lucid

I had a lucid dream using meditation this morning. Went back to bed at 7:48 a.m and woke up again at 8:15 a.m. I find myself in my bedroom. I focus my intent on my desk to manipulate some shadows in a cat. Then, a real cat appears outside one of my windows. I look outside the window and I see my house floating high above Earth. There are land masses covered in ice and use my intent to manipulate the ice caps. I leave my bedroom and go outside. I see my mom, niece and dad along the way. I am in my front yard and it is early morning before sunrise. I call out for one of my dream characters and she appears via my neighbor's door way. We greet each other and continue walking down the street. She disappears. I try to summon lightning and the clouds above gently flash with light for a moment. I continue walking until I am on another street. I see two children with backpacks in front of their homes presumably waiting for the school bus. I attempt to re-summon my dream guide from before so we can decide the adventure we want to embark on.

No dice.

I was around the interior of what could have been a space-station. It felt like I was playing Doom(1993). I get inside this bedroom-like area and I notice I am dreaming. I think of where I want to go next. I choose to try and teleport to an island. I put my arms out at my sides, close my eyes and spin like a top thinking that the next time I open my eyes, I will be at my destination. Instead, everything goes dark and the dream ends. Good grief.

Had a lucid dream about being at this school. I dream about school a lot. I saw a black Camaro. I was spotted by some people so I turned invisible. I felt the need to run away and so I did. I went upstairs until I was in a dorm room. I entered a bathroom and opened a window to try and escape.

Happened randomly in the dream. No technique. I teleported back to my house and tried to summon dream character. Appeared but was distorted. Apparently trying to summon original dream characters breaks the dream.

Had another lucid dream this morning. One thing with I mild I learned this morning is that I need to do it continuously until I fall asleep and not let my mind wander about other stuff.

So I did my WBTB + MILD and it yielded me two lucid dreams this morning. Again, I focused more on my intention to remember to have a lucid dream. But I've noticed something interesting about my successes so far, they are more likely to happen when I intend to "just do it". Similar to act of speaking in waking life, when I make my intention I don't get caught up on the 'how' of lucid dreaming or over-think things. This was always a problem before, given that I - like most people I assume - wanted evidence that the technique was working or was going to work at a later time. We do our big technique (WBTB + Meditation + Mantra + Visualization) then fall asleep hoping a lucid dream will happen. It appears that this approach was incorrect. It could also be that my prospective memory has developed from Dr. LaBerge's exercises and my repeated attempts at MILD. Lucid Dreaming this past week has been almost seamless for me.

I had a very short lucid dream this morning of my car producing a lot of smoke and eventually my engine caught on fire. I recognized I was dreaming and stuck my right hand out of telekinetically put the fire out. Telekinetically meaning I used strong expectation and belief to make the fire die down. I also tried to summon a dream character but no dice. It may be because I don't have an expectation of 'how' said dream character is to come into being. Out of thin air? Out of a portal? Descend from the clouds? I should probably focus more on stability instead of trying to jump straight into dream control.

Mild works for me now because the efficacy of the technique has dawned on me. It's the prospective memory that yields the lucid dream. Not the mantra or visualization. The latter two is to solidify the memory. Furthermore, WBTB is critical to success in lucid dreaming so much so that to attempt to lucid dream at any other point in the night is a waste of time.

After being awake during WBTB, I lay back down in bed and make a firm intention to remember to lucid dream. That's the shift; to focus on prospective memory and not lucid dreaming. If memory and intention is strong, the lucid dream will just happen.

Had lucid dream today through treating my mind like a virtual reality helmet. I recognized I was dreaming when the dream just loaded around me. It was short though. I was in my elementary school. More testing to do.

After about a long dry spell, I had a lucid dream this morning AND I found my dream character. We embraced because I just couldn't believe it actually worked after so long a dry spell. I used MILD. The key to it that there needs to be a strong link between the mnemonic and the thing I want to remember. In this case, I noticed that school is recurring setting in my dreams. Thus, I spent a good portion of yesterday creating a very strong link between school and my intention to find my dream character. It's not the mantra or visualization that causes a lucid dream. It's the prospective memory and the link between the intention and the mnemonic. Visualization + mantra is only to strengthen that link such that it will even work while in unconscious REM sleep.

Had a dream it was my last day in high school. I didn't realize it was and I was the last student in the classroom with a male teacher. I told him that I had 'finally done it.'; that I had no more schooling left for the rest of my life. I leave the building and I realize I am dreaming. I stabilize the dream by looking at my hands, and everything becomes clearer. I try to summon a dream character but no dice. The dream ends not because it collapsed but because my alarm went off I needed to be awake.

After a 5 day dry-spell, I managed to have a lucid dream this morning.

- Wake up at 6:15 A.M
- WBTB period was 115 minutes including reading and working my computer for a coding assignment.
- Go to sleep at roughly 8:30 A.M with needing to get ready for work at 9:45 A.M(Yikes)

There was a point where in the middle of my nap, I wake up again for 20 seconds. I instinctively "[got] present to the moment." That's all I'm thinking during that micro-waking. "Get present". It's this thing where I take a mental pause, clear my mind and focus on the here and now. I also sort of focus on where my Frontal Sinus is located - between my eyebrows. I don't accept the existence of a "third eye" so more testing needs to be done. I fall asleep like that and later on I recognize that I am dreaming.

I've have had at least 2 lucid dreams in the past two days. I think I may have figured out what is causing me to have lucid dreams. It was never the specific technique or the meditation. It was the fact that I was staying awake for 90 minutes then falling back to sleep with the intention to lucid dream. 90 minutes is not a magic number. It's about fully waking up - when the mind/body least wants to - and stretching the rubber band of sleep deprivation. Then we release that tension by lying down and quickly falling asleep with no other thought than to recognize the next time we dream. Some experts would describe this as REM rebound. One must figure out how their mind/body relate to sleep deprivation and REM sleep during the WBTB period.



For my next dream goal, I am going to get a dream character to tell me their name.

WBTB + no technique. The environment just felt weird so I assumed that I was dreaming. I'm trying to play with this dream incubation technique.

I did SSILD to get a lucid dream after a WBTB. This time, the efficacy of the technique dawned on me. It isn't about the cycles or how long you do them, it is about the mere act of paying attention. It's about the mental act of bring background noises, sensations and objects to the foreground of awareness; noticing subtle things like: how one's cloths touch the skin, how tense or relaxes muscles are, the sound of the fan, the chirping of the birds and crickets, the weird shapes in the darkness of vision.

The mere act of paying very close attention stimulates the mind to the extent that the next time I fall asleep, I can't help but notice I am dreaming. Of course, I've only done this one time so more trials are needed. This hypothesis seems very plausible and could explain why techniques I've invented in the past have worked - staring through the eyes, mindfulness meditation, SSILD, listening to the white noise in the ears; they all require me to pay attention during my WBTB period.

~~~

The dream featured me walking down my street and trying to stabilize the dream. I call out repeated for Gray to appear; the dream character I have chosen to act as a goal for dream control. No matter how many times I call out, she doesn't appear. I attempt to walk to the park around my home and make it far enough until I find myself in a hallway; the end of it being a bookshelf. I close my eyes in the dream and imagine myself having the ability to walk through solid objects. I phase through the shelf and find myself on the other side in a room.

I find Gray sitting on a park bench inside this room. We greet each other and the dream ends.

Did MILD but....during the lucid dream, it took me a while to figure out it was a dream.