Tony's Workbook

Sometimes I think it's good to "start over" -- one of my favorite things to do to start over is re-read my favorite books: ETWOLD & Tibetan Dream Yoga books (both the classic TYoDAS and the new Holecek book). I get really excited rereading this material.

When I started out, I strictly followed LaBerge, with perhaps the exception that I didn't assiduously and re-work goals. But doing that may be very helpful, because goals that you're excited about have been proven to increase performance (in many different cognitive activities). Prospective memory exercises, reflection/intention moments, RCs.

What's a typical day & night practice like for you these days? How many wakings per night do you notice? Do you do WBTB at all? Do you ever reset intention in the middle of the night?

The TYoDaS gives you a great way to measure your progress: basically, ask yourself: how often are you aware in the first moment of experience, and in the first moment of behavior (response to experience)? Do you control mindfully your reactions, or do your reactions control you?

I think you can't go wrong with a steady diet of attention, reflection, and recall. Build each as high as you can. Play memory games during the day: use a mnemonic system like the peg system to "record" interesting moments/experiences/scenes throughout the day, and in the evening see how many of them you can recall.

As long as you're working on these fundamentals, and maintaining an active interest and strong intention to get lucid in dreams, I think you can't go wrong. If you're enjoying your dreams and remembering more and more of them, and feeling more vivid and "present" in your dreams, that's all to the good.

To improve in any discipline one must add positives, subtract negatives, and balance learning theory vs. practice. Keep trying different things to keep it fresh and fun. It's important to build a practice that you enjoy, so that you can maintain if in the long run.

So i have my Ipad where i keep my dream journal. I'm using it to do raw data transmission upon waking. I'm also working with a notebook where i write once or twice a week to go over dream goals, and to read my notebook for dreamsigns. I'm currently reading "are you dreaming" by Daniel Love as well as going through the Prospective Memory excercises with Stephen Leberge from the mild chapter of the book. I check print and clocks for stability any time I see. I also do a nose pinch whenever something feels weird or when ever I'm getting emotional. I am not perfect in terms of mindful actions. I notice coming out of a fevered moment and check more than i do in the middle of a fevered moment. I've never heard of the peg system. When i catch myself being not mindful. I take a moment to feel my body and hear the world and do a moment to moment recall of the last few minutes. I stare at clouds and look for pictures to work on my schema buiding creativity.

At night. I set an alarm for 330ish 3-4 nights a week. That's about 5ish hours of sleep. I do some trance mindfulness meditation before bed in the vein of Jamie alexander. I'm also getting up in the middle of the night to set intention and try to wild back in with more trance meditation.

It's never taken this long to hit lucid before. It's a little weird. I've set a few reasonable concrete goals and missed all of them. I'm keeping a steady diet of things beyond manuals that focus on questioning the nature of reality and dreams.

I do have the andrew holoceck book in Audio form. I may download that again and give it another listen.

Well it sounds like you're doing a lot of good stuff. It helps to stay very positive, think about how much you love dreaming and recalling dreams. Hah, I also check clocks a lot but I haven't gotten lucid from them once in over 3 years. And I've looked at my watch on my wrist (which I haven't worn in YEARS) on several occasions in dreams. A week or so ago in a dream I also was given several watches (grudgingly by a guy who didn't like me) and I looked at them: sort of ornate analog watches, but I never tried to see the time on them.

I really like the Holecek book, I started with the audio version but quickly switched to the recently release ebook form because I prefer to learn from text.

I've had some long dry spells this year, I think on the 4-week level, even longer. Dry spells make me sort of mad and make me try a lot harder :).

Keep thinking of all the ways it's possible to get lucid: DILD from awareness and dream signs and intent, WILD from falling asleep aware, DEILD approaches maybe with clock alarms. If your sleep cycle is very regular and you can map your REM/dream times accurately then try some sleep interruption timers about 20 minutes (play with the time) before your anticipated waking from a dream. Keep trying them all. I'm now working a lot on WILD based on this message:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreami...wilds_here_is/

... which is a sort of mindfulness meditation approach to sleeping.

Other things to try: eating for brain health, lots of choline & tryptophan & making sure you're not deficient in any key minerals and vitamins. Exercise for good sleep. There are many avenues to investigate, just try to keep self-evaluating and look for areas of improvement.

I am having some great dreams. My dreams tend to be mashups of different periods in my life with a tiny bit of narrative. I mean the best ones. I have many dreams about things I watch on TV or games I'm playing. I find myself sorted into those roles. Having a community to see people hitting goals is great and I love to feel connected to y'all. I've been reading my little girl to sleep the Love book on lucid dreams and she's been telling me about her dreams in the morning as well. She dreams about star wars and darth vader quite a bit. that's pretty exciting because I do belive I'm building what will hopefully be a lifelong rapport in this space. When I'm in a good space with the RC and Awareness training, I am in better control of my emotions... that's not right... in better control of my ACTIONS because I can recognize when i'm having a flood of emotions. There is much that's great about this practice. But I still want the real shit... know what i'm saying?

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Originally Posted by tblanco

I've been reading my little girl to sleep the Love book on lucid dreams and she's been telling me about her dreams in the morning as well. She dreams about star wars and darth vader quite a bit. that's pretty exciting because I do belive I'm building what will hopefully be a lifelong rapport in this space.

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That is sweet! I envy that connection you have with your daughter. I think I waited too long with my son (new adult) but he is starting to pay attention to mindfulness. I can't seem to get him to show an interest in dreams so far.

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When I'm in a good space with the RC and Awareness training, I am in better control of my emotions... that's not right... in better control of my ACTIONS because I can recognize when i'm having a flood of emotions. There is much that's great about this practice. But I still want the real shit... know what i'm saying?

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I hear ya…it will come with continued and consistent practice. It indeed sounds like you are doing the right things and you already know that you can have lucid dreams! :) And they get better and better over time!

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Originally Posted by tblanco

There is much that's great about this practice. But I still want the real shit... know what i'm saying?

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I do know what you're saying, I feel the same way! There is a balance that needs to be struck, here, though (there goes that "b" word again!). We want these dream experiences, so we work for lucidity in dreams. Yet there is an element of (as the Buddhists say) "grasping" here, reaching for something because we think this will lead us to happiness. It is this grasping that builds a wall of delusion that prevents us from fully living in the present moment and seeing the truth of our experiences from moment to moment. This recognition of the truth of the present moment is lucidity! So you see the paradox: in order to be lucid in both waking and dreams, we need to both want it and not want it. The intention to be lucid in dreams seems to help make it happen more often, but we need to somehow manage the intention so that it doesn't distract us from what is happening right here, right now, and seeing it for what it is, and acknowledging our response to it, and choosing how to respond, rather than letting habitual reactions dictate our response for us.

Developing this mindset takes time, so patience and consistent effort are required. I hope this helps in some way!

You need to do the work with feeling but without desire. Anticipation not desperation. it's a tough line to ho.

http://selfdefinition.org/tibetan/Te...-And-Sleep.pdf

fun resource if you guys don't know it already. my kid and I read some of the old steve ditko stan lee spiderman before bed... (did you know they used to call him peter palmer?) and then we read a little bit about lucid dreams. She's been telling me about what she wants to dream now. She wants to ride on Rainbow Dash (from my little pony) and go flying in the sky. and she wants to marry her best friend, lucy. three year olds are a trip.

This Peg technique is crazy. I'm trying it out today with random things from my day and at then end I'll journal them. i'm up to 3 tree so far. How do you use the technique, FRY?

Yep I know TYoDAS :). It's one of my main resources (see my sig? :P).

I was doing the peg thing actively for a few weeks, I'm not actively working on it at this moment, but I would pick "interesting things" from my day and assign them a peg, and every time I assigned a new peg I'd go through the list. I found that I pretty much always remembered all of them through to the end of the day, it's a powerful approach.

It's great to hear that you are using the peg system. You can use it to work on memory during the day like you are doing and it is also useful for retaining as many details as possible of your lucid or non-lucid dreams until you get a chance to record them, which is how I use the pegs. But that daytime exercise is great for one of the fundamentals of lucid dreaming: memory.

Can I get an example of how you use pegs for dreams fog>?

I use the pegs for quickly recalling my goals when I become lucid. 1 (used to be tall man, currently just 1) = Show me an experience of being one with everything around me. Had a cool experience last time I did that. 2 (snake, handwritten 2 looks like a snake to me; good if no fear of snakes) = go to a specific place (private) that has a mental connection to snakes for me. 3 (looks like a butt on it's side) = Get off my butt and start narrating my dreams, etc...

I mixed up my mnemonics (memorization tools). What I use for recall is actually a pattern of letters either when I first wake or sometimes even during the lucid dream, most commonly during a breather in the void. For example: There was a *Bat and then later I was *Dancing with a girl. So I remind myself: Bat, Dance = BD = "Bad Dudes yo!" or whatever fun saying that comes to me. Of course you can make long sentences like the way you might have remembered the different levels of classification of living organisms in school "King Phillip Came Over For Good Steak." If that quote doesn't ring a bell, just google it, you will see what I mean. :)

I had tried to use mnemonics to save writing in a journal during the night, and it worked for a while. But I had never thought of using it in a dream! thanks for that.

Peg work + developing the personal mantra + mindfulness meditation +ADA work.
every day is every day

So the goal here is to start to set real intention for my lucid dreams. This path is going to take me down to the dream yoga way and I'm very interested in connecting with spiritual geometry in the dream space, exploring chakras and auras in the dream space and feeling spiritual super powers, meeting gurus and enlightened beings and exploring the depths of my subconscious. First step is reconnecting with my confidence and understanding that lucid dreaming is real for me and a state that I can realistically achieve with the power of awareness and positive thinking.

Lucidity is who I am.

This is the oldest magic i know that works. putting that intention out into the world. Shaping my thoughts and shaping my consciousness and thereby subtly influencing my actions and perspectives to bend the world to me or me to the world. Lucidity is who I am. With persistence, it's only time between me and sleeping awareness, clear light lucidity, crackling in the internal virtual reality sandbox of my mind. It's there, I'm just remembering the code, digging through the ring to find my key.

That's the attitude! As they write both in Holecek and TYoDaS, the change may not come instantly, but remember that you're not the same person that you were when you were a teenager, etc. (No I don't think it will take *that* long!), so as long as you keep it up, the change *will* come.

I had a brief LD this morning where I was doubting it at first. That's the fog and haze laid down over our awareness in the dream state, and the impaired access to memory doing its thing. We need to build a bright awareness, and realize that YES, this COULD BE the dream state!

I'm dreaming, this is a dream! We all dream a ton every night, we just need to connect with it!

Become a dream detective, always looking out for signs of the dream state.

This morning I had a late period dream where i was sitting on a rock in a field talking to a beautiful woman. I was on the edge of lucidity and the DC was trying to help me along. She was telling me I could have anything I wanted. It was registering that I was dreaming way in the back of my mind, more like i was a celebrity superstar or I had some magical powers. It was right after hitting the snooze so i knew i was about to wake up but it didn't have that ZING of lucidity. She was also giving me pushback on my requests and I was just taking them like "ok".

Meditation and sensory exercises are what i'm going after now. I think i gave basic LD Day work a fair 2 month shake and now i'm moving to some pure dream yoga stuff. This one was very close. The dream was really interesting. I jerked awake and lost the memory but then remembered to lay down in my sleeping position and drifted back into the dream.

I think long (like 1 minute or more), and as frequent as you can, session of reflection/intention really help generate LDs. Also, daytime MILD-like review of dreams where you see yourself in the scenes from the night before, seeing yourself recognizing the dream state and getting fully lucid. dream yoga illusory form exercise (the main meat of the day work) is basically reflection/intention. You're recognizing the dream-like nature of experience. Each time you do so, it's basically "having a lucid moment."

my recall hasn't been great the last couple of days but i've been doing some good sitting meditation and stronger questioning of reality. I got really close a couple of days ago and it was very similar to the last time i pierced the veil. my dreams became about people trying to tell me what was going on. If i keep paying attention, i will listen.

Recall is getting much better in the last couple of days. I've taken to saying out loud "this is a dream" at odd points. My kid is like "right now? THIS?"

Great! Yes, it is a dream! Keep it up. In TYoDaS they say it can take a while to make a change to your awareness via illusory form, but the changes can be significant, and I believe long-lasting. You get out of it what you put into it.

THIS IS A DREAM.

alternating practice between sensory and breathing meditation.

my recall hasn't been great the last few days, i think i need to start adding in more reflection.

Flexible, playful and humorous. Andrew H. stated those as what happens as you practice dream yoga and illusory form. Along with Lucid dreams, those are some great goals.

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Originally Posted by tblanco

THIS IS A DREAM.

alternating practice between sensory and breathing meditation.

my recall hasn't been great the last few days, i think i need to start adding in more reflection.

Flexible, playful and humorous. Andrew H. stated those as what happens as you practice dream yoga and illusory form. Along with Lucid dreams, those are some great goals.

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I think the playful attitude is really important. It's how I feel in my best, longest, most stable LDs: having a good time, joking with the DCs, doing TOTM tasks. The mindset I got from reading Holecek helped me to have a bunch of LDs that week or soon after.

Recall is about consistency, sleep patterns, overall well-being, and about how much you pay attention to your life experiences as a matter of course. Illusory form practice should help with that. Pay attention, reflect, recall! Auto-pilot in waking life is the enemy of dream recall at night (autopilot during the day means you'll autopilot at night!)

Got lucid friday night. Epic series of dreams taking me to many locations. In the last one I remembered the hotel I was in from another dream. I looked at the pictures on the wall and saw one with a few friends of mine and realized this was a dream. Then I woke up. As i was remembering all of the cool stuff that happened I made a judgment call to journal rather than try for the dild.

Staying with illusory form practice. Staying with the meditation. Staying with awareness. Staying with visualization recall. I think i'm on the right path here. Going to start to add on new dream yoga stuff in the future.

Staying with this site and this journal.

Thanks fry and fog.

Nothing better than an epic! Except maybe an epic LD! Congrats! This is a game of changing your brain: stay with it, and in time the results will begin to roll in. Sometimes the change is so gradual you won't notice it, before waking up one morning and realizing you've had an epic night of dreaming *again*, and it's been this way for months now. Remember: "develop stability in awareness, and your dreams will change in extraordinary ways!"

Awesome job Tony!! :D

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Originally Posted by tblanco

Staying with illusory form practice. Staying with the meditation. Staying with awareness. Staying with visualization recall. I think i'm on the right path here. Going to start to add on new dream yoga stuff in the future.

Staying with this site and this journal.

Thanks fry and fog.

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I am so happy to hear that you have found a good path that works for you! :D I think the credit goes to you, and to FM for helping you find a path that resonates with you! Thank you for showing your appreciation. :D