The Weirdness Symposium clocks on and says hello...
Hi there.
Here's a bit about me. As a newbie I feel obliged to say a little about what I'm about and where I'm coming from.
I started meditating about ten years ago. Nothing outlandish - just Benson's method and some simple mantras. Blissful relaxation. That kinda made me interested in consciousness. I haven't experimented much with the meditation state - I've been quite religious with my mantra and never tried to impose any agenda on the state. The only luxury I allow myself is to drop my mantra and just enjoy the relaxation; when mild hallucinations - such as images or sounds (voices) - occur I don't pay much attention to them - just let them pass.
Over the past couple of years I've been "watching" myself go to sleep every night: I imagine a specific place (Such as under a big tree over my local park) with a group of people there and imagine how they react with the onset of sleep. I see them commenting on their increasingly relaxed state, their reaction to 'hallucinations' and their struggles with their failing powers of reason. Eventually I fall asleep normally.
While meditating or "watching myself go to sleep", I've noticed a phenomenon I've come to call, "Dream popping." A dream image will pop into my head. It never feels as though I'm creating a dream then and there - it always feels like I'm remembering a dream that I've had in the past. I always think to myself, "Hey, I can't believe I didn't remember this dream before!" I can't be sure if I am really remembering a dream from the past or my brain is creating a dream in the moment.
Recently, I've tried to explore my "dream pops". That is, I simply direct my focus gently in one direction within the "landscape" of the dream pop. I've sometimes found that I "remember" new chunks of the dream; I instantly remember a whole sequence of events that occured at that new location I travelled to. I'm fairly sure this isn't a lucid dream.
I think I would've explored lucid dreaming many years ago but unfortunately at about the age of 16 I started having terrifying sleep paralysis and false awakening. Assuming I was the only one to suffer such a condition I never really researched these phenomenon and simply hoped I would never have them again! (Incidentally, I did find most of them were occuring in the early evening - about 11pm on days when I'd allowed myself to have an afternoon nap.)
I'd heard somewhere about the link between SP, FA and LD. The other night I found myself "suffering" from a false awakening. Luckily, armed with new knowledge of FA and LD, I had the presence of mind to kind of "grab the reins" and said to myself, "Hey, you're having a false awakening - don't be afraid, take control!" So I did and started to explore my environment. The fear soon passed and I was ready to try an experiment (a little ambitious, perhaps :) ) : I decided to pass through the wall and fly across the stairs. Unfortunately I got stuck half way through the wall and suddenly found I couldn't breathe - I was suffocating. Of course, I woke up.
So that's where I am now. With a little experience with the strangeness of our sleeping mind, and my "taking the reins" incident to give me a little confidence, I now want to pursue LD. My initial thoughts are that WILDing would suit me (as I've had years of practice of relaxing myself through meditation).
I've also got a lot of ideas about LD - on many things I've read about LD online I've been asking, "Why hasn't anyone thought of trying that?" But I'd better stop writing my life story here - these can wait for another time :)
TWS
