too. This method works similarly.
While all this might sound insanely hard to do, newcomers, PLEASE don't be afraid to try all of these out. Experiment, explore and have fun!
~ Fighting.
Another very important topic. I love a good challenge, so I am pretty much always fighting with one or another in an LD.
- Basic punch and kick. :D
Once you have control of your dream body, and can move around, you can punch and kick.
Not too impressive? Read on.
- Putting more power behind it.
There is a variety of ways to 'empower' your fighting moves.
1. Imagine yourself getting stronger, more muscular. A very crude method, but it's efficient. Example: I can break that guy's nose. Compare to : I can blow off his head with one hit.
See where I am going? You will get as strong as you need be, but you have to believe.
2. You can put more 'energy' behind your, let's say, kick. When I want to make my kick powerful, I hold it a while before executing it, while imagining the amount of damage it will do. You'll notice a vibration/tingling sensation when you do this. As you put more and more power behind it, this sensation will get stronger, like a balloon filling with water, and will burst when you make contact.
3. You don't need to physically make an effort at all. Feel like doing something non-violent? Walk up to your enemy, and touch him. Depending on what you believe your touch will do to him, he will experience varying amounts of pain. (or comfort, going the other way round) The tingling feeling is still there, but it's greatly amplified on contact. Like a transformer. Such a little spark, but it's 3000 volts. Small, but packs a punch.
- How to stay in control while fighting.
Another thing you will find annoying is that when you get into the thick of fighting, throwing punches here and there and shit, your dream will start to fade/destabilize. What do you do now? Stop and re-stabilize? No. You can try a couple of non-intrusive stabilization techniques. You can look around at the dream scape, it will help to clarify. You can flex your muscles. You can form a sphere of lucidity (psi manipulators will find themselves in familiar territory here) and expand that to stabilize your dream.
But one of the above may or may not be enough. Always be ready to use more than one technique if necessary.
- Your opponents do what you expect.
This is a fairly new discovery that I made. Other people may have realized it before, but I noticed it now. While fighting with my dream guide, I noticed there was a pattern to her attacks. This eventually led me to think that I may be the one controlling HER, since I am controlling most of my dream anyways.
Upon further experiments on enemies from manga novels and what-not, I discovered that, your opponents will be as strong as you expect. Example: A child. You won't expect much from them. Fight? Ahahaha move over kid.
Example 2: The guy from my avatar. He's got a long black katana, has insane speed, and kicks butts. He will be tough. I wonder if I can fight him?
Notice the difference? I will repeat, your opponents will be AS strong, no more, no less, than you expect.
- Using dreamscapes to your advantage.
While on the topic of modifying dreamscapes, you can use creative ways to use them to your advantage. See a mountain? Enemy on top? Too bad, mountain's gonna crumble.
See a ship? Enemy riding on it? Whoops huge water wave comes and swallows the ship. xD
My point is, when you can effectively modify elements of your dreams, you can alter them at strategic times to add a pinch of salt to the fight. Needs multi tasking skills, more on that later.
- 'Saving' your powers for the next dream.
So you discovered a new type of power. Maybe you learned to throw fireballs. Maybe you got this awesome killer gaze. (I'm just saying.)
You wouldn't want to start at level 1 again, now would you? So when you acquire a new ability, you have to make it permanent. It's sort of like a scar, once you get it, you learn to live with it. When you learn a new ability, you have to consider it as 'permanent', like something likely to stay on you forever. Get used to having it all the time, and you will have it in each of the following dreams.
~ Toning your dream body.
- Make yourself stronger, smarter, faster.
I personally feel that your dream body is just a modifiable version of your real body. So, you can exercise during lengthy lucids, meditate, etc, to hone your dream body. Remember, stay fit, even in dreams, both mentally and physically.
- Practice, practice, practice.
^This.
~ Transportation.
Moving on. I chose the title of this section for a lack of a better term. :D
Basically this section covers methods to move around in the dream realm.
- Portals
These are handy little rips in dreamspace-dreamtime that will allow you to instantly teleport to another location. There are a lot of ways to open a portal. You can imagine one behind a door, you can throw a pill on the ground and watch a portal pop up, you can team the fabric of space-time in front of you like a cloth, and jump through it. You can go through mirrors, walls, anything you can imagine. Basically, it's a 'linkage' to another point in time and space.
A little harder to control is where exactly you will end up. While most people will say that you have to imagine where the portal will take you, I use a better, fail proof method. Take a sign, write 'Hawaii' or 'Moon' or wherever it is you want to go, and hang it above the portal. Tadaa! Fool proof way of ensuring correct destination. Just jump in and enjoy the often not-so-pleasant ride.
- 'Flashing' through dreamscapes
My favorite technique. It's something that allows you to instantly 'blink' through a dreamscape, allowing you to travel huge distances within the blink of an eye. Use it to get behind enemies and surprise them, move when you feel like you don't walking, etc.
But how to do it?
Here is my method.
Blur your vision. No, really. Notice that slight blur when you just start to cross your eyes? Go ahead, try it now. Things will go out of shape, their edges will become less defined. Now, mark a location where you will end up. It could be a pole 10 meters away, or a far off star. Your choice. Now, feel a little 'trust' which propels you towards your location. Deny all laws of physics, all arguments of reality. Believe that, the thrust will transport you to target location immediately.
The most important part is the thrust. It's hard to describe, it's like your whole body is moving towards that point, but you aren't really moving your body. Try it out now. Try to propel a few inches back from current position. You won't move, but you will get this queasy feeling. THAT'S what I am taking about.
- Moving fast
Look in 'Toning your dream body.' You can increase your speed in various ways. Practicing it beforehand, eating an energy pill, etc. This is a basic thing, so you should find it easy.
~ Modifying your dream.
- Changing dream scapes
This is a comparatively easier task. It's very easy to alter some aspects of dreamscapes. For example, you can make the sky change color, make more tress grow, whatever your heart desires. The easiest, and the best way to do it, is to close your eyes (or blur your vision, I do that), imagine the change, believe it will happen, then open your eyes. Viola! Enjoy your new scenery.
- Modifying gravity.
This last thing I'd like mention before the ending chapter. It's a really fun trick to modify gravity. Make it weaker, stronger, or make it disappear wholly. The fundamentals are, again, belief. Jumped from a skyscraper? No problem, imagine you starting to slow down while you fall because the gravity got weaker. Did you slow down? Good. Now imagine the gravity REVERSED. The whole earth pushes you away from itself. You start to go back the way you came.
It's easy to modify gravity, but I find it gives the most positive results when you are in mid jump.
~ Multi tasking.
In my opinion, the truly advanced aspect of LDing.
- Doing everything listed above AT ONCE, AND Stabilizing while fighting/flying/porting.
So you will face a situation where you will be fighting a super powerful guy. You have to use your abilities. IMA CHARGING MAH LAZAA... wait, the dreams collapsing! Stabilize, feel around, look around, BAM, super powerful guy hits you HARD. You haven't got up before he is in mid air, delivering a fatal kick. What to do? Flash. But the dream's collapsing again.
Annoying situation, right?
Well, I am sorry to say I will be closing with a question left unanswered. This is something that needs more than LDing skills, it needs a certain aspect from your real life. Multi tasking.
Since this is not a guide to multi task, I won't go into any exercises here. But I will say, once you learn to multi task effectively in real life (do your homework, watch TV, AND talk on the phone all at once (girls you will find this a piece of cake xD) etc.), you can do that in dreams too. It's just different thoughts, but you are doing the same thing. Running parallel processes simultaneously.
I recommend meditating a bit and expanding your mind a bit, then trying some multi tasking exercises and games you can find on the Internet, for people who find it hard to multi task.
Well, that's it for this class. Hope you enjoyed it !
Regards,
Max.
PS, what, you thought I wouldn't give you homework?! Ten pages on why I am awesome!
Just kidding, within the next few LDs, try some of this stuff out, and as usual, post it in your journal! I'll be checking them ! ^_^
