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Disclaimer: This is a guide for my own personal technique that may not be as viabl. It's how I learned to lucid dream originally (at around 10 years old). I've had hundreds if not thousands of lucid dreams from it over the course of 20+ years. It remains my favorite and most reliable technique personally, but I can't promise it will work for others. Take it with a grain of salt.

For those wanting a universally practiced technique, I recommend vanilla WILD or MILD.

Anyway...

Dream Brain Mimicking is a way that I personally like to initiate lucid dreams from the waking state (similar to WILD). It works by mimicking the same areas of your brain that are active during dreams, allowing you to seamlessly transition from waking to conscious sleep without the usual WILD anchors.
Note: Technically, the dream story you come up is your anchor, but you don't have to think about it that way.

This guide will explain the mindset for what I like to call "dream brain", what kinds of thoughts you can engage in to encourage dream brain, the mindset you want to cultivate for dreaming, and how you may feel in altered states.

If you're already familiar with the feeling of dreaming, I highly recommend you embrace your own personal experiences as a frame of reference in addition to the tips outlined here, as this is what Dream Brain Mimicking is all about! The more you emulate your own dreaming mindset, the better.

Optional Reading
My WILD guide can be found here if you want a more thorough understanding of vanilla WILD: https://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/ner...d-guide-94340/).
MILD can also (optionally) be incorporated into Dream Brain Mimicking for more powerful effects. Here's a good MILD guide: https://skyfalldreams.net/guides/skyfalls-mild-guide/

Moving right along!


Choose a Setting
As you lay in bed, choose a setting that you would like to start with. It can be related to your daily life, your dreams, or be something entirely new.

If you want the most potent option, choose a setting that includes dream signs that will continuously trigger and reinforce your lucidity and/or a setting of a dream you had previously. For example, a mythical fantasy world with dragons and cities in the sky will remind you that you must be dreaming. If you already dreamed of this mythical place before, even better! Any dream settings you regularly get lucid in are the best if your only goal is lucidity.

The setting you choose can always be changed later as the dream progresses, so it's not set in stone. The important thing is that it will eventually turn into a dream, so ideally pick something you want to dream about. The more motivated you are, the better. What's something you've always wanted to do?

You can also connect settings together. If you have a previous dream setting that you're always lucid in, you can create a path from that location to another setting for a dream you want (maybe it's connected by an alleyway or a portal) and go from there.

I'm going to continue this guide with an underwater city setting for demonstration. For this, you could start in the ocean already, or start above the water and dive in.


Starting Your Dream
Imagine yourself beginning the dream. If you picked the underwater city setting for example, imagine yourself flying above the ocean under a bright blue cloudless sky. See the mountains in the distance and circle downward as you dive. Feel the current and hear the water's surface breaking as you plunge right in!

Fully immerse yourself in the sensations of swimming downward towards an underwater city as a rush of bubbles trails up behind you. The closer you get, the more details you can see of the city below as it comes into view. You are immersed in this real time experience.

Take Your Time
There's no rush to this process. Feel free to take your time and be immersed with any or all of your senses. You can imagine breathing underwater in any way you want, whether you have gills or if it feels just like breathing air.

Does the seawater taste salty? Look at all of the color and details, bubbles, light, and darkness. Do you see any fish swimming by? Try looking around from different angles and perspectives. Look up and see the sunlight coming through the surface above. Then, as you look back down, get a view of the underwater cityscape and how the streets were once laid out by some lunatic who can't design a city, now in a serene murky ruin. Set the tone! Fill your world with personality and backstory, as if it has a real history. And what are you looking to accomplish? Why are you here again?

Note: If you have aphantasia, feel free to skip the visuals and work with other senses. The important thing is your immersion with your dream, not the specific details of it.

How to Be Immersed
Don't worry about using all of your senses or doing specific step-by-step tasks. There is absolutely no checklist to follow. The goal of this practice is to be fully immersed and invested in your unbridled inclinations. Be freely driven by your most primal and natural emotions. Follow your gut instinct, do what flows naturally (as opposed to complex decision-making and logical thinking). This is how we usually engage in dreams. It's a light, passive way of thinking. Like a flowing stream of though

Show, don't tell; do, don't think!
Although it may sound contradictory to lucid dreaming, part of immersion means not having constant meta awareness of what you're doing. In other words, put yourself in the mindset of actually being there in the moment, rather than being highly aware that you're laying in bed thinking about it. Engage the experience of the dream, not just thinking about the dream. Engage thoughts like "I am lucid now, this is a dream." and "I'm exploring! What's over there?!" instead of things like "Oh. Did I do that right for the technique?" or "Uh oh, did I use my sense of taste yet?"

Engage with your environment as it comes, rather than going through a checklist of tasks. Again, "I need to focus on this or that" isn't the right mindset. You want to engage in the environment in your mind as if it's real and right there in front of you. Allow yourself to forget your current physical position in bed—you're not laying in bed doing a lucid dreaming technique. Rather, you are experiencing this dream in real time. The thoughts in your mind are more than just thoughts. They are your direct reality.

It's okay if you don't do this perfectly. If you have to scratch an itch, move around, or your thoughts veer off track, that's fine. Don't worry about it! I do this constantly and it doesn't interfere when I don't draw attention to it.

Plan Ahead
If there are very specific things you want to do, I recommend making plans for your goals ahead of time rather than trying to sort it all out in the moment—particularly for more complicated ideas that you're not sure of. For example, if you want to make up a plot about a sea dragon living in the heart of the city and what it's doing there, make some notes about it before you start. You could still have this sea dragon show up without planning, and improvise what it's doing, but if there's anything you want special control over, do that ahead of time.

Same goes for dreams. Incubate anything you really to go a particular way ahead of time so you don't get caught up in complicated plot structures in the moment—because most of the time when you're dreaming, you're not going to be making tons of complicated plot decisions. Dreams tend to form naturally and are influenced by our intentions, associations, free-flowing thoughts, and natural expectations—rather than heavy logical thinking and scheming.

So I recommend you do your fancy logic brain stuff beforehand for best results. It's not that you can't do this in dreams, it's just that we tend to do it less, and doing it less makes this technique easier to fall asleep to. We are, after all, trying to fall asleep. Easy free-forming thoughts you can fall asleep to is the goal.

Engage Your Passion
Dreams that motivate you on a personal level can be highly effective. If possible, pick something that you can easily get lost in while staying immersed, and invest your time in without it feeling like a chore. Feel free to follow your instincts and desires. Do the things you're most motivated to do.

Things that are currently pressing you in waking life are great candidates for dream material, too. For example, if you have a fictional crush you're interested in, you can make them a character in your dream. Tie what you know about the character into the story. For example, if the character is an author, the dream version of this character could have written about this underwater city and joined you to learn more about it for their research. Or you can shake things up a bit—maybe this character has a book that allows their writings to become reality, which can be a dream control tool for the both of you.

Perspective
Don't feel like you need to maintain a first person perspective for the sake of immersion. Overthinking this is immersion-breaking and not worth doing. Third person perspectiive is fine to have! Dreams often switch between perspectives randomly anyway, often without us even noticing because we're so immersed in the contents of the dream (which is what you want to emulate).

Follow Your Natural Schemas
If you're familiar with schema for dream control, you know that personal associations are involved in dream formation. If you see a cat, it will be more likely to meow than to bark like a dog, because you associate cats with meowing (unless there's some specific reason it would bark instead). This dream doesn't have to follow the rules of reality, but it should generally follow the personal way you associate concepts, because your dreams also form in this way. There's a lot of schemas that many people universally share (like cats meowing and dogs barking). Other schemas may be cultural, and then there's personal schemas. For example, if I see a white cat, I might automatically expect it to be a male with one eye, because I had a male white cat with one eye growing up. For someone else, a white cat may be more likely to have other attributes since having a one-eyed male cat is a highly specific experience for me and not others.

You don't have to overthink this though. Schematic associations that you have already will come automatically without you even having to think about them. It's the way dreams are formed instantaneously without the need to think about it, and waking thoughts will do the same when we let them flow naturally. It's a good idea to let your mind do what it does naturally, even if it doesn't always make sense, rather than trying to narrate, drive, and control every little detail.

Your Dreams "Want" to Process Your Experiences
An important underlying fundamental behind all of this is that your mind "wants" to process something when you go to sleep. You have dreams about your past experiences, especially the more recent experiences you've had. If you went to a family gathering the night before, you're more likely to have dreams about it. We even have dreams about media we've recently consumed. The things that are most immersive and "important" to are often the things you dream about. It's your brain's way of processing and storing memories. Dream Brain Mimicking takes advantage of this natural processing by "feeding" your mind an experience you want to process in your dreams. The "mimicked" dream you create in your mind becomes the thing your brain thinks you need to be dreaming about. This is why an immersive approach with personally impactful themes that tie into other memories works really well.

Dream Control
With the above said, you can absolutely control the dream and I recommend doing so if you don't like something or if you want to adjust how the story unfolds. You can totally backtrack and start over when it's necessary to fix unpleasant things. Despite everything this guide has explained so far, you absolutely can make decisions and change things as needed. It's just not a majority of what you should be doing.

I recommend using dream control methods that you would employ in real dreams for making changes (not required, but it generally works better this way).
Here's a guide on dream control basics: https://www.enter-the-mist.org/post/...-part-1-schema
And another guide for schema: https://www.dreamviews.com/dream-con...ur-dreams.html

There are multiple ways you can control dreams:
- Redirect your attention.
- Switch out unwanted schemas for wanted schemas.
- Develop new schemas/expectations.

For example, you may associate being underwater with saltwater. If you don't like the taste of salt, you can change this in different ways:
- Stop paying attention to the taste. Unlike waking reality, dreams depend on your attention. If you thoroughly ignore and forget about something, it ceases to exist completely.
- Change it to a different taste that follows a another schema. For example, maybe it has an algea flavor. Kinda nasty though, redirection may have a more desirable outcome in this case lol.
- Create a new schema such as imagining that this is a magical ocean that tastes like cotton candy. This can have transcending effects on your entire story and you may need to change other things about your surroundings to reinforce it. This is more of a drastic change that I don't recommend most of the time, but absolutely recommend it to fix particularly unpleasant trains of thought.

Simply shifting your attention off of the undesired experience is often the best route. Take the path of least resistance for the little things. Save the schema-changes and new schemas for more important things or for when shifting attention doesn't work.

Strengthening Associations Through Repetition
The more consistent you are and use repetition for the things you want, the more it will become a part of your real dreams on a consistent basis. For example, if you give yourself gills in this dream every day for a week of practice, you will be much more likely to always have gills in your dreams when swimming and you may even unconsciously develop an association between the feeling of having gills and being lucid in dreams. Through repetition, gills can become your default in swimming dreams and even a trigger for lucidity.

You may also have more swimming dreams in general, lucid or nonlucid, because of the repetition.

Dreams are often formed through associations and repetitions. Be mindful of the reality you're creating for yourself. I recommend not botheringt with nightmarish or unpleasant things. Turn your attention off of things you don't want, and change them with schema if they're particularly ingrained (sometimes deeply ingrained connections require more repetition of new associations to fix).

Staying on Track
It's normal for the mind to wander, especially while falling asleep. Dream Brain Mimicking can help you stay on track because of its dreamlike mindset, but if you find yourself losing track, keep practicing! You can also hop on your new train of thought and create a whole new dream from it, alternatively.

It helps greatly to use a dream story that you can easily and comfortably follow as you fall asleep. Some things may be easier to stay on track with than others. The more enjoyable and low effort, the better. The goal is to fall asleep consciously using passive awareness (aka WILD technique), so unlike regular story creation, skip the complex decision-making, boring parts, complicated plot structures, and overfocus. For example, sometimes I just skip character dialogue altogether and assume they conveyed something without deciding every word spoken. Detailed dialogue is boring to me. I just assume they conveyed the intended meaning without worrying about the details.

There are no specific details that you must follow. You can skip anything that doesn't interest you. Dreams are oftewn nonsensinsical like this, but they make sense to you, the dreamer, in some way. That's all that matters. This is a dream process rather than a final draft scripting process. The only audience is you. Allow your mind to flow freely on its own, like a dream, even if it's not always logical, and have fun!

Easy Thinking
Most of my success with Dream Brain Mimicking comes from things that are easy to think about. Low effort is ideal. Feel free to be lazy and make half-baked stories. You're going to sleep doing this so it need not be work! When you get the ball rolling on a story narrative, you will start to (eventually) fall asleep consciously because you're immersed, not because you're trying hard to perform a task. The story flows and wanders sometimes nonsensically like a dream, but it'a a dream you're passively following.

Doing this all cultivates a dreaming mindset before you fall asleep. You start the dream when you're awake, you encourage dream-like thought patterns, and work with your mind (instead of against it) to enter a real dream that you can stay engaged in. This will not only give you lucid dreams, but train you to have longer dreams with stable story narratives and can also be used for MILD and incubation of specific dream elements.

The Final Transition
You may or may not notice when the dream becomes real. Sometimes I experience hypnagogia with this technique (odd sensations like buzzing or tingling), but usually not. If you do experience anything like that, keep engaging in your dream. The transition can often appear as if the scene becomes more vivid (gradually), you may encounter a doorway or portal of some kind, or you may not notice any transition at all. Experiences can vary, but eventually you'll wind up fully asleep in the dream.

Final Note
Just a heads up that you can also get DILDs from this technique, not just WILDs. Sometimes if you fall asleep unconsciously, you end up back in your intended story lucid dreaming anyway later in the night.

Happy dreaming!

It becomes apparent that I have been watching too much Battlestar Galactica, I start having a lot of dreams with cylons. I also miss a very obvious cue that I am dreaming.

--- --- --- --- ---

I was a part of a fleet, very reminiscent of the one from the show, but distinctly different. It had split, and half of us had set down upon a planet to await further instructions. All the higher-ups were with the other group, so I suddenly found myself with more power and responsibilities than I had ever had before. We expected no resistance here, so most of us took the downtime as a sort of shore leave. We could finally breathe fresh air and stretch our legs. The atmosphere was breathable, and the forested landscape was very reminiscent of Earth.

We had a few large carrier ships here along with a number of smaller vessels. All were fitted out with a number of detachable, five-man pods, which could be easily moved or picked up by our multitude of small ferry ships. They were our emergency escape option if we did not have enough time to get the larger ships into the air. We would shuttle the pods into orbit and hope for recovery.

I was stationed in one of the smaller ships that was mainly populated by political workers; secretaries, advisers and the like. We all got along quite well, which was fortunate given how little space we had to share.

I was outside enjoying the warm daylight air. The youngest of our group approached, an energetic male in his late-twenties. He made a comment in regards to our continued survival. He was wondering just how long we could expect to live. The rest of us shared a knowing look and laughed.
"I have cancer," I told him. I was not upset by it.
"So you're dying?" he asked. The question took me aback.
"Well yes, I suppose so."

I wandered around the metal landing brace that we had been gathered around. The air was fresh and plants flourished on this planet. My older friend turned to face me as I approached. He had dark, curly hair and a lazy eye, but he was a very perceptive man.
"Have you been having any dreams?" he asked.
"I have, actually. They're pretty good." I shrugged. Any significance had been lost on me.

Nice one.

We were back on the ship, in a small area under the open air. It was certainly not a section of the ship that could be utilised during space-flight. Our young friend came into the room.
"Doesn't it drive you mad sometimes, that any of us could be a cylon and not even realise it?" he asked, exasperated. My friend with the lazy eye addressed his concerns.
"Whenever I start having those thoughts, I sit down for a while and use this, and it reminds me of what I am." He held up a fist-sized ball covered in a multitude of small, coloured dots. As he rolled it around in his hands with grace and skill, the spectral patterns would seem to move around the ball, following his guidance. It was a remarkable sight.
"But doesn't that just mean you are more likely to be a cylon?" the young man joked, marvelling at the creation.
"The orb is covered in floating, magnetic beads," replied my friend.
"Oh," another chimed in. "I always found that thing fascinating."

I was outside again, enjoying a quiet evening stroll. That's when the attack began. Fighters came in out of nowhere and began shooting up the ships. We were caught unawares, and the larger carriers would take some time to warm up for flight. I saw a couple of shuttles begin ferrying pods up into the atmosphere, but not nearly enough. I was too far from the ship at this point to run back, but there was a group of parked cars situated not too far away. I felt as though our best chance at survival was to scatter and pray that the rest of the fleet would return before it was too late. Some of the vacant pods began to explode on the undersides of the ships. We only had a limited supply, and even with all of them it wouldn't be enough.

A utility screeched past with my friend at the wheel and an empty pod in his tray. He didn't stop for me, but I took his cue. I dashed over to a nearby 4x4, selecting one with enough boot space in case I was able to get a pod myself. Fortunately, it was unlocked. I hopped in, hoping that I would remember how to drive in a punch, and dropping the sun visor. Keys fell onto the ground. In relief, I picked them up and hurriedly turned on the engine. The car growled to life and I took to the road, following another survivor in similar style.

Hundreds of survivors had fled on foot, running out into the parklands. Cylon ground troops had landed in force, and were pursuing them into the forest. I attempted to navigate the chaos, but the roads were impractical and the cylons were wreaking havoc. I saw a pair I had seen many times before. Wherever they were deployed, they never shot a human, but would take the opportunity to 1v1. The would chase each other around instead, and hope their comrades did not discover their little game.

I ignored them and turned my attention to the madness around me. I saw a group of cylons chasing down some civilians. I pulled the car around and paused for a moment. I was surrounded by chaos, and it would be futile to attempt to navigate my way out, even in a vehicle. I gunned the engine, put my car in gear, and chased down the cylons instead.

A very vivid dream with high continuity. My dreaming personality is a little more extravagant and dramatic than my waking personality. I also have a nice little freak-out when I forget that in a dream, people communicate telepathically/empathically. Weirdly enough, it is only when I type this entry up six months later that I realise that the family at the end are very familiar.

--- --- --- --- ---

I was in a large, detailed town. The landscape was shaped like a bubble, with the edges of the town curving up towards the sky as though it were situated within a basin. The town proper was quite dense and centralised, comprised of public buildings and several private homes. Apartment complexes stretched up the far side of the basin on the outskirts of the town. I had a home here, several levels tall. I shared it with room mates. Behind my home were several statelier buildings and quiet winding streets.

My recall begins in my bedroom on the top floor. The town is sunny and pleasant, but I am routinely aware of a presence observing me through one of the windows. When I look out, my vision zooms to a location on the other side of the town. I see a shadow shift on a ledge as someone leaves the area, but I am not fast enough to catch a glimpse of my observer.

I walk out onto my balcony. It overlooks a public sports oval. There is a crowd gathered there, some of their number are wearing costumes. They are rehearsing for an event the next day where many would come to revel in their self-pity and cling to their vices. They were a harmless lot, ultimately likeable, but foolish. For many years I had known them well, and counted myself as one of them, but no longer.

I return inside. I am with a small group of my friends, none of whom I know in the waking world. They are all male and dressed in Victorian-era clothing. They seem taken aback when I announce that I will not be joining the festivities this year.
"Tomorrow, I will be out on my balcony, smoking. If anyone should care to join me, then they would be most welcome," I say, taking a puff from my cigar. One of the younger gentlemen piped up in response.
"Smoking? Whatever for?"
"For grandeur." I declare. They chuckle. My closest friend is sitting beside me. He shakes his head at me, but laughs all the same.

I go outside onto a lower balcony with him. The evening air is enlivening. I get a better look at him now that we are alone. He is a spritely, middle-aged man with a grand moustache and a quick wit. He is always impeccable dressed, but never too extravagant. He sits in silence, drawing from a large, glowing cigar.
"I'm going to miss these, you know," I say to him, fondly lighting a cigar of my own.
I look out across the town. The lights are off in the apartments across the basin, but the town below is still full of life.

I find myself down in the town proper. Three single-levelled buildings are arranged around a common square. The left-most structure is the workshop of a local artist and jewellery designer. She has wicked red hair, and a strong but gentle presence. I notice a young girl smoking cigarettes and dawdling around her building. When the girl finished smoking, the artist burst from her workshop and berated the girl for the lingering smell.

I had known better, but it struck me as odd that I had already known without being told. I walk around the side of the building. One of my teachers approaches, a wise woman, well-revered by the town. I addressed my concern to her in regards to my own foresight. I was so shocked that I could know what somebody had been thinking without interacting with them. The artist was passing by as I was speaking, and stopped out of curiosity. I had asked the wise woman many questions in the past, but this one surprised her. They exchanged a curious glance, and then looked back at me, puzzled. I felt that it wasn't my experience that they found bizarre, but why now I should fail to understand it.

I was going somewhere. I would lose something.

"We should sit over there and have a smoke," a youthful friend suggested to me. I had been deep in thought. We were in a large hall with others, waiting for the rain to pass. Night had fallen and I had been gazing out the great, vast windows before me. This was a familiar place.
"They're covered in water," a female friend replied. She was right. A few benches were situated on the wooden verandah outside. It artistically swept around the extended wings of the house. But for all its clever design, the walkway did not extend far enough and the eaves were too shallow; rain water dripped down onto the benches.

I returned home, sharing a few friendly words with my house mates. I proceeded upstairs to my hammock. I was uneasy about the open window through which I could be viewed, but was relieved to find it had already been closed and the blind pulled down.

The dream shifts, and I am on the rear-most carriage of a speeding train, right where I expected to be. I had caught this train many times before, and even had a good rapport with the rear guard. I rushed to the back of the train. Below the raised platform where the guard would sit, there was a thick, steel archway with a blue, metal door. It served little purpose other than my own.

I was reaching my end, somehow content with my own undoing. I had known this was coming for a while, and now the time had come to the face the music. I began to speak, a conversation I can hardly remember.
"We all come to our end eventually, don't we?" I say.
"What do you mean?" the guard replied from above. I rushed behind the door and fastened it behind me. The train was picking up speed, but I wanted to delay my moment of passing for just a few minutes longer.
"We degrade, don't we? It's a natural process. Why should we fight it? Would it not be more logical to embrace this demise?" I continued my rhetoric. I had already resolved that it would be this way, and chosen this place because it would quicken the process. Despite my verbose monologuing, my stomach still sank when I began to see the effects unfolding before me.

I held out my left arm and rolled back the sleeve. It was fading away, turning bony and pale, but also ethereal; shrinking and vanishing before my eyes. I tried to remove my watch, but it too was disappearing and hanging limply around my skeletal wrist.
"Surely it would be better not to fight it, don't you think?" I asked to my final witness, captivated by the sight before me.
"I'm sorry, I didn't quite hear what you said," the guard replied. I was snapped from my self-indulgent trance. The wind was roaring, but the guard's ears were keen. They heard every one of my final words, knew in their heart that I was misguided, and would feign deafness now rather than extend advice. My ego was inflamed.

We were slowing past a station. I deftly rolled from the train and skidded for some metres before coming to a stop near a family of three waiting patiently with their luggage. The train slowed to a halt beside me, the guard and driver both now in the engine. The guard, while distinctly the same person, was now a young female with straight brown hair. I stood up and marched over to them in rage.
"Fuck you, you piece of shit!" I screamed. They seemed rather unfazed.
Though still angry, the next few moments were filled with remorse for my behaviour. I felt compelled to apologise to the mundane folk - a rotund man and his wife - for shouting obscenities in front of their son.