Perspective of Motion

[lenscaper]

I was just looking out my office window at huge snowflakes floating slowly down. I, of course, did a state check and imagined that I was in this dream and flying up through those fat flakes. With my eyes closed I started to feel as if I was staying still and the scene was flowing by me. I wonder about trying that for flight in a dream.....letting the ground drop away from me. And I further wonder if that's really what is happening in our lucid dreams.........are we just staying still while the dream flows around us?

[Darkmatters]

I'm gonna go all Sageous on ya for a minute here (or as best I can, he could do it better). In actuality nothing is moving and nothing actually exists in the dream - it's all just your mind creating and maintaining a clever illusion. There are no other people - you don't have a body, it's all just dream. Sometimes for me this becomes apparent when the whole dream will suddenly drop into what I call low-res, everything turns all simple and almost blocky, like a video game that needs to buffer or something. Or like if you're watching a video in HD on YouTube and suddenly that needs to buffer so it drops into extreme low-res like 240p or something. As a more direct response to your question, keeping what I just said in mind, the subconscious is very inventive in creating these illusions for us and switches between different ones from time to time. Sometimes maybe it will seem the scene is flowing past as you're holding still, sometimes it will seem as if your'e actually just watching it all on a big screen or something. Sometimes it will feel like you're struggling mightily and barely able to float 6 feet over the ground at a slow walking pace, and maybe even then you start to lose motive power and descend like a dirigible deflating. And sometimes I get this super-flying capability where I'm miles above everything and moving like a supersonic jet. That's pretty rare for me though and I think it's taxing on the mind's 'processing power' to maintain it. I also notice sometimes when I'm flying or falling there's a definite sensation of forward acceleration in my body that I believe I'm actually experiencing physically, because if I wake up it's still there for a while, and in fact I can sometimes feel it even before falling asleep, as I quiet down in bed, and I know there are going to be lots of flying or falling dreams. I think the sensation comes before the dream, rather than being caused by it. I'm not sure what causes it. My suspicion is it might be caused by sugar, or maybe just some kind of excitation in the body, the body chemistry – maybe some adrenaline or something. I know a lot of dream scenarios reflect actual physical conditions, but flying often is just a dream thing. I can generally tell the difference when it's a body thing (if the bodily sensation is really strong I know I'm in for a bad night of falling over and over from tilting skyscrapers that suddenly shoot up to thousands of feet high). Oh yeah, I wanted to actually say something helpful too before I get carried away! One thing I've found is that if you want to fly don't think about the flying itself but imagine your goal and feel a strong urge to get there. You might fly or you might teleport or something else, but if you do fly it's going to be much stronger and faster than if your'e thinking about the effort involved. Thinking about the goal sort of pulls you forward rather than you having to push the whole way. That said though, sometimes I can fly really well and love to do it with no particular goal in mind. One way I used to do it is to find myself on a rooftop (not one of the thousand-foot-high ones, this is when it's not a bodily sensation dream) and I just kind of know I can't be hurt without becoming fully lucid - I recognize it as "one of these things I get into sometimes where I can do cool stuff like flying" but don't fully realize it's called a dream. In those I just know I can do things I can't normally do, so I'll leap fearlessly off the roof and either start flying right away or sometimes I might fall to just above the ground (and I mean like a half an inch above) and then my downward motion will effortlessly switch to horizontal motion and I find myself gliding as if on smooth ice just above the ground. Those are fun!

[lenscaper]

In actuality nothing is moving and nothing actually exists in the dream - it's all just your mind creating and maintaining a clever illusion. That's true, of course. I'm trying to get a feel for the perception of perspective so I can create it in my mind during the day. I am imagining being in a simulation where I am going though the motions while scenes flow by me and around me. Good stuff about flight, btw. Right now I am using the image of Iron Man in the first movie when he is first figuring it out and learns how to hover just off the floor like that. I have been going into that posture after state checks here in my office and closing my eyes to try to feel myself rising off the floor. It's a VERY good thing that I have a private office.

[Darkmatters]

Oh ok, I see what you mean. Yeah, there are times when you want to understand that's it's all just illusion created by the subconscious, and there are times when you want to examine the way those illusions present themselves. I think the first Iron Man movie is a great one for studying the dynamics of flight - it was really outstanding in that regard and several others as well. If you watch the flying scenes before bed you may well find yourself airborne.

[lenscaper]

If you watch the flying scenes before bed you may well find yourself airborne. Clear for takeoff....

[fogelbise]

I was just looking out my office window at huge snowflakes floating slowly down. I, of course, did a state check and imagined that I was in this dream and flying up through those fat flakes. With my eyes closed I started to feel as if I was staying still and the scene was flowing by me. I wonder about trying that for flight in a dream.....letting the ground drop away from me. And I further wonder if that's really what is happening in our lucid dreams.........are we just staying still while the dream flows around us? Once again, I like how you think. Flying up through those fat snowflakes...wonderful imagery that took me to my imagination of that. I also like your unconventional thinking: "...letting the ground drop away from me." If interested, I recommend the first link in my signature for general dream control help, which could give you some ideas about flying and other types of movement.

[lenscaper]

Thanks for that fogelbise. Yeah...that's a very good thread. Slow here this afternoon so I have an earbud in to listen to some of the podcasts. Trying to stay immersed in front of the weekend.

[Methos]

I've used to use the 'ground drop' a lot when I first started lucid dreaming because it was too hard to launch upwards. Othere times I'd think 'there is no up or down really, I'm just going to fall off the earth' in effect 'falling upward' into the sky. Not much flight control in the 'fall upward' dreams but they worked to get me off the ground. Best of luck with your experimentations.

[lenscaper]

Othere times I'd think 'there is no up or down really, I'm just going to fall off the earth' in effect 'falling upward' into the sky. I REALLY like that concept!