Spyguy's workbook on Dream Yoga

So, this will be my workbook for the class on Dream Yoga. Right now, I don't really have an idea what it is, so I don't really have anything to say about it right now :P I do think that this has a lot to do with all day long awareness, meaning it will make me better at ADA, which is a techique I already use.
I joined this class because I think this could be helpful in my life, and it is always good to try out some new stuff!

Note: I probably can't post every day, but I will do my best to be as active as possible :)

I hope you enjoy the stuff I will post. I have never read about ADA if there is a certain tutorial or from a book, but I assume it is all from some old teachings that got spread around. This first stuff may be exactly the same as ADA. You will be good at the first lesson already. Hopefully you will be able to train your brain and add a few new tools in with ADA.

Basic skills: lesson #1

After reading the lesson two days ago, I started off with the exercise for hearing. I closed my eyes and listened around for sounds. There were not a lot of noises around, and I heard the obvious ones almost immediatly. After a little while I focussed my attention on two stories below, and I could actually hear our bird sing! Pretty amazing if you ask me. I find it a little tough to maintain the awareness, but I'm sure it will get easier with practice.

Later on I tried 'feeling an intense world', and I have to say that one was a lot easier for me. I can feel every part of my body now :) The next step for me is to try and maintain that awareness for longer periods of time, and to combine it with the hearing exercise.

I'm actually doing 'mixing it up' right now as I'm typing. I got an orange-flavour lollypop in my mouth and I focus on the taste of it while typing this message. Lost track of the sensation a few times now, but nothing troublesome that can't be helped with practice.

So what I will do next is combining awareness of multiple senses and make the world around me feel as vivid as possible.

One last thing I would like to note is how awareness seems to make the world much more vivid. In the same way as a dream becomes much more vivid after attaining lucidity and stabilizing, the world suddenly becomes a lot more realistic when realizing that I should be more aware. Even without lucidity, that would be enough reason to practice this on itself! Is it normal for that to happen when training this, or is it just me?

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One last thing I would like to note is how awareness seems to make the world much more vivid. In the same way as a dream becomes much more vivid after attaining lucidity and stabilizing, the world suddenly becomes a lot more realistic when realizing that I should be more aware. Even without lucidity, that would be enough reason to practice this on itself! Is it normal for that to happen when training this, or is it just me?

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Sorry, I'm sure this was meant more for Sivason but I just wanted to toss in my two cents.

Awareness does seem to make the world much more vivid. Also, I think you're right about it being useful. Oftentimes in dreaming, many will wander about without any sense of awareness. That happens in waking life also, people go about their day, their jobs, life, on a sort of autopilot. It's only once you are aware and really feel the experience of your actions, thoughts, behaviors, that you begin to increase awareness.

I've been trying to become more aware in waking life... to stop working on autopilot... but it's just as difficult as remembering to R/C in dreaming. It's like, you never remember until something out of the norm occurs. Whether it be an extreme emotion, event, person, etc, sometimes it's the inconsistencies which are the most helpful in becoming aware.

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Originally Posted by Belle

Sorry, I'm sure this was meant more for Sivason but I just wanted to toss in my two cents.

Awareness does seem to make the world much more vivid. Also, I think you're right about it being useful. Oftentimes in dreaming, many will wander about without any sense of awareness. That happens in waking life also, people go about their day, their jobs, life, on a sort of autopilot. It's only once you are aware and really feel the experience of your actions, thoughts, behaviors, that you begin to increase awareness.

I've been trying to become more aware in waking life... to stop working on autopilot... but it's just as difficult as remembering to R/C in dreaming. It's like, you never remember until something out of the norm occurs. Whether it be an extreme emotion, event, person, etc, sometimes it's the inconsistencies which are the most helpful in becoming aware.

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Making it a habit is definitely tough, but with practice you can really get it down. Just keep pushing your limits and keep trying to increase the awareness further and further :) I'm sure it will work out for both of us if we just keep at it

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Originally Posted by Spyguy

Basic skills: lesson #1



One last thing I would like to note is how awareness seems to make the world much more vivid. In the same way as a dream becomes much more vivid after attaining lucidity and stabilizing, the world suddenly becomes a lot more realistic when realizing that I should be more aware. Even without lucidity, that would be enough reason to practice this on itself! Is it normal for that to happen when training this, or is it just me?

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You've got the idea! It is part of the training, so I guess it happens to everyone, who does not fail at this. We are exploring the fact that we are not really always lucid, even when awake.

Just to give a little report on my progress:
I have been quite busy, so I didn't get much practice. My current goal is to maintain as much awareness as possible during daytime.

I am now starting to get better at this. I switched my focus from bursts of hyper-attention to staying aware for as long as possible. Ofcourse, I won't notice as much sensory input as when I focus very hard for shorter periods of time, but I think that being aware ALL THE TIME could be key to this.

Hi everyone! It has been almost two weeks. I hope everyone got a chance to practice. The thread Dream Yoga Basic Skills: Lesson 1, has been updated. I have shared a few ways these skills will be useful in LDs, and the thread is now open to Q & A.

Hey there! Sorry for my absence, I've been very busy with school lately.
I have started practicing the diffuse vision. Luckily, I'm already able to focus and unfocus my sight. Focussing on objects on the rim of my visual field is still a bit tough for me though. So far, I have been able to focus on an object to the left and an object to the right simultaniously, but I have not been able to 'unsee' the object in the center of my vision while I was at it. Is that a problem? And also, while practicing this, should I focus on objects that are really on the edge of my field of vision, or can I use any object that is not in the center of it?
I will start practicing the other exercises as well, but I'm not sure if I will have time to post in the next few days

This course will be very spread out, so no need to rush. You do not "unsee" what is in the center, but do not let your mind focus on it like normal. Normally you kind of see what is to the sides and notice what is in front. This version is just the oppisite off that. The next step is combining both front, and sides. It will take practice.
Any object that is not in the central part of your feild of vision. Try setting up a colorful or interesting object on each side in advance.

Since my last post, I have trained my general awareness of the senses (my lucid rate went up again :D) and I have practiced diffuse vision. I think I have got the hang of it now. When using it, my field of vision seems to get bigger. Using it while riding my bycicle was simply amazing, I saw more and it was really vivid! However, objects on the sides of my field of vision are still more blurry than the ones in the centre, is that normal?

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Originally Posted by Spyguy

Since my last post, I have trained my general awareness of the senses (my lucid rate went up again :D) and I have practiced diffuse vision. I think I have got the hang of it now. When using it, my field of vision seems to get bigger. Using it while riding my bycicle was simply amazing, I saw more and it was really vivid! However, objects on the sides of my field of vision are still more blurry than the ones in the centre, is that normal?

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It is 100% normal and has a science based explaination. Rods and cones are two types of receptors. The middle portion of vision is highly specialized for reading and intricate detail. The sides of your vision are highly specialized for detecting any form of movement. You must use regular binocular vision to pick up truely refined vision, but it sucks for sports. Diffuse vision is a high level martial arts skill, and I assume it can be used in other activities. A guard will be much more effective with diffuse vision for instance.

Allright, I have done some more practice of the basic skills lately, and I am really starting to get good at them! I use the sensory awareness as often and as long as possible, so those get plenty of excercise time. Practicing the 'be here now' is not easy to keep up all the time, but I get the feeling that goes hand in hand with sensory awareness. It's hard to think of anything other than here and now when you focus on the sensory information which is always in the present.
I have not spent much time on mantra awareness, but I do not experience any difficulty focussing on one thought. Also, a lot of people say that it is impossible to stop your thoughts, but I can stop thinking (almost) any thought for a little while. Is that going to be any use in later lessons?
Lastly, I have been practicing visualization. I understand the steps and I'm making some progress with the colours, but I don't always know whether something I see is visualization or conceptualization. Is there any rule to tell the difference between the two?
Thanks to all the time spent on the basics, I now feel like I got a really strong foundation to practice the rest, so I am going to get started on creating a feeling of motion while continuing to practice the basics

You are making progres if you can even experience anything like seeing the shapes in your mind, conceptual or visual, but you are going for actually seeing them, like dream (HI) imagery.

The art of stopping thinking all together is used later. It is an advanced skill, and even after 25 years I can not maintain it solid. I can stop thinking for almost aminute, then have to supress some thought and back and forth. It is used to keep LDs on track and eliminate the random elements of an LD such as DCs and random events. Often you wiill want random fun things to happen, but it allows me to gain complete control over every aspect of the LD when I choose to.

Things are going quite smoothly :) I have been focussing on visualization. My visualization is more conceptualization-based than literally seeing things. The weird thing is that I can sometimes see them without really seeing them (I guess that doesn't really make sense). What I mean is that I see the blackness with all the coloured dots and things, but behind that, I can 'see' what I am visualising (sometimes in detail, sometimes with much less detail). I have a hard time actually forming visualizations with the dots and things which I can literally see. So I sometimes wonder whether I am doing it right or nit, but the thing that I am doing is going quite well, and has even helped me DEILD a couple of times.
I will soon begin with the next topics, such as energy flow simulation

I am sure you are doing it right. It takes years to develop, but you are onto something. Your seeing without seeing is leading to something. Good job.

There is something I would like to know regarding meditation. I meditate from time to time. If I would have to put my method into one of the three categories it would probably be 'mental discipline', but instead of attempting to stop all thoughts, I let them roam free without paying attention to them (in very much the same way as the 'free floating state of mind' which is often described regarding WILD). I like it because it gives trippy effects, like a feeling of free-falling, but does it have any other advantages that you know of?

One obvious advantage to that form of meditation is realizing that you aare not your thoughts or emotions, and that another part of you can passively observe them. Itt teachs a mental discipline in that while attempting to WILD a passive awareness work well, but if you direct your focus at what you are experiencing you often interupt the process. So, while in the end it would be good to master all sorts of different meditation skills, the one you are using now, is a good thing for LDing, and mental discipline in general.