Thread: Eye closing.

Some suggest not to close your eyes in a dream, because you lose reference, where you are. When in a lucid dream, you should constantly be reminding yourself where you are by talking to yourself, saying "I'm dreaming", touching, smelling, feeling, and interacting with the dream any way you can, so you stay part of it.

But once you lose your lucid dream for whatever reason and you recognize it, or you wake up after it's over, you can try and enter another one via DEILD method. That's Dream Exit Induced LD.

So when you wake up, stay still and try not to wake up too much by thinking about anything, but your previous dream. By not moving you have a very good chance of staying in REM and entering another dream lucidly in just a few seconds.

DEILD by dutchraptor

I gotta go with gab on the eye close thing. I personally have bad luck when I close my eyes in an LD. I don't think everyone has the same problem, and I'm sure it's possible to overcome it with time. For now though I definitely recommend to keep all your senses going in a lucid dream so you don't lose it accidentally.

I didn't really have anything to add to gab's post, I just wanted you to know that you're not alone when it comes to that particular frustration

Gab's right, but I thought I might add a notion that might give you some mental fuel to prevent your eyes from closing in the future:

In dreams you have no eyes.

That sounds silly, I know, but if you think about it, your dream character body is a mental construct reflecting your dreaming mind's conjurings and your own expectations. In other words, there really are no eyes to close.

I think this has a lot to do with why dreams fail when you "close" your eyes, because choosing to do so likely has a real impact on your dreaming mind's processes, and, given that you've shut off dreaming's primary metaphor factory -- visual perception -- by closing your DC eyes, your unconscous is left with nothing to do ... and you wake up.

So, if you understand all this and remember it during the dream, you might be able to "keep your eyes open" simply because you realize that you have no eyes at all.

Sorry I'm going on about this, but you've touched on an important aspect of dream control: knowing that this body you're in, eyes and all, is not real, and its actions should have no effect on your dream (indeed, you don't even need a body in dreams).

I hope this made sense!

That helps a lot.... but remember... waking life could be (is) the same as dreaming. you're just so used to the "laws" of waking life... that it seems different.... when you enter a lucid dream, you get the feeling of omnipotence.... but maybe if you could actually have that feeling in waking life, you could do the same things as in dreams.... it's all mind over matter. That's how people in the past did crazy shit. They knew this. They had higher consciousness. We are getting back there.

When you're dreaming, your brain is conjuring up all these scenarios etc... and when you are awake.... another brain is conjuring up all these scenarios for you. It's all the same. It's all a dream. thoughts create the physical realm. anything physical = a thought.

if you knew without a doubt, that you could jump up and fly... you damn sure would. But, you have doubts, so you will crash. The same happens in dreams.

sorry i'm high.

You know guys, in a past thread (and I've mentioned this in a couple places), I asked folks if they could "see their nose" in lucids. You know, like how you can see a side of your nose in the inner corner of each eye in waking life? Especially if you wink one eye. I noticed this specifically in a lucid dream recently, and thought it remarkable. Remarkable, and also annoying. In a lucid dream, I think I'd rather not notice these ocular restraints. I suffer from lucid blindness more frequently than I'd like, and most often it's just in one eye. Or if it's in both eyes, it's a visual snow type thing. Or it's just really damn dark. Anyway, I have really bad vision in real life, and I recognize that it carries over into my lucid dreams. Obviously I haven't fully accepted, on a truly high level, that in a lucid dream (or nonlucid), my physical body just ain't there. It's just constructs made by my brain, based on waking life stuff.

I guess what I'm getting at is, there's no reason why I or you or anyone can't just imagine that our "dream eyes" are a giant rectangular screen of vision. No lids, no astigmatism, no pupils irises whites eyelashes. Just.. perception of a vast world with no visual obstacles. Make it so, subC.

can you try wearing dream contacts? or dream glasses to help you vision?

Originally Posted by Michael

can you try wearing dream contacts? or dream glasses to help you vision?

I swear I put on glasses in an LD when things were blurry, and it stayed blurry. As if the glass was just glass and not prescription glass. Yeah, I realize I have a hang-up But it's interesting, you know? It shows me that I need to move past "lucid tricks" when I hit this sight obstacle, and I need to improve upon my true true awareness in LDs. If that makes sense.

Originally Posted by OpheliaBlue

I swear I put on glasses in an LD when things were blurry, and it stayed blurry. As if the glass was just glass and not prescription glass. Yeah, I realize I have a hang-up But it's interesting, you know? It shows me that I need to move past "lucid tricks" when I hit this sight obstacle, and I need to improve upon my true true awareness in LDs. If that makes sense.

That makes perfect sense, on a couple of levels.

I personally also have lousy vision in waking life, yet my "vision" during LD's is always perfect. Plus, when I have one, my DC body has never worn glasses, though I've got a pair perched on my nose every moment of waking life. I even tried for a while to make touching my glasses a RC, but in my NLD's I consistently forget that I wear them, so it never worked.

I think that my innate attitude toward vision in dreams is one of expecting, knowing, that every image I experience will be crystal clear. I've never given "sight" a thought in dreams, probably more by nature than by choice, and that has made everything crystal clear.

I'm not bragging here or trying to say I'm any better at this stuff (though it sure reads that way; sorry!). I'm just confirming that an attitude I've always held has been what gave me clear vision, and not a technique or trick. That attitude eliminates any significance of my waking-life senses or body -- because they simply do not matter.

The same attitude helps nothing at all happen when I darken a scene in a dream (aka: close my eyes), though that is a bit more difficult because I am confounding my unconscious dream image factory when I do that.

tl;dr: You're absolutely right, OpheliaBlue; it all comes down to awareness. If you know through strong self-awareness and memory (well-laid expectations would help as well, especially in low-level LD's and NLD's) it isn't you're eyes that are doing the seeing in a dream, then you won't get tripped up or impaired by the activities of your DC-You's "eyes." You won't even know, or care, that you have any.

And then freedom and real control ensue.

Not tldr at all. That was a very inspiring post Sageous. And you are totally right, I need an attitude adjustment haha! Gonna make this my next big goal: "remember, there are no eyes". Sorry this post is typed weird, this is my first iPhone post lol

Originally Posted by gab

Some suggest not to close your eyes in a dream, because you lose reference, where you are. When in a lucid dream, you should constantly be reminding yourself where you are by talking to yourself, saying "I'm dreaming", touching, smelling, feeling, and interacting with the dream any way you can, so you stay part of it.

But once you lose your lucid dream for whatever reason and you recognize it, or you wake up after it's over, you can try and enter another one via DEILD method. That's Dream Exit Induced LD.

So when you wake up, stay still and try not to wake up too much by thinking about anything, but your previous dream. By not moving you have a very good chance of staying in REM and entering another dream lucidly in just a few seconds.

DEILD by dutchraptor

I could not possibly state it any clearer than Gab has, so instead,,, take Gab's advice on this, she has it exactly right.