Hello, I'm Paul, a creative person and robotic engineer

[PaulMakesThings]

Since I'm getting really into lucid dreaming I thought I'd sign up here and start to participate. I'm a robotics engineer, I recently finished a master's degree in mechanical engineering and I live in Milwaukee. I work on electronic and artistic projects, most of my projects are somewhere in the middle, I am PaulMakesThings on instructables.com and several other places. I've always focused on creativity, which I believe ties into math, science and engineering just as much as it does into art. I've always been able to control some of my dreams and occasionally became conscious in a dream but this was rare and almost instantly ended when I realized it. I only recently learned that this was a skill that could be honed. About 2 months ago I started recording dreams almost nightly to build up dream recall. I've started doing regular reality checks and about 8 days ago I became fully lucid in a dream and had the presence of mind of focus on staying calm and conscious, to improve clarity and to do some things. I hope to improve at it and do this more often. I had one last night, but I had sleep paralyses when I realized I was dreaming and was unable to maneuver it into a lucid dream without just waking up. In that dream last week, my clearest and most conscious thus far. I was in a grove of trees, and there were beehives covering so many of them that I felt it was closing in around me, I realized I was dreaming and willed them to turn into something less frightful, they turned into clouds of butterflies. It was a sunny clear day in a place like the rolling hills of Ireland, in the distance there was some ancient structure buried into a hill (on hindsight I should have gone to explored it). I got the hang of flying right away, I was continually reminding myself that it was a dream and to stay conscious. I flew up above the clouds and came back down in a city, I saw a car with three sexy women in it, I was very conscious and reminded myself that trying to turn it into a sex fantasy is what always halted my lucid dreams in the past. I wanted to try the mirror trick, I first saw my reflection in a window, it was just my legs because I was a giant, then I pulled out my phone and looked at my reflection in it, I was old, fat and disgusting (im actually 28 and very good looking ). I had read that the image reflects your self image so I focused on how I feel after a good work out, like im young and healthy, the image only improved slightly, from a very fat 80 year old to a kinda fat 50 year old. I gave up on mirrors and decided to try to build something, I decided to build a floating house in the sky, saw the same car of sexy women again and again mindfully ignored them, and was just starting to fly up to build my castle when my alarm went off and woke me up. I did a reality check to be sure it was a real awakening and it was. I am continuing to learn about MILD (and WILD, though I will do that more later) and read methods of remembering, becoming conscious in, clarifying and stabilizing dreams. I keep reading whatever I can find and I belive that lucid dreaming can have many benefits for me; I can work on my creativity, maybe even design things. I can have fun. I can learn about myself. And I seem to feel more rested with less sleep when I do it. Plus it seems to tie in with meditation and other concentration and focus exercises. Looking forward to getting to know people here. Thanks for reading.

[gab]

Welcome to Dreamviews! That's an excellent start. It shows that you are a go-getter. So please make yourself confortable, post your questions should you have any, will be happy to help you expand your knowledge. If you have not done so yet, check out the DV Academy, where you can join a class, or just to read the lessons. Happy dreams

[OpheliaBlue]

Welcome to DV Paul! Wow, that was quite a lucid. I've heard the same thing about mirrors. I'm almost 38, but in my lucid mirrors, I always look 25ish, and in my best shape. And my eye color changes too, weird. At any rate, good luck with MILD and WILD, and please don't hesitate to ask any of us on staff if you have any questions at all. (im actually 28 and very good looking ). pics or it didn't happen

[PaulMakesThings]

It's actually been my only really solid clear lucid dream so far, the rest were no better than the kind one has at random without knowing about lucid dreaming. I'm not worrying about that though because I know remaining confident and not giving up are both key. I tried a Wake Back To Bed (WBTB) last night, but it failed for obvious reasons, I stayed up way later than usual and ended up waking up naturally before the alarm I had set. I still had some dreams I recalled and recorded when I went back to sleep but didn't become conscious. I've learned a few things through dream journal keeping, I'll start putting those in a DJ here so people can help. One thing I've observed is that I am not easily frightened in dreams, when I see something that would be horrifying, it only bothers me as much as when I see it in a horror movie. I've started recalling lots of dreams, several a night some times, and they are quite detailed, but I can't find a dream sign because my dreams seem to usually be quite mundane, they take place in suburban houses, in a car in a normal place, with my family, the weirdness is not surreal, just odd little things like loading a car on a cargo plane for a road trip, or having a really big old house. Granted that stuff is odd, but not as odd as the moon being a giant eye, or a space suit with a doll head following me around. I do seem to have recurring locations in my dreams, ones that don't exist in my real life, maybe I could use them? One is what I've come to call "the big old house" in my dream journal. I've lived in about 10 different houses due to my dads job moving us all over, and it's sort of a combination of all of them, it's not a fancy house, but it has hundreds of rooms, goes several stories under ground, and many stories up, it has a confusing layout with many kitchens, bathrooms and living rooms connected by hallways and stairwells seemingly at random. I've noted that if I am there I am dreaming many times, but though I've had more dreams there since then it has never made me become lucid. I point to this lack of surreality in my dreams as a challenge (though not an impossible one) because when I became lucid it was because the dream was surreal, there was a giant catacombs in front of me and the trees were so covered in bee hives they were practically made of bees. Another lucid I had by sheer luck long ago was because there was a treadmill covered in colorful houses revolving. When many of my dreams are so normal I can't easily find a clue that it's not real. None the less, since they often involve places that aren't quite right I'm sure if I keep doing lots of reality checks I can start lucid dreaming more. Thanks for the replied, they are very encouraging. (and I'll be putting up a user pic soon)

[Mancon]

Welcome to Dreamviews! I agree with what you say about creativity. It reall does tie into everything, even math. You sound like you are a great robotic engineer. Keep doing what your doing! Increase you recall and write in your dream journal as often as you can. It really helps. The MILD techniques a great technique and you should have success with it. One of my favorite MILD guides on Dreamviews is Naiyas MILD Technique. I recommend you read that and you might learn a few things. Good luck to you! if you have questions please ask. I hope to see more of you around the forums.

[PaulMakesThings]

I'm still working on dream recall, it seems to be accelerating rapidly, first it was a little bit every night, now I have more than I can take the time to write. Even without having control of them it feels like I have 2 days every day. I've only had a few lucid dreams, but with my recall improving so much I'm sure that will accelerate as well. I had an interesting happening last night, I had a dream and since it seemed odd, and was in fact in a recurring location that only appears in my dreams, I did a reality check, and I falsely decided it was real. I didn't expect that because I thought remembering to do the reality check was the hard part. I have adjusted my reality checks accordingly. My typical reality check is that I look at my hands and count the fingers, then I think about the past 5 scenes that lead to the one that I am at. Oddly, in the dream I was able to recall a long chain of events leading to my being there, and I had the right amount and type of fingers. Now in my reality checks I will really ask WHY I am there, in this dream it made no sense for me to be in this place (the basement of an empty house) but I accepted it because I could recall how I got there and how I got to the 3 places before that, if I had asked what I was there for and what I was planning to do there, I believe I probably would have seen that it was a dream. Also I need to be more ready to accept that I'm dreaming, make sure that when I do a reality check, I am honestly considering that it may be a dream. Things are going well so far, just recalling so many of my dreams is like starting to discover a new world.

[saltyseedog]

Seems your dreams are very vivid! Be aware that much of what happens in dreams is symbolic of things in your life.

[PaulMakesThings]

I had another lucid dream! I think I need to work on being more conscious when I do become lucid. I was definitely lucid, but I was way too focused on how everything looked like a video game and how I wanted it to look more real than on trying the techniques I've learned about. I did a spin to try to change the scenery. I think next time I'll do some math in my head to wake up the rational part of my brain a bit more. Another note, I fly so much in my lucid dreams I think it would actually be a change of pace to walk a bit.

[Sensei]

Paul! I am a mechanical engineering student and am half way through my Bachelors degree. I am glad to see someone here like this. Congrats on lucidity twice. party. I always remember how I get there in my lucid dreams but the hands thing always worked for me. I don't count them though. I just look at them normally one of them is really short or changing sizes. What kind of Robots do you work on? I have been thinking about medical robots. Those are pretty awesome, I was able to see a surgery with one about a year ago.

[PaulMakesThings]

I work in product development, I mainly do things that involve controls and perception algorithms. Medical robotics are an interesting field, if you decided to get into robotics though you may find that the demand is in places that you don't expect. Much like computers in the 70's they are at a point where they will only show up in the places where they apply most readily. If they come as far in 40 years as computers have come in the past 40 years, it's hard to imagine what things will look like.

[IAmCoder]

You will appreciate this quote from Stephen LaBerge and might want to apply it to your perception algorithms: Dreaming is perception unconstrained by sensory input. Perception is dreaming constrained by sensory input.

[Sensei]

Yeah, It looks like a pretty awesome field, I do not know exactly where I am going yet because I need to see where I can get an internship from my college.

[dutchraptor]

Hey pual, welcome to DV, I actually read you blog a few times, you are indeed quite awesome

[melanieb]

Welcome to the forum! From this welcome thread I think a lot of people would enjoy you being active in the community. You certainly gained their attention. If you have any questions or have forum issues please let us know! Pleasant dreams!

[PaulMakesThings]

I was so focused on methods to become lucid, but I've been just realizing that I'm dreaming due to the dreamlike qualities of things. I've had lucid dreams 3 nights in a row now. Last night when I became lucid, since things were too fuzzy I tried doing math in my head, I heard that makes your conscious mind wake up more, it just woke me up. I'm going to focus on clarity. You will appreciate this quote from Stephen LaBerge and might want to apply it to your perception algorithms: You are right that it's a useful thing to consider. What I found most interesting in the context of AI and perception was his ideas about scheme theory, you can take any array of sensor data and look for statistical patterns and correlations, and keep track of how closely they are related so you can pull them up to recognize future patterns.

[IAmCoder]

That is exactly what I do at the Lucid Scribe Project - I record my sleep with sensors embedded in a headband and look for patterns that correlate to the REM state in order to trigger audio tracks while I am dreaming.

[pruzel]

Wow! Very interesting dreams you have there. I would like to welcome you to the forums. I only signed up probably a bit less than 24 hours ago but can tell you right now that there are so many nice people and useful tools here! If you want you can open up a dream journal and write about and keep track of your dreams. There are other tools and features on this site that I'm sure you'll enjoy so I will leave you to exploring them! Hope to see you around. ~pruzel

[Sivason]

Welcome to Dream Views! This is the place to be for anyone wanting to learn how to lucid dream. The Dream guide team is here to help you navigate the forum and answer questions. We all have 3 green stars above our avatar. Click on our user name and you can then select private massage if you have a question, or you can start new threads. Don't worry about starting threads that have been started before, just try it out, if it ends up in the wrong place one of us can move it for you. Also be sure to check out the DVA Dream Views Acadamy, click on this link to get there, DV Academy. Matte , our Dream Guide team leader runs a general lucid dreaming class, and you can join in contests where you gain points for dreams you have. Gab , another Dream Guide runs a class that is very valuable to beginners on MILD/DILD, which is by far the best method to start with. The very first thing you should do is check out basic tutorials. This one covers most of the terms you will see members using, so start here, http://www.dreamviews.com/f20/beginn...eaming-124786/ Have fun and good luck with your dreaming!