Okay. Here we go.
I am an eighteen-year old male. I sleep fairly irregularly, but generally go to bed sometime between 1:00am and 3:00am, and wake up from 8:00am to 11:00am.
I want to post all facts relevant to sleep cycles or dreams here in case people have specific ideas about this- I could use the feedback.
Until two days ago, when I started exploring LD, I had not had a dream I could recall for possibly years. Just never really spent much thought upon it.
I want to explore LD for several reasons;
1. As a fierce introvert and more importantly, introspect, dreams offer a totally new world in which to examine one's mind and self.
2. As an artist (or attemptee) dreams provide a break from the chains and restrictions of conventional, habitual thinking and delve into free association and creativity of levels unprecedented.
3. As a perfectionist, LD can be used to test certain experiences, ideas, experiments, in a not altogether realistic setting, but nonetheless can be effective to some degree.
4. As a philosopher, I am fascinated with consciousness, the mind, and the mysteries of that metaverse which is so ambiguous and enigmatic titling it with a single word could not do it justice. LD can be used to explore interesting philosophical problems.
5. Finally, as a seeker-of-pleasure, I can't think of anything cooler than a sandbox world of your whims and desires locked in your head, free to fly to the moon or blow up the galaxy or seduce Carey Mulligan.
This is getting a bit long.
I have several ideas already on exploring the dream-world;
Music- I am a classical musician, and I don't mind saying a good one. I play several instruments and compose and arrange. I have perfect pitch and can extremely accurately 'visualize' a Mahler symphony in my head, with accuracy regarding pitches, timbre, instruments, etc. I would be very interested to know how this would play out in the dreamscape; i.e. would associations and conclusions work differently as they often do in dreams? Could you compose something in a dream that you would enjoy in Real Life? Etc.
Smell - I can't smell very well at all. I haven't been able to for years. I might smell that garbage that's been sitting there for weeks, but no guarantees. My taste is pretty shot too. I wonder if any changes or recollections would be possible with LD.
And others.
Anyways, here's stuff:
Reality Checks:
It's been two days now, and I have employed
Pressure of Palm with finger
Counting of Fingers
Checking/Rechecking text/digital clock
Jumping
Following a course of action and seeing whether consequences made sense
regularly all the time.
I have a symbol on the back of my hand- every time I see it, I perform some kind of RC. My dream last night, I can't really remember, but I was in a car at some point and checked my hand for the symbol, saw it wasn't there, and realized on some level it was a dream. However, while somewhat conscious, I did not choose to exert any influence into the course of the dream for some reason. Dream vividness and recall are rapidly improving. Also keeping a dream journal by bedside and putting as much detail as possible.
Noticed that my handwriting can be rather difficult to read being written just after waking up.
Updates on their way.
