PKJacker's Journey

Since I'm not in that quiet of an environment, I'll be starting with version 2 of lesson 1.

Well started the feeling stuff

Noticed that I could not feel the tops of my feet at first, then noticed that I had a feeling like there was a bug crawling on my big left toe

I then had a tingling feeling on both tops of my feet

Then lost concentration

Noticed my ankles and everything I already noticed before

Lost focus and had mini dream about switching brains

Discovered the front part off where your foot bends into your leg, the arch part

Noticed cheeks and tip of nose

Faded out after trying to focus on my whole body and fell asleep.

Second day of doing version 2
Lying down in my bed like last time

Since I did this yesterday I already feel all the doors I discovered yesterday

Noticed that I didn't notice my upper neck before

Felt both of my legs up to my stomach and noticed that my stomach hurt when I focused on it, also lower back seems to be sore

Went up to my shoulders and down my arms and noticed that I could give my arms a fuzzy feeling

I made the fuzzy feeling alternate between arms and did that and made it also alternate my legs as well

The feeling made my feel sleepy

Focused the feeling into fingertips of one hand

Then focused it into both hands

Took a while but also focus the feeling to include my palms as well, it feels slightly stronger than when I did my whole arm

Had the focus on my whole hand now, maintained the fuzzy feeling and had a mini lucid while doing this mediation, did this for 20 minutes and now will sleep

Well I did lesson 1 & 2 of the intermediate skills today and yesterday.

Lesson 1
Yesterday:
I did step 3 of part 1 for a bit and it was pretty damn hard honestly, I could get blue and I could get red, but once I had red in my vision is was really hard to get blue again. I then was able to relax and get a really really blue color to come up, but then I was only able to get very little, (then when I started focusing all of my attention on it I got kind of sidetracked into a thought that I was focusing a lot of other minds on it as well that were all set on having me achieve a strong blue, it reminded me a bit of Legion.)

Today:
I did step 3 again but this time I was able to notice that when I opened my eyes the red and blue colors would tint my world a bit, which was pretty cool, I wasn't able to get as strong of a blue as before, a reason for this could be that I wasn't relaxed enough since this time I was just doing it in church instead of lying down like yesterday.


Lesson 2
I was having quite a bit of fun with this, but I wasn't doing exactly what you were suggesting and instead just getting the sensation of rotating or falling.

Yesterday:
Falling was interesting but it makes me realize that I need to do that immunity to shock stuff again since I kept getting a short breath when I was inducing the falling forward feeling, and the shortness of breath kept making me lose focus so I couldn't continue the feeling and see exactly how far I could go with it. First I was just doing it with my hands folded in my lap while sitting in a chair, this was a lot easier to get the falling forward feeling in then when I was laying down later. An interesting thing about this pose though is I don't really know if my head was moving in the direction I wanted to feel the falling motion or not since it felt pretty much the same way, but if I was moving it then I wasn't moving it enough to really notice a difference.

About the immunity to shock, I think you just have to keep practicing it or else it wears off, since I definitely know that at one point I was able to play a game completely calm while I could feel the adrenaline rushing through me (it was a pretty intense moment) when normally my hands would be shaking and I'd pretty much not be able to think clearly.

Falling backwards was harder then falling forwards, and just all of the sudden falling forward was harder then if I did a gradual face first fall like the one you would experience if you were on a roller coaster. With both methods I still would get the shortness of breath, but the roller coaster method was defiantly able to feel more real then the other one.

Today:
I did the falling forwards and about same story, except it was harder to concentrate, probably since I was in church. I also did rotating clockwise spinning towards my right arm, and then counter clockwise towards my left, so basically 2 rolls and then I did 2 yaw movements after that.

An interesting thing about the Yaw movement was before when I did this movement a while ago I was able to rotate the visual snow as well, and when I rotated it back I was able to return to the same pallet I was working on earlier.

Intermediate Skills Lesson #1
I have been working on that visualization training and found that it becomes easier to visualize the more tired you are (or high you are)

First the high example, smoked a little bit of marijuana (less then .1g) then went on a bus ride where I focused on expanding the range of colors I was able to get, first I got pink, then green, then yellow, all of it was so easy, I just thought of what color I wanted and there it was with the brightness I expected it to be.

Then I was staying up later then usual, staying up till 3 when I usually sleep at midnight and I closed my eyes and thought it would be fun to try to visualize space ships, well what happened was some star wars TIE fighters came out of this random trap door the appeared in the floor then flew away. They weren't well colored, just mostly purple since it's the easiest color I could make as well as when I make most of the visualizations coming out of dreams I assume them to be purple and black spotted so that probably tied heavily into that event as well.


I don't really think that it is crucial to really do this while fully awake, but I am able to make lines very easily by overlaying a bunch of lines that go on forever on one spot, then cutting away the sides to make something that looks more like a white tear in my vision then anything else. And I can make triangles and squares kind of by just making that shape in my head then pasting it onto my vision almost, only problem is it is really tough for me to hold it in my head, so I have to keep making the shape over and over again, with varying sizes instead of just holding the first size in it's place.


Intermediate Skills Lesson #2
For creating motion I haven't really found a good use for it in regular sleeping situations, but in class or in other situations where I don't feel like paying attention I have been just creating the motion of moving my fingers on a keyboard and then I end up going into a dream that has me typing on a keyboard.
Only problem with this is that I cannot hold on to the dream too well, I think it is partly the fact that I'm not in SP (I'm not usually but when lying down at night you don't pay as much attention to slight movements) so I sometimes move my fingers in real life by accident, and also the fact that I am usually quite excited when I enter the state.

Guess I need to start doing cold showers and ice again for the excitement.

An easier way for me is to just play a song in my head and wait for when the song becomes nice, crisp, and clear, so that I know that I passed into a dream and since it doesn't involve movement it's easier to not get any jolts, but the excitement is still there to be annoying.



Advanced Skill #1: Suppressing Emerging Thoughts

Well I thought I might as well try the first part with the 15 seconds since it seemed like something doable on the first try, and it gave me a good question, what exactly qualifies as thought?

You mention thoughts as being actual words, but during the exercise I didn't have any wordy thoughts come into my mind, and I went on for another minute like that just to see if I could and I did, no words came into my head except for the seconds that I counted off.

But then I did switch my attention while counting to the sound of the TV downstairs, or my beating heart, so maybe that change in focus could count as a thought?


Be Here Now:
I've been doing this quite a bit and one thing I noticed is that I do a horrible job remembering anything unless I give in and think about how I shouldn't have thought about that thought.

Advanced Skill #1: Suppressing Emerging Thoughts.


So I skipped right to step 5.

Noticed that the thing that I would start getting tripped up on is thinking if I should have thought something. Also had trouble with the fact that I was mimicking the sound of my breathing in my head, barely noticed it except for the fact that it was louder then my actual breathing.

Doing it with eyes closed makes it much harder.
Trying to really find where the emerging thoughts come from.

Well I did 3 WILDs all aimed at trying to figure out where do the thoughts form and I did a pretty bad job judging from the fact that all the dreams started with only clouds and a sidewalk, then ended in me finding sivason in my dream, shooting giraffes for achievements, and having a temple built for me since I was a god.

For my next WILD I will try to keep a small island clear of everything and try to stop things from forming

Advanced Skill #1: Suppressing Emerging Thoughts.
Ok so I had some spare time so I did a WILD in the middle of the day.

This time it went horrible from the start, first I was at conflict about whether I was going to do a nightmare and play around in that or do the island idea.

When I get into the dream I went to make the island and when I was in the ocean there were many others swimming as well in the one area that I was going to make the island so I had to have sharks kill them and when I created what I thought was going to be just a sandy beach, there were graves all over.

Graves quickly were replaced with a giant house and garden, met a bee, bee became a monster bee and I woke up when I started losing the dream in a hospital environment.



So on the good side I'm getting really good examples of why this skill is a useful one to have, but on the bad side so far I am not really any closer to achieving this goal.

Advanced Skill #1: Suppressing Emerging Thoughts

So minor update here.

I started to get a clue about when I am starting to form random thoughts, I did not figure it out through lucid dreaming, instead just spent everyday outside watering plants and trying to only think about relevant things.

Still haven't really gotten around to suppressing them though.

good work so far. not all thoughts come as words inside, but those are the easiest to detect. If you can suppress them, then move on to suppressing mental pictures and other subtle distractions your mind creates.

Intermediate Skills Lesson #1


Well I started doing this again in order to make a dot to try to hold in my vision for as long as possible.

First I noticed it's easier to start it by using you fingers to draw the shape, or in this case make a dot then it is to try without your hands. This of course requires you to have your eyes open but that's not really a problem if the room is dark enough.

Second I noticed that once I made the dot it would keep getting distorted, first by having smaller dots accenting it, then it became the pupil of an eye, and my eye kept twitching to look at it.
To get rid of the twitching I tried looking at my whole vision (eyes closed) so that I wouldn't try to shift to that one unstable spot. When I first unfocused I made the mistake of testing the movement of my eyes on a face, which was a frightening face, then I got the dot but it reminded me of the dots in the pupils of Freddy from the game Five Nights At Freddys when he stares into the camera.

After I got that connection something interesting happened, first it was hard to not think of it, and the face of Freddy became clearer and clearer to the point that I could count teeth in the smile.


So from this little adventure I learned that fear is very good at making you focus, and this exercise is mostly based on how focused you are in order to get more defined shapes.

I haven't stopped practicing, just haven't really felt the need to update.
Now I'm trying to work on increasing my body temperature though so I don't get as cold outside. I heard of people imagining that their hands is in a hot liquid to increase their temperature, but I think I need more focus and more of an idea of what exactly I want.

To get more of an idea I'm going to try to heat my real body from inside a lucid dream and hopefully get the feeling down.

I tried doing a lucid dream today but for some reason when I took a nap it was only just bits of mental chatter, and when I did enter a dream it wasn't stable enough to make into a full one.

I'm assuming I got too much sleep today for it to work, but since I don't have any tests today I can limit my sleep and not worry about consequences.

Wasn't able to really focus today, mind just felt tired, couldn't even do work in class.

Could be I wasn't able to push myself past the fact that I only got 6 hours of sleep, could be that I was more tired since it was raining all day today.

Test tomorrow so I'm not going to deprive myself of sleep so I can make sure I do well.

Last night for a challenge I held my breathe in the elevator going down. I held it for about 15 seconds when I got the urge to breathe, but I was able to quickly turn off that feeling completely, I only held it for a couple seconds more since I never did that before and was concerned about holding it too long and was pretty surprised that that happened.

This might mean I'm getting a little closer to my goal of being able to warm up my body more, or it could be a little bit of a set back since I might turn off my feeling of the cold and not know how cold my body really is.

Slept only 5 and a half hours today, I felt like there was more clarity then when I sleep more hours.

When I went to sleep in the afternoon I was pretty aware, but not aware enough yet to be able to realize it was a lucid dream, instead I just thought it was a continuation of the day.


A friend gave me some advice on the subject that I am still practicing.
"
Tried that and it's hard. Start by trying to make your back or spine shiver, imagine goose bumps and get that happening then try to put that sort of thought into the area you want to heat up. Imagine all the cells in your body getting active and just concentrate on a small patch. Hands have lots of nerves so put thought there or in your foot. It's a very good way to get a WILD going and works well.
"

I tried focusing on my spine a couple times already, it is getting easier but so far all I've been getting is a tingly feeling, and I haven't been able to focus on the entire spine at one time so far.

Today I was walking in the rain in only a t shirt and I tried the warmth thing, I didn't get it to have goose bumps, but I kind of thought why even start with the spine when my arms are the cold part.

So I focused on giving my arms warmth for a bit thinking I had no success until I felt hot air carried by the wind.

That gave me the idea to use that level of heat as a bench mark to where I should be when creating heat.
Then another breeze came and I realized I was the one creating the illusion that it was hot wind, and the rain was also warm against my skin instead of cold.

I had a fear that it was all an illusion that I was warm and that I actually was still just as cold, but I think I don't need to worry about that.

Taking a break from the generating heat thing due to health problems (may or may not be related) :lol:

Still not practicing generating resistance to the cold due to health problems, but I found something interesting that I'd like to pretty much make a note of:

I switched into a different mindset today.
(Pretty much copy and pasted from a chat)

I was just sitting in my friend's room today, and all of the sudden felt like I really needed to smoke weed, like I really really needed it for my imagination and visualization to be on track. I kind of thought maybe that's why I haven't been able to dream that well, because I haven't smoked in a while.
Then probably about 15 minutes later I just got a very sudden clarity in sight and thought, I have basically entered a different state of mind and it feels really nice.

I used to be in it during the beginning of college, then lost it and have been trying for it for a while now, it basically feels like my vision has been expanded so that I can see more, but hallucinations are a lot more prevalent.
Also I feel a lot more in the moment.
I think what happened is I'm having less thought then usual, cause earlier I was looking at horror pictures to try to fill up my mind with visualizations.
I quite like this state though now that I'm in it.

It's kind of funny how I didn't want to give up the previous mindset, it reminds me of a thought I had that every day I woke up my past me died, it was like that current mindset was realizing its demise and wanted to stay alive.

I'm curious what kind of changes I'll be noticing tomorrow from my past behavior in the last mindset

PS: I feel like the mindset I am in currently is very similar to the one I have when I am skiing, or getting ready to ski.

Being able to see Freddy's face is a good sign that you can visualize even if it is not what you intended to see. Clearly you inner world is not stuck on black

You are correct that yogi can feel warm in cold settings. I can (with the correct preparation) walk bare chested through a snow storm with little discomfort. I one time walked out side in shorts and stood in a slush puddle and took a large snow ball and rubbed it on my chest. It melted rapidly and I feel no discomfort. However, as you mention health conditions, I will mention that you do suffer from exposure doing this. You may feel warm, but your body is expending great amounts of its internal heat to keep up. It is more of a mid set/ self delusion thing than some magical trick. You are still at danger of getting too cold eventually.

The way I do this is by taking the sensory stimuli of cold and using visualization I trick my brain into believing I am feeling warmth. I mean that I use the actual strong stimuli that my body is experiencing (cold) and change my interpretation of it to heat. Start with a jacket on and feel the stimuli of cold. Convince your mind the stimuli is because you are uncomfortably warm. Tell your mind it only make sense to relieve this discomfort by shedding clothing. When you are topless visualize a sense of relief that you now are not to hot and have reached a very intense pleasant level of warmth, like you may feel in the summer at the beach.

It takes serious development of the visualization center and other disciplines to achieve this, but with time (a year or more) it should not be very challenging. Remember that you are still going to loose heat fast.

Last night I was able to control my heat in a way hat didn't go to instantly sweating from too much heat like previous tries.

I was lying in bed for at least 5 minutes before doing it so I don't think I can use it while walking around quite yet since I won't have the same mindset.

I visualized a fire demon going inside my body and heating up my skin like how fire heats up a pot, and it gave me a feeling of a glowing warmth. Was able to heat up my entire body this way and it felt quite nice.

I notice that I am being held back from being immersed in my visualizations because I am always trying to plan ahead when making them, so I'll end up kind of doing a second of the "now" part, then skip forward to visualize what I want to happen in the next second, then go back to the "now" again.

Going to try to break that habit in a couple of ways.

-I will try to free draw with no end goal in mind, and will try to not plan ahead with my drawing either. I don't know how effective this will be as I haven't tried it.

-Other way I have planned is just to simply visualize fast enough that I don't try to plan ahead

A friend told me that lucid dreaming doesn't happen from a want, but a need, and I find that really useful advice as to how to practice attempting to lucid dream.

Quote:

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I notice that I am being held back from being immersed in my visualizations because I am always trying to plan ahead when making them, so I'll end up kind of doing a second of the "now" part, then skip forward to visualize what I want to happen in the next second, then go back to the "now" again.

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I still have this problem, it's like my mind doesn't like just having things flow, it always needs to stop and analyze what was just happening. Still trying to work on it, but it's taking a lot more to move past then I initially thought.