Thread: SILD, satipatthana induced lucid dream

1/22/12

day 1

nothing last night, not even a single recall. however, being completely out of practice this is no surprise. also i slept for only five hours, normally i average eight to nine hours a night. i drank some whacked out energy drink that i didn't realize was the kind that lasts for many hours, not just forty five minutes to an hour like coffee or tea. mindfulness is strong, i hope for better results tonight.

I've always been interested in mindfulness and I think it could be one of the best techniques for lucid dreams (and a better well being in general) with enough practice. When in busy situations, how do you focus your mind back to your thoughts, feelings, movements, breathing, etc.? Like if you're around a lot of people, in conversation, watching a movie. Just stuff like that, how do you not completely drift away for hours?

Supinadassi, with an awareness discipline like that, I know you'll have great success; I don'teven feel a need to wish you luck, because you won't need it!

Thanks for sharing, though, and I hope many dreamers view this thread, and, more important, pay attention to it!

Originally Posted by Erii

I've always been interested in mindfulness and I think it could be one of the best techniques for lucid dreams (and a better well being in general) with enough practice. When in busy situations, how do you focus your mind back to your thoughts, feelings, movements, breathing, etc.? Like if you're around a lot of people, in conversation, watching a movie. Just stuff like that, how do you not completely drift away for hours?

it takes a lot of practice. the general rule is that you may set down your meditation object temporarily like you would set down a bag you are carrying and pick it up when the necessary task is complete and the meditation object can be taken up again. the goal is to set it down as little as possible. one thing i've learned recently is that when you have to set it down, you can make whatever the distraction is the object of your mindfulness. like if you have to do some intricate task, you make the task the object until you are done, then you pick back up your meditation subject. picking breathing as the subject is helpful since you can usually do most tasks while being mindful of that. with practice, you can do almost all but the most demanding tasks while keeping up practice.

one very important thing that this practice has that i never knew before is attention to the condition of the mind. before i would be trying to be mindful but if i got stressed or angry i would lose my mindfulness. now i make note of the anger or stress "mind affected by anger" and let it go. if it won't go, it becomes the object of mindfulness until it goes away. this leads to a much greater continuity in mindfulness.

oddly, leisure time can be the most distracting. since work requires some mindfulness as it is, it can be easier to keep the practice there. at home or elsewhere one can get distracted by forms of entertainment and other amusements.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Supinadassi, with an awareness discipline like that, I know you'll have great success; I don'teven feel a need to wish you luck, because you won't need it!

Thanks for sharing, though, and I hope many dreamers view this thread, and, more important, pay attention to it!

what a nice thing to say! thank you!

Originally Posted by supinadassi

what a nice thing to say! thank you!

You're welcome, but no need to thank me; I was simply admiring both the excellent path you've chosen, and that you decided to share it here, where people might sense -- and act upon -- the quality of your example...

1/23/12

so i had this dream that i was walking on some kind of stone path, nothing really out of the ordinary. just a path made of individual stepping stones on grass near some white building. i'm being mindful and, without checking for dream signs or reality testing or anything, i just realized "this is a dream." since i was paying so much attention directly to my surroundings it was obvious and didn't need to be verified. now since i'm out of practice, i didn't lead into doing anything cool or fun, i just kept walking and looking around lucidly and eventually woke up. nonetheless, success! dang, there are those rhymes again! truly accidental.

my goals are the supernormal powers: "Having been one he becomes many, having been many he becomes one. He appears. He vanishes. He goes unhindered through walls, and mountains as if through space. He dives in and out of the earth as if it were water. He walks on water without sinking as if it were dry land. Sitting cross-legged he flies through the air like a bird. With his hand he touches and strokes even the sun and moon, so mighty and powerful. He exercises influence with his body even as far as other realms."

-paraphrased from DN 11

now the question is: can my consciousness work in many different places? or will it diminish each time it is duplicated. like trying to watch two tv screens, then upping it to three, then four, etc. you can kind of watch two, three less so, four is pushing it, etc. in waking life you can only stretch your consciousness so far, but dreams may be different, we shall see...

1/24/12

nothing big last night. good recall but nothing really lucid. i had kind of a half lucid state where i was walking around telling people i was dreaming all enthusiastically but in reviewing the dream i was far from lucid. day time practice though is making me feel more and more at peace.

1/25/12

i was dreaming i was in some kind of mansion, staying with a bunch of other people and i was a little confused about why i was there and what room i was staying in. i was drinking a bottle of vodka and i set it down on a table near some people i knew and it looked half empty, then i picked it up and it looked almost full. i figured the pressure of my hand on the plastic bottle was forcing the liquid up, making it look full. i thought "mind affected by alcohol?", and then reflected on how weird this was (in real life i do not have even a drop. fifth precept and all that). i realized i was dreaming and could only vaguely recall my goals of the superhuman states. i started trying to duplicate myself but it didn't work. i thought maybe seeing myself would help so i got a large mirror and looked in it. i focused really hard and all that happened was i turned red.

i got a few more mirrors (losing lucidity at this point and using dream logic) and tried looking in all of them. i became conscious of all the dream characters around looking at me and murmuring to each other. i turned around to them and said "this is a dream!" trying to defend myself against the fact that they thought i was crazy and (back into half lucidity) somehow ended up outside on the sidewalk. there was a few people standing around looking at me. i said "look, i'll fly!" and started trying to leap into flight but instead just jumped up and down in frustration over and over while a crowd gathered to see my ridiculousness.

it was pretty funny. trying to prove to people that do not exist, that they do not exist! so redundant!

day time has given me relief from most of my problems. for example i was given a large amount of extra tasks to do at work and only an hour to do them which was completely unreasonable. my co-workers and i were all quite angry. it became nearly impossible to stay on my breathing. in the past i would have just been done with it and ended up finishing my shift angry. instead i thought "mind affected by anger." and made the anger the object of my mindfulness, which ensured that the thoughts did not become cyclical and grow upon themselves. instead of thinking about what made me angry and why, which could go on forever, i was just mindful about the emotion of anger itself. eventually it went away and i went back to my breathing. i also have started to realize that emotions are a lot like weather. if you wait, they always change. like when it rains, you don't sit around and mope, thinking about why it's raining, how bad it is, why it is so terrible that it is stopping you from doing some activities and so on. you find some indoor activity to do and ignore it until it goes away while simply giving bare mindfulness to it so you know when it is gone. the same can be done for emotions, if you are really angry about something, you shouldn't just stew and reflect on why you are angry, getting more and more angry. you should just note that you are angry and do some activity while you wait for it to go away.

i think that this whole thing is exactly what led to the dream yogis development. my guess would be that some monks who were doing the basic mindfulness practices ended up having lucid dreams and then further developed this skill. what happened though is they started teaching people to constantly think "this is a dream, everything around me is a dream" all day, every day. this is very intrusive and distracts from what you are doing. like if your are training for a new job, you won't be able to pay as much attention if you are busy convincing yourself that your trainer is a dream character and that everything they are saying and everything around you is a dream. with satipatthana, you would make the training the object of your mindfulness until it was over and you could go back to your main meditation object. so if anything you would learn it better by being extra mindful of it. with dream yoga, the instruction is "tell yourself you are dreaming under all circumstances this technique is fine for monks, but for laypeople not so much.

also when this does manifest in your dreams, you have created the habit of going on about your day after saying "it's all a dream" and so that's what you do in your dreams. if you're dreaming you're walking down a street and you say to yourself "this is a dream." you won't do anything cool, you'll just keep walking because that's what you trained yourself to do in real life. and even then you may wonder if you were really lucid or if you were just repeating the mantra like you do in real life. this technique does work for some, but many people i have talked to (and myself included) say this is the result.

with satipatthana you are deeply mindful of reality itself, not of a generic mantra that is about dreaming. so when you are dreaming, it is kind of obvious.

1/26/12

last night was just some dream about living in some kind of forest community where everyone lived in cabins and my wife wanted to meet stan lee who was living there also. random.

on a side note, many people talk about two main types of meditation: serenity and insight. serenity is the calming, concentrating type, like mindfulness of breathing, or loving kindness meditation. insight is where you reflect on certain things. a lot of people debate about this. i've read people saying gotama taught insight (vipissana) and that that's all important. then i've heard ten times as many people say he taught mainly serenity (samatha) meditation and that vipissana is just a natural result of it and need not be a separate practice.

however recently i have been reading the suttas and have found that he taught them both and that both are important. there are many suttas explaining how to develop insight and there are even ones describing how to use serenity methods to develop insight! i think the debate is ridiculous, both are needed. teaching or practicing just one of them is totally incomplete.

in many suttas he gives specific practices to develop insight. and it doesn't seem that insight comes naturally from serenity, as i noted above he taught how to develop insight from serenity practices. and it's a different practice with different instructions.

for example, some serenity instructions are: "and how bhikkhus, does a bhikkhu abide contemplating the body as a body? here a bhikkhu, gone to the wilderness, or to the root of a tree or to an empty hut, sits down, having folded his legs crosswise, set his body upright, and established mindfulness in front of him, ever mindful he breathes in, mindful he breathes out. breathing in long he understands: 'i breathe in long.' or breathing out long he understands: 'i breathe out long.' etc."

-quoted from MN 118

and that description of mindfulness of breathing frequently leads into the four jhanas (deeper levels of concentration). then in one sutta he teaches that after experiencing a jhana one (in this sutta it's sariputta experiencing this) may develop insight by thinking about the jhana one has just experienced:" 'so this is how these qualities, not having been, come into play. having come into play, they vanish.' he remained unattracted & unrepelled with regard to those qualities, independent, detached, released, dissociated, with an awareness rid of obstructions. he understood that 'there is a further escape,' and pursuing it there really was for him. "

-quoted from MN 111

so there you have it, straight from the horses mouth.

1/27/12

dreamed i was driving in daytime down some road, following someone else, missed my exit so i turned off onto a dirt road and then drove across grass to get to another dirt road where i saw them driving. then it's night time and i'm with a couple people following a friend to some location through the woods. we go to the location and then back. on the way to the location again i try to lead the way from memory and see a polar bear in the distance lit up because there is a fallen flashlight next to it. i say "it's a f*****g bear!" and run back. i consider just going back the way we came but the people with me want to try to go around the bear so we start walking in a new direction. i say something about how the bear probably killed someone and that's their flashlight. i become lucid and read the minds of those around me. they were all thinking deep thoughts about things like hope, truth, peace, etc. and i could feel these emotions as i read their minds. it was pretty cool.

1/28/12

dreamed i was walking down the street with a friend and totally spontaneously realized i was dreaming based on nothing at all. i jumped really high and bounced from roof top to roof top and had lots of acrobatic fun.

so i've been practicing satipatthana for two months, general mindfulness for years and years (varying in intensity and focus). i started journaling and in just six days i've had four lucid dreams.

i think this method is sound and functional. it works better than any method i've used before. i would guess that it would take more dedication than many other methods but the dedication is healthy and improves on life in every way and does not distract or take away from anything else.

that being said, i would imagine that many people wouldn't be dedicated enough to get the same results as fast, so i would suggest practicing WILD in combination with satipatthana. so do casual, lazy, satipatthana all day and try to WILD at night and journal every morning. satipatthana will take care of focus, memory training, and mindfulness, all of which are extremely important for lucid dreaming, and WILD will give that extra push to get you there. just practicing WILD with no other training at all is unlikely to yield many lucid dreams, but combining the two should make it very easy. or just very dedicated satipatthana alone will work even better.

since i've come to this conclusion, and the fact that no one seems to really care, i'm no longer going to post results. i just wanted to share this method and i think i've accomplished that.

good luck!