photonist's workbook

Photonist's Workbook
Alrighty then, here's my workbook, let's see what we've got to work with.

Reality Checks:
- Finger Through Hand
- checking time or text on my phone
- gravity check
- mirror
- does the environment look normal?
- retrace how i got "here"

Dream Signs:
-The feeling in reoccuring nightmare where i scream with all my power yet all i get is a "whisper"
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Short-Term Goals:
- Get a dream recall!
- Have my first lucid dream

Long-Term Goals:
- Perfect dream recall
- Explore dreamworld, myself and a lot more
- Have a lucid dreaming every day

Lucid/Dream Recall History:
- I had no dream recall until i started a dream journal 10days ago, journaling gave me 1 dream recall for every 1.5day
- No lucid dreams yet
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Current Technique:
- I dont use a technique since trying a technique and not being able to sleep for an hour or plus half an hour makes me angry and stressed, i just do reality checks, and dream journal

Hey photonist! Welcome! I like your RC's especially the last 2. Maybe you will have a DILD soon. It looks like your on track. I can't wait to read about your first lucid!

:welcome: to the class, photonist!

Welcome, photonist! Good to have you here.

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Originally Posted by photonist

Current Technique:
- I dont use a technique since trying a technique and not being able to sleep for an hour or plus half an hour makes me angry and stressed, i just do reality checks, and dream journal

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Not a problem. Just keep up with the dream journaling (good start already!) and eventually work your way to Lesson II. This does a great job of laying out the techniques, along with their pros and cons. No rush, but once you get there you may find that there are techniques that will suit your sleep temperament. Techniques like DILD via all-day awareness and DEILD might fit for you.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. All in due time. :) In the meantime, keep us posted on how you do!

Thank you, your words really helped me and mean a lot. I am grateful for your help. And you are right no need to stress, non-lucid dreams are quite fun, realizing it lately!

I have a somewhat progress to gladly report in :)

Today, i had a dream, where my sister had my previous phone, and it was broken, and there was quite big integrated circuit, it was thicker than phone thats when i got suspicious "how is that possible, it fitting there" and i consciously examined it but i wasnt aware that i was lucid. But i am still thankful for the vividness and recall of the dream.

After that i had a second dream where there was a woman who made a great cake, first she made the red, strawberry or raspberry but i never saw that much alive shades of colour before, and she put a jelly on that and when the light reflected from the cake to the wall, i liked the caustics/dance of the light and said to the woman "the light comes out of the cake looks like as if the dolphins are doing flips watching it felt like somehow holding or looking to a golden bar so great"

And third dream today most important one is, i dont remember the whole dream but there was a part where i did a reality check! But i still feel like i am not sure if that was a dream it feels funny.anyways when i did the reality check, it was not my hand that was weird but my perspective was like fisheye like when i checked my hand and most important weirdness was, the image/view/perspective was like as if i took 4-5pills of ritalin or lots of caffeine and got overstimulated. My sight was noisy, not noisy noisy but those noises, flickers was like as if light was not stable or my visual neurons were slightly firing at a random state

And i somehow feel like i am slowly getting lucid dream by dream day by day, i feel this in the dreams and it is growing stronger.

Good, good!! Stay with it, stay relaxed, and keep building on these experiences!

Spend some time reflecting on what this experience felt like. Part of what you're training yourself to do is recognize what dreaming is like. Now you've had the experience of having your "waking mind" experience a brief taste of the dream world. You're growing the mnemonic skills that you'll need to kick yourself into lucidity in your DILDs.

Your use of the term "caustics" makes me wonder whether you have experience working in computer graphics or some other area of art. Experienced artists or graphics programmers tend to use that term a lot but I hardly hear it anywhere else. Anyway, great imagery there.

Great stuff. You'll experience many of these small victories along the way, and each of them will always be special to you. Congratulations! :goodjob:

CanisLudicus, thank you!

i was not completely lucid but somewhat lucid while making the analogy as i reflect on it, it feels like my childhood or highschool stoned-like yet impressive and interesting(to myself, like not-so-boring analogies compared to my current-mind) analogies are back. As if i fired the dusty old neurons back and it really felt amazing, so fresh so young and so stupid, no need to even unlearn the boring mindstate i am in! I believe lucid dreaming challenge, and lucid dreaming itself will kindle the sparks i feel! Maybe it will expand my consciousness, or give the oppurtunity to let me do it and doing it by challenge and succeeding will also be another life-changing/enhancing effect i see.

About computer graphics, yes i have some experience on cgi, mostly rendering, scripting, but i am studying computer science to have a better scientific approach to it hopefully.

And after reading some DV articles, i analysed a nightmare of mine, where something bad happens or just becaues of my emotions and i try to scream, yet only thing comes out of my mouth sounds like a gas comes out of a pipe. And it all somehow illuminated. I used to be so passive, introvert lately i am doing quite extrovert stuff, "challenging myself" and being more active. The nightmare was my subconscious trying to warn me in a way!

Thank you again for help and motivation, i am really much more motivated now :)

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Originally Posted by photonist

CanisLudicus, thank you!

i was not completely lucid but somewhat lucid while making the analogy as i reflect on it, it feels like my childhood or highschool stoned-like yet impressive and interesting(to myself, like not-so-boring analogies compared to my current-mind) analogies are back. As if i fired the dusty old neurons back and it really felt amazing, so fresh so young and so stupid, no need to even unlearn the boring mindstate i am in! I believe lucid dreaming challenge, and lucid dreaming itself will kindle the sparks i feel! Maybe it will expand my consciousness, or give the oppurtunity to let me do it and doing it by challenge and succeeding will also be another life-changing/enhancing effect i see.

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Right on, I love these thoughts. Dreaming (in particular lucid dreaming) lets you connect with a wilder, more fearless part of yourself. Nothing like it.

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Originally Posted by photonist

About computer graphics, yes i have some experience on cgi, mostly rendering, scripting, but i am studying computer science to have a better scientific approach to it hopefully.

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I'd thought so! You'll enjoy scrutinizing the visuals that your "internal renderer" produces. :)

in my last dream, i went to a cinema with two people i do not remember who they were. Anyways most intresting part was when we got into the theater the movie was not projected to a single screen/curtain, there was 3 curtains in front and two sides, and most bizarre thing was it was as if they were actually windows to the reality where movie is going on, like the theater was somehow there and we were looking from the windows instead of looking to a curtain anyways that was vivid watching it was feeling like drinking a great cold water after a insane-long thirst or diving to water in crazy temperatures! anyways somehow i got this tiny but tiniest clue "how is this possible, its only possible with computer graphics even magic can not be industrialized like that :O" but i still did not realize that i am dreaming, i am trying to habitualize reality checks since 2-3weeks but no fruits so far.

And on another dream, i was checking my phone, and noticed some cracks/scratches on my phone, i thoght "thats not possible, i just have single vertical 4-5pixel long scratch around middle, this scratch is also not looking normal, its not physically sensible, but i still did not realize i was dreaming :(

Am i going,doing good? What do you think i should fix or improve on my methods to get better? And this is the second time i saw a smartphone in my dream, sometimes its really hard to distinguish between reality and dream, i will do RC's every 30 mins instead of 45 to speed up the habitualization process

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Originally Posted by photonist

in my last dream, i went to a cinema with two people i do not remember who they were. Anyways most intresting part was when we got into the theater the movie was not projected to a single screen/curtain, there was 3 curtains in front and two sides, and most bizarre thing was it was as if they were actually windows to the reality where movie is going on, like the theater was somehow there and we were looking from the windows instead of looking to a curtain anyways that was vivid watching it was feeling like drinking a great cold water after a insane-long thirst or diving to water in crazy temperatures! anyways somehow i got this tiny but tiniest clue "how is this possible, its only possible with computer graphics even magic can not be industrialized like that :O" but i still did not realize that i am dreaming, i am trying to habitualize reality checks since 2-3weeks but no fruits so far.

And on another dream, i was checking my phone, and noticed some cracks/scratches on my phone, i thoght "thats not possible, i just have single vertical 4-5pixel long scratch around middle, this scratch is also not looking normal, its not physically sensible, but i still did not realize i was dreaming :(

Am i going,doing good? What do you think i should fix or improve on my methods to get better? And this is the second time i saw a smartphone in my dream, sometimes its really hard to distinguish between reality and dream, i will do RC's every 30 mins instead of 45 to speed up the habitualization process

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I think it is great that you are starting to question your dream reality. That's the first step to initiating a DILD! Maybe don't do RCs to a set time. Wait until you think of lucid dreaming or you see something odd or unusual or surprising. I worry that you can over work yourself, but are a better judge of that than anyone. This is my personal preference, but I don't do a lot of RCs any more. Doing so many a day all day gets boring an automatic and my brain gets tired of it. I like to mix it up with other things like practice dream control in waking life and just being self aware. Maybe be a time line check; What was I doing 5 min ago and what will I be doing 5 from now. Ask yourself, How did I get here and why. See if you can remember waking up this morning. It looks like you are indeed doing some of those things anyway so that's good.

It looks like your phone is a dream sign. For me, my phone never works right in dreams. So in real life I try to remember to question reality when my phone misbehaves. I haven't done this in a dream yet but soon I am sure. Another one I have is seeing crazy things in the sky. It's my oldest of dream signs and has triggered many lucids.

Remember to be patient with yourself. Relax and enjoy the learning process. For me, if get impatient and try to force things along faster, it only lowers the odds of my getting lucid.

I hope this helps you.

Photonist, these are great signs! I started having many dreams like this just before I really hit my stride with lucid dreaming. At first they'll drive you a little bit crazy but at least they make for some funny stories.

These "close calls" are just part of the learning process. The more of these you have, the more easily you'll recognize them for what they are when they happen. This is all part of the process of "getting to know" your dreams and all of this is a great sign.

Have a good laugh when these happen and then really ponder them. Think about all the clues that you'll have available to latch onto in the future. This will pay off handsomely down the road!

Xanous andd CanisLudicus, you really replenished my motivation i am grateful to two of you! Thank you :)

I think you are right, i unfortunately have a bad habbit of underestimating my effort which i slowly unlearn anyways, i started to prioritize skycheck and try to make fire/torch with my hand by opening my hand wide from complete hard fist, it somehow feels like a magician.

And focusing on here,now,how i got here, just observing the environment is quite powerful in waking life too. It somehow calms or distracts you away from the daily worries feels like you are really really alive.

And i also little by little try meditation/dream yoga exercises, i try to feel my skin sensations while doing my usual daily activities, it really quiets down the mindstream. Lucid dreaming methods do actually give quite much besides lucid dreaming

On second thought, i actually somewhat beat the weird reaction of mine,

I usually get excited or my heart races and my diaphram or guts gets all stressed when i focus on my breath or try not to move, its not happening much lately but WILD is still pretty hard to succeed :D but i can see the hallucinations or weird imagery when i do not move much, and that imagery feels like it is right behind my forehead, if i somehow try to reach there with my eyes i get into it! but then i lose my consciousness

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Originally Posted by photonist

Xanous andd CanisLudicus, you really replenished my motivation i am grateful to two of you! Thank you :)

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I am glad to help. It's exciting to see others learn about lucidity. I am sure CanisLucidus feels much the same way.

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Originally Posted by photonist

I think you are right, i unfortunately have a bad habbit of underestimating my effort which i slowly unlearn anyways, i started to prioritize skycheck and try to make fire/torch with my hand by opening my hand wide from complete hard fist, it somehow feels like a magician.

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Sounds like a good plan to me. I especially like the hand gesture for the fire. I may give that a shot. Thanks for the idea!

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Originally Posted by photonist

And focusing on here,now,how i got here, just observing the environment is quite powerful in waking life too. It somehow calms or distracts you away from the daily worries feels like you are really really alive.

And i also little by little try meditation/dream yoga exercises, i try to feel my skin sensations while doing my usual daily activities, it really quiets down the mindstream. Lucid dreaming methods do actually give quite much besides lucid dreaming

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Oh you are sooooo dead on there. You will start to see many parallels of lucid dream and real life stuff.

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Originally Posted by photonist

On second thought, i actually somewhat beat the weird reaction of mine,

I usually get excited or my heart races and my diaphram or guts gets all stressed when i focus on my breath or try not to move, its not happening much lately but WILD is still pretty hard to succeed :D but i can see the hallucinations or weird imagery when i do not move much, and that imagery feels like it is right behind my forehead, if i somehow try to reach there with my eyes i get into it! but then i lose my consciousness

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I think all this is common. You just have to find what works best for you and with practice its gets easier. You sound like you are right on track though.

I had a very vivid scene this morning where I was looking at hard packed earth with fall leaves scattered about. I could feel the cool wind on my body as I watched the leave swirls around and blow away. Then in an instant I was back in bed. I think this is just being on the border line of entering the dream. When you get that you know you are close.

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Originally Posted by photonist

Xanous andd CanisLudicus, you really replenished my motivation i am grateful to two of you! Thank you :)

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You are very welcome! The good folks here have supercharged my motivation time and again so I am thrilled to have been some help to you.

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Originally Posted by photonist

And focusing on here,now,how i got here, just observing the environment is quite powerful in waking life too. It somehow calms or distracts you away from the daily worries feels like you are really really alive.

And i also little by little try meditation/dream yoga exercises, i try to feel my skin sensations while doing my usual daily activities, it really quiets down the mindstream. Lucid dreaming methods do actually give quite much besides lucid dreaming

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Man, you are already learning some of the big lessons. Awareness is simply taking the time to savor every detail of a moment in time. All of us have a limited number of these moments ahead of us and once they're gone, they never return. It's right that we should stop and just experience them and appreciate them for what they are.

Just being here, now, at this time in history and on this planet is a mind-blowing gift. When you internalize this fact, you become much less concerned with fretting about things you can't change, worrying that you're not rich/popular/whatever enough, wondering what the Kardashians are up to, etc. :)

You're exactly right -- LD practice leads to a more lucid overall life.

good news!

Yesterday i read something about circadian rhythm which says to reset your circadian rhythm stop eating 12 hours prior to the time you want to wake up, so i stopped eating after 20:00 no caffeine etc neither

Anyways today i woke up and i had 4 dreams and i still remember them! I wasn't lucid but this is really a great progress for me!

after a quick google session i found an article which claims that dream yogis do not eat after 6pm because of this, it said something about 'energy' but i will read it in detail later on,

Four dreams in one night is outstanding! It sounds like this little "mini-fast" worked amazingly well for you. If you continue this experiment, keep us posted on how it works! Really good stuff.

To make this a true scientific experiment, I will continue to be a part of a "control group". As a member of this control group, I will continue to shovel a bunch of food down my pie hole right before bed. :lol:

I'll check out your (new!) DJ as well.

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Originally Posted by photonist

good news!

Yesterday i read something about circadian rhythm which says to reset your circadian rhythm stop eating 12 hours prior to the time you want to wake up, so i stopped eating after 20:00 no caffeine etc neither

Anyways today i woke up and i had 4 dreams and i still remember them! I wasn't lucid but this is really a great progress for me!

after a quick google session i found an article which claims that dream yogis do not eat after 6pm because of this, it said something about 'energy' but i will read it in detail later on,

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photonist, congrats on the recall and overall success so far! Aside from benefits to sleeping, abstaining from food after 6pm is very healthy for your body. It allows time for your digestive system to clear everything out. That is probably the reason it aids recall. Digesting food while sleeping affects body chemistry which in turn effects dreams. For example, too much sugar before bed can increase the heart rate and lead to nightmares. For a lot of people, their schedules are really hectic so eating late might be their only option but if you can do it, more power to you!
:muffin:

Guys, good news again!

I had a semi lucid dream! And its definitely correct that smartphone(my current or previous one) is my dream sign. In my semi lucid dream as i recall i was on facebook and right there i thought "my first aware dream and i am on facebook" i got bored you know i was expecting something more adventurous, mystic, divine, or fun :D and woke up or blacked out of that dream as i remember
That was 2days ago and somehow my dream recall is much more better, like when i try to remember my dreams, its like i can put more struggle/power/effort to my recall request on my brain much more easier than previous times and i can recall even after i wake up and go to shower i can remember there. Yet the laziness to write dreams for the week is still on. I will work on that but good times, good times!

And i switched my reality checks to awareness checks, i look at my surroundings, calmly completely diverting my awareness from what i was busy, since as it seems in dreams your mind is like when you focus too much on something you completely lose all of the reality around you except what you focus, like hyperfocus of ADHD/ADD patients. And dreams are far more realistic than i attributed them to be, physicially and psychologically! Awareness checks feels like they will work much better since i feel like to do them intuitively, yesterday i was on a cafe and sea was looking so strange just like in games, and i actually asked myself is this a dream and did the awareness check. Its easier and something relaxing to do instead of routine reality checks with 1hour intervals
anyways, it seems like on lucidity its like the harder you you try the easier it gets.

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Originally Posted by Chimpertainment

photonist, congrats on the recall and overall success so far! Aside from benefits to sleeping, abstaining from food after 6pm is very healthy for your body. It allows time for your digestive system to clear everything out. That is probably the reason it aids recall. Digesting food while sleeping affects body chemistry which in turn effects dreams. For example, too much sugar before bed can increase the heart rate and lead to nightmares. For a lot of people, their schedules are really hectic so eating late might be their only option but if you can do it, more power to you!
:muffin:

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Chimpertainment, you are definitely right! Some little reading about this fasting indicates that it also aids the circadian rhythm to adjust. So win win. But its hard i only did it for two nights, other days i atleast ate some chips or drank juice but it will take some time to fully adjust, but it really helps dream recall in my experience!

thank you everyone for your help and motivation!

Hey thanks for the tip. I started fasting at least 12hrs before waking and my recall exploded. I almost had a DILD if only I was a bit more focused. I had heard this for dieters but not for dreamers. Makes sense though.

And i am lately reading a book named Willpower: rediscovering the greatest human strength, there are really great experiments and conclusions about willpower in the book. And one of the intresting result they found over a decade(they studied old experiments and did new experiments from old ones) and it seems that willpower is correlated with calorie intake, not general-intake, when one does something which causes willpower fatigue(ego depletion) if he/she does not have even small caloric intakte willpower will not keep up and they will quit, but as the old experiment indicated even a tasteless milkshake boosts willpower and one can keep going, and dozens of recent experiments of that team confirms that yet they are still digging the neurobiological reasons, but one of the possible reason seems that willpower takes quite energy inside brain and blood sugar goes down somewhat, that is why we crave lots and lots of sweets or "calories" in midterms, stressful job demands etc etc so i have an idea that whenever i will have meditated thoughts about lucid dreaming or or whenever i will try to motivate myself about it i will take little incentives aka sweet jellybeans :D lets see if it will help. and it wouldnt jeopardize my fasting either

Nice job, photonist! I like the direction you're heading with moving to awareness checks. This increased overall sense of awareness will help so much with picking up DILDs. This is how you eventually build up your capacity to sense that "something's off" in a way that mechanical reality checks by themselves don't do.

Reality checks are great for hammering home that bolt of realization that "holy crap I really am dreaming!" But it's awareness that plants those seeds of suspicion that give you that inkling that something's off.

Cool observation about willpower. I've heard about really similar studies that said the same thing about "decision fatigure". (Decision fatigue is that moment when you are just exhausted from making hundreds of tiny little decisions and just don't care what shade of brown the coffee table is going to be.) As with willpower, ingesting calories helped recharge the decision fatigued subjects. This is part of why dieting and leaning out can create additional stress.

Looking forward to hearing more observations and results from your experiments. BTW, Xanous, are you employing the fasting now, or is this something that you did in the past?

the more i think about that hulk jump while running in yesterday's dream which was partial hulk jump because it was semi-supernatural :D as i saw your comment in my dream journal the more it makes sense!
those stuff are actually one of my 1000 things to do in your lucid dream before you die. And i still do not understand why i did not defy gravity completely even i was 3 or 4x more better jumper than a human in that dream

Fasting really seems to work on dream recall i do not eat, after 8 or 9pm i just drink some juice, ice tea etc, recall gets better and better i am able to recall after 1-2hours of wake up sometimes surprisingly

I've of course got mad respect for a fellow practitioner of the Hulk Jump. :) You may move directly to true flight in your lucid dreams very quickly, but if not you can also follow the path that I took and rely on Hulk jumping for a bit until you acquire a comfort with flight. (This took me a while, but many pick real flight up immediately. Lots of variance between people.)

It's impressive that you had so much recall from your earliest REM periods (after 1-2 hours of sleep.) My recall is so unreliable and abstract during those earliest phases of sleep.

Lately i am skipping my lucid tasks due to my midterms and my other challenges i think i am having a ego depletion anyways an intresting update, but i hope its something!
Yesterday i ran 10km continuously and had a winter swimming session for 10mins anyways it was a great run i didn't pause my stamina was shocking compared to 2-3weeks ago. Its been 1months since i started to run anyways
today in my dream i saw a great great tobacco, cigarette actually there was an intresting reminiscent thing on the cigarette which reminded me golden virginia anyways i saw it and i hesitated "i shouldnt smoke i will probably run tomorrow"
This is the first time i had a dreamworld & real world consciousness touch

I love it when you said "dream world and real world consciousness touch" :D

That's great, because it means you're becoming more aware in your dreams. Keep it up!