Thread: Tony's Workbook

Originally Posted by tblanco

beginning that "look from the back of the eyeballs" training

This sounds interesting. Is that where you are basically soaking up everything visible to the eye, kind of like Sivason's diffuse vision exercise I think it is called?

I'm noticing marginally better emotional control. I am starting to feel that heat in my chest before I do something, rather than after. getting to make choices.

Very nice, that is the start of some great changes!

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this is from A. Holocek's book. I saw the Sivason thing too and i think they must be talking about the same thing here.

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this is from A. Holocek's book. I saw the Sivason thing too and i think they must be talking about the same thing here.
edit, good lord that's so tiny

"look at things as if you were looking at them from the back of your eye. This is a deeper and more penetrating gaze, one that doesn't get caught up in mere appearance. It's almost as if the gaze of the psyche, our non-lucid gaze, comes from the outermost surface of our eyes, while the clear-light mind comes from the very back of our eyes."

They're different. Diffuse vision is specifically about remaining aware of phenomena within your visual field even out to the periphery without "focusing" your visual system on it -- about feeling and overcoming that urge to focus directly at movement in order to see it. "Looking from the back of your eyeballs" is looking with full attention/awareness -- it's like you're seeing yourself seeing. It's a little bit like the "Being John Malkovitch" phenomenon.

they seem at least tangentially connected.

Very interesting! I am getting more and more interested in getting this book. Thank you both for sharing.

Wake back to bed wild attempt resulted in successful lucidity. After a few minutes of lie still and wait i got up and went check the time. On the way back to bed i did a nose pinch and BAM, lucid. Immediately my excitement in getting lucid caused the dream to destabilize but I was able to start rubbing my arms and hands and the room came back into vision. I was feeling my body and the room was getting stronger.

Progress.

I'm also up to 15 minutes of sitting meditation a day. I'm beginning to work on some of the awareness excercises outlined in the Dream Yoga class and I say out loud "this is a dream" several times a day.

A couple of days ago I didn't have much energy for it and only RC'd a couple of times. I said to my self that day that this shit ebbs and flows and I just need to do a little bit to keep going.

Awesome! Congratulations! Exactly, ebbs and flows…it is indeed important to keep your practices going even if you can't put as much into it on certain days.

Some days you get 5 good RCs and you feel like it's not a good day, then you remember it was a day you kept going.

I working on some of sivason's beginner excercises in awareness while sticking to sitting meditation every day.

My recall is spotty these days and I think part of it is the stress of the impending holiday but that's ok.

Just every day every day.

Just wanted to say hi. I'm doing the same class you are doing and started around the same time you did. I also use WBTB , galantamine and dream journal. I also have about two lucid dreams a week and am working on stabilizing, lengthening the dreams and interacting with dream characters. I'm also interested in asking the dream philosophical and psychological questions and in meditating and similar things within the dream. Anyway I thought it was interesting we seem to be at about the same place in working with dreams which is fun I thought. Good luck with your continued dream work.

Good to meet you. I'll follow along. It's good to have someone on the path you can connect with. 2 a week! that's pretty awesome.

Big holiday weekend. lots of people. I've let myself go slack without dropping off completely. dream journal every day even though a couple of days had truly poor memory. Saturday i woke up and wrote 'no dreams remembered' then later while out for a walk i suddenly caught a memory of a dream from the night before.

I've also been practicing diffuse vision exercises and beginning to get a little better at it.

Alright, I've been super minimalistic over the last couple of days and want to remotivate myself. I am still journaling, still RC'ing 2-3 times a day, and doing 5-15 min of mindufulness at night. The fire is not there but it can come back. I know i will have 2-3 more lucids before the end of the year and when i do, I'm either going to walk through a wall if indoors or go flying if outdoors. Proper motivation necessary and I can do this shit.

LD last night. Got a wild about five hours after going to sleep being able to wake up and make some moves. I did some work on the double vision shit getting a lot better at that especially now that I've realize that I can just look at the edges of my classes or keep them in focus and then everything else is just kind of there but I'm not focusing on any of it with my eye muscles but still I can use focus to move myself around and then put multiple things into focus. And then I can start adding in songs or feeling my heart they are my breath. It's pretty impressive form of engaging that awareness medic Tatian.

So I wild I find myself in a parking lot I do a nose pinch breath and get excited. This wasn't one of those relax into awareness type of dreams. This is one of those I force stabilization on myself as the dream keeps trying to wobble itself out of existence. I used to have trouble talking in the lucid dream and first I was like talking through lips that wouldn't open and then I got to words to come out like I was punching through a wall. I asked the dream character what the dream was about and first he was like what dream? And then I asked him again and he said what do you want the dream to be about? Sex of course.

But the dream would go blinding white for a second and start to shake away and I would use the diffuse vision to grab the whole scene in my focus and bring it back in or I remember slapping my elbows to keep you know a sense of my physical body to ground myself in but none of it was a relaxing thing. It was all really really deliberate pow engaged and desperate I think is the best way to put it.

But a lucid dream HoorayI love it it was great awesome even I can see I've got a things to work on and I'm excited to work on them and I'm just happy to be progressing and being a part of this fucking world thinks you guys

That's really great, congrats! It's really wonderful to see you incorporating your practice (diffuse vision) into your LDs! Hooray for the LDs! Keep it going, don't stop, and dreams and life will just keep getting better and better!

I think a big part of the awareness and intention training is that a big factor of success in LD is that you are keeping a ton of shit in mind at once. holding onto the knowledge you are in a dream, you body, your surroundings and objectives, which may or may not require several degrees of focus as well. So building that memory training, that awareness training, that focus and mantra all of it is important because you are using all of it AT THE SAME TIME.

Last night I reread FRY's tips for memory before bed and made an extra effort to hold onto that mantra as i was going to sleep. I was also able to hold still while waking and kept track of some massive dreams from last night. My brain does a good job of taking seperate dreams and stringing them all together. not lucid but great recall. I can do both.

the yoga and meditation practice continues apace, keeping my awareness up more into the world, practicing DV several times a day, next on savison's list is the mantra and that's one that i'm starting to work on. I think the really neat thing about how he structures his class is how you don't stop one lesson to go to the next, they blend together and build upon one another.

I like how sivason says his dream yoga exercises are all about transforming your brain into a lucid dreaming "SUPERCOMPUTER!" It definitely feels that way, good observation: it's not just about balance, it's about sustained simultaneity, and that takes practice. You have to get really really good at it while awake to have a chance to do it at an acceptable level with a partially impaired dreaming brain.

Many things all must come together for lucidity. My dreams remain very highly vivid, present, ("alternate life level"), that comes from attention. But reflection must be part of the mix, together with memory, remembering your goal to be lucid in the dream state (in order to remember to reflect upon your state). Attention, reflection, recall, *simultaneously*, night and day. While they're described individually, they are most effective when applied all together at once.

Spent a few days on a company team building trip. Lots of drinking. No meditation, a few rcs, and journaling every night. Got to talk about LD to some people so that was nice.

Had a great dream last night, building back up and will commense the hard training now.

Woke for my WB2B but Just laid there for a few minutes. Back in the motions of doing stuff but yesterday was like climbing back out of that hole. Did some good reading and I'm back on track today with stronger intentions.

I had one of those recall things where rather than actually remember my dream, I had a song stuck in my head. I know the song was related to my dream but it shut everything else out. I held still to try to remember but nothing came but the song. Anyone have any experience with this?

LD night with 2 DILDs!!
WILD after a 5 hour WBTB.
Nose pinch confirmation.
Got to use some powers.
Got to eat candy! Eating was a new one for me. I knew I could taste because i had a dream a few weeks ago where my dog peed on my head and in my mouth. (I told my kid about it and she still brings it up and laughs at me about it.) Swallowing was weird at first but i did get it to work.
I also walked through a wall. I thought I might get the jelly wall effect but instead the wall crumbled around my hands like it was made of ritz crackers.
PRETTY FUCKING COOL NIGHT.
I'm all jazzed up, and going about my day.
WE CAN DO THIS SHIT, YALL.

Fry, Andrew Holocek's book is fucking awesome. Better than the Audio. I've been reading it every night to my 3 yr old.

One more thing. I can WILD now pretty well. but When i wild I end up back in the house. I need to go back to Sageous' class and read up on building my new place to go when i wild. Or figure out how to get outside. It's fun wandering around a house with superpowers but soon I'll need to break out of this world.

Yay, yay!

Tony, your "stick-to-it-ness" is inspiring! Consistent effort, confidence, experimentation, searching for a practice that clicks with you, and never giving up IS REWARDED. And yes, Holecek is DA BOMB YO! You see, I'm not just blowing hot air about it. Yes, far superior to the audio version, way more information (I'm a visual learner, I go crazy on audio it just moves too slowly). I just wish more people would discover its awesomeness. I plug it every chance I get. Also the original TYoDaS, *especially* the intro chapter to the practice section is basically "all you ever need to know about LDing."

Congrats, here's to many more! p.s. you may want to look into the TOTM now the wings are redesigned, even snazzier, and more directly show progress. TOTY badge now lasts all year and shows how many tasks you've done.

So what's the secret to WILDing for you? It still eludes me.

For getting out of the house, you could try various teleports: door, jump through the floor, draw a magic portal in the air/wall and step through, dive through the TV or a painting, etc. Or even a spin teleport.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Mahamudra...ook/B008DG8O8I

I worked on this course about 2 years ago and it goes through many variations of trance meditation. Later, I got Jamie Alexander's kindle collection and read through that. His version of tapping into that sense of focus to get to the trance just resonated really well with me. When I wild, I tend to trance out for a while and then roll over and go to sleep, then I'm sleeping but i'm dreaming and I can confirm and go about my business. But I am working on a few different kinds of meditation right now, sensory awareness, mantra, mindfulness and trance. Not all of them every day but i'm moving between them.

oh yeahhhhh, teleporting. I was able to make portals a few years ago, or i could find a door. no shit. I thought it might take me out of the house when i went through the wall but i was more trying to just do the dream yoga wall thing more than go somewhere.

When I set my alarm for the middle of the night, the hardest thing for me is to actually get my ass out of bed. Even waking up for a second to turn my alarm off will give me time to think about lucid dreaming in my bed but doesn't give me the necessary shaking off the cobwebs necessary to take an honest attempt at a MILD or WILD return to sleep. I do however, get good dream recall when i wake up in the morning.

Tips for actually rousing for the WBTB for the momentum challenged?

on another note, my kid has been making me tell her about my dreams, and has been telling me about hers. This morning she remembered 2 dreams... she's fricking 3!

I love hearing about a young person engaging in their dreams and it's wonderful that you two have that to share.

Yes, tips on actually rousing for WBTB. Have you tried the water method (my preferred method - forced to get up to pee)…you just have to play with the volumes of water before bed. It also seems to catch me at what seems to be the end of REM most times. It seems that is when we are most likely to notice our physical body (and the urge to pee) during those mini awakenings. Reference "In humans, the end of a REM episode and the transition to non-REM stages of sleep may be associated with some body movement, and a very brief arousal; or the transition may occur with no movements at all and no arousal. Often there is a change in body position such as a rolling over or a series of smaller adjustments." (web source: end your sleep deprivation - 5 stages of sleep).

If you don't like the water method, I've heard of alarms that require you to do simple math to turn them off. You may also want to move your alarm during wbtb where you can't quite reach it, especially helpful if you have to get out of bed to reach it. Getting out of bed gives the strongest results, but I know people like Sensei mention sometimes staying in bed and doing math in his head to "shake the cobwebs."

Good luck!

Headcold fucks with my sleep quality. I put my alarm across the room and i have been waking up to get it. Next question. I forgot what to do with my wbtb time that i'm up.