wRembrandt

Just woke up from an afternoon nap that was a lucid dream + an almost astral projection event.

It was weird because during the time I was dreaming, I felt like I was having an OBE. I was in my bed still on my left side. I was shifting around and attempting to pull myself out of my body with an imaginary rope above me. I FELT MYSELF RISE but I could not see a damn thing.

After fluctuating between sleep and wakefulness or perhaps false-wakefulness, I finally managed to find myself in what was a clearly a lucid dream - in my bedroom. The irony was that the lucid dream was not clear and 'clarity now' didn't really work out too well. The dream kept fading in and out because I wanted to explore but the DREAM-SCENE WOULD NOT LOAD FULLY. If that makes sense. It was like a poor visualization.

I did however get to accomplish my dream goal of seeing the moon in the night sky; just a small goal to confirm that I can control the dream scene somewhat. I went inside a house next to me just to see what the dreamworld would load up for me.

It was blurry and hard to move to say the least.

Now for the big part, the induction technique:

All I did was just lay in bed relaxed as possible with a clear mind.

Yup, that's it. WILD with breath as an anchor.

In other words, I lie there and make sure that MY FOCUS IS ON MY BREATH. Any weird thoughts from the day? Back to the breath. Textbook meditation I believe. Hynagogic Imagery/Thoughts/Sounds and other foolishness that was distracting? BACK TO THE BREATH.

Until I felt 'The Transition' which was the weirdest shift of consciousness I have ever felt. I have no words for it other than it felt like mind was getting twisted and squished. When I was in the dream world, I tried my best to keep a clear mind by focusing on the dream world via my senses.

The focus on something external has - for me at least - keep my mind quiet and aware. I reckon this is most likely why SSILD worked so well for me because the focus on external stimuli quiets the mind down from chatter and other non-sense. I am no master of meditation, but this is just my guess. I am still in pursuit of the goal to have a lucid dream at least 5 nights a week of better length and quality.

On a side note, during the process of having random gibberish thrown at me to let me know I was falling asleep. I gently asserted that none of the information was real so I wouldn't get sucked into a non-lucid dream. Then I returned back to the breath as best as I could.

This is going to be my technique going forth.