Age and Lucidity

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Originally Posted by lenscaper

How does age affect the ability to experience lucid dreams as a beginner?

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Welcome dreamer. 62 here, born lucid dreamer (since earliest memories). Very practiced in dream yoga.

I'd think an advantage of waking up to lucid dreaming later in life might be that you've already had time to sort out much of the nonsense of youth, unless of course, you've carried that with you. But even if so, you've probably got more critical thinking skills that in your youth you might not have yet developed. You might be less inclined towards magical or otherwise crazy thinking so you might be able to see what you are experiencing more clearly, less cluttered and associate it more integrally with the rest of your thinking. You might be less affected by peer pressure so able to consider your experiences in a more independent way without the coloring of everyone else's opinion.

There are numerous issues of lucidly dreaming in youth. For instance, I didn't know the difference between when my body was awake and when it was asleep as a young child. So I'd "have conversations" that those people would later deny. When I got older it wound up take me years to sort out what was memory and which was dream.

Also odd at my age, slightly younger than you was that early on we had no internet. We didn't even have much of the eastern works such as Dzogchen and its dream yoga yet translated. So even if you could find info in the library, that was limited, severely. There was very little research at the time in the west. LaBerge was just cranking up. Tart had done a book on altered states. Castaneda was having fun with fiction. But most of the Tibetan works from those who'd studied dreaming for 100s of years was not yet available. So we were for the most part all on our own. Trying to figure out what was hardly if ever spoken about. Certainly we gained from that experience of doing that work but it would have been nice to have had all the resources available to you today.

Also I'd think there's a confidence to our older years replacing cockiness of our younger selves that might help stabilize your dreaming as well as maybe a humility required to extend the view of what you might be able to see.

Thanks for those excellent perspectives, dream yogi. Everything you said fits with what I have realized in these past weeks about my predisposition for this. While I left the nonsense of youth behind fairly early, the many paths that I found myself on during my life were somewhat diverse, sometimes to the point of distraction, even as I always maintained a strong connection to the center.

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Originally Posted by dream yogi

Also odd at my age, slightly younger than you was that early on we had no internet.

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This, I think, is a huge factor. My only contact with the possibilities of dreaming came in the early 70's through Castaneda and it was not until just this past year, when I picked his books up again, that I discovered the fictional aspect of his writings. If it was not for the internet I may have never found myself on this path and I do not believe that I would have progressed so quickly. One of the most powerful tools that I have found in this journey is total immersion. Since I am fortunate enough to have a completely autonomous work space during the day, I have been free to peruse every lucid dreaming website and listen to every blog and video that I could find.

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Also I'd think there's a confidence to our older years replacing cockiness of our younger selves that might help stabilize your dreaming as well as maybe a humility required to extend the view of what you might be able to see.

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Absolutely.

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Originally Posted by lenscaper

Thanks for those excellent perspectives, dream yogi. Everything you said fits with what I have realized in these past weeks about my predisposition for this. While I left the nonsense of youth behind fairly early, the many paths that I found myself on during my life were somewhat diverse, sometimes to the point of distraction, even as I always maintained a strong connection to the center.



This, I think, is a huge factor. My only contact with the possibilities of dreaming came in the early 70's through Castaneda and it was not until just this past year, when I picked his books up again, that I discovered the fictional aspect of his writings. If it was not for the internet I may have never found myself on this path and I do not believe that I would have progressed so quickly. One of the most powerful tools that I have found in this journey is total immersion. Since I am fortunate enough to have a completely autonomous work space during the day, I have been free to peruse every lucid dreaming website and listen to every blog and video that I could find.



Absolutely.

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You're very welcome lenscaper. Sometimes seems just about anything can distract from pretty much everything else.

While there's time saving benefits to not reinventing the wheel, even given the now relative abundance of information on dreaming, I'd rely if at all on that more as clues, less as map; less as instruction, more as confirmation, reaching places in the mind more by self direction, by our own mistakes even, more by experience, less by imagination, the object being to establish the neurological pathways that drug taking or living vicariously though others might not provide.

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Originally Posted by dream yogi

reaching places in the mind more by self direction, by our own mistakes even, more by experience, less by imagination, the object being to establish the neurological pathways

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I added that bold because I think this is a huge piece of advice. There is an aura of fantasy and mysticism that surrounds the concept of lucid dreaming but there is also a great deal of hard science. I have been allowing myself to go in whatever direction felt right and it has been very rewarding. Of late, however, I am feeling myself drifting a little.

Neurological pathways........never too late to establish new ones........

EDIT:

In my office now and researching neural plasticity. :nodyes:

I ran across a very cool video as I was researching neuroplasticity and how it relates to lucid dreaming. This has me realizing that I can really create new neural pathways that will make this whole process happen naturally.....if I just keep at it with diligence and intent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmHlBi77FdQ

After my first seven weeks of pretty constant lucidity the spigot has turned itself off. :)

I'm good with that. I have lots to ponder now as I feel the stream flowing by me now just out of reach.

I am patiently waiting.

It's interesting feeling how that ebb is slowly returning to flow as I let go a bit. These last two nights were the first nights in these eight weeks of my training that I did not attempt any lucidity techniques at all. In spite of that, last night's non-lucid dreams were, once again, filled with very aware and almost lucid moments with clear possibilities (in hindsight) for dream sign induced lucidity.

Relative to age and lucidity.......I am realizing that us old folks need more sleep in general and when we try too hard we disturb the balance between restorative sleep and REM sleep. Anybody care to comment on that?

Last night, after some very strong SSILD cycling, I fell asleep but immediately woke back up and started cycling again. This time my partner was there egging me on.......it was, pf course, a false awakening. :facepalm:

It was extremely real, until I decided to go out into the kitchen and check on the pancakes. As I looked down at those perfect looking cakes on the griddle lucidity hit me like a wet fish. I woke up chuckling out loud.

I got to thinking this morning that my biggest hurdle on this path, as an old guy, is that I have spent the better part of 67 years creating my realities and learning to trust them. Now, after all this time, those neural pathways are like super highways, i'm finally learning to question those realities so I can change them in this dream duality. It's going to take time.

Oh, to be young again. :)

Consider the following:

Dreams

Death (and NDE…Near Death Experiences)

DMT…the psychedelic drug Dimethyltryptamine…which some claim we can all synthesize.

NHS/Imperial College London research claims similarities between NDE and a DMT trip.

If true, where is the DMT available in hospitals and theatres of war?

Such trips are usually profound, and some say life-changing. Many people who trip get déjà vu (a feeling of being there before) and have difficulty expressing experience.

Lucid dreaming…the ability to “wake up’ within dreams. It exists (I’ve done it a few times)

Some people are natural LD’ers. They may be awash with the hormone melatonin, (derived from the amino acid tryptophan) which regulates sleep patterns.

Most of us need to work at lucid dreaming. (keeping dream-journals, spotting common dream themes, conditioning the brain to be more aware during sleep.) It’s quite hard to do.

Most dreams are quickly forgotten unless recorded immediately.

Buddhists maintain one’s persona evaporates during death and only a degree of awareness remains. If we do re-incarnate, they say it’s only awareness that does. Consider a new born baby. Is that not just awareness at first?

Buddhists maintain the opportunity exists to avoid reincarnation, by conditioning oneself to recognise a source of radiance when it occurs. As in dreaming, it can easily be missed unless one’s awareness is finely honed.

Why would one avoid reincarnation? Because it may be endlessly reoccurring and with the likelihood of unpleasant existences because it may be so random?

Common factors?

Cycles…Dream themes, reoccurring experiences on DMT trips, maybe reincarnation.

Deja Vu…(done this before) experienced on DMT trips and by some people who ‘remember’ previous lives.

Awareness…facilitates lucid dreaming and after-death experience (according to Buddhists.)

All great stuff in that post, LukeSid. Two months ago most of what you said would have been of just passing interest to me but now that I am firmly planted on the LD/Dream Yoga path, all of your above comments really resonate.

Regarding awareness......this is where my life seems to be changing the most, even at this somewhat advanced age. I always considered myself to be more aware of the world around me than most, due to a few various disciplines in my life, but now that I am basically dismantling my perceived realities on a daily basis I am more aware of detail than ever both awake and a'dream. I find myself becoming the lucid observer almost every night now.....fully aware of the dream state and yet just letting it flow around me as I reach out and grab little pieces of it to take back with me across the threshold.

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Originally Posted by LukeSid

recognise a source of radiance when it occurs.

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I like that a lot. I'm going to put it into my mantra tonight. :)

As I enter my third month of training I am coming to a pretty clear understanding and acceptance of my personal lucidity. I am able to achieve lucidity often.....just about every time I make a sincere effort, but I rarely have adventures. Instead, I find myself passively observing people around me....occasionally interacting....while in a state of very clear lucidity. These are almost always people from my past. I am definitely attributing this to age.

At 67, I have had my adventures already. I do not feel a strong need to have more. Instead I seem to be working out karma in my dreams and it feels wonderful. Last night I sat at a cafe table in deep conversation with a young woman whom I did not know.....helping her to understand lucid dreaming. :nodyes: Later in the night, after a WBTB, I met that same woman in a mall and she was struggling badly with something I could not see. I watched for a while and then beckoned to her. She came to me and I was able to comfort her.

I did, however, have a very exhilarating flight off a snowy mountain the other night. Guess there's still a bit of the adventurer left inside somewhere.:)

i often wonder this my self. i am so glad and happy for you! i got into lucid dreaming when i was younger. in fact when i found it. by researching astral projection, i thought it was a made up thing that was on the internet :) so i totally understand how happy you are :) the line from the matrix movie. why are my eyes so sore? Morpheus: you never used them before. welcome to the real world lenscaper.
now back to what i was saying, i wonder this my self all the time. jeswiz i am even asking the occasional older person here and there if they dream more or less now? compared to when they were younger. it could be a brain chemistry thing as others have said. it could even be your perceptive on it. your beliefs even. i wish i had all the answers i did a quick google on it and got this, maybe it will help you? https://www.sleepfoundation.org/arti...ging-and-sleep. i hope it helps
i couldnt imagine getting into lucid dreaming at a older age. you got so much to explore my friend. prepare thy self, a good book on the whole brain chemistry thing is called Advanced_Lucid_Dreaming-The_Power_of_Supplements. you can download it in pdf form

Hey acillis......thanks for that link and for your support. Truth is that I am still very good at falling asleep and I as I got older I have had more vivid dreams. My dream recall has always been good as well. I suspect I have had lucid dream moments in the past without recognizing them. It was a massive such moment a few months ago that brought me to this wonderful LD path now.

I guess I am a bit of an anomaly, though.....as an older person in general, because I have spent my life in search of any path that led me toward greater self realization. This has kept me a bit younger than my years. :) That said, I after a lifetime of changes I find myself content to sit back a bit these days and watch things transpire around me. I suspect that laid back attitude stays with me in my dreams as well now. I find myself looking for depth of meaning in the plots that my mind spins up and only changing things when they go in odd directions. I wonder if that is the halmark of an older lucid dreamer.

I did try a supplement early on, btw, but I did not like how it made me feel. We'll see if I go back to it later.

This was the 83rd consecutive day (night) of my training and for the first time I did absolutely nothing. I have backed off a bit a few times but last night I let it go completely.........no hypnagogic meditation and attempted WILDs, no SSILDs, no MILDs and no DILDs. There were no WBTBs and no OBEs.

For the first time in three months I decided to just sleep through the night. I slept very well.....and dreamed.

In the still dark morning I laid on my back and listened to the windswept spring rain lashing against the bedroom window. Then I got up and immediately wrote this in my journal:

I drift across the threshold
As an empty vessel
A dry sponge
By the golden gravel shore
I step into the stream
On the bottom I lay
And immerse myself
In the turbulent flow
of my subconscious being

All of my life
Flows over and around me
Through the swirling surface
I look up at the sky
And it is filled with light
I breathe in the water
Then slip back
Across the threshold
As more each time

All that I have been
I am
All that I'll be
I am
All that I am
I am

Back to my training tonight. :)

Sleep well...and dream.

So I am going into my fifth month of steady training and I have definitely made some progress. For any folks who might be following the stumbling steps of an older beginner, here is where I find myself now and some of the things I have discovered along the way:

I have learned to work within my sleep schedule. I get up very early for work so I only have barely eight hours to work with. It took a while to realize that I needed to sleep first to be successfully lucid later. That means purely sleep oriented exercises when I first go to bed. My first awakening is usually after four hours and SSILD prepares me for possibly lucidity after that. This is when I am most successful.

I generally wake up again with an hour still in front of me and that has become the time for hypnagogia. On Sunday mornings I am often able to go back to bed after a few hours of taking care of things. These lay-ins have become a very interesting time as hypnagogia leads to some amazing imagery and dream snippets. I have developed some very cool personal hypnagogic meditations and mantras that really work. I have not had a successful WILD....but I'm fine with that at this stage. :)

The MOST IMPORTANT thing I have learned is that real long term success at this will only really come (for me at least) from serious and persistent daytime awareness practice. I have come to understand this. I have good technique to rely on at night now so I have stopped worrying about that. I know now that true lucidity that becomes a part of the fabric of my life will only come when I can consistently attend to the dream as a dream. To do that I must attend to my waking life as a dream as well so that I no longer respond to each stimulus with blind emotion.

I truly believe that there is no better way to attain natural dream lucidity than to train myself to be lucid during the day.

I know this will take time, but I also know that through diligent daytime awareness practice I will be lucid for life.

Anyway....just sharing again.

^Love it! Thank you for sharing and I look forward to hearing more of your progress. :)

First of all...thank you fogelbise for your kind support.

For those reading this.......I have found that every time I post something like this here at Dream Views my lucidity spikes for a few days. I think it has something to do with formalizing my intention. I highly recommend more posting! :)

I have been dreaming for 67 years now. While the dreams of my youth were fantastical machinations of a youthful imagination, as I got older and began to amass countless karmic traces, I began to wander dreaming down well worn paths surrounded by real people doing very real things. These days my dreams are almost always like that. Even with building lucidity, I dream about real people doing incredibly real and normal things. That reality has been pretty much impossible to get through and my most lucid moment come when something fantastical comes from out of nowhere and shocks me into uncontrolled lucidity.

A few days ago, after posting here, I suddenly realized that the key was right there in front of me. I needed to concentrate on those very real dream characters. I spent the last two days treating everybody who came into my office as a dream character. Remembering to do that was extremely difficult at first but yesterday I began to have success.

So last night I was doing a landscape job with my old partner. Even with that nagging feeling of hovering lucidity, he was absolutely real as was everything in the dream. But as I got in my truck to back it up.....I felt lucidity blooming. I got out and walked up to him.

"You're not Digger", I said.

He looked at me and smiled...."Of course I am".

"No. No you're not. This is a dream".

He laughed....a gentle and real laugh that was not in any way mean spirited. "OK", I said...and I floated up into the air over him. I rolled over and smiled up at the blue sky.

FINALLY! Real controlled lucidity!

.......and one night now after that breakthrough of using my dream characters to trigger excellent lucidity my subconscious served me up two very strong dreams with NO dream characters. Not a single one.

I wandered in hazy lucidity down the streets of a city and out into a country setting looking for my dream characters and marveling at the lack thereof.

It's as if my subconscious does not want to be torn from those well worn paths. I'll definitely be working to understand that as i carefully blaze new neural trails.

:)

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Originally Posted by lenscaper

A few days ago, after posting here, I suddenly realized that the key was right there in front of me. I needed to concentrate on those very real dream characters. I spent the last two days treating everybody who came into my office as a dream character. Remembering to do that was extremely difficult at first but yesterday I began to have success.

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Can you give examples of how you interacted with the people who came into your office? I am assuming this was during waking life.

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Originally Posted by fogelbise

Can you give examples of how you interacted with the people who came into your office? I am assuming this was during waking life.

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These are the same people that I see every day, for the most part, and our interactions tend to be pretty similar from day to day. They will mostly be somewhat brief one on one interactions with us standing in close proximity. I have been having these friendly interactions for years and they are a well worn path that I travel throughout my day. These conversations are friendly interludes to the business of the day.

My interactions with my dream characters, I realized, often follow exactly the same path. When I realized that, I saw it as a potentially very powerful opportunity to further my understanding and true acceptance of the dream-like nature of my waking life. When waking life phenomena are truly perceived as a dream I believe one can slip gently out of their grasp and, in that moment, change the way we engage with them.

So I set a very strong intention to recognize my colleagues as dream characters as soon as I saw them. I wanted it to happen at that first moment so that I could continue to engage with them properly but on a subtly different level. I told myself over and over that the next person who came into my office would be a dream character. But......one would walk in and I would find myself immediately on that well worn path......every time. Then they would leave and I would give myself a classic dope slap! I couldn't make it happen. Those neural pathways of social interaction are just too strong after all these years.

Finally, on the second day, I was able to make the transition during a conversation. I tend to do more listening in these interactions and in the middle of listening to a story about an upcoming weekend camping trip I suddenly thought.......wait.....she is a dream character....this is a dream. The conversation continued and as I continued to listen and smile, I let my inner self soak in the dream-like quality of the moment. I felt it and I truly accepted it as such.

The day got busy after that and there was only one other opportunity to try this.....and that opportunity resulted in another mental dope slap. Still.....it was enough, it seems, to establish a tiny new path because that night I had the strong lucid event with a dream character that I described above.

I am still chuckling about how my subconscious seems to have fought back by presenting me with NO dream characters the next night. I intend to continue working on this but last night I decided to just sleep....I had some pleasantly samsaric dreams and slept very well.

:)

....are SO CRAFTY!!

After posting the above, I went back to bed for a Saturday lay-in. My body was telling me that I needed more sleep so my intention was just that. I fell asleep watching the tree outside my window start to catch the morning light.....no WILD attempt....no dream induction techniques at all. After 45 minutes or so of seemingly dreamless sleep I I suddenly turned from a non-distinct conversation with a nebulous woman to watch a crystal clear character walk up and stand right in front of me.

With lucidity barely bubbling up deep in my depths I found myself examining this guy. He was an older gentleman with hair that was a cross between Bob Marley and Albert Einstein.......dark grayish semi-deadlocks that stuck out from under a blue ball cap. He wore a pressed light blue button down shirt that was buttoned at he cuffs and olive green pleated Dockers with a brown belt. He had wire rimmed glasses and a slightly bushy mustache. I looked him up and down in crystal clarity with lucidity still bubbling deep within. He just looked at me as if to say, "Well? Don't you have something to say to me?"

I didn't. Instead I woke up.

My dream characters are definitely the key to real lucidity right now but they are NOT going to make it easy. :)

So many different things are working at different times now.

I'm SO close to putting them all together...........

Thank you for your answer and sorry for my late response. I definitely think that is a very good practice and look forward to hearing more about your progress. Finding the dreamlike quality of waking can take some practice to hone and maintain but can be exactly like (or at least very very similar to) the eureka moment of full lucidity in the dream realm.

Thanks for your continued support, folgelbise, it means a lot.

I am at a point now in my training where my daytime/nighttime combined practice has given me an almost unbroken continuity of consciousness between my daytime existence and my nighttime existence. I have spent a great deal of time reading and re-reading Tenzin Rinpoche's "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep" and that has given me a wonderful mindset. My commitment to dream awareness and lucidity has improved my life in a number of very clear ways with regards to overall awareness and clarity as well as a generally improved outlook on pretty much everything.

Of late I have been letting the lucid river flow around me both day and night while I work on ADA and use SSILD at night to achieve various levels of clarity and lucidity in my dreams. Now I am going back to re-read the basic techniques as offered right here at Dream Views in the Induction Methods and Techniques section, concentrating strongly on WILD. I strongly recommend this approach to anyone who has been trying hard to achieve lucidity for months as I have.......at some point in your practice, get back to basics.

I intend to renew my commitment to working on WILD as I truly believe that is the best way to achieve full lucidity on a regular basis. This quote really caught me from the WILD tutorial thread:

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Originally Posted by PostScript99

It makes me sad that we're still telling newbies that WILD is hard...Come on! WILD is not as hard as everyone says it is. :(

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:)

I am about to enter my sixth month of steady and focused practice.

I am now finding myself becoming lucid with no specific induction technique. I attribute this very interesting turn to my continuing concentration on daytime training. It seems as though my work with lucid moment to moment daytime awareness is now naturally carrying over into my dreams.

Sleep well...and dream.

:)