Thread: Age and Lucidity

Originally Posted by lenscaper

Well.......During my days I sit in front of a computer screen with a bluetooth headset on in a nice private office. With big windows and a huge ficus tree. It is a very personalized space. I have a small bright pink post-it sticky stuck to the phone and every time I glance at it I ask myself if this is a dream. Then I look closely at all the things close around me and try to see details that I have missed in the past. I'll get up and walk around while I am taking calls and watch my hands. I have started telling myself over and over that this is a dream...just the one I am awake in. That may be the important part...it feels right.

It has become a pretty constant frame of mind....almost as if I am living in a reality check. I am fortunate to be in such a controlled environment for 10 hours each day.

These daytime exercises, along with the night time lucidity, are really changing my perspective of "reality"....in a good way.

I am loving this thread. What you write is really inspiring to me, because I'm also working hard during the day for this. My frequency of LD has also increased but I'm still not at the phase of having stable controllable lucid dreams. Nevertheless I do feel I've made progress.

I'm very interested in the part where you say that you are at a computer. I am in a very similar situation as you: I work from home, on the computer (as a computer programmer). How do you manage to stay aware on the computer? I find it really hard. I get very easily absorbed (I've been programming for at least 20 years). I find that working on the computer and being aware can be a bit contradictory, or maybe just very hard?

Do you have some advice? I would like to somehow integrate practicing awareness and "this is a dream" while on the computer too. That's the part where I lose track the most. When I get up from the computer, I'm a bit in a haze that I need to work on getting out of by either socializing, taking a break, a walk or doing something else. Meditation also works but the formerly stated activities work much better. Being in nature is golden though! I wish my office was in the wild

I'm glad this thread has been helpful to you, gbbr........it has been incredibly helpful to me as well to be able to write like this.

Originally Posted by gbbr

I'm very interested in the part where you say that you are at a computer.

Well, my situation is very different from yours. I work as the Technical Director for a building material manufacturer. We make a very unique building board that is used for sound control in construction so I spend my days answering email and phone questions about sound control and researching all sorts of things. While I do sit in front of my computer a lot, I also walk around my office talking to folks and there is a lot of time between calls and emails.....so I get to research all things lucid a lot as well.

I would like to somehow integrate practicing awareness and "this is a dream" while on the computer too. That's the part where I lose track the most. When I get up from the computer, I'm a bit in a haze that I need to work on getting out of by either socializing, taking a break, a walk or doing something else.

I get that way as well at times. There is an excellent exercise in the Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep manuscript (page 39) where he speaks of balancing the prana. I do that when I get hazy and it really works. Every time you get up from your computer for a break look for details that you maybe walk by all the time but never notice. Look at them and see them as in a dream..........odd things like finding your reflection in a brass door knob or finding shapes in the grain pattern of a wood door. Stand in one place with your eyes closed and be extremely conscious of your body for a minute or two. I find that total body awareness like that leads to a feeling of pure presence (I do that at night as I fall asleep too). Then try to float....or to let the floor fall away from you. Then go back to work. These are some of the things I do during my day in the office.

Originally Posted by gbbr

Being in nature is golden though! I wish my office was in the wild

Getting out into nature is an excellent way to find the peace that will help to foster calm and focused lucidity. I am exploring the Japanese discipline of Shinrin-yoku (Forest Bathing) on my weekends.

Thank you for this! I'm going to try that out, I really like the idea of walking around looking for details.

Sometimes it feels as if the harder I seek lucidity the more I fail at it. Ardent effort must inevitably result in many failures and our consciousness tends to highlight failures over successes in those meta-cognitive moments. Those highlighted failures become ingrained seeds for more failure I think.

I am working on letting the lucid flow happen around me for a while. Sometimes that is not so easy, though.