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

Originally Posted by Memm

Also I'm finding that it takes vigilance to not fall into the "trying" mentality, I woke up this morning thinking "damn, didn't have an LD" and almost automatically tensing up with the need for effort, but effort to do what? Meditate until my legs fall off? The only way to progress with anything is in a relaxed manner, tensing up just fills the mind with "why didn't it work? It should have worked, right? How come it didn't work?" and then while you're spending all that time discussing the issue with yourself, RCing or following the breath or just being aware gets thrown right out the window.

The old Should Have, Shouldn't Have of ego leading to Not Good Enough or Something's Wrong mentality. We all go there from time to time. And you're right, it's not productive and actually self-sabotaging.

The work put in is a process and leads to where it leads. Be true to the journey. Believe in it. Enjoy it and live it. Be present in it.

For me I find it a very simple and effective technique to simply use the breath and be present in the breath and the moment when these thoughts and feelings pop up. It's a great way to ground and center one's self. To derail a negative thought-train. To refocus on the process and the path.

Originally Posted by Memm

I just recently saw an article (lost the link) that had a Buddhist practitioner (monk if I remember right) saying that our minds are already multitasking on so many things and you should set one of those tasks to be following your breath, even if you're doing something else at least some part of you is still working with the breath.

Nice! I like this!

Also I'm finding that it takes vigilance to not fall into the "trying" mentality, I woke up this morning thinking "damn, didn't have an LD" and almost automatically tensing up with the need for effort, but effort to do what? Meditate until my legs fall off?

Guilty! As charged! Over and over again!

The only way to progress with anything is in a relaxed manner, tensing up just fills the mind with "why didn't it work? It should have worked, right? How come it didn't work?" and then while you're spending all that time discussing the issue with yourself, RCing or following the breath or just being aware gets thrown right out the window.

Disappointment does create energy though, but it gets soaked up by the tension almost immediately, so once disappointed I feel I must quickly remove the tension then I'm just left with the energy that I can direct towards something actually productive. It's also almost impossible to come up with any real solutions while being closed and busy wallowing in disappointment.

Usually by the end of morning I'm positive and looking forwards to the night again. In "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep" the author emphasizes the importance of being thankful for your dreaming experiences, whatever they are.

Being thankful is a really good point and something I've been neglecting, which might be why I'm struggling the last week, so thank you for bringing that up.

Other descriptions might be appreciating or valuing the dream experience, then I suppose that the mind understands that it's something positive and forms stronger connections. Generally experiences that we take for granted don't stand out enough for the brain to remember properly, that's why in mnemonics the most important thing is making the memory something out of the ordinary.

I think this discussion is definitely showing that it's more important to form the correct mindset for LDing rather than the correct technique.

I had a fairly long, vivid non-lucid dream this morning that I wanted to describe as "boring" but I will avoid doing that since I do not want to form any negative associations with dreaming. It was pretty cool in fact because I was thinking a lot about things, the scenario though was fairly "mundane."

No WBTB last night, early morning appointment and catching up on some sleep. I will probably make WBTB efforts not every night now but make it a more planned event looking forward with anticipation, to avoid the mind getting accustomed to it and not thinking it's anything special.

I'll concur with what you and Memm said about being thankful. A little technique I picked up a while ago and having nothing to do with dreaming is practicing gratitude. Just pick little things throughout the day and be grateful for them. Simple things like waking up, having a roof over one's head, food on the table, etc... It builds appreciation for the things we do have.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

I had a fairly long, vivid non-lucid dream this morning that I wanted to describe as "boring" but I will avoid doing that since I do not want to form any negative associations with dreaming. It was pretty cool in fact because I was thinking a lot about things, the scenario though was fairly "mundane."

No WBTB last night, early morning appointment and catching up on some sleep. I will probably make WBTB efforts not every night now but make it a more planned event looking forward with anticipation, to avoid the mind getting accustomed to it and not thinking it's anything special.

Good attitude on the negativity!

Also, it's probably good what you're doing with WBTB, just watch out for letting it slip. The first phase in giving up trying to get used to something is your mind trying to convince itself that it is not necessary. You can decrease the frequency but keep consistent with yourself and don't slack or you'll end up slowly forgetting about it.

Originally Posted by InnerVision

Good attitude on the negativity!

Also, it's probably good what you're doing with WBTB, just watch out for letting it slip. The first phase in giving up trying to get used to something is your mind trying to convince itself that it is not necessary. You can decrease the frequency but keep consistent with yourself and don't slack or you'll end up slowly forgetting about it.

Wow am I glad I made this thread -- so much great input and so many wonderful, helpful suggestions. I started my current WBTB splurge when very caught up on sleep and now after several failed back-to-sleeps and other life-messing-with-my-dreaming/sleeping (don't you hate when that happens!?) situations, I'm now behind on sleep so just need to recharge and then continue. I absolutely love getting at least two solid bunches of recall, waking around 5 hours, and I'm determined to learn the gentle art of falling asleep (it takes iron will as I love to daydream after WBTB which keeps me up) after WBTB.

Yes it can indeed mess up your life and routines. There's no reason of course to wear yourself out, slow down when you need to. And I completely agree recall is almost always doubled for me with WBTB, it works great!

I have just now placed a sticky tab with a "B" written on it on the top middle of my monitor to remind me to maintain a "multi-tasked" thread of attention on the breath.

No WBTB last night, catching up on sleep still, had a great non-lucid flying dream, though. Did not record middle of the night dreams and so lost them, but the final dream was great so it was a good night.

So one thing I noticed is I can't trust myself, haha.

By this I mean that even if I feel "oh I think my mind is pretty clear tonight", skipping a short calm abiding meditation session (even if just 5 minutes) before bed is a terrible idea. Just because you think your mind is clear, it's really not, after a long day there is so much subtle junk floating around that is really detrimental to LDing.

Also, a full 24-minute breath attention session yesterday with no distractions, went pretty well, I was a bit surprised how much my mind wandered but I haven't done a session that long before. I never went very long though before noticing and bringing back attention to the breath. Was quite comfortable at the 24-minute alarm and could have gone longer.

Today, an outdoor session in the park in the -12C sitting on a bench, shorter, probably more like 8-10 minutes max. Followed by mindful walk.

Per Sageous's advice I'm focusing more on my desired dream goals than "getting lucid" as a goal. One of my major dream goals is an epic flying adventure around the Golden Gate bridge and San Francisco, and lo and behold I had a great flying dream (non-lucid though) last night.

Plan to keep up with the dream expectation and setting intention to notice flying as a dreamsign.

He is talking about a different topic, but this part seems very much relevant to not losing mindfulness.

http://youtu.be/t2YSM3inP-k?t=32m44s

@32m 44s

Unplanned WBTB last night. Still catching up on sleep. 6th hour waking, recall, pee, and can't sleep for 30 minutes. Get out of bed and go to kitchen, drink milk, chat with Sensei on laptop, bitch & whine about not sleeping, really starting to feel sorry for myself, then I start to feel really tired about 1.75 hours later and run to the bed, fall asleep in about a minute, and have a really fabulous final REM cycle (in my DJ)

http://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/fryi...ed-girl-63671/

I've encountered this pattern before. Maybe, just maybe, my problem with WBTB is that *I'm not staying up long enough to get tired enough to quickly fall asleep again*!!!. This is a real epiphany. As is realizing that staying in bed not sleeping is a big waste of time. Well, it's great for breath meditation but the purpose during the night is sleep and dreaming. Staying up 1-2 hours is a big gamble….but maybe it pays off big time enough to try it again?

Originally Posted by Memm

He is talking about a different topic, but this part seems very much relevant to not losing mindfulness.

http://youtu.be/t2YSM3inP-k?t=32m44s

@32m 44s

Thanks for the link! Hey that's THE GUY…Mr. Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep. Does he have any Dream and Sleep material on youtube?

Hey FM, that's some pretty impressive dream recall!!!

I generally remember one dream from a given REM cycle, probably the last. Sometimes two and on rarer occasions three. But I will say before I started DJing I only remembered a couple dreams per week, so I've experienced a huge increase!

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Thanks for the link! Hey that's THE GUY…Mr. Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep. Does he have any Dream and Sleep material on youtube?

Only this one as far as I know:

Dream Yoga, Recorded on 12/19/13 ligmincha on USTREAM. Buddhism

The full list of videos is here:

Internet Teachings | Ligmincha International

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

Hey FM, that's some pretty impressive dream recall!!!

I generally remember one dream from a given REM cycle, probably the last. Sometimes two and on rarer occasions three. But I will say before I started DJing I only remembered a couple dreams per week, so I've experienced a huge increase!

Thanks! I've focused a lot on dream recall from the very beginning. My approach to dream recall is always reach for recall every single time I find myself awake, always. No breaks from dream recall! And to be thankful for recall. Keep it up and over time the recall will grow and grow. I think having good recall is critical for LDing since it really develops the feeling of "presence" while in the dream. You can't get lucid unless "you" are there to begin with! Dream recall and day awareness work together to build this "presence" in the dream.

Yup! Right now I'm not really concerned about having an LD or when it will happen. Of course that's my goal, but right now my main focus is dream recall and secondary is LD-specific awareness practice during the day.

To my benefit I naturally awake two or three times throughout the night, and prior to DJing I'd just fall back to sleep within minutes if not seconds. So now I take some time to recall and record then go back to sleep. Aside from a huge boost in numbers of dreams recalled, I'm beginning to notice different aspects of dreams I've never noticed before, like specific conversations with DCs. The other night I actually asked a DC to help change the content of a dream, even though I wasn't aware I was dreaming. That is totally out of character and the first time I can remember doing so in a dream.

Yeah, I'm really enjoying all this recall and going back over my DJ and reviewing dreams.

Great plan. A lot of people get frustrated with lucid dream training and often give up pretty quickly.

Lucid dreaming is like any other skill, you will not be a master overnight. It takes hard work and consistency.

Best of luck with your progress.

BTW if you're having trouble with meditation there's a free app called "Headspace" that offers short (10 minute), guided meditations you can try out. I found it very helpful when I was starting my meditation practice.

So I've been trying to narrow down the exact mental "properties" that lead to having an LD and I had a spontaneous DILD yesterday and 2 unfortunately short WILDs this morning (which would have been amazing and decent length if my sister's kids weren't staying over and waking me up with their noise while I was trying to WILD).

Hopefully I can continue this tomorrow!

Hint: I'm not using any technique.

Originally Posted by Memm

So I've been trying to narrow down the exact mental "properties" that lead to having an LD and I had a spontaneous DILD yesterday and 2 unfortunately short WILDs this morning (which would have been amazing and decent length if my sister's kids weren't staying over and waking me up with their noise while I was trying to WILD).

Hopefully I can continue this tomorrow!

Hint: I'm not using any technique.

Share those properties, man!

^ what he said!

I definitely will, just want to make sure it's 100% repeatable, but right now I'm quite confident since I did the exact same thing twice in a row and got the exact same result twice in a row, that's why I'm teasing haha.

*Suspense builds*

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, aw c'mon, let us help you test your theory! There's a competition on and the nights are slipping by! As the Scotsman said to the fly who landed in his pint, "Spit it oot, lad, spit it oot!"