intro: Experienced Lucid Dreamer with more to learn
I just found this site. Wish I knew about it earlier to say the least. Skimmed over one of the tutorials and liked what I saw. There is good info in there even for experienced lucid dreamers, because there must be very few who can do everything, and sometimes that refreshing lesson can really help. So I'll read them in more detail and probably approach them as a new study, and will have some questions, but wanted to go ahead and introduce myself.
One question I already have is on the subject of the mind's apparent creation of dreams: In the tutorial a lot of advice is along the lines that dreams are created wholly by the mind. I can see how it's useful to use common sense and assume it's all created by the mind, it is good to teach and practical mindset to approach dreams with especially when starting out. I just feel that dreams are not exclusively mind created and can be created by the same force/forces that created things.. the universe itself. I put that out there because I'm curious about the mindset here, but also because that is a very fundamental way that I approach dreaming - it's not ALL in/from/of my mind and it's good to understand that that is my perspective when reading my posts.
I am in my 20s and have been dream journalling off and on for 3 years or so. Easily 200 pages worth, most of them have been destroyed and thrown away - because some of those entries are embarrassing if someone were to come across them and no longer useful after a while. In highschool I slept in class a lot! And I think this has put me more in touch with that "in-between" state, because I didn't really fall asleep, I could usually hear what was going on. Sleeping in a car on a long trip would do the same sort of thing. I have recalled over a thousand regular dreams if you count the ones you have multiple times a day/night. I have gone lucid around 100 times, maybe more, and had 1 solid OOBE, and a few sketchy OOBE. The longest lucid dream I've had was what I think was 2 hours, but no way to be sure, and I thought to myself after a long session of recall, "People are not SUPPOSED to be able to do that."
In dreams I've flown around myself, flown in a UFO captained by a friend, fought in a medieval battle, woke up as I was about to marry a very "hard to get" princess in a fantastic world, gone on typical adventures with my friends, died, skydived w/o a parachute (lucidly), taken out the bad guys, made it out into space - the moon, jupiter, only once or twice etc. etc. But my favorite things to do in dreams: which I rarely get to do actually because usually I'm experimenting with whatever is in my way. It is to simply walk around holding hands with a pretty girl outside and look at the scenery, and to sing in dreams. I hope/believe the mind can change the "quality" and nature of sound in a dream, just like it can change other things so perhaps I will learn how to willfully sing, and mentally project sound itself - as if creating a melody without speakers to sing along with, and effect my voice as well. If there is anything in particular I am working on right now, that would be it.
In dreams I find telekinesis and flight comes to me easily, but I have no ability to teleport and conjure whatsoever, though I can certainly shape things that are already there - would that be abjuration, I don't know, usually I can't even travel quickly. So in these I have a lot to learn as well. I have started a fire with my bare hands before, but very weakly... There are actualy very very many things in a dream that I can't do, and I've gone lucid a lot.
Glad to have found this site, will be reading all the tutorials... hope to learn and be helpful, looks like a great site. I don't typically post such long posts but I wanted to get my first impressions out there before getting involved and reading all the tutorials, because my dreaming has for the most part been on my own, with only basic help from the outside, and it seems that is about to change.
