Advanced Lucid Dreamer

I had my first Lucid dream when I was a teenager, I am now in my 40's.
I got into the occult in my early 20's and started working with some of the Golden Dawn rituals. Specifically one called the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP).
The ritual itself isn't really relevant, however in it, one 'draws' a pentacle in the air in front of themselves in each of the four cardinal directions. I made it a point to do this ritual 2-3 times a day and specifically right before going to sleep at night, I did not skip a day. After about a year of doing this I read about the use of the 'drawing of the pentacle' as a method to force outside influences to show themselves for what they really were in meditations.
I had experienced waking to realize I was dreaming a couple of times before all of this though I was more of a passenger in them, no control over it just aware that it was going on.
However, after all this time of drawing the pentacles in my waking life I began to do it in my dreams. When I did this, things got weird. I would immediately 'wake up' to the fact I was dreaming but the dream itself became malleable. I started like everyone else I am sure with flying, though it was more like jumping and 'holding' the air to stay aloft.
I practiced and eventually learned how to float up from a sitting position and just move about at will.
As time went on my control grew and grew, today when I dream I am completely aware that it is a dream, and have complete control over it, if I want to.
I can rewind dreams and change the dialogue of the player, or the players themselves. I can alter dreams like changing channels on a television, fast forward or just choose to wake up.
You could easily explain the level of control as if a waking person were to just imagine things, anything they want.
I have never really tried to use the skill in any material meaningful way.

Typing this all out I find myself with so much I want to try to convey, that I am at a loss for where to start ot how to get it all out.

I once lived, in my dreams, as a sailor on a ship in the 1700's. I would go to sleep each night and pick up where I left off the night before. This went on for about 6 weeks straight. I lived a whole life in that dream sequence...

Reading back over this, I feel like what I am writing is fantastical and bullshit to anyone reading this.
I am happey to go into any details if anyone wants to ask me about my experiences or more importantly the deeper stranger things I have run into in these dream adventure.

What I am here for, and hope to find is if there is any researchers or proffessionals on this site that I could talk to and maybe work with.

Nothing I am writing is bullshit and I am extermely serrious about studing this as deeply as I can and getting the most out of it.

-James

Welcome! It sounds to me like you've basically stumbled into lucid dreaming and learned how to master it, pretty much on your own!

I can't speak to the occult, but from what I know of lucid dreaming, I'd explain what you've described like this: You basically found the DILD technique with your own version of a reality check - you performed an action in waking life so diligently, you found yourself doing it in a dream and then used that to tell that you were dreaming. Most lucid dreaming technique reality checks would be a little different, like trying to breathe through a pinched nose, then when you do it in a dream and CAN breathe, it cues you to the fact you're dreaming, but yours had a similar effect. In a lot of the training, being focused and diligent is the key, so you could say this helped you here. Once you had your cue in place, you then had great success in telling when you are dreaming and then becoming lucid. You could then argue that with this in place, you then just became better and better at becoming lucid in your dreams and working on dream control on your own, also mastering that!

I think you'll find that what you can now do is what almost everyone on this forum is striving towards.

Just my two cents!

Not sure what the DILD technique is.

It is interesting what you said about breathing through a pinched nose.

Just reading that triggered a memory from way back, honestly couldn't tell you when it happened but I want to say when I was a young teen. But I recall a memory of being able to breathe under water in a pool my friend had at an apartment complex he lived in at the time.

I haven't thought of that in years and at the time it didn't trigger me to waking up in the dream, I just thought I could breath under water in a weird sort of way.

I lucid dream pretty much every night now, at least 6 days out of 7 so long as I get at least 5 hours of sleep. Most days I would prefer to sleep for 12 hours if I could. The dreams can be extraordinary if I allow myself enough time in them. The longer I sleep the more the dream become malleable.

I recently, and by recently I mean the last few years have used sounds to influence the dreams I have. Certain music carry a tone to it, horror theme, fairy theme, war theme, meditation theme, whatever...

Here is the interesting part of all this, to me anyway, I almost never set out in advance to have a specific dream. I don't decide in advance or even after sleeping what I will dream about.

The dream starts and I can either play along or not, most often now I just go with whatever happens. I am fully aware of what is happening and could, if I wanted change whatever I want in them.

I find it much more entertaining if I don't try to make a dream from scratch but rather let my mind set up a scenario and then as it plays out I make changes or adjustments to it as I see fit.

My favorite dreams almost always revolve around some sort of force that is 'evil' for lack of a better term and I play a game with it where I allow it to have influence and some degree of power in the dream. Particularly over the other actors in the dream and I play the Cthulu esque investigator and help save people from it, or sometimes I show the evil force that it has the wrong way of looking at things and release it from its cyclic behavior.

Anyway, thank you for your response I do appreciate it and maybe once I learn the vernacular you all use I can contribute what I have learned and help pass along the fun.


I have on occasion through the years had what I consider to be a nightmare of my own creation.
It is always the same, I am doing math equations over and over and over. But not like in a classroom or anything it's more like mental math equations that just repeat over and over and over all night long. I don’t even really solve the equations, it's just a repeating thing in my mind all night long… I know I am doing it, I just keep doing it like I have OCD and can't stop. So very strange for me.
I literally wake up tired, as if I never slept at all.

DILD simply stands for "Dream Initiated Lucid Dream" and it just means becoming lucid from a normal dream, usually when you notice something strange, doing a reality check like the nose pinch, or through training yourself to stop and really think "how did I get here? Where was I before this?" that sort of thing during your waking hours, the idea being that you'll do this in a dream, discover you don't know how you got there so must be dreaming.

This site has a TON of interesting and useful information, and lots of experienced lucid dreamers which hopefully you'll find interesting and useful!

I also have an issue in my dreams where I can do things like fly and breathe underwater but these don't seem strange to my 'dream brain' and I just continue in the dream as if all is normal and never become lucid. My dreams are often different and interesting, though I wish these strange situations would cue me to become lucid - I'm working on it!