Thread: OPEN BETA - Open beta TWOTLD - Days 7, 8, and 9

A day of fundamentals and exploration, ideal for new dreamers, but still good practice before days 8 and 9...

Chapter 7 - Walking in the bizarre

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it, and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed." – Albert Einstein

Having explored lucidity both in the body and in the world, we have been steadily preparing ourselves for lengthier excursions into the outlier realms. We’ve stuck our toes in lucid waters and found them to be warm and inviting. As we now prepare for full immersion into the Dream, we once again consider those that have blazed the trail before us. Einstein knew the power of perception. His power to see things differently, to journey into the outliers, transformed our understanding of the physical world. To him, his access to the outliers was in conjuring the mysterious. Rather than seeing things as knowns, he viewed them as unknowns. The gateway to lucid realms is conjured in much the same way. Though rather than calling it mysterious, dreamers tend to call it the Bizarre.

What is it about flying pink elephants that causes us to wake up? Dreamers often believe that it’s the absurdity or impossibility of the event that triggers lucidity, but there are subtler things happening. The elephant events first hook our attention. We stop what we’re doing and do a double-take. They pull us in. If we slow down the event, before we get to, “Hey, I must be dreaming!” we first have a moment of just seeing the elephant with an internal attitude of “That’s bizarre…” It’s only after we’ve gone through bizarre that we start piecing things together and exclaim that we must dreaming. Bizarre is the starting place. Bizarre calls forth a realm of mystery and undims the eyes. Bizarre pulls us into lucidity.

So let us take our cues from Einstein and elephants. What happens if we remain in the state of “that’s bizarre…”? In normal lucid dreams, becoming very interested in the dream is one technique for prolonging lucidity. This redirection of attention from ourselves and our stories (where we tend to get trapped) back into the dream, allows us to remain in the lucid state. The mind tends to get bored with reality because it thinks it already understands the world. Rather than participating in the vivid world out there, if it thinks there’s nothing new, the mind goes back to rehashing the same old thoughts over and over. It’s only when the mind comes across something bizarre that it stops generating its false mentally constructed world and allows us to look at the world as it really is. A bizarre exterior lifts the veil. The mind wants to know what’s going on. It finally wants to SEE.

The best way to direct our attention out into the dream is to become infinitely fascinated by the dream, and the best way to do that is to see everything as bizarre. Don’t just view pink elephants as bizarre, view the whole brilliant thing as bizarre. The more feeling of bizarre that we can conjure, the more lucid our dreams and our lives can become. Conjuring the bizarre is the quickest way out of our mentally constructed worlds. When something is bizarre, we immediately become lucid.

Exercise 7: Walking in the Bizarre

Pick an object and look at it as if it were the most bizarre thing you’ve ever come across. Be intrigued by it, desire to see every detail, leave no part of it unexplored. You are beholding an impossibility, a great mystery!

Continuing with this level of fascination, go for a walk and explore your surroundings. Let every aspect of the world seem Bizarre. Walk in the Bizarre like Alice when she first entered Wonderland. Let the sky be bizarre, let your body be bizarre. Feel like a stranger in a strange body walking in a strange and marvelous land. If at any point you feel yourself being pulled back into normal consciousness, simply start the process over again. Focus again on everything being bizarre. Continue your walk until you effortlessly feel like you’re in a lucid dream.

Any of the previous exercises can be revisited adding in this element of lucidity.

Frequently in spiritual texts we are told to become as children. Teachers from the Dalai Lama to Jesus Christ encourage us to love, trust, and be exactly as a child would love, trust, and be. We know that children have an innate sense of innocence and wonder through which they view the world, but what is it really like to see the world through their eyes? We’ve grown used to the way things are. The way we move, the way we act, the way we drive, everything is normal to us. Would we feel the same if we were from another place or another time? Our world would seem truly bizarre to someone from 500 years ago, just as their world would seem equally bizarre to us. Their thoughts, beliefs, and ways of life would be absolutely confounding; similarly, as they viewed the way we live our lives, they would think we’d all gone mad. Imagine how bizarre this all must be to children! Growing up is a process of becoming accustomed to the bizarre. As the world goes from bizarre to normal, our eyes slowly dim. We get sucked into the dream and fall asleep. Enlightenment fades. We must journey back into the bizarre if we are to recover that light.

Some beginning lucid dreamers recall being able to lucid dream when they were children. They believe that somewhere along the way, they lost their talent. We understand now that it’s not that they lost something, it’s that they fell deeper and deeper into sleep. By taking walks in the bizarre, we are strengthening our Dreaming skill and finding our back to lucid dreaming with the ease of a child. By using our various Dreaming exercises, we immediately see through our mental constructs and begin to view reality as we do in a lucid dream. The longer we spend Dreaming throughout the day, the quicker our progress on this path becomes. We can now conjure the bizarre to disrupt our mental construct any time we choose, but where does this mental construct keep coming from? Why can’t we just use an exercise to wake up and then be lucid for the rest of our lives?

All text (c) C.A. von der Mehden, 2014.

Please share your experiences with this one!

Chapter 8 - The lucid shield

“One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion.” - Voltaire

The dream world has the feel of a subtler reality than the physical world. In the physical world, we’re concerned with objects, matter, and avoiding pain. In dreams, these things become less important, and our focus turns towards finer, harder-to-describe things. The texture of dream stuff is softer, subtler. Even if we’re holding a dull, heavy object in the dream, and even if it seems exactly like it would in real life, we’re still experiencing some other subtle element. There’s some dream-like quality that is interwoven throughout everything. The air is alive with it. Many lucid dreamers will know right away what I’m talking about, even if they’ve never stopped to think about it. Some strange energy of the dream pervades both the dreamer and the dream, and in the dream, you’re connected to it all. The leaves on a branch a mile away might as well be right in front of your nose. There is no real separation. Your awareness seamlessly flows wherever you want it to. Nothing is holding you back. You look at the mountains and it’s like you’re there. You can feel them, they’re so present that you almost feel like you’re standing there now.

Talented lucid dreamers know they can take that feeling to the next level. Not only can you feel like you’re there, if you so choose, then poof, you actually are there. Dream teleportation is easy as long as you’re tapped in to the interconnectedness of the dream. You don’t have to travel anywhere because you’re already there. When you’re aware of the subtle energy of the dream and when you can feel it permeating your dream body, you know that the real “you” is just consciousness hopping around in the dream, shifting perspectives wherever you want. We can start to experience this permeated connectedness in the Dreaming exercise.

When we wake up, rather than being permeated by the physical world, we try to keep that reality at arm’s length. We don’t open up to it like we do in the dream. Even though we’re constantly being maintained by the physical universe, breathing it in, breathing it out, ingesting it, using it, becoming it, sweating it, passing it - being it – even though we are exactly it, in a constant state of flux and motion, we pretend that we’re not. We pretend that we’re somehow separate from it. It’s not giving us life and being, we’re doing that all on our own, thank you very much! Or so we seem to believe. In the dream, this illusion is gone. We embrace the lucid environment and let it in. We know that we are an essential part of the dream world, and we swim and soar in that connection. When we wake up, however, walls come up and we try to keep things out.

We’re afraid of physicality because we believe it to be dangerous. It could hurt us! We spend great amounts of time and energy protecting ourselves from the world. People, places, and things have hurt us in the past, so we erect barriers, certain modes of consciousness that we believe will keep us safe. People wounded in love might hold themselves back from a new potential romance. People who have been bullied might approach strangers with caution. Countless bumps and bruises from life slowly accumulate as we grow older until one day, we’ve cut ourselves off from everything. We believe and creates ourselves as separate. A veil falls across our eyes, and the world ceases to be a place of wonder. We’ve fallen asleep and the world must now be endured, tolerated, or overcome. Life becomes a game of me versus them. Compare this to life in a lucid dream!

On the other end of the spectrum, we have children who live in the Now. They live for the Moment. They embrace the wondrous physicality of life. They roll in the mud. They run as fast as they can. They’re quick to make friends. They are truly, purely, and beautifully a part of the world. They don’t view the world as outside of them, there is no isolated, ego self they’re trying to maintain. They are open and present and connected. Countless spiritual teachers tell us, “be here now,” but what does that mean? What they’re talking about is being connected, tearing down all of our walls and being a part of everything, as if we were lucid in a dream.

As adults, we live in a subtly projected space that cuts us off from the flow of that waking dream we call Life. We’ve already discussed the mentally constructed version of reality that prevents us from seeing, but where does that reality come from? As we grow up, we learn to shield ourselves from the world. We learn to protect ourselves and keep bad things “out.” Unfortunately, during this process, we get cut off from the subtle aspects of the Dream. There are many nuances to lucidity that a dreamer taps into when he becomes lucid. The experience is enlightening whichever world you’re in. All the feelings of connection and bliss and peace and joy that we experience when we’re lucid (in dreams or in life) come from being open to the world. We’re tapped in. When we shield ourselves from that glorious realm, it gets boring really fast. All the feeling is gone. All the sensation is gone. And so, desperate to get a piece of that back, we generate a mental construct of reality and immerse ourselves in our own little world. We leave reality and the freedom of being a lucid dreamer, and exchange it for a smaller self that thinks it’s the master of its own universe. In our mentally constructed world, we’re safe and seemingly in control. And we dream that we’re connected. We dream that we’re awake.

In truth, we’ve shielded ourselves so utterly and completely from the world “out there” that we have expressions like “He lives in his own world,” and this is actually normal! Our minds have taken control of our thoughts, actions, perceptions, and lives so completely that we are completely removed from reality. We live in a virtual world, and we are cut off. As long as we’re in our shielded reality, keeping the universe at bay, we’re asleep in our dreams and we’re asleep in life. Consider the moment before becoming lucid in a dream. You’re caught up in a fantasy. Everything happening is a dream, but you don’t realize it! It all seems real. You swear up and down that you’re “you” until you become lucid. Then the walls come down and you wake up. There was a lucid shield around you, a great veil, keeping you from knowing a simple truth: a false world had been pulled over your eyes.

We believe the lucid shield keeps us safe, but all it does is keep us asleep. We can become aware of it right now. An easy way to feel this bubble-like shield is to conceive of it as your personal space. When nothing threatening is in your personal space, you feel safe. Everything is under control. You know who you are, you know what to expect, and you don’t have to worry about anything outside of you. The walls of this personal space are familiar and known, they’re comfortable, relaxing, almost lulling… which means if we wish to experience the unknown, the mysterious, the bizarre - the lucid - we must leave those walls. Leaving our shielded reality can be very exciting or very uncomfortable. That choice is ultimately up to us. We can fight it, or in the words of the shaman I studied with in Peru, we can “let it go, let it go.” The more illusion we let go of, the more lucid we become.

Most people have a sense of their personal space and how far out it extends. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, find a partner and stand about ten feet apart. Have your partner slowly come towards you. At some point, if your partner isn’t a lover, you’ll suddenly feel on guard or uncomfortable. In the case of lovers, we grant them access to our personal space, and unsurprisingly, our lovers tend to make our lives more mysterious, lucid, and unknown…

Personal space cuts us off from the subtler realms of experience. This illusory separation shields us from being lucid in dreams and in life, but luckily it’s not a fixed thing. With certain people and places our guard goes up. With others, our guard goes down. We can expand and contract our personal space according to the situation. Consider someone who has just arrived in Paris for the first time. She’s been looking forward to this trip her entire life and is expecting two weeks filled with adventure, romance, and dreams come true. For this person, her personal space would be at a minimum. Her shield is almost transparent. She’ll head out, as lucid as she knows how to be, ready to experience a Parisian wonderland. When she meets someone at a café, she’ll feel open and interested in the other person. She isn’t projecting any walls or barriers. Unknowingly, she’s taken down her lucid shield as best she can.

Consider now a disgruntled businessman. He’s got a million things to do. He’s upset about his situation at work and being sent to straighten things out with his foreign counterparts. He may enter the same café as our first-time traveler, but he’ll feel completely different. His personal space feels almost solid, a wall cutting him off from the experiences and wonders around him. He is cut off from the Dream, shielded from the world around him and asleep. We are actually sensitive to these shields. When someone doesn’t want to be bothered and you approach them, you can feel their space and you walk away.

Imagine yourself completely lucid in a high level lucid dream. Let yourself feel open and connected, powerful, joyful, and free. Now imagine yourself that way right here, right now. Feel as lucid as you can. You can do anything you want. You can be anything you want. Now in that space, the lucid shield at a minimum, imagine your parents looking at you. How do you feel? Did you change? Was your feeling of freedom lessened? Do you need to behave a certain way? Add in your siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Can you feel the shield coming up? Can you feel it strengthening? Keep adding people in: teachers, ex-lovers, bullies, enemies, strangers. The shield gets stronger and stronger. You become less and less free, and the “you” that is emerging isn’t the real you.

The lucid shield is a subtle force we project that cuts us off from whole realms of subtle sensations. When we can connect to that realm of subtle sensation, we are lucid and free. Whereas Gurdjieff said that we don’t see the world as it truly is, it’s equally true that we don’t feel the world as it truly is. The physical world actually feels the way it does in a lucid dream. The magic and thrill of interactions in the waking world are there, just on the other side of our lucid shields. The subtle sensations of the dream world occur in this world too, but we’ve barricaded ourselves in a self-created illusory cocoon. There is a marvelous world happening on just the other side of our lucid shield. There is ecstatic, lucid life waiting for us to wake up and let it in.

The famous scientist Sir Isaac Newton, and the somewhat less famous mystic and dreamer, again Sir Isaac Newton, noted that whenever a force is exerted upon an object remaining at rest, there is an equal and opposite force exerted back. What this means for us living in our lucid shields is that any force we project against the dream to keep ourselves feeling safe is matched from the other side by the Dream. The Dream is there waiting to wake us up, but we’re actively fighting against it. As soon as we realize this, we can take steps to stop fighting, and when we do, we’ll find ourselves another step closer to full lucidity.

Exercise 8a: Exploring the lucid shield

Before we leave the lucid shield, we first need to fully explore it. The lucid shield is a projection into and against the subtler realm we’ve been seeking. If we want to fully experience the lucid world, we need to start by fully experiencing our lucid shield. By tuning in to these projections, we develop our subtle perceptions and increase our skills as lucid dreamers.

Become aware of your lucid shield. This is the personal space, the bubble, the reality in which you live. How far out does it go? Become aware of its walls. Notice how you feel when nothing is threatening your shielded space. You feel safe. You feel like you.

Go for a walk maintaining awareness of the lucid shield. Can you strengthen it? How solid can you make it feel? If something were to threaten you, what would happen to the feel of the lucid shield? Notice that there’s a world “out there” and a world “in here”. You’re safe in one, but not the other. Continue walking and exploring the outside world while maintaining full separation from it, safe within the walls of the lucid shield.

Exercise 8b: Morphing the lucid shield

Just as we can strengthen or weaken the lucid shield with our will by perceiving danger or perceiving safety, we can control the size and shape of the shield with our will as well. We do this naturally in life. Alone in nature, our shield tends to be big and expansive, whereas in a crowd, it becomes very close to the skin.

To explore the malleable nature of the lucid shield, let us imagine a very solid shield extending out from us to a range of about 8-10 feet. Feel the walls of the lucid shield. This is your personal space. This is your domain. Enjoy how it feels to be in your domain. Extend your perception all the way to the walls of the shield and explore the world that is inside. In this space, you are in control, outside, the world is Unknown.

Retract the lucid shield in a foot or two. You’ll instantly feel the Unknown fill the vacated space. The bubble is smaller now. Feel its edges and explore the space as you did before. When the new lucid shield is clearly perceived, bring it in a little more. Continue gradually bringing the shield in and feeling the new space until you’ve brought it in all the way to your body. Once the shield corresponds to your physical body, realize that the only thing separating you from the Dream, the bizarre Unknown, is your own skin.

Now pop the bubble, release the lucid shield, and note any sensations that may occur.

At the end of the exercise, project the shield out 10 feet. Then farther. Then farther still. Then as far as you can. When the lucid shield has been projected out as far as you can imagine, and you are experiencing all that space as your domain, again let it go and conclude the exercise.

End of Chapter 8. All text (c) C.A. von der Mehden, 2014.

9b seems simple enough... let me know your experiences!

Chapter 9 - The proper use of totems

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” – Lao Tzu

Spontaneous lucidity is a phenomenon that should interest us greatly. The majority of my lucid dreams, even as a beginner, all fell into this category. High level lucid dreams would just happen. In the early days, this was frustrating because I had no control over when these desired dreams would occur, I was merely the glad recipient of accidental fortune. We, of course, are not interested in being accidental lucid dreamers. We want to dream with clarity, choice, and power, able to step into lucidity at will.

So what happens if we start to study the spontaneous lucid dreaming phenomenon? In previous chapters, we looked at flying pink elephants. People may call them dream signs or dream clues or incongruities, or whatever, but regardless of the name, they are a curiosity. They are outlier dreaming events. They somehow hook our attention in the dream due to their bizarre nature, we do a double-take, and the waking-up process begins. Unfortunately for me, and probably the majority of people out there, we just don't dream about flying pink elephants all that often. As I scan across the pages of my dream journal, I notice a distinct lack of elephants, and I find that most of my lucidity triggers really aren't that bizarre at all. In one instance from May 2004, it was a normal looking tree.

I’m walking through a city with James. It’s daytime. I believe we’re overseas somewhere, but I'm not sure where. We're headed down a sidewalk, talking, when I notice a particular tree. There's nothing special about it but as I look at it I realize that I'm dreaming.

A lot of my spontaneous lucid dreams are similar to that. Something catches my eye, I pause, and suddenly I wake up. There's no questioning or reality checking involved, it just happens. I've had dreams where buildings, plants, views, rocks, and even grass have all sent me into a high level lucid dream. In each of the cases, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the object. It just hooked my attention and suddenly I woke up.

In one of my favorite dream moments, it was the look in a woman's eyes. I was walking through a public area, in my own little world, wrapped up in my story. A woman was walking towards me, headed somewhere else. As we passed, I looked up. She had a delicious knowing smile and when I caught her eyes, the veil simply fell. My lucid shield, my cloud of illusion, disappeared. I turned around to interact with her, but she was gone into the crowd.

Each of these anomalous dreaming interactions are known as totem events. Totems are objects outside of you that cause you to wake up. In the 2010 film, Inception, they used totems to keep track of whether or not they were dreaming, and like most Hollywood films, despite being a great movie, they didn’t quite get the mechanics of the concept right. Totems pull you out of the non-lucid state, they wake you up. The most easily identified totems are the outrageously bizarre, but totems can be anything. An object, a plant, a view, even a stranger's smile. When we encounter totems in a dream, they are seeming accidents. We stumble upon them, and to a dreamer, they are gifts. We don't necessarily know where they came from or why they're there or how they work, we just appreciate their appearance. They are beacons of lucidity that break down our barriers and wake us up.

Any lucid dreamers unfamiliar with totems should scan through their lucid dreams and look for them. In each of your lucid dreams, what caused you to wake up? What was present in the second before becoming lucid? Often we think it just sort of happened, but if we really go back into those moments, we always find a totem of one kind or another present and anchored in the lucid realm, broadcasting the feel of something more.

Totems possess an ineffable quality. How is it that they can penetrate the densest fogs of our minds and pull us into crystal-clear lucidity? It’s almost as if a part of us wants to be awake and leaves us beacons scattered throughout the dream realm that gently offer us a way out. Totems ignore any shields we may be projecting and reach right into our world and rekindle awareness. They wake us up. Interestingly, once we’re awake, the totem is just like all the rest of lucid reality. It’s only when we’re asleep in the dream that it occurs as an oddity. Once we’re lucid, whatever mysterious quality it possessed blends into the rest of the dream because the entire lucid world all radiates that same quality.

If we start looking for totems in waking life, we find that they are everywhere, scattered across our paths to wake us up in this world too. Often they’re associated with beauty (a sunrise, a flower, a cathedral, a work of art, etc) but they can be anything. A really good wine, a perfect kiss, a song, anything that cuts through to our core, gives us pause, and reminds us what it’s all about. These are all totems, beacons of a super-conscious realm broadcasting their message into our sleepy, wayward lives. Usually, the lucid moment only lasts an instant. We briefly pause, remember, but then rush right back into what we were doing. This happens both in the dream and in life. In order to extend our lucidity, we can’t just approach the lucid realm and be satisfied with a quick glimpse, we have to stop what we’re doing and enter. Then, the farther in we venture, the longer we’ll be able to stay.

We want to become very familiar with the totem process. This is the stuff lucid dreams are made of! We know that reality checks and all the various mnemonic reminders are not guaranteed to work. We want to become lucid as easily as possible with the least amount of effort as possible. We’d like the dream to do the work for us, scatter totems throughout our consciousness and have us bump into them over and over throughout the night. The more we practice lucid dreaming, the more totem events we start having in our dreams. Lucidity becomes automatic. The reason for this is that we’re reprogramming our minds. The work we’ve been doing thus far is actually programming our minds to automatically lucid dream. We’re developing a way of looking at the world, a way of being, that causes spontaneous awakening. Since what happens in life gets reflected in the dream, if you have an argument with a friend, chances are you’ll be arguing in your dreams in a night or two. If you spend your day fantasizing about a vacation, you are likely to find yourself there in your sleep. Now if your state of consciousness throughout the day corresponds to that state of consciousness that we’re distinguishing as non-lucidity in the world, then your state of consciousness in the dream is going to largely be non-lucid. Dream consciousness mimics waking-world consciousness. If being awake in the world becomes our norm, so too will being awake in our dreams.

By using our outlier experiences from dreaming, we’re learning the ins and outs of lucidity. We’re activating enlightened mental pathways so that they get triggered at night. The more accustomed we become to viewing the world with lucid eyes, the more accustomed we’ll become to dreaming with lucid eyes. We already have the know-how, it’s an innate part of being human, we just don’t do it very often. So rather than viewing totems as oddities of the dream world, let us once again consider the dream our teacher and explore what it has to offer.

Looking closer at a totem experience, what do we find? The totem can be anything, it doesn’t have to be special or bizarre, anything will do. In the dream, it catches our eye. We stop what we’re doing and look closer. There’s something about the object… and as soon as we get really interested, it’s hooked us, pulled us into its reality, and we wake up. The totem radiates the essence of the lucid realm, and the power of that realm instantly cuts through to our core. Any shields we were projecting vanish like fog in the sun as the energy of lucidity floods in and awareness dawns. When we see the totem, we are actually seeing the lucid realm, and as soon as we see it, as soon as we connect to it, the spell is broken. The veil is lifted, and we are there.
Our daytime exercises have all been developing the skill called Dreaming, and our nighttime exercises will all be employing this same skill. Dreaming is very distinct from imagining. Imagination is a process that requires effort. When we imagine something a certain way while awake, we are essentially trying to change the nature of that thing. We are trying to overwrite the world as it is. Imagination is a process that occurs in the head, outside of reality. When we’re within the mental construct, imagination can help us get out, but once we’re out, it does us no good.

Opposite imagination is Dreaming. Whereas imagination requires effort, Dreaming is effortless. It involves an allowing and beholding. To Dream something is to choose it and to create it, exactly as it is occurring. While imagination takes place in the head, Dreaming seems to come from the heart. In imagination, we’re separate from what we’re imagining. In Dreaming, we feel an intrinsic connection, like in a lucid dream.

To fine-tune our Dreaming skill, we’ll be alternating between imagining and Dreaming.

Exercise 9a: Totem tuning

Pick something and imagine that it is a totem (requires effort). After a moment or two of imagining, switch to Dreaming that it’s a totem (effortless). You should feel an immediate relaxing.
Pick something else and repeat. Continue until the distinction between imagining and Dreaming is very clear.

Exercise 9b: Waking totems

Totems are things outside of us that cause a change in or disintegration of the dream shield. To learn how to use totems while awake, we start by deliberately creating their intended effects. Pick something outside of your personal space and let your lucid shield stop just on the near side of it. This is a Dreaming process, not an imagining one. When you can clearly perceive the wall of your shield in front of your chosen totem, extend your shield just enough to include it. The totem is now in your space, your reality. Notice any subtle sensations that may occur. Then pick a new totem.

Continue treating things as totems until the separation between inside and outside disappears.

End of Chapter 9. All text (c) C.A. von der Mehden, 2014.

Interesting stuff... will be giving these a try. The lucid shield seems very very fun.

I am still working on going through these latest exercises but I wanted to chime in a quick thank you for sharing your book's potential chapters and exercises with us. There are always doubts when something new or different comes along and I have a question or two that I will try to save to the end in case they are answered as we go along. Some items I know are helpful to lucid dreaming, while some I am taking a wait and see approach. Either way, I am finding the exercises beneficial in some way and just wanted to say thank you.

If you have questions arise, I'd be glad to hear them. I want to know what's going on in people's minds at each step of the journey. Thanks for your words and for taking part in the test!

Sure, thank you. There is a theory around that focusing too much on your surroundings, although great for many things, can pull you away from lucidity once you are lucid in a dream. You could become lucid and get so wrapped up in all of the awesome things that you are seeing that your self-awareness is reduced and you can revert to continuing the dream non-lucid, goes the theory. I have definitely lost lucidity before without waking up but I feel that my work on self-awareness usually prevents that. To be honest, when I have lost lucidity it seems like it is usually a tricky false awakening, real awakening or I just wasn't very self-aware or strongly lucid in the dream to begin with which makes me question the theory a bit. On the flip side, my practice thus far has been more skewed towards the self-awareness end of the spectrum than my surroundings in a lucid dream, so I haven't had many opportunities to get lost in my lucid dream so perhaps the theory stands just fine in my personal experience. As a side note, since returning to lucid dreaming in adulthood after a number of decade's absence I have naturally found more wonder and amazement in my waking world. An example that ties into day/chapter 7 is my fascination with the idea of "shadows from diffused light" about a week ago which may have also been nudged to the forefront by your previous exercises. Such shadows are something I have seen and kept going past many times before, but I am now truly seeing it and acknowledging it. Months back I found fascination with light in other ways, basically paradigm shifts that I directly attribute to experiences I have had while lucid dreaming. Do a google search for "shadows from diffused light" or "shadows from diffuse light" in *quotes* as shown and you will get less than 1 page of results currently showing it is not something to commonly be mentioned or thought about. I find this fascinating as well since it has never been pointed out to me and I am far from a genius, though probably a bit above average. Your leaden body exercise brought more focus towards self-awareness but surprisingly as I went a long I was seeing/feeling both my body movements and my surroundings in a new light which made me quite giddy. (no time to clean up that mess of writing, hopefully not tldr)

What you mean by shadows from diffused light? Can you expound upon that?

The too much awareness on your surroundings is an interesting phenomenon. There's an exploration of both ends of that spectrum in the exercises, but by the end, the goal is to have discovered the access to the perfect balance of the two.

Originally Posted by cvdmehden

What you mean by shadows from diffused light? Can you expound upon that?

I had to look up the terminology to even know what to call it beyond just "a shadow." It is something that most people will look and think "yeah, I have seen that," but never gave it any thought before. Everyone is very familiar with standard shadows created from direct light like your own shadow due to the sun shining directly on you. A shadow from diffuse(d) light is more faint in that it is created from light that bounces off one or more surfaces before hitting the object it creates the shadow for. The more surfaces the light is bouncing off of, it seems, the more faint the shadow. This is most commonly seen inside a room during the day when the location of the sun is not shooting light directly into the room but you still have light coming into your room, reflected off all kinds of objects outside of (and inside of) your home (and I am not talking mirrors). An example would be when you have a room with only an East facing window but the sun is facing the West side of your home and you still get some light and some shadows in that room. After really thinking about this it also reminded me of the phenomenon of how if you are wearing a bright colored shirt you can often see a hint of that color on surfaces nearby, particularly bright white surfaces due to the reflected light off of your brightly colored shirt.

The too much awareness on your surroundings is an interesting phenomenon. There's an exploration of both ends of that spectrum in the exercises, but by the end, the goal is to have discovered the access to the perfect balance of the two.

I thought that may be the case. Again, thank you. I am enjoying your exercises.

I really appreciate this writeup. I haven't read all of it yet, but it's definitely on my to do list.

I just wanted to chime in a little, because my self study of lighting (For film) is forcing me to correct a small detail about diffused light: Shadows are not soft because light is bounced off multiple surfaces, it's soft because the source of the light is very large. Light from windows outside of direct sunlight are being lit by reflected light from the sky and atmosphere - a very large source. The size of the source of light is all that matters. If you have a small lamp you'll see this effect too - the closer you put your hand to the bulb, the softer your shadow is on the table because the light source compared to your hand is getting larger the closer you get.

If you've ever seen how most movie sets are lit, you'll probably see gigantic white screens hanging in the background somewhere with powerful lights shooting through or bouncing off them. Soft lighting is flattering to most people so it's used almost exclusively in modern movies and TV. This is an example (of a very small one):

^^And the learning continues...thank you. Do you know the reason why some shadows are softer than others in the same room where the only light source is coming through the window (via the sky...from a great distance?)? Where does the sky start in these equations (e.g. the air right outside of the room or hundreds, perhaps thousands of meters up)?

I found this description at http://www.ehow.com/about_5470956_diffused-light.html

"What Is Diffused Light?...It is scattered and comes from all directions."

"What Causes Light Diffusion?

• When a light beam strikes a smooth surface, most of it reflects back in the same concentration. This is specular reflection, which gives us direct, bright light. A mirror is a common example of a smooth surface that causes specular reflection. 

What happens on a rough surface? Even microscopic irregularities create roughness. The law of reflection is not broken. Each ray reflects back at the same angle at which it struck the object but in a different direction. So diffuse light is scattered light. This scattering is what causes the diffusion and softness of the light beam."
  
  

So I was a little skeptical of the shield exercise, I wasn't sure exactly what you meant by it but when I practiced it I think I had a better understanding. It was interesting feeling my personal space and expanding and shrinking it. During exercise 8b when I shrank it to my own skin I felt a crowded sense of the outside world around me pressing in on me, then when I released the feeling I had a sense of relief and comfort with my surroundings. I liked expanding the shield more than shrinking it, when expanding it I felt like I was becoming more and more comfortable and opening up to everything in a wide radius around me. I haven't done much with the totem practice yet, I wanted to understand the shield a little better before then.

Originally Posted by Fuzzman

So I was a little skeptical of the shield exercise, I wasn't sure exactly what you meant by it but when I practiced it I think I had a better understanding. It was interesting feeling my personal space and expanding and shrinking it. During exercise 8b when I shrank it to my own skin I felt a crowded sense of the outside world around me pressing in on me, then when I released the feeling I had a sense of relief and comfort with my surroundings. I liked expanding the shield more than shrinking it, when expanding it I felt like I was becoming more and more comfortable and opening up to everything in a wide radius around me. I haven't done much with the totem practice yet, I wanted to understand the shield a little better before then.

Exactly what we're going for! Where do "you" stop, and where does the "world" begin? How would you answer that now, and how would you answer in a lucid dream?

Looking forward to hearing your experience with totems. That exercise is magic.

Exercise 7/walking in the bizarre: This was fun and mentioning Alice In Wonderland was a good clue to how to go about it. My body and limbs felt free and full of jello as I looked all around, up and down I felt like I was taking everything in with a feeling of bliss.

Exercise 8ab/lucid shield: pulling the shield in closer made it obvious why we should open it up. It made me feel limited and almost imprisoned. As I expanded it a sense of freedom, joy and connection with everything around me finally expanding to my imagination of the far reaches of the universe. I continued as I drove to run an errand, suddenly the cars approaching and the people inside were all part of the same essence and I felt connected to strangers like never before!

Exercise 9ab/totems: 9a definitely noticed the difference between imagining and dreaming and was able to do the same with the shield as instructed. I will work more with 9b. I noticed subtle differences and maybe a hint of magic, but I think I need to revisit this when I am not running off some where (currently) since I saw your note that "That exercise is magic."

Originally Posted by fogelbise

As I expanded it a sense of freedom, joy and connection with everything around me finally expanding to my imagination of the far reaches of the universe. I continued as I drove to run an errand, suddenly the cars approaching and the people inside were all part of the same essence and I felt connected to strangers like never before!

Awesome!

^^It was quite!

9b I did as I was driving just after my previous post. I was gawking at the low sun blazing through a beautiful cloud formation in colors of silver, blue and white. I dreamed my shield stopping just before the clouds and then brought the jewel in the sky into my shield, into my world, into my experience. It felt a part of me and part of my waking dream, as if I could touch it, swim in it and breathe it in. It was quite breathtaking! When I got to my destination people must have been wondering "why is that guy smiling so big?"

Very nice! Have you tried doing a number of totem exercises back to back? The experience builds up to another aha! moment. Anyone else tried these yet?

I am really enjoying these exercises and hope many people take the time to try them! So I did have another aha moment that was developing in my previous exercise while driving but it got abbreviated until I returned to exercise 9b today. It gave me the sense that the world is my oyster; the world is my playground! There is so much beauty, wonder and experiences all around if you just allow the world in or allow yourself out into the world around you. Starting with items nearby I felt as if I can play with the items by freely dreaming. It was quite fun to play with these items via dreaming. Possibly got off course when one item I looked at gave me a mental visual of that item separated into horizontal and vertical layers which made me think of matter, atoms, and the even smaller particles within, but I felt that thinking too deeply got me away from dreaming, so I reset my focus. The fence and the neighbor's back yard was seen as a man made shield where comfort level would go down just on the other side of the fence, just as with the shield. By releasing the shield there was a world of experiences dreamed and "real" just beyond the fence. Then I went out to the distant trees and objects. I then had to close my eyes to go further: neighborhood, city, region, 300 mile radius, further to where my parents and brother live as if I could see them in a way and certainly "feel" them, further to the top of the Eiffel tower where I once experienced what felt like the whole world blowing upon my face and body. Even further to the moon, the sun, Jupiter, the Milky Way, and an attempt at the universe but that was difficult to get a true dreaming feeling for. I thought about the various distant stars and planets like marbles to play with but that didn't feel right, it felt too irreverent. I did dream the heat of distant stars and of cupping my giant dreamed hand around the gravity of distant planets.

I have noticed another side effect besides the primary ones in my previous two posts. I am catching details in the distance more now, catching views/scenic features that I don't remember noticing as visible from certain spots, realizing that these views were always visible but I just wasn't "seeing" them.

I have a few thoughts about these exercises. Though I have not made a prolonged attempt at practicing your particular methodology, I have recently developed personal "exercises" very similar to these, through my own life progression. Correct me if I am wrong, but these exercises all seem centered upon the concept of unity. What I mean by that is, as with the reality of dream states, these exercises are vehicles for realizing the mind's domain over all phenomena. I am not saying that our minds are directly responsible for altering our realities - that can easily be misunderstood. I am saying rather that because all phenomena is received by the senses, and the senses strained through our minds, our lives are merely a reflection of the internal. As I am observing your exercises, it seems to me that they are varying ways of "feeling out" this sense of unity in waking consciousness. Yes, the first exercise (seven) sows the seed of purity of perception, allowing the perception of untarnished reality through innocent eyes. The second (eight), is much like the way in which I first experienced unity - by expanding the self (energy body / mind) into the "external" reality, thus establishing a live-wire so to speak between inner and outer, joining them in union. The last exercise (nine) seems to be a refinement of the previous exercise, working with individual objects and similarly tying looses ends in the perceived field (the mind). This is, of course, only my interpretation of what you have written. Perhaps you intended something entirely different when you wrote those lines, I am simply sharing the impact that exercises, identical in nature yet varying in content from your own, have had on my own path. I would certainly like to know if your experiences in any way parallel mine, and if this is your intention in teaching people these things.

After the rewrite, the book's focus is on breaking free of the 5 "constructs" that keep us asleep within our dreams. The "construct of separation" is the 3rd construct we discover. When we overcome it, we experience unity. So by exercise 10, we learn to achieve an experiential oneness with reality.

Unity becomes the new starting point, but, what lies beyond that?

7)Walking in the Bizarre

Been doing this one since I had a kid. Trying to think of how one would process something with every single thing being new to them. Look at one thing and try to see it as brand new, and like there is nothing else like it that I could compare it to, just like the magical boxes that we all have in our pockets at all times now. It makes the world seem extremely exciting. Taking a walk can be the best part of your day if you do it like this.

8) Lucid Shield

As I thought it would be, it was interesting. I tried to see where it was at start, and it seems like I normally only am aware of about 6 feet ahead of me that I can see, and everything else is vague and not really considered in my space. Most of my body wasn't even in the shield.

A little confused by totem. Will reread and do this today.