SpiceRack's Workbook

Hi Professors and fellow classmates,

A bit about me:

My name is JJ but I do also go by SpiceRack when I am hiking. I am 26 years old, I work on a humane sheep, cattle and pig farm in Pennsylvania, though I am from Brooklyn, NY. I am deeply interested in Eastern philosophy, meditation, yoga, religion and spirituality. I move around a lot, usually finding a new gig in a new place every 6 months to a year. I have worked in development in East Africa, in finance on Wall Street, studied the politics of international relations and war at some university and walked from Mexico to Canada. One of my goals in life is to find a village or community living situation where I can live with as little dependence/interaction with the industrial global economy, which I consider to be exploitative and destructive. Consumerism is my sworn enemy. One of my other goals in life is to lead humanity into the Age of Aquarius, striking down the hierarchy of global capitalism and dogmatic religions for a new understanding of the one'ness of the universe :cheeky:

I spend a lot of time in my own head. I am the introspective, contemplative type. I like to read (particularly the broody, suicidal types like Hesse, Kafka, David Foster Wallace, Dostoyevsky) and think more than I like to do. I want to know all about God and the world religions, especially mysticism. I think I might be a closeted Buddhist. I am a philosophical relativist for sure. I attend a Mennonite church and am a very active member of my church community, despite not being a Christian or even a theist. I just really love experiencing spiritual practice and loving communities (and potlucks).


Reality Checks:
For the past few days I have been looking at something, looking away, and then looking back at it.
This actually scares me every time, kind of like a horror movie. I always expect on some level to look back and be surprised.

Dream Signs:
None that I know of yet.

Short-Term Goals:
To record my dreams and practice awareness, which is a major pillar of my spiritual training anyway. I am actually curious to learn more about the relationship between awareness (also, mindfulness) in the LD community and Eastern philosophy. When I read something on awareness on this forum which talked about becoming aware of your surroundings all the time as a means to LD'ing, I thought: Are you serious? This quality of awareness in daily life is what Buddhist monks spend lifetimes developing! I guess I was shocked to hear of this method which I consider to be my lifeline to sanity and growth being recommended as a casual habit one can just pickup. That said, someone who knows more about this please tell me what's up. (I am excited about the possibility that the novelty of LD'ing could be an effective inducement to greater awareness.)

Long-Term Goals:
To uncover my inner, subconscious tendencies, patterns, habits, desires by breaking through the wall of my conscious inhibitions. To be more fully me. To push the limits of what I have experienced in being a human consciousness. To be more creative and motivated in life. To be kinder to myself and others.

Also to be a lightsaber wielding Jedi and ride a giant sand-worm into battle. :D

Lucid/Dream Recall History:
I have had two lucid dreams in my life. These two dreams occurred in two consecutive nights in which I had just moved to a foreign country where I knew I would be living for at least a year. In each I was lucid for only a few moments before I became terrified about this prospect and forced myself awake (by yelling loudly). In the second dream, I had a false awakening after a moment of lucidity achieved by looking in a mirror in the dream and not recognizing my face. I then woke up in my dream, believed I was awake in reality, realized this was not where I went to sleep and then did the yelling force-awake thing again. This experience was exhilarating and scary.

I recall my dreams pretty much every morning but quickly forget them as the day goes on. They tend to be vivid. I am hopeful about LD'ing because I have had a sense of being on the cusp of awareness in my dreams generally.

Current Technique:
I am beginning by trying to DJ and practice awareness in all things. As I stated above, the latter is my major life goal anyway (to see God or the one'ness of all things with total equanimity in every atom of every moment), so...here goes nothing!

Thanks everyone for having me.

So I tried to DJ last night for the first time and it was an awesome experience in and of itself! I woke up once in the middle of the night naturally and recorded my dream and a second when I awoke naturally in the morning. I felt connected to my dreams and am glad to be able to reflect on them now.

Even cooler, I had a soaring flying dream! I have never had a soaring flying dream before (some flying, but it is more like repulsing off the ground just above the highest thing I am going over and doing so quite awkwardly). Coincidence I would have a magnificent dream on my first night of DJ'ing? I think not.

Hey JJ, that's great with the flying dream! One thing that I've noticed with myself and some other members, is that recording your dreams is quickly gratifying in terms of recall. If I get lazy and my recall slips, I only need to pick up my DJing again and it comes back pretty quick. What's the use of having great dreams, lucid or non lucid, if you can't remember them?

Anyway, nice to have you in the class, and I loko forward to reading about more of your experiences :)

SpiceRack! Good to have you here!

You seem to be a learner. I would highly suggest the writings of Carl Jung. His material would probably be right up your alley from the looks of your intellectual interests.

Lookin forward to seeing more from you! :)

Indeed, great to meet you, JJ. Welcome to the intro class, and can I say, I find your short bio pretty fascinating. Good luck and see you around

I have begun to ascertain my dream signs! This is pretty exciting for me. With only a few weeks of journaling and dream-mindedness, I have already begun to have insight.

One major dream sign for me is supermarket shopping. With great frequency in my dreams I am shopping in a well-lit, typical American supermarket. This is something I really loathe doing in the US. In fact, I have a habit of getting very anxious and having to leave supermarkets because all of the disgusting industrial processed foods and packaging and math trying to calculate the best deal just overwhelms me and I bottom out and just put down my basket and walk out.

Another dream sign I think might be Uganda. This is somewhere I lived for a couple of years and I think it might be one. Also possibly adjusting my contact lens and the New York City subway.

I had a lucid dream last night!!!

There was some hectic chase scene going on (I was being chased across the farm where I work). This Act of the dream ended (I tend to dream in Acts).

I then found myself talking with a friend of mine (a rare event in a dream for me, to be engaged in conversation, oddly enough this is what I love to do most in life) and realized he was looking and acting sort of weird and then suddenly I went totally lucid. I had the presence of mind to stay calm, tried to focus on the things around me but it was too much, I got too excited, then scared and the dream stopped. I am hesitant to say I woke up because I did not recall being lucid in my dream until I woke up and did some real world stuff in the morning.

So, this is exciting for me but I need some help. How do I stop from getting so excited and scared by the fact that I am experiencing a dream? I really want to stay calm when I go lucid and be present and explore the dream world, which is something my dream recall lacks anyway, that is, details and imagery. My dreams are not vivid and the recall is very linear plot based, not image based. How can I see more of my world in my dreams, move more slowly and stay calmer when I go lucid? Thanks for any ideas!

Congrats on the lucid! :banana: :banana: :banana:

When you get lucid, try to stay calm by composing yourself and stabilizing. Don't think right away about what you're gonna do because you'll get even more excited then. Look at your hands, hold objects that are close to you, stabilize the dream: http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...-tutorial.html

You can even vocally tell yourself to calm the heck down! Works for me many times ;)

Thanks paigeyemps for the advice and encouragement. I will give the micro-focusing a try. That is actually the advice given to people to have panic attacks. Should work for dream anxiety too!