Thread: Age and Lucidity

Originally Posted by Sageous

Someone want to tell me what a "normal" LD is, exactly?

Seriously. I'm starting to think that pretty much anything goes.......

Not only that, but isn't interacting with dreams, for whatever reason, the default setting for dreamers everywhere?

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.

Originally Posted by lenscaper

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.

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Sageous

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

This is such an important principle......thank you for bringing it into the conversation.

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.