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As a slightly older oneironaut I watched all the original Seinfeld episodes as they came out. Last night, as I was coming out of some SSILD cycles and sleep was closing in, I remembered this one for some reason:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW_s6EqOxqY
I gave it a shot as a transition mantra and it worked unbelievably well!!!
:nodyes:
Hilarious! Also could see that working!!Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Seinfeld was such a great show. Want to re-watch all the episodes at some point.
Lenscaper, I was just rereading your original post on this topic....
Amazing experience! Did you even know the term "lucid dream" when that happened to you?Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Sounds like you're a natural LDing person! That's so great!Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
I can, except I was only 5-10 years old when I had a spontaneous LD that was similar to your experience, including the threatening aspect. A bee was chasing me. Suddenly I realized it was a dream, so I stopped, looked at the bee, and told it to go ahead and sting me. It just flew away in disgust. I was amazed at the idea of being able to realize I was dreaming during a dream, but at that young age I didn't know what to do with it. However, I never forgot about it. As an adult, I eventually got into LDing. Mostly I found that supplements worked best for me. (Galantamine, choline bitartrate, theanine, nicotine, etc.)Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
I'm now almost 64. I'm not a beginner, but also don't consider myself to be an expert. Anyway, as I got older, I gradually got to the point where LD supplements usually gave me insomnia. So I pretty much stopped using them for the last 10 or 15 years.Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Then late last year I was discussing LD supplements with someone on another forum (Deep Dreaming). He mentioned the idea of using extended-release supplements. I thought they might be worth a try, because they might not give me insomnia. Unfortunately there's no such thing as extended-release LD supplements. At least I couldn't find any. However, in searching for them, I found something even better: empty delayed-release capsules that can be filled with whatever supplement you want. I ordered some online. It turns out they work perfectly! So now I'm using LD supplements regularly, without them causing any insomnia. Basically the delayed-release capsules provide enough time for me to get to sleep before the effects of the supplements kick in.
Hey, Zthread......Quote:
Originally Posted by Zthread
That's a cool story about the bee.....very similar to my first experience.
I had never heard of lucid dreaming when that happened. My eyes were opened wide that next day when I stumbled on the term and realized that I could actually train myself in this discipline. To say that I immersed myself in all things lucid would be a bit of an understatement.
I don't consider myself to be a natural lucid dreamer but now, in retrospect, I see that I have always had pretty clear dreams that may have, at times, even been lucid. Throughout my adult life I have trained and practiced in other disciplines that seem to have prepared me for this wonderful lucid journey. I have practiced and taught T'ai Chi for many, many years and I trained in the Japanese martial art of Aikido for many years before becoming Sensei. Those disciplines taught me to overcome distractions and abide in an aware state of mind a lot, which has been helpful if attaining lucidity.
I have not tried any supplements. I want to achieve a natural state of lucidity that can be incorporated into my life. These days I have begun to realize that I need to work toward being able to achieve dream lucidity spontaneously because I just don't have enough time in the night to deploy the techniques I have learned and still get the sleep that I need to be sharp in the morning and at work.
To that end I have really ramped up my daytime practice. If I can achieve a state of pure presence as much as possible during my work day, I will achieve that naturally in my dreams and that will allow me to cut through the fantasies and illusions of those dreams right away and achieve lucidity spontaneously. It's starting to work. :)
What happened in your first experience, if you don't mind my asking? (No problem at all if you do mind!)Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
That's great!Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Yes, I imagine that kind of training would help a lot!Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
I like the idea of just having LDs spontaneously in that way.Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Wow! Really great!!Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
:)Quote:
Originally Posted by Zthread
It was the night of February 5, this year, and I still remember it as if it was last night. I was floating down a small river in a red canoe when just in front of me, where the river narrowed between two outcroppings, a huge hippopotamus rose up slowly from the river. I still remember how the river water streamed off its dark grey back. The hippo spoke to me in a woman's voice but I do not recall the words. Instead of crashing into the hippo, I suddenly leaped from the canoe and flew to the top of the raised riverbank that had been on my left. I stood at the top of that riverbank and looked out over an expansive grassy field realizing that I was fully conscious of being in a dream.....before waking up, of course.
The next morning I researched "awake in a dream" and the first article mentioned lucid dreaming.....I was off and running. That hippo dream became my first dream journal entry. Looking back now at those early entries I am reminded that I went after WBTB and WILD right away. My WILD attempts were sloppy but they yielded immediate results. On 2/6 I had an OBE after 2 hours of HI where my dream arms reached out of my body to grab one of the colored HI blobs and pull it back in before it drifted off. The next night I fell asleep during another long period of HI and did my first clumsy flight. On 2/9 I had a most profound LD after again falling asleep during HI where I entered the dream high in the air over a beautiful stream. I flew down to that stream and walked up through the water to a sandy spit of land where I sat and just watched the stream flow by. The next night I had the exact same dream. This time instead of sitting down on the shore, I waded out into the stream and laid down on the bottom where I looked up through the water at the blue sky and breathed in the water.
Anyway, that's how it all started for me..........thanks for asking about it. :)
Wow! Beautiful dream! Wonder what the hippo said, though!Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Amazing you had such fast results!Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Grabbing HI! That's something I've never heard of before. I love HI, but never have thought of grabbing it. Might be a way to "pull" oneself into a dream.Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Great ones, also, especially so soon after discovering LDing. Nice idea to breath underwater while looking up through the water....Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
I'd have to say you're a natural LDer.Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Hmmmmmm.....maybe......Quote:
Originally Posted by Zthread
The thing is, I don't do any of the things that most folks here do when I am lucid. I don't go looking for adventure........no long flights of fancy, no sex with movie stars or journeys to the center of the earth. Instead I just attend to what my subconscious runs by me. I attend to the dream as the dreamer, sometimes interacting, sometimes making subtle changes. When things go off the rails....and they occasionally do.....I take flight. When I find myself in a natural place with no DC's around me I immerse myself in that place.
I don't quite have the technique down to go anywhere I desire, and I'm not sure that I want to.....although I have been trying to go back to that stream again. :)
When i wake up from these LD's where I have been the lucid dreamer just observing the dream as it flows around me I always feel amazingly refreshed and alive. It is as if more of the weight of my past has been lifted and blown away forever.
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Originally Posted by Zthread
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Originally Posted by lenscaper
No, Lenscaper, you are likely not a "natural" LD'er. And that, I think, is a good thing.
If you were a natural, then this thread wouldn't exist, because you would not have needed to learn anything, at all, about the process of becoming lucid, to search as actively as you did, because the process would have already been embedded in your psyche, naturally. Lucidity by now would be old hat for you (even a nuisance, possibly), because, if a natural, you would have been experiencing it, often without choice, for decades. But, in your case, I believe something way better than natural ability happened with you:
Your lifetime of activities that involve self-discipline and perhaps self-awareness certainly primed you to relatively easily achieve consistent LD'ing. Rather than having lucidity thrust upon you by your genes, you worked hard for your skills, and earned your current ability; revel in that fact, and don't belittle your work by calling yourself, or allowing yourself to be called, a natural.
The reason I say all this, and in such a condescending manner, is because I am pretty sure that natural lucidity is incredibly rare, if it exists at all, and the internet-fueled tradition of people calling people (or themselves) "naturals" has created a term that is wrong, counterproductive, and perhaps a bit damaging to novices. For instance, a dreamer struggling for success might come to believe that she must need some innate ability to have any success; with a convenient excuse for her failure, she gives up. Or, worse, folks who proclaim themselves naturals might fall into a state of delusion that prevents them from ever attaining the skills that will help them experience true lucidity consistently.
I could go on all day about this, but nobody wants that, so let me leave with some bullets:
* This is anecdotal, of course, but I have met or spoken with thousands of LDers over the years, and many of them are remarkably adept at LDing. But out of all those people, I ran into only one who could convince me that he was a natural. And, perhaps not ironically, I met him because he came on this forum looking for help to cure his natural ability; being awake all night, every night, for decades, was literally driving him nuts.
* The paradoxical nature of lucidity -- being awake while you are asleep -- runs anathema to pretty much every aspect of our natural sleep and dreaming processes, we are "naturally" programmed to not be lucid during dreams. So, perhaps aside from mental illness/persistent psychosis, our natural machinery is designed to combat lucidity, tamping it down whenever it may occur -- which may be why becoming consistently lucid is generally not easy, even with experienced LDers.
*That machinery does fail now and then: I believe that all people have moments of lucidity in their dreams sometime in their lives (just as they do in waking-life), and your mindset might have caused that failure a bit more often than normal, but that is very different from naturally being able to induce lucidity on demand, or have it induced for you by accident, all night every night.
* Lucidity has nothing to do with clarity, or vividness. It is about the presence of waking-life self-awareness in a dream; nothing more, nothing less. Some of my most vivid, clear dreams were NLD's, while some of my most lucid moments were in a blurry mess -- and vise-versa.
tl;dr: Take credit for a life's work, self-awareness speaking, that led you to LD'ing in the first place, and take credit for your tireless effort this year to make LD'ing a part of your life -- those are far more impressive than being a so-called "natural," by any measure.
Old guy rant over; now back to your regularly-scheduled program.
:sageous:
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Great post, Sageous!
You're right.....I have worked hard. I am becoming....more than I was......through my LD training, so I will continue to work hard.
VERY interesting perspective on the "curse" of natural dream lucidity.
Or, maybe not!Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
That's also my favorite way to do LDing. Because whatever my conscious mind comes up with, it's never as good what my subconscious creates. Here's a metaphor: When you get lucid, the dream becomes a dance between your conscious and subconscious minds. And your subconscious mind is a better dancer, so it's usually best to let it lead.Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Right. Why bother with such techniques? It's not necessary. As they say, you can never go back to the same stream, anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Doesn't get much better than that!Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
I've often thought that if most of our dreams were LDs, people would work on techniques to induce non-LDs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sageous
Great point.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sageous
Yes, probably is quite rare. And could be damaging in various ways.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sageous
Wow! Also, during an LD, your sleep quality isn't as high, so wouldn't be surprised if someone who only--or mostly only--had LDs would be chronically sleep-deprived.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sageous
Right. Not easy, and likely not at all desirable or healthy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sageous
True.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sageous
Also the most intriguing things often happen in NLDs, not LDs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sageous
Thought-provoking rant!Quote:
Originally Posted by Sageous
.....WILL lead to successful lucidity.
Here at the start of my seventh month of training I have recently had my first true, intense and completely WILD event. Oddly enough, it came while I was taking a few days off from my training.....on the second night of a mini beach vacation. I had spent the early morning swimming out close to the wild dolphins at the New Jersey shore. The rest of the day was a mass of humanity on the crowded beach and the evening ended after a nice dinner and a few beers with a walk through even more humanity on the boardwalk.
I fell into a peaceful sleep much later than usual setting no intention to try for lucidity.
But I woke in the night to a feeling of intensely clear presence. I laid in that hotel bed and, surrounded by HI, I pondered the clear light of pure presence. As sleep slowly enveloped me, I found myself out the small fourth floor balcony that overlooked the Atlantic Ocean where I immediately dissolved the railing and soared out into the rising sun. I flew close over the water...like a pelican would....and the dolphins came and swam just under me.
Wow!!:sunflower:
As I progress I am coming to a deeper understanding of my personal lucidity in dreams. As an older oneironaut I tend to more often take the role of the lucid observer where I can subtly change the "dream plot". In these dreams I feel as though I am no longer part of the dream but, rather, I am the dreamer.
Last night was like this. I had five dreams but only got up to write down one....and that one has stayed with me. Without getting into details, I was doing a job that I am not good at and I knew I was there not to do that job but to observe the dream. The dream plot went in a direction that felt to be the wrong one and I interacted with the dream characters specifically to change the plot. At the end I looked around at what I was supposed to be doing, smiled, dropped my tools and left the dream.
There was never a moment of "AHA! This is a dream!" but I have come to not expect those moments often as I work toward that unbroken continuity between my "waking dream" existence and my sleeping dreams.
I am wondering how more experienced LDers view all that.
Well, this experienced LDer views all that as genuine progress!Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
In my opinion, coming to understand that "I am no longer part of the dream but, rather, I am the dreamer" is effectively coming to understand lucidity itself; nice work, and congrats!
It might seem like semantics, but the next step is coming to a moment where you find yourself saying (or, better, knowing), "I am the dream."
Good luck!
Wow. Yeah........wrapping my head around that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sageous
Thanks for that. :)
Great way to do it!Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
How did that work? Did the dream character representing yourself do something to get the other DCs to change what they were doing?Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Also, wonder if your subconscious purposely made you do a job you knew you weren't good at. Seems symbolic, possibly. Or maybe it was a done as a way to help you realize you were dreaming.
You left the dream by waking up? Or you went into a different dream scene?Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Nice!Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
It's an approach that appeals to me a lot.Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Well......I found myself on a carpentry crew in the framework of a house that was being built. It was very real. I was....me. I knew that I was not a very good carpenter and I wondered what I was doing there. I was....amused about it. One of the crew members went someplace else, maybe for lunch, and we all knew he was in some sort of trouble. The foreman wanted to rescue him. So I went to where he was and saw two older men sitting at a table with their backs to me....one had scraggly long grey hair...I knew he was the one responsible for the trouble. He felt.....nasty.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zthread
I went back to the job site where the foreman was working the few other characters up for a rescue. I spoke to him...told him that would not be a good idea as these men were dangerous. I told him he needed to call the police as that was what they did. He resisted and I persisted.......until I finally said.....you're not listening to me. Another man entered the space then....an authority figure. He said....you're right, he's not, but I am...and we'll do the right thing. I never saw that man clearly.
Actually.....I walked over to where I was working and lifted up a piece of plywood that I had fastened to the floor....it came right up. I chuckled at myself and let my tool belt fall to the floor.......and woke up.Quote:
You left the dream by waking up? Or you went into a different dream scene?
I do believe that the whole scene from the beginning was a subtle way for my subconscious to let me know I was in a dream. That kind of scenario happens frequently these days (nights). I have been working hard on daytime awareness of life as a dream......telling myself that I am creating the story during the day with my own cognitive reality. I think that is starting to translate into my dreams. One of my daytime mantras is "lucid days....lucid nights". So....the realization at night that I am dreaming comes as a very subtle transition.....it's as if I just know with no real trigger, just that subtle awareness.Quote:
Also, wonder if your subconscious purposely made you do a job you knew you weren't good at. Seems symbolic, possibly. Or maybe it was a done as a way to help you realize you were dreaming.
I know that I need to work harder on this to get to the point where I can make obvious and substantive changes in these dreams.......but at this point I don't really want to do that as these dreams are affecting me in a very good way....there are lessons in them that are subtle but very real. A dream like the one I just described stays with me with such clarity........I can still hear the voices and still see the back of that man's head with the scraggly grey hair. I can still feel my frustration rising when the foreman was not listening to my warning....and the relief when the other character stepped in to support me. And, most importantly.....I can still feel my self deprecating chuckle when I let that piece of plywood drop back down, dropped those tools and knew I could leave the dream.
I'm still just letting it all sink in. I can feel myself changing from these dreams.
Thanks for asking about it, Zthread. Discussions like this really help to fortify these experiences.
:)
So from the start you knew you were dreaming? Totally unlike a normal LD, but in a good way. Letting the dream play out--while interacting with it to see what happens--is something most people don't do.Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
In LDs of this type, do you usually feel like you just know what to do next? Or do you have to mull things over a bit to decide what to do next?Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
In other words, you were trying to wake yourself up? That's also something most people don't do in LDs!Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Great way to do it!Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
What kind(s) of change(s) in the above LD would you like to have the ability to make? Or just in general in any LD?Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Yes, that's a possible drawback of changing things too much.Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Nice!Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Thanks for posting about what you're doing! It's giving me some ideas....Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
Someone want to tell me what a "normal" LD is, exactly? Not only that, but isn't interacting with dreams, for whatever reason, the default setting for dreamers everywhere?Quote:
Originally Posted by Zthread
... Just sayin'
I knew I was in a dream when I realized that I had a hammer in my hand. I chuckled and looked around to see what was going onQuote:
Originally Posted by Zthread
Good question...and helpful. In these types of dreams I seem to always just start to interact with DCs as I would in the waking world once lucidity blooms. I don't tend to mull things over....I usually just get right in the game.Quote:
In LDs of this type, do you usually feel like you just know what to do next? Or do you have to mull things over a bit to decide what to do next?
It's more as if I know I need to wake up. I have been getting up at 4:00 AM for years....I never use an alarm. Dreams like this one almost always come at the end of the night. My subconscious mind seems to know when I need to wake up from them. I call these my "4:00 Special". This time I looked over at the clock at 3:45 and set an intention for one more dream with lucidity. I rolled over and went back to sleep......woke up out of this just after 4:00 and went in to write it down immediately.Quote:
In other words, you were trying to wake yourself up?
An even better question.....and even more helpful to me as I learn from all this! The dream yoga perspective would say that I am liberating karmic traces from dreams like this by just interacting with them in a non-dualistic manner. That perspective also might say that by taking a more aggressive role I could be creating more karmic traces that would then need to be worked out. I feel, though, that I would like to have more real control in general in my dreams. I want to go back to some places that I have been to meditate and reflect while in the dream. In this dream, in retrospect, it would have been nice to do that at the end so the ability to go to another venue after a dream sequence is something I wish to develop.Quote:
What kind(s) of change(s) in the above LD would you like to have the ability to make? Or just in general in any LD?
Those skills will come in time. I will continue to train. One thing I have learned in life is that much can be accomplished through persistent practice.
Seriously. I'm starting to think that pretty much anything goes.......Quote:
Originally Posted by Sageous
Pondering that. It's essentially the case, of course. I seem to spend a great deal of time in my LDs interacting very specifically with DCs, though. It seems as though my lucidity blossoms when I engage them. I wonder if that tendency is preventing me from seeing a bigger picture.Quote:
Not only that, but isn't interacting with dreams, for whatever reason, the default setting for dreamers everywhere?
That is a curious trap that many dreamers allow themselves to fall into, possibly for a lifetime. Yes, lucidity can seem to blossom when you engage DC's but it will only actually blossom when you do so from a non-dual perspective, knowing that those DC's are just facets of your own personality and imagination (or, I suppose, knowing that the DC's are the facets of someone else, but that is for a different conversation ;)). I think many dreamers may initially see DC's they encounter as real beings, as they normally do when not lucid, and when they focus on them the beings may become more real, just because lucidly focusing on an object tends to intensify its image. Now, if you are lucidly interacting from a non-dual perspective, you will understand the increase in intensity, and everything is fine, lucidity might be improved, and you might even learn a thing or two about yourself that maybe you've been ignoring in waking-life. However, if you are interacting from a perspective of duality (aka, our default perspective), then that intensity will impress you, and you will likely be drawn into the DC's presence rather that making it part of your own. That drawing in will result in a loss of lucidity as you continue to elevate the importance of the DC, and, ironically, you will continue to think you are lucid, and perhaps even more so, even though your presence is already slipping away. Eventually, the interaction engulfs you, true lucidity is gone, and your interaction becomes a dream about being lucid.Quote:
Originally Posted by lenscaper
This trap doesn't just apply to DC interaction, but also to other possibly intense actions lucid dreamers take, like flying, teleportation, summoning dream guides, creating new dream scenes or worlds, having sex, etc. Great care must be taken during these events to continue to know that all this cool stuff isn't happening to you or in front of you, but it is you. To do otherwise, to believe these things are as real as they seem, is to allow your presence to leave the scene. I personally think a lot of LD'ers fall into that trap, and many come to describe the trap itself as a lucid experience, thereby missing the real thing.
tl;dr: Yes, allowing yourself to be absorbed by one aspect of your dream may seem like a good thing -- and it can be -- but in the end it may cause you to make that absorption become more important than your understanding that everything in the dream is you, and the bigger picture will likely be missed.
This is such an important principle......thank you for bringing it into the conversation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sageous
I have been working incredibly hard toward a goal of living my life in a non-dual presence. Much of my daytime practice is centered on this principle of late and it is amazingly difficult to achieve with any degree of steadiness. But that practice has very definitely been a factor in my limited but steady progress toward lucidity in the dream. The ability to exist during the day in a lucid, non-dual presence....even for moments at a time.....very definitely leads to the ability to do so in a dream.
That first moment of pure, non-dual perception is so fleeting..........
Wrt dream characters.....as I mentioned somewhere in an above post, for a while I was using them as very potent dream signs. When I found myself drawn in to them I was using it to trigger lucidity.....with great success. That came from practice during the day with real people. :)
I need to go back to that I think, for more work.