Thread: Anyone like to meditate before bed for lucids?

Originally Posted by stonedreams

Sorry misunderstanding haha.

Hahaha no problem! It happens to the best of us

I think he means the site that you are learning how to meditate from.

In that case it is Aro - Learn Buddhist meditation

Sorry for the misunderstanding

Originally Posted by stonedreams

I disagree with you Suratana, you still need a dream journal to get in the habit of remembering your dreams. I don't think meditation alone will help with dream recall or inducing a lucid dream.You still need the basics like RCs because how would you ever recognize you are dreaming. Also, it is essential you use a dream journal in my case, and I think just about everyone else agrees.

What mastermind said was generally a good summary. I know of a few people who don't RC or dream journal at all, just intense meditation and what is amazing is that they are even better lucid dreamers than me. The mind is a powerful tool and learning how to use it through meditation gives us access to this tool. It is well known that states of hypnosis and meditation in the mind can be vulrenable to suggestions. Practising almost constant awareness and with the right intent they can have a lucid whenever they want, susposedly even when they want it.
Figure out what happens in the brain when doing RC's and dream journalling and you will see that it is basically a more roundabout way of what meditation achieves. It may seem strange that we don't need exterior help to lucid dream but it really is true, the mind is essentially an almost empty shell just waiting to be programmed, either by external or internal influence.

See to me I feel like meditating is more of an aid then anything, at least to me. I get that a lot of people are natural lucid dreamers and that's amazing and such a great ability and I sure wish I had it. How do the people that don't record their dreams how in the hell do they remember their dreams from a year ago heck a year ago? I also feel that the people who can lucid dream naturally with just meditation could be so much better at lucid dreaming with RCs and dream journalism. Ether way though it is amazing for those people that can reach lucid dreaming just by meditating.

Well it sort of like going beyond the PRACTISE of lucid dreaming and making it a different state of awareness or life experience.

You don't keep a day journal in order to remember your day right? And you don't reality check to induce an awake state right?

All you need is constant awareness, and just like we can learn to wake up in the physical world, we can learn to wake up in the dream world.

Meditation has both western views and more spiritual views, even though you can only prove the now so far spiritual views for yourself.

The spiritual view provides an answer to what we really are as conscious beings and our purpose.

When you truly understand (with experience) that you are more than your physical body (through meditation) you realize that there is no limit to what you can do, and that you survive physical death. This might sound like new age crazy information, but if you are somewhat interested in this or atleast if the information would give you more happiness IF it was true, do as the theoretical physicist and former NASA employee Thomas Campbell and the Military employee that was sent to just see if there was benefits for this in terms of the remote viewing experiments that was done by the military, look it up!

Even though titles and authority shouldn't convince you, it's just a rethorical trick, but I just want to show you that SKEPTICAL people still gave it a chance and was open minded and looked iy up, got their own experience and well they didn't regret it.

It sort of like not believing in lucid dreaming just because it isn't proven scientifically yet... Because even if it is now, it wasn't many years ago and just think about all the people missing out on that! Lucid dreaming is beneficial for your ego, because dreaming is all about understanding and exploring the ego, your dreams.
Subconscious, memories and emotions - What makes you!

However what I am talking about that is basically the goal of meditation, understanding that you are MORE than your physical body and MORE than your ego, goes way beyond that, you'll realize your purpose and why you as a conscious being choosed to become a HUMAN being.

A simple explanation is that your life is like a videogame, let's say World of Warcraft, when you see the game as a higher conscious being you think "Oh I want to play that!" But the rules say that you have to forget all about your perevious experience, and perhaps previous lives. But you just ignore that and say "Sure I can do that, install, next next next, agree, finish". You also choose what you want to be and the debate of why people choose to live in poverty in Africa is not very difficult to explain, but I'll let you try to understand that yourself. Anyway in this game you choose an ORC or a HUMAN Race . Then it starts BAM. Memory wiped and you are now a lower conscious being in the game of WoW.
Then you'll go through your life with the information digitally programmed into you, by programmers, in real life it's DNA. Then you'll learn to live that life.
You are still your higher self which is the higher conscious being you was from the start, but it only exists now as a being in the realm of thought and of information, sort of how Superman talks to his own dad through the information programmed in a crystal. So you are more than your digital ORC body because you are more than physical WOW matter, when you understand this and connect to the higher self that is you and be more in control of your life and understand your life etc.

We can now understand why the brain isn't responsible for the awareness, but rather a representation of the awareness. Think of the ORC character in the WoW, when we are in tha world we look at the inside of the orc's head and see a brain and observe blabla many theories, but when you know that you are more than just the orc's physical body, you'll realize that the consciousness is beyond that. In this example... It's right in front of the screen. xD

And the purpose of this experience is the same purpose as any other experience, to learn.

This is the true and biggest "goal" of meditation, and when you realize this truth by experience you are what a buddhist would call enlighted, and you will understand Buddha, Jesus and many others that was just like you a HUMAN but by realizing their truth they understood that they were more than a human, like a boddhisatva or a son of God, name it what you want. Just realize that you only have the potential that you yourself think you have.

"He is able who thinks he is able" - Buddha

Be aware of what you think of yourself.

So you see meditation holds a bigger meaning to me than you probably thought.

If you don't want to look this up, it's ok with me, I'll just say the same thing I would say to someone who didn't want to look up lucid dreaming:

"It's your choice, but you don't know what you are missing. "

If you want more information tell me ^-^ I will just send some youtube videos, but if you want to find them yourself youtube search: Robert Monroe or Thomas Campbell

I meditate before bedtime daily. I can't say that it helps with my lucidity. I think there are other barriers preventing me from being lucid often. The meditation does help me in my waking life a great deal though, and I recommend it, at any time of the day.

As far a binaural beats go, how do you use them? do you just put it on replay and listen to it all night? Do you use earphones to listen to it? if so, doesn't it become bothersome to wear earphones while sleeping? I always was curious about binaural beats but was never sure on how or when to use them.

In the mornings, I meditate while stretching, focusing on exactly what my body needs and where. I do this for a few minutes before Tai Chi. I've always found it easier to reach a meditative state while doing something (not while sitting or laying down in a serene quiet room).

Originally Posted by MasterMind

Well it sort of like going beyond the PRACTISE of lucid dreaming and making it a different state of awareness or life experience.

You don't keep a day journal in order to remember your day right? And you don't reality check to induce an awake state right?

All you need is constant awareness, and just like we can learn to wake up in the physical world, we can learn to wake up in the dream world.

Meditation has both western views and more spiritual views, even though you can only prove the now so far spiritual views for yourself.

The spiritual view provides an answer to what we really are as conscious beings and our purpose.

When you truly understand (with experience) that you are more than your physical body (through meditation) you realize that there is no limit to what you can do, and that you survive physical death. This might sound like new age crazy information, but if you are somewhat interested in this or atleast if the information would give you more happiness IF it was true, do as the theoretical physicist and former NASA employee Thomas Campbell and the Military employee that was sent to just see if there was benefits for this in terms of the remote viewing experiments that was done by the military, look it up!

Even though titles and authority shouldn't convince you, it's just a rethorical trick, but I just want to show you that SKEPTICAL people still gave it a chance and was open minded and looked iy up, got their own experience and well they didn't regret it.

It sort of like not believing in lucid dreaming just because it isn't proven scientifically yet... Because even if it is now, it wasn't many years ago and just think about all the people missing out on that! Lucid dreaming is beneficial for your ego, because dreaming is all about understanding and exploring the ego, your dreams.
Subconscious, memories and emotions - What makes you!

However what I am talking about that is basically the goal of meditation, understanding that you are MORE than your physical body and MORE than your ego, goes way beyond that, you'll realize your purpose and why you as a conscious being choosed to become a HUMAN being.

A simple explanation is that your life is like a videogame, let's say World of Warcraft, when you see the game as a higher conscious being you think "Oh I want to play that!" But the rules say that you have to forget all about your perevious experience, and perhaps previous lives. But you just ignore that and say "Sure I can do that, install, next next next, agree, finish". You also choose what you want to be and the debate of why people choose to live in poverty in Africa is not very difficult to explain, but I'll let you try to understand that yourself. Anyway in this game you choose an ORC or a HUMAN Race . Then it starts BAM. Memory wiped and you are now a lower conscious being in the game of WoW.
Then you'll go through your life with the information digitally programmed into you, by programmers, in real life it's DNA. Then you'll learn to live that life.
You are still your higher self which is the higher conscious being you was from the start, but it only exists now as a being in the realm of thought and of information, sort of how Superman talks to his own dad through the information programmed in a crystal. So you are more than your digital ORC body because you are more than physical WOW matter, when you understand this and connect to the higher self that is you and be more in control of your life and understand your life etc.

We can now understand why the brain isn't responsible for the awareness, but rather a representation of the awareness. Think of the ORC character in the WoW, when we are in tha world we look at the inside of the orc's head and see a brain and observe blabla many theories, but when you know that you are more than just the orc's physical body, you'll realize that the consciousness is beyond that. In this example... It's right in front of the screen. xD

And the purpose of this experience is the same purpose as any other experience, to learn.

This is the true and biggest "goal" of meditation, and when you realize this truth by experience you are what a buddhist would call enlighted, and you will understand Buddha, Jesus and many others that was just like you a HUMAN but by realizing their truth they understood that they were more than a human, like a boddhisatva or a son of God, name it what you want. Just realize that you only have the potential that you yourself think you have.

"He is able who thinks he is able" - Buddha

Be aware of what you think of yourself.

So you see meditation holds a bigger meaning to me than you probably thought.

If you don't want to look this up, it's ok with me, I'll just say the same thing I would say to someone who didn't want to look up lucid dreaming:

"It's your choice, but you don't know what you are missing. "

If you want more information tell me ^-^ I will just send some youtube videos, but if you want to find them yourself youtube search: Robert Monroe or Thomas Campbell

I really appreciate the response. I didn't think that much about some of the deeper values of meditating and you really showed them to me! thanks!

I have been thinking along the lines of what you said there, but I have forgotten recently.
Too much pressure from school.. but tomorrow christmas break starts, and so will I start again with getting to know myself
Thanks for posting this it made me remember some of my previous thoughts that were valuable.

Originally Posted by BossMan

As far a binaural beats go, how do you use them? do you just put it on replay and listen to it all night? Do you use earphones to listen to it? if so, doesn't it become bothersome to wear earphones while sleeping? I always was curious about binaural beats but was never sure on how or when to use them.

All you have to do is download a app on your phone or some other device. If you don't have that you can always buy a CD with the beats on it. If you want to just try them out go on youtube and type in Binaural beats for lucid dreaming.Yes you can use ear buds or headphones whatever you find more comfortable, I prefer ear buds.Sometimes they fall out and may not give you good results. Personally the beats didn't work well for me but you can try them, may work better for you. Let me know.

I am glad that you guys liked my post, it's time for us to wake up and realize what we are and what previous well known people of spirituality have tried to tell us.

(But we just end up glorifying everything and missing the message.) Patch Parables 8 ~ Adventures of the Reluctant Messiah - YouTube

However for those people wh don't find this spiritual idea appealing, (I have full understanding for that, skepticism is great, but if just the idea seem interesting give it a look and listen to this pragmatic man and then you can determine wether it's pesudo-science/ crap/ bullsh*t or not.

Robert Monroe explains his first OOBE. - YouTube And if that is still not enough for you and you want physics based on Nobel Prize winner physicist combined with the theories of the consciousness, here you go: Thomas Campbell - The Monroe Institute Lecture - 1/12 - YouTube (Although the theory is boring, the experience is amazing.)

However if you still bash the theory of the consciousness, I will try to give you another theory, based on western thinknig (current brain science), of WHY meditation can still be beneficial for lucid dreaming. (Sorry for hi-jacking your thread a bit.) But I hope that the following information will help you inspire both your left brain - logical thinking, and your right brain (bigger picture thinking, and random thinking), or in other words motivate meditation with many reasons.

Anyway to prevent this from getting longer than it has to be, I will not go into detail of what chemicals each system is a part of, and just describe the general idea.

There are two systems of the brain that is important for you to understand, the first one is the aminergic system (which can for simplicity be explained as the system that makes you think critically!) and the second one is the cholinergic system (One of the systems that makes us dream, still unknown exactly how but let's think, once again for the sake of simplicity, that thi system is totally responsible for the dreaming process.).

When we dream, as you might have noticed, you are not thinking critcally at all and accept everything that you experience, that is because the aminergic system isn't active. When we are awake though it is very active, but by then our cholinergic system isn't active.

The cholinergic system starts to increase after a certain amount of time in full body relaxation. And as we become unaware we also start the decrease of the aminergic system.

When we lucid dream it is because the aminergic system gets active while the cholinergic system is active, or in other words, we become critical of the dream.

So it's all about a balance of these two systems.

Now think of meditation! What if we could sleep aware by meditating, and maintain the aminergic system at the same time as we increase the cholinergic system as we relax our body. That would mean that we would end up more critical in our dream because it took longer time for the aminergic system to decrease, or even better it never decreased at all (WILD). But even if we didn't managed to maintain the aminergic system at it's top we would still end up more aware in the dream since we delayed the decrease. Do you see where this is going?

Meditation can help you become more aware of your dreams, which will therefore, make them easier to remember and recall, and easier to be aware of!

This is just a theory, I have nothing except experience to back this up. But I don't have to, all you have to do is to try it.

Meditate as you lay in bed ready to go to sleep, calm your mind and then maintain awareness for as long as possible and have closed eyes, move a little if you want to this is not torture. Then when you wake up see if you got any results in terms of recall, awareness, vividness or anything else.

There you go, now you understand meditation is beneficial both in a spiritual way and in a western thinking way.

And here is also a video of the Brain Chemistry of Lucid Dreaming: Lucid Dream Technique - Brain Chemistry - YouTube
Happy meditating

Mastermind, thank you for spreading the news about meditation and its link to LDing and so many other aspects of life. Keep up the good work, people are helped by your effort.

I am a total fanatical about meditation. I feel that those who chase LDing and do not learn to meditate will have much more struggle with most aspects of LDing.

Anyone interested can learn more about using meditation to master LDing in a class here, Dream Yoga (Sivason)

I am to lazy I guess to really keep a DJ, although I have entered 99 LD entries this year since feb, because I wanted others to be able to get an idea of how I went about things. I normally do not DJ much and even now, only DJ interesting LDs or ones I can use to show a point or principle. I think it would be best if everyone did keep one. I have forgotten many hundreds of LDs over the decades. The powerful ones do stay with me like waking life memories. Wish I wasn't so lazy, darn.

Gotta keep a DJ. I actually had a pretty nonvivid LD last night and a vivid, amazing, and awesome non LD. I am glad I write down both.

Originally Posted by sivason

Mastermind, thank you for spreading the news about meditation and its link to LDing and so many other aspects of life. Keep up the good work, people are helped by your effort.

I am a total fanatical about meditation. I feel that those who chase LDing and do not learn to meditate will have much more struggle with most aspects of LDing.

Anyone interested can learn more about using meditation to master LDing in a class here, Dream Yoga (Sivason)

I am to lazy I guess to really keep a DJ, although I have entered 99 LD entries this year since feb, because I wanted others to be able to get an idea of how I went about things. I normally do not DJ much and even now, only DJ interesting LDs or ones I can use to show a point or principle. I think it would be best if everyone did keep one. I have forgotten many hundreds of LDs over the decades. The powerful ones do stay with me like waking life memories. Wish I wasn't so lazy, darn.

Thank you My intention is to help, because what you give you'll recieve.

At first I thought this was a problem in a way because then it's a selfish reason, but then I realized that that cycle is infinite, and because we are one I am also helping myself to help you, and I help you to help myself. So it's no longer an altruistic or selfish reason, but a collective one.

Random thought, but that is unfortunately how my mind works, every thing I see is a new thing to ponder upon X. X

I think everyone can agree that mastermind has really opened our eyes to the meaning behind meditation and how it is essentially more then just meditation. He has also opened my eyes to the fact that meditating is more then just sitting there with your eyes closed focusing on certain thing. Mastermind your efforts are greatly appreciated by everyone, and everyone knows it too. Thank you!

Not to sound selfish, but i really didn't need this post to actually become aware in dreams and notice that meditation is key.
I actually act the same in dreams like how i do in real life, i respond to stupid and funny things, also i usually get very mad when it comes to DC's persuading me to respond in a negative way. I do the same in real. But i did vote

I agree with hathor28 The idea of meditation have existed for a long time.

People often forget that the idea of lucid dreaming is just as old, why? Because it was then considered a kind of meditation - Dream Yoga.

It's just that when Western Minded thinking people looked at it they forget this connection.

Robert Monroe helped the Western thinking unite with the Spirituality though, and he is the one we should truly thank for reminding us.

And here is a video that explains that sort of awakening: Awakening - 2012 - A Message of Hope - YouTube

Spirituality and Science isn't enough if you just focus on one of them, but together... It's a thousand times more powerful!

Monroe Institute Review:

"In 1994, a front page article in the Wall Street Journal reported confirmation from the former director of the Intelligence and Security Command of the U.S. Army sending personnel to the institute. It also stated the opinion of the head of the Zen Buddhist temple in Vancouver British Columbia that "Gateway students can reach meditation states in a week that took [me] 30 years of sitting"

This is just one example of why everyone and everything should be looked at in unity and not as separate things. We are one.

Inlakesh. Namaste

I meditate almost every night now, but I noticed one kind of meditation (focusing on breathing) interferes with my ADA while the other one (visualizing Buddha) improves it. The latter also helped me achieve LD, but my results are still inconsistent.

I've read about and practiced meditation before, mainly the western ones, but this is the first time that I incorporated it with my LD attempts.