Lucid Dream discussion thread

[Arakawa]

Some minor lucid dream successes over the course of about an hour.

Entering the dream:

• Trigger was deciding to sleep in for an extra hour and dreaming that the alarm clock I'd set for that purpose was ringing, even though it was obviously too early.
• This resulted in a series of dreams where I started out in my bed and would either 'eject' myself from the bed and enter the dream by focusing first on the position of my body and then visualizing where I would have landed in the room after ejection; or visualize zooming at high speeds along a landscape similar to the one in (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsUIZ58DVrc - particularly around the 4:00 mark) and then 'touching down' within the landscape. I would correspondingly end up either within my room, or somewhere in the bucolic British (Ontario? British Columbia?) countryside.
• If a dream faded, I would dream I was in bed again, and repeat the procedure.

Dream characters were annoying -- they came along and insisted on following a scripted storyline while I was busy experimenting changing night into day (only half-successful) or making cups refill themselves with water. (In retrospect, it would have been interesting to see what the story was supposed to be.) Regarding trying to get them to go away, it appears that I can plant suggestions in their heads by visualizing a different script for them; depending on the character, the suggestion either takes hold, or they become aware that I'm attempting to rewrite the dream and resist the suggestion. (And then the character stomps off in a huff, so goal accomplished.)

Even more annoying were the trees which would follow me around when I wasn't looking at them, Weeping Angel-style, but otherwise didn't have anything to do with anything. Shoo! Bad trees!

Would like to point out that my experiences mostly consist of one or two nights like this, followed by a month of mostly nothing. (To give an idea of the interval, between the last dream I posted and this sequence I had exactly one lucid dream which was so brief and uninteresting as to not be worth mentioning.)

However, the 'time lapse landscape' method of entering a dream was new and might be easier than what I was trying to do earlier, since it doesn't require any bodily sensation / sleep paralysis nonsense in the initial phase -- it's similar to turning on a YouTube video in the mind's eye, then stepping through the screen into the depicted landscape once the video is sufficiently vivid. Maybe I'll have better success with it in the long term, given the amount of time lapse footage that's been burned into my brain over years of staring at YouTube...

(Since these are methods which involve going to sleep and waking up immediately on both sides of the dream, dream recall wasn't an issue as it usually is.)

[Brian]

That's quite impressive.

After our last discussion in IRC, I've managed to overcome my major barriers to dream recall--  Which is very strange for me, realizing I can actually start to recall bits and pieces of dreams almost every day.

Unfortunately, the tiny pieces that I manage to save are incredibly vague and disconnected.


Almost all of them seem to revolve around being in a ship or some other vessel -- or otherwise allude to a crew/captain relationship.  I first attributed it to playing too much Mass Effect, but even after stopping that, the same images tend to crop up in the pieces I can remember.  I have a long way to go, I think, but am slowly making progress.

[Arakawa]

After our last discussion in IRC, I've managed to overcome my major barriers to dream recall--  Which is very strange for me, realizing I can actually start to recall bits and pieces of dreams almost every day.

Unfortunately, the tiny pieces that I manage to save are incredibly vague and disconnected.

In my opinion, moving from zero recall to recalling something is probably the tricky part (since it's not at all clear how to improve your dream recall when your brain is convinced that there isn't anything to remember). At this point, it's just a matter of various tricks to continue to pay attention to what it is you do remember.

Anyhow, I'm glad to hear that you've accomplished the part that I'd have no idea how to go about accomplishing had I been in the same situation ^_^

Almost all of them seem to revolve around being in a ship or some other vessel -- or otherwise allude to a crew/captain relationship.  I first attributed it to playing too much Mass Effect, but even after stopping that, the same images tend to crop up in the pieces I can remember.  I have a long way to go, I think, but am slowly making progress.

The most common recurring element of my dreams is (for whatever reason) riding the subway. Not sure why, and I can't seem to use it as a reliable lucid dreaming trigger in spite of the fact that it crops up in almost every dream I have.

[Arakawa]

Two points of progress:

• Dream recall exercise. Lie down for five minutes, relaxing until random imagery starts making its way into the mind. With a bit of a nudge the imagery can even be made to form a dreamlike narrative. After five minutes, get up and record the stream of imagery in a dream diary, exactly as though it were a dream. (This requires a large degree of focus to pay attention to a part of the mind that's normally ignored, but takes all of five minutes.) Then fall asleep while trying to maintain the same state of focus on remembering what you see.
• In a lucid dream last night, instead of experimenting on my own, this time I decided to find a dream character who would be willing to give me advice on how to exert greater control over my environment. This was harder than it seemed, most of my struggle had to do with the fact that the first few people who offered to tutor me seemed like people I shouldn't be taking advice from. (Also, given the %0.00000002 percent chance that I'm dealing with random supernatural beings / other dreamers, rather than figments of my own imagination, it probably pays to be picky.) I'll see if I can manage to find my way into a second lesson.

If you're curious, the first lesson involved some explanations about how there shouldn't be any difficulty with what I'm trying to accomplish, since a dream at the bottom of it is just myself showing myself to myself; followed by a demonstration of how much I still have to learn. (I was instructed to perform an action which should theoretically work, but in practice -- and based on prior experience -- reliably crashes the dream in my case. It crashed my dream, though for a reason different from the one I was expecting.)

Kind of paradoxical. Still, it was far more thought-provoking than the usual stuff I do when I happen to get a lucid dream.

[Arakawa]

And for the first time ever my first dream of the night was lucid. (Even if it was not exactly crystal-clear quality.) Normally it was basically a given that I had to have most of the night to sleep for even the vaguest possibility of a lucid dream to occur. It's very odd to see how I can lever my dreams wide open if I can find the right things to concentrate on.

Since it isn't exactly the most restful form of sleep (it feels about half as stressful as pulling a late nighter, the focus needed to get my brain into this unaccustomed state), I'll leave further experimentation to subsequent nights and get some normal sleep now. Again, I'm kind of surprised at my progress.

More details in the morning.

[Arakawa]

Okay, I kind of had a surreal night last night (well, the first half; the second half I had the ordinary sorts of dreams I normally have). Best summarized as follows (slightly paraphrased, but as far as I can remember exactly as in the dream):

Welcome to all our new students!

Hikari-chan's Dream Academy guarantees that the learning experience will be irritating but fun. Students are expected to pay attention, exert significant amounts of focus, and generally be on the ball.

The primary problem we begin with solving is that of distraction and disconnection from reality, a problem that is your inevitable lot existing on the mortal plane. (At least eventually.) However, before that happens, we should be able to overcome the issue enough to have plenty of fun!

You may feel surprised to know this, but essentially the same attachment that lets you reject the distractions of irreality and stay grounded in reality and that enables things like skillful driving, piano playing, or just generally managing the relentless flow of everyday things, is the attachment that will help you succeed in the task of lucid dreaming!

If you're feeling enthusiastic and want something to do before the next official lesson, we suggest you try the following exercises:

• Do {{ten rotations en toast}}. Most of the challenge is deciding what that's even supposed to mean!
• Generally stay in a sunny and happy mood :-)
• Find a dream or daydream location where you can review and remember the contents of this email. Fair note of warning: different people may see completely different messages, since they almost certainly have different ways of seeing.

Looking forward to our next meeting and wishing sweet dreams :-)

-- Hikari-chan

After thinking about it for some time, I'm... kind of dubious on this. But beyond the dubiousness is the basic reaction of "okay... what just happened?"

[Brian]

You subconscious assembled something based largely on your expectations?

[Arakawa]

More or less. I'm trying to figure out if this process is useful or just a waste of energy.

[Arakawa]

And in last night's session... training montage!

_{(I blame my last IRC conversation with Brian.)}

EDIT: the reason I'm not going into details is that I'm on my first ever several-nights-consecutive streak, so I've decided it makes sense to wait until that streak is broken and post edited highlights, rather than spamming this thread on a daily basis. Going to quiet down for now.

[Arakawa]

To vaguely summarize the gist of my recent (highly personal) experiences, and keep my issues out of the 'In Your Dreams' thread:

My unconscious mind seems to be deeply dissatisfied with who I am (far more than my conscious mind is). Many of my dream characters betray this attitude either explicitly or through unspoken demeanor. The dream tutor is the most encouraging, being an attempt to communicate this message in a friendly and nonthreatening manner. But in general, I can lucid dream when, and only when, I make a serious effort to push my psyche in a more tractable direction.

But on the bright side:

It's not like constantly pushing my psyche in a more tractable direction, and getting rewarded for it, is a problem or anything. As for having to constantly stare at my own apparent negative attitude toward myself, it's not like I'm not going to fix that by ignoring it -_-;; so that doesn't change much in terms of the cost/benefit calculation.

[Brian]

I've made no headway on further lucid dreaming, but have managed to recall more dreams.


I recently come to realize that almost all of my dreams are very depressing.  I also had a dream where I _knew_ I was dreaming, but it wasn't lucid.  Irritatingly, I was only bitter about it because it was the one 'pleasant' dream I could recall, and I couldn't enjoy it because I knew it wasn't real.

[Arakawa]

It sounds like an attitude that can (and should) change as you progress. It's sort of similar to watching a good movie but being unable to enjoy it properly because it's not real. >_>

More encouragingly, it's nice to discover that (with sufficient effort) you can push your mind to work differently. (Or at least, I've found the discovery encouraging. Figuring out what overall direction to push is worth the effort has been more tricky.)

[Arakawa]

Had an in-dream training session, but I've let my dream recall slip to the point that I didn't remember any details when I woke up. Time to work on dream recall again...

_{(Conclusion: unless you've had perfect recall for several months or something, this is something you need to keep grinding at to maintain.)}

[Arakawa]

Remembering some details now. It continued the recent theme of learning to split off and re-absorb parts of my psyche in the form of dream characters, without losing control of the dream, and I was finally starting to have success with it! Kind of annoyed that in all the excitement about being able to have this new experience, I've let myself neglect maintenance of the basics that enabled it in the first place.

[Brian]

Had a dream today where I discovered something that probably says terrible things about me.

I was dreaming I was one of a duo of characters in what appeared to be a buddy/action movie.  At one point, the plot required me to make amends with someone who had caused me substantial grief in the waking world.  Instead of going along with it or waking up, I managed to somehow change the dream to no longer require him as a character, and remove my PoV to be external to the two main characters -- just finishing the rest of the dream as an observer.

It ended with a buggy jumping over a ramp and an improbable landing with no damage to anyone (the buggy was naturally in pieces), and then Shami woke me up.

I have no idea what the whole, 'change things you don't like without becoming lucid' aspect means.

The other strange thing I've discovered is that I will remember my dreams upon waking, write some details down, and then (typically while I'm in the shower) I will remember other parts of the dream.  My ... guess is that I'm not nearly as unified when I dream, so it takes something that aligns all of me to achieve lucidity.  Most of me will remember some parts of the dream, and if I work at it, the rest trickles in later.  For this dream, I remembered the 'buddy/action' movie parts, but the 'retcon that guy I don't like out' part didn't come to me until later.

Not sure what that means, but suspect it translates into me being a terrible person.