Thread: Created a persistent dream realm

Originally Posted by DreamLord1

I've recently read through Hyu's DJ for inspiration, and i decided to try his persistent realms technique.

Haha, Hyu is awesome. I got my first LD after getting super excited from reading his thread http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...other-dcs.html

Congrats to creating your realm, sounds awesome!

Originally Posted by LLucido

... i found i can very easily achieve ld every night ( if i have normal sleep and don't feel very stressed ). I have no idea about wilding and such, but my simple technique gives me almost guaranteed LDs, ...

That's an awesome accomplishment! Congrats. Sounds pretty mastery to me.

Originally Posted by sensei

Oh, so not mastered, but gotten to an LD. Almost every night. Big difference. Got it.

I guess buddhist monks who stay aware and lucid during the whole NREM and REM and in between would call our best "masters" noobs. Or maybe they wouldn't. : winky :

Originally Posted by Sensei

You have 300 lucids and have no persistent dream characters or worlds? That is a little shocking.
You have been LDing for 30 years and only have 300 Lucid Dreams?

If your LDs don't have any persistence, then what is the point of getting lucid? I wouldn't waste my time LDing if that was the case.

Perhaps persistance is not that important to others as it is to some. And, uhm, wasting time? I have had over 200 LDs and not a single persistant thing. Am I doomed? Lol, maybe I enjoy randomness and surprises. And when I decide to get persistant, I'll enjoy that too. But till then, not gonna loose any sleep over it : winky :

Haha, we all have different goals, dreams, fun doing different things. How can someone say that if someone else is not doing it his way, he is doing it wrong?

^^ All true, but...

Originally Posted by gab

Perhaps persistance is not that important to others as it is to some. And, uhm, wasting time? I have had over 200 LDs and not a single persistant thing. Am I doomed? Lol, maybe I enjoy randomness and surprises. And when I decide to get persistant, I'll enjoy that too. But till then, not gonna loose any sleep over it.

Yes, persistent realms might night matter to many (though I do experience them, I personally have no use for them), but I think Mzzkc's question way back when was a valid one: is developing a persistent realm -- a place of literal sameness -- in your dreams the best use of your imagination, of your spiritual time in LD's? I'm not sure.

You may be ahead of the game, Gab, in your preference of randomness and surprise over getting exactly what you expect or consciously design in your dreams. Persistent realms for me seem to represent where we've already been, what we've already done, and they may simply reflect a certain comfort zone of our self-esteem or interest in learning.

We grow, intellectually, spiritually, and to some degree physically, by facing new challenges, new imagery, new concepts, and new worlds. To focus all your lucid energy on creating a world based entirely on what you already know and feel, and to then continue to return to that world as though you were its not its God but simply another player, is to risk hampering your intellectual and spiritual growth. I would even argue that you are diminishing your lucid skills by consistently returning to a world that you expect to be there, because eventually that world will become a sort of reality for you -- something other than a part of your own mind -- and when it does, lucid development stagnates.

So persistent realms can be very cool, especially when you get them to match pictures like those provided in the OP, but there are some valid arguments for questioning their validity, and people who have differing opinions about them (or even whether they truly exist, or aren't just recurring dreams a dreamer might have had anyway; or, worse, and I'm not saying this about anyone here, perhaps just cool waking-life stories attached to some remarkable dream fragments).

Finally: yes, everyone has differing experience and opinions, but sometimes a little chat about those differences can be helpful, especially on a subject as spotty as persistent realms. The only way we can learn more about persistent realms, or why we all experience them differently, if at all, is by discussing our experiences and, occasionally, getting into annoying and decidedly irrelevant pissing contests that often fade away, as long as the conversation stays true in general. To decide that a conversation is a mess simply because people are expressing themselves in a manner that runs counter to what the echo chamber demands is not the most enlightened decision, I think.

Persistent realms in LD's is a fascinating topic, for a lot of reasons. I hope the gods of DV will be willing to let those who disagree with the concept, or at least some of the decidedly wild claims (whether true or not, they can still be pretty out there) that persistent dreamers make, be treated respectfully for disagreeing.

And yeah, Mzzkc's question, "Don't you feel persistent realms have the potential to restrict your growth?" had a real potential for opening up this conversation; it's a shame it went pretty much ignored... maybe if it hadn't, we would have had a much better conversation.

I'm rambling... Here's a quick tl.dr: Due to the nature of the subject, opinions about persistent realms in LD's are going to vary quite a bit from dreamer to dreamer, but it might be better for those opinions (and supporting experience or knowledge) to find a little air rather than setting them aside in the name of politely supporting the OP or a practice attributed to one or two very popular members... sometimes pointing out that a person is doing something wrong is the only way to find out you are doing it wrong yourself,,, speaking of that, can we maybe consider Mzzkc's question about whether persistent realms might restrict growth?"

I think the point gab was making was NOT to be condescending toward eachother. This thread had started to get kinda bitchy so we were like "whaaaa?" But as long as everyone is cool and getting along, then it's all good. That's what I love about the On Topic Forums: here we are way more cool and understanding, whereas the Extended Discussion forums are where topics get rude and out of hand. And I for one am extra glad that we all strive to keep that separation.

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ All true, but...

Thank you Sageous. Firstly, I apologize for getting preachy. I wrote a longer sermon yesterday, but had the sense to reduce it to one sentence. Perhaps zero would have been better, but that milk has been spilled. Here is my opinion. Let me first define persistence, as I understand it and as it pertains to dream control.

Persistence: A storytelling device wherein the narrative spans multiple sessions of interaction, especially such that the narrative is allowed to progress between sessions.

And to be clear, the mechanism of the narrative's progression is the author's imagination, invoking what I above described as "a suspension of disbelief and a spirit of play." I'm not suggesting anything supernatural. Nor, to me, does persistence require a very rigorous fidelity or formalism. It is a storytelling device. A creative tool. One arrow in the quiver of the author. The author always retains license to bend the rules toward a holistic pursuit of an enjoyable experience.

By that definition, I contented that it would not necessarily restrict growth. Quite the contrary, it is a skillful tool for an author to create a larger and more ambitious narrative. Very plainly, it just allows a narrative to be longer in time. The time we have in each dream is limited; that's a consequence of biology. Extending a dream over multiple sessions seems like a natural desire. And persistence is the tool to facilitate that desire. Is it wrong to indulge desire? For me, that argument merges up to any dream control and lucid dreaming in general, so not particular to persistence.

Now, my personal experience. I don't keep a persistent world to the degree of some other contributors. But I do refer to the environment of all my dreams as The Dreaming, and believe, in the spirit of play and suspended disbelief, that it has its own persistence, character, and uniqueness. I think it is interesting when persons or places recur in my dreams and how they seem to evolve. As a pastime, I like to speculate on if there is continuity of those characters, and by what mechanism I might attribute their evolution. Is it randomness? Is it my unconscious? Is it my shifting knowledge and worldview? To me, this exercise is rich in exploration, not stagnation.

Thus, I (respectfully) reject such characterizations as stagnation and sameness. Of course, anything taken to extreme can be pathological, but that is a disclaimer to add to just about anything, so I don't see how it is of particular significance here.

I had a nice chat with Samael over PMs regarding the inherent drawbacks and dangers of creating a persistent realm without first gaining an intuitive grasp on practical schema manipulation (both IWL and in dreams).

Some points of note were shortcutting the association process without a solid understanding of it, schema bleeding out of the realm into other dreams, and the cautionary story of the late Walms.

But I guess there's little interest in talking about that here, yeah? =P

Thanks everyone! I really hope this thread keeps on as I find it very interesting.

I have no persistent realms turned up yet in LD'S but I love them all!

I do want to use Ldreaming on my path to awakening simply coz thats with me all the time in life as a wish since i was a child - to develop and grow as a human being on this planet, to expand my mind in a way thats benificial... That means I am always on the look out for other folk doing that and interested to hear and learn

My belief is if you can dream it you can dream it.
So I believe a persistent place is something I could eventually build, but like Kaan I think dreams are inherently pretty unstable. I think I would have to work to maintain the place, and also I would need to learn to teleport there. Mostly in dreams I find myself a victim of circumstance, but also targets of Opportunity. Usually the dreamscape fights back against lucidity and also against outright control, just like I can't always fly in a dream or can but get stuck in the air, I doubt I could learn to go back to my dream world that is waiting on pause for me. Teleport in and hit the play button. I think I would find myself walking down a hall to where I knew I was going and then due to a stray thought found myself somewhere else entirely. Or If I were to enter the Spartacus Slave market to check out the latest commodities from the north lands with my bag full of gold, only to find that there is an uprising in progress. I can't believe my dreams would ever start fully behaving or even allow persistent stable control much less stable visuals. But going to a place I built to see what mischief my subconscious has waiting for me seems doable

as for the 'spiritual part' I don't think living inside your own mind discovering things about yourself is very spiritual. If your a dream guru who is all knowing, seems to me self-knowledge is the opposite of spiritual, the spiritual part is sharing knowledge gained with others.

I would be more likely to have a real grasp of someones persistent dream world if they made their own crude drawings of it, rather then some uncited (no credit given) work of art that is someone else's and saying yea just like this. Or I'm so super creative I can make a whole world I just have to get the names from old episodes of Mork and Mindy. "I'm the shiznit of showing you other peoples ART and citing the principal cities of ORK"

In the end maybe some dreamers limit themselves with our preconceived ideas of the limits of our own dreams.

I intend to first try to go to modified real places, but have never really even remembered to teleport in a dream so I still need more prospective memory. I'm sure that even If I did remember teleportation was possible It would be more like to hell with porting to the slave market of Capua, look at that chick over there, and as I get closer to her things can morph to my expectation and delight, or morph to my subconsciousness' expectation and horror!

not really. its just a side project, really.

Thank you for the fantastic response! I've been sort of a lurker for the past 6 months, and i'm amazed i got this kind of feedback from the community! I don't have reliable ld's, but i've always been a natural at dream control. I was actually getting pretty depressed 3 months ago for unrelated reasons, hit a pretty low spot. This response is a real pick me up! I hope that this thread can continue. And for those who were asking, everything was directly inspired from hyu's dream journal. And gab, his dream journal was also what inspired me to start again after abandoning lucid dreaming. Thank you all so much! This means so much to me!

So, i have a photographic memory. what that means, is that i can remember things in detail, and those memories are quite stable. As you all know, Kaan thinks the dream world is to unstable to support a realm. The funny thing is, is that the combination of stable "schema sets"(photographic memories) and the continued integration of the dreamer into a coherent, open-ended plot ensures stability. it also means that the realm runs itself. I have know direct control over the plot.

The Battle of Tartarus

Dream: I wake up to my alarm on tuesday, and my mother is shouting that i'm going to be late to school. On my way their, i realize that the very last thing i remember is falling asleep on saturday. I decide to check my watch, and it's gone batshit insane. It's actually showing the word "Dream". Quickly becoming lucid, i decide to fall backwards to visit Trenzalore once again. I quickly awaken in trenzalore. I am immediately compelled to go to the high council chambers in the citadel, as i'm messaged by the chair of the council that a special meeting of the admiralty has been called. Arriving at the high council chambers, i realize that something extremely important is going on. The chair of the high council informs us that a weaknes has been discovered in the atraxi's defenses. In order to prevent our ships from warp-jumping past the line, the atraxi use warp drives designed to introduce severe space-time distortions in the border, making it impossible to navigate. Ships called wall-breakers can, in fact, break through these "warp walls", but the amount of energy needed grows with the severity of the distortions. The atraxi are channeling 20 percent of their total power output into their "warp walls", making it virtually impossible to break through the border with a wall-breaker ship. However, high command has discovered that an important "crossroads world"--where structures are placed to create warp highways and power conduits, in this case used to support the line-- Tartarus, is extremely close to the border. So close, that if we launch a full out attack on of the border worlds close to it, we will drain enough power from the warp generators to breach the wall and attack tartarus. And if tartarus falls, it becomes near impossible for the atraxi to reestablish the line without first retaking tartarus. It is decide that the 7th fleet will carry out the diversionary attack, while our fleet and the 4th have been assigned to tartarus. I immediately leave to the docks in orbit. Once aboard the cerberus, the fleet organizes into attack formation. Our numbers include 3 hades-class juggernauts, 20 Osiris-class destroyers, and 40 cruisers. We warp jump to just ouside the neutral zone, and patiently monitor the distortions. Finally, the distortions in our sector reduce to traversable levels. Wall-breaker ships are sent forward with 3 destroyers each to secure a beachhead in orbit around tartarus. The rest of the fleet soon follows, and when the cerberus warp-jumps, we find ourselves in the middle of a warzone. A massive atraxi fleet is firing on us. I give the orders for the fighters to be deployed and to protect the cruisers at all costs. The destroyers regroup into strike groups and launch a forward assault into the defending fleet. As hours pass and the battle rages on, it becomes clear that the strike groups are succeeding and the defensive formation is splitting. The Anubis's strike group opens a hole in the defenses, through which 17 cruisers land on tartarus. The fighter squadrons are given the order to attack the atraxi destroyers. Though they are outnumbered 10 to 1, the atraxi use tactics that are already 300 years old to us. We soon start taking out the destroyer's shields. Our destroyers are given the order to start firing full broadside. The atraxi destroyers are torn apart in the maelstrom of artillery fire. The fleet begins to withdraw. All of our cruisers have now landed on tartarus, and it seems that the system is ours. I soon realize that the bridge of the cerberus is getting foggy, and unable to stabilize the dream, i exit and wake up.

Originally Posted by DreamLord1

So, i have a photographic memory. what that means, is that i can remember things in detail, and those memories are quite stable. As you all know, Kaan thinks the dream world is to unstable to support a realm. The funny thing is, is that the combination of stable "schema sets"(photographic memories) and the continued integration of the dreamer into a coherent, open-ended plot ensures stability. it also means that the realm runs itself. I have know direct control over the plot.

You do know eidetic memory isn't really a thing, yeah?

What you are describing using the term "schema sets" sound more like a general mnemonic device, similar to the chain method but at a broader scale. Effective for the intended application, sure, but not eidetic by any stretch.

After knowing all this, if you're convinced I am wrong (as is the wealth of scientific study on this topic), then do brain science a solid and submit yourself for testing at your local uni.

all right. let me explain what i mean by "schema set". I mean that it is a set of interconnected schemas that form the realm itself. For example, one such schema set is trenzalore. I have detailed memories of the various objects i find there, and there all given locations relative to each other, causing them all to link into one 3 dimensional schema for the whole city. And by eidetic memory, i'm saying that i never "learned" this. My mind automatically converts each memory into a schema set, instead of just a bunch of roughly related schemas. And as far as i know, mzzkc, you're right. No true "photographic" memory has been found in a human, but it is definitely possible to unconsciously make linked "schema sets". This is what i mean. For example, you probably know the layout of the area you cover on your daily commute to work. You roughly remember where everything that you've ever paid attention to is. In my case, my mind takes that to the extreme. It religiously links all the information it percieves into one coherent shema set. When i remember my 9th birthday, i first get a very rough sense of who's who and where they are. depending on who i focus on, though, i unconsciously retrieve all schemas related to them that are part of the "9th birthday" schema set, meaning there face suddenly comes into sharp focus and i recall what they were doing. I don't see a picture. I see only one branch of the schema tree at any given time. Whatever i happen to be remebering will be missing details, but i can remeber those details at the cost of being unable to "place" them in the original memory. It's like taking a series of increasingly zoomed-in photos. The smaller the zoom, the greater the portion of the fov that is visible. You can zoom in to find more detail, at the cost of "occluding" the rest of the fov. This is what i mean by photographic memory.

I knew what you meant. See the bit above where I postulated you were actually referring to the use of a mnemonic device which utilizes broader linking.

It's important to note mnemonic devices are not necessarily explicitly learned skills. I think that might be where you're getting hung up?

Either way, being in touch with how the brain organizes memory is a good thing. It's useful when you want to start delving deeper with that stuff and begin messing around with path deletion and modification. You've got creation down, it seems. Just be careful not to let connections form between your persistent realm and your normal dreams. Walms (deceased, now Hukif) was a master of this, separating his dreaming realm and his persistent realm(s) entirely. Of course, this tied all his powers, relationships, progress, etc. to the persistent realm. Thus, when he died, he lost everything he'd built up over the years, and had to essentially start from scratch as Hukif.

Ok. Glad we agree on that.

Who's Hukif?

One of the most prolific and accomplished self-taught Lucid Dreamers I know. Along with Naiya, he helped lay the foundation of what is commonly known as ADA thanks in part to his gravity RC. He also averages 13 LDs a night on a bad day, and created a persistent universe before there was even a "method" to do so. He can modify his personality through dreams, can consistently dilate time, and all that's just the basics.

I'd link you to his DJ, but he had it removed from DV back when they switched to blogs. Around the same time, he started frequent other forums which I cannot mention or link to here because censorship. You could always google "Lucid Dreaming Hukif" to find out more, though. =P

"Walms (deceased, now Hukif) was a master of this, separating his dreaming realm and his persistent realm(s) entirely. Of course, this tied all his powers, relationships, progress, etc. to the persistent realm. Thus, when he died, he lost everything he'd built up over the years, and had to essentially start from scratch as Hukif"

" He also averages 13 LDs a night on a bad day, and created a persistent universe before there was even a "method" to do so. He can modify his personality through dreams, can consistently dilate time, and all that's just the basics."

waaaat?

can't he also fly above the sea irl?

Originally Posted by Kaan

waaaat?
can't he also fly above the sea irl?

Come on Kaan get with the picture obviously he can dilate time and travel thru it in real life, how else could all those Tibetan monks have been lining up for century upon century to learn ADA from him?

He discovered levitation while trying to teach the Vajrayana to cross their legs in the eight century!

All these permanent alternative realities stuffs make me think about some kind of famous mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, multiple personalities, and so on, or in the best case megalomania with some part of pseudologia fantastica...

And after that, don't ask me why people call you crazy when you're just talking about Lucid Dreaming...

If you're feeling incredulous, just look the guy up yourselves. It's not that difficult if you have a basic grasp on how to Internet.

Otherwise, you're coming into this conversation with an uninformed viewpoint and an unwillingness to research the basics. All around, you're just making yourself look like an ass-hat.

Which you aren't? Right? =P

13 lucid dreams on a bad day...Did he wake up and go back to sleep that many times to keep a record?

If I have to choose between being incredulous and being credulous, life taught me to go for the first one.
And what I know about the brain and dreams is enough for me to have an opinion.
I don't think sharing my point of view makes me an ass-hat.

does it?

It does if you're unwilling to do some basic research in an attempt to consider other viewpoints, while simultaneously throwing out ad hominens as your only argument.

Tell me, who've you read on the topic of neurochemistry as it relates to dreaming?

You're right, that's a bit niche. Maybe just share some insight on the role the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex plays in lucid dreaming? That's an easy one, after all.

If you want to impress, and keep on-topic, regale us with your thoughts on how neural networking impacts dream formation. Still easy, but definitely more telling.

^^ Is there an imogee for throwing down a gauntlet?