Version 2: Feel an Intense World. I should be able to go over this one quickly as the concepts are the same as above. However this version will deal with the sense of touch. |
|
Version 1: Listening to a Noisy World. |
|
Version 2: Feel an Intense World. I should be able to go over this one quickly as the concepts are the same as above. However this version will deal with the sense of touch. |
|
Version 3: Mixing it up. |
|
Diffuse Vision: This skill is a little out of place at this point, as most of Lesson 2 is going to be about developing awareness of the mind. This is not just a physical talent, but requires learning a new mental state, so it could kind of fit here. However, I have already taught some of this in a few student workbooks, so I am posting it now. |
|
Wandering Mind Recall: |
|
Be Here Now: |
|
Mantra Awareness: |
|
Mudra Awareness: |
|
Hi everyone, Many of you have read this material before. If so, then you have a head start. Some of you are probably suprised I called the basic skills basic! I know this stuff can take months or more to get good at. Here is your first mega-challenge! Visualization training. Do not become frustrated if you seem to stall at even the very first steps involved. The intermediate skills take months of work. I hope everyone, whether posting in work books or just studying on the side, will be able to accept that this is an art and will take a long time to develop. It is an amazing skill, that really makes you start to question. |
|
There are many ways to go about this and I encourage you to come up with a few that suite you through experimentation. I will share my two favorites with you so you can get started. |
|
1) Visual. Lay in bed in the dark while fully awake and aware. Close your eyes. It is not really black is it? If you only see black, be patient, most people will start to see tiny specks of color or even blurs and dots of color. Perfectly normal at this point. I have only met one person who could not see some tiny flecks moving around. Step one: Just watch them for a couple nights. Become more aware that the colors are there. Step two: Try to cause one color to be more prevelant. Some colors will be more natural for you. If the most common random color is blue, start with blue, and so on. While watching the normal flecks, start thinking about things of that color. For blue maybe day dream about looking into the ocean. For red maybe day dream about looking into a glass of red wine. Watch the visual field as you do this. You should notice that the amount of that color will increase, maybe even appearing as whole sections of the visual field having that color of light shone on them. This may take awhile, or be very easy. Step three: Get to where you can increase the amount of two more colors, and try switching back and forth between them. Now more red, switch to visualizing blue and so on. Step four: Try to cover the entire visual field with mostly one color. Step five: Now picture common geometric shapes. For instance, two crossing lines, or a circle. At first any color randomly, then when you get that, the color you choose. Step six: Get to where you can create a shape of a chosen color on a back ground of a chosen color. After that make up more steps on your own. |
|
2) Tactile (touch) Lay in bed fully awake. Step one: Try to feel your fingers without touching them. You are recieving impulses from every part of your body, but filter out most of it. Get to where you can preceive each of the fingers of you right hand with out moving them. Step two: Slowly open and close your right hand. Really pay attention to how it feels. Try to experience it in fine detail. Now stop actually doing the movement. Try to remember how it felt. Go back and forth between doing the movement and trying to recreate the feeling of doing it. Step three: after you can actually clearly picture how the motion should feel, try visualizing each finger moving one at a time. Go back and forth between really moving it and trying to recreate the feeling of moving it. Step four: Now do the same thing, but move your whole arm and hand. A simple waving motion or something like that. Go back and forth between actually making the motion, and trying to recreate the feeling. After you get that far, make up other similar moves on your own. |
|
Intermediate Skills Lesson 2: Creating a Feeling of Motion |
|
Intermediate Skills Lesson 3: Energy Flow Simulation |
|
This is perhaps one of the most advanced of yogic activities. In my own opinion it is far harder than anything I have presented so far. It is often the stated goal of many schools of meditation. The truth is that even after decades of practice I have a long way to go to suppress all thought for more than a minute or so. |
|
The way it works requires understanding why random crazy things take place in your dreams. |
|
The actual lesson is pretty short; the path to achieving the goal is a many year journey, but you are all planning on lucid dreaming the rest of your life, aren’t you. If you get good at suppressing emerging thoughts, then you will be able to increase your control by many degrees. |
|
Step 1: Become familiar with how quickly thoughts form. Sit and watch the hands of a clock. You will do this only 15 seconds at a time. Try to avoid any thoughts by saying the number corresponding to the second hand in your head. It is unlikely that while awake you will make it to 15 without a thought forming. Work on this until you can get from 1 to 15 with only a single interrupting thought. You must stop thinking about whatever the thought is, as quickly as possible by focusing on the next number. You will notice that despite using your inner monologue to count, you still can form thoughts. In this part of the lesson I simply want you to experience how quickly you get interrupted by a random thought and increase the speed with which you can suppress that thought by focusing on the clock and the next number. You can move on as soon as you can only have 1 random thought in the 15 seconds and refocus on the clock before the 15 seconds expires. |
|
Step 2: Spend a couple minutes doing the “Be here now” meditation. It is described in an earlier lesson. Simply interrupt any random thought that does not apply to things you are experiencing with your sensory awareness, by using your internal voice to narrate what you are seeing or experiencing. If you start to think about your job, then force your mind into describing or commenting on something taking place at the moment. |
|
Do steps 3-5 in a meditation state or while falling asleep, until you have developed confidence, then try them while external stimuli is happening (such as riding the bus.) |
|
Meditation is a term for a broad range of practices that develop mental skills and personal awareness. Here are three examples of types of meditations and how they can help you on your lucid dreaming path. |
|
Sensory Awareness Meditations: They are any mental practices were you try to stop the mind form thinking about things that are not taking place in the present moment, and instead truly feel and experience in various senses. By closing your eyes and paying close attention, you come to realize that your brain has been ignoring most of the world around you. The benefit to LDing is that you become keenly aware of how being awake truly feels, and you will then notice when any subtle thing is not right in a dream, thus increasing the effect of a reality check. Also, when in an LD you will have increased the amount of detail your brain can process, which leads to more vivid and life like dreams. |
|
Visualization Meditations: This type of mental exercise involves developing the portion of your brain that is used in reproducing a real life sense in a dream or in meditation. The most straight forward type is called a guided meditation. In these a narrator describes a basic scene and helps you relax and imagine the scene. This is very effective at training the imagination and can lead to truly seeing the scenes described. More advanced visualization meditations involve learning to actively harness the ability to recreate sensory stimuli by intent. Visualization meditations are very useful in LDing as a means of mastering dream control and changing the scene into one of your creation. They are also very useful in WILD attempts, as visualizing can take the place of thinking, to keep your mind aware, but not over stimulate your waking mind. |
|
Mental Discipline Meditations: In this type of meditation you learn to keep the mind from wandering. The type of discipline worked on can vary from trying to only think about a single subject or word, to trying to avoid thinking at all. The benefit to LDing is the ability to eliminate the random aspects of your dream, such as annoying DCs and events you did not consciously choose to create. It is also very important in WILD attempts, as you will be able to stay aware, but avoid thinking about the stresses of your daily life. |
|
This is going to be a very short lesson. The idea is simple, but the practice is going to be more than some of you will be willing to endure. It is the kind of thing most Yogi will master in the first few years. |
|
Bookmarks