Quote Originally Posted by adraw View Post
Finding the sweet spot... Hard as hell. But also a lot of fun. May I ask you how you increase the detail in more detail? Please. Even if it is hard to formulate, try to.

Thx.
It was a long time ago, and thinking about it now, it is really hard to express! but I'll try. I thought I got the idea from EWLD but looking through it briefly I can't see it mentioned. That time really stands out in my memory...

I must have been really relaxed but also alert, as I can't do it right now, naturally. I think the crucial thing when it happened was recreating the mental feeling, the atmosphere of the place. You know how every single place has a certain feel to you? A feeling which is impossible to put into words.

Right now, every place we have ever been to conjures up a unique feeling when we go to it and we should be able to remember that mental sensation of being there. In my opinion that particular feeling associated to that particular place is mainly linked to time, not the place. Therefore imagining a place we have been to recently, should be far easier. Some memories will be hard-wired into our brain, but we should be able to relate more and better visualise a recent memory. Maybe that's why I'm unable to re-create the same experience with that particular memory because the memory was from several years ago.

It may help if the particular memory is something we don’t have any negative feelings towards because we may subconsciously try to avoid re-creating that. The best sort of memory may be a completely neutral one, for example standing in a lift, because we may be more aware, we are neither lost in happiness nor sadness. Although we may feel neutral towards, and more aware of, that particular memory, the surrounding period and emotions of our lives may help to pinpoint and visualise it.

So as you’ve gathered I think the feeling and atmosphere of the time and place was the crucial factor for me at that time, and the details flowed from that.

I’m sure I did try to consciously increase the detail though, and I’m sure I was focused on the buttons in the lift. It was a big button pad. I remember I used to have difficulty remembering which floor to go to! So I would check it carefully. My best guess is that I focused on the atmosphere, remembering how the walls looked, then the button pad, and then focused down onto a single button, held the focus and it just sprung from there. Almost like peeling away layers. There was definitely some effort of willpower involved on my part, but not a great deal.

Actually, the reason it became more detailed, lifelike, could have been simply because I crossed into a dream with awareness, by holding my focus on something - the surroundings. But the root cause of it all was definitely starting with the feeling/atmosphere/emotion of the place.

I tried!