Thread: Steph´s Workbook

Yeah - but my brain knows now "it's only a LD - my mind makes it up right now" so it can make it up badly, esp. if I expect to have stability issues or faulty optics.
Suddenly - knowing it is my brain's work - shoddy work might appear and I have the explanation, so to speak..
Actually that is more what I expect, because it is so hard to believe that the mind can really make up whole worlds on the spot.

Yeah - but my brain knows now "it's only a LD - my mind makes it up right now" so it can make it up badly, esp. if I expect to have stability issues or faulty optics.

Not, quite! You (your conscious self) know it's an ld! Your brain doesn't! Here are a few articles from a quick google search that better explain what I meant.

Real or Imagined? The Brain Doesn’t Know! | New Hope Outreach

Visualization alters the brain

And in the end real or not real it doesn't matter - because we are capable of internally producing a high quality version of everything, just need to learn to do so. Be confident and be amazed - there is no better recipe!

Soo - I seem to have a bit of success with something - and it might well be the hypnosis, which I repeated yesterday and 2 days before.
Night before last night - I got shortly lucid in the most un-useful circumstances - I decided to go on with what I was dream-doing, since it was very pleasurable.
And last night - I got lucid again, and thought of my plan to follow The Cusp's tip with establishing a 3d environment - but - I didn't concentrate on the cognitive side of affairs a la dutchraptor, and so I happily lost lucidity in the beautiful 3d landscape I got..
But I did not wake up or loose perceptions - I've been lucidly running about for a while!
Much better than that streak of seconds-lucid fadeouts to awake.

Besides hypnosis I do a bit of image-streaming, but only under 10 min. yesterday because it can be quite strenuous.
And I did a bit of imagining a dream and becoming lucid in it before sleep - nothing else - and for that my success is quite nice, I would say!

That's awesome! Congrats on the lds! Image streaming sounds interesting! I guess the combo of the two techs works even better!

Tonight - soon - one more hypnosis!
And I play a darts-tournament tomorrow - it would be perfect timing, if I'd be lucid darting tonight and properly.. goodsigh2.gif

Didn't work of course - neither/nor - otherwise you'd know it by now! Na well. Season starts September - I'll see, what I can do till then.
I don't do anything for LDing at the moment, except wishing for more recall upon going to bed and doing a mini-WBTB the last three days. After some hours, when I woke up naturally, I got up just shortly and then lay down on my back, where I usually can't fall asleep at all.
But at all means half an hour for me - how others could possibly wait for several hours for that - I can't quite understand.
Funnily I did fall asleep once, after loosing myself in thoughts, slipping into a dream - so I guess, it is a good WILD position for me after all.
On my stomach - I just fall asleep.
Anyway - with looking at the back of my eyes or counting down with saying I am dreaming for maybe 10 min. or a bit more, and then rolling over and sleeping - I had two short lucid moments!
So that is not so bad - but they were gone and I was awake almost instantaneously. And I don't know why.
Next time I keep DEILD in mind - could have worked, had I been mentally prepared, I guess.
Isn't most of the practice about getting there - and I do - but what to do in the day for them not instantly collapsing?
Probably the usual things - need to kick my behind in action - mostly I enjoy posting more than doing something useful for LDing - it's a shame..



Something I forgot - not long ago I had a dream, in which a flying train featured - and now last night's dream had people talk about such a train, and I remember that scene as reality!!

About the hypnosis thing - maybe more repetitions were necessary for it work? You know that's how it goes with most techniques here.

Congrats on the lds! So, these were following a wbtb that was shorter than usual or longer than usual? If I do a long wbtb I have more chances of lds that even start straight away but the first ones can be quite difficult to hold. Was that the case with you - maybe you were too close to waking? Other than that I think working on one's focus should help keep lds for longer. The very simple visualization/meditation practice during the day can help - visualize or think of an object and hold it in your mind for as long as possible. Then you can take a few seconds to rest and either pick the same object or another object. It's a really great skill (being able to focus and for a long time) that comes in quite handy in all areas of life - from work to lding.

Really cool about the flying train dream btw.!

Oh yes - I am going to go on with the hypnosis - just slacking a bit at the moment!
Maybe I do a session of picture streaming first, and see, if I can compare effects - but I think, both works to an extent.
I'll try to stay up a bit longer this night and not forget DEILD.

Very, very good news!

Day before yesterday my fourth hypnosis session - yesternight a micro LD - last night a loong one!
Fogelbise and Ophelia had lately emphasized again, not to worry, if for example optics don't work, and just expect it will come in order, and keep dreaming blindly.
Now I know, that many of the crashed LDs were actually me aborting them actively - waking myself up in frustration.
Last night I just accepted blindness, and walked about a bit, talking, and I could stay in the dream perfectly well. Optics came back, too, but with a bit of a fight. Intermittently they were so good, that I had to re-RC, but there were all in all four episodes of battle with dream-light, I believe.
I managed a basic task, too!
Hypnosis - and yesterday newly RCing on three cues, natural short WBTB after four hours sleeping, some affirmations - that was it.
Now I am finally motivated again - I didn't see the sense in inducing micro-LDs any more - and it were only such over the last several weeks.
So I'll start throwing more energy at it again, after this very revealing experience!

Ahhh! Congratulations! How did the tequila taste?

Well done on not giving up on the dream! Now that you know you can stay in the ld longer, you can go for all sorts of cool adventures.

It tasted like proper tequila, and the lemon was very convincing, too - fortunately the "salt" tasted like sugar!

And another one last night! Ha!

Little update - 4 nights no lucidity after doing the 5th repetition - much to my dismay and as I have been afraid it would be - after hyping it so much. Maybe that's the exact reason, this holding my breath in subliminal negative expectation - but maybe my lucidity levels with the 4th were coincidental after all.

I did have a dream about lucidity, though, in the first night and in the third, I told myself, it's okay the scenery out of the window looks strange - that would always be so in my dream-flats. Happy about this solution to the dissonance - I turned round and kept dreaming non-lucidly ..

This time I included my WILD script - that's the main reason I gave it a shot in the afternoon yesterday - from Sageous' report thread:

Originally Posted by StephL

I was sooo close just before!
Taking a nap, concentrating on my breathing, watching the optics on the back of my eyelids, which were really interesting - and they stayed to be looked at properly for a while at times, and crystallized to scenes at times as well. Bit of mantraing..
And then - that was not the first thing - of all things, I had before dreamt of stuffing candy in my mouth - but then I dreamt of scratching an itch on my chin - and realized, that my arm was at the time lying next to me, and not scratching!!
That jolted me awake then - damn!!

Originally Posted by StephL

Yeah - it's so hard for me to keep my cool when "something happens" in a WILD attempt - tends to give me a surge of excitement, physically.
Thankfully that doesn't happen in DILD - but at least this time something did happen, and I'll hopefully get used to the craziness of it all soon!
Bit paradoxical, this - I obviously did dream already - but I didn't know that - so technically it wasn't an LD - despite me being otherwise of almost waking-life functionality, cognitively. On the other hand - why find it normal to take a piece of candy and eat it in the middle of a WILD attempt. I would never do that - so I was clouded after all.

It's actually better than it used to be - when confronted with stable optics in fine detail - that used to give me a jolt in the past, and this time not. There was one huge completely sharp and clear eye hanging in my vision for example - looking at me, or in me it felt - and I could take that without the visceral reaction.

Usually I am full of coffee and not able to fall asleep in the day - but this is encouraging. The more so the more I think about it.
I could have gotten up and had an OBE ("experience" - of course I do not subscribe to supernaturalism) - I was basically half there - or further in even. Just I was still aware of my physical body at the same time as doing things with my dream-body.

There was no candy of course, for sure not - but I must have reached somewhere and grabbed a piece of dream and put it in my mouth and tasted it and all.

I did have a dream about lucidity, though, in the first night and in the third, I told myself, it's okay the scenery out of the window looks strange - that would always be so in my dream-flats. Happy about this solution to the dissonance - I turned round and kept dreaming non-lucidly ..

So, even in the cases where it's not working to induce lucidity, it is still working. I think greater success would follow after more repetitions. I'd love to prove this point with my audio but had to put it on hold for a bit. So far, I could attribute 2 lds to it (excluding wbtb lds, and lds on nights when not played pre bed/day before).

And then - that was not the first thing - of all things, I had before dreamt of stuffing candy in my mouth - but then I dreamt of scratching an itch on my chin - and realized, that my arm was at the time lying next to me, and not scratching!!

Oh, that's so cool! Congrats on the mini-wild! Next time just keep scratching!

Yeah - it's so hard for me to keep my cool when "something happens" in a WILD attempt - tends to give me a surge of excitement, physically.

That used to be the case with me as well - I would analyze the stage of wild where I was at, and get excited when going deeper into sleep. The only way for me to overcome this was to become indifferent to achieving a wild! Sounds strange but this is the only way for me to fall asleep! (That of course doesn't mean cancelling the intent to have an ld.)

Usually I am full of coffee and not able to fall asleep in the day - but this is encouraging. The more so the more I think about it.

As long as you have the opportunity, naps are a bonus for lding. Caffeine in small amounts can help bring extra awareness. A tea nap might do the trick too. :sleepysteph:

Hi there!
Just dropping in, hoping to get myself to work again.
Lucidity never really left, once a week or so I get a short and relatively unsatisfying one, but a little string of lucids over the last days plus having read the Feynman autobiography where he describes how he stumbled upon the phenomenon and wanting to post that - brought me back here!
Soo - lets see if I get a TOTM done!

Great to see you back! Thanks for sharing Feynman's dream experiences, was a really cool read.

Wish you more lds with the totms soon!

Thank you!