Thread: YogiThinkfirst's PlayBook

An appealing practice to start/continue is the visualizing while going to sleep and setting some repetitive intentions when going to sleep and during yoga nidra that the physical body is sleeping and consciousness is awake

What a great way to focus the mind and ward off thinking as I go to sleep.
I used the visualizing technique and mentally saying my physical body is sleeping and consciousness is awake.
It felt as if I was not ever falling asleep, and yet also I did catch myself sometimes becoming aware I was not focusing
on the field behind my eyes. There's actually a name for this field, and I'll have to remember what it is.

Most of the time, there were never any particular shapes to speak of.
Once, a hazy blue vertical line, once for a few minutes a blue "eye," and once a pop of a really sharp image of red and green oriental-flavored items that might go on an alter.

As the night progressed it felt like I was never having long dreams, or never getting into a deep Delta sleep. Yet I did remember some dreams after I got up. They popped back into my memory as I was writing. Not details, just hazy snippets.

I went to bed at 11:15, got out of bed at 7:50. Its a Saturday, so that's a long stretch. Felt great getting up.

I will continue the visualization practice to see what else happens.

Its called Chidakasha Dharana.
http://www.yogamag.net/archives/1981.../chidcla.shtml
https://youtu.be/-SgflBzNGhw

Now, this might be a little different that the practice found in the Dream Yoga instructions, but its a good place for me to start and learn about.

Practiced hatha yoga and yoga nidra today. I did lose consciousness several times, and somewhere in the instruction there is guidance into the chidakasha dharana.

Sun Jan 8.
7.5 hrs sleep
awake at 2:30, 4:30, 5:30
Entered sleep with guided yoga nidra meditations
Practiced Chidakasha Dhrana (CHD) several x going back to sleep

During the early sleep the CHD was difficult and felt impossible, but became easier in the early morning.

I did have a new house dream but did not yet question the astral or physical plane.

Today is the day I had a "revelation" tho:

The content in story and people of both the astral plane and the physical plane are of secondary importance to the question, "Is consciousness awake in this plane?" That is THE quest. That's union with consciousness or divinity. Then I am able to understand the divinity and consciousness in all.

The content of both physical and astral planes are metaphoric, symbolic and archetypal, including my own form, nature and personality. They give insight to what I am playing with in this plane, allow me to have a fun adventure, and give correction if I am going against what is ultimately for my best good. But still all that is less important to being AWAKE in either plane.

If I have an injury in the astral plane, the physical body is not harmed but is asleep. If I have an injury in the physical plane, the soul or consciousness is not harmed because it is eternal and not subject to the laws in the physical plane. Death is powerless.

I used pay a lot of attention to the dream symbols and the content of the dream, but I can see its more important to learn to be awake in all planes. The content is helpful to accomplish that, but its secondary and ultimately only a distraction from YOGA. Union

Welcome to the class!

Good choice of awareness practices! These will definitely be of help for both the sleeping and waking parts of our experience.

Progress as of today:

1) I'm getting to bed at a reasonable time. The motivation to accomplish a LD helps me get to bed.

2) Energy medicine: released guilt and shame of focusing on this hobby. When I wanted to do this in the past, but had a hard time putting it into the schedule, I rationalized that its better to give up the desire for a LD, to stay fully and firmly rooted in the physical body and not get too much "in my head." I naturally lean towards the esoteric and I judged this as a waste of time and not valuable.

I've put all that behind me and I'm willing to honor the mystic in my current human nature and fully enjoy the process of learning the skill of LD. Removed the subconscious programming: Its good to sleep all night.
Installed the new programming: In my dreams I wake up in the astral plane.

3) I am hand writing the dreams and probably not going to type them out into the computer. I lost a few years worth of dreams because I typed them into a format that when the computer crashed, could no longer be supported.

4) During a nap today, it seemed/felt like I was not sleeping at all and I remember thinking, "I haven't fallen asleep at all."
Then a flash image popped up of a close up of a piece of tan wall with the silver protective strip down the corner and silver specks on the wall as if it had been chipped up. Then I popped awake. I don't remember a dream, only this image, and it had been 25 min so obviously I did fall asleep.

So this seems like the opposite of a LD, where I'm sure I am and have always been awake the whole time.

5) Seated meditation right after a nap is really nice. I will continue that as much as possible.

Continuing every day and night looking for the technique that works for me.
I write down 4-5 dreams every night and mostly from about 3-8 am.
So many babies and children in these dreams!
But as of yet, this does not trigger lucidity.

One particular moment it "felt" as if I was remaining conscious, but going to sleep and I thought, hey!, I'm awake in my dream now. But I realized I was still "watching" myself like in 3rd person proceed in the action. It was not yet me in the dream, I was watching myself be in the dream. And I could not shift that perspective.

I'm going to add another method that I heard explained on youtube. I will enjoy it - just like all the others and we'll see how it goes. Pick an object. Meditate on the object with the intention that when I see the object in my dream, it will cause lucidity.

I'm going to be more careful about my use of the word "wake up." If I continually say I will "wake up" in my dream, maybe that is working in my subconscious mind to mean waking up the physical body. I will intend, "become lucid" instead.

I didn't realize there were some differences in the astral traveling, and lucid dreaming. I'd like to explore these differences more.

Its the first time I've ever had a dream of my death. And that I felt the cause of it and recognized that I had died. I think I woke up after the death occurred. And it was actually a scheduled execution by electricity or something. Apparently me and another person did something that the school board decided it was worthy of death. The dream proceeded through telling my family, dispersing of my things, having many thousands of people petition, have a private family and friend swimming party, a final school board meeting. The school board members were dressed up in pint-sized frog costumes. They would not change their mind.
My husband was generous enough to go through the process with me, I'm not sure if he died also. We went up a ladder into a door in the ceiling/roof and the place of execution was like the bed of an old truck. Not a chair but wrapping up in a blanket of sorts, then I felt the "shocking electricity" and knew I was dead at the end of this story.

I had made some significant mental/emotional shifts during the previous day so this could certainly be resonating with that change. Just curious that this was a first time dream.

I've been studying more techniques and so I'm going to shrink my goals even more.
For this week, I will
(1) continue all day awareness and a few times of RC.
(2) go to bed before I am tired - start preparing for bed by about 9ish if at all possible.
I have felt the buzzing/vibrating feeling before after naps, but now I realize that is a gateway
into lucidity, so I will (3) just notice and try to lengthen out those occasions of the buzzing feeling.

That's it. No expectations. Just develop these habits more.

OK. Good progress today. Very good.
Celebrate good.

Because I had gone to be so late last night (not of my own choice) and had the opportunity to take a nap during the day....I took a nap in the morning and the afternoon.

After the afternoon nap, I just stayed there, focused on the buzzing/cold/vibrating feeling, listened to the internal ear sound and I guess I got into the right doorway state of mind. I felt that I could move my astral body arms. And I struggled to get more than my arms separated, but could not.

I remembered that another technique was pulling on a rope. That was too hard. I remembered another technique of rolling over, so I began to do that. Seems like a remember getting up and trying to turn around to see my body, but it was dark. Limbs felt heavy, yet I was aware that I was not moving my body. So that was not successful yet - about seeing myself.

I must have come back and into my body again. The next time I remember Danny making some noise next to me, so I rolled over and touched his hand. I wanted to test to see what body I was in. I tried to talk to him but couldn't speak. I quit trying and then realized in a few minutes that he was not awake, and neither was I. Apparently I had interacted in that astral realm.

I tried again to get into the doorway state, but could not.

I have done this before. Is it called "false awakening?" But I didn't know what it was, didn't know that I should continue and play with it. I didn't like the feeling of it. Now that I know, I will explore it again when available. Seems like it has to be when I am not tired at all - like after a nap or after I have slept in a whole bunch.

Hey! Nice progress!

Another technique that could be used to get away from the body is actually by ignoring your dreaming body altogether and instead try to zoom in a neaby object or even a distant location. You may be familiar with this process as it happens during nlds.

Seated meditation has improved enormously since beginning this journey of seeking lucid dreaming. Focusing the mind, stilling the thoughts have become much easier. If I never get to lucid dreaming, then at least meditation has improved, and that results in a more stable and purified nervous system. All good.

Along with shrinking my goals I want to explore motivation.
I am very inspired when I listen to the lectures and book of Tibetan dream yoga.
So my motivations are practical and mystical at the same time.
I want to make good use, practical use of the sleep time.
I want to meet teachers and guides that will instruct me in yoga, meditation and healing.

I have always had the desire for religious/spiritual experiences - to have the direct experience of God.
That desire has come and gone as I have had a family and children upon which to focus, but it is still there
and now is a good time to commit more to that desire.

I want the direct experience, yes. But I also want it to be skillfully approached so that I can commune with
higher intelligence at will. Or I approach as skillfully as possible and grace allows me inside the gates.
I want to have the direct experience of prana flowing up the central channel.
I would like the deeper understanding, thru direct experience, of the flow of prana both on the physical and the astral plane.
I want a deeper understanding, thru direct experience of the 5 koshas of the body.
I would like a deeper understanding of the flow of energy in the universe.

All of these things are fun to me.
I think my biggest distraction is that there is SO much information, so many paths, so many awesome stories and things to learn and I would love to learn it all. I get distracted from the step by step skill building that must take place.

Note taking on a video about dream yoga and lucid dreaming:
In the afternoon, during a nap, become able to "hang out" in the middle point before going to sleep. This is where working with yoga nidra is so beneficial - with the intention to stay awake and aware.

Every time you have a lucid dream you are strengthening your capacity for mindful awareness and the point of that according to this video is kindness - living in the moment and acting from our best self, unencumbered by samskaras. Full human potential is only realized when we are awake - on every plane.

The shadow is the seat of all creativity - the subconscious part of us we disown. And nightmares help us to integrate that shadow.
Some of the techniques are taught. RC, MILD, WBTB,
Stages of lucid dreaming: wake, hynagogic, dream state, (lucid or not), hypnopompic, wakeful

hypnopompic state is very powerful, if possible move through this slowly and meditatively.
Buddha suggests to look upon all states as dreams. All projections are false attachments.
Woken up from the dream of separateness.
Everything in a dream comes from my own mind. Its all me. Every DC is me and coming from my mind.
Well, why not the physical world also. Is not this also just a projection of consciousness?

A lovely video. I enjoyed it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C888_DyJL0&t=702s

I need to make some distinctions that will be helpful for me as I describe my experiences and I don't know that anyone else here on DV uses them, but I will.
I often speak of waking life as being a dream, and its just a more concrete dream, and I don't want to confuse my mind, so I will speak of the physical plane and the astral plane. And they are BOTH dream worlds. Thus my astral body AB, or physical body PB.

The time of an afternoon nap seems to be the best for me to experience the AP. Hopefully when I get better at it, the mind will transfer and become lucid in the AP at night.

I used a yoga nidra guided meditation this afternoon, fell asleep for most of it, but then stayed laying down after it was over and I was aware that it was over. The next thing I remember is that my DH and I are sitting face to face and he has on large reflective blue glasses. But they are not entirely opaque because I can still see his eyes. He is reading a guided meditation to me. At one point I open my AB eyes and notice that there is a reflection in his glasses of the baby moving at our feet. IRL we do not have a baby, and babies or toddlers are a dream sign for me.

I comment to my DH that the baby is awake and rolling around now because I can see the baby in his glasses.

I reach up with my AB arm and try to open my eyes a bit more because they feel very heavy. For some reason as I am telling this dream, it doesn't sound like much, but I remember during the dream that I knew I was working on the AP. Its just not that clear to me now.

I woke up, or maybe the scene just changed - I don't remember. I was laying down in a different direction than my bed is IRL. But it was still on the floor. I was stroking my chin very gently and I guess it must have been my AB. I thought, "I should move very carefully and gently so I don't wake myself up. The chin stroking seems to be really effective at making the full body vibrations that I need to have to AT (Astral travel)."

I heard people walking around or making little noises and again I thought, "I hope it doesn't wake up my body. I want to stay asleep here for a bit." Then I thought to myself, "I will practice and try to get my AB out of bed. And the first thing I will do is go out the window and fly around." In this AP, the window was on my right. I was unable to move more than just my AB arm and fingers stroking my chin. I couldn't get my eyes open, roll over or anything else.

Unfortunately IRL I had an alarm set and it went off, so I didn't have more time to practice moving my AB.
When I was able to assess my surroundings, I was only stroking my chin with my AB, and I was entirely alone with no other people around making any noise.
I don't even know if I can call these little occasions of progress a LD, since I still am only able to just lay there in the AP and not do anything yet but move an arm. Maybe for me it will truly be like a baby IRL who has to learn how to control each body part before even being able to roll over, crawl or stand up.

I'm sure it is, as with other skills, that lucid dreaming just takes longer for some than others, but I wish I had a better idea on when to expect lucidity to finally happen.

A podcast on meditation also helped me remember than too much striving just pushes the goal farther out.

Two things I'm going to add to my routine: When writing my DJ, I will add a little addendum about how I would have been aware enough at one point or another to do a RC and then become lucid, then what I would have done with lucidity at that time.

Also, since I am already in a dream in the physical state, I'm going to start incorporating the monthly tasks - in whatever dream world I can.

Originally Posted by thinkfirst

I'm sure it is, as with other skills, that lucid dreaming just takes longer for some than others, but I wish I had a better idea on when to expect lucidity to finally happen.

A podcast on meditation also helped me remember than too much striving just pushes the goal farther out.

Yes, we are definitely in for the long run, however, it is best that expectations are always set on "I will have a lucid dream tonight". Be sure to go to sleep with this thought every night. While it may work on some nights and not others, this attitude is the only way to reach our subconscious mind. So, every night you go to sleep, expect to become lucid that very night. And sure enough you will!!!

Yay.
Mission accomplished!
Here's the event history.
For the past few days I have been listening to the Sounds True Energy Medicine Conference. Its been amazing and has peaked the desire to ask if I have some guides around me.
So in the evening I energy tested and discovered yes, I have 10.
I don't remember, but maybe I requested their help with accomplishing the lucid dreaming.
I meditated before bed
Went to sleep with another guided binaural meditation.

I woke up and wrote some dreams at about 3:30.
BTB and did not feel particularly tired.
Repeated the intention to lucid dream this morning.

I do not remember what triggered me to do a RC in the dream, but I pinched my nose and could still breathe, so I realized I was awake in my dream. The first thing I knew I wanted was to fly. I was in my parents back yard. I jumped up and flew around the yard, then over to the park. Other details are in my written DJ.

At one point I became part of a dream adventure with DC I had not met. So even tho I was still consciously choosing to fly, while they ran, I was part of their adventure until I woke up.

Yay! And now I'm excited and happy and not going back to sleep to try again.

That is fantastic! Congrats!

I will eventually learn my particular recipe for bringing in a lucid dream.
#2 LD this morning.

We went to bed very late. I was discouraged about waking up to write down dreams and even tho I had a few, I didn't have the motivation to sit up and write them down. I had about 7 hours of sleep with a waking at about 6ish, but I went to bed feeling sleepy and tired and did not go to sleep easily. I think part of the recipe will be going to bed before I am tired.

Since I didn't have anywhere to go after sending everyone out the door, I decided to try a WBTB and MILD. It worked.

Again I do not remember what triggered me to do a RC. I was in my own house, in the kitchen I think. I plugged my nose and could still breath in easily. So that was it. I was dreaming, and knew it. The next tasks I have for myself were to study my surroundings more carefully, so I looked around with mindfulness and woke up. So apparently its harder to look around mindfully than it is to do something active like flying.

I stayed there to see if WBTB would work again. And it did. For sure I was in the kitchen looking out the window and my DH was there with me. I did the RC and told him, "hey, we are dreaming!" And did the RC again to show him. I did not want to abandon him and go try flying again, so I suggested that we try sex in the Astral Plane.

I have the whole dream written down on paper so won't go into detail. But feel happy.

So it looks like the breathing RC is the best thing so I'm going to amp up the number of times I do that during the day.

There seems to be a pattern emerging that I don’t know if I like, but if its reality, then there’s not much I can do about it. Maybe and the skill of LD gets better, the pattern will not be too strong.
I had another opportunity to go back to bed after getting people out the door in the morning at about 7:30. So I thought I would see if I could get a LD experience. I used a repeated mantra and imagined as much as possible the scene of the last dream.
The dream I entered had nothing to do with the previous one, and it took awhile before I realized and said to myself, “this is a dream, I’m lucid dreaming!!” And after a bit of action, the dream became non-lucid again, before I woke up again. The sleep period was at least 90 min, so a full sleep cycle. I’m not sure if I went right into dreaming or not.

3 out of 4 LD have now been within the routine of going to bed later than I wanted, getting up around 6 or 7 to get people out the door, then going back to bed. I usually have an hour before I really have to get up for the day. It takes awhile to get back to sleep, but then I have a LD. If this seems to be the formula for success, I will keep practicing.

However, it does not happen everytime I follow the formula, so I guess there's no guarantee.

This was the first time in coming into lucidity that I was in the midst of a dream and questioned the story then did a reality check.
This should help me be more motivated during the day to do a RC more often.

I tell the whole story in my handwritten journal so I won't recount it all here. But the big picture was that teenagers were causing mischief around the house. I was hiding from them, and had the thought that this might be a dream. I did the RC, realized it was a dream and then for some reason wanted to continue the storyline a bit, but just change how I was participating. I wanted to fly, of course. I just love flying in LD.

So I flew around sabotaging more marauding teens and men. The lands morphed from my parent's neighborhood to Mexico or India. I had some of them chase me, fire weapons at me and then I found and recovered my baby that I had been searching for earlier in the dream. Then I became mentally exhausted when I got back to the house and didn't want to face more mischievous teens, so I decided to just wake up and end the dream.

After pondering the dream, and pondering the physical world, I wonder just how much control I really have. And in the dream, even tho I was lucid, I still felt compelled to continue the mission, to have an adventure, to accomplish something. I'm sure that much of the time in the physical world I go around accomplishing stuff and feel busy and productive and not enough time being mindful that its just another layer of a dream and things might be more concrete, but still not real.

I'm not lucid enough in the physical world.

I'm wondering if it's more beneficial to keep practicing skills and doing tasks in the dream world to stabilize control, or if I should practice stopping the action and just seeing how long I can "do nothing" in a LD.