Thread: Sakata Gintoki's Workbook

I don't remember (even though it was 3 days ago ) but I think the negativity came from argueing with my brother about religion and I just felt incapable for not talking sense into him. But yesterday I found out that it's not all my fault. He said "if you can find ONE mistake in the quran, JUST ONE". I said alright so if I just find one mistake you'll confess and admit it's all bullshit. His face was lit up with pride as if he just made the perfect argument. I thought about the claim that Allah made the heavens and earth in 6 days and I didn't take it seriously, I didn't think it would be so absolutely ridiculous to directly and literally say that in the book. I found it though, it says it as literally and directly as you could imagine. But he still didn't accept it. He said 2 things. 1) Yeah but what do you mean by the earth? We don't know that. 2) Maybe it's not 6 days for us, you know? Maybe it's 6 days for something else.

Then I just said "Stop. Do you really want me to have a sensible argument with somebody who is not for one second doubting that the heavens and earth were made in 6 days?" Then a few minutes later he said he made the planet in 2, mountains and trees in 2 and the heavens in 2 days. What? Do you even realize the scale? 100s of billions of stars in a single galaxy and many of those stars have planets and those have moons going around them, there are 100s of billions of galaxies all containing 100s of billions of stars. 100 Billion that is a 1 with 11 zero's, multiply the 2 you get a number with 22 zero's. He made all the galaxies in 2 days but the earth in 4? Come on, man. My dad also said "You don't know what it means by days." First time I ever felt ashamed to be of the same human race of certain individuals. My mom, dad and brother.

About letting go of negativity, the last few days I am trying to accept reality with everything in it as it is. I'm not trying to exaggerate the good and diminish the bad and I'm trying to be present and not think about memories or the future, just feel the present as it is. It's a bit difficult sometimes, but I am getting better and it gives me a tremendous amount of relief.

I also told him about satellite images and what they show. They can see stars forming, stars exploding, gas and dust clouds clotting together, planets forming all over the universe. He just said that it's not clear what it means by 6 days.

Yes, it can be quite difficult to convince people when they hold strong views about something. I try to avoid getting into conversations about things I know we have very conflicting beliefs about. Not very easy but saves a lot of nerves.

About letting go of negativity, the last few days I am trying to accept reality with everything in it as it is. I'm not trying to exaggerate the good and diminish the bad and I'm trying to be present and not think about memories or the future, just feel the present as it is. It's a bit difficult sometimes, but I am getting better and it gives me a tremendous amount of relief.

That sounds like a good approach. Wish you more pleasant and calming moments!

Thanks. Sam Harris' talks made a big impact on me and he made me realise just how important mindfulness is. I am almost convinced it's the single best way to be truly happy. This morning I realized that my life has been getting sadder and sadder for at least the past 3 years. Every low is lower than the one before and every high is lower than the high before, so there are still highs and lows but on average I am just sliding down. And I really don't like it. I have to find a way to just be happy. Logically I understand that if you have no reason to feel bad, you should just feel happy, but that logic doesn't translate directly into happiness. I think meditation and mindfulness is the way and I really hope I am right. It's a damn shame be as lucky and well off as I am and not be happy, you know? I didn't recall any dreams last night.

It's not all bad, though, my highs from music are greater than ever before. 3 Days ago was in tears while listening to this and when it ended I felt such an intense gratitude for my cd-player that I hugged it for like 5 minutes while the euphoria was still swimming around in my brain Yeah I know it sounds ridiculous

I had some nice lucid action this night. At around 5 PM I got tired and meditated for a few minutes and then I got tired of sitting and decided to lie down and try to grasp the things Sam Harris talked about. He said consciousness is merely the space in which every expierience arises and if you try to look for the looker or find the thinker of thoughts you won't find it. You will find that there is only consciousness, a mental space where everything arises. While doing this I fell asleep and woke up at about 5AM so I had a nice long sleep.

I had 4 lucid dreams. 3 Pretty short ones and 1 pretty long one, I flew in the last 3 of them and was not fully lucid in any of them. But I was more and more aware as the night went on. In the first one I was the least lucid and I don't remember doing anything besides snuggling in bed with my girlfriend And the girl had no counterpart in real life. The second dream was a bit shorter than the first and I flew up into some high trees because animals on the ground were trying to eat me, that's all I remember In the 3rd dream I was somewhere with a friend and we entered a shop that also sold ice cream, I had no money but wanted ice cream and he didn't give it to me. I stole a box of ice cream and flew away, went up a huge building. I was intimidated by the height and when I looked up I saw two pretty small buildings or castle like constructions that were way up. One of them was almost as high as an airplane would fly. I was curious about going there but I got scared of the height and decided to stay where I was, then it ended. The 4th dream was pretty long, like 30-40 minutes of dream time. It started with a party, then I a flew away and had sex with several different girls, then flew somewhere else and became a dragon protecting people from some evil city that kept breaking apart and moving around, trying to avoid my burning disc attacks. I felt a bit like a dragon even though I didn't see my body because my breath was really hot and I had insane physical strength. While attacking that city I was flying really high and carrying on my foot or tail or something (I don't know how I carried it) a room that was removed from the building so I was pretty strong. Ofcourse I wrote this in my detail in my dj on my phone.

Oh man I love lucid dreaming xD

Logically I understand that if you have no reason to feel bad, you should just feel happy, but that logic doesn't translate directly into happiness. I think meditation and mindfulness is the way and I really hope I am right. It's a damn shame be as lucky and well off as I am and not be happy, you know?

Mindfulness can really help with that. At some point, I started noticing how my inner dialogue would determine the way I feel. It's like I would say to myself "I feel sad today", (or lazy or depressed, etc), and then would agree with this "yes, I do". It's terrible when one realizes one repeats these little thoughts throughout the day and it's this process that keeps us locked up in the same place. But this can be changed - by not repeating these negatives in the first place. I also have an entire philosophy that comes to the rescue - in a nutshell, the world is neither good or bad but just is. There is always a little negative in the positive and positive in the negative. And in the end it's just a matter of interpretation, of focusing on one or the other. Mindfulness helps us realize we have a choice where precisely to focus.

Congrats on the lds! Sounds like you had a really great time.

Sam Harris described it as being kidnapped by the most boring person on earth and being forced to repeat the same conversation over and over again
I did have a great time and I hope it's the result of mindulness because I'm getting more and more of that! Sometimes I would actually have to use discipline NOT to meditate, and I love it. Just sitting silently and being content with just "being". No thoughts, no emotions, just being. Obviously I can't do this yet, but it gets better and better as I get closer. I love how I can direct my thoughts, it's just like you described, normally you get a thought and then that seems to direct your state of mind. But when you realise that that is just another thought with no real significance it loses significance. The fact that a pieceful, calm, content mind is actually the most basic mental state is quite a blessing. What can be better than that? The closer you get to the most basic, most fundamental state of consciousness, the more peaceful you get = D

The last few nights have been pretty boring, no lucidity. But this morning I meditated for 30 minutes in the garden and when I opened my eyes I noticed how colorful and alive everything was, I felt like becoming lucid in a dream. It was a nice reminder of how colorful nature is.

Yesterday I reminded myself of the basics of LD mastery, recall, lucid dream anchoring/lengthening, and lucid dream induction. You train recall by recalling (journaling) You train anchoring/lengthening by memorizing techniques and practicing it, and you train induction by awareness. Then I got 2 lucid dreams. I was flying in both, and in the last one I remembered to shouted 2 commands, both were something like "CLARITY NOW!!". I know it worked but I don't remember what happened, I just know it worked I also had a DMC4 dream, I dream about that a lot lately, I guess I had about 6-7 DMC4 dreams in the past 2 months. I have been watching many gameplay videos lately and in my dream I am always playing the game and doing better combo's than in real life, and it's really awesome. As always, the flying was more like antigravity than real flight. And as always going up was very easy and very fast, controls for left/right/back/forth were pretty bad and going to was almost impossible. But I have a feeling that it's getting more and more intuitive.

Also I have been feeling some guilt towards myself, because I have been in this beginner phase for at least 3 years now and when I consider what kind of crazy dreams I could have been having right now if I had practiced just a little bit more, I get a bit sad Having said that, I am going to spend some more time and effort to get good at lucid dreaming.

DMC4 is a ps3, xbox360 and PC game. Devil May Cry 4.

That's great to hear, Ginsan! Congrats! You should have these ld mastery reviews more often.

Thanks I like your quote btw, about the climb.

Something I had been noticing for probably very early on, before I knew there was a word for lucid dreaming, I almost always get the best lucid action in the very last dream. It makes sense, because the final REM period is the longest, also the last dream is often the longest dream of the night.

Last night I woke up after about 7 hours of sleep, and I journaled 1 or 2 dreams just to practice my recall and then deleted the memo on my phone, so I don't remember if I got lucid in those 7 hours. Then I slept again for about 2.5 - 3 hours, but I trained that day and I stayed up 3-4 hours longer than usual so it's normal I slept 10 hours. Then I had about 5 minutes of lucidity, I did almost nothing. I looked around in the neighbourhood in houses that might have some pretty girls I was only half lucid and wasn't really thinking. But something interesting happened, something I often get but with a twist. Sometimes I am in a grey area between the dream and wakefulness where I am trying to hold on to the dream, but this time it was between one dream and a false awakening (I only realized it was a fa after waking up and thinking about it), but because I was in this gray area, I couldn't shout commands (like clarity now or lucidity now) because I was afraid I might shout in real life That was something interesting and I'll do more RCs upon awakening and just lying in bed so maybe I can catch the next false awakening by the balls

So, in a way you managed not to wake up, even if it was an FA. Congrats on the ld!

Yeah

I've been a bit more mindful these past few days and I noticed something interesting in my lucid dream of last night and an ld of the day before that. I tried to meditate, and my mind was much less chaotic than usual. This calmness is probably a result of my moment to moment calmness, and I hope I'll keep pursuing this calmness. Yesterday I thought of meditating while lucid and I did it for a few seconds, I think I noticed some difference but for some stupid reason I stopped and lost my mental clarity and continued whatever useless thing I was doing Last night I thought I had a dream (when I was actually dreaming) so I got up and thought of meditating. But then I thought "hey, let's jump out the window and fly" , but then I had this feeling that maybe I'm not really dreaming. Stupid as I always am in my dreams, I didn't do any reality checks. I didn't meditate, went to my bed and then woke up in my real bed, feeling disappointed.

By meditating I mean just sitting still and focusing on my breath, being mindful/aware of the sensations and thoughts so that I can anchor myself. I have never done this succesfully but I feel like it will work if I do it correctly and I want to at least try it out. The problem is that I am never fully clear headed, it's like I don't have my full mental faculties with me when I become lucid. It's annoying but if I have learned one thing in these past 3 years of faling to master lds, is that you just have to keep trying with iron consistency because results will definitely come but NEVER CONSISTENTLY Sometimes you do nothing and get lucid/recall/etc and sometimes you try hard but get nothing. But if you are always trying, the average of these few months is almost always going to be better than the average of the last few months.

It's good to be back on track

Congrats on the lds! Your post got me thinking how cool it would be to experience meditation while non-lucid. I have one interesting experience where I was non-lucid, trying to do a form of visualization. Since it was a dream already, it was super easy and the dream teleported me to a new place resulting in some form of in dream wild. Interestingly, after that I realized I was dreaming too. If only we could incubate more such experiences!

It's annoying but if I have learned one thing in these past 3 years of faling to master lds, is that you just have to keep trying with iron consistency because results will definitely come but NEVER CONSISTENTLY Sometimes you do nothing and get lucid/recall/etc and sometimes you try hard but get nothing. But if you are always trying, the average of these few months is almost always going to be better than the average of the last few months.

^^ Good points!

Hey check out my thread in the Dream Control section, this might be a new thing for me

Saw it! Well, when it comes to fighting and swords you'll get the best advice from Sensei! I haven't used superpowers in combination with swords/fighting but I like to use superpowers from time to time to have fun. Mostly I enjoy all possible things you can try to do with water. Super speed and super strenght are also relatively straight forward - you just have to remember physical properties are absolutely bendable. Do you have particular questions about super powers? Do you have super powers in nlds?

Not really, I´m listening to Sensei´s podcasts and he has great tips. Especially about items. He said something like "believe in items instead of yourself because you only have a limited amount of dream energy". I always have trouble with dream energy and I hope I'll remember that when I get lucid

And it would be awesome using water like Katara If I forgot to use a sword, I definitely hope I'll remember to bend water

I got a moment of lucidity again but didn't do anything with it. My number one issue seems to be stabilization, then recall. I got lucid often enough now but it's too short and I am never really clear headed. And the problem is, I can't do anything if I'm not "fully there" when lucid, I simply don't hink about stabilization. Do you have any tips beside practicing mindfulness?

Congrats! The best way to keep an ld going is to keep being engaged in the dream. Try different things - from simple examination of surroundings to taking action. Having a task to complete comes in very handy at such moments.

Okay I'll try to keep that in mind.

I've had some barely lucid moments again. In one dream I was being attacked by a car and a helicopter and I recalled movie scenes of helicopters exploding/catching fire and put my hands out to the car and helicopter and it worked. It took some effort and about a minute but it worked I flew a lot. But I never had any real clarity so I never thought of doing RCs or anchoring or remember to practice swordplay.

I also received a nice tip from Sensei's podcast. That is to read journal entries before sleeping so I tried that. Usually I just delete the entry from my phone and it gets lost. But now I don't delete them and I actually read all of them before sleeping. They are short entries so it's okay, and my recall seems to be improving I know it's too soon to draw conclusions in 3 days but it's been improving these last 3 days. I'll keep doing this and hopefully I'll find out that this is a legitimate improvement

EDIT: with "it worked" I mean the car and helicopter caught fire and were defeated and the people inside died or at least they stopped attacking. I don't remember what I did after that, maybe I flew off, because there were more people after me

Sounds like a cool dream! Congrats!

I also received a nice tip from Sensei's podcast. That is to read journal entries before sleeping so I tried that. Usually I just delete the entry from my phone and it gets lost. But now I don't delete them and I actually read all of them before sleeping. They are short entries so it's okay, and my recall seems to be improving I know it's too soon to draw conclusions in 3 days but it's been improving these last 3 days. I'll keep doing this and hopefully I'll find out that this is a legitimate improvement

You have been deleting your DJ entries before, oh, no! How do you keep track of what happened in the long term? Glad you have switched the strategy. Going over past entries can be exciting - so much cool stuff in both nlds and lds.

Yeah occasionally there is cool and weird stuff It's especially fun to read dreams you had forgotten.