neuralswarm's Workbook

[neuralswarm]

Hello, I'm Jesse! So far I've had about 30 lucid dreams but most have been pretty short. I'm trying to master the techniques to stabilize the dream. I'm also studying hypnotherapy and am very interested in applying hypnosis to various issues that cause and help with lucidity. Reality Checks: - counting fingers - finger through hand - look at tattoo Dream Signs: - shooting guns - breathing underwater - flying/floating/weightless - bending fire/water/air/earth - telekinesis, moving things with my mind and hands - superpowers - mirrors not working - seeing people from my past - things not being like they should be Short-Term Goals: - Ask the dream "What am I?" - Stabilize lucid dream perfectly - become more adept at DEILD Long-Term Goals: - shapeshift - lucid dream as long as I want - have conversations with dream characters - talk with my unconscious mind - resolve bitter feelings - many others Lucid/Dream Recall History: - Pretty reasonable. I usually wake up and audio record my dreams during the night and transcribe them later. Usually about 2-3 a night. - Had about 30 lucids, but still working on how to stay in the dream Current Techniques: - DILD (MILD) - WBTB - DEILD Next Lucid Dream: - Shout out "What am I?" and remember the answer Motivation: - Learning more about myself and the mind - Having fun, shooting lighting, shapeshifting - Visiting my dreambase

[CanisLucidus]

Great to have you here, Jesse! It's cool that you have experience with applying hypnotherapy to lucid dreaming. That's an exciting topic and so far not one that (AFAIK) anybody in the class has done much with. Nice workbook, and I'm looking forward to seeing more from you!

[neuralswarm]

Thanks, CanisLucidus! I had about 5 recorded dreams last night, none lucid. Also had a false awakening where I thought I was recording the dream then woke up and realized it was a dream, haha. I tried a short WBTB around 4.5 hours into sleep, but I was too sleepy to stay up a full 20 minutes. I did count up by 7s to 100 then subtract 1 and count down by 7s. I did MILD after every recorded dream. I also asked my unconscious to help me with a situation I was bitter about, and I actually do feel better. Dreams rock!

[neuralswarm]

Had a couple dreams during the night and this really interesting dream: Semi-lucid Speaking African Man's Tongue and Balance Upon Awakening Just had a very interesting lucid experience. I am in this bed in the middle of a dusty dirt yard. I have all my covers and everything and I open my eyes and above me are clouds and a clear blue sky, and the Sun beaming down on me, feeling great on my skin. I was just about to record this dream I just had. It has so entered my unconscious mind that I record my dreams that I was going to do it having woken in this dream, this false awakening. So I'm laying out in this yard on this bed, watching the sky. I'm just about to start recording and I look out and I see a black man nearby. An African wearing a dark gray shirt and light blue pants. I get out of bed, wearing my pajamas, holding my iPhone, and I turn around and leap several times up, up, onto the roof of something, and onto the ledge and then into and around this house. The man comes by and he says to me, When are you going to be able to speak our language? And I say to him, What do you want me to say? And he has a big smile on his face, as I realize that I've spoken his language without even trying, simply by hearing what he said I know how to respond. So I go down a ramp and I'm standing next to him in the warm awesome sun. I ask him what this is, and he starts telling me about Spain and Italy and France and he shows me on his hand and he's telling me these words. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. He says that I'm in a Lucid Dreaming Realm. I ask him how I can go into the future. He says Oh, that requires a lot of focus and balance. And I think Balance, huh. It requires balance to go into the future. So I start to balance. I balance and I slowly open my eyes. I see the dirt out in front of me. I see a black object, rectangular, laying on the ground. I'm slowly opening my eyes, balancing, consciously existing. I take my iPhone, which I'm holding in my right hand, and I put it over my right eye, and I still see this dirt, this black rectangular object. As I'm looking and looking, I know that my iPhone is covering my eye, and yet I do not see my iPhone, I see this black object, this rectangular object and this dusty ground. And so I've balanced my right eye, and I start to slowly, slowly open my left eye. And as I slowly open my left eye, I balance. And then I realize, as I release all the tension and open both eyes fully, that I was existing in the dreamworld and in the waking life simultaneously. I was dreaming with my eyes open. I was dreaming with my eyes open and seeing the wall of my room. I could feel the world in my dream, and yet I had my eyes open. I awoke. I remember too that while I was awakening I convinced myself that what I saw out there was actually in my head and I could control it.

[neuralswarm]

Had two interesting lucid dreams this morning. One I was with this woman who had a cut on her leg. I realized I was dreaming and tried spinning. I had a false awakening and rolled off my bed onto the floor. I kept spinning and rolling and imagined going into a dream I've had before, on a beautiful pebbled beach. I'm trying to create a new dreamscene out of the black and I start hearing a beach melody. I open my eyes but unfortunately it was my waking life eyes. However this taught me to keep my eyes closed until the scene has completely formed. In the next one I drift down into sleep and do MILD (I am aware I am dreaming). I hear two women singing, like angels. Then two younger girls start singing too. Unfortunately I slightly move and wake up, just barely. I DEILD and hear a talk show host talking, trying to sell a product that gives you vision. I'm paralyzed like Stephen Hawking and signaling I want to buy the product. Suddenly I see a grocery store in front of me, with a big black coconut or fruit in the center of my vision. I look at it a second and feel my eyes getting tired and look down and to the left and the image goes black and I wake up. Any ideas? Sometimes it's so easy to keep the dream stable, I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

[neuralswarm]

Had a short lucid this morning. I throw a knife at a wall. It spins in the air, then strikes the ground and bounces up and hits the wall lamely. I say to myself "I didn't believe it would happen so it didn't." This causes me to realize it's a dream. I walk over and pick up the knife, then look at my left hand to try to stabilize the dream. I'm holding it up in front of my face for about 2 seconds when I look down and the dream collapses. How to I keep my eyes focused on my hands without feeling like I have to look away?

[CanisLucidus]

Yes, this thing with my eyes wanting to shift perspectives has happened to me a few times. It's maybe every 7th or 8th dream, and I wish that I had a good explanation for what causes it. It also doesn't usually collapse the dream scene for me and kind of goes away after a second. Can you describe this urge to look away? Is it sudden and violent? Do you feel that your negative feelings about this urge to look around are perhaps what collapses the dream scene? I know that when I get upset about my dream control during a dream I often blow it up. (I am nowhere near "past" this problem!) I'll have to think about this one a bit more. One thing I'd definitely advise is to go with the flow in any way that you can during a dream. If something strange or seemingly negative happens, you can often flow with it and get yourself back on track. I find that if I always believe that the dream is taking me where I want (or need) to be, things tend to work out. Good luck, and keep us updated! I'm enjoying hearing about all the LDs you're having.

[BossMan]

Cool workbook Neuralswarm, I like your listed goals. Your from the ATL? What university and high school did you go to? I went to Centennial High and SPSU.

[neuralswarm]

Yes, this thing with my eyes wanting to shift perspectives has happened to me a few times. It's maybe every 7th or 8th dream, and I wish that I had a good explanation for what causes it. It also doesn't usually collapse the dream scene for me and kind of goes away after a second. Do you follow the urge or keep focused at one spot? Can you describe this urge to look away? Is it sudden and violent? It's sudden. Not so much violent as automatic. It seems to happen very quickly. Do you feel that your negative feelings about this urge to look around are perhaps what collapses the dream scene? Interesting point. I don't think with this specific urge I have too many negative feelings, but I might have built up an expectation within myself that it's hard to keep a lucid dream going, so that manifests. Think that could be it? I've had about 30 lucids, with most lasting 5-60 seconds, a couple in the 5-10 minute range and one about 15 minutes. It seems like I should be better at this by now, but even that thought is probably unhelpful. I should do more hypnosis on myself. One thing I'd definitely advise is to go with the flow in any way that you can during a dream. I had two lucid dreams this morning, and took your advice. In the first, I am crawling underneath a fence, chasing a bad guy with a big barreled sniper rifle. My shirt snags on the bottom of the fence, I pull through and it rips. I'm running and running, see a house and a roof. I say to myself, If I can leap onto the roof then I'm in a dream. I easily fly through the air and land on the roof. I keep going with the flow, chasing him. I remind myself I'm in a dream in order to stay lucid. I ask out loud What is it I wanted to do in a lucid dream? I can't remember. I wake up soon after. As I'm waking I try to spin, I end up spinning slightly in bed and waking abruptly. The second was more helpful. I had stabbed this evil fat man with only thumbs for hands. I stabbed him with a pen in the chest and he walked away down a hallway. As I'm walking after him, I see him begin to sink through the floor as he's walking, kind of like he's able to walk through walls. I ask him, Who do you represent? I recognize I'm dreaming. I ask the dream, What does he represent? I hear a woman behind me begin to giggle. I turn around and the image blurs. For a second I see a nurse in blue scrubs, then I wake. I'm not sure exactly what he represented but I feel better, somehow. Earlier in the night I did a dream incubation session about something I was still bitter over. I don't know if this dream was the one that fixed it, but when I think of the situation now, I'm not bitter anymore. Pretty cool. Cool workbook Neuralswarm, I like your listed goals. Thanks! Lucid dreaming is pretty powerful. I'm amazed how little attention I gave to dreams before starting my practice. They can teach so much. Your from the ATL? What university and high school did you go to? I'm from the Stone Mountain area. I dropped out of high school on my 16th birthday and have been studying on my own ever since.

[BossMan]

I had a friend that lived in that area. Funny as I read this I got a message on whatsapp from my friends going to hike up Stone Mountain right now. Studying on your own? Sounds tough man.... I wish you the best of luck.

[CanisLucidus]

Do you follow the urge or keep focused at one spot? I usually feel sort of whiny and fretful about it but I try not to fight it too hard. At best course, I will flow with it and convince myself that it is trying to show me something important, perhaps the very thing I was looking for. Sometimes I let it push me around for a bit until it gives up. And every now and then I freak out and blow up my dream. Interesting point. I don't think with this specific urge I have too many negative feelings, but I might have built up an expectation within myself that it's hard to keep a lucid dream going, so that manifests. Think that could be it? I've had about 30 lucids, with most lasting 5-60 seconds, a couple in the 5-10 minute range and one about 15 minutes. It seems like I should be better at this by now, but even that thought is probably unhelpful. I should do more hypnosis on myself. I certainly couldn't have said it any better! Yes, some dreams will end quickly, but just chalk those up to bad luck. Belief and positive expectation, as always, are very helpful here. (This is so often the case with lucid dreaming.) I had two lucid dreams this morning, and took your advice. Cool. There's nothing wrong with having very specific goals in mind and pushing for those goals. Sometimes things don't quite go your way, and you sort of learn to pick your battles. Just think as fluidly about any situation you encounter and how to turn it to your advantage. A gust of wind blowing you in a different direction? Ah, it's trying to show me how to get to X... it's taking me to X... it's taking me to X. The dream moving my vision against my will? Ah yes, this is a great time to look at my hands, rub them together, and make sure I stay a part of this dream. Obstacles in dreams tend to strengthen when we focus on them. They draw all of their strength from us. Without our focus, they tend to crumble and fade away. If you can master this sort of fluid thinking and "dream jiu-jitsu", you can turn every situation to your advantage. Unfortunately, this can be so tough to remember to do in-dream! All that stuff I just said? That's the stuff I remember to do one time out of five but wish I did every time. LOL. Earlier in the night I did a dream incubation session about something I was still bitter over. I don't know if this dream was the one that fixed it, but when I think of the situation now, I'm not bitter anymore. Pretty cool. Love this!

[Chimpertainment]

Welcome Neuralswarm! Your dreams are very interesting! I will be on the lookout for any new material in the future.

[neuralswarm]

Thanks, fellows! Good, helpful input. I had another lucid dream a couple of nights ago. An old friend is watching me after he saw where I put something in a hole in the ground. I go and get some water and come back and he's chuckling. I think he's stolen it. I grab him by the back and fly up. I say something like I'll drop you because this is a dream because I'm flying. I let him go and he falls falls falls down back first, looking up at me. He's not scared. There are trees and he falls into them, I don't see him land. I drop toward the ground quickly and think of Alice falling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. I see roots and algae on trees and soil as I rush down. I feel like everything is getting bigger, like I've drunk a shrinking potion. My eyes want to shift, I go with it and look around more as I'm still falling. I continue allowing it, the dream lasts a litle longer. I run out of things to do and the dream fades and collapses. I try to spin as it's turning black and move slightly in bed. I wake. Need more practice to remember things to do, but the techniques are working!

[neuralswarm]

I chained a bunch of lucid dreams this morning, maybe 5-10. I don't have a lot of continuity so they don't make much too much sense, but it was cool to do. I would go back out and come back in, concentrating on the previous dream, staying very very still. And then I would reach that critical point where I would totally lose my body. The first one I remember was I was with a friend, in a garden or forest. There were red berries and we ate some. Then we felt like we are overcome with tiredness, sleepiness. We collapse. We dream. I remind myself that what's coming next is a dream. I try some blue berries. I try some purple berries. They have different effects. Cool to eat them and see them just as if I was eating them in waking life. I remember during this long adventure, which I'll just share snippets of, I remember a fence, and an old black guy walking up. Beside me to the left was a guy with long brown hair. He was white but it was hard to tell through the hair. My friend was walking up on the left, down below this fence. The white guy and I were on this balcony type thing. I asked the black guy if he was my spirit guide. He looks at the white guy with long hair next to me. I ask my friend if he's my spirit guide. I stretch my arm (literally making it lengthen) down to the black guy and have weird sensations of feeling as I touch his face and my friend makes a comment about how it's his face. Throughout the dream I remember it collapsing and reemerging based on what I expected to happen. I'm learning how to control to expect that it will continue. I expect the dream to continue. I remember at one point being in a room, a big room. I saw a head and I named this head. I was in a video game, shooting people, acting as if I was playing CounterStrike Source, acting as if I had an aimbot. So I'd play and as soon as I saw them I would aim for the head. The head floats and I name it. I ask it who it is and he says he's related to me. I remember turning him sideways and spinning him, crafting him. I would ask him things and I remember him saying that he didn't know the answers. I remember as I was awakening, I was like Oh, I'll remember all this, I don't need to record it. And yet even now I can't remember a lot of it. It's the broken chains, I find it hard to go from one to the next. But I did a lot better on sustaining the dream world, and a lot better on being completely still and reentering the dream world, over and over and over. I remember thinking I was WILDing, and I remember feeling my body almost fly up and pop out of my body. I remember flying a number of times. I remember that I woke up in the same position that I went to sleep in, laying on my back. I remember asking Who am I, what am I, but I don't remember the answer. I remember having a false awakening and trying to record and I couldn't get it to record properly, every time I would hit New it would record over the old track. It was very messed up. It was a very interesting series of dreams because I was with people a lot of the time.

[neuralswarm]

I've had three lucid dreams in the past two nights. Yesterday night I had a long one, somehow I forgot a lot of what happened at the beginning. Basically I went lucid because I tell my friend This is how you know I'm a wizard, otherwise I wouldn't be able to do this. I place my hands near my shoes and have faith and they light up on fire. I try to smother it with my hands and it's still burning so I run to the tub and turn it on and extinguish the flames. I am lucid and go out on the balcony. We're on a huge wooden platform a few hundred feet in the air, like a building of some kind. Beneath are beautiful rolling hills and a house way at the bottom. It's amazing. I'm on the edge of the balcony and I notice water flowing over from the tub. During this whole time I don't feel rushed. My dreamPhone has not been working, and I know it's a dream so I see what it's like to smash it over and over against the corner wood of the balcony. It gets cracks but it's as if it's made out of plastic and never shatters or breaks. I was angry at it because every key I hit it chooses a small area of the screen and continues on randomly. I'm watching the balcony race toward the ground and I think that the dream is going to collapse and suddenly it does. I wake. The ending was really the best part, I don't remember a lot before that, but I remember it being a long lucid dream. I need to do hypnosis on dream recall and remembering. But I had another lucid dream, woohoo. This almost could be considered semi-lucid because I was still entangled with the plot of the dream somewhat, but I knew I was dreaming so I'm calling it lucid. Last night I had a cool one with dream control. I did a dream incubation mantra "I want to have a lucid dream and be happy with my family.", and I do feel happier. I'm in a forest, don't remember how I got there. I'm lucid because I have been thinking about using hypnosis to induce lucid dreaming. My sister walks by, her hair is ruffled. She walks deeper in the forest. I find a blue racquetball in my hand. I throw it into the forest and command it to come closer and closer. It's not being pulled, it's still flying away, so I start commanding it to go further and further. My sister walks over and picks it up. I say Throw me the ball. As she's doing so I'm snapping my fingers, changing the color of her shirt from white to blue to green to yellow to orange. It doesn't flip colors but rather gradually shifts. I remember to keep consciously keep my eyes open, concentrating and concentrating even though it's uncomfortable. As long as I don't try to close them they stay open and the dream continues. My sister throws the ball back to me. We're in a kind of field now. I catch the ball, throw it at her and then bring it back toward me without it hitting her, as if it flies around her and it's magnetically attracted to my hand. We tossed the ball a few times and I controlled its flight through the air. As she was about to throw it I will it to appear in my hand and it vanishes from hers and appears in mine. I wake. The other lucid dream from last night I went to sleep with the mantra of "I want to lucid dream about being confident." I become lucid because I am talking to someone about lucidity. I'm watching cars come at me and I see one about to run me over, a blue SUV bearing down right on my location. It's just about to run me over as it spins and I can see through the side window. I wake. I try to spin my dream body at the very end as I watch my vision fade down into a smaller and smaller circle. However I feel myself move in bed so I stop. I tried again the technique of keeping your eyes open consciously. I need to do more hypnosis on wanting to record dreams, at least lucid dreams because it's so important otherwise they're forgotten entirely except for the fact that you dreamed. If you want to lucid dream you have to make a choice once you wake up whether to keep dreaming or whether to record and find it harder to go back to sleep afterward. So I guess my question is, how do I want to record my dreams more? I feel tired a lot of the time after I wake and feel somewhat unmotivated to record. It's fun, but my attitude needs work. Any tips?

[Xanous]

So I guess my question is, how do I want to record my dreams more? I feel tired a lot of the time after I wake and feel somewhat unmotivated to record. It's fun, but my attitude needs work. Any tips? I get too tired and lazy too. Have you tried just making brief notes and writing the details later? Also, its important to remember that the more dreams you write, the better recall you have, and the better recall you have, the more you will get lucid. That motivates me!

[neuralswarm]

Thanks for your thoughts, Xanous. I think I need to do more hypnosis on myself and think through the problem. Usually I audio record the dreams and transcribe them to a text file on my computer that syncs with my phone, so I can read them during a wake-back-to-bed and get in the mindset of lucid dreaming. I've been traveling lately so it's hard to sleep properly anyway. We'll see how the new year turns out, I'm looking forward to it!