Thread: Tony's Workbook

I'm sorry to hear about the transition stresses Tony. I come across quotes from time to time about struggles making a person stronger, but it is difficult for me to relate to those kinds of sentiments even if I feel they must be true. I really like what FryingMan said and strongly believe that mindfulness helps with so many different challenges. Mindfulness is definitely a journey though. I send thoughts of loving kindness to you both, for whatever it's worth.

As I hold on loosely but do not let go this occurs to me
I think about the breath
And come back to that
And pull myself into the moment
I think that's the core of everything
Remember to breathe
Notice the breath
Hear the sound of the air
Feel the lungs expand
Touch the moment right now
And remember that right now is right now
Everything else
The expectation,
The flying
The fighting
The fucking
The rubbing your hands together
It all comes
It's all there
A million times there
But just remember to breathe.
That's the first step.
I did not let go
Of intention
I did not release my practice
Just holding on
Loosley.

Beautiful verse Tony! It really spoke to me.

Lucid dream last night.
after i got lucid i pushed my hand through a vending machine glass and ate some twix bites
a couple of big goals there
DILD no WBTB
just meditation and day awareness
and illusiory form practice

this is a dream right now
all this world is in my head

Originally Posted by tblanco

DILD no WBTB
just meditation and day awareness
and illusiory form practice

Very nice Tony! This shows the power of good awareness work IWL. WBTB has become a bit of a crutch for me. I know that I have the strongest lucidity when I have paired WBTB with strong awareness work and I should never put the awareness work on the back burner...something I have to remind myself from time to time for some reason.

I've been on a cruise with my family, terrible sleep. just getting back into the full routine now. I did dream journal every day but I'm just beginning to get all the pieces back in place. My goal is to bring my recall back up to speed, get better with my daytime awareness, set more full intentions and then reintergrate wb2b when I've gotten more settled in my practices.

yall i got some dreaming to do,
great to be back

Good to see you Tony I hope you had a nice cruise vacation.

my recall is in a bad place. I need to figure out what's happening there. I'm going to go back to FRY's tips and start all over.

It's good to review things periodically! I've returned to being in a very happy place in waking life, so dreaming is starting to pick up again. My favorite thing to review is the two page intro to the practice section of TYoDaS. It is so inspiring and clarifying on exactly what leads to excellent dreams (stability in awareness).

Waking thoughts are also key. Make a habit of delaying waking day worries, tasks, etc. until physically out of bed. Reserve waking thoughts only for dreaming and recall. That helps a LOT if you can think immediately of dreaming upon waking.

I'm taking a couple of moments to rengage my intent before i let it slip away too far. I understand the value of mindfulness and awareness training, both as a precursor to special superpowers and the lucidity of dreamtime and as something that has inherent value in traditional waking life.

That is good to hear and it is good to see you around the forms again

one of my goals is to train myself to do the prospective WBTB without an alarm.

I've been doing a good job of state checking ma little more every day and writing in both my dream journal and dream intention journal every day. Finding the motivation to do pure sitting meditation has been tough but it's def something I know is on the line. I also want to go over the materials some more for motivation.

I drank a metric ton of water before bed and successfully did an alarm free wbtb. this could be game changing.

This is definitely the way to go for people that don't like to use alarms. I also like that it is a more natural awakening and is the only method I use to wake me up for WBTB.

Been a while, things got a little crazy in my personal life, then settled down, i started journaling again, and i found a way to convert the PDF of etwold into my kindle paperwhite format so i can start working and reading again, I’ve been doing the reality checks, reverse checks, and have been trying to meditate for several months before... I had my first lucid in a while a couple of days ago and it’s pretty exciting.

Congrats, and welcome back! As always, working on the fundamentals always brings great results over time: dream recall, awareness/attention/mindfulness, setting strong intention to recall and get lucid in dreams.

I'm working on the prospective memory excercises straight of the leberge textbooks. I'm planning on doing a full court MILD press. Recall important, awareness, questioning, and of a high priority in this early state, becoming familiar with my dreams, what patters are there and what needs to be done.

finished the Leberge prospective memory excercises, began setting them for myself before bed
namely remember to remember dreams and journal them working very well
starting to remember to WBTB myself and that's been working too!, now i just need to remember to actually GET OUT OF BED
I've collected about a months' worth of data on dream recall - up to 2-3 dreams a night most nights - i want to build my own prospective excercises based on dreamsigns and recurring dream elements
Also I have a few set goals of what i'm going to do the next time I'm lucid! I'm thinking about them, imagining myself doing them while i'm doing the RC's to keep motivation up
no lucids yet since vacation but the work is there!

anything I'm missing here?

Originally Posted by tblanco

anything I'm missing here?

There are so many different paths per the individual, but you have a good start there and you may not want to overload yourself. When you are ready, you might look at practices that you liked and/or you noticed worked well for you in the past.

Originally Posted by tblanco

finished the Leberge prospective memory excercises, began setting them for myself before bed
namely remember to remember dreams and journal them working very well
starting to remember to WBTB myself and that's been working too!, now i just need to remember to actually GET OUT OF BED
I've collected about a months' worth of data on dream recall - up to 2-3 dreams a night most nights - i want to build my own prospective excercises based on dreamsigns and recurring dream elements
Also I have a few set goals of what i'm going to do the next time I'm lucid! I'm thinking about them, imagining myself doing them while i'm doing the RC's to keep motivation up
no lucids yet since vacation but the work is there!

anything I'm missing here?

What I found with PM exercises is that "4 targets per day" I found too few. I wanted to have an always active set of targets. So I modified the practice to maintain a set of active targets all throughout the day. When I hit (or realized I'd missed) one, I replaced it with another. This eliminates the relaxation of the goal-seeking center of the brain once all targets are exhausted.

On those days where I gave my attention to PM exercises and went through 10-12 targets, I frequently had lucid dreams...

Originally Posted by FryingMan

What I found with PM exercises is that "4 targets per day" I found too few. I wanted to have an always active set of targets. So I modified the practice to maintain a set of active targets all throughout the day. When I hit (or realized I'd missed) one, I replaced it with another. This eliminates the relaxation of the goal-seeking center of the brain once all targets are exhausted.

On those days where I gave my attention to PM exercises and went through 10-12 targets, I frequently had lucid dreams...

Did you make a new list for every day of the week?
And I made a list of 12 for today

Just coming up with a list like that every day is challenging and I found I would burn out fairly quickly. So I'd just choose some general and some specific short-term targets. The specific short-term ones would be those where I'd be 100% or nearly 100% sure of encountering the target. The general one were ones that may or may not happen. I found I didn't have the energy for really creative new targets so I'd tend to re-use some. Some I also included where I expected to be distracted, like during my commute ("the moment I set my foot on the bus...."). Even though I tended to re-use those a lot, I'd miss them frequently (or hit them with a delay).

The main thing is to be always reflecting, always keeping your eye out for the goals, which helps to keep dreaming on your mind.

With the Leberge targets, you hit them or miss them once a day. Would your targets be evergreen all day long?