2015: Year of the Breath, meditation, WBTB, confidence and dedication

**Memm** · 01-28-2015 10:42 AM

It's difficult to explain precisely because it's not any sort of technique, so whether it works or not depends purely on how well you grasp the concept and put it into practice, so I can't do a step 1, 2, 3 guide but I can point in the direction.

I've been using Trello to keep notes on the mental properties we've discussed in this thread and also my own ideas for the last couple of weeks and it seems like last two nights I've "glued" it all together into something that can actually be practised towards.

I'll try and list the key points, each one is important and must be present otherwise you won't have the right state of mind.

As we mentioned in the thread you need to actually want to have an LD tonight, as in you need the desire for it, this may sound simple but it means pushing all your other "life problems" out of your mind, just like we do in meditation, when you sit down you think "I might have other issues going on, but right now I'm meditating", so you might have other issues going on, but at night you LD.
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Meditation on the breath, this needs to be done, at least 15 minutes before you go to sleep, or better yet a couple of times during the day, but you have to understand why you're doing it otherwise it'll be pointless, here I will explain what you are trying to achieve because you need to keep this in mind while you meditate and later when you actually try to LD, some meditation experience would be helpful but not necessary as long as you get the idea:

When you sit meditating, your mind is on your breath, you know when you breath in and when you breath out, what you are doing is focusing on what you are currently doing, more importantly what you currently want to focus on. Your mind wonders away even though you know what you want is to focus on your breath, this is why you don't succeed in having an LD, you want to have an LD but your mind wonders away. This is why you practice the ability to not forget what you're doing through the meditation on the breath. It doesn't have to be just the breath, you can practice while brushing your teeth, when your mind wanders you bring it back to brushing your teeth because that's where you want your mind to be.

This is the most important thing to understand out of all the points here, you have to practice and build this ability to focus on whatever you want to focus on and return when you lose that focus, dreams are overwhelmingly distracting, without this practice you simply get lost and can only LD at times when your mind just happens to be focused rather than having it under your own control. This all sounds very difficult but it's actually not, I found that even 20 minutes before bed is enough as long as you realise what it is you're trying to achieve and "keep at it" as you go to bed (see #1, #3 and #4).

So you are developing your ability to keep your mind on your chosen subject of intention, this doesn't happen in the first 5 minutes of meditation, you need to give time for the mind to settle down, you can't do that with effort you can only do it with more time, you should be okay to get up again when you get to the point where you don't want to get up anymore and you're happy to just follow your breath.

As a sort-of-related side-note, it's a good idea to do the practice "for other people", so when you first start you can think something like "may everybody be happy", the reason for this isn't some sappy Buddhist notion, it also helps calm you down because when you do something nice for other people you automatically feel good and that's a good state of mind to have because it frees you from all the crappy emotions you gathered during the day that get in your way.
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This third point is equally important and shouldn't be forgotten, it requires a change of mindset about sleep, normally people go to bed, put their head on the pillow and are "knocked out". The normal mindset of somebody falling asleep is "finally I can get some rest" or "siiiigh *unconsciousness*". When you close your eyes to go to sleep you need to think "I'm not sleeping, I'm resting", this assumes some level of awareness is still present. There's no need to force yourself to stay awake or conscious, that's not what I'm talking about, you just need to stop considering sleep as the "dead zone" of consciousness, which is a really strong habit for most people which is why as soon as you feel like you're "falling asleep" you need to replace that with "I'm resting, not going unconscious", but without force because you still need to fall asleep, you're not doing anything differently, you're just thinking about it differently. Hopefully this is understandable. While doing this it's useful to refer back to your breath to remind you of #2 and at the same time or slowly replace it with #1 because that's your intention to LD, the breath is just the practice, what you actually want to have your mind on is LDing.
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WBTB - hopefully this point will not be needed after enough practice when we can LD every dream, but right now none of us can keep the above points in mind throughout the entire night 100%, the good news is that when you wake up (don't use an alarm IMO) your mind will still mostly be in a good state if you did the meditation well and didn't mentally knock yourself out when you went to sleep (you can let sleep knock you out, which will happen anyway, the point is not to hit yourself see #3). Now you return back to your breath to ground yourself again, remember #2, you don't need to do the entire practice session, just enough to get remind you what you're doing it for and bring you back to the state of mind where you can focus on whatever you want to focus on without wandering off. This might take a minute (if you did the other parts well then your mind should be mostly set) otherwise if there are kids screaming around the house it might take a while because they are messing with your ability to stay your mind, but it's still possible, more meditation practice will make it easier to do this under any circumstance. Remember #3 also, DILD or WILD is irrelevant at this point, it's like SSILD (except I can explain why and how it works ) at some point you will want to stop following the breath, because that's just the practice and instead simply remember #1 because that's what you want the mind to be on rather than the breath. At this point you will either go into a dream straight away (or after 30 minutes of listening to people ignore your need for sleep) or you'll fall asleep and remember what you're doing in your dream (because #2 and #3 gave you the mental skill to not be distracted by dreaming and bring your mind back to #1).

Don't exert yourself, you may want to put some "force" into it during meditation if your monkey mind is running wild, but if you do or don't it'll settle on its own given enough time, patience and perseverance are the key not effort.

Also don't literally try to keep every single bit of the above in mind as you fall asleep, you'll go crazy with effort, mind on the breath then you feel good you go back to #1 and #3, then you feel your monkey mind is still active you go back to #2 for a bit, keep it balanced, the point is simply not to lose what you gained during the meditation session, especially when you do WBTB.

The success of this depends solely on how well you understand and internalise what I'm talking about, you can get it really quickly (those with meditation experience or those with good mind control) or it will take practise before you understand what you're practising. Either way you succeed based on your comprehension rather than how long you've been doing it.

#2 Meditation will help with everything else, do that correctly and don't lose what you gained during the meditation and everything else will flow from there.

Also everything else we discussed in this thread is worth internalising.

Phew that was not as short as I wanted it to be.... you asked for this.

Welcome to the no-technique zone, try not to have your brain explode.

**Ctharlhie** · 01-28-2015 11:58 AM

Great stuff. I've been falling into the technique trap recently and needed to see this, the worst of it is when you start treating meditation as a technique as Tim Post warned against. I think this is what he was advocating when he talked about non-technique.

Self-awareness and recall are the foundation, all technique is simply superstructure. But, to follow this architectural metaphor, say you built nothing on this foundation, what would arise from this foundation? Intent?

**Memm** · 01-28-2015 12:21 PM

Well meditation is a technique that builds a certain mental skill (or multiple skills), it's this skill to not lose track of what you're doing that's needed to have an LD, some days you're simply in a good mood and DILD/MILD works and other days you're thinking about what happened during the day and forget that you wanted to LD, or you're too busy fighting a dream dragon or whatever. That's why you need to practice keeping your mind on your chosen subject, then while fighting the dragon the mindfulness you've been developing will go "wait a second, this isn't what I was just focused on" and BAM! Lucidity.

You don't need any of this if you're already naturally focused, but you still need the other points I wrote about to bring it all together. Also you might just think that you are naturally focused but you don't quite realise what is actually going on inside your head and still need to practice, either way practice is good, for LDing you only need to practice to an extent where you can keep it up during sleep or get back to it easily during WBTB.

Also the other good skills it develops at the same time is calm abiding and openness, openness is actually needed to remember your dreams, for example the other night while working on the breath during my WBTB I suddenly remembered my dream, when I woke up I didn't even know I had a dream and I wasn't trying to remember a dream, something simply connected because I was in a state where nothing was blocking that connection.

Past couple days my dream recall has been pretty great from practising those 4 points, it's also I think the first time I successfully WILDed in the middle of ridiculous noises (although I couldn't keep it up) and I also didn't care one bit about how long I stayed up (I actually went back to bed about an hour later) or what technique I was doing, just simply focused on my breath for a while to try and cut through the noise and then used that state of focus to not drift off into unconsciousness.

I think the main difference between my earlier meditation sessions and what I'm doing now is the understanding of what exactly I'm working on and how it relates to LDing, you can't just build the mindfulness you need to use it, it needs to be directed towards something and the other 3 points in my list is how I'm channelling it in a sense.

In fact it might help to think of #1 as your bullet, #2 as loading your gun then #3 you take aim and #4 you keep it steady and fire to hit your target.

Or #2 is you fuelling up your car, #1 is finding on the map where you want to go, #3 is driving down the road and #4 is stopping to read the map and make sure you're heading in the right direction.

**FryingMan** · 01-28-2015 01:23 PM

^^ Brilliant, Memm, brilliant! You've put it all together in a way that strongly resonates with the way I think of things. I definitely knock myself out & empty my mind in bed at night, my excuse is that this is the only reliable way I've found to get back to sleep. I've suspected for some time that this blacking out is suboptimal. It works great, if all you want to do is sleep, but hinders the goal of lucidity.

So for me this "rest, not sleeping/blacking out" is the real trick/challenge. WBTB: not a problem, I can wake without alarms. Meditation before bed: 2nd biggest challenge, but I've started adding "unwind" time before bed, this will be just an extension. Daytime "be here and now": I'm working on it, but progress has been lukewarm. I will continue. Thanks so much for this!

**Memm** · 01-28-2015 01:34 PM

Just to mention my only day-time practice is now and then I centre back on my breath for a minute just to try and keep the "focus on what I want not on what my mind wants" engine running, I don't really do anything else.

My main practice is the 15-30 minute meditation right before bed followed by making sure I don't just "black out" like you say and then during WBTB I basically do the same thing as during the day, basically keep the engine active, I find this to be the hardest part depending on noise / heat (it's boiling in Australia right now) / stray thoughts from drowsiness etc... but the practice before bed makes this a whole lot easier than normal and I think continued practice will probably turn all of these 4 things into a natural habit which will hopefully cause LDs every single night with minimum effort! Everything is hardest when you first start, it should become a rhythm quickly as long as I don't get lazy, that's my aim anyway.

Also changing from sleeping to resting hasn't effected my sleep at all, I think it's important to use your mind comfortably rather than exert some sort of force, you can actually mantra "just resting, not sleeping" a couple of times and that should do the trick.

**JustASimpleGuy** · 01-28-2015 01:37 PM

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Great stuff. I've been falling into the technique trap recently and needed to see this, the worst of it is when you start treating meditation as a technique as Tim Post warned against. I think this is what he was advocating when he talked about non-technique.

Self-awareness and recall are the foundation, all technique is simply superstructure. But, to follow this architectural metaphor, say you built nothing on this foundation, what would arise from this foundation? Intent?

Here's a great quote from Bruce Lee. Of course it's about martial arts, but it can also apply to meditation:

"Again let me remind you Jeet Kune Do is just a name used, a boat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to be carried on one's back."

**JustASimpleGuy** · 01-28-2015 01:50 PM

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Daytime "be here and now": I'm working on it, but progress has been lukewarm.

I have to tell you this thread has inspired me to be more mindful of my daily waking mindfulness outside of formal meditation practice. It's also been lukewarm for me and not because I find it difficult when engaged, but simply because it's so easy to get distracted and forget, especially at work.

What I started doing yesterday is using a reminder. I was thinking of getting one of those cheap silicon bracelets. You know, kike the LiveStrong ones? I even found a site you can order one with a customized word or phrase like 'Awareness' or 'Breathe'. I didn't want to wait so I have these mini bungee cords in my kitchen draw. They are just a tad big but not enough to slip over my hand. That's actually good because it constantly moves around and is a great reminder to simply breathe and be mindful. If I get too used to it on one wrist I can put it on the other.

Then I got to thinking. What else can I use to mix it up? How about a small piece of cotton stuffed into an ear? Or even a nostril? Maybe a dime or penny in my shoe?

Anyway I did really good yesterday with being mindful, even at work. Not 100% of the time but far and beyond anything previously imaginable to me. It's pretty much like ADA, which in reality is mindfulness. It just never occurred to me to try to keep it up all day.

**FryingMan** · 01-28-2015 05:05 PM

I have sticky bookmarks on my computer monitors with the letter "B" for "Breathe!"

**Memm** · 01-29-2015 06:54 AM

Really tried last night but everything was against me, 30 degrees and a thunderstorm so it was hot and ridiculously humid at the same time, barely got any sleep because of the noise in the morning as well. Did 30 minutes of meditation before bed but it just wasn't enough to keep me focused.

**FryingMan** · 01-29-2015 07:27 AM

I reasonably successfully implemented the "the night is for restful lucid dreaming" mindset last night. I noticed a number of little wakings, each time immediately bringing back this mindset and "continuing to rest" which led right back to sleep. I was concerned about insomnia but it didn't happen. I feel a little bit under-slept in the morning, but I went to bed 2.5 hours after my preferred bedtime, and my wife was snoring the entire night (again). I did not pursue recall on these wakings, but in one case I did wake from a dream and recalled it fairly well so quickly went over it and again set my mind to resting and lucid dreaming.

I think the waking day focus/attention work is great. I like to include the subtext of *why* I'm paying attention: the ultimate goal is to be continually aware of my state (wake/dream). So it's not just the night where the goal is lucid dreaming, but all through the day as well.

**Memm** · 01-29-2015 08:44 AM

Very true! I wholeheartedly agree practising is 10x more effective when you know why and have a goal, otherwise it's just repetition with no depth to it.

**Ctharlhie** · 01-29-2015 12:11 PM

Memm, I have to thank you for that post. It really challenged my outlook. I realised that what I had intended as a rigorous and organised practice just looked to my unconscious like a load of boxes to be ticked before I was allowed to have a lucid dream. So I cut down my day and night practice to the bare essentials, meditation, SAT, microWBTB, recall, and didn't even think about trying to induce until I'd got my baseline practice of two micros done. And I had a very cognizant lucid dream where I remembered my intended task! (albeit with teleporting hitches). The most important thing was knowing that I had everything that needed to be done to become lucid, all I had left to do was sleep!

I think you should do a full write up of your ideas on attitude as a tutorial.

**Memm** · 01-29-2015 01:14 PM

Thank you for the kind words, I'm happy my view on things helped, it's FryingMan's thread that pushed my thinking into this direction so my own thanks goes to him.

I want to first reach my goal of being able to LD most nights of the week before making an official guide about this though, but hopefully after a year of experimenting and posting on Dreamviews maybe we finally cracked the code, haha, that would be a dream come true.

My wish is that one day when people ask "how do I LD?" they can get a straightforward answer and succeed.

**Memm** · 02-02-2015 09:25 PM

I think there's one thing we've been neglecting and that's the impact that our physical state plays on our mental state.

I've been so concerned lately with my mental state that something so simple has alluded my attention, was doing Tai Chi practice today and realised the better and more comfortable my posture the clearer and more mindful I became.

So my final (I think) suggestion for everyone including myself is that when you are standing, sitting, doing your sporadic awareness, ADA, RC, breathing, meditation or ideally any activity that you seek a still, content, comfortable and relaxed position where you are not stretching anything that doesn't need to be stretched or tensing anything that doesn't need to be tense, not collapsing your back or your waist into awkward and contorted positions etc... and only after that do your nose plug or whatever.

This is almost an instant shortcut to a clearer brain.

Last post for a while, going to concentrate on more practice and less discussion, good luck everyone! =]

**Ctharlhie** · 02-03-2015 12:07 AM

And to you!

**FryingMan** · 02-03-2015 02:45 PM

Thanks Memm, good luck, and yes, I concur about less talk more practice! But not "trying/efforting" too hard! With mindfulness and memory!

I think this notion that "night time is for rest and lucid dreaming" helped me get lucid late this morning.
I had a broken WBTB at about 5 hours where all I did was journal and set some intention and a quick pee, and I found I was too awake to fall back asleep through my wife's loud breathing/snoring.

So, I got up and sat quietly in the kitchen playing a calm game on the laptop (black background so not too much light) for a few hours, and got REALLY tired after about 2-2.5 hours, where I returned to bed and my deep sleepiness at that point helped me to sleep through the wife noise. It still took a while, it was a slow back-to-sleep, and I thought again about how bed time is for rest and lucid dreaming, not unconscious/unaware/blackout sleep.

I had a long string of dreams across probably 2 sleep cycles, finishing up with a short LD which I think was at first a waking lucid moment but I was able to go back in by manipulating HI into a real scene mentally, and *then* before getting carried away I recalled my intention to connect to waking memories and stated that my waking body was sleeping in bed and this entire experience is a fantasy. I then called out "brighter" about 3 times, (I've never commanded a dream like this before, I credit the connection to waking memory raising lucidity to the point to realize I could do this), each time I said the word it was like a "clarity/brightness" knob got turned up a little more, until the scene was fully visually there. Then I looked around appreciating the funny/dream-ness of the scene (there was a big group of identical little girls in identical dresses doing a dance line packed into a tiny space) and kissed a girl and then woke up. Not bad for what initially may have been a waking moment.

**Ctharlhie** · 02-04-2015 12:42 AM

Your dream reminds me of a lucid I had in which I started chanting "clarity" to stabilise. Each time I repeated it the word got louder until it became louder than my waking voice, louder than any physical sound could ever be. It started dominating the texture of the dream, so that it felt like the dream was as much about the word clarity as it was anything else. Still in my top 5 most vivid LDs.

**FryingMan** · 02-04-2015 09:48 AM

It's interesting because I always read of others doing this but I up to that dream yesterday never had done it myself. Mostly, my LDs always have clear visuals. What I find fascinating is that I had the reflex-level response (that's what it felt like, I did not go through any moment of thinking "oh, the visuals are a bit grey, maybe I should just call out to brighten it) to call out "brighter," and really got excited when it worked immediately. It's like my first LD when I instinctively did a "spin" to try to save the fade to gray without needing to think about it first.

**Ctharlhie** · 02-04-2015 03:43 PM

In case you don't spot it, check out this thread http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...-sleeping.html seeing as I know you have trouble with falling asleep from WBTB

**FryingMan** · 02-06-2015 11:18 AM

OK, time to grade January fulfillment of goals:

WBTB: "A" for effort, "C" for effectiveness. Lots of WBTBs but lots of insomnia, but little lucidity results. I have learned something valuable though: if I can't sleep, then just get out of bed, go sit in the kitchen doing something quiet on the computer and in an hour or two I get really really sleepy and can then fall back to sleep fairly easily.

Meditation: "D-". Only a couple formal sitting sessions.

Breath awareness: "B+". All throughout the day, I keep rediscovering my breathing and using it to center myself in the now, telling myself "I'm now aware that I'm breathing," and reminding myself that my awareness has a goal: recognizing the dream state while in dream (getting lucid). The awareness doesn't last long because when I'm thinking of my breathing I can't seem to breathe without controlling every breath explicitly, which gets tiring quickly and so I end up letting to of that awareness soon.

Confidence: "C". Frequent vacillations between manic enthusiasm "I'm an awesome dreamer" and depressed thoughts "I suck at this after all this time and work why am I not lucid more?"

Dedication: "B". Especially in the last week or so picked up on Memm's suggestion of framing the purpose of the night: to rest, and to have lucid dreams/recall dreams, not to black out with no awareness. First weeks quite dedicated to nightly wakings and WBTBs, lost a bit of steam for WBTB after many multi-hour insomnia sessions.

LDs: 2? 3? Lowest monthly frequency in a while. Have to pull myself out of this ditch.

February goals: daily meditation! Keep up breath awareness, eradicate depressive lack of confidence phase, maintain and beef up dedication.

**JustASimpleGuy** · 02-06-2015 01:16 PM

Concerning breath awareness, trying to control every breath explicitly and eventually tiring of it...

If I think back to when I first started regular meditation I had the same experience. Over time that lessened and now it's pretty much non-existent. I think it was just daily practice and after several weeks I became so familiar with the sensations and patterns of breath the mechanics faded back into the background.

The other thing I think is I stopped focusing on the actual breath. The air coming into and out of my nose and flowing down my trachea and into my lungs and instead focused on the sensations of the body. The movements of diaphragm, stomach and chest cavity and the sensations of air passing over the upper lip and through the nose and down the trachea. Another thing I like to be aware of is the transition between in breath and out breath. The rhythm of that transition.

One other thought...

I'll also use daytime breath awareness as an anchor. That is use it to remind me to be mindful of mindfulness. It simply puts me back into mindfulness and if I tire with breath I can shift mindfulness to something else like gravity, interoception, a sound, a smell, an itch, feeling, emotion, thought, whatever.

**FryingMan** · 02-06-2015 03:00 PM

^^ Thanks. I don't *want* to directly control the breath, but I can't seem to be aware of it without controlling it. Good points though. Yes I use it as a anchor/"catch" to become mindful again.

**KonchogTashi** · 02-06-2015 03:09 PM

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Meditation: "D-". Only a couple formal sitting sessions.

Breath awareness: "B+". All throughout the day, I keep rediscovering my breathing and using it to center myself in the now, telling myself "I'm now aware that I'm breathing," and reminding myself that my awareness has a goal: recognizing the dream state while in dream (getting lucid). The awareness doesn't last long because when I'm thinking of my breathing I can't seem to breathe without controlling every breath explicitly, which gets tiring quickly and so I end up letting to of that awareness soon.

LDs: 2? 3? Lowest monthly frequency in a while. Have to pull myself out of this ditch.

First: This is a great thread, thanks for sharing your progress!

regarding the above quoted sections: Meditation sessions, don't be too hard on yourself. Meditating regularly is very much like practicing LD induction in a number of ways, on its most basic level its a habit. We all know that starting a new regular habit requires many "false starts" and often takes quite some time to be seamlessly integrated into our behavior. Unless, of course, it is a destructive habit and then it mostly seems to be very easy to habituate. From my experience it took many years of practice to work up to a "never miss a day" meditation practice. Just keep the intent set and practice when you can and the habit will grow.

Breath awareness (awareness in general with regards to mediation) In meditation we are always looking for that balance between attentiveness (focus/effort) and relaxation. In buddhist mediation traditions we are always looking out for the "faults" of torpor (lethargy or sleepiness) and agitation. In general agitation can be exacerbated by too much effort, trying too hard. Striking this balance takes alot of hours of sitting and vacillation back and forth between too tight and too loose. I have found that just keeping up with regular practice allows me to find this subtle balance more and more.

Regarding LD frequency: You are obviously way ahead of me in this department, but I have never broke 5/month. I was tremendously heartened by listening to an interview with Robert Waggoner recently where he stated he had "between 2 and 4" LDs a month. Just thought I would share.

Thanks again!!

**JustASimpleGuy** · 02-06-2015 03:29 PM

Originally Posted by FryingMan

^^ I don't *want* to directly control the breath, but I can't seem to be aware of it without controlling it.

Yup, totally understand. Like KonchogTashi said, it's a fine balance between too much and too little effort/attention. For me it's all about becoming more and more familiar with the territory. Over time it gets easier.

**FryingMan** · 02-06-2015 04:19 PM

Thanks people, it's great to have some support and suggestions from people farther down the breathing/awareness path!

I know what Sensei would say about Waggoner's LD rate: "obviously a rank amateur"

. It's interesting to note that Sensei also mentions that just a few years ago that such a result would be considered among DV's "advanced" lucid dreamers, my how things have changed! I know I know it's not good to compare oneself to others, to each his own path, etc. But knowing it's possible, and that I want it, keeps the fires burning. Besides, I've experienced myself in the last year 14/month, multiple per night, and dense periods like 7 in 10 days. And as Sageous would say, it's "quality not quantity," but come on, LDing gods, at least throw us a bone of a few little ones per week in between the incredible long, high awareness, amazing LDs (the "quality" ones).

Non-lucid dreaming remains very good when I'm rested and when I can keep my mind on dreaming and recall during the night (see last night in my DJ), and that's a big motivation help.

I keep waiting for something to "click" and for an increasing number of those vivd non-lucids to become lucid. Or rather, I'm searching for that "twist" to make that click happen actively. It'll come, I'm sure. Maybe it's just the accumulation over time of increase self-awareness and improved access to memory and experience in directing intention properly.