Thread: Intent in Lucid Dreaming; Break that Dry-Spell, Escape the Technique Rut

Originally Posted by FryingMan

When I did these dream walks, I usually added in a sense of "here *I* am in this dream." "Here I am, on a dream street, with dream cars and dream people, look there's a dream cloud in the dream sky, it's all a dream, I'm dreaming..." and so on. I never felt a sense of losing a grip on "reality" (for what is reality?).

And isn't it anathema to dream state recognition to have a mindset that *knows* you're not dreaming? I do not want that thought anywhere near my dreams: in my dreams I want to *know that I'm dreaming*. Maybe self-awareness is supposed to take care of that all by itself, but I'm not seeing that fruit yet, it seems a ways off.

When I'm dreaming non-lucidly, I don't feel like I'm dreaming. This leads me to the conclusion that at any time, I could actually be dreaming, and I want to be continuously vigilant of this possibility, so that I catch the dreaming moments. "Knowing" that I'm awake seems also completely counter to this, and to the mindset the dream yogis are talking about.

You may have missed my point. It isn't about knowing that where you are is a dream, or reality. It's that, unless you have some mental illness or have made some curious global esoteric/religious decisions, you will know, on a visceral and very real level, that you are in reality no matter what you try to tell yourself during your walks. That knowledge goes very deep, to unconscious, even instinctual places. So, no matter how effectively you intellectualize that "I actually could be dreaming," your unconscious is saying "The hell we are! This stuff is real."

So, come dreamtime, your unconscious might just give you a NLD dream schema that mirrors this exercise... right down to an excited DC You believing that this is all could be a dream while you unconsciously know it is all real; not a very good combination for lucidity, I think. The unconscious is a very powerful engine, and fueling it with still more things to build an imagined external world that seems consistent to your DC self is not a great idea. And of course convincing it that reality is not real could be a troubling fuel in itself, for some.

Better, I think, to focus on your Self, and not on global observations that the entire external world is either real or a dream; it is more important than to remember that this dreamworld is you than it is to make the dreamworld something important in its own right (which I think is exactly what this exercise might do).

I'm not sure any of that made sense to anyone but me, and I may be the only one who finds it important, but I hope you consider it. And of course if it works for you on a consistent, post-placebo basis, than forget everything I said and have at it!

I've avoided the dream yogi book up to know, reading that it's really confusing, but I think that's a mistake, I'm going to get it pronto.

That is an excellent idea! I also think that at this point you will like find it more simplistic than confusing...

PS: You know, I did these last few posts without ever once reading the subject of this thread! I suppose that anything that breaks a dry spell is a good thing, so, though my caveat still stands, I do agree that this exercise might at least help a bit to get you back into dreaming mode. Dry spells are also a time when anything lucid is welcome, even dreams about being lucid, so I guess that exercise might make sense to do -- until the dry spell ends, of course!