# Lucid Dreaming > Attaining Lucidity > Meditation >  >  Dream-like States via Meditation

## Mzzkc

I've had a lot of success reaching dream-like states during my meditation practices. Without touching on what would be considered spiritual topics, and thus off-topic for this sub-forum, I can best describe them as waking WILD experiences. I know some U.S. Military programs have also had some success on this front as well (https://www.cia.gov/library/readingr...00210016-5.pdf), and was wondering if perhaps a few of you guys have had similar experiences.

I think there's a lot of potential here to push the boundaries of lucid dreaming through meditative states. What are your thoughts?

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## DarkestDarkness

That's quite a peculiar document, and in fact, a peculiar programme at that. I suspect that alone would hold a lengthy lengthy discussion... I will have to read it and https://www.cia.gov/library/readingr...00270006-0.pdf in more detail at some time soon, as it will probably provide an interesting read, regardless of conclusions drawn by the authors.


But going more toward your specific question: my experience of hypnosis (which in my honest opinion, is only different from self-hypnosis because of the presence of a "guide") is that it can be combined with regular meditative and awareness techniques for something quite different from any of those single things by themselves. My suggestion to others on this would be to learn about all the different techniques that are floating around (as much as time allows and as much as one's brain can discern which will be useful or meaningfully different from previously learned concepts).

Unfortunately, due to my biological context (and perhaps the more pertinent fact that something is always going on in one's life), it can be very difficult for me to practice some of these even on their own, nevermind altogether for something different. I find that it requires a level of focus and "intentive" mood that for me is simply out of reach, most of the time. But I feel that the reason for that is the same as to why I struggle with WILDs in general. If my situation in that context was improved, work on a technique like that would no doubt be improved, too.

I have had a couple of WILD-like experiences that did not induce or result in sleep, but both were very different from one another; one of them was more like astral projection as I recall, but I did not record either of these into a journal, very sadly. So most of what I remember is the lingering feelings, which isn't terribly useful... One of the experiences that I *do* remember, I don't really think it to be appropriate to discuss openly with public posts.

I do think you're right that there's room to push boundaries here, but I think what I would like to put forward is plainly that the more I practice techniques of "meditative" nature, the more I find that they are all related and use the same part of thinking/focus/consciousness; perhaps that's just me or just a bias I've created. But it's how I _feel_. I have the view that many self-help courses and groups try to _separate_ all of these techniques too much, as if there is some objective hard-line definition between them, when they all use the same principles of focusing on one-self and one's surroundings and basically paying attention. I would have already written something on these subjects if only I could write coherent text (at length).

And ultimately biology seems to be a limiting factor; and I'm not suggesting that one's biology is set in stone in this sense, because we can acquire health conditions and lose them, which can affect biological mechanics in a significant way. I feel I can personally attest to this, but this remains a subjective point for me, since I cannot know all of any single individual's experience of their senses and the world.


*Just a "small" edit*: I have been reading the report in more depth and while I have a general amount of faith in something we cannot prove to be real (i.e. gods etc), a lot of this report reads a bit too much as "mumbo-jumbo" to me. Mixing science and faith is dangerous territory, in my personal opinion. You are free to disagree, but there are plenty of groups and cults that take advantage of supposed scientific "truths" to push financial and political agendas of no real value to the life of an average individual human being. There seems to be some sort of employment of a scientific model, but most of it boils down to hypothesis (which is not the same as a _Theory_). Some aspects of the report seem like they _could_ potentially be validated with more, well-evidenced research, and ultimately it is probably going to be impossible to discern whether the findings, especially the reported findings from the subjects, are valid or not.

Another two things to consider: #1, the report was written, seemingly, near or at the end of the Cold War. Just because the document has been declassified, this alone cannot explain if there is an ulterior nature to it, as it could have been part of US intelligence/counter-intelligence operations; note that this report and the recruitment leaflet I linked at the top of my post here are part of a larger collection, if you are curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project - or search the CIA archives for it.
#2, while the report _does_ provide a bibliography (albeit rather limited, 9 authored works, is not my idea of a US Army/Military funded research...), no substantial amounts of hard _data_ are provided. Notice for one, how the number of participants is not revealed in the report. There is a lot of other potentially relevant data that is not produced by the report.

Still, it is an interesting read; just don't read too much into it, in my opinion; but I believe that you are free to believe in anything (so long as it doesn't harm others).  :smiley:

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## dolphin

I think you're refering to closed eye hallucinations? I agree there is a lot of potential in this area.

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## Sivason

Yes, totally possible to lucid dream in a meditation state where you induce non-REM sleep and still maintain a small percentage of waking awareness, such as the ability to stay upright or respond if something happens. I personally have less color and depth of experience doing this compared to REM sleep WILDs. It is basically a WILD.

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## DarkestDarkness

> I think you're refering to closed eye hallucinations? I agree there is a lot of potential in this area.



Actually last night I was looking at a few threads about this in more detail, and thought it was all interesting, and I'm going to be looking into it a bit further.

Here are the old threads I found:
https://www.dreamviews.com/dream-con...-tutorial.html
https://www.dreamviews.com/research/...ile-awake.html
https://www.dreamviews.com/wake-init...ld-easily.html


Because of reading these, I have realised something I had never noticed before. There was a type of "dream" I mentioned in my intro post, where things would look like this noise and "feel" fuzzy somehow. I think these so called dreams were related to this, because the dominant pattern and colours of everything in those, was simply like this visual noise.

Though when I was reading that wiki article, I got the impression that seeing the noise pattern all the time is actually not that normal? I always see it, even when I'm as awake as I can be and looking at this screen or objects around me. Very rarely it annoys me, but most of the time I'm simply aware of it.

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