SpreadLearner0's Workbook

A number of weeks ago I added 20 minutes of silent lotus sitting to me daily routine, and later added the beginner's listening excercises. Since that time my posture in this position has become relaxing, and I've begun work on visualization, diffuse vision, and creating motion.

A friend of mine lent me a Chakra meditation book as well, and I've found that the Yantra meditations have helped me to see things on a sort of 'screen' between simple imagination and light stimulation. The most startling experiences I've had associated with this screen have taken place at times that I am attempting to visualize while not meditating (since the only thing I visualize while meditating is the yantra).

One such incident took place while I was sitting on a chair in the bathroom on a break at work. I had my feet propped up onto the stool as I sat with my eyes closed and attempted to watch the flecks of color in my eyelids (a practice I've made sluggish progress with) after a period of time sitting this way, I suddenly noticed that I was looking at my feet before me, as well as having a sort of vague impression of the rest of the room around me. It's hard to describe the sense that I was not in fact seeing images, but sort of feeling the room and my feet as a sort of sonar etch-a-sketch.

Unfortunately, the shock of realizing what is happening generally wakes me up and short-circuits the process of events like this at my point of progression, but it is quite encouraging!

Diffuse vision is another effect that is rapidly developing. I have several room-mates who were alternating marathon Skyrim play in my living room a few weeks ago, so I used the opportunity to stare at the wall directly left of the TV for several hours at a time. I realize that this is the goal of the practice, not the start, but I'm so familiar with the format and look of Skyrim that it was easier to watch without watching than it would be seeing something entirely new and constantly changing.

These sits were usually not too interesting, and wore me down mentally after a while, but a day or two later, I was smoking a cigarette on my porch and staring into the neighbors yard vacantly, when suddenly in the center of my field of vision, objects began to contract and expand in a telescope-ish kind of way. Now, when I sit in my room and stare at my wall I can easily set the whole room breathing after a minute or two, and can experience a sense of certain contour lines in my peripherals being set alight from one end to the next, then remaining particularly clear for a time before fading.

I have yet to awake fully in a dream, but my dreams continue to be vivid, easier to remember, and seem to now come with a particular feel that creates a sense that I'm in the same dream every night, or perhaps the same place in every dream.

I'll post more about what I see as I pass more milestones!

I think I've just discovered a function of diffuse vision in learning to visualize! Autostereogram illusions work by having the viewer relax binocular vision so that an artificial depth is perceived by a repeated pattern entering the focus of this individuals awareness of his field of vision.

I've found my experiences with diffuse vision to be similar, as I said in my earlier post I get the sense of zooming in and out, or seeing a pattern 'light' up, and the longer I've repeated this I find that when I am trying to visualize, I'm less and less likely to have eye movement, and am more likely to create a second artificial 'space' awareness. I can't hold on to this sensation for long periods of time yet, but it's begun to pop into my head in a diluted form when I'm simply imagining something throughout the day.

Also, at the end of a dream the other night as I began to wake up, this feeling of space allowed me to visualize a winding road from zenith perspective. It was as if I were zooming in on it briefly, then I was looking at grass at my feet, then I woke up because I got excited when I realized I was either awake and visualizing or asleep and gaining lucidity.

Hopefully, familiarizing myself with this feeling will help me recognize its similarities to dream sensations in general and aid in my ability to attain lucidity in the future.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpreadLearner0

I think I've just discovered a function of diffuse vision in learning to visualize! Autostereogram illusions work by having the viewer relax binocular vision so that an artificial depth is perceived by a repeated pattern entering the focus of this individuals awareness of his field of vision.

I've found my experiences with diffuse vision to be similar, as I said in my earlier post I get the sense of zooming in and out, or seeing a pattern 'light' up, and the longer I've repeated this I find that when I am trying to visualize, I'm less and less likely to have eye movement, and am more likely to create a second artificial 'space' awareness. I can't hold on to this sensation for long periods of time yet, but it's begun to pop into my head in a diluted form when I'm simply imagining something throughout the day.

Also, at the end of a dream the other night as I began to wake up, this feeling of space allowed me to visualize a winding road from zenith perspective. It was as if I were zooming in on it briefly, then I was looking at grass at my feet, then I woke up because I got excited when I realized I was either awake and visualizing or asleep and gaining lucidity.

Hopefully, familiarizing myself with this feeling will help me recognize its similarities to dream sensations in general and aid in my ability to attain lucidity in the future.

---

Great stuff here. You sound like your brain has already got some of the wiring this class is intended to develop. Keep in mind the idea of challenging your brain to stimulate adaptation. You will develop new ways of preceiving.

I may only respond a couple times a month, but the course is designed to be large changes in preception over a year or even much longer.

Have fun, keep this stuff up and you will get fully lucid soon.

Thank you for your encouragement and guidance Sivason! It means more than you may realize.

Since the time I last posted I have still not attained lucidity, however, my reality checks are becoming more spontaneous in dreams, and I've been having more experiences where I do things such as talk about lucid dreaming to other dream characters, mildly defy physics without feeling like its beyond my capabilities or abnormal, and in one instance I was evidently dreaming while in a dream.

I don't think I've made mention of it, but I, like most if not everyone who remembers dreams almost every night occasionally have the infamous "teeth falling out dream". This reccurence was one of my original inspirations to learn to lucid dream, and I have some early memories of my mother complaining about having these types of dreams when I was a kid.

What I've noticed about them is they usually begin when I am fully aware of my body while in a dream, which is not to say I'm aware of my physical body, but that my dream body is a very convincing replica of my own, possessing all five senses. I usually begin to feel as if I am tonguing the inside of of my mouth in the dream, and one of my teeth with start to feel loose, just like when I lost teeth as a kid. I then become worried and start to try not to move anything in my mouth to avoid knocking it out, but without fail it will eventually dislodge.

Initially these dreams were for all intents and purposes nightmares, from which I would awake feeling relieved to have my chompers intact. Since I've been practicing the techniques in this course they've changed to opportunities to wake up. I've made a strong mental connection between losing teeth and dreaming, such that now when this happens I generally begin talking to a dream character about it, usually mentioning something like "let's see if I'm dreaming!" and I then look at the tooth in my hand, feel the inside of my mouth where it used to be etc.

The teeth never look like they should, usually having some abnormally crystalline or geometric qualities, and sometimes there is even another tooth growing into the spot where one was lost. For whatever reason my reality checks tend to fail in these situations, probably because unconsciously I think that the people around me are the best way to find out if I'm dreaming.

A week or two ago however, I began to start feeling pressure (while awake) right where my nasal ridge meets the tip of my nose while I was at work. I couldn't explain this phenomenon, it was nothing like sinus pressure, and there were no blemishes developing or anything of the sort, until one day I realized that I was, in fact, perpetually looking at that spot on my nose.

Once I was aware of that fact, the pressure immediately shifted to my forehead between my eyes. I have read about some meditations centered around intentionally seeing your nose to get a sense of the 'space element', or 'second-space' as I've called it so I think this has been a natural symptom of practicing diffuse vision. Anyhow I figured that trying to see my nose in a dream would be a good reality check. However, I found that the last time I lost a tooth, I did indeed remember to check for my nose to see if I was dreaming after I showed a wonky looking tooth to my mom and mentioned to her that I might be dreaming, but doing so seemed to only make me dual-aware of the inside of my eyelids in the physical body and what I was looking at in the dream. I still just can't quite get to the point where I can apply my waking logic fully to the dream, I just seem to be waking myself up.

Overall I consider these developments progress, but I think I need to put a lot more effort into finding a reality check that I can remember to do and will really click with my structuring consciousness in addition to my impressionistic consciousness.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpreadLearner0

Thank you for your encouragement and guidance Sivason! It means more than you may realize.

Since the time I last posted I have still not attained lucidity, however, my reality checks are becoming more spontaneous in dreams, and I've been having more experiences where I do things such as talk about lucid dreaming to other dream characters, mildly defy physics without feeling like its beyond my capabilities or abnormal, and in one instance I was evidently dreaming while in a dream.

I don't think I've made mention of it, but I, like most if not everyone who remembers dreams almost every night occasionally have the infamous "teeth falling out dream". This reccurence was one of my original inspirations to learn to lucid dream, and I have some early memories of my mother complaining about having these types of dreams when I was a kid.

What I've noticed about them is they usually begin when I am fully aware of my body while in a dream, which is not to say I'm aware of my physical body, but that my dream body is a very convincing replica of my own, possessing all five senses. I usually begin to feel as if I am tonguing the inside of of my mouth in the dream, and one of my teeth with start to feel loose, just like when I lost teeth as a kid. I then become worried and start to try not to move anything in my mouth to avoid knocking it out, but without fail it will eventually dislodge.

Initially these dreams were for all intents and purposes nightmares, from which I would awake feeling relieved to have my chompers intact. Since I've been practicing the techniques in this course they've changed to opportunities to wake up. I've made a strong mental connection between losing teeth and dreaming, such that now when this happens I generally begin talking to a dream character about it, usually mentioning something like "let's see if I'm dreaming!" and I then look at the tooth in my hand, feel the inside of my mouth where it used to be etc.

The teeth never look like they should, usually having some abnormally crystalline or geometric qualities, and sometimes there is even another tooth growing into the spot where one was lost. For whatever reason my reality checks tend to fail in these situations, probably because unconsciously I think that the people around me are the best way to find out if I'm dreaming.

A week or two ago however, I began to start feeling pressure (while awake) right where my nasal ridge meets the tip of my nose while I was at work. I couldn't explain this phenomenon, it was nothing like sinus pressure, and there were no blemishes developing or anything of the sort, until one day I realized that I was, in fact, perpetually looking at that spot on my nose.

Once I was aware of that fact, the pressure immediately shifted to my forehead between my eyes. I have read about some meditations centered around intentionally seeing your nose to get a sense of the 'space element', or 'second-space' as I've called it so I think this has been a natural symptom of practicing diffuse vision. Anyhow I figured that trying to see my nose in a dream would be a good reality check. However, I found that the last time I lost a tooth, I did indeed remember to check for my nose to see if I was dreaming after I showed a wonky looking tooth to my mom and mentioned to her that I might be dreaming, but doing so seemed to only make me dual-aware of the inside of my eyelids in the physical body and what I was looking at in the dream. I still just can't quite get to the point where I can apply my waking logic fully to the dream, I just seem to be waking myself up.

Overall I consider these developments progress, but I think I need to put a lot more effort into finding a reality check that I can remember to do and will really click with my structuring consciousness in addition to my impressionistic consciousness.

---

This is really good progress so well done for that! :goodjob:

Keep at it, you can only get closer to getting lucid and when you do, it's so worth it! Just keep up those RCs and you will get there in no time, also, search up ADA (All day Awarness) it could e really good for you; http://www.dreamviews.com/induction-...kingyoshi.html That is a really good tutorial made by Yoshi, if your interested.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Phased

This is really good progress so well done for that! :goodjob:

Keep at it, you can only get closer to getting lucid and when you do, it's so worth it! Just keep up those RCs and you will get there in no time, also, search up ADA (All day Awarness) it could e really good for you; http://www.dreamviews.com/induction-...kingyoshi.html That is a really good tutorial made by Yoshi, if your interested.

---

ADA is helping me write dream journals a lot better. It seems that Dream signs are appearing more frequently, and I do question them, but I usually end up distracted by something else in the dream shortly after. I also seem to have a better memory of waking life in my dreams, such as expecting certain quantities of money to be on my person based on what was in my pocket when I was last awake, and dreaming about places that look like the last place I was awake in.

The most startling dream sign that failed to grant me lucidity was two nights ago, I was speaking to a DC that was supposed to be my land lady, and during the conversation I noticed she suddenly had four eyes. I thought that she should rather have three, and took a closer look. It then looked like I was just seeing double, like my eyes were unfocused, and I moved on to something else in the dream.

I think that this will be a most promising technique, and I've been mentally retracing my steps in waking life as often as possible, as well as looking for sensory input that I haven't been conscious of during these memory sessions.

Thank you for the link Phased!

This post will differ from my last in that it is going to be a few points of interest from dreams I've had recently in which I have again been pointed further in the direction of lucidity, while still not quite 'getting there' as it were.

I've been complimenting my ADA with period checks in which I review the day as far back as I can to see the progression leading to the present moment. After only a few days of practicing this, I had a dream in which I was walking downtown where I live, and arrived in front of my dad's office. I was eating a box of frozen skittles in the dream, when I suddenly realized I could not remember at all how I had arrived where I was that moment. Afterward I was again swept away by the bright and vivid events that followed, all of which are obvious signs of a dream to me while awake, but are merely cause for captivation in the dream at this point. The first sign being that the skittles were frozen despite being so far from my home and being on foot, followed by a curious looking moon with a different face on its surface than normal. It had very dark and bold contours forming a much more definitive face, and there was a strange bulge on the upper left side of the disc that I pointed out to my father as I stared at it. While I was trying to figure out why the moon was so different, and what the structure could be, a street light suddenly exploded violently off to my right, waking me instantly.

In another dream, I was at a friends house, and I saw his cat walking with a limp. I spoke to it as I often speak to animals, saying "aw, kitty, did you hurt your leg?" at which point she responded "yes". "You can understand me!?" I asked. "of course" she said, "but its not me..." She spoke playfully, and had a silent sort of laugh in her voice. Also, as her mouth moved there was a clear disconnect between its frequency and the words being said, which I took note of while dreaming. It was like she was being poorly dubbed. I leaned in close and looked her right in the eyes and said, "I know... it's me" not really thinking about what that meant fully. Next I remember feeling embarrassed, as if I were being watched and might be thought crazy for talking to a cat. I rejoined my human friends on the couch and said "I think I just projected... never mind" the finishing thought that I stopped myself from speaking in the dream was "...my voice through the cat." but I stopped myself because I knew it was crazy, and then woke up.

The dream events above represent precedents in my dream life more than new perspectives achieved, another from a recent dream was watching cars drive backwards while I waited to cross a street, which I immediately wondered about in the dream, but did not make the jump to "I'm dreaming", and last night I had an even more realistic dream in which the dream took place in real world time, at my real world setting. I awoke in my bed that I knew I was sleeping in, and looked around the room, I saw shadows moving about on my walls and thought, "I can see the shadow people that my brother saw when we were kids" something I never experienced as a boy, but I hear about from many individuals. I tried to turn on my lamp, and the switch did not operate on it, or any other light in my room. I felt a bit panicky, and experienced a gasping sensation that happens occasionally in my more anxious states which I have come to recognize as being aware of my physical body's breathing. I left my room and went downstairs to sleep on the couch because I was too freaked out. I turned on the den's analog overhead lights to a low setting and laid down on the couch. "I forgot a blanket" I think and settle for just a pillow that I place beneath my head as I lay down to go back to sleep, at which point I opened my eyes, back in my room.

Again, these events mark some interesting experiences that I haven't had before that are definitely catching my attention and are just begging me to make the next step, but I'm just not quite there. I always remember dreams now, however, and they have been dazzling me more and more with levels of creativity and vividity I didn't think possible. My conclusion is that my next step is to fully comprehend that the dream is not separate from myself, or acting on me, such that I can start to externally manipulate them. I have as such changed my reality checks from testing the reality of waking life to rather reinforce to myself that I am dreaming instead of "am I dreaming?".

Also, I got a local book shop to order me a copy of the Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep. It has been a good read, and a helpful supplement, I actually had found out about the book before this class, so I'm glad I'm finally getting to read it.

Keep up the dreaming!

Last night I had a really stunning experience that gave me a slight taste of external manipulations in a dream. At the end of it, I was swimming in a big, open bay as a little girl with a weird hairline. I swam under the water and found my shapeshifting father who took the form of a pink, spotted fish of about three or four feet in length.

I floated on the surface of the water and pet him while I spoke to him, and the whole scene was incredibly bright and vibrant. Every time I turned my head to look some place else around me, the leaves of trees, clouds in the skies, formations of birds flying, and the sun etc. would realign themselves to form large scene-encompassing faces.

It was quite an experience, I wasn't consciously controlling it, but it was at least a direct experience of the world around me changing itself in real time (which at least resembles the description of dream telekinesis on this site: "let the object lift itself through the dream, don't exert force on it".

Exciting news! Last night I achieved lucidity for a short amount of time during a dream. I'm kind of surprised that I can't remember much of what was happening before I 'woke up' and what happened after a short moment of clarity, but my hypothesis is that it took some effort of will to keep the dream intact.

I distinctly remember looking at the dream characters around me and yelling, "this is a dream!" at which point things started to go black and I felt a rush of excitement accompanied by a strange sensation that I can only compare to getting chills in your spine when listening to music, but the feeling was localized around the crown of my head instead of my spine. I consciously calmed myself down and refocused on the dream, and enjoyed a brief stint of levitating and flying before the dream carried me off and I forgot what had happened until morning.

I'm very thrilled that my experiences with this site have helped lead me to this point. I suppose my next step is to work on stabilization.

Lucid again this morning for a short time! I woke up in the morning and fell back asleep shortly after, my girlfriend thinks it's hilarious when I twitch in my sleep, and as I was fading into a dream I ran up to a ball on the ground to kick it, causing her to laugh at a twitch in my leg in real life and making me realize I was dreaming. I flew around through my parents church a bit, and remembered the description of making your body feel like it was whirling around quickly to transform and teleport and promptly gave it a try. It was as if my field of vision was blurred out by waves of heat, and it felt kind of like being caught in a strong wave, swirling all around and inside me. I briefly felt like my hand was becoming a dog's paw, but decided to try teleporting instead - which was much harder. I was able to keep up the same sensation of whirling, but it started to make my visualization field melt, and my perspective to spin around rapidly without ever changing the position of my body.

Again the lucidity didn't last throughout my sleep, but it is still very cool that it happened again so soon after my last experience. Both times I was surprised because I wasn't strongly intending to get lucid on either night. I'm quite excited that I didn't have nearly as hard of a time struggling not to wake up this time!

WOOHOO!!!! We have another lucid dreamer! AWESOME!!! Here is to a life time full of LD adventures!:cheers:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sivason

WOOHOO!!!! We have another lucid dreamer! AWESOME!!! Here is to a life time full of LD adventures!:cheers:

---

Thanks, Sivason!

I've been a bit busy lately and haven't been giving quite as much attention to developing Ld'ing much lately, I have had a modicum of success with WILD'ing recently, but I find the experience has been limited to becoming aware of a "dream body" so far, in that I can't seem to create a dream in which to participate in, but I can lose focus of my senses and start to 'feel' some sensory input that isn't there. One such instance was essentially feeling like I was lying on my knees / stomach instead of how my waking body was positioned, which was flat on my back.

I am also happy to report that I had some success with an optical illusion exercise that I've been trying occasionally for years, in which I was able to perceive a ceiling fan spinning in the opposite direction with diffuse vision. It makes the fan appear to be spinning faster in addition to being in reverse, and it's hard to keep it going that way for long. The idea was inspired by the illusions of a car's wheels spinning backwards on film and those of a rotating dancer that you can trick yourself into seeing spinning in either direction.