• Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views




    View RSS Feed

    Life's Recollections

    Here's my dream journal! I'm trying to make this a daily habit because it's always been interesting to me. Maybe I'll learn more about myself if I do.

    Maybe I won't! In that case, I hope even one entry is entertaining to someone else, and I'll be happy enough with that.

    1. WILD Day 3, No Dreams

      by , 06-30-2020 at 04:49 PM (Life's Recollections)
      As per the title, I had only a few tiny dream fragments but the way I slept (I just kept falling asleep over and over again each time I woke up) I basically forgot everything. I maybe should have tried a little harder to use the wakeups as DEILD (dream exit induced lucid dream) attempts, but I always forget to hold still when I wake up. I should probably start working on that too!

      I label this attempt 3, because even though I used to practice this years ago, I hadn't until recently and it feels like starting fresh.

      WILD (wake induced lucid dream) Attempt 3:

      During the day yesterday, I would say about 5 times overall (trying to make it more), I practiced the "Reverse Reality Checks" described in Sageous' WILD class. I tried to follow my curiosity naturally as to myself and interactions with the world, just investigating the self and trying to be genuinely self-aware, inside and out. It's a difficult thing to do "honestly" (when I investigate the self it often feels like nothing is there), but general mindfulness is something I have been working on a lot anyway, so it goes right along with recent practice. I have just tried to think about my place in the world mostly, both in the recent past and my predictions of what I will effect in the close future.

      Also, re: Sageous' recent advice, and my experiences last night, I made some changes to my WILD strategy. Namely, to set the dream up beforehand, choose a mantra related to getting into the dream, and to focus on visualizing the dream during the WILD attempt.

      I set my alarm for 5 AM (I fell asleep a little later today), and woke up, spent 15 minutes again on the edge of my bed figuring out where I wanted to go in my dream and thinking of a suitable mantra (I had thought it over the night before as well but hadn't set it in stone yet). There is a small little forested shore that I sometimes visualize myself in when performing meditation that is of a visual nature, that I find quite a relaxing and unthreatening place to be, so I thought it would be interesting to see it in a dream. I can visualize it rather well, so I figured it should be easy to visualize in a dream also. I chose "I'm coming home," as my temporary mantra, because this place I was trying to go is something of a mental home for me, and I found it a relaxing thing to repeat, as well as drawing me towards my intention.

      I laid down with my arms by my sides today (no crossing) and found this much more comfortable. I still had some trouble avoiding swallowing 2-3 times, but I find this does not wake me up immensely and is at most a few seconds of set-back when it happens, so while it would be ideal not to do it, it doesn't seem like the end of the world.

      At any rate, I laid there for about 20-30 minutes, repeating my mantra, and trying to visualize walking around this small shore and the forest that surrounds it, picking up sand, putting my hands on the trees, crouching in the grass, etc. I found that when I could carefully hold my focus on these activities, it definitely helped draw me towards sleep and away from my body. Oftentimes I would be imagining one of these activities, find myself a little emotionally lightened (or something, that's the best way I can put it), and with that came a lightening of consciousness, as if I was becoming more comfortable and thereby more ready for sleep.

      I also noticed something during this attempt: I know that I shouldn't be focusing on my body but it is sometimes hard to forget the difference between your visualized body messing around in your visualized intended dream, and your real body lying there and its sensations. However, I found that as I became more sleepy, I for some reason found myself 'staring' at my eyelids naturally. It's hard to explain, but I think as I became more sleepy, my mind drew back from my body more and more (it was becoming more numb anyway), and I found myself almost secluded in my head with my thoughts, until something roused me a little and I found myself in my whole body again. I experimented a little with intentionally 'staring at my eyelids' (again, so to speak, because there's nothing to look at) and found that it did seem to help me force this state a little more, the feeling of being just inside my head in the dark, rather than lying on a bed with my eyes closed. That may be something I'll experiment more with.

      Unfortunately most dips towards sleep were followed by things that when woke me back up, such as becoming distracted from the visualizations, or some HI that accidentally caught my attention a little too much (at one point I faintly saw a window seemingly peering out from a spaceship into space, near a moon of some sort, and even though I was attempting to ignore it, I almost couldn't help but look-- but as quickly as I looked, it vanished, leaving me more awake than before... darn HI).

      I eventually laid there for about 50 minutes before I realized that I was seeing something light grey, and at first thought perhaps my WILD attempt had brought me into sleep and I hadn't noticed somehow, but I couldn't figure out why I wasn't having a dream. Unfortunately, after about a minute or two of staring at this light grey, I had a realization, and opened one of my eyes-- it had simply become light outside as it was almost 6 AM! Perhaps I need to get a sleep mask or shift my sleep schedule back a little.

      At this point I basically abandoned the attempt, and decided to experiment a little as I fell asleep: I turned on my side away from the window and held my hand near my face to block the light (which is a more natural sleeping position for me than on my back, weirdly). I still felt pretty awake and aware, and not like I would fall asleep suddenly. I tried repeating my mantra and continuing the visualizations, and even experienced some more auditory HI. However I kept feeling the urge to move, and again just for the sake of experimentation (even though everyone says not to move, I know!) I decided to just move whenever I felt like moving to make myself more comfortable each time and see if I would fall asleep more quickly while I was still fairly aware.

      Of course as one could predict, my experiment ended in me eventually shifting into a position I was comfortable in, and immediately hard falling asleep for the next 4 hours, without even any memorable dreams, lol.

      Take-aways:
      • Visualization of the dream definitely helped somehow, I'm not sure how but there was a palpable sense of movement towards the dream.
      • I'm unsure whether the mantra ("I'm coming home") was better or worse-- much like "keep it tight," it occasionally seemed to be helping draw me towards something, but I don't know if it was the dream. Mostly it just felt like something to do while lying still, though this could just be the sign of a bad mantra.
      • There seems to be something to me about shifting the focus into the headspace and away from the body intentionally. In retrospect this seems obvious but I had not found a good way to do it, whereas by 'staring at my eyelids' I seemed to almost force this perspective a little bit.

      Updated 06-30-2020 at 05:17 PM by 24709

      Tags: wild attempt
      Categories
      Uncategorized