Dream Incubation Experiment: Creating a World

Instead of focusing on becoming lucid, I've decided to instead focus on having highly immersive and exciting dreams. You know, those dreams where you wake up and have vivid memories of actually being fully immersed in a situation. For example, waking up from a dream in which you felt were actually in a zombie apocalypse, and your survival is dependent upon fighting off the hoard of undead and finding supplies.

So, I've ntoiced everyone on this board is so gung-ho about lucidity, that no one seems to have done any really detailed/thorough experiments regarding Dream Incubation for Non-lucid dreams. So, I'm gonna go ahead and get this doing.

The Experiment

This was actually sparked by the recent Tulpa craze..instead of making an Imaginary person, however, I'm going to take a similar method and fully flesh out a "dream world." Its not much different from what fiction Novelists do, except I'm going to apply it to my dream instead of a book.

For the next month or two, every single night I am going to spend 30-60 minutes visualizing and fleshing out a specific dream-realm. I already have a bunch of things written down, such as:

A.) Places: I'm going to draw out a map. It wont be stunningly beautiful or anything, but it will serve its purpose.

Afterwards, I'm going to draw out areas, and pinpoint large cities, a couple towns, and then a few miscellaneous locations/villages/ruins/temples, etc.

B.) Characters: I plan to have at least 10 "main characters" for this world that should frequently appear and that I will interact.

C.) A very, very general storyline. Well, not exactly. Perhaps not really a storyline, but some very general events and such that I hope to occur.

D.) A specific culture for each of the areas.

Implementation

I plan to spend an hour, roughly, before bed every night, doing what will essentially be a combination of meditation and intensive day dreaming, fleshing out places, people, and rough-sketches of storylines.

Expectations

The biggest issue I foresee at the moment is...just how specific and detailed I should go. On the one hand, I need a certain amount of detail to visualize and cement these characters and places in my head. On the other hand, given the very nature of dreams, I doubt the dreams will actually portray these environments and people precisely the way I flesh them out anyway.

Goal

My goal, in general, is to essentially create a fairly consistent and detailed dream world. NOT for lucidity, however. Instead, I want this to be a huge stockpile of ideas, characters, and places for my mind to immerse me in as Non-Lucid Dreams. i want to wake up feeling like I was just on an adventure in this world that I have created. If I become lucid...wellll, I guess that is okay too. :P

ultimately, I hope this to be a detailed, fleshed out playground for my dreams that is ingrained in my subconscious through rigorous visualization and meditation.

I would definitely welcome some feedback, critiques, or even motivation! (I'm sure that when I'm a week or two into this with little to no results, I'm going to want to quit. Keep me motivated people! Please? :D )

I'll be posting updates as I go.

I've actually been fiddling with this idea the past week or so. I'm a delivery driver, so I have a lot of time on the road to just experiment with these ideas and come up with places, themes, plots, characters, etc.

Here are some things I've come up with so far...keep in mind, I'm not tryign to be incredibly creative. in fact, the more "cliche" this is, the better it will serve its purpose, I'd imagine.

The world is going to be fantasy based, in a sort of medieval period. A little more advanced.

There will be a magic system I've come up with. Powers are fueled by spirits, and the spirits are divided into 5 general groups. Each having a subgroup.

1.) Earth Spirits: Stone and Nature.
2.) Energy Spirits: Fire, Electricity/Wind
3.) Sky Spirits: Water and Ice.
4.) Ephemeral Spirits: Light and Dark.
5.) Life Spirits: Mind and Body.

The gist of the world is that the barrier between the spirit realm and the physical is fading, and spirits are beginning to cross over.

As well, the people in the world can summon the spirits in order to perform magic via summoning circles/pentagrams, etc.

More over, they can actually create a pact with the spirit and have it bond with them so that they can cast the magic the spirit is affiliated with without a circle. However, the spirit would then reside within the person, and the spirit, if it so chooses, can battle for control of the host body.

With that in mind, I plan for there to be certain elements taking over characters in positions of power in order to take control of the physical realm too. That should provide some good conflict and battles and such.

I've also got about 5 different places listed, each one representing one of the elemental groups.

Might be too specific for a dream world, but we'll see. I'll be focusing more of the environment for the first few weeks anyway.

Hey Aluuu! This sounds awesome. I actually have been incubating a zombie apocalypse dream for the past few weeks. Not necessarily for lucidity, though. I've been having some luck, because some elements of my story are starting to seep into my dreams. They include the general storyline, some characters, and some specific objects I've been visualizing. They're very little details, but I think I'm doing good progress.

This is a really neat experiment, and I hope you have huge successes! The whole spirit thing sounds cool too :3

The only thing I worry about (for both of us, as well as other dream incubators out there) is that the dream elements might not converge in one dream. This is what I've been experiencing lately. Only some elements go through into the dream, and the other remaining elements would show up in another dream. They never fully unite, so I'm usually left with really weird dreams that make no sense at all. I wonder if there's a way around that?

Yeah, thats the problem I've been foreseeing ever since I decided to try this. Either things are going to be quite different than what I've created, or it'll mix and match, etc. Just because that seems to be the nature of dreams-- random and mixed up.

I've had many dreams, though, that had very realistic flow and matched up with a fantasy world-- I had a Castlevania dream this morning, for instance, which could easily have been part of the games.

My only hope is that the intense meditation-daydreams will solidify these things. I spent about 40 minutes last night visualizing and brainstorming on one of the areas heavily influenced by the nature spirits and came up with some pretty good ideas and vivid scenery. Nothing bled over into my dreams last night though, as far as I'm aware.

I have wanted a zombie apoc dream forever! How do i incubate?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Suck4Luck

I have wanted a zombie apoc dream forever! How do i incubate?

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You plan out what you wanna dream about. Create a story in your head, visualize it as much as you can, daydream about it, and most especially before bed. If you wanna go all-out, create sketches and storylines! :D It can take a while for it to set in, so don't fret if it doesn't show up within a few days :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Suck4Luck

I have wanted a zombie apoc dream forever! How do i incubate?

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Well, the technique I'm working on right now is spending 30 minutes or so every night doing intense visualization and planning. if I have any luck with it, I'll be posting a tutorial for this!

Well, I haven't had any direct crossover between my world-building and my dreams, but over the past 3 nights my dreams definitely seem to be more fantasy based.

I had a dream last night about a nordic tribe of warriors. Something from a Beowulf era, I guess. It even had a Hall similar to Hrothgar. I hadn't previously planned for the Northern Areas of the world, which are controlled by the Ice Elementals, but these guys from my dream fit perfectly with the dream-world I'm building. Maybe my subconscious is helping out?

Updates on Methods

I think instead of doing the meditations 30 minutes before going to bed, I'm going to start doing them IN bed, as I go to sleep. It takes me 30-60 minutes to fall asleep anyway, so I'm going to start doing this meditation-visualizations as I fall asleep everynight. I also think that doing them while I am in bed will aid in associating this fantasy world with my dreams.

Also, I'm going to start actively incorporating ideas from my dream into this fantasy world. For example, the Nordic Warrior society I dreamt of last night was NOT something I had planned out yet, but it fits very well. Either it was random, or my subconscious is helping out. Eitherway, I think incorporating things from my dream into the world will also help in associating this fantasy realm with my dreams.

Well...I started slacking on this project pretty hardcore with holidays coming up. But I'm back in now. I had a lucid a few nights ago, but for some reason it didn't even occur to me to attempt exploring my world. Oh well. The show goes on.