Arrrggghhh!! Blurring Everywhere!!!

[Mustang69]

Right so i had this lucid dream the other night, and i was in this hotel place, i did my reality check on a car reg plate and it work, so then i wanted to test my control, so i went upstairs into one of the bathrooms, and in their was this shower, which i made change into a bath. but the problem was every so often, my eyes would become really blurry an i was using techniques such as concentrating on your hand, but it didnt last for long! Does anyone know any tips for keeping my dream clear and vivid without trying to hard!? Thanks Mustang69

[O'nus]

Have you been keeping a dream journal? How effective would you say your dream recall is? This may seem irrelevant at first, but please work with me. ~

[Mustang69]

Well yea i have been doing for a while but i had a break bout a week or so back cause of exams, but just like these last few days ive had a flurry of activity when it came to remembering my dreams. when i put my mind to it i can remember yea, how does this influence how clear my dreams are? Thanks Mustang

[O'nus]

Well yea i have been doing for a while but i had a break bout a week or so back cause of exams, but just like these last few days ive had a flurry of activity when it came to remembering my dreams. when i put my mind to it i can remember yea, how does this influence how clear my dreams are? Dreams are truly the recollection of your unconscious episode. Truthfully, the cerebellum is inclined to assimilate experiences to make chronological sense. This is why it seems that you are experiencing the dreams as they are happening, but you are actually not and cannot. There cerebrum is functionally deactivied (no monoamine neurotransmitter activity) so it is actually when you awake that your mind re-arranges everything and functions on lucidity, dreams, etc. The blurryness is likely the result of confused or difficult recall. Either way, the recollection residually helps and reinforces attention and focus. Your exams and suspension of the dream journal are likely the culprit to this blurryness. I could interpret it as the uneasyness about your exams (ie. "i do not know how this will come about" analguous to "i cannot see the future" etc. etc.). What do you think...? ~

[Mustang69]

Wow, That was a detailed diagnosis doctor, lol i suppose you could be right, just as i'm wondering, how is it that if it is unconcious episode then why does it feel as if it were in real time and i have the choice to do what i want? and what about the hand technique, when i felt myself going, i tried focusing on the line on my hand and sumtimes it helped me clear it up a little. Thanks again

[O'nus]

Wow, That was a detailed diagnosis doctor, lol i suppose you could be right, just as i'm wondering, how is it that if it is unconcious episode then why does it feel as if it were in real time and i have the choice to do what i want? and what about the hand technique, when i felt myself going, i tried focusing on the line on my hand and sumtimes it helped me clear it up a little. To demonstrate what I mean, have you ever watched a movie that was entirely in subtitles? Like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Passion of Christ? Jet Li's Fearless? If you have, do you remember reading the texts or what they said? Typically, people will remember them as saying what they read in the text and not reading it. Thus bringing the response, "Oh yeah, it's in subtitles!" However, this is just a natural phenomenon with the mind to collectively bind context into a whole; it just helps us function better overall. The problem might be you are isolating your methods to specific senses (ie. sight). Try using all senses. This is what I advise to others which I first did: - Stick out a hand with all fingers and start counting: One - Olfactory (sense of smell); you often do not smell in dreams, but if you do, it will oddly be whatever you are thinking of. This is because dreams are introverted. Two - Taste; samething as smell really, but different sense. Three - Touch (notice t's are in alphabetical order); simply imagine touching something, can you feel it? Do you need to actually touch something to feel it? Four - Auditory; (I cannot think of an easy way to remember this one, sorry); Can you hear anything? Can you picture a sound and make it real? This one might be the most difficult. Five - Sight; how much detail can you see. Is there anything surprising? etc. The idea here is to simply use a process of sense recognition rather than just one isolated sense. What do you think...? ~

[Mustang69]

well i supose that would improve my clarity, i will have to try all them that you said, i havent become even an rookie at lucidity yet, but when im in them i have complete control of physical objects but just not always of their clarity, and its so annoying, its like when your in real life and your trying really hard to imagine something and all you get is the blackness you can see behind your eyes. I guess something in my brain hasnt opened up and let my imagination in yet. There was only one lucid dream i can truly say i was blown away with, it was the typical flying one, an i could feel the air rusing by, and i could smell the fresh air and see the sun, an i could feel the massive amount of pressure on my body, it was incredible, i just wish i could learn to control the clarity and attain the lucidity. With you being experiance at this, if i was to become more in tune with my senses would it help me in my quest?? Thanks

[O'nus]

i will have to try all them that you said, i havent become even an rookie at lucidity yet, but when im in them i have complete control of physical objects but just not always of their clarity, and its so annoying, its like when your in real life and your trying really hard to imagine something and all you get is the blackness you can see behind your eyes. I guess something in my brain hasnt opened up and let my imagination in yet. With you being experiance at this, if i was to become more in tune with my senses would it help me in my quest?? These are bit contradictory and may be part of the problem. You feel that your body is not allowing you to become lucid and seek ways to help. You wonder if you are to better understand your body, you might become more lucid and in control. What I am thinking is that you do not feel in control right now - you have the free ability to do so right now! It may simply be your mental block caused by what you expect lucid dreams to be or what causes them. What do you think allows people to lucid dream? PS: I like the avatar ~

[Mustang69]

erm, thats a tricky one, i'd probably guess that it was the concious part of the mind wanting to control the destiny of a dream, for self development or just self exploration. i dont actually know the scientific reason why people lucid dream or what allows them. does my understanding allow me to lucid dream? P.s. Cheers!

[O'nus]

erm, thats a tricky one, i'd probably guess that it was the concious part of the mind wanting to control the destiny of a dream, for self development or just self exploration. i dont actually know the scientific reason why people lucid dream or what allows them. does my understanding allow me to lucid dream? I would say that understanding your motivation to lucid dream is a very fundamental part to it, yes. You do not need science to know how or why, really. Sorry if I made it seem that that was what I was looking for. Perhaps there are mental blocks that prevent people from controlling there unconscious..? Ever think of why someone becomes addicted to something, they know they are addicted, but cannot stop doing it? Think of it like that. Like being addicted to being unconscious in your dreams, knowing it, but cannot stop. It's hard, but you can become lucid. Does that help..? What do you think..? ~

[Mustang69]

Yea that does help so are you saying that it because we only do what comes natural from a young age and ignoring our lucid understaning means that we find it hard to escape falling back into the unconcious? And if we were to train our selves back up to a high standard it would switch it back the other way round and we'd have complete control? wont the physical aspects come into play in affecting this?? Do you have this control because you have complete understanding? Thanks

[O'nus]

so are you saying that it because we only do what comes natural from a young age and ignoring our lucid understaning means that we find it hard to escape falling back into the unconcious? Right, it is natural to simply sleep unconsciously. Most people do not even care to remember them let alone control them. And if we were to train our selves back up to a high standard it would switch it back the other way round and we'd have complete control? The word "back" is misleading; I do not think we ever began at such a complex level of thinking. Also, I do not think we could ever have complete control, it is almost impossible (ie. lucid dream while controlling the physical body). wont the physical aspects come into play in affecting this?? Depends on how you define complete control. Do you have this control because you have complete understanding? I do not think we could ever have complete understanding about anything, really. There is always room for growth and knowledge. I think I do have control because of my inquiry, questioning, and investigating though. If I did not care about my dreams, I would not be having such complex ones. On a similar level, you would not have knowledge about computers if you never desired to question what it was, right? ~

[Mustang69]

Right yea i get that So what your saying is that i need to lift these mental blocks i have, how would i go about doin this? Stoping myself of being unconcious? Thanks

[O'nus]

So what your saying is that i need to lift these mental blocks i have, how would i go about doin this? Stoping myself of being unconcious? Right. Notice that in your original post you concentrate on tasks and methods. You may even wonder if drugs or food will help. Notice how they all avoid the mental part of lucid dreaming? The mental part is the central core for lucid dreaming and dreaming in general! How can we ignore this? Try and find ways to open your mind; try new experiences, things you've never done or tried before. These will eventually lead to a very broad definition of yourself and not only lucidity in dreams, but in real life. To concentrate on just dreams, think of why you want to become lucid. What's your motivation? Relax and try to "become one" with your surroundings. It may sound silly, but it is really becoming in-tune with your senses and mental self. Do you agree? ~

[Mustang69]

I guess i dont have a great overall motivation to become lucid, just maybe because i have power i the fact that i can do what i want, do i need a solid subject or idea to become properly motivated? what types of things would you suggest? i guess if i was lucid dreaming i would want to be in a very normal environment sometimes but do something very extraordinary. and then sometime be in a place where ive never been before and be ordinary. Does this make any sense? I guess your more philosophy and psychologically more knowledgeable than me. so.

[O'nus]

I guess i dont have a great overall motivation to become lucid, just maybe because i have power i the fact that i can do what i want, do i need a solid subject or idea to become properly motivated? Not at all! You need nothing besides motivation itself! Do not think that it is a way of having something. It is just like happiness; do you think you need something in order to be happy? You can be happy at any moment you want. This is the exact same for lucidity. what types of things would you suggest? It is truly a personal journey. I want you to know I am advising a more difficult path for you but it is significantly more rewarding than any other method. Not only will this path help your lucid control but your life in general. Please stay with me here. i guess if i was lucid dreaming i would want to be in a very normal environment sometimes but do something very extraordinary. and then sometime be in a place where ive never been before and be ordinary. Does this make any sense? Of course. You want to experience new things. I appreciate that. I guess your more philosophy and psychologically more knowledgeable than me. so. That is not only untrue but unnecessary. Just because I might read more, or even have a higher IQ, does that mean I am better capable at things than you? Does anything give an indiciation to how happy you are? Do you see how these are related? ~

[CiD]

Just going to throw my 2 cents in here. I'm a lucid dreaming noob and until rececently havent been consistently lucid dreaming since I was about 12. I consider myself lucky since I really don't have a clue what I'm doing, it just sort started happening for me. In my recent lucid dreams I have had no problem staying in a vivid dream. I only learned control of the dream last night...was quite easy so I won't say anything is easy for anyone else, I just happen to be in the right mindset (whatever it may be). O'nus (btw Turing Machine, nice) made a great point early about focusing too much on methods. Basically, I think you are trying to hard. Having set tasks in you mind may have clouded it (like your vision). By entering the hotel, you had a destination and set a bunch of tasks for yourself. This sounds like you have too many thoughts going through your head. Once you have achieved lucidity, let it go. See where your dream goes and simply observe (kind of like going on a trip) and see if it stays clear. Once you have followed your dream for a bit, if everything is still clear try changing a few things to see if you can control it without anything blurring. It's like setting up an experiment with the control group being letting the dream progress naturally and then trying to control it so you can see where the issue is. Even better its like debugging your dream! Last night my dream ended, when I went a little nuts with controlling it. I wanted to see how far I could take it, and started summoning beasts and had them fighting each other (Pretty cool since they ignored me <== that was me). Not long after this I woke up. I'm not sure how focusing on your hand will help regain clarity (help O'nus). I don't really understand this technique. I can use what little I know about psychology to help though. Our sense of vision is dominant (in RL anyway). For instance, if you put some sort of prism in front of a straight rod it will appear bent. Therefor it will feel bent even though you know for a fact it is straight. This leads me to believe that focusing on your hand would have the opposite affect. I would have tried identifying an object and grabbing it. I honestly don't know what I'm talking about. Just trying to help. If you are truly motivated to do this, it worth doing some research. I don't know if this will help your lucidity, but it can't hurt. It is another example of sight dominating other senses that I saw in a scientific magazine once...I quick googled it and found this: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/hea...,7257377.story

[O'nus]

^ Exactly true. I agree. This is where my reasoning came for the idea that he may be isolating the visual sense too much in order to lucid dream. Thank you for the needed elaboration. ~

[CiD]

No problem. I was just spilling out ideas. Anywho, if you get blurry, try and find someone with glasses and put them on. That would be funny if this worked. Since you create the world you are seeing, your brain may infer that the glasses will clear up the world. Sounds like a long shot, but it takes advantage of the logic your brain performs (thats right, unconcious logic). For example, cross your fingers and touch each side of your nose with the crossed fingers. Close your eyes and you may feel an illusion of having 2 noses! The phantom limb is also a good example of this. The same can be recreated with a fake halloween hand. Hide your hand and have someone stroke your hand and the fake hand in the same manner, and you may feel the sensation as arising from the fake hand even though you can clearly see it is not attached to anything. It's amazing how you can change your perception of your body image which you have created your entire life in mear seconds. edit: Just came up with an idea. If I try these experiments in a dream, will it actually create a second nose?!? Or if I summon a fake hand and something to hide mine behind could I make my hand turn into a fake mutant hand? There is another experiment in which you close your eyes and get the sensation of having a 4 ft. nose, but this would require too much participation from DCs (too much concentration to control them).

[FreeOne]

Dreams are truly the recollection of your unconscious episode. Truthfully, the cerebellum is inclined to assimilate experiences to make chronological sense. This is why it seems that you are experiencing the dreams as they are happening, but you are actually not and cannot. There cerebrum is functionally deactivied (no monoamine neurotransmitter activity) so it is actually when you awake that your mind re-arranges everything and functions on lucidity, dreams, etc. The blurryness is likely the result of confused or difficult recall. Either way, the recollection residually helps and reinforces attention and focus. Your exams and suspension of the dream journal are likely the culprit to this blurryness. I could interpret it as the uneasyness about your exams (ie. "i do not know how this will come about" analguous to "i cannot see the future" etc. etc.). What do you think...? What about the WILD technique? you dont even lose consciousness. and WILDs are alot clearer than DILDs. they are for me anyway. They feel more like present experiences than past experiences for me as well.

[O'nus]

What about the WILD technique? you dont even lose consciousness. and WILDs are alot clearer than DILDs. they are for me anyway. They feel more like present experiences than past experiences for me as well. I'm really not sure what to say about WILD's - I have no grounds to really work from. I speculate that it may be conditioning, hypnogognic imagery control, etc. However, you cannot have consciousness during sleep - it is just impossible. Your brain will not function like that because while you are asleep your monoamine neurotransmitter production is inhibited which invariably inhibits your cerebral activity. I cannot really prove this to you or persuade you otherwise. It is a result from my experience in research in other forms of psychology that I presume transfer over to the phenomenon of sleep; I call it a phenomenon because we do not know what regulates sleep. With that said, if I were you, I would likely take what I say on a marginal level unless you are willing to trust my opinion. In that case, I would say you could strengthen your hypnogognic imagery control and the attention will seem over to sleep. The only thing I do know for certain is that you cannot have the same stream of consciousness from waking life to unconscious life - it is simply a biological impossibility. ~

[Grunkie7]

Mmm I'm confused. We know we're dreaming, but we're not conscious until we awake, which makes sense. But what would be doing the lucid dreaming then, or in other words, how does it become lucid if there is no consciousness to become aware and make decisions? (I'm not learned on brain mechanics) (Yea, not the point of the thread but it was bugging me )

[CiD]

Yea that was bugging me too. I have taken a really basic psych class, bt most of my knowledge stems from research I have done on my own. I do not understand the mechanics you are trying to explain, but I trust your opinion. Part of understanding involves keeping an open mind. What you are saying explains a lot of things I never understood about dreams so, I cannot disagree. Though, it seems quite the opposite, it does explain skipping of dreams from place to place, and visual processing is a subconcious process to begin with. If we are in fact unconcious, then a dream is like picturing something in your head and actually seeing it (or is that still a concious process?) because this is what I do to create things in my dream. It does not, however, agree with decison making in dreams, lucid or not. This definately gives me something to ponder for the next few days because there are a number of possibilities that could emulate decision making. All I know is that our subconcious brain is capable of quite of a lot of processing. It creates the world we see every day, and displays accurate dipictions of motion of multiple objects instantaneously. A dream may be a depiction of the subconcious mind which could make them a usefull tool for discovering the secrets of the brain. To this end, I am pretty much stumped. I read somewhere that when we go to sleep, the gland in our brain (I feel stupid for forgetting which one. If I had to guess it is pituitary.) releases DMT into our brain. DMT is a natural hallucinegenic that can be smoked or eaten. This would mean that we trip our faces off every time we are dreaming. This DMT could serve as the input for the visual processing, but that is just a hunch. Links worth checkin out: I saw this on TV last year. Famous savant explains how he does math subconciously. Goes to show how powerful our subconcious mind, and why isn't it doing my math homework!?!? Check out how he does math toward the end... http://youtube.com/watch?v=UqLzoiVzEY8 Akinetopsia is a disorder in which a person is unable to perceive motion... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B47Js1MtT4w

[Mustang69]

Wow, Cheers guys, that kinda cleared a lot of things up, i guess i was trying to hard, and i guess thats sometimes why i would drop in an out of sleep. So al just try and relax and see how it goes Thanks again Mustang

[CiD]

nice avatar freefire!