Feeling like I'm actually there, inside the LD

[LouaiB]

What makes the dream more aware? What makes it not fuzzy? Makes it feel like I'm actually there. Not like a distant memory. This is not so much about the senses as it is about the awareness, the being 'fully awake' inside the LD. What can I do? My LDs feel fuzzy and like a distant memory, not like what I hope them to be. Do I train my dream recall? Is it about taking time to focus inside the LD? Is it about later REM cycles for example that tend to be more aware? Ugh this is so depressing for me.

[Habba]

What makes the dream more aware? What makes it not fuzzy? Makes it feel like I'm actually there. Not like a distant memory. This is not so much about the senses as it is about the awareness, the being 'fully awake' inside the LD. What can I do? My LDs feel fuzzy and like a distant memory, not like what I hope them to be. Do I train my dream recall? Is it about taking time to focus inside the LD? Is it about later REM cycles for example that tend to be more aware? Ugh this is so depressing for me. If you're already aware that you're dreaming I would say that this all comes down to your mental senses. Do you feel like you're about to wake up?

[LouaiB]

If you're already aware that you're dreaming I would say that this all comes down to your mental senses. Do you feel like you're about to wake up? Nah, I don't get that much lately, but I still don't get very calm inside the LD. I lately try to stabilize and focus, and it makes things better, but still not good enough. Maybe it's a combination of good sleep chemicals (at later REM periods mostly), high focus, self awareness(lucidity), mindfulness, stabilizing the dream, and good dream recall afterwards(especially well if I wake myself up from the dream)? Does WILD make awareness particularly strong? What makes the 'being there' or 'I was just there' effect?

[Habba]

Nah, I don't get that much lately, but I still don't get very calm inside the LD. I lately try to stabilize and focus, and it makes things better, but still not good enough. Maybe it's a combination of good sleep chemicals (at later REM periods mostly), high focus, self awareness(lucidity), mindfulness, stabilizing the dream, and good dream recall afterwards(especially well if I wake myself up from the dream)? Does WILD make awareness particularly strong? What makes the 'being there' or 'I was just there' effect? You should try meditation, It can help you attain lucidity and will give you a +1 on your awareness. You could call WILD some sort of meditation because you're expecting your body to fall asleep while your mind stays awake, Hence why I said +1 because your body is in a deep relaxed state which leaves you to enter a lucid dream. I have actually heard when someone is in a Lucid dream you can shout command out like "CLARITY NOW" which could help you with the process. So yes, I would say it makes your awareness particularly strong.

[FryingMan]

LouiaB, I think I may have mentioned this before, but the general answer to "I want XYZ to be better in my dreams" is to train it in the waking state. Do you pay attention to your waking life with utter clarity? Do you live in the present moment or do you zip from scene to scene and not even remember how you got from point A to point B? Can you recall your waking day for 30 minutes or more at bed time, recalling many many moments with great vividness from the day? Notice things! Be "fully aware" in the waking state, rejoice at being fully present in the now! It not only works wonders for dreaming, but makes waking much more interesting as well! Now go do it, I want to start reading your success stories!

[LouaiB]

LouiaB, I think I may have mentioned this before, but the general answer to "I want XYZ to be better in my dreams" is to train it in the waking state. Do you pay attention to your waking life with utter clarity? Do you live in the present moment or do you zip from scene to scene and not even remember how you got from point A to point B? Can you recall your waking day for 30 minutes or more at bed time, recalling many many moments with great vividness from the day? Notice things! Be "fully aware" in the waking state, rejoice at being fully present in the now! It not only works wonders for dreaming, but makes waking much more interesting as well! Now go do it, I want to start reading your success stories! I've thought about my waking life memory often lately thinking "hey I don't even recall moments from yesterday very well let alone vividly". I should seriously start this. Is this just mindfulness or general awareness of events/environment/etc too? I can be more focused on the present, the soroundings, my state, etc. Does it really help you get more 'really there' in LDs?? PS: I'm almost finished with that mindfulness book by Zenn. It's really amazing!

[Shansss]

I have actually heard when someone is in a Lucid dream you can shout command out like "CLARITY NOW" which could help you with the process. This has always worked for me. Definitely worth a try

[FryingMan]

^^ Don't worry about labels "is it mindfulness?", but generally mindfulness *is* paying attention. Glad you're enjoying the book by Zinn, but you need to "live" it, practice it, it's not just theory, it's a "doing" book. Yes I have found that continued effort on dream recall together with daytime mindfulness practice, really looking at things, being aware, has led to much much better dreaming experiences. I also find being well-rested, being stress-and-anxiety free, and having a good diet of brain-healthy foods (blueberries, lecithin, generally all vitamins/minerals) results in better dreaming, and more junk food means worse dreaming.

[Djaxup]

what worked well for me is to cancel out a lot of multitasking I normally did over the day. Things like watching TV while eating... I try to eat with more attention now, try to taste what the components used in the meal taste like, how the smell of the food is composed. Like drinking a good whisky. You don't just down that stuff... you smell every nuance, notice every change in flavor etc. you get the idea. Do what you do with more focus on detail. Start with just one or two activities. Another great example is driving I think. Sometimes when I drive to work I wonder how I already got where I am at that moment. I can't remember how I crossed the motorway intersection and so on. The detail is absolutely not there at all, sometimes I can't remember even a single picture of the situation in my mind. So I guess many of my waking live memories are just as hazy. What helped me to remember the dreams is actively noticing every detail that happens and to mentally repeat it, like "oh yeah, nice how the air drifts over my arms through all the small hairs..." I will then have a clear memory of this moment. If I speed along the plot of the dream I can usually recall the plot and some details, but it will all seem very blurrish and not vivid at all. So take your time, in waking live and in your dreams. Take a few moments to really stabilize the dream, adore the nice wallwork or how goofy your hands look. Not just notice that they do, but really get into what exactly makes them look strange. If you perform the nose pinch RC not only notice "oh yeah, I can breathe through my closed nose, nice, lucid!" but try to feel the fresh air and really get into this strange feeling, that you cannot have in waking live. Appreciate it as that, an experience you would never have had without LD. I noticed my LDs getting longer with this also, they don't fade as quickly. In some of them my own awareness is not that good and I forget to stabilize. Those feel very distant to me compared to the dreams where I took my time to really settle into the dream world.

[LouaiB]

Thank you guys so much! Good thing I stopped junk food completely like a month ago! I became a vegetarian this summer too, wonder how that would affect my dreams. I ought to research dream and brain foods. Yeah I'm being serious about mindfulness. It's hard at first, especially when a "I should do a mindfulness session now" while there's nothing happening at all lol. I know, I know, you still should be mimdfull of the moment, but in these situations I end up being "hey, a saltshaker..... I'm here now, at this moment, looking at a saltshaker.....and the fridge....." Lol I know it's not about souroundings but there would be nothing at the moment, and I wouldn't be able to stop my mind from going astray. I know, I shouldn't stop it, but when I become mindful of it, it's still hard to not lose the moment. Oh well, practice will solve this. But I am seeing how easier it's becoming! And I get to use this to enjoy my activities more! And definitely, I'm gonna settle and focus in my next LD, hopefully tonight if I manage to do a WILD before uptime tomorrow. Maybe I should settle with mild, it might work better. High success rate with it if I right my intentions down during wbtb. This reminds me, I should stop using my tab during wbtb. It makes falling asleep harder. Studies show this. Something about the blue band frequencies of light from our common devices which suppresses Melatonin I think?

[FryingMan]

LouaiB, check my sig for a pointer to Memm's "no technique" approach to LDing. Change your mind about the night. Night time is for lucid dreaming! And for rest. But *not* just "blacking out". Every time you find yourself awake at night, remember the goal for the night: lucid dreaming, and rest. Don't worry about "performance" of mindfulness -- just keep bringing yourself back, and yes, why not revel in the saltshaker, and wonder if this is a dream saltshaker? I frequently look closely at and think about normal and strange objects in dreams, and I want to catch these moments and get lucid. Just last night I was looking at a hill outside a home in a dream and saw a hole there, and thought, "children should not climb this hill without supervision." I also was looking at a roll of toilet paper that got wet with pee and the pee soaked through the entire roll, making it useless. Haha. So not only pay attention, but realize *why* you're paying attention: ultimately, to recognize the dream state. Yes reducing multi-tasking is one good way to learn to focus. Just today I was sitting on a park bench taking a break and was chewing zombie-like on a pack of almonds, and I suddenly "came back" and realized I'd been eating them barely realizing what I was doing. The more you focus, the more you see. And sometimes, the quality of sleep and you're overall mental state affects the quality of dreams. I stayed up 3 hours past my target bedtime and as a result my dreams were highly fragmented especially later towards morning (upside down from normal, earlier are usually fragmented and later are normally coherent multi-scene).

[Djaxup]

And sometimes, the quality of sleep and you're overall mental state affects the quality of dreams. I stayed up 3 hours past my target bedtime and as a result my dreams were highly fragmented especially later towards morning (upside down from normal, earlier are usually fragmented and later are normally coherent multi-scene). so true FryingMan, if I don't sleep well the night before I don't even really attempt to LD. Even if it works it will be a hazy, fragmented mess with little quality. Funny thing with sleep quality: I had serious trouble with sleeping before I started to journal my dreams and eventually get into the LD stuff. I was outright annoyed even by the thought of going to sleep because I knew it was going to take at least half an hour of lying around bored before I would finally drift into sleep... Now sleeping became an event that I really enjoy and I actually look forward to sleep at night. My sleep quality has risen so much since I started with dream journaling and even more with lucid dreaming. I usually fall asleep in the first 5 minutes after going to bed. I love it

[LouaiB]

Funny, I was eating popcorn watching anime when I was like "hey I should eat them mindfully and enjoy them". It's useful that when I do my hobbies I remember to do them mindfully, focusing on them and diving deep into them, into their worlds (diving deep into a show for example would be mindfulness or getting distracted from what's really going on? I think not, since the show is what would be really going on at the moment (?) ). Focusing on the moment. It needent be meditation, but I still am planing on doing meditation sessions. Yeah I'm also focusing again on tuning my critical mind, mostly by RCs, tholeys, RRC, generally being aware how much dreams can be fooling and no matter what I think or feel, I might be dreaming at any moment. Oh, and thnx for the link! I'll read it right away

[FryingMan]

I think "diving into a show" is tricky. If you're aware of yourself watching the show, and acknowledging this choice of yours to participate in this activity, keeping a sense of that going, then that would be mindfulness. Emerging out of the show like "where was I for the last hour?!" would be zoning out.

[LouaiB]

I think "diving into a show" is tricky. If you're aware of yourself watching the show, and acknowledging this choice of yours to participate in this activity, keeping a sense of that going, then that would be mindfulness. Emerging out of the show like "where was I for the last hour?!" would be zoning out. Isn't that self awareness too? I need self awareness to be explained to me simply lol. Is it the ability to realize one's self and state, and to train it, I should train my state awareness and self realization (being aware of myself, my 'life', the 'me', my me person) since we tend to forget the 'me' in our dreams (it's like being someone else in the dream) and moment awareness (kinda sort of knowing which part of my 'life chapters' I am in, like what I'm in now in my, well, kinda 'lifestyle storyboard' thing whatever)? Do I train it by having moments throughout the day to focus on my current position and condition in my 'life storyboard', and focusing on the now, and the sorounding past and future close events, and the 'interaction' I'm in, the action, the greas, the 'going on' in the time and period I'm doing the RRC in? Yeah it's basically RRC. I can't just do it without getting what are the specific abilities I'm training. You know, the subcategories or whatever of self awareness I'm working on. Lol I need to understand. Self awareness seems very important from what I see you all talking about it. Uh, am I overcomplicating this? Overcomplicating a simple concept?(the concept I'm talking about, the things we LDers need to understand, not the whole self awareness itself, cuz I know self awareness in and of itself is a complex thing) Am I making this too hard on myself?