Hey, it finally happened! I've been waiting for you guys to connect for months; I knew you would. I suggest you stay in touch with each other as your paths -- and your drives -- seem remarkably similar to me!
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Hey, it finally happened! I've been waiting for you guys to connect for months; I knew you would. I suggest you stay in touch with each other as your paths -- and your drives -- seem remarkably similar to me!
Ok....not really ignoring them....more like choosing to not let them affect the dream.
As I approach month nine my dreams are now often that way. As the lucid observer of a clear dream I tend to choose to stay in the dream rather than trigger more active lucidity and go off on an adventure.
Last night was a classic example. I am in a massively crowded airport where the crowds are all moving along in a definite direction. Interspersed in the crowd are people from my past...ex-wives, estranged children, ex-inlaws. It is all very calm and I am flitting from one to the other casually interacting with them as they all move along independent of each other in the crowd.
The cool thing is, though, that there are a number of blatantly obvious incongruities that keep appearing. I see these dream signs as what they are and some of them make me chuckle....but I know that the dream itself is more important so I choose not to let them trigger more extreme lucidity of the sort that will draw me away from what I am observing.
Every few days my subconscious gives me a break from all that and serves me up with an inescapable lucid experience by dropping me directly into a scenario that can only be resolved through true active lucidity.....generally flight. These lucid moments are always staged to give me time to comprehend the situation and make an active decision.......hanging from a bridge or balancing on a high tree branch.
Once again, just sharing.....and pondering even more.
:):):)
In the last couple of months I have started writing down some of the things that have been working for me. I want to have a record of these things so I can revisit them from time to time and possibly even revise them as I learn more. These "white papers" are really just notes to myself.
This is one that has been resonating a lot of late and really working well for me. After discussing it with a friend I realized that I needed to make sure I captured it in this format as well.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gx...eRZGpP6BpAbKEF
Into month nine......
I am having one or more clear dream every night and I always have one that stays with me all of the next day. Every 5 to 10 days I have a lucid event that leaves me exhilarated and enlightened in the morning. After working pretty much every day and night for these months and experimenting with every technique I have now boiled my program down to three simple elements that I practice all day.
Pure Perception
I look at every event during my days as exactly what it is, attaching no expectations, desires or apprehensions to it. It does not always work, but I never stop working on it. That pure perception leads to....
Non-dual Awareness
I see and experience ongoing interactions without taking a position. Everything happens as it happens and I do not let myself get drawn into outcomes. My success rate at that is getting better. When I get it right, both of those disciplines lead to.....
Pure Presence
Pure presence has become the key to my lucidity. Pure.....presence. Existing in the moment. It allows me to observe my dreams from a wonderful vantage point and to slip into lucidity when the time and circumstance is right.
I am stable now. My life has become an unbroken continuity of consciousness between day and night. I know there are more horizons and I know I will cross them and look for even more, but through persistent and dedicated practice I have established lucid days and lucid nights.
I wish you all the best of what LDing offers for you.
Sleep well...and dream
:)
Awesome, lenscaper, what a great achievement! I do hope to get back to something close to this myself in my own practice. In fact, I do believe *presence* in the present moment experience is the key to lucidity in both the waking and the dreaming states. Because if you are not there in that experience -- you with your self-awareness, memories, intentions, goals, and reflective ability and experience -- just who is it that is going to get lucid in that dream? :)
That is also exactly the term I use to describe the highest, most enjoyable state of dreaming experience: "vivid" and "present."
Wow, it's pretty crazy reading this. I too have gotten back into awareness(and lucidity) after having quit the usage of nicotine. That's beside the point though. I have come to the same conclusion of pure presence. This is the phrase that describes it perfectly that I, for some reason, did not even think of. I always described it to myself as a state of a natural flow of awareness blended perfectly with a soft amount of constant attention. I don't even think that's a good definition of it even now as pure presence leaves it in the dust.
I think we all 3 agree that this one thing, presence, is monumental. And that's pretty cool.
I'm thinking that this type of awareness may be the key to incorporating lucidity into everyday life....establishing a routine that can fit into any lifestyle. It is beginning to feel self-sustaining as the more present and aware I feel in my dreams, the clearer and more alive I feel during the day....which then leads to even stronger presence and lucidity in my dreams.
On a side note, I have found that every time I make a meaningful post here at Dream Views it is like a shot of adrenaline to my dreams that night. I posted just before bed that night and my dreams were incredibly strong and clear....I made notes on five dreams and I know I missed at least one during my first sleep cycle. It's as if posting here is a condensed and distilled form of dream journaling. :)
I awoke this morning from a night of no dreams. That probably had something to do with the wedding that I attended yesterday. :)
After doing my usual morning routine, including grocery shopping at 6:00 AM when the store opened, I laid back down for some extra sleep. I did not sleep. Instead I had an hour or so of clear light meditation. I arose with this thought and went right into the studio to write it down:
Before grasping or averting; before any reactionary response, perceive the true nature of that which you observe.
I realized this morning that it has been weeks since I practiced a traditional LD induction technique. Instead I have remained immersed in a somewhat personalized version of the more esoteric techniques of dream yoga as those techniques seem to have slipped into the fabric of my life much more easily.
Meanwhile, I have fully inhabited my dreams. They have become clear and strong with amazing moments of true lucidity that seem to bloom spontaneously out of a more passive yet aware general lucidity that is pervasive. I have come to an amazing place in my life now.
I wrote this in my journal very early this morning after waking from a flight over golden hills:
Practice pure perception.
Nurture non-dual-awareness.
Abide in pure presence.
Discover your true nature and you will become your true self.
I am getting there I think.
Just....sharing......
:)
I have come to an interesting place in my dream regimen. Dream Yoga induction techniques have become an intrinsic and automatic part of my nights even as I slip in LD techniques as well. I am sleeping very well every night, even as I get up two or three times to write in my journal. I have established a natural rhythm between deep sleep and extremely clear dreams. My dreams have begun to reflect the effects of this protocol in a very interesting way.
In almost every dream now I find myself taking part in whatever is going on but from a conscious perspective that allows me to subtly steer the dream plot. I interact with dream characters, listening to them and communicating with them even as I consider how the dream is developing. Sometimes this kind of interaction is stronger than other times. These dreams feel important and I do not want to lose them....but I also do not want them to get out of hand. Every week or so one of these dreams becomes absolutely lucid in response to some anomaly that needs serious attention.
As an example of this, just the other night the bus we were riding in flew off the road and soared up into the air. There were hardened criminals in seats around me....I knew this. Instead of crashing, I settled the bus down in a corn field and as the bad people rushed off I had them start signing autographs at a table next to the bus...as I left the dream. I woke up smiling and got up immediately to write it down.
This ....dream management......was subtle thing. I did not consider what to do and then do it......I just changed the flow of the dream.
Just....sharing....as I finish month nine of my training.
I have been doing an exercise....a meditation really....that I am calling Collapsing Inward.
This involves letting all of my energies slowly collapse into my energetic center.....you know, that spot just below the navel....and feeling all that energy gather there. I visualize the collapse of a blazing star into a tiny mass of incredibly compressed energy (a neutron star). It is very powerful.
I am bringing this into the LD conversation because it has had a profound effect on my dreams the last few nights. After falling back to sleep in this state I go into dreams with a powerfully strong physical connection to my body. The dreams have been incredibly clear and...visceral. Sight, sound and the sense of touch are amplified. The number of dreams and the recall of them in just the last few nights has been amazing. I am now incorporating this exercise into my ADA practice.
Great advice! It's not what most people normally do, because it's not easy. We mostly just look at superficial aspects of things.
Even if we aren't capable of drilling all the way down to something's true nature, at least it's good to look at things from different perspectives. Especially other people.
So it's like you're controlling the dream, but in a very spontaneous way? That is, not "overthinking" things, which can make the control of the dream become a bit "clunky" or "heavy handed"? It's like doing improvisational theater rather than conventional theater. You're in control, but the control is very spontaneous, not pre-planned. Maybe you're letting your true self (maybe your subconscious mind) do the controlling?
I definitely prefer LDs that are like that. It's like I just know what to do at each point in the dream. There's no hesitation or pondering what to do next. But that doesn't always happen for me. Usually doesn't.
Could you say more about how you do that? Do you just focus all your attention on that area below your navel? Do you also repeat a mantra, or anything like that?
What if you let all your energy collapse into a different part of your body, such as your chest or your head? Does that also work? If so, it probably has different effects. Or maybe you haven't tried that.
I like that comparison to improv theater a lot. For quite a while now I have been working to establish a very basic level of underlying lucidity in my dreams rather than to achieve strong and actionable lucidity. My goal is to create a very strong foundation for a life time of lucidity.
This seems to be resulting in this subconscious level of "dream management" at times.
This is an offshoot of the work I have been doing in Dream Yoga where you concentrate on a different energy center (chakra) before each sleep cycle. I noticed that that protocol kind of skipped over the classic spot below the navel. That is a place I have concentrated on for many years in my practice of T'ai Chi and Aikido. In Aikido we call it the "one point". It seemed natural to try to include it in the DY protocol.Quote:
Could you say more about how you do that? Do you just focus all your attention on that area below your navel? Do you also repeat a mantra, or anything like that?
I found that once all of the chakras were open at the tail end of the night I could feel some internal energy trying to gather in that spot. I had just read an article about the formation of neutron stars and the idea of visualizing that intense concentration of energy at the "one point" seemed natural. When I first did the visualization i immediately could feel the gathering of external energy there. It became a pulse of energy and I let it flow into my extremities as a fell asleep......no mantra, just a strong sense of marshaling my energy there.
It is really quite strong when done in the last sleep cycle like that. I need to get up very early for work and this morning after a very strong last dream I laid in bed and kept drifting back into brief dream sequences without quite falling back to sleep. I was definitely smiling when I finally let that go and rose for the day.
The DY protocols earlier in the night have already opened the energy centers in the throat, brow, heart and behind the genitals. Only one energy center left. :)Quote:
What if you let all your energy collapse into a different part of your body, such as your chest or your head? Does that also work? If so, it probably has different effects. Or maybe you haven't tried that.
Good way to do it! The way lucid dreaming is often done suppresses some of the most interesting aspects of regular (i.e., non-lucid) dreams in exchange for the ability to do fun things. That sounds like a criticism of how lucid dreaming is often done, but it's not. There's nothing wrong with doing it that way, but there are other ways to do it that are totally different and possibly more fulfilling, at least to some people.
Anyway, the way you're doing LDs is appeals to me. You're getting lucid while preserving more of what I find interesting about non-lucid dreams. Not easy to do.
I often meditate before going to sleep. I'll try focusing on that energy center instead of what I usually do, which is repeating a mantra and/or focusing on my breathing.
Sounds great! Nice imagery of a neutron star. Maybe the image of a black hole would also work.
Yeah....I definitely thought about a black hole. I also considered visualizing a singularity like the grain of sand that was the beginning of our universe. The neutron star image keeps the energy more accessible than a black hole and somewhat more controllable than a big bang type of singularity. :)
Some dreams are just so real and....lucid....that they just stick with you in vivid detail, right?
I am walking down the wide path that I always take to get to the woods but the path is blocked by a family taking pictures. A little girl in a white dress is wailing in her mother's arms. I know she is cold....I am wearing a jacket and gloves against the early morning chill. As I walk by them she stops crying and we lock eyes. Nobody else seems to see me.
Now I am in the woods with the freshly risen sun at my back. I am surrounded by small black birds. They are everywhere around me and their shadows from the low sun play across the trees. They are so loud. I can hear their occasional droppings hitting the dry leaves around me.
Now I am back on the path and another family is there, once again taking pictures. A very pregnant woman is posing in a gray sweater with her hands on her belly. An very young oriental child is sitting on a stool in front of some small pumpkins. He is dressed smartly in a white button down sweater and his hair is meticulously combed. As I walk past them they all smile. The child follows me with his eyes.
The coolest thing is.....I knew I was in a dream.......but I was awake. :)
Oh........
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bx...5Zk4EVx_g6EqG9
All of that actually happened....exactly that way....every little nuance. When that little girl in the white dress locked eyes with me I felt certain that I was in a dream. Then, on the way back that second family in the exact spot on the path......incredibly dream-like.
And, of course, those birds.....grackles.
I had slept in on Saturday morning on a night that left me with seven different journal entries. I rose just after the sun and went for that walk.
What I truly think is happening is that I am beginning to succeed in creating an unbroken continuity of consciousness between my waking life and my night time dreaming life. For me this is a very important goal. I am beginning to truly inhabit my dreams as the very same person that I am when I am awake. I make decisions....I have memories.....I have the same personality. Not all the time, of course.......but when I am that way I wake up feeling as though I am now living a much more expanded existence.
From a dream yoga perspective this is allowing me to liberate tons of lingering karmic traces......and I do have tons from this long life of mine. :nodyes:
It has been a few weeks since I did anything that would be considered truly lucid in a dream. No flights in a while. But I honestly feel that I have become more intrinsically lucid than ever. I have stopped asking myself if this is a dream. I just seem to know that I am dreaming without making a big deal out of it. That's is how it feels anyway.
:)
Really?
Debatable, right?
Here is an interesting take on that from a cognitive neuroscientist. It's a little heady and kind of long....
https://aeon.co/videos/its-impossibl...neuroscientist