# Lucid Dreaming > General Lucid Discussion >  >  Age and Lucidity

## lenscaper

I am 67 years old....a young 67, though. :smiley: 

I stumbled into lucid dreaming three weeks ago when a pretty incongruous event in a somewhat threatening dream caused me to say, "Wait....this is a dream!" I was able to change the circumstances and deal with the issue at hand and I woke up profoundly amazed.

Since then things have happened very quickly....it's a bit like an ember falling on a dry brush pile. In these last three weeks I have searched out every bit of info I can find on this amazing thing called lucid dreaming and I have immersed myself in "lucidity training". I have said those same words in three different dreams in that time. Almost all of my dreams seem to now have some degree of lucidity and I feel it having a very interesting effect on my life in general.

Any other old folks out there that can relate to this?

How does age affect the ability to experience lucid dreams as a beginner?

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## Darkmatters

Apparently being in our 'advanced stage of life' does make it more difficult, but it's a relative thing. I believe it partly has to do with brain chemistry - I've heard it's related to Choline levels or something. That can be supplemented with choline pills you can get at a drug store or online. But no matter what the age, some people can lucid really good, some less so to varying degrees, and it can always be improved through interest, training and practice. 

Far and away the #1 resource if you really want to learn all about lucidity is the book *Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming* by _Stephen LaBerge_. But your best line of support and advice of course is right here. It's really helpful to look into the Dream Journals section - read people's dreams and see what kind of experiences they're having. how similar or different it is to your own. People often write in their DJs what kind of techniques they're using for lucidity as well, and how successful it is.

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## lenscaper

Thanks for that reply Darkmatters. I seem to be an anomaly I guess because I am having good early success. My many, many years of T'ai Chi practice may be helping somehow...that mind/body relationship thing.

I have already ordered the book. I am in the process of reading many threads here as well....this is a fantastic resource!

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## Darkmatters

I definitely suspect the T'ai Chi is a big factor. Meditation helps as well, because it helps you focus your intentions and your awareness.

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## zelcrow

Glad to hear you ordered that book, lenscaper.  It helped me to have my first several lucids.

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## lenscaper

Since I have this thread going I'd like to use it to ask a few questions about what I am experiencing at this very early stage of my journey rather than start a number of different threads. I am betting that there are quite a few folks lurking about who may be beginners like me and perhaps my experiences and questions will be helpful to them as well. 

As I look through my very brief journal I see that the first entry was only 22 days ago. I have the word "lucid" circled four times, including in the entry I just made. I have tried every technique that I have learned of. I know that folks say to stick with one for a while but I find that I am REALLY enjoying the process and not worrying so much about the result as the process, in all of its forms, has been incredibly rewarding thus far.

So.......this question concerns mantras. after reading Enz's thread and discovering SSILD I tried it out last night with great success. But....it took a while with a false start. As I was trying to fall asleep I could feel a dream forming but I found that I kept switching from one mantra to another. I finally found myself in a semi-lucid dream that suddenly became very lucid with the most visceral lucidity I have yet experienced...including a brief exhilarating flight. I woke up with a full body smile.  :Happy: 


Should I develop one mantra that I always use or do folks switch from one to another often?

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## zelcrow

That's really interesting, lenscaper.  I've usually read to use one mantra as an anchor, but if switching allows you to maintain the focus that you need I don't see why or how it could be a bad thing.  There are other forum members that have been using mantras for lucid dreaming much longer than I, though, as I've only been at it for a few months now.  So they may have some deeper insight.  Also, congratulations on your success using SSILD!

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## lenscaper

I appreciate that insight, zelcrow. It makes sense that I should stick with one and I suppose I'll settle into one. I'm getting the feeling, though, that it is really the strong intention of becoming lucid that builds when focusing on any mantra that is the key factor here.

In trying to understand my success last night I am realizing that the most important thing that I have been doing is working diligently on being super aware during my days. There was no RC kind of trigger in last night's lucid dream.....it was more of just a general realization that I was in the sleeping dream rather than the awake dream.

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## zelcrow

Sure.  You could try alternating between switching mantras and hanging onto one to see which works better for you.  I would agree that strong intention does a lot to attaining lucidity.  It seems like when I am able to become lucid, it is preceded by a strong will and motivation throughout the day and while falling asleep.  When that intention and will wanes, I have fewer lucids.  

Hmm.  That has happened to me with some of the lucids I've had.  I have confirmed the lucidity with RCs, but a few times I've just suddenly realized I'm in a dream while standing around without anything apparently odd happening.  I'm interested by how quickly you seem to be achieving lucidity.   Approximately how frequently each day are you aware?  Is it hourly or more?   And how much time will pass in between your moments of awareness? How do you experience the awareness you've been working on as it is happening?

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## lenscaper

Well.......During my days I sit in front of a computer screen with a bluetooth headset on in a nice private office. With big windows and a huge ficus tree. It is a very personalized space. I have a small bright pink post-it sticky stuck to the phone and every time I glance at it I ask myself if this is a dream. Then I look closely at all the things close around me and try to see details that I have missed in the past. I'll get up and walk around while I am taking calls and watch my hands. I have started telling myself over and over that this _is_ a dream...just the one I am awake in. That may be the important part...it feels right.

It has become a pretty constant frame of mind....almost as if I am living in a reality check. I am fortunate to be in such a controlled environment for 10 hours each day.

These daytime exercises, along with the night time lucidity, are really changing my perspective of  "reality"....in a good way.

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## gab

lenscaper -  ::welcome::  to our Lucid Family : D

You had your first lucid dream just by thinking "Wait, this must be a dream". THAT is the secret to lucid dreaming. Knowing that you are dreaming. That one thought is more important than methods are. All the methods are mostly a vehicle to carry this thought.

Reading all the methods, practices, experiences is wonderful, as it keeps your mind interested and excited about all those new things. I found that EXCITEMENT about possibility to be awake while asleep is what gave me my first lucid and many more after that. I also discovered lucid dreaming later in my life and it was like discovering the most amazing secret of humankind. 

I would recommend reading all the threads on this forum that you find interesting. I discovered that my mind paid attention to every detail I read, even if I was not trying to memorize them consciously. Just knowing, that I can do what other could helped me greatly and I started doing things in my dreams I had no idea I can do. Just by reading them and knowing that I CAN.

We have many wonderful members here that are happy to help you with any questions. In our DV Academy, you can get more personalized help and read more about 2 main techniques WILD and DILD. 

https://www.dreamviews.com/wild/
https://www.dreamviews.com/dild/

here is something more about mantras, reality checks and a DILD - which is a type of a lucid dream you are having. It's when you realize that you are dreaming while you are having a normal dream. https://www.dreamviews.com/dild/1321...ods-dilds.html

Happy dreams!

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## lenscaper

Thanks so much for the warm welcome, gab. I intend to make full use of this most excellent resource as I try to fit in here in this wonderful community. I'll definitely check out the links that you provided as a start.

Sunday nap soon....going to work on improving my hypnagogia techniques and see where that takes me.  :armflap:

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## lenscaper

I have not yet been making very good use of dream signs. As I have mentioned, all of my lucid moments have come more from a broad realization that I was dreaming. I think my mind is trying to tell me something, though,  :smiley: 

I mentioned in an earlier post about the florescent pink sticky that I have on the phone in my office to remind my to reality check. It is right there in front of me all day...has been for two weeks. Well, last night I did not try very hard to get lucid. I did SSILD but I fell asleep with somewhat less intention than usual. My dreams were mundane and hardly memorable....until I drove a car onto a wide boulevard and there in the distance in front of me was an entire troop of soldiers walking toward me in a loose formation. They covered the entire boulevard and they were all wearing......that exact florescent pink.  :Nod yes: 

I was startled into lucidity....and immediately woke up.

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## Darkmatters

Do you use any kind of mantras? Or keep a dream journal? Those were the most effective things I've done. I even combined them, by writing my mantra in the DJ before going to sleep, and then repeating it to myself over and over as I drifted off. For me anyway, after coming up with a good mantra and using it every night for a while, it started working like a charm. What I used in the beginning was *"I wake after each dream, lie still with eyes closed, and remember the dream."* 

That was to increase my awareness to dreams and my recall. And it worked brilliantly! In fact, once I had it firmly implanted in my mind, I could stop using the mantra and it would keep on working for long periods of time afterwards. I'd keep a notebook and pen next to the bed and scribble down the bare facts of the dreams, then write them up in more full detail on the computer in the morning (or to my DJ in here). Once you've got that down, then you're ready for another mantra to remember to do some reality checks and stabilize.

Oh, not a necessity, but I use a *Weems & Plath* navigation pen designed for a sea captain's logbook –– it has a green LED light next to the tip so you don't have to turn on the room lights, which can wake you up too much and make the dreams just evaporate instantly, plus you can't get back to sleep.

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## lenscaper

My music studio is just around the corner from the bedroom.....the dream journal is on the keyboard next to my scratch pads for new songs. I have only been writing down the key parts of the dreams that were somewhat lucid or had extremely lucid parts but I have an entry for every day since I started this three weeks ago. I wake up every night at around 1:00. I go to bed very early and get up at 4:00 naturally every day. It's a throwback habit from my landscaper days. Anyway, often times I'll make an entry then and then go back to bed. I definitely keep the lights of.....the 1:00 entry is always very short and sometimes barely legible. I'll definitely look into that pen. 

The mantra that I start with is_ "When I dream I'll know I'm dreaming"_. When sleep is close I switch to _"This is a dream"_.

I have something else on my mind.....I'm going to a make a new post for it.

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## lenscaper

I hope it is ok for me to post like this. Things are happening fast for me and this is an amazingly good way for me to keep track.

I have had recent success with SSILD so today I tried something interesting......bathtub SSILD practice.  :smiley:  Here's how it went:

Fill the tub with very warm (hot) water. I added 2 cups of epsom salt. I have this little issue with chronic Lyme and that helps keeps me one step ahead of it.

Immerse completely and begin the SSILD protocol. While concentrating on the back of your closed eyelids count to 30 on in and out breaths....nice long cleansing breaths. Have your ears in the water for this part. Then rise up so your ears are out of the water and listen to the world for 30 more counts. Listen for the silence between the sounds. Then go back into the water and feel your body for 30 more counts. Do a full body check. Feel how your body rises in the tub when you breathe in and then sinks when you breathe out.

Repeat the process counting slowly to 20. Repeat again counting to 10. 

When you are ready to get out lie on the floor and repeat the process for a bit....especially feeling how your body now is reacting to gravity. (Thank you Hukif )

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## snoop

> I hope it is ok for me to post like this.



If by "post like this", you mean double/multiple posting, I'm pretty sure it's fine as long as it's not excessive and the following posts are complete and/or separate ideas/topics that aren't better tacked on as simple edits. I'm no mod, so don't take my word for it on that, but I've noticed others following these guidelines and making multiple successive posts and somewhat regularly do it myself and have never been given a warning or reprimanded for it.

Dream signs and reality checks are good practices to be in, but definitely keep in mind the method behind the madness. The primary motivation behind and ultimate goal of reality checks and dream signs are to increase your general awareness of yourself. That's a rather loaded statement though--by general awareness of yourself, I mean of virtually everything in your life and that you experience. A lot of the time, even though specific dream signs may be good for prompting reality checks for example, the dream signs themselves are more a symptom of what you ought to becoming more aware of than the cause or an end in themselves. What I mean is, it generates genuine inquisitiveness and interest in what might make these dream signs show up so often and why, leading to some real insight. 

All in all, it's a never ending process of trying to achieve a greater knowledge of yourself and life. Ultimately it's all part of a broader process of spiritual/psychological enlightenment and transcendence... put in other terms, part of a journey of self-actualization and individuation. I think pursuit of self-improvement, understanding, and self-actualization/individuation is perhaps the greatest way of indirectly improving one's ability to lucid dream. Honestly, I think making progress on this front has greater potential to improve lucidity than directly practicing lucid dreaming can and often does.

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## lenscaper

> All in all, it's a never ending process of trying to achieve a greater knowledge of yourself and life. Ultimately it's all part of a broader process of spiritual/psychological enlightenment and transcendence... put in other terms, part of a journey of self-actualization and individuation. I think pursuit of self-improvement, understanding, and self-actualization/individuation is perhaps the greatest way of indirectly improving one's ability to lucid dream. Honestly, I think making progress on this front has greater potential to improve lucidity than directly practicing lucid dreaming can and often does.



This really resonates with me. But I'm also thinking that it can be turned around the other way as well......a greater degree of consciousness (lucidity) during our dream state can lead to more self-improvement, understanding and self-actualization along with enhanced spiritual enlightenment as a whole being.

I'm thinking that in the dream state we are immersed in an outpouring of....self....from our sub-conscious. The more conscious we can become in the presence of that outpouring, the more it will become part of the entire fabric of our being. It is this potential that has attracted me so strongly to lucid dreaming.

Thoughts on that?

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## lenscaper

In the meantime.....! am working very hard at understanding how my natural sleep cycle works and how to best use it. I used to do a lot of trout fishing and there was nothing more frustrating than working a pool that had no fish in it. That's pretty much how I felt last night when I woke up after only 4 hours of sleep and tried for another SSILD.

I didn't catch anything and I woke up a little groggy.  :smiley:

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## Darkmatters

I literally thought you were going to say:





> I used to do a lot of trout fishing and there was nothing more frustrating than



"...Catching a big fish and then waking up with nothing to show for it!"   :armflap:

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## lenscaper

> I literally thought you were going to say:
> 
> 
> 
> "...Catching a big fish and then waking up with nothing to show for it!"



Nope. I think I was at that particular "fishing hole" at the wrong time since I was not in my productive REM period. Those fish just weren't about to bite.  ::doh:: 

Tonight I'll try to wait another couple of hours and I bet I get plenty of action.  ::D:

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## fogelbise

Welcome to DV lenscaper. I enjoyed reading about your journey thus far. It seems you have a good approach to this and I encourage you to continue with your gut feeling to develop your own unique path that perhaps others can learn from. I also like this: "I have started telling myself over and over that this is a dream...just the one I am awake in. That may be the important part...it feels right." That is a one of the practices used in Dream Yoga, illusory practice, so you are in great company. 

May I ask if you have any other backgrounds that have helped your mindset beyond the T'ai Chi? 

I also strongly agree that both lucidity practice and lucid dreaming has many benefits on waking life!

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## lenscaper

> May I ask if you have any other backgrounds that have helped your mindset beyond the T'ai Chi?



Thank you for that welcome and for you words of encouragement, fogelbise. There are two other important parts of my life that I feel play a part in my mindset and may be helping me along on this amazing new journey.

I have been writing songs for over 40 years and recording them for the last 20 years or so. This is a private thing.....not at all professional. I have used it over the years as a bit of a conduit to my subconscious self. I am feeling a connection forming between my lucidity and my songwriting already.

The other thing that still lives at my core is my time studying the Japanese art of Aikido. I was Sensei for a dozen years or so until an injury took me off that path.

EDIT:
There's something else that I just realized while I was going through my morning routine. I have been consuming home made kefir daily for the last two years in a focused effort to restructure my microbiome. It has made me...very healthy. There is a great deal of scientific evidence that supports a very strong connection from our gut bacteria to our brains. They pretty much rule the roost, it seems. We are actually....bactosapiens. I am thinking that there is a further connection here and I must research "kefir and lucid dreaming". :smiley:

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## lenscaper

.....a very powerful experience.

Last night I woke myself up after 6 hours of good sleep. I practice the SSILD protocol for 10 minutes or so and then rolled over to my sleeping position and tried to go right to sleep. No such luck. As I felt my body drifting toward sleep I tried to relax my mind....I tried a number of different mantras......

Finally I just projected my mind into...the sky...space....and felt my body slip into complete stillness while I lingered in hynagogia.

My very next conscious experience was an intense burst of visual light and...power....that emanated from around a roughly square shaped opaque window. The window was the color of pewter. It lasted for only a spit second and it blasted me awake....and into crystal clear lucidity. I slowly sat up on the edge of the bed...with an huge smile. I thought about doing a reality check but I knew exactly which dream world I was in.

Close to 2 hours had elapsed. I felt as though I had slept for 10 hours. I'm still smiling.

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## snoop

> This really resonates with me. But I'm also thinking that it can be turned around the other way as well......a greater degree of consciousness (lucidity) during our dream state can lead to more self-improvement, understanding and self-actualization along with enhanced spiritual enlightenment as a whole being.
> 
> Thoughts on that?



Absolutely, that's the great part about the lucid dreaming. Any great length of time dedicated to lucid dreaming inevitably points people toward self-actualization, self knowledge, and spiritual growth because the two things have so much overlap and complement one another so well. Well, that's my opinion anyway.

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## lenscaper

I know I'm going about this in a pretty unconventional way. Yesterday evening I had a wonderful conversation with a friend about seeing our waking life as a dream. I went to bed with that on my mind.

After two non-lucid but very clear dreams (I even tried a DEILD) I awoke again with only a couple of sleep time remaining. I got up and sat for 15 minutes in the dark studio. I thought deeply about what we had talked about and resolved to try to somehow transfer my waking consciousness to my dream consciousness. Back in bed I set that goal hard as I fell back to sleep.

I went almost immediately into a two hour dream that was different than any I have had. I was extremely conscious of everything around me. There were characters (an ex-wife and two very young kids) but I tried not to interact with them. Instead I inspected every little nook and cranny of the beach house we happened to be in. I observed...everything....but I did not try to change anything. I remember every bit of it even now. When I awoke two hours had elapsed and I was.....much less conscious than I had been in the dream.

In fact, I felt as if I had left some of...me...in the dream. Has anybody ever experienced that?

Tonight I shall try to make the conduit flow both ways as that is my ultimate goal.

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## fogelbise

Terrific work! That sounded like a very special experience and I look forward to seeing more of these from you.





> In fact, I felt as if I had left some of...me...in the dream. Has anybody ever experienced that?
> 
> Tonight I shall try to make the conduit flow both ways as that is my ultimate goal.



I don't think I have experienced leaving a part of me in a dream. I have had many lucid dreams that I still long to be back inside of, definitely. I have also had lucid dreams where I felt more like I was there than I usually felt I was here in the waking world. I was able to bring the fascination with experiences in lucid dreams to experiences that were previously mundane in waking, as if bringing that piece of me back, a piece that was awakened within me, within lucid dreams. Actually, I'd say pieces, plural. The example above has  not been a constant experience...not yet at least. I do see it as a conduit that flows both ways though.

Keep it up!  :smiley:

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## oolally

Amazing *lenscaper*! Your progress is so exciting. 





> Back in bed I set that goal hard as I fell back to sleep.



I'm curious to know what exactly your process is for setting a goal hard. In my WBTBs I run through a mantra in my head, it's sort of changing every night but the intention is the same, "When I'm dreaming I'll ask myself Am I Dreaming and then do a reality check" - and I visualise myself doing this in a recent dream. 

Most of the time I start falling asleep and my mind drifts and I don't LD. Or I focus too hard and it keeps me awake.  :armflap:

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## lenscaper

> I'm curious to know what exactly your process is for setting a goal hard.



For me to set a goal hard like that takes more than just a mantra. I kind of give myself "a good talking to". In this case it went something like...."You're awake and aware right now, right? So take that with you now as you step across the threshold. Awake and aware...awake and aware. Don't you let go of that! Awake and aware...awake and aware. See the dream...be the dream." Something along those lines is how that "conversation" went...although it was more of a forceful lecture than a conversation.

The trick is to forcefully set that intention...and then stop and breathe at the right time. I have been combining that forceful intention setting thing with a follow up SSILD protocol...you know, the sensory awareness meditation thing. That really gets me ready for sleep quickly.

I heard that mentioned as Multiple Induction techniques (MIT) in one of the excellent podcasts.

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## lenscaper

I found this amazing video of a guy free diving. I have been watching this and visualizing flying........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=OnvQggy3Ezw

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## Darkmatters

If I want to dream about flying I sometimes look at parkour videos:





Or wingsuit flying:




(Click the YouTube logo down in the corner and then watch fullscreen)

Watch a bunch of this before bed and you most likely will fly.

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## oolally

> For me to set a goal hard like that takes more than just a mantra. I kind of give myself "a good talking to". In this case it went something like...."You're awake and aware right now, right? So take that with you now as you step across the threshold. Awake and aware...awake and aware. Don't you let go of that! Awake and aware...awake and aware. See the dream...be the dream." Something along those lines is how that "conversation" went...although it was more of a forceful lecture than a conversation.
> 
> The trick is to forcefully set that intention...and then stop and breathe at the right time. I have been combining that forceful intention setting thing with a follow up SSILD protocol...you know, the sensory awareness meditation thing. That really gets me ready for sleep quickly.
> 
> I heard that mentioned as Multiple Induction techniques (MIT) in one of the excellent podcasts.



Interesting! I like the variation from just repeating a mantra. I kind of suspect that I don't really listen to myself when I'm repeating my mantras so this sounds like a much stronger approach. 

Can I ask which episode you heard the technique from?

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## lenscaper

Hey oolally......

well, the episode that spoke briefly about MITs was this one, I think...

https://www.dreamviews.com/dreamview...ild-deild.html

But I have to admit that my method of forcefully setting intention like that is not something that I have read anywhere. I seem to be doing a lot of things like that on my own. I can only hope that I am not setting up bad habits like that but it seems to be working for me. 

I have always tended to go my own way with disciplines that I wanted to master as quickly as possible and throughout my life that tendency has given me some very unique perspectives on a few very important disciplines that have stayed with me over the years.

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## Darkmatters

Yeah, it's important not to fall into mechanical repetition of a mantra. I make sure if I do use one to change it from time to time, and I make sure to put some emotion into it when I say it - I also include a period of questioning if I'm dreaming now or awake, and I really consider that it could be either one. It's also vital to find ways to refresh your enthusiasm now and then or it gets stale. But that's pretty basic stuff really, I'm sure your'e both well aware of those ideas. Lenscaper, I like the idea of the hard set.

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## lenscaper

My mantra for today (the waking dream part) is....

_...unbroken continuity of consciousness between sleep and awake...._

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## lenscaper

That may be the title of my next album.  :Shades wink: 

Seriously, though, my last two days have been a bit less lucid due to my workload......so, of course, my nights have followed suit. I still woke up smiling this morning after a brief moment of lucidity in my last dream.

I understand and accept that there will be an ebb and a flow in this unbroken continuity. I suspect that may be a crucial frame of mind for one who intends to dream on forever,  :smiley: 

Anybody have any thoughts on that?

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## Darkmatters

> *Lucid Days, Lucid Nights*
> 
> That may be the title of my next album.



I've heard that one... isn't it by _the Eagles?_ No wait, I'm thinking of *Wasted Days and Wasted Nights*. Yeah, that's what it was. I guess that one refers to us in the younger days (me anyway, I won't speak for you). Wasted in both senses of the word. Though really that's not entirely true - even those days served a purpose - they were fun for sure, and it's important not to judge yourself too harshly. And as Jung kept saying, the first half of life has very different goals and purpose than the second half. 

As for thoughts on the more serious stuff, yeah I agree. It's important to keep in mind we're living organic beings. Or if you prefer we're invisible beings composed of an intellect, emotions, and an elusive deeper part called a soul, living inside an organic body that follows the natural rhythms every living thing does, with requisite highs and lows. And if you imagine you can somehow overcome those organic rhythms then you're setting yourself up for failure or disappointment. They'll always be there, like the tidal movement of the sea. 

Now let's grab our boogie boards and hang ten - surf's up!! Or maybe this is a time to sit with your feet dangling off the pier into the waves and just stare out at the ocean in melancholy reflection. Both serve their purpose.

(Now I keep hearing the Eagles song with your lyrics!   ::lol::  I like it!)

_____________
_WOW_ was I wrong!! Not the Eagles at all, it was Freddie Fender. I wasn't aware I knew any Freddy Fender songs, only vaguely knew the name. I guess with the Eagles I was thinking of _Wasted Time_. Weird crossed-wires in the brain mixup. Lol, and I'm still hearing the song done by the Eagles, but with your lyrics in my head!  :Rock out:  ::chuckle::

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## LukeSid

Hi lenscaper and all. snoop you are so right. As I said in my dream journal today I started late in life and it needed a lot of effort to achieve LD. I've lost the ability at the moment but it led on to so many other things...meditation, an interest in Buddhism, the brain, DMT etc. It encouraged spiritual development. Although I envy those who have natural LD ability I also realise that without the difficult journey I had I might never have progressed to a more spiritual awareness...instead I might have just got caught up in the trip rather than the lessons to be had. Love you all

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## lenscaper

> I also realise that without the difficult journey I had I might never have progressed to a more spiritual awareness...instead I might have just got caught up in the trip rather than the lessons to be had. Love you all



This really resonates with me, LukeSid.

This early on in my journey I am only experiencing lucid moments and I have yet to master any degree of real control.......but each and every attempt, along with my daytime exercises, leads me closer to my goal of awakening more consciousness and spiritual awareness.

For me, this journey is just as rewarding as the glimpses of the destination.

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## Rothgar

Lenscaper, nice to know I'm not the oldest lucid dreamer out there. I turn 67 this month. I started 10 years ago, but have been gone from the forum for a year and a half. Why? I got into a virtual reality online game which one can do on demand, unlike LD. It sorta dried up the LDs. But I got off the game for two weeks and back to lucid dreaming. Early on I journalled all my dreams. I filled about 6 or 7 large journals...thousands of dreams...maybe 1000 lucid. Some of my very best "experiences" in life have been lucid dreams, since you can do the impossible there. I could talk for a long time about all my experiences, but I imagine my old posts are still on here so I won't repeat myself!  :smiley: . Well, welcome to an exciting chapter of your life.

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## lenscaper

Hey Rothgar......good to meet somebody else who a start on this somewhat late in life. Thanks for the welcome.

Btw, I actually think LukeSid has us beat by a few years.

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## lenscaper

I have decided to go all in on WILDing for a bit and I am realizing at the same time that age really is a factor in trying to master these techniques.

Why WILD? Going into my sixth week of this incredible journey and I have had a number of very lucid events using the various forms of DILD. But......they have all been brief and I have yet to achieve any real control. I am okay with that...I have learned patience in my years. I have decided to take a shot at jump starting things through WILD.

The real problem though is that my failed DILD attempts......and there have been many....leave me feeling a bit groggy in the morning. I get up at 4:00 AM every morning. I have for many years. I exercise a bit and work in the studio before getting to my office at 6:00 AM. I go to bed very early, of course, and that puts my prime LD hours from 2:00 to 4:00.

I have found that if I attempt a SSILD or a MILD and I am unable to get back to sleep or I stumble into a non-LD....I have lost those hours of sleep. My few serious WILD attempts, however, have been very rewarding even without resulting in a LD. I have found that the hypnagogic state is, in and of itself, a very rejuvenating experience. I feel like I have slept a full and restful night after an hour of deep hypnagogia. These periods have also rewarded me with brief amazing OBE-like experiences and very strong feelings of peace and spirituality. In hynagogia I feel as though I have a foot in each dream world.

What is the age factor? Well....I need to get good sleep. I don't have the ability to get by with 5 or 6 hours of sleep as I did when I was young. I believe that getting good restorative sleep is one of the most important things we can do for our bodies, especially as we start to get older. During my WILD attempts this weekend I got SO close.....but I could not stay fully awake for long enough to make the transition. It was a good show though....lots of colored fractals, faces.....sheets of white light....even another glimpse of the opaque window that blasted me fully awake this morning.

I know that I must establish a pattern that allows me to incorporate LD into my life completely without negatively affecting my health. I intend to do just that.  :Nod yes: 

Anyway....just sharing.  :smiley:

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## Darkmatters

lenscaper, you keep mentioning control. One thing that will destroy lucidity immediately is to try to control things or even interact with them before they're stabilized. That means both in a dream, and in the early period of developing lucidity. I don't know if you're trying to control anything, but I would just relax and enjoy whatever is happening for a while. Let it happen and it will grow.

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## Rothgar

I like my sleep too. Consequently I only tend to rely on DILD and dream signs. I sleep normally and hope to catch a lucid because something triggers that I am dreaming. It seems like some have gotten really good at this...I keep hoping I'll find some key (maybe ADA or something like that...) Which I can combine to increase frequency. I was doing reality checks early on, but after awhile I got more spontaneous awareness and quit the RCs. Maybe that was a mistake....

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## lenscaper

> lenscaper, you keep mentioning control. One thing that will destroy lucidity immediately is to try to control things or even interact with them before they're stabilized. That means both in a dream, and in the early period of developing lucidity.



Thanks for that, Darkmatters. I had not considered that. 





> I don't know if you're trying to control anything, but I would just relax and enjoy whatever is happening for a while. Let it happen and it will grow.



Truth is, That's exactly what I am doing. I am thoroughly enjoying this process. I have definitely learned in life how to not push the river so I am letting the control come to me rather than trying to force it. I will say, though, that sometimes it doesn't hurt to get yourself into a part of the river that is flowing a little faster.  :smiley: 

At this point I am just trying to get to a point where sudden lucidity in a DILD doesn't just wake me up.





> I like my sleep too. Consequently I only tend to rely on DILD and dream signs. I sleep normally and hope to catch a lucid because something triggers that I am dreaming. It seems like some have gotten really good at this...I keep hoping I'll find some key (maybe ADA or something like that...) Which I can combine to increase frequency.



Yes....that is kind of my goal as well. I intend to incorporate this into my life style so it has to work with everything else. I definitely want to master WILDing, though, as there are always times when I have the space to be more proactive.....such as the nap that I am about to take. :Nod yes: 





> I was doing reality checks early on, but after awhile I got more spontaneous awareness and quit the RCs. Maybe that was a mistake....



Reality checks are not really working for me either. I still find that my strongest tool has been working diligently on daytime mindfulness and awareness. When I have the space to do that during the day I have my strongest spontaneous LDs. This past week found me a bit busier in my office and my training took a hit. That definitely affected my LDing.

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## oolally

I agree lenscaper - sleeping is probably THE most important thing we can do for our health (Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker can tell you all about this - sorry if I keep banging on about this  :smiley:  ) and having an attitude that is about building a lucid dreaming practice _around_ your life instead of it _controlling_ your life makes sense to me. For this reason, I may not be progressing at a million miles a day but I am slowly and gradually building awareness and changing neural pathways that lead me to question waking life as second nature. 

I'm far far from being an expert of course, but I feel like this approach probably takes much longer than the setting-the-alarm-in-the-middle-of-rem method, but will be more deeply ingrained in your thought processes and behaviour. 

That said, and in contradition to myself  ::lol::  - I am also tempted to do some more drastic sleep-interruption techniques so I can have a taste of a longer LDs (basically more than 4 seconds), as I suspect the more you experience, the more familiar your brain becomes to the phenomenon. And then it might trigger more DILDs from recognising that dream feeling more easily?   

You talk about being busier correlating with fewer LDs lenscaper - I wonder how many of us got into LDs during a period in our lives in which we have less going on, and the routine and monotony of daily life leads us to seeking out more meaningful experiences? I say this because that is where I am finding myself at the moment; and lucid dreaming has given me something exciting to work on and look forward to.

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## lenscaper

> I wonder how many of us got into LDs during a period in our lives in which we have less going on, and the routine and monotony of daily life leads us to seeking out more meaningful experiences? I say this because that is where I am finding myself at the moment; and lucid dreaming has given me something exciting to work on and look forward to.



I definitely think you should take advantage of this time to lock in some good personalized LD systems.....you may not always have this luxury, right?





> I may not be progressing at a million miles a day but I am slowly and gradually building awareness and changing neural pathways that lead me to question waking life as second nature.



Well said. Slow growth lasts.

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## lenscaper

Yesterday I decided to stop using the word "lucid" in my conversations with myself for a while. It has started to feel a bit like a catchphrase to me. 

Instead I spent the day instilling the feeling of the unbroken continuity of consciousness. During the day I thought a lot about letting this somewhat mundane reality of my day just extend into the reality of my night. It was a bit of an arduous day and I was pretty exhausted by the time I left the office.

As I fell asleep at the beginning of the night I again hard set the idea of taking my awareness and my consciousness with me into my dreams. I told myself not to worry about being actively aware that I was dreaming....just _be_ in the dreams. I told myself not to worry about anything tonight.......don't go seeking adventure. Just let the continuity...happen....and sleep.

So.....I end my morning routine every day with a 4 or 5 minute headstand....been doing that for a long time. I slept deeply last night but woke up as usual right about where my REM cycle is strongest. Instead of doing anything specific I just laid on my back remembering the dream that I awoke from and breathing until I fell back to sleep. The next thing I knew I was out in the hallway outside the bedroom completely aware and conscious. I decided to do a headstand......fumbled with it a bit (I never fumble with it any more) and then got into the perfect pike headstand position.......a foot or so off the floor.  :Nod yes:

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## lenscaper

Six weeks in now........

During my first week I had my only real full LDs. On back to back nights I entered the dream flying down onto a stream....both nights exactly the same place. The second night I was able to walk up and immerse myself in the pool.

So yesterday I decided to set the intention of going back there. I spent the entire day setting the intention to fly down on that stream and walk up to the little shore on the left where I would sit and watch the stream while grabbing a handful of sand. As I fell asleep I set the intention more and when I awoke during the night at the perfect REM spot I set it even harder. I was certain in my mind that this was going to be a major breakthrough in lucidity.

Instead I fell asleep into a fairly conscious but not lucid dream where I was wandering from one scene to the next, ignoring obvious dream signs, and feeling decidedly frustrated.

But as I slowly woke from that dream I consciously went to that stream. Instead of climbing up onto the shore as I had in the countless scenarios I had practiced, I turned the other way and immersed myself in the pool. I looked up at the surface, and took a huge breath of the water........and woke up.

I had only 15 minutes or so left until I had to get up so I rolled onto my back and put myself into deeper hypnagogia. Before I had finished my first cleansing breath I was absolutely FLOODED with imagery....faces, images....sounds......fractals...all at once. It was overwhelming and exhilarating.

I think I actually _did_ have a major breakthrough....just not the one I was expecting.  :smiley: 

Once again....just sharing.

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## lenscaper

At this stage of my learning it seems that every new and somewhat successful lucid experience opens me up a bit more for the next. I have found that posting these experiences here is helping a great deal as well. Perhaps there are other beginners like me who can also benefit from my stumbling lucid exploits.

Last night I was lucid for an entire dream through SSILD. I have come to understand my lucidity as something quite different from what I read in other folks' writings. I'm not flying around or changing the substance of things....instead I am inhabiting these night dreams just as I am in the waking dream. Last night it was crystal clear to me that I was in a dream and I just watched the dream unfold around me trying to take note of every detail. I looked down at my hands on the table at one point and just smiled.

Late this morning, with the house to myself, I laid back on the bed with my sleeping mask and ear plugs in place to experiment with WILDing.  Through my breathing I put my body to sleep in minutes but then I found myself in an unfamiliar place. It was as if I was floating surrounded by deep black...light. That seems odd upon writing it but that is how it felt. There was no thought, no images....no dreams.....just that ocean of soothing black consciousness. A sound from outside the house got through and I awoke to an incredible feeling of........awareness and clarity. Over and hour and a half had gone by.

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## dream yogi

> How does age affect the ability to experience lucid dreams as a beginner?



Welcome dreamer. 62 here, born lucid dreamer (since earliest memories). Very practiced in dream yoga.

I'd think an advantage of waking up to lucid dreaming later in life might be that you've already had time to sort out much of the nonsense of youth, unless of course, you've carried that with you. But even if so, you've probably got more critical thinking skills that in your youth you might not have yet developed. You might be less inclined towards magical or otherwise crazy thinking so you might be able to see what you are experiencing more clearly, less cluttered and associate it more integrally with the rest of your thinking. You might be less affected by peer pressure so able to consider your experiences in a more independent way without the coloring of everyone else's opinion.

There are numerous issues of lucidly dreaming in youth. For instance, I didn't know the difference between when my body was awake and when it was asleep as a young child. So I'd "have conversations" that those people would later deny. When I got older it wound up take me years to sort out what was memory and which was dream.

Also odd at my age, slightly younger than you was that early on we had no internet. We didn't even have much of the eastern works such as Dzogchen and its dream yoga yet translated. So even if you could find info in the library, that was limited, severely. There was very little research at the time in the west. LaBerge was just cranking up. Tart had done a book on altered states. Castaneda was having fun with fiction. But most of the Tibetan works from those who'd studied dreaming for 100s of years was not yet available. So we were for the most part all on our own. Trying to figure out what was hardly if ever spoken about. Certainly we gained from that experience of doing that work but it would have been nice to have had all the resources available to you today.

Also I'd think there's a confidence to our older years replacing cockiness of our younger selves that might help stabilize your dreaming as well as maybe a humility required to extend the view of what you might be able to see.

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## lenscaper

Thanks for those excellent perspectives, dream yogi. Everything you said fits with what I have realized in these past weeks about my predisposition for this. While I left the nonsense of youth behind fairly early, the many paths that I found myself on during my life were somewhat diverse, sometimes to the point of distraction, even as I always maintained a strong connection to the center.





> Also odd at my age, slightly younger than you was that early on we had no internet.



This, I think, is a huge factor. My only contact with the possibilities of dreaming came in the early 70's through Castaneda and it was not until just this past year, when I picked his books up again, that I discovered the fictional aspect of his writings. If it was not for the internet I may have never found myself on this path and I do not believe that I would have progressed so quickly. One of the most powerful tools that I have found in this journey is total immersion. Since I am fortunate enough to have a completely autonomous work space during the day, I have been free to peruse every lucid dreaming website and listen to every blog and video that I could find.





> Also I'd think there's a confidence to our older years replacing cockiness of our younger selves that might help stabilize your dreaming as well as maybe a humility required to extend the view of what you might be able to see.



Absolutely.

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## dream yogi

> Thanks for those excellent perspectives, dream yogi. Everything you said fits with what I have realized in these past weeks about my predisposition for this. While I left the nonsense of youth behind fairly early, the many paths that I found myself on during my life were somewhat diverse, sometimes to the point of distraction, even as I always maintained a strong connection to the center.
> 
> 
> 
> This, I think, is a huge factor. My only contact with the possibilities of dreaming came in the early 70's through Castaneda and it was not until just this past year, when I picked his books up again, that I discovered the fictional aspect of his writings. If it was not for the internet I may have never found myself on this path and I do not believe that I would have progressed so quickly. One of the most powerful tools that I have found in this journey is total immersion. Since I am fortunate enough to have a completely autonomous work space during the day, I have been free to peruse every lucid dreaming website and listen to every blog and video that I could find.
> 
> 
> 
> Absolutely.



You're very welcome lenscaper. Sometimes seems just about anything can distract from pretty much everything else.

While there's time saving benefits to not reinventing the wheel, even given the now relative abundance of information on dreaming, I'd rely if at all on that more as clues, less as map; less as instruction, more as confirmation, reaching places in the mind more by self direction, by our own mistakes even, more by experience, less by imagination, the object being to establish the neurological pathways that drug taking or living vicariously though others might not provide.

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## lenscaper

> reaching places in the mind more by self direction, by our own mistakes even, more by experience, less by imagination, *the object being to establish the neurological pathways*



I added that bold because I think this is a huge piece of advice. There is an aura of fantasy and mysticism that surrounds the concept of lucid dreaming but there is also a great deal of hard science. I have been allowing myself to go in whatever direction felt right and it has been very rewarding. Of late, however, I am feeling myself drifting a little. 

Neurological pathways........never too late to establish new ones........

EDIT:

In my office now and researching neural plasticity.  :Nod yes:

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## lenscaper

I ran across a very cool video as I was researching neuroplasticity and how it relates to lucid dreaming. This has me realizing that I can really create new neural pathways that will make this whole process happen naturally.....if I just keep at it with diligence and intent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmHlBi77FdQ

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## lenscaper

After my first seven weeks of pretty constant lucidity the spigot has turned itself off.  :smiley: 

I'm good with that. I have lots to ponder now as I feel the stream flowing by me now just out of reach.

I am patiently waiting.

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## lenscaper

It's interesting feeling how that ebb is slowly returning to flow as I let go a bit. These last two nights were the first nights in these eight weeks of my training that I did not attempt any lucidity techniques at all. In spite of that, last night's non-lucid dreams were, once again, filled with very aware and almost lucid moments with clear possibilities (in hindsight) for dream sign induced lucidity.

Relative to age and lucidity.......I am realizing that us old folks need more sleep in general and when we try too hard we disturb the balance between restorative sleep and REM sleep. Anybody care to comment on that?

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## lenscaper

Last night, after some very strong SSILD cycling, I fell asleep but immediately woke back up and started cycling again. This time my partner was there egging me on.......it was, pf course, a false awakening.  :Picard face palm: 

It was extremely real, until I decided to go out into the kitchen and check on the pancakes. As I looked down at those perfect looking cakes on the griddle lucidity hit me like a wet fish. I woke up chuckling out loud.

I got to thinking this morning that my biggest hurdle on this path, as an old guy, is that I have spent the better part of 67 years creating my realities and learning to trust them. Now, after all this time,  those neural pathways are like super highways, i'm finally learning to question those realities so I can change them in this dream duality. It's going to take time.

Oh, to be young again.  :smiley:

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## LukeSid

Consider the following:

Dreams

Death (and NDENear Death Experiences)

DMTthe psychedelic drug Dimethyltryptaminewhich some claim we can all synthesize.

NHS/Imperial College London research claims similarities between NDE and a DMT trip.

If true, where is the DMT available in hospitals and theatres of war?

Such trips are usually profound, and some say life-changing. Many people who trip get déjà vu (a feeling of being there before) and have difficulty expressing experience.

Lucid dreamingthe ability to wake up within dreams. It exists (Ive done it a few times)

Some people are natural LDers. They may be awash with the hormone melatonin, (derived from the amino acid tryptophan) which regulates sleep patterns.

Most of us need to work at lucid dreaming. (keeping dream-journals, spotting common dream themes, conditioning the brain to be more aware during sleep.) Its quite hard to do.

Most dreams are quickly forgotten unless recorded immediately.

Buddhists maintain ones persona evaporates during death and only a degree of awareness remains. If we do re-incarnate, they say its only awareness that does. Consider a new born baby. Is that not just awareness at first?

Buddhists maintain the opportunity exists to avoid reincarnation, by conditioning oneself to recognise a source of radiance when it occurs. As in dreaming, it can easily be missed unless ones awareness is finely honed.

Why would one avoid reincarnation? Because it may be endlessly reoccurring and with the likelihood of unpleasant existences because it may be so random?

Common factors?

CyclesDream themes, reoccurring experiences on DMT trips, maybe reincarnation.

Deja Vu(done this before) experienced on DMT trips and by some people who remember previous lives.

Awarenessfacilitates lucid dreaming and after-death experience (according to Buddhists.)

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## lenscaper

All great stuff in that post, LukeSid. Two months ago most of what you said would have been of just passing interest to me but now that I am firmly planted on the LD/Dream Yoga path, all of your above comments really resonate.

Regarding awareness......this is where my life seems to be changing the most, even at this somewhat advanced age. I always considered myself to be more aware of the world around me than most, due to a few various disciplines in my life, but now that I am basically dismantling my perceived realities on a daily basis I am more aware of detail than ever both awake and a'dream. I find myself becoming the lucid observer almost every night now.....fully aware of the dream state and yet just letting it flow around me as I reach out and grab little pieces of it to take back with me across the threshold.





> recognise a source of radiance when it occurs.



I like that a lot. I'm going to put it into my mantra tonight.  :smiley:

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## lenscaper

As I enter my third month of training I am coming to a pretty clear understanding and acceptance of my personal lucidity. I am able to achieve lucidity often.....just about every time I make a sincere effort, but I rarely have adventures. Instead, I find myself passively observing people around me....occasionally interacting....while in a state of very clear lucidity. These are almost always people from my past. I am definitely attributing this to age.

At 67, I have had my adventures already. I do not feel a strong need to have more. Instead I seem to be working out karma in my dreams and it feels wonderful. Last night I sat at a cafe table in deep conversation with a young woman whom I did not know.....helping her to understand lucid dreaming.  :Nod yes:  Later in the night, after a WBTB, I met that same woman in a mall and she was struggling badly with something I could not see. I watched for a while and then beckoned to her. She came to me and I was able to comfort her.

I did, however, have a very exhilarating flight off a snowy mountain the other night. Guess there's still a bit of the adventurer left inside somewhere. :smiley:

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## acillis

i often wonder this my self. i am so glad and happy for you! i got into lucid dreaming when i was younger. in fact when i found it. by researching astral projection, i thought it was a made up thing that was on the internet  :smiley:  so i totally understand how happy you are  :smiley:  the line from the matrix movie. why are my eyes so sore? Morpheus: you never used them before. welcome to the real world lenscaper.
now back to what i was saying, i wonder this my self all the time. jeswiz i am even asking the occasional older person here and there if they dream more or less now? compared to when they were younger. it could be a brain chemistry thing as others have said. it could even be your perceptive on it. your beliefs even. i wish i had all the answers i did a quick google on it and got this, maybe it will help you? https://www.sleepfoundation.org/arti...ging-and-sleep. i hope it helps
i couldnt imagine getting into lucid dreaming at a older age. you got so much to explore my friend. prepare thy self, a good book on the whole brain chemistry thing is called Advanced_Lucid_Dreaming-The_Power_of_Supplements. you can download it in pdf form

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## lenscaper

Hey acillis......thanks for that link and for your support. Truth is that I am still very good at falling asleep and I as I got older I have had more vivid dreams. My dream recall has always been good as well. I suspect I have had lucid dream moments in the past without recognizing them. It was a massive such moment a few months ago that brought me to this wonderful LD path now.

I guess I am a bit of an anomaly, though.....as an older person in general, because I have spent my life in search of any path that led me toward greater self realization. This has kept me a bit younger than my years.  :smiley:  That said, I after a lifetime of changes I find myself content to sit back a bit these days and watch things transpire around me. I suspect that laid back attitude stays with me in my dreams as well now. I find myself looking for depth of meaning in the plots that my mind spins up and only changing things when they go in odd directions. I wonder if that is the halmark of an older lucid dreamer.

I did try a supplement early on, btw, but I did not like how it made me feel. We'll see if I go back to it later.

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## lenscaper

This was the 83rd consecutive day (night) of my training and for the first time I did absolutely nothing. I have backed off a bit a few times but last night I let it go completely.........no hypnagogic meditation and attempted WILDs, no SSILDs, no MILDs and no DILDs. There were no WBTBs and no OBEs.

For the first time in three months I decided to just sleep through the night. I slept very well.....and dreamed.

In the still dark morning I laid on my back and listened to the windswept spring rain lashing against the bedroom window. Then I got up and immediately wrote this in my journal:

_I drift across the threshold 
As an empty vessel
A dry sponge
By the golden gravel shore
I step into the stream
On the bottom I lay
And immerse myself
In the turbulent flow
of my subconscious being

All of my life
Flows over and around me
Through the swirling surface
I look up at the sky
And it is filled with light
I breathe in the water
Then slip back 
Across the threshold
As more each time

All that I have been
I am
All that I'll be
I am
All that I am
I am_

Back to my training tonight.  :smiley: 

Sleep well...and dream.

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## lenscaper

So I am going into my fifth month of steady training and I have definitely made some progress. For any folks who might be following the stumbling steps of an older beginner, here is where I find myself now and some of the things I have discovered along the way:

I have learned to work within my sleep schedule. I get up very early for work so I only have barely eight hours to work with. It took a while to realize that I needed to sleep first to be successfully lucid later. That means purely sleep oriented exercises when I first go to bed. My first awakening is usually after four hours and SSILD prepares me for possibly lucidity after that. This is when I am most successful.

I generally wake up again with an hour still in front of me and that has become the time for hypnagogia. On Sunday mornings I am often able to go back to bed after a few hours of taking care of things. These lay-ins have become a very interesting time as hypnagogia leads to some amazing imagery and dream snippets. I have developed some very cool personal hypnagogic meditations and mantras that really work. I have not had a successful WILD....but I'm fine with that at this stage.  :smiley: 

The MOST IMPORTANT thing I have learned is that real long term success at this will only really come (for me at least) from serious and persistent daytime awareness practice. I have come to understand this. I have good technique to rely on at night now so I have stopped worrying about that. I know now that true lucidity that becomes a part of the fabric of my life will only come when I can consistently attend to the dream as a dream. To do that I must attend to my waking life as a dream as well so that I no longer respond to each stimulus with blind emotion.

I truly believe that there is no better way to attain natural dream lucidity than to train myself to be lucid during the day.

I know this will take time, but I also know that through diligent daytime awareness practice I will be lucid for life.

Anyway....just sharing again.

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## fogelbise

^Love it! Thank you for sharing and I look forward to hearing more of your progress.  :smiley:

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## lenscaper

First of all...thank you fogelbise for your kind support.

For those reading this.......I have found that every time I post something like this here at Dream Views my lucidity spikes for a few days. I think it has something to do with formalizing my intention. I highly recommend more posting!  :smiley: 

I have been dreaming for 67 years now. While the dreams of my youth were fantastical machinations of a youthful imagination, as I got older and began to amass countless karmic traces, I began to wander dreaming down well worn paths surrounded by real people doing very real things. These days my dreams are almost always like that. Even with building lucidity, I dream about real people doing incredibly real and normal things. That reality has been pretty much impossible to get through and my most lucid moment come when something fantastical comes from out of nowhere and shocks me into uncontrolled lucidity.

A few days ago, after posting here, I suddenly realized that the key was right there in front of me. I needed to concentrate on those very real dream characters. I spent the last two days treating everybody who came into my office as a dream character. Remembering to do that was extremely difficult at first but yesterday I began to have success.

So last night I was doing a landscape job with my old partner. Even with that nagging feeling of hovering lucidity, he was absolutely real as was everything in the dream. But as I got in my truck to back it up.....I felt lucidity blooming. I got out and walked up to him.

"You're not Digger", I said.

He looked at me and smiled...."Of course I am".

"No. No you're not. This is a dream".

He laughed....a gentle and real laugh that was not in any way mean spirited. "OK", I said...and I floated up into the air over him. I rolled over and smiled up at the blue sky. 

FINALLY! Real controlled lucidity!

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## lenscaper

.......and one night now after that breakthrough of using my dream characters to trigger excellent lucidity my subconscious served me up two very strong dreams with NO dream characters. Not a single one.

I wandered in hazy lucidity down the streets of a city and out into a country setting looking for my dream characters and marveling at the lack thereof.

It's as if my subconscious does not want to be torn from those well worn paths. I'll definitely be working to understand that as i carefully blaze new neural trails.

 :smiley:

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## fogelbise

> A few days ago, after posting here, I suddenly realized that the key was right there in front of me. I needed to concentrate on those very real dream characters. I spent the last two days treating everybody who came into my office as a dream character. Remembering to do that was extremely difficult at first but yesterday I began to have success.



Can you give examples of how you interacted with the people who came into your office? I am assuming this was during waking life.

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## lenscaper

> Can you give examples of how you interacted with the people who came into your office? I am assuming this was during waking life.



These are the same people that I see every day, for the most part, and our interactions tend to be pretty similar from day to day. They will mostly be somewhat brief one on one interactions with us standing in close proximity. I have been having these friendly interactions for years and they are a well worn path that I travel throughout my day. These conversations are friendly interludes to the business of the day.

My interactions with my dream characters, I realized, often follow exactly the same path. When I realized that, I saw it as a potentially very powerful opportunity to further my understanding and true acceptance of the dream-like nature of my waking life. When waking life phenomena are truly perceived as a dream I believe one can slip gently out of their grasp and, in that moment, change the way we engage with them.

So I set a very strong intention to recognize my colleagues as dream characters as soon as I saw them. I wanted it to happen at that first moment so that I could continue to engage with them properly but on a subtly different level. I told myself over and over that the next person who came into my office would be a dream character. But......one would walk in and I would find myself immediately on that well worn path......every time. Then they would leave and I would give myself a classic dope slap! I couldn't make it happen. Those neural pathways of social interaction are just too strong after all these years.

Finally, on the second day, I was able to make the transition during a conversation. I tend to do more listening in these interactions and in the middle of listening to a story about an upcoming weekend camping trip I suddenly thought.......wait.....she is a dream character....this is a dream. The conversation continued and as I continued to listen and smile, I let my inner self soak in the dream-like quality of the moment. I felt it and I truly accepted it as such.

The day got busy after that and there was only one other opportunity to try this.....and that opportunity resulted in another mental dope slap. Still.....it was enough, it seems, to establish a tiny new path because that night I had the strong lucid event with a dream character that I described above.

I am still chuckling about how my subconscious seems to have fought back by presenting me with NO dream characters the next night. I intend to continue working on this but last night I decided to just sleep....I had some pleasantly samsaric dreams and slept very well.

 :smiley:

----------


## lenscaper

....are SO CRAFTY!!

After posting the above, I went back to bed for a Saturday lay-in. My body was telling me that I needed more sleep so my intention was just that. I fell asleep watching the tree outside my window start to catch the morning light.....no WILD attempt....no dream induction techniques at all. After 45 minutes or so of seemingly dreamless sleep I I suddenly turned from a non-distinct conversation with a nebulous woman to watch a crystal clear character walk up and stand right in front of me.

With lucidity barely bubbling up deep in my depths I found myself examining this guy. He was an older gentleman with hair that was a cross between Bob Marley and Albert Einstein.......dark grayish semi-deadlocks that stuck out from under a blue ball cap. He wore a pressed light blue button down shirt that was buttoned at he cuffs and olive green pleated Dockers with a brown belt. He had wire rimmed glasses and a slightly bushy mustache. I looked him up and down in crystal clarity with lucidity still bubbling deep within. He just looked at me as if to say, "Well? Don't you have something to say to me?" 

I didn't. Instead I woke up.

My dream characters are definitely the key to real lucidity right now but they are NOT going to make it easy.   :smiley:

----------


## lenscaper

So many different things are working at different times now.

I'm SO close to putting them all together...........

----------


## fogelbise

Thank you for your answer and sorry for my late response. I definitely think that is a very good practice and look forward to hearing more about your progress. Finding the dreamlike quality of waking can take some practice to hone and maintain but can be exactly like (or at least very very similar to) the eureka moment of full lucidity in the dream realm.

----------


## lenscaper

Thanks for your continued support, folgelbise, it means a lot.

I am at a point now in my training where my daytime/nighttime combined practice has given me an almost unbroken continuity of consciousness between my daytime existence and my nighttime existence.  I have spent a great deal of time reading and re-reading Tenzin Rinpoche's "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep" and that has given me a wonderful mindset. My commitment to dream awareness and lucidity has improved my life in a number of very clear ways with regards to overall awareness and clarity as well as a generally improved outlook on pretty much everything.

Of late I have been letting the lucid river flow around me both day and night while I work on ADA and use SSILD at night to achieve various levels of clarity and lucidity in my dreams. Now I am going back to re-read the basic techniques as offered right here at Dream Views in the Induction Methods and Techniques section, concentrating strongly on WILD. I strongly recommend this approach to anyone who has been trying hard to achieve lucidity for months as I have.......at some point in your practice, get back to basics.

I intend to renew my commitment to working on WILD as I truly believe that is the best way to achieve full lucidity on a regular basis. This quote really caught me from the WILD tutorial thread:





> It makes me sad that we're still telling newbies that WILD is hard...Come on! WILD is not as hard as everyone says it is.



 :smiley:

----------


## lenscaper

I am about to enter my sixth month of steady and focused practice.

I am now finding myself becoming lucid with no specific induction technique. I attribute this very interesting turn to my continuing concentration on daytime training. It seems as though my work with lucid moment to moment daytime awareness is now naturally carrying over into my dreams.

Sleep well...and dream.

 :smiley:

----------


## lenscaper

As a slightly older oneironaut I watched all the original Seinfeld episodes as they came out. Last night, as I was coming out of some SSILD cycles and sleep was closing in, I remembered this one for some reason:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW_s6EqOxqY

I gave it a shot as a transition mantra and it worked unbelievably well!!!

 :Nod yes:

----------


## Zthread

> As a slightly older oneironaut I watched all the original Seinfeld episodes as they came out. Last night, as I was coming out of some SSILD cycles and sleep was closing in, I remembered this one for some reason:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW_s6EqOxqY
> 
> I gave it a shot as a transition mantra and it worked unbelievably well!!!



Hilarious! Also could see that working!!

Seinfeld was such a great show. Want to re-watch all the episodes at some point.

----------


## Zthread

Lenscaper, I was just rereading your original post on this topic....





> I am 67 years old....a young 67, though.
> 
> I stumbled into lucid dreaming three weeks ago when a pretty incongruous event in a somewhat threatening dream caused me to say, "Wait....this is a dream!" I was able to change the circumstances and deal with the issue at hand and I woke up profoundly amazed.



Amazing experience! Did you even know the term "lucid dream" when that happened to you?





> Since then things have happened very quickly....it's a bit like an ember falling on a dry brush pile. In these last three weeks I have searched out every bit of info I can find on this amazing thing called lucid dreaming and I have immersed myself in "lucidity training". I have said those same words in three different dreams in that time. Almost all of my dreams seem to now have some degree of lucidity and I feel it having a very interesting effect on my life in general.



Sounds like you're a natural LDing person! That's so great!





> Any other old folks out there that can relate to this?



I can, except I was only 5-10 years old when I had a spontaneous LD that was similar to your experience, including the threatening aspect. A bee was chasing me. Suddenly I realized it was a dream, so I stopped, looked at the bee, and told it to go ahead and sting me. It just flew away in disgust. I was amazed at the idea of being able to realize I was dreaming during a dream, but at that young age I didn't know what to do with it. However, I never forgot about it. As an adult, I eventually got into LDing. Mostly I found that supplements worked best for me. (Galantamine, choline bitartrate, theanine, nicotine, etc.)





> How does age affect the ability to experience lucid dreams as a beginner?



I'm now almost 64. I'm not a beginner, but also don't consider myself to be an expert. Anyway, as I got older, I gradually got to the point where LD supplements usually gave me insomnia. So I pretty much stopped using them for the last 10 or 15 years.

Then late last year I was discussing LD supplements with someone on another forum (Deep Dreaming). He mentioned the idea of using extended-release supplements. I thought they might be worth a try, because they might not give me insomnia. Unfortunately there's no such thing as extended-release LD supplements. At least I couldn't find any. However, in searching for them, I found something even better: empty delayed-release capsules that can be filled with whatever supplement you want. I ordered some online. It turns out they work perfectly! So now I'm using LD supplements regularly, without them causing any insomnia. Basically the delayed-release capsules provide enough time for me to get to sleep before the effects of the supplements kick in.

----------


## lenscaper

> Did you even know the term "lucid dream" when that happened to you?



Hey, Zthread......

That's a cool story about the bee.....very similar to my first experience.

I had never heard of lucid dreaming when that happened. My eyes were opened wide that next day when I stumbled on the term and realized that I could actually train myself in this discipline. To say that I immersed myself in all things lucid would be a bit of an understatement.

I don't consider myself to be a natural lucid dreamer but now, in retrospect, I see that I have always had pretty clear dreams that may have, at times, even been lucid. Throughout my adult life I have trained  and practiced in other disciplines that seem to have prepared me for this wonderful lucid journey. I have practiced and taught T'ai Chi for many, many years and I trained in the Japanese martial art of Aikido for many years before becoming Sensei. Those disciplines taught me to overcome distractions and abide in an aware state of mind a lot, which has been helpful if attaining lucidity.

I have not tried any supplements. I want to achieve a natural state of lucidity that can be incorporated into my life. These days I have begun to realize that I need to work toward being able to achieve dream lucidity spontaneously because I just don't have enough time in the night to deploy the techniques I have learned and still get the sleep that I need to be sharp in the morning and at work.

To that end I have really ramped up my daytime practice. If I can achieve a state of pure presence as much as possible during my work day, I will achieve that naturally in my dreams and that will allow me to cut through the fantasies and illusions of those dreams right away and achieve lucidity spontaneously. It's starting to work.  :smiley:

----------


## Zthread

> Hey, Zthread......
> 
> That's a cool story about the bee.....very similar to my first experience.



What happened in your first experience, if you don't mind my asking? (No problem at all if you do mind!)





> I had never heard of lucid dreaming when that happened. My eyes were opened wide that next day when I stumbled on the term and realized that I could actually train myself in this discipline. To say that I immersed myself in all things lucid would be a bit of an understatement.



That's great!





> I don't consider myself to be a natural lucid dreamer but now, in retrospect, I see that I have always had pretty clear dreams that may have, at times, even been lucid. Throughout my adult life I have trained  and practiced in other disciplines that seem to have prepared me for this wonderful lucid journey. I have practiced and taught T'ai Chi for many, many years and I trained in the Japanese martial art of Aikido for many years before becoming Sensei. Those disciplines taught me to overcome distractions and abide in an aware state of mind a lot, which has been helpful if attaining lucidity.



Yes, I imagine that kind of training would help a lot!





> I have not tried any supplements. I want to achieve a natural state of lucidity that can be incorporated into my life. These days I have begun to realize that I need to work toward being able to achieve dream lucidity spontaneously because I just don't have enough time in the night to deploy the techniques I have learned and still get the sleep that I need to be sharp in the morning and at work.



I like the idea of just having LDs spontaneously in that way.





> To that end I have really ramped up my daytime practice. If I can achieve a state of pure presence as much as possible during my work day, I will achieve that naturally in my dreams and that will allow me to cut through the fantasies and illusions of those dreams right away and achieve lucidity spontaneously. It's starting to work.



Wow! Really great!!

----------


## lenscaper

> What happened in your first experience, if you don't mind my asking? (No problem at all if you do mind!)



 :smiley: 

It was the night of February 5, this year, and I still remember it as if it was last night. I was floating down a small river in a red canoe when just in front of me, where the river narrowed between two outcroppings, a huge hippopotamus rose up slowly from the river. I still remember how the river water streamed off its dark grey back. The hippo spoke to me in a woman's voice but I do not recall the words. Instead of crashing into the hippo, I suddenly leaped from the canoe and flew to the top of the raised riverbank that had been on my left. I stood at the top of that riverbank and looked out over an expansive grassy field realizing that I was fully conscious of being in a dream.....before waking up, of course.

The next morning I researched "awake in a dream" and the first article mentioned lucid dreaming.....I was off and running. That hippo dream became my first dream journal entry. Looking back now at those early entries I am reminded that I went after WBTB and WILD right away. My WILD attempts were sloppy but they yielded immediate results. On 2/6 I had an OBE after 2 hours of HI where my dream arms reached out of my body to grab one of the colored HI blobs and pull it back in before it drifted off. The next night I fell asleep during another long period of HI and did my first clumsy flight. On 2/9 I had a most profound LD after again falling asleep during HI where I entered the dream high in the air over a beautiful stream. I flew down to that stream and walked up through the water to a sandy spit of land where I sat and just watched the stream flow by. The next night I had the exact same dream. This time instead of sitting down on the shore, I waded out into the stream and laid down on the bottom where I looked up through the water at the blue sky and breathed in the water.

Anyway, that's how it all started for me..........thanks for asking about it.   :smiley:

----------


## Zthread

> It was the night of February 5, this year, and I still remember it as if it was last night. I was floating down a small river in a red canoe when just in front of me, where the river narrowed between two outcroppings, a huge hippopotamus rose up slowly from the river. I still remember how the river water streamed off its dark grey back. The hippo spoke to me in a woman's voice but I do not recall the words. Instead of crashing into the hippo, I suddenly leaped from the canoe and flew to the top of the raised riverbank that had been on my left. I stood at the top of that riverbank and looked out over an expansive grassy field realizing that I was fully conscious of being in a dream.....before waking up, of course.



Wow! Beautiful dream! Wonder what the hippo said, though!





> The next morning I researched "awake in a dream" and the first article mentioned lucid dreaming.....I was off and running. That hippo dream became my first dream journal entry. Looking back now at those early entries I am reminded that I went after WBTB and WILD right away. My WILD attempts were sloppy but they yielded immediate results.



Amazing you had such fast results!





> On 2/6 I had an OBE after 2 hours of HI where my dream arms reached out of my body to grab one of the colored HI blobs and pull it back in before it drifted off.



Grabbing HI! That's something I've never heard of before. I love HI, but never have thought of grabbing it. Might be a way to "pull" oneself into a dream.





> The next night I fell asleep during another long period of HI and did my first clumsy flight. On 2/9 I had a most profound LD after again falling asleep during HI where I entered the dream high in the air over a beautiful stream. I flew down to that stream and walked up through the water to a sandy spit of land where I sat and just watched the stream flow by. The next night I had the exact same dream. This time instead of sitting down on the shore, I waded out into the stream and laid down on the bottom where I looked up through the water at the blue sky and breathed in the water.



Great ones, also, especially so soon after discovering LDing. Nice idea to breath underwater while looking up through the water....





> Anyway, that's how it all started for me..........thanks for asking about it.



I'd have to say you're a natural LDer.

----------


## lenscaper

> I'd have to say you're a natural LDer.



Hmmmmmm.....maybe......

The thing is, I don't do any of the things that most folks here do when I am lucid. I don't go looking for adventure........no long flights of fancy, no sex with movie stars or journeys to the center of the earth. Instead I just attend to what my subconscious runs by me. I attend to the dream as the dreamer, sometimes interacting, sometimes making subtle changes. When things go off the rails....and they occasionally do.....I take flight. When I find myself in a natural place with no DC's around me I immerse myself in that place.

I don't quite have the technique down to go anywhere I desire, and I'm not sure that I want to.....although I have been trying to go back to that stream again.  :smiley: 

When i wake up from these LD's where I have been the lucid dreamer just observing the dream as it flows around me I always feel amazingly refreshed and alive. It is as if more of the weight of my past has been lifted and blown away forever.

----------


## Sageous

> I'd have to say you're a natural LDer.




No, Lenscaper, you are likely not a "natural" LD'er.  And that, I think, _is a good thing_.

If you were a natural, then this thread wouldn't exist, because you would not have needed to learn anything, at all, about the process of becoming lucid, to search as actively as you did, because the process would have already been embedded in your psyche, _naturally_. Lucidity by now would be old hat for you (even a nuisance, possibly), because, if a natural, you would have been experiencing it, often without choice, for decades. But, in your case, I believe something way better than natural ability happened with you:

Your lifetime of activities that involve self-discipline and perhaps self-awareness certainly primed you to relatively easily achieve consistent LD'ing.  Rather than having lucidity thrust upon you by your genes, you worked hard for your skills, and earned your current ability; revel in that fact, and don't belittle your work by calling yourself, or allowing yourself to be called, a natural.  

The reason I say all this, and in such a condescending manner, is because I am pretty sure that natural lucidity is incredibly rare, if it exists at all, and the internet-fueled tradition of people calling people (or themselves) "naturals" has created a term that is wrong, counterproductive, and perhaps a bit damaging to novices.  For instance, a dreamer struggling for success might come to believe that she must need some innate ability to have any success; with a convenient excuse for her failure, she gives up.  Or, worse, folks who proclaim themselves naturals might fall into a state of delusion that prevents them from ever attaining the skills that will help them experience true lucidity consistently.

I could go on all day about this, but nobody wants that, so let me leave with some bullets:

* This is anecdotal, of course, but I have met or spoken with thousands of LDers over the years, and many of them are remarkably adept at LDing.  But out of all those people, I ran into only one who could convince me that he was a natural. And, perhaps not ironically, I met him because he came on this forum looking for help to cure his natural ability; being awake all night, every night, for decades, was literally driving him nuts.

* The paradoxical nature of lucidity -- being awake while you are asleep -- runs anathema to pretty much every aspect of our natural sleep and dreaming processes, we are "naturally" programmed to _not_ be lucid during dreams.   So, perhaps aside from mental illness/persistent psychosis, our natural machinery is designed to combat lucidity, tamping it down whenever it may occur -- which may be why becoming consistently lucid is generally not easy, even with experienced LDers.  

*That machinery does fail now and then: I believe that all people have moments of lucidity in their dreams sometime in their lives (just as they do in waking-life), and your mindset might have caused that failure a bit more often than normal, but that is very different from naturally being able to induce lucidity on demand, or have it induced for you by accident, all night every night.

* Lucidity has nothing to do with clarity, or vividness.  It is about the presence of waking-life self-awareness in a dream; nothing more, nothing less.  Some of my most vivid, clear dreams were NLD's, while some of my most lucid moments were in a blurry mess -- and vise-versa.

*tl;dr:* Take credit for a life's work, self-awareness speaking, that led you to LD'ing in the first place, and take credit for your tireless effort this year to make LD'ing a part of your life -- those are far more impressive than being a so-called "natural," by any measure.  

Old guy rant over; now back to your regularly-scheduled program.

 :sageous: 



.

----------


## lenscaper

Great post, Sageous!

You're right.....I have worked hard. I am becoming....more than I was......through my LD training, so I will continue to work hard.

VERY interesting perspective on the "curse" of natural dream lucidity.

----------


## Zthread

> Hmmmmmm.....maybe......



Or, maybe not!





> The thing is, I don't do any of the things that most folks here do when I am lucid. I don't go looking for adventure........no long flights of fancy, no sex with movie stars or journeys to the center of the earth. Instead I just attend to what my subconscious runs by me. I attend to the dream as the dreamer, sometimes interacting, sometimes making subtle changes. When things go off the rails....and they occasionally do.....I take flight. When I find myself in a natural place with no DC's around me I immerse myself in that place.



That's also my favorite way to do LDing. Because whatever my conscious mind comes up with, it's never as good what my subconscious creates. Here's a metaphor: When you get lucid, the  dream becomes a dance between your conscious and subconscious minds. And your subconscious mind is a better dancer, so it's usually best to let it lead.





> I don't quite have the technique down to go anywhere I desire, and I'm not sure that I want to.....although I have been trying to go back to that stream again.



Right. Why bother with such techniques? It's not necessary. As they say, you can never go back to the same stream, anyway.





> When i wake up from these LD's where I have been the lucid dreamer just observing the dream as it flows around me I always feel amazingly refreshed and alive. It is as if more of the weight of my past has been lifted and blown away forever.



Doesn't get much better than that!

----------


## Zthread

> No, Lenscaper, you are likely not a "natural" LD'er.  And that, I think, _is a good thing_.
> 
> If you were a natural, then this thread wouldn't exist, because you would not have needed to learn anything, at all, about the process of becoming lucid, to search as actively as you did, because the process would have already been embedded in your psyche, _naturally_. Lucidity by now would be old hat for you (even a nuisance, possibly), because, if a natural, you would have been experiencing it, often without choice, for decades.



I've often thought that if most of our dreams were LDs, people would work on techniques to induce non-LDs.





> But, in your case, I believe something way better than natural ability happened with you:
> 
> Your lifetime of activities that involve self-discipline and perhaps self-awareness certainly primed you to relatively easily achieve consistent LD'ing.  Rather than having lucidity thrust upon you by your genes, you worked hard for your skills, and earned your current ability; revel in that fact, and don't belittle your work by calling yourself, or allowing yourself to be called, a natural.



Great point.





> The reason I say all this, and in such a condescending manner, is because I am pretty sure that natural lucidity is incredibly rare, if it exists at all, and the internet-fueled tradition of people calling people (or themselves) "naturals" has created a term that is wrong, counterproductive, and perhaps a bit damaging to novices.  For instance, a dreamer struggling for success might come to believe that she must need some innate ability to have any success; with a convenient excuse for her failure, she gives up.  Or, worse, folks who proclaim themselves naturals might fall into a state of delusion that prevents them from ever attaining the skills that will help them experience true lucidity consistently.



Yes, probably is quite rare. And could be damaging in various ways.





> I could go on all day about this, but nobody wants that, so let me leave with some bullets:
> 
> * This is anecdotal, of course, but I have met or spoken with thousands of LDers over the years, and many of them are remarkably adept at LDing.  But out of all those people, I ran into only one who could convince me that he was a natural. And, perhaps not ironically, I met him because he came on this forum looking for help to cure his natural ability; being awake all night, every night, for decades, was literally driving him nuts.



Wow! Also, during an LD, your sleep quality isn't as high, so wouldn't be surprised if someone who only--or mostly only--had LDs would be chronically sleep-deprived.





> * The paradoxical nature of lucidity -- being awake while you are asleep -- runs anathema to pretty much every aspect of our natural sleep and dreaming processes, we are "naturally" programmed to _not_ be lucid during dreams.   So, perhaps aside from mental illness/persistent psychosis, our natural machinery is designed to combat lucidity, tamping it down whenever it may occur -- which may be why becoming consistently lucid is generally not easy, even with experienced LDers.



Right. Not easy, and likely not at all desirable or healthy.





> *That machinery does fail now and then: I believe that all people have moments of lucidity in their dreams sometime in their lives (just as they do in waking-life), and your mindset might have caused that failure a bit more often than normal, but that is very different from naturally being able to induce lucidity on demand, or have it induced for you by accident, all night every night.



True.





> * Lucidity has nothing to do with clarity, or vividness.  It is about the presence of waking-life self-awareness in a dream; nothing more, nothing less.  Some of my most vivid, clear dreams were NLD's, while some of my most lucid moments were in a blurry mess -- and vise-versa.



Also the most intriguing things often happen in NLDs, not LDs.





> *tl;dr:* Take credit for a life's work, self-awareness speaking, that led you to LD'ing in the first place, and take credit for your tireless effort this year to make LD'ing a part of your life -- those are far more impressive than being a so-called "natural," by any measure.  
> 
> Old guy rant over; now back to your regularly-scheduled program.



Thought-provoking rant!

----------


## lenscaper

.....WILL lead to successful lucidity. 

Here at the start of my seventh month of training I have recently had my first true, intense and completely WILD event. Oddly enough, it came while I was taking a few days off from my training.....on the second night of a mini beach vacation. I had spent the early morning swimming out close to the wild dolphins at the New Jersey shore. The rest of the day was a mass of humanity on the crowded beach and the evening ended after a nice dinner and a few beers with a walk through even more humanity on the boardwalk.

I fell into a peaceful sleep much later than usual setting no intention to try for lucidity.

But I woke in the night to a feeling of intensely clear presence. I laid in that hotel bed and, surrounded by HI, I pondered the clear light of pure presence. As sleep slowly enveloped me, I found myself out the small fourth floor balcony that overlooked the Atlantic Ocean where I immediately dissolved the railing and soared out into the rising sun. I flew close over the water...like a pelican would....and the dolphins came and swam just under me.

----------


## Zthread

Wow!! ::sunflower::

----------


## lenscaper

As I progress I am coming to a deeper understanding of my personal lucidity in dreams. As an older oneironaut I tend to more often take the role of the lucid observer where I can subtly change the "dream plot". In these dreams I feel as though I am no longer part of the dream but, rather, I am the dreamer.

Last night was like this. I had five dreams but only got up to write down one....and that one has stayed with me. Without getting into details, I was doing a job that I am not good at and I knew I was there not to do that job but to observe the dream. The dream plot went in a direction that felt to be the wrong one and I interacted with the dream characters specifically to change the plot. At the end I looked around at what I was supposed to be doing, smiled, dropped my tools and left the dream.

There was never a moment of "AHA! This is a dream!" but I have come to not expect those moments often as I work toward that unbroken continuity between my "waking dream" existence and my sleeping dreams.

I am wondering how more experienced LDers view all that.

----------


## Sageous

> I am wondering how more experienced LDers view all that.



Well, this experienced LDer views all that as genuine progress!

In my opinion, coming to understand that "I am no longer part of the dream but, rather, I am the dreamer" is effectively coming to understand lucidity itself; nice work, and congrats!  

It might seem like semantics, but the next step is coming to a moment where you find yourself saying (or, better, _knowing_), "I am the dream."

Good luck!

----------


## lenscaper

> the next step is coming to a moment where you find yourself saying (or, better, _knowing_), "I am the dream."



Wow. Yeah........wrapping my head around that.

Thanks for that.  :smiley:

----------


## Zthread

> As I progress I am coming to a deeper understanding of my personal lucidity in dreams. As an older oneironaut I tend to more often take the role of the lucid observer where I can subtly change the "dream plot". In these dreams I feel as though I am no longer part of the dream but, rather, I am the dreamer.



Great way to do it!





> Last night was like this. I had five dreams but only got up to write down one....and that one has stayed with me. Without getting into details, I was doing a job that I am not good at and I knew I was there not to do that job but to observe the dream. The dream plot went in a direction that felt to be the wrong one and I interacted with the dream characters specifically to change the plot.



How did that work? Did the dream character representing yourself do something to get the other DCs to change what they were doing?

Also, wonder if your subconscious purposely made you do a job you knew you weren't good at. Seems symbolic, possibly. Or maybe it was a done as a way to help you realize you were dreaming.





> At the end I looked around at what I was supposed to be doing, smiled, dropped my tools and left the dream.



You left the dream by waking up? Or you went into a different dream scene?





> There was never a moment of "AHA! This is a dream!" but I have come to not expect those moments often as I work toward that unbroken continuity between my "waking dream" existence and my sleeping dreams.



Nice!





> I am wondering how more experienced LDers view all that.



It's an approach that appeals to me a lot.

----------


## lenscaper

> How did that work? Did the dream character representing yourself do something to get the other DCs to change what they were doing?



Well......I found myself on a carpentry crew in the framework of a house that was being built. It was very real. I was....me. I knew that I was not a very good carpenter and I wondered what I was doing there. I was....amused about it. One of the crew members went someplace else, maybe for lunch, and we all knew he was in some sort of trouble. The foreman wanted to rescue him. So I went to where he was and saw two older men sitting at a table with their backs to me....one had scraggly long grey hair...I knew he was the one responsible for the trouble. He felt.....nasty.

I went back to the job site where the foreman was working the few other characters up for a rescue. I spoke to him...told him that would not be a good idea as these men were dangerous. I told him he needed to call the police as that was what they did. He resisted and I persisted.......until I finally said.....you're not listening to me. Another man entered the space then....an authority figure. He said....you're right, he's not, but I am...and we'll do the right thing. I never saw that man clearly.





> You left the dream by waking up? Or you went into a different dream scene?



Actually.....I walked over to where I was working and lifted up a piece of plywood that I had fastened to the floor....it came right up. I chuckled at myself and let my tool belt fall to the floor.......and woke up.





> Also, wonder if your subconscious purposely made you do a job you knew you weren't good at. Seems symbolic, possibly. Or maybe it was a done as a way to help you realize you were dreaming.



I do believe that the whole scene from the beginning was a subtle way for my subconscious to let me know I was in a dream. That kind of scenario happens frequently these days (nights). I have been working hard on daytime awareness of life as a dream......telling myself that I am creating the story during the day with my own cognitive reality. I think that is starting to translate into my dreams. One of my daytime mantras is "lucid days....lucid nights". So....the realization at night that I am dreaming comes as a very subtle transition.....it's as if I just _know_ with no real trigger, just that subtle awareness.

I know that I need to work harder on this to get to the point where I can make obvious and substantive changes in these dreams.......but at this point I don't really want to do that as these dreams are affecting me in a very good way....there are lessons in them that are subtle but very real. A dream like the one I just described stays with me with such clarity........I can still hear the voices and still see the back of that man's head with the scraggly grey hair. I can still feel my frustration rising when the foreman was not listening to my warning....and the relief when the other character stepped in to support me. And, most importantly.....I can still feel my self deprecating chuckle when I let that piece of plywood drop back down, dropped those tools and knew I could leave the dream.

I'm still just letting it all sink in. I can feel myself changing from these dreams.

Thanks for asking about it, Zthread. Discussions like this really help to fortify these experiences.

 :smiley:

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## Zthread

> Well......I found myself on a carpentry crew in the framework of a house that was being built. It was very real. I was....me. I knew that I was not a very good carpenter and I wondered what I was doing there. I was....amused about it. One of the crew members went someplace else, maybe for lunch, and we all knew he was in some sort of trouble. The foreman wanted to rescue him. So I went to where he was and saw two older men sitting at a table with their backs to me....one had scraggly long grey hair...I knew he was the one responsible for the trouble. He felt.....nasty.



So from the start you knew you were dreaming? Totally unlike a normal LD, but in a good way. Letting the dream play out--while interacting with it to see what happens--is something most people don't do.





> I went back to the job site where the foreman was working the few other characters up for a rescue. I spoke to him...told him that would not be a good idea as these men were dangerous. I told him he needed to call the police as that was what they did. He resisted and I persisted.......until I finally said.....you're not listening to me. Another man entered the space then....an authority figure. He said....you're right, he's not, but I am...and we'll do the right thing. I never saw that man clearly.



In LDs of this type, do you usually feel like you just know what to do next? Or do you have to mull things over a bit to decide what to do next?





> Actually.....I walked over to where I was working and lifted up a piece of plywood that I had fastened to the floor....it came right up. I chuckled at myself and let my tool belt fall to the floor.......and woke up.



In other words, you were trying to wake yourself up? That's also something most people don't do in LDs!





> I do believe that the whole scene from the beginning was a subtle way for my subconscious to let me know I was in a dream. That kind of scenario happens frequently these days (nights). I have been working hard on daytime awareness of life as a dream......telling myself that I am creating the story during the day with my own cognitive reality. I think that is starting to translate into my dreams. One of my daytime mantras is "lucid days....lucid nights". So....the realization at night that I am dreaming comes as a very subtle transition.....it's as if I just _know_ with no real trigger, just that subtle awareness.



Great way to do it!





> I know that I need to work harder on this to get to the point where I can make obvious and substantive changes in these dreams...



What kind(s) of change(s) in the above LD would you like to have the ability to make? Or just in general in any LD?





> ...but at this point I don't really want to do that as these dreams are affecting me in a very good way....there are lessons in them that are subtle but very real.



Yes, that's a possible drawback of changing things too much.





> A dream like the one I just described stays with me with such clarity........I can still hear the voices and still see the back of that man's head with the scraggly grey hair. I can still feel my frustration rising when the foreman was not listening to my warning....and the relief when the other character stepped in to support me. And, most importantly.....I can still feel my self deprecating chuckle when I let that piece of plywood drop back down, dropped those tools and knew I could leave the dream.
> 
> I'm still just letting it all sink in. I can feel myself changing from these dreams.



Nice!





> Thanks for asking about it, Zthread. Discussions like this really help to fortify these experiences.



Thanks for posting about what you're doing! It's giving me some ideas....

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## Sageous

> So from the start you knew you were dreaming? Totally unlike a normal LD, but in a good way. Letting the dream play out--while interacting with it to see what happens--is something most people don't do.



Someone want to tell me what a "normal" LD is, exactly? Not only that, but isn't interacting with dreams, for whatever reason, the default setting for dreamers everywhere?

... Just sayin'

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## lenscaper

> So from the start you knew you were dreaming?



I knew I was in a dream when I realized that I had a hammer in my hand. I chuckled and looked around to see what was going on





> In LDs of this type, do you usually feel like you just know what to do next? Or do you have to mull things over a bit to decide what to do next?



Good question...and helpful. In these types of dreams I seem to always just start to interact with DCs as I would in the waking world once lucidity blooms. I don't tend to mull things over....I usually just get right in the game.





> In other words, you were trying to wake yourself up?



It's more as if I know I need to wake up. I have been getting up at 4:00 AM for years....I never use an alarm. Dreams like this one almost always come at the end of the night. My subconscious mind seems to know when I need to wake up from them. I call these my "4:00 Special". This time I looked over at the clock at 3:45 and set an intention for one more dream with lucidity. I rolled over and went back to sleep......woke up out of this just after 4:00 and went in to write it down immediately.





> What kind(s) of change(s) in the above LD would you like to have the ability to make? Or just in general in any LD?



An even better question.....and even more helpful to me as I learn from all this! The dream yoga perspective would say that I am liberating karmic traces from dreams like this by just interacting with them in a non-dualistic manner. That perspective also might say that by taking a more aggressive role I could be creating more karmic traces that would then need to be worked out. I feel, though, that I would like to have more real control in general in my dreams. I want to go back to some places that I have been to meditate and reflect while in the dream. In this dream, in retrospect, it would have been nice to do that at the end so the ability to go to another venue after a dream sequence is something I wish to develop.

Those skills will come in time. I will continue to train. One thing I have learned in life is that much can be accomplished through persistent practice.

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## lenscaper

> Someone want to tell me what a "normal" LD is, exactly?



Seriously. I'm starting to think that pretty much anything goes.......





> Not only that, but isn't interacting with dreams, for whatever reason, the default setting for dreamers everywhere?



Pondering that. It's essentially the case, of course. I seem to spend a great deal of time in my LDs interacting very specifically with DCs, though. It seems as though my lucidity blossoms when I engage them. I wonder if that tendency is preventing me from seeing a bigger picture.

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## Sageous

> I seem to spend a great deal of time in my LDs interacting very specifically with DCs, though. It seems as though my lucidity blossoms when I engage them. *I wonder if that tendency is preventing me from seeing a bigger picture.*



That is a curious trap that many dreamers allow themselves to fall into, possibly for a lifetime. Yes, lucidity can seem to blossom when you engage DC's but it will only actually blossom when you do so from a non-dual perspective, knowing that those DC's are just facets of your own personality and imagination (or, I suppose, knowing that the DC's are the facets of _someone else_, but that is for a different conversation  :wink2: ).  I think many dreamers may initially see DC's they encounter as real beings, as they normally do when not lucid, and when they focus on them the beings may become more real, just because lucidly focusing on an object tends to intensify its image.  Now, if you are lucidly interacting from a non-dual perspective, you will understand the increase in intensity, and everything is fine, lucidity might be improved, and you might even learn a thing or two about yourself that maybe you've been ignoring in waking-life. However, if you are interacting from a perspective of duality (aka, our default perspective), then that intensity will impress you, and you will likely be drawn into the DC's presence rather that making it part of your own.  That drawing in will result in a loss of lucidity as you continue to elevate the importance of the DC, and, ironically, you will continue to think you are lucid, and perhaps even more so, even though your presence is already slipping away.  Eventually, the interaction engulfs you, true lucidity is gone, and your interaction becomes a dream about being lucid. 

This trap doesn't just apply to DC interaction, but also to other possibly intense actions lucid dreamers take, like flying, teleportation, summoning dream guides, creating new dream scenes or worlds, having sex, etc. Great care must be taken during these events to continue to know that all this cool stuff isn't happening to you or in front of you, but it _is you_.  To do otherwise, to believe these things are as real as they seem, is to allow your presence to leave the scene. I personally think a lot of LD'ers fall into that trap, and many come to describe the trap itself as a lucid experience, thereby missing the real thing.

*tl;dr:* Yes, allowing yourself to be absorbed by one aspect of your dream may seem like a good thing -- and it can be --  but in the end it may cause you to make that absorption become more important than your understanding that everything in the dream is you, and the bigger picture will likely be missed.

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## lenscaper

> Yes, lucidity can seem to blossom when you engage DC's but it will only actually blossom when you do so from a non-dual perspective



This is such an important principle......thank you for bringing it into the conversation. 

I have been working incredibly hard toward a goal of living my life in a non-dual presence. Much of my daytime practice is centered on this principle of late and it is amazingly difficult to achieve with any degree of steadiness. But that practice has very definitely been a factor in my limited but steady progress toward lucidity in the dream. The ability to exist during the day in a lucid, non-dual presence....even for moments at a time.....very definitely leads to the ability to do so in a dream.

That first moment of pure, non-dual perception is so fleeting..........

Wrt dream characters.....as I mentioned somewhere in an above post, for a while I was using them as very potent dream signs. When I found myself drawn in to them I was using it to trigger lucidity.....with great success. That came from practice during the day with real people.  :smiley: 

I need to go back to that I think, for more work.

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## gbbr

> Well.......During my days I sit in front of a computer screen with a bluetooth headset on in a nice private office. With big windows and a huge ficus tree. It is a very personalized space. I have a small bright pink post-it sticky stuck to the phone and every time I glance at it I ask myself if this is a dream. Then I look closely at all the things close around me and try to see details that I have missed in the past. I'll get up and walk around while I am taking calls and watch my hands. I have started telling myself over and over that this _is_ a dream...just the one I am awake in. That may be the important part...it feels right.
> 
> It has become a pretty constant frame of mind....almost as if I am living in a reality check. I am fortunate to be in such a controlled environment for 10 hours each day.
> 
> These daytime exercises, along with the night time lucidity, are really changing my perspective of  "reality"....in a good way.



I am loving this thread. What you write is really inspiring to me, because I'm also working hard during the day for this. My frequency of LD has also increased but I'm still not at the phase of having stable controllable lucid dreams. Nevertheless I do feel I've made progress.

I'm very interested in the part where you say that you are at a computer. I am in a very similar situation as you: I work from home, on the computer (as a computer programmer). How do you manage to stay aware on the computer? I find it really hard. I get very easily absorbed (I've been programming for at least 20 years). I find that working on the computer and being aware can be a bit contradictory, or maybe just very hard?

Do you have some advice? I would like to somehow integrate practicing awareness and "this is a dream" while on the computer too. That's the part where I lose track the most. When I get up from the computer, I'm a bit in a haze that I need to work on getting out of by either socializing, taking a break, a walk or doing something else. Meditation also works but the formerly stated activities work much better. Being in nature is golden though! I wish my office was in the wild  :smiley:

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## lenscaper

I'm glad this thread has been helpful to you, gbbr........it has been incredibly helpful to me as well to be able to write like this.





> I'm very interested in the part where you say that you are at a computer.



Well, my situation is very different from yours. I work as the Technical Director for a building material manufacturer. We make a very unique building board that is used for sound control in construction so I spend my days answering email and phone questions about sound control and researching all sorts of things. While I do sit in front of my computer a lot, I also walk around my office talking to folks and there is a lot of time between calls and emails.....so I get to research all things lucid a lot as well. 





> I would like to somehow integrate practicing awareness and "this is a dream" while on the computer too. That's the part where I lose track the most. When I get up from the computer, I'm a bit in a haze that I need to work on getting out of by either socializing, taking a break, a walk or doing something else.



I get that way as well at times. There is an excellent exercise in the Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep manuscript (page 39) where he speaks of balancing the prana. I do that when I get hazy and it really works. Every time you get up from your computer for a break look for details that you maybe walk by all the time but never notice. Look at them and see them as in a dream..........odd things like finding your reflection in a brass door knob or finding shapes in the grain pattern of a wood door. Stand in one place with your eyes closed and be extremely conscious of your body for a minute or two. I find that total body awareness like that leads to a feeling of pure presence (I do that at night as I fall asleep too). Then try to float....or to let the floor fall away from you. Then go back to work. These are some of the things I do during my day in the office.





> Being in nature is golden though! I wish my office was in the wild



Getting out into nature is an excellent way to find the peace that will help to foster calm and focused lucidity. I am exploring the Japanese discipline of Shinrin-yoku (Forest Bathing) on my weekends.

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## gbbr

Thank you for this! I'm going to try that out, I really like the idea of walking around looking for details.  ::dreamerchair::

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## lenscaper

Sometimes it feels as if the harder I seek lucidity the more I fail at it. Ardent effort must inevitably result in many failures and our consciousness tends to highlight failures over successes in those meta-cognitive moments. Those highlighted failures become ingrained seeds for more failure I think.

I am working on letting the lucid flow happen around me for a while. Sometimes that is not so easy, though.

 :smiley:

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## Tygar

Hi Lenscaper.  I had my first LD back in 2004 and have been pursuing it off and on since then with varying degrees of success.  It can be extremely frustrating at time.  Sacrificing a good night's sleep with no results.  Getting lucid and immediately waking up.  Trying technique after technique which don't give reliable results.  If you look at my signature it tells the story, I've had years where I worked so hard and years where I just gave up.  Yet, I keep coming back to it because some lucid dreams can be so amazing.  I've woken up from some amazing LDs and feel euphoric for several days after.  That is what keeps driving me to find a method that I can stick with for the rest of my life, and gives me good results.  I'm not greedy, I would settle for 1 good LD every 2 weeks.  

I wish you great success in your LD pursuits.  If you have great success keep everyone informed on your methods.

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## lenscaper

Hey Tygar...thanks so much for your support! Your story is good inspiration. It is so good for me to hear from experienced folks like you in my quest to integrate lucidity in my life.

You are so right about how that euphoria of a lucid event drives us on. I am having success already with such clarity and presence in all of my dreams now with a strong LD event every couple of weeks. They are short but oh so sweet!

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## Tygar

lenscaper - are you keeping a record of your LDs?  If so, be sure to post them in the dream journal.  I really enjoy reading other people's LDs.  It is inspiring and often very entertaining.

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## lenscaper

I have kept a pretty good DJ in general since I began this journey six months or so ago and my strong lucid events are labeled nicely for me to go back to. 

What's really cool to me is that I still have seriously clear memories and images of the ten or twelve strongest ones. I find that I experience a lot of what I might call low grade lucidity but those strong LDs that you drop right into or that come from sudden dream sign recognition can REALLY stick with you in vivid detail.

I have not taken advantage of our forum DJ section, however.

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## StarSeeker

I was going to make new thread, but thanks to Sageous mentioning about falling in the DC trap, I'm going to post it here.

 As one that is very curious about DCs as me, I tried to make a lot of contacts as possible for this reason with them and finally reach a breakthrough. My theory was proved true by series of positive experiments. One of them is type of a dream that I started to have recently, it is like remote viewing, but instead in dream world. In these I don't have a body, it's like my consciousness is floating around and other people/DC are controling the dream and most of the time I have more than one perspective(what do you think how can I have more than one viewpoint at the same time). 

In the last dream I saw two DCs arguing about "is this the real world or not" or so I thought. The more I listened to their conversation, the more I realized that one of them was in fact a dreamer. He was gaining lucidity little by little and started to question the reality itself. In the last moments, he say to the DC that this world maybe is not real and maybe he was dreaming, but the DC traped him in 'another reality' using that precise moment, he(DC) told him that this is indeed a fake world, but instead of a dream he told him this holographic projected reality on top of the real one and in fact they are still in real world. With that explanation the dreamer lost the little lucidity he has and his dream continue as non-lucid. They continue to talk how they are gonna escape this holographic prison as they walked away from my viewpoint.
I will write a further reference but I need to synthesize it correctly first.

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## lenscaper

A lot to ponder over in your post. StarSeeker, and I hope to learn from the comments that come. But, if you don't mind, I'd like to pick up on one aspect of it because it has caused an important realization for me.





> One of them is type of a dream that I started to have recently, it is like remote viewing, but instead in dream world. In these I don't have a body, it's like my consciousness is floating around



Pretty much all of my pre-LD dreams were like that I think.....only occasionally would I be in a body and observing the dream. But in the first week after I was drawn into the world of LD something happened, that thanks to your post, I now see as very important. After a night of intense HI I went into a dream where I was flying high above a stream at the edge of a field. Standing there in the middle of the stream, far below me, was a figure. As I entered that dream high above that stream I said, for the first time ever, "This is a dream", and I flew down and became that body.

The coolest thing is that the very next night, after more intense HI, I had the EXACT SAME dream......same exact stream setting......except there was no figure standing in it. In that second dream I walked up the stream to a pool, entered the pool and laid down on the bottom looking up at the blue sky.

Since those two dreams, in every single dream I have had I have been in my body in the dream. I think that establishing that body connection has been an important thing for me. SO much to ponder here........ :smiley: 

Thanks for your post, StarSeeker.

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## StarSeeker

I'm sorry lenscaper, I'll have to postpone my report, because I'm in the middle of important mind experiment and I will need a little more time. In meanwhile I have something interesting to post, because of new technique or one that I finally complete, this morning I had whole 12 lucid dreams in a span of 3 hours. The method is strange but easy to perform, before I was doing it incidentally, but with little help of a Guru, I finally completed it. The Guru words to me was _"Let go of your Ego, stop trying to control everything, including death, everyone dies, that is the natural course of the universe. You have to surrender, only then you will be able to use your full potential."_

So here go the steps: Best time to try this is in the morning after al least 5 hour of sleep. You can use alarm or the natural aproach. The hard part is that you need to get closer to the sleep moment as much as possible and then begin next steps, but you don't need to do a WILD aproach. You gonna know the right moment when you start to see dream images, simply focus your vision on one of them, but don't focus on the entire image, only on a single object, preferred on small object, like a book, sign, bottle of any kind. Something that has tiny details on it, now focus on these details, like zooming your vision(if you know how sniper rifle work, when change the zoom from 2x to 4x to 8x), try to make them clear as you can, but don't try too hard, everything must be performed in calm yet focused way. Now that you zoomed in on that object catch him with your dream hands, they don't need to be visible, it is more like you catch him with your mind. When you do this the object will turn into a anchor and your dream hands in a rope, metaphorically speaking. Now just fall asleep while holding the object, surrender to the dream, you gonna feel a suck in sensation and you will get directly in the dream, it's working like a WILD. The dream that come is a fleeting, so you need to stabilize him fast.

Tip: If you can't see any dream images you always can make a simple visualization of the preferred object and then start the focusing part, most of the time I'm doing this, because visualization is simpler for me than waiting to happen on it's own.

Good Luck^^


p.s. In one of the LD, everything around me was full of DCs, it was a huge plaza. For the first time I didn't care at all, I strip all my clothes and run around in Awe :Big laugh:

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## lenscaper

That is fantastic success, StarSeeker!!

I really like that technique. I have had HIs in my hands a few times but my inexperience kept me from doing anything with them and the moment was fleeting. The idea of focusing in on a detail sounds excellent.

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## lenscaper

My nightly practice seems to be boiling down to a distinct set of specific exercises as I get closer to my goal of developing a nightly protocol that allows me to get the sleep I need while still achieving lucidity as often as possible. During the week I really only have seven hours to work with. Here is what I have been doing:

1. As soon as I lay down I begin to reach for a calm and stable place through breathing and meditation while lying on my back. I pretty much can now will my body to sleep within five minutes or so.

2. I always wake for the first time in 3 - 4 hours. At this time I concentrate on feeling as much clarity and presence as I can....depending on how sleepy I am. On a good night I will have already had sufficient cleansing and restful sleep to allow for 10 - 15 minutes of this kind on introspection. When sleep closes back in I immediately roll over and let it. 

3. My third waking generally comes 1 -2 hours before I need to get up. This is the time to make a move on lucidity. If the first two sessions were strong I will wake feeling stable, clear and present in the moment......I will then get up for a few minutes. Upon returning to bed I finally engage in some real LD technique, such as strong lucid intention or perhaps SSILD. That last hour or so before I must rise is my time for lucidity so I try to let sleep come back again fairly quickly in more of a DILD type transition. On weekends, when I can sleep in a bit, this becomes a time for prolonged HI and a possible WILD.

As I work more and more within the above framework, I find myself more and more entering a dream scene and taking charge of the scene. I redirect DCs as well as the plot. There is not often an "AHA! moment" of dream recognition but instead there is a general feeling of awareness of the dream. For instance, last night I looked at a very obvious dream sign and kind of chuckled a little as I went on with what I was doing. What is interesting is that I always know when it is time to exit the dream.....I never oversleep.

I feel as though I am establishing a natural base state of lucidity through these very basic practices. I feel like I am building a very strong foundation.

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## lenscaper

I have been trying to use the people who come into my office or who walk by my door as RC moments because I am trying to use DC's as DS's. When I have been successful at that in the dream, the Dream Character loses his or her grasp on me and lucidity springs up immediately.

But....here in my office I generally fail miserably at practicing this. I just can't seem to grab that first moment of pure perception. I _know_ that if I can get better at this during the day I will improve significantly at night as well.

So....this is now my new computer background....sitting here in front of me on my seriously large computer screen that only I can see. I think I better buckle up, right? 

 :armflap:  :armflap:  :armflap:

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## lenscaper

I am approaching month eight of my training and I have been sitting out on the back deck watching a few yellow leaves flutter down from the big butternut tree and pondering last night's dreams.........while I wrap my head around just what it is that I am doing and what I have accomplished.

I have come to the realization that I have been using lucid dreaming as a powerful tool toward a deeper goal. By plumbing the hidden depths of my subconscious mind I have come to know myself much better, in the process reaping a few other very cool benefits. There is a new clarity to everything I do these days. My mind is sharper and my body feels younger. My stress level is down.....as is my blood pressure. I feel as if I am living each day from moment to moment now and I can feel my world expanding toward horizons that seem at once perfectly distant and right in front of me. Even my songwriting seems to have improved.  :Nod yes: 

Once again....just sharing.

 :smiley:

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## Zthread

> I am approaching month eight of my training and I have been sitting out on the back deck watching a few yellow leaves flutter down from the big butternut tree and pondering last night's dreams.........while I wrap my head around just what it is that I am doing and what I have accomplished....



Wow! Nice!

What kinds of songs do you write, BTW?

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## lenscaper

:smiley: 

I write about the what I am feeling about the world around me. As I think about it right now, my songs are a bit like dreams........they come from within and generally have a message that is hidden within a story. Take a listen if you'd like......

.......and thanks for asking about it.

https://www.soundclick.com/bands3/de...5B49F750D40CEA

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## lenscaper

In my ongoing research into as many perspectives on LDing as possible I stumbled upon this interesting short paper.

Training For Lucid Awareness

In it the author speaks of training her students in lucid awareness by having them "re-dream" in waking fantasies to improve the outcome of previous dreams.

So....I , of course, took it a bit further and tried a version of that out for a few days. I imagined myself very small while sitting under the spreading leaves of the tiny succulent plant on my desk. I reached up and touched the bottom of the leaves. I took an imaginary trip through the spiraling chambers of a large conch shell that I have over on my lay-out table. I did a bunch of stuff like that. Then, back home on the deck after sunset I closed my eyes and imagined myself in the upper atmosphere watching the sun set over the curvature of the earth.

Lucid Friday night and again Monday night.......short periods of time as usual. Working on that aspect now.

 :smiley:

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## lenscaper

I have a hugely important meeting in my office in about an hour and, for some reason, I am nervous about this one. I will be presenting something bold....a little over the edge.

So......I am sitting back and picturing myself climbing over the railing of a very high bridge and looking down while I hang from the bridge. It sure is a long, long drop down the the river below. But here's the thing.......I did exactly that just two nights ago. After looking down at that drop....I let go and floated.

Letting go again right now.......floating...breathing.

Ahhhh.....I'm ready now.

 :smiley:

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## lenscaper

So after immersing myself for a while in the dream yoga approach to ADA I decided to go all in for a bit. I spent the last couple of weeks practicing just "The Main Practice" as outlined in "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep". It took a while to get into the flow and after spending months working on more active LD techniques like SSILD and the like, these passive protocols seemed, well, TOO passive. 

But as I got into the rhythm of it and actually got through opening all four of the chakras (as I understand it), something interesting has begun to happen. I have found my dreams to be clearer and much more memorable...with a strong sense of what I would call underlying lucidity. I am having memorable dreams with each sleep cycle now.....filling a lot of dream journal real estate with them.

But the coolest things happen when I throw in strong SSILD at the end before going to sleep for the final sleep cycle.  :Nod yes: 

I'll stay on this for a while and see where I end up.

Here's how that protocol might look....... :smiley:

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## Zthread

> I write about the what I am feeling about the world around me. As I think about it right now, my songs are a bit like dreams........they come from within and generally have a message that is hidden within a story. Take a listen if you'd like......
> 
> .......and thanks for asking about it.
> 
> https://www.soundclick.com/bands3/de...5B49F750D40CEA



I've been listening to some of your music. Great stuff! Have you found that your work on LDs has influenced your music? Seems like it would. (I apologize if you've already talked about that elsewhere in this thread. Haven't read it all.)

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## Zthread

Actually, just noticed you have a song called "Save your last dream for me." I assume that's probably inspired by your LD work.

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## lenscaper

> Have you found that your work on LDs has influenced your music?



First off, thanks so much for listening!! "Save Your Last Dream For Me" was written just a month after I started training hard. I had already realized that the last dream was always the most powerful of the night.  :Nod yes: 

Since I began my lucid dreaming journey my songs seem to flow out naturally. It's as if I have opened a conduit into my subconscious. I'll be picking on an acoustic guitar and a line will just slip out and ride the music........and a new song begins. I have always written that way but these days that flow seems to always be there.

Quite honestly, my entire life has subtly changed in similar ways since I have begun to inhabit my dreams, particularly in the last month or so as I have felt myself stabilizing into a self-sustaining pattern of lucidity. I am approaching things differently in my life and my work........from a more centered, relaxed and confident perspective that is extremely effective.

Thanks again for checking out my music.

 :smiley:

----------


## FryingMan

> So after immersing myself for a while in the dream yoga approach to ADA I decided to go all in for a bit. I spent the last couple of weeks practicing just "The Main Practice" as outlined in "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep". It took a while to get into the flow and after spending months working on more active LD techniques like SSILD and the like, these passive protocols seemed, well, TOO passive. 
> 
> But as I got into the rhythm of it and actually got through opening all four of the chakras (as I understand it), something interesting has begun to happen. I have found my dreams to be clearer and much more memorable...with a strong sense of what I would call underlying lucidity. I am having memorable dreams with each sleep cycle now.....filling a lot of dream journal real estate with them.
> 
> But the coolest things happen when I throw in strong SSILD at the end before going to sleep for the final sleep cycle. 
> 
> I'll stay on this for a while and see where I end up.
> 
> Here's how that protocol might look.......



Hi lenscaper,
   I'm coming to your thread a bit late, but welcome to the site and congrats on all your progress!   I'm also a "more mature" LD practitioner (mid 50's now), having started right at the end of my 40's.  I found I had very good success.   I was thrown off practice for the last couple years by traumatic waking life events, but I'm making my way back towards more lucidity.

It's great that you're working with TYoDaS.   I find that the two general approaches I resonate the most strongly with are the general practice as described in ETWOLD chapters 1-3, and the two pages at the start of the practice section of TYoDaS.   In fact, I believe these two pages are the most significant and succinct summary of LD practice in general, and encourage everybody to read them (link to these pages is in my  LD bibliography post) and really ponder them.

I would also encourage you to read Andrew Holecek's DY/LD book.   He offers a slightly more "Western" perspective on the practice, with a bunch of concrete exercises.

I think the degradations that come with age can be counteracted by maintaining an active lifestyle.   There is ample research that "athletes of aging" who maintain high levels of physical activity (including strength training) do not suffer from the ails of degenerative muscle and bone loss.   I believe the same goes for largely mental activities as well -- in other words, "use it or lose it."  When you're young, you just have "it" by default, but those of us in the "2nd half of life" need to expend effort to keep "it." 

Consistency is key with LD practice.   Do something every day, even just a little.  Keep LDing on your mind -- the notion that at any conscious moment, you could actually be in the dream state.

I find that my best and longest lucids some when I have specific, concrete dream goals.   Participating in DV site TOTM, TOTY, and competition activities can really help with this.   Some of my best LDs of all time were when I accomplished TOTM goals in succession.    Dream length can be enhanced by actually *not worrying* about dream length, but instead focusing on really enjoying each dream, and having specific things on your list that you want to accomplish.     

As for more general advice, I'd say: focus on dreaming practice, not just LD practice.   Really treasure all your dreams, especially the non-lucid ones (since they come for "free" every night!), and consider LDs as icing on the cake.   Work for lucidity, but do not set up a "non-lucid = failure" association, which IMO can impede LD progress.   A positive, happy, confident, anxiety-free mindset results in great dreaming, and more lucidity!

----------


## lenscaper

Hey FryingMan!! 

Thanks so much for stopping by. Every bit of your excellent post resonates with me....all of it. You have hit on all of the aspects of the somewhat personalized training and practice program that I seem to have developed. It is extremely encouraging to read the observations of someone who started late in life and now has close to ten years of experience........as I work my way through month eight.  :smiley: 

For other older folks who are following I want to underline this:





> I think the degradations that come with age can be counteracted by maintaining an active lifestyle.   There is ample research that "athletes of aging" who maintain high levels of physical activity (including strength training) do not suffer from the ails of degenerative muscle and bone loss.   I believe the same goes for largely mental activities as well -- in other words, "use it or lose it."



By way of agreement with that excellent observation above......I was up at 4:00 AM this morning after a night of excellent dreaming. After 30 minutes of yoga and cardio I spent another 30 minutes in the music studio doing deep editing on a new song. Then I went into my office where I always start with another 30 minutes of meditation before I get to work. Some time in mid morning I'll close the door and spend some time with my 30# weight.

I sincerely invite anyone who is following this thread to read FryingMan's post ....and then read it again...because every one of those aspects are a part of what has been working for me.

This last bit resonates the most:





> As for more general advice, I'd say: focus on dreaming practice, not just LD practice.   Really treasure all your dreams, especially the non-lucid ones (since they come for "free" every night!), and consider LDs as icing on the cake.   Work for lucidity, but do not set up a "non-lucid = failure" association, which IMO can impede LD progress.   A positive, happy, confident, anxiety-free mindset results in great dreaming, and more lucidity!



 :smiley:

----------


## Sageous

Hey, it finally happened!  I've been waiting for you guys to connect for months; I knew you would.  I suggest you stay in touch with each other as your paths -- and your drives -- seem remarkably similar to me!

----------


## lenscaper

Ok....not really ignoring them....more like choosing to not let them affect the dream.

As I approach month nine my dreams are now often that way. As the lucid observer of a clear dream I tend to choose to stay in the dream rather than trigger more active lucidity and go off on an adventure.

Last night was a classic example. I am in a massively crowded airport where the crowds are all moving along in a definite direction. Interspersed in the crowd are people from my past...ex-wives, estranged children, ex-inlaws. It is all very calm and I am flitting from one to the other casually interacting with them as they all move along independent of each other in the crowd.

The cool thing is, though, that there are a number of blatantly obvious incongruities that keep appearing. I see these dream signs as what they are and some of them make me chuckle....but I know that the dream itself is more important so I choose not to let them trigger more extreme lucidity of the sort that will draw me away from what I am observing.

Every few days my subconscious gives me a break from all that and serves me up with an inescapable lucid experience by dropping me directly into a scenario that can only be resolved through true active lucidity.....generally flight. These lucid moments are always staged to give me time to comprehend the situation and make an active decision.......hanging from a bridge or balancing on a high tree branch.

Once again, just sharing.....and pondering even more.

 :smiley:  :smiley:  :smiley:

----------


## lenscaper

In the last couple of months I have started writing down some of the things that have been working for me. I want to have a record of these things so I can revisit them from time to time and possibly even revise them as I learn more. These "white papers" are really just notes to myself.

This is one that has been resonating a lot of late and really working well for me. After discussing it with a friend I realized that I needed to make sure I captured it in this format as well.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gx...eRZGpP6BpAbKEF

----------


## lenscaper

Into month nine......

I am having one or more clear dream every night and I always have one that stays with me all of the next day. Every 5 to 10 days I have a lucid event that leaves me exhilarated and enlightened in the morning. After working pretty much every day and night for these months and experimenting with every technique I have now boiled my program down to three simple elements that I practice all day.

*Pure Perception*
I look at every event during my days as exactly what it is, attaching no expectations, desires or apprehensions to it. It does not always work, but I never stop working on it. That pure perception leads to....

*Non-dual Awareness*
I see and experience ongoing interactions without taking a position. Everything happens as it happens and I do not let myself get drawn into outcomes. My success rate at that is getting better. When I get it right, both of those disciplines lead to.....

*Pure Presence*
Pure presence has become the key to my lucidity. Pure.....presence. Existing in the moment. It allows me to observe my dreams from a wonderful vantage point and to slip into lucidity when the time and circumstance is right.

I am stable now. My life has become an unbroken continuity of consciousness between day and night. I know there are more horizons and I know I will cross them and look for even more, but through persistent and dedicated practice I have established lucid days and lucid nights. 

I wish you all the best of what LDing offers for you.

Sleep well...and dream

 :smiley:

----------


## FryingMan

> Into month nine......
> ...
> *Pure Presence*
> Pure presence has become the key to my lucidity.



Awesome, lenscaper, what a great achievement!   I do hope to get back to something close to this myself in my own practice.  In fact, I do believe *presence* in the present moment experience is the key to lucidity in both the waking and the dreaming states.   Because if *you* are not there in that experience -- you with your self-awareness, memories, intentions, goals, and reflective ability and experience -- just *who* is it that is going to get lucid in that dream?  :smiley: 

That is also exactly the term I use to describe the highest, most enjoyable state of dreaming experience:  "vivid" and "*present*."

----------


## OneUp

> Awesome, lenscaper, what a great achievement!   I do hope to get back to something close to this myself in my own practice.  In fact, I do believe *presence* in the present moment experience is the key to lucidity in both the waking and the dreaming states.   Because if *you* are not there in that experience -- you with your self-awareness, memories, intentions, goals, and reflective ability and experience -- just *who* is it that is going to get lucid in that dream? 
> 
> That is also exactly the term I use to describe the highest, most enjoyable state of dreaming experience:  "vivid" and "*present*."



Wow, it's pretty crazy reading this. I too have gotten back into awareness(and lucidity) after having quit the usage of nicotine. That's beside the point though. I have come to the same conclusion of pure presence. This is the phrase that describes it perfectly that I, for some reason, did not even think of. I always described it to myself as a state of a natural flow of awareness blended perfectly with a soft amount of constant attention. I don't even think that's a good definition of it even now as pure presence leaves it in the dust. 

I think we all 3 agree that this one thing, presence, is monumental. And that's pretty cool.

----------


## lenscaper

> In fact, I do believe *presence* in the present moment experience is the key to lucidity in both the waking and the dreaming states.







> I think we all 3 agree that this one thing, presence, is monumental. And that's pretty cool.



I'm thinking that this type of awareness may be the key to incorporating lucidity into everyday life....establishing a routine that can fit into any lifestyle. It is beginning to feel self-sustaining as the more present and aware I feel in my dreams, the clearer and more alive I feel during the day....which then leads to even stronger presence and lucidity in my dreams.

On a side note, I have found that every time I make a meaningful post here at Dream Views it is like a shot of adrenaline to my dreams that night. I posted just before bed that night and my dreams were incredibly strong and clear....I made notes on five dreams and I know I missed at least one during my first sleep cycle. It's as if posting here is a condensed and distilled form of dream journaling.  :smiley:

----------


## lenscaper

I awoke this morning from a night of no dreams. That probably had something to do with the wedding that I attended yesterday.  :smiley: 

After doing my usual morning routine, including grocery shopping at 6:00 AM when the store opened, I laid back down for some extra sleep. I did not sleep. Instead I had an hour or so of clear light meditation. I arose with this thought and went right into the studio to write it down:

_Before grasping or averting; before any reactionary response, perceive the true nature of that which you observe._

----------


## lenscaper

I realized this morning that it has been weeks since I practiced a traditional LD induction technique. Instead I have remained immersed in a somewhat personalized version of the more esoteric techniques of dream yoga as those techniques seem to have slipped into the fabric of my life much more easily. 

Meanwhile, I have fully inhabited my dreams. They have become clear and strong with amazing moments of true lucidity that seem to bloom spontaneously out of a more passive yet aware general lucidity that is pervasive. I have come to an amazing place in my life now.

I wrote this in my journal very early this morning after waking from a flight over golden hills:

_Practice pure perception.
Nurture non-dual-awareness.
Abide in pure presence.
Discover your true nature and you will become your true self._

I am getting there I think.

Just....sharing......

 :smiley:

----------


## lenscaper

I have come to an interesting place in my dream regimen. Dream Yoga induction techniques have become an intrinsic and automatic part of my nights even as I slip in LD techniques as well. I am sleeping very well every night, even as I get up two or three times to write in my journal. I have established a natural rhythm between deep sleep and extremely clear dreams. My dreams have begun to reflect the effects of this protocol in a very interesting way.

In almost every dream now I find myself taking part in whatever is going on but from a conscious perspective that allows me to subtly steer the dream plot. I interact with dream characters, listening to them and communicating with them even as I consider how the dream is developing. Sometimes this kind of interaction is stronger than other times. These dreams feel important and I do not want to lose them....but I also do not want them to get out of hand. Every week or so one of these dreams becomes absolutely lucid in response to some anomaly that needs serious attention.

As an example of this, just the other night the bus we were riding in flew off the road and soared up into the air. There were hardened criminals in seats around me....I knew this. Instead of crashing, I settled the bus down in a corn field and as the bad people rushed off I had them start signing autographs at a table next to the bus...as I left the dream. I woke up smiling and got up immediately to write it down.

This ....dream management......was subtle thing. I did not consider what to do and then do it......I just changed the flow of the dream.

Just....sharing....as I finish month nine of my training.

----------


## lenscaper

I have been doing an exercise....a meditation really....that I am calling Collapsing Inward.

This involves letting all of my energies slowly collapse into my energetic center.....you know, that spot just below the navel....and feeling all that energy gather there. I visualize the collapse of a blazing star into a tiny mass of incredibly compressed energy (a neutron star). It is very powerful. 

I am bringing this into the LD conversation because it has had a profound effect on my dreams the last few nights. After falling back to sleep in this state I go into dreams with a powerfully strong physical connection to my body. The dreams have been incredibly clear and...visceral. Sight, sound and the sense of touch are amplified. The number of dreams and the recall of them in just the last few nights has been amazing. I am now incorporating this exercise into my ADA practice.

----------


## Zthread

> I awoke this morning from a night of no dreams. That probably had something to do with the wedding that I attended yesterday. 
> 
> After doing my usual morning routine, including grocery shopping at 6:00 AM when the store opened, I laid back down for some extra sleep. I did not sleep. Instead I had an hour or so of clear light meditation. I arose with this thought and went right into the studio to write it down:
> 
> _Before grasping or averting; before any reactionary response, perceive the true nature of that which you observe._



Great advice! It's not what most people normally do, because it's not easy. We mostly just look at superficial aspects of things.

Even if we aren't capable of drilling all the way down to something's true nature, at least it's good to look at things from different perspectives. Especially other people.

----------


## Zthread

> On a side note, I have found that every time I make a meaningful post here at Dream Views it is like a shot of adrenaline to my dreams that night. I posted just before bed that night and my dreams were incredibly strong and clear....I made notes on five dreams and I know I missed at least one during my first sleep cycle. It's as if posting here is a condensed and distilled form of dream journaling.



Good point about posting things about dreams. Definitely helpful.

----------


## Zthread

> As an example of this, just the other night the bus we were riding in flew off the road and soared up into the air. There were hardened criminals in seats around me....I knew this. Instead of crashing, I settled the bus down in a corn field and as the bad people rushed off I had them start signing autographs at a table next to the bus...as I left the dream. I woke up smiling and got up immediately to write it down.
> 
> This ....dream management......was subtle thing. I did not consider what to do and then do it......I just changed the flow of the dream.
> 
> Just....sharing....as I finish month nine of my training.



So it's like you're controlling the dream, but in a very spontaneous way? That is, not "overthinking" things, which can make the control of the dream become a bit "clunky" or "heavy handed"? It's like doing improvisational theater rather than conventional theater. You're in control, but the control is very spontaneous, not pre-planned. Maybe you're letting your true self (maybe your subconscious mind) do the controlling?

I definitely prefer LDs that are like that. It's like I just know what to do at each point in the dream. There's no hesitation or pondering what to do next. But that doesn't always happen for me. Usually doesn't.

----------


## Zthread

> I have been doing an exercise....a meditation really....that I am calling Collapsing Inward.
> 
> This involves letting all of my energies slowly collapse into my energetic center.....you know, that spot just below the navel....and feeling all that energy gather there. I visualize the collapse of a blazing star into a tiny mass of incredibly compressed energy (a neutron star). It is very powerful.



Could you say more about how you do that? Do you just focus all your attention on that area below your navel? Do you also repeat a mantra, or anything like that?

What if you let all your energy collapse into a different part of your body, such as your chest or your head? Does that also work? If so, it probably has different effects. Or maybe you haven't tried that.

----------


## lenscaper

> It's like doing improvisational theater rather than conventional theater. You're in control, but the control is very spontaneous, not pre-planned. Maybe you're letting your true self (maybe your subconscious mind) do the controlling?



I like that comparison to improv theater a lot. For quite a while now I have been working to establish a very basic level of underlying lucidity in my dreams rather than to achieve strong and actionable lucidity. My goal is to create a very strong foundation for a life time of lucidity.

This seems to be resulting in this subconscious level of "dream management" at times.





> Could you say more about how you do that? Do you just focus all your attention on that area below your navel? Do you also repeat a mantra, or anything like that?



This is an offshoot of the work I have been doing in Dream Yoga where you concentrate on a different energy center (chakra) before each sleep cycle. I noticed that that protocol kind of skipped over the classic spot below the navel. That is a place I have concentrated on for many years in my practice of T'ai Chi and Aikido. In Aikido we call it the "one point". It seemed natural to try to include it in the DY protocol. 

I found that once all of the chakras were open at the tail end of the night I could feel some internal energy trying to gather in that spot. I had just read an article about the formation of neutron stars and the idea of visualizing that intense concentration of energy at the "one point" seemed natural. When I first did the visualization i immediately could feel the gathering of external energy there. It became a pulse of energy and I let it flow into my extremities as a fell asleep......no mantra, just a strong sense of marshaling my energy there.

It is really quite strong when done in the last sleep cycle like that. I need to get up very early for work and this morning after a very strong last dream I laid in bed and kept drifting back into brief dream sequences without quite falling back to sleep. I was definitely smiling when I finally let that go and rose for the day.





> What if you let all your energy collapse into a different part of your body, such as your chest or your head? Does that also work? If so, it probably has different effects. Or maybe you haven't tried that.



The DY protocols earlier in the night have already opened the energy centers in the throat, brow, heart and behind the genitals. Only one energy center left.  :smiley:

----------


## Zthread

> I like that comparison to improv theater a lot. For quite a while now I have been working to establish a very basic level of underlying lucidity in my dreams rather than to achieve strong and actionable lucidity. My goal is to create a very strong foundation for a life time of lucidity.
> 
> This seems to be resulting in this subconscious level of "dream management" at times.



Good way to do it! The way lucid dreaming is often done suppresses some of the most interesting aspects of regular (i.e., non-lucid) dreams in exchange for the ability to do fun things. That sounds like a criticism of how lucid dreaming is often done, but it's not. There's nothing wrong with doing it that way, but there are other ways to do it that are totally different and possibly more fulfilling, at least to some people.

Anyway, the way you're doing LDs is appeals to me. You're getting lucid while preserving more of what I find interesting about non-lucid dreams. Not easy to do.





> This is an offshoot of the work I have been doing in Dream Yoga where you concentrate on a different energy center (chakra) before each sleep cycle. I noticed that that protocol kind of skipped over the classic spot below the navel. That is a place I have concentrated on for many years in my practice of T'ai Chi and Aikido. In Aikido we call it the "one point". It seemed natural to try to include it in the DY protocol.



I often meditate before going to sleep. I'll try focusing on that energy center instead of what I usually do, which is repeating a mantra and/or focusing on my breathing.





> I found that once all of the chakras were open at the tail end of the night I could feel some internal energy trying to gather in that spot. I had just read an article about the formation of neutron stars and the idea of visualizing that intense concentration of energy at the "one point" seemed natural. When I first did the visualization i immediately could feel the gathering of external energy there. It became a pulse of energy and I let it flow into my extremities as a fell asleep......no mantra, just a strong sense of marshaling my energy there.
> 
> It is really quite strong when done in the last sleep cycle like that. I need to get up very early for work and this morning after a very strong last dream I laid in bed and kept drifting back into brief dream sequences without quite falling back to sleep. I was definitely smiling when I finally let that go and rose for the day.
> 
> The DY protocols earlier in the night have already opened the energy centers in the throat, brow, heart and behind the genitals. Only one energy center left.



Sounds great! Nice imagery of a neutron star. Maybe the image of a black hole would also work.

----------


## lenscaper

> Maybe the image of a black hole would also work.



Yeah....I definitely thought about a black hole. I also considered visualizing a singularity like the grain of sand that was the beginning of our universe. The neutron star image keeps the energy more accessible than a black hole and somewhat more controllable than a big bang type of singularity.   :smiley:

----------


## Zthread

> Yeah....I definitely thought about a black hole. I also considered visualizing a singularity like the grain of sand that was the beginning of our universe. The neutron star image keeps the energy more accessible than a black hole and somewhat more controllable than a big bang type of singularity.



Yes, good point!

----------


## lenscaper

Some dreams are just so real and....lucid....that they just stick with you in vivid detail, right?


_I am walking down the wide path that I always take to get to the woods but the path is blocked by a family taking pictures. A little girl in a white dress is wailing in her mother's arms. I know she is cold....I am wearing a jacket and gloves against the early morning chill. As I walk by them she stops crying and we lock eyes. Nobody else seems to see me.

Now I am in the woods with the freshly risen sun at my back. I am surrounded by small black birds. They are everywhere around me and their shadows from the low sun play across the trees. They are so loud. I can hear their occasional droppings hitting the dry leaves around me.

Now I am back on the path and another family is there, once again taking pictures. A very pregnant woman is posing in a gray sweater with her hands on her belly. An very young oriental child is sitting on a stool in front of some small pumpkins. He is dressed smartly in a white button down sweater and his hair is meticulously combed. As I walk past them they all smile. The child follows me with his eyes._


The coolest thing is.....I knew I was in a dream.......but I was awake.  :smiley: 

Oh........

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bx...5Zk4EVx_g6EqG9

----------


## Zthread

> Some dreams are just so real and....lucid....that they just stick with you in vivid detail, right?
> 
> 
> _I am walking down the wide path that I always take to get to the woods but the path is blocked by a family taking pictures. A little girl in a white dress is wailing in her mother's arms. I know she is cold....I am wearing a jacket and gloves against the early morning chill. As I walk by them she stops crying and we lock eyes. Nobody else seems to see me.
> 
> Now I am in the woods with the freshly risen sun at my back. I am surrounded by small black birds. They are everywhere around me and their shadows from the low sun play across the trees. They are so loud. I can hear their occasional droppings hitting the dry leaves around me.
> 
> Now I am back on the path and another family is there, once again taking pictures. A very pregnant woman is posing in a gray sweater with her hands on her belly. An very young oriental child is sitting on a stool in front of some small pumpkins. He is dressed smartly in a white button down sweater and his hair is meticulously combed. As I walk past them they all smile. The child follows me with his eyes._
> 
> ...



So you were actually awake? 





> Oh........
> 
> https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bx...5Zk4EVx_g6EqG9



That's a lot of birds! What kind are they?

----------


## lenscaper

All of that actually happened....exactly that way....every little nuance. When that little girl in the white dress locked eyes with me I felt certain that I was in a dream. Then, on the way back that second family in the exact spot on the path......incredibly dream-like.

And, of course, those birds.....grackles.

I had slept in on Saturday morning on a night that left me with seven different journal entries. I rose just after the sun and went for that walk.

----------


## Zthread

> All of that actually happened....exactly that way....every little nuance. When that little girl in the white dress locked eyes with me I felt certain that I was in a dream. Then, on the way back that second family in the exact spot on the path......incredibly dream-like.
> 
> And, of course, those birds.....grackles.



Oh, grackles! Was going to guess they were starlings, but grackles makes sense.





> I had slept in on Saturday morning on a night that left me with seven different journal entries. I rose just after the sun and went for that walk.



So maybe your dreams are becoming more real at the same time your waking life is becoming more dreamlike?

----------


## lenscaper

> So maybe your dreams are becoming more real at the same time your waking life is becoming more dreamlike?



What I truly think is happening is that I am beginning to succeed in creating an unbroken continuity of consciousness between my waking life and my night time dreaming life. For me this is a very important goal. I am beginning to truly inhabit my dreams as the very same person that I am when I am awake. I make decisions....I have memories.....I have the same personality. Not all the time, of course.......but when I am that way I wake up feeling as though I am now living a much more expanded existence.

From a dream yoga perspective this is allowing me to liberate tons of lingering karmic traces......and I do have tons from this long life of mine.  :Nod yes: 

It has been a few weeks since I did anything that would be considered truly lucid in a dream. No flights in a while. But I honestly feel that I have become more intrinsically lucid than ever. I have stopped asking myself if this is a dream. I just seem to know that I am dreaming without making a big deal out of it. That's is how it feels anyway.

 :smiley:

----------


## lenscaper

Really?

Debatable, right?

Here is an interesting take on that from a cognitive neuroscientist. It's a little heady and kind of long....

https://aeon.co/videos/its-impossibl...neuroscientist

----------


## Zthread

> What I truly think is happening is that I am beginning to succeed in creating an unbroken continuity of consciousness between my waking life and my night time dreaming life. For me this is a very important goal. I am beginning to truly inhabit my dreams as the very same person that I am when I am awake. I make decisions....I have memories.....I have the same personality. Not all the time, of course.......but when I am that way I wake up feeling as though I am now living a much more expanded existence.



Have other people in your life noticed anything different about you?





> From a dream yoga perspective this is allowing me to liberate tons of lingering karmic traces......and I do have tons from this long life of mine.



That should be a really good thing. Could be painful at times, though, right? Doesn't liberating karma always have to involve some degree of suffering? I think I read that somewhere. A book about Tibetan Buddhism, I think. But don't really know much about the topic.





> It has been a few weeks since I did anything that would be considered truly lucid in a dream. No flights in a while. But I honestly feel that I have become more intrinsically lucid than ever. I have stopped asking myself if this is a dream. I just seem to know that I am dreaming without making a big deal out of it. That's is how it feels anyway.



You're not much, if at all, into taking LD supplements, right? Do you ever take any natural sleep aids, though? Like theanine?

Do you do anything special with your diet?

What about mechanical or electronic devices, such a LD masks? I'm guessing not. But something like an LD mask might possibly have synergistic effects with what you're already doing.

----------


## lenscaper

> Have other people in your life noticed anything different about you?



Good question. I don't have a very wide circle of acquaintances these days. I live with my co-star in an empty nest and she already sees me as a somewhat unique individual. I finish my exercise routine in the morning before work with a 4 minute headstand. I keep my dreaming to myself.





> You're not much, if at all, into taking LD supplements, right? Do you ever take any natural sleep aids, though? Like theanine?
> 
> Do you do anything special with your diet?
> 
> What about mechanical or electronic devices, such a LD masks? I'm guessing not. But something like an LD mask might possibly have synergistic effects with what you're already doing.



No supplements. I tried Claridream very early on and decided i did not need it. No drugs....not even any medications.

I'm pretty tight with my diet. No junk food ever....lots of organic vegetables. No red meat for the last 40 years or so....organic poultry.

One major dietary enhancement is the kefir I have been making from grains for the last three years. I bought completely into that whole "gut bacteria rules the roost" thing back then and have not looked back. I am definitely a "bactosapien" these days. Healthier than I have ever been.

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## Zthread

> Really?
> 
> Debatable, right?
> 
> Here is an interesting take on that from a cognitive neuroscientist. It's a little heady and kind of long....
> 
> https://aeon.co/videos/its-impossibl...neuroscientist



Just listened to the whole thing. Quite thought provoking!

If I understand it correctly, he's saying that as a conscious entities we don't experience the true nature of reality because the only thing each of us experiences is our own consciousness. And the consciousness we each experience is actually just our highest-level consciousness. We (meaning each of our highest-level consciousnesses) don't directly experience the lower-level consciousness of agents within our own minds. For example, maybe what we call our subconscious consists of one or more lower-level agents that are themselves conscious and that contribute to our high-level consciousness. What he's saying, which I think is true, is that I (meaning the highest-level of consciousness produced by my mind) normally never experience what my lower-level agents experience. That is, I don't know what it's like to be them. Similarly, they don't know what it's like to be me.

At best maybe I can sometimes get a hint of what these lower-level agents experience, based on things they do to me. For example, I think my subconscious has a lot of control over my dreams. It tries to alter my dreams in ways it considers to be good and tries to prevent me from dreaming things it considers to be bad. So by looking at my dreams I can learn something about its personality. Sometimes it behaves in a very practical manner. For example, if I really have to pee while having a dream, it does what it can to prevent me from wetting the bed by preventing me from finding a suitable place to pee in the dream. That happens to me a lot in dreams.

What he's also saying is that we can't directly experience the consciousness of other conscious entities outside of ourselves. If I see you smile I may infer that you're happy about something. But I don't really know for sure what you're actually feeling. I can never know what it's really like to be you. At least I don't know of any method that would allow me to directly experience what you're experiencing. But what other entities are experiencing is a huge part of reality. What he's saying is that we're cut off from that reality.

Anyway, that's my interpretation of what he's saying. What's your interpretation?

BTW, that aeon.co website looks like it has a lot of really great stuff on it.

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## lenscaper

> What's your interpretation?



I need to watch it again to really wrap my head around what he is postulating. What I have taken away from it so far is that the only thing that is truly real is our consciousness. All of the things that we experience around us are really icons for something much, much deeper.....and our bodies are pretty much user interfaces that allow us to use these icons around us to access the reality of our consciousness. Something along those lines.  :smiley: 

That resonates with me on a number of levels, including dreaming. If it's true that our consciousness is what is real then when we carry conscious thought with us from the waking world to the dream we are basically extending our "real lives" into the dream, thereby adding all that sleep time to our "conscious existence". That may, however fly in the face of true lucid dreaming where we want to see the dream as "not real" so that we can change it as we wish.

Hmmmmm.......I see it the other way around. If consciousness truly _is_ reality and we can develop the ability to carry that consciousness between the dream and the waking world, then both of those worlds are the same. That begs the question for LDers......are they both real or are they both a dream?

Toward the end he alluded to the possibility of sharing consciousness....combining that shared consciousness into one. I need to revisit that to see if I got that right. That would open some very cool possibilities for the continued evolution of a collective human consciousness.

 :smiley:

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## Zthread

> Good question. I don't have a very wide circle of acquaintances these days. I live with my co-star in an empty nest and she already sees me as a somewhat unique individual. I finish my exercise routine in the morning before work with a 4 minute headstand. I keep my dreaming to myself.



That's a long time to do a headstand! So she's not interested in your dreaming? Seems like most people aren't.





> No supplements. I tried Claridream very early on and decided i did not need it. No drugs....not even any medications.



Good to not use them, especially if they're not needed.





> I'm pretty tight with my diet. No junk food ever....lots of organic vegetables. No red meat for the last 40 years or so....organic poultry.



That should be really healthy.





> One major dietary enhancement is the kefir I have been making from grains for the last three years. I bought completely into that whole "gut bacteria rules the roost" thing back then and have not looked back. I am definitely a "bactosapien" these days. Healthier than I have ever been.



What does that taste like? Haven't tried that, but it's true the microorganisms in our body are really important. The bad ones can make us sick or kill us, but we'd die without the good ones.

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## Zthread

> I need to watch it again to really wrap my head around what he is postulating. What I have taken away from it so far is that the only thing that is truly real is our consciousness. All of the things that we experience around us are really icons for something much, much deeper.....and our bodies are pretty much user interfaces that allow us to use these icons around us to access the reality of our consciousness. Something along those lines.



Yes, the stuff about our bodies and sense perception being analogous to user interfaces that let us control a computer without us knowing anything about what's really going on in the computer (e.g., voltage levels in different parts of the circuitry, etc.). But is he really saying that the only thing that's real is consciousness? Maybe. I'm listening to it again right now. At one point he says "...the probability that we see reality as it is is zero." And that's based on the assumption that our senses were based on evolution (i.e., natural selection, random mutations, survival of the fittest, etc.). So he's not saying there isn't some physical reality out there, just that we don't really see it as it is. Instead, we just sense what we need to about it in order to have a reasonably high probability of surviving long enough to reproduce. The idea of survival implies some kind of physical reality, though, doesn't it? Or maybe in a reality that's purely non-physical (i.e., that consists only of consciousness) there could still be entities that survive and entities that don't survive?

He also says, "...the problem is that the very language of space and time and physical objects is the wrong language to describe objective reality. You could not frame a true description of the world in that language." So he's not saying there is no objective reality, just that we can't really know anything about what it actually is. Seems similar to Kant's doctrine of transcendental idealism, which says that we can know how things appear to us, but can never know anything about things in themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_idealism

He also says at one point that our senses provide us with a way of controlling reality without knowing anything about it. 

He goes on to say, "So now the question that you asked is 'What is that reality?' And the right answer is 'I don't know.' " So he doesn't seem to be saying there's no such thing as physical reality. Instead he's saying that we just don't know what reality is. Maybe even various concepts about reality such as the idea that it's purely based on physical entities out of which consciousness somehow arises, or the idea that reality consists only of consciousness are all without meaning, according to his view. Because if he's correct in saying that we don't know anything at all about the true nature of reality, then how can we have any valid concepts relating to it?

He then goes on to talk about the "hard problem of consciousness":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_p..._consciousness

He says, "And I'm trying to think of a theory of reality that will allow me to solve the hard problem of consciousness. The problem is this: We have a lot of interesting data that gives us correlations about certain kinds of brain activity and certain conscious experiences that we have."

But what I don't understand is: If we're fundamentally incapable of knowing anything about reality, how can we hope to develop a theory of reality? It seems totally futile. He even talks about data that he seems to be implying tells us something about reality, while simultaneously denying that we can know anything about reality. Collecting and utilizing data on brain activity, for example, seems to assume we know something about the reality of brains. How could that make sense, given his view that we can't know anything at all about reality?

Anyway, to continue. He says at some point, "And so this theory of evolution that I mentioned that says we don't see reality as it is has a *really strange consequence*. It means that when I see a physical object like an apple, effectively I'm creating that apple as a data structure in my interface much like if I'm in a virtual reality and I have a headset on and every time I turn over here I will see something--I'm rendering that in real time--I see an apple. As I go over here, I'm no longer rendering, uh, the apple's gone, but as soon as I return over there, I will again create a three-dimensional apple. So I'm saying this doesn't just happen in virtual reality, it happens in everyday life. I look over here, I see an apple, I'm literally creating that data structure, because now I'm..., effectively the apple is a description of fitness payoffs and how to get them. It's all about fitness, that's the key thing, evolution is all about fitness. But that means that the objects don't exist as pre-existing things. When I see an apple, we like to think well that's because there really is an apple, and I'm saying, no no, *there's some other reality out there*, but just like the blue icon on your desktop doesn't resemble the true file, the apple doesn't resemble anything in objective reality. It's an abstract data structure that's just telling you how to act to get fitness payoffs. *Here's the kicker: When you look inside your brain...inside your skull and you see a brain, that's also just a data structure that you're creating. Neurons are just data structures. They don't exist, and this is the weird stuff, I don't have a brain when no one looks*, and some of my colleagues would say, 'Yeah, I agree with that. Ha ha! You don't have a brain!' But the point of this is that *we create any physical object that we see in the moment that we see it, and so neurons don't exist when they're not perceived, therefore neurons could not be the source of our conscious experiences*."

I think he's getting things mixed up there. How can he know whether apples or neurons really exist, if he can't know anything about reality? He could say that sometimes we create the data structure of an apple or the data structure of a neuron, depending on the situation, but that doesn't say anything about whether those things in themselves (i.e., actual apples or actual neurons) exist or not in reality. I think he's mixing up our perception of reality with reality itself. That is, he's mixing up epistemology with metaphysics. But maybe I'm misunderstanding what he's saying.

He goes on to say, "So, what is reality? It's a long answer to your question, *but the answer is I don't know*, but I'm trying to come up with a reality that would allow me to solve this hard problem of consciousness. So if the brain is just a symbol that we create when we look, and I'm trying to understand how consciousness is related to it, if I start with a theory in which consciousness is fundamental, and I have to do it scientifically, saying what do I mean precisely by consciousness, with mathematical precision, and I have this theory of, that I call, conscious agents, in which conscious agents interact. It's like a... The proposal is that reality is a vast social network. It's like a Twitter-verse or Facebook, so it's a big social network of conscious agents, that's the reality. They're not in space and time. They're just consciousnesses interacting with each other. As they interact, they are passing experiences back and forth. And it's an infinite Twitter-verse, an infinite set of consciousnesses out there in this big social universe, yeah, social-network universe, and any single conscious agent in that network would be overwhelmed trying to understand all of it. Like if you were trying to understand Twitter, there's tens of millions, hundreds of millions, of users, billions of Tweets. How are you going to try to understand what's going on in the Twitter-verse. Well, you can't. But what you can do is you can use visualization tools. Suppose I have a visualization tool that compresses it all down, shows you what's trending in this city and what's trending over there. So you compress it all down, maybe into something you can see through a headset... That's what evolution did for us. The reality is this big vast social network of interacting conscious agents. Each individual agent would be overwhelmed, because it's infinite--social network. And, so, what we call the physical world just is our visualization tool. That's what we have."

OK, so that's interesting. It's obvious to me that many conscious agents exist and that they interact with each other. I have to agree with him on that. But, given that he doesn't believe we can ever know anything at all about reality, how could he, or anyone else, ever find evidence of any kind for or against his theory that reality is an infinite network of interacting conscious agents? In fact, how could any science of any kind be possible, if it's fundamentally impossible to know anything about the nature of reality? Also, how could his theory help to solve the hard problem of consciousness? Maybe he gets into that later in the video.

He also talks about how we don't directly perceive anything about anyone else's consciousness. For example, if we look at someone's face, we learn very little about their consciousness. We may get some idea of their emotional state, but that's about it. I think that's a valid point. We only directly experience our own consciousness.

Then he goes on to say that we mistakenly conclude from the fact that we can't directly experience other consciousnesses to mean that reality is fundamentally unconscious. Not sure that's a common mistake. Most people don't deny that consciousness exists, do they? There are different theories about what consciousness is and where it comes from, but I think most people understand that it exists. At least, one's own consciousness must exist, because we experience it directly. Another question, though, is does reality include entities that are unconscious, or does everything have some degree of consciousness. I get the feeling that he thinks everything has some degree of consciousness, but I'm not sure.

Listening to more of it, I do think he thinks consciousness is probably fundamental. Meaning that the physical realm, to the extent that it exists, comes out of consciousness. So that is more or less what you were saying in the quote from you at the top of this post. That is, the only thing that is real, or at least that we can really know is real, is consciousness. I thing that's what he believes is probably true, although ultimately he says we can't really know anything about what's real.

He says, "I don't know what the truth is. I'm just a scientist. I'm just proposing a bold hypothesis that consciousness is fundamental and it's real. *Now if it's false, it's false, we'll find out....*"

But how could we ever find out, if his assertion is true that we can't ever know anything about the true nature of reality? That's the main thing that bothers me. Seems like there's a contradiction there, but it could be I'm just not understanding what he's saying.





> That resonates with me on a number of levels, including dreaming. If it's true that our consciousness is what is real then when we carry conscious thought with us from the waking world to the dream we are basically extending our "real lives" into the dream, thereby adding all that sleep time to our "conscious existence".



Good point! Wonder what he would say about that.





> That may, however fly in the face of true lucid dreaming where we want to see the dream as "not real" so that we can change it as we wish.



True. I would assume that most people who are into LDs believe the physical world is real.





> Hmmmmm.......I see it the other way around. If consciousness truly _is_ reality and we can develop the ability to carry that consciousness between the dream and the waking world, then both of those worlds are the same. That begs the question for LDers......are they both real or are they both a dream?



*Great question! Really would like to know what he'd say about that.* He talks about our sense perceptions, and so forth, as being analogous to a user interface on a computer, but, instead, it's a user interface that lets us interact with reality in a way that promotes our survival from an evolutionary standpoint. *But is it just as much a user interface to reality when we're dreaming as it is when we're awake?!*





> Toward the end he alluded to the possibility of sharing consciousness....combining that shared consciousness into one. I need to revisit that to see if I got that right. That would open some very cool possibilities for the continued evolution of a collective human consciousness.



Yes, that would be worth exploring! No idea at all how it would be explored, however. *Another question that comes to mind in that regard is, if his theory is correct that reality fundamentally consists of interactions between an infinite number of conscious entities, then why doesn't the interface to reality that evolution has given us provide us with any direct experience of the consciousness of conscious entities other than ourselves?* Instead, it just appears to give us information about a purely physical, non-conscious (and perhaps completely illusory) "reality." *We seem to be almost completely cut off from what others are experiencing as conscious beings.* All we can do is get a very imprecise idea of what they're experiencing, based on what they say, what facial expressions they make, etc.

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## lenscaper

> Is he really saying that the only thing that's real is consciousness? Maybe.



i think that is what he is saying.....or at least strongly alluding to I love how he carries on with that kind of mischievous smile as he drops all of this very provocative stuff on us. And, yes.....he readily admits that he could be wrong, even as he says that much of this has been proven mathematically.





> He goes on to say, "So now the question that you asked is 'What is that reality?' And the right answer is 'I don't know.' " So he doesn't seem to be saying there's no such thing as physical reality. Instead he's saying that we just don't know what reality is.

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## Zthread

> i think that is what he is saying.....or at least strongly alluding to I love how he carries on with that kind of mischievous smile as he drops all of this very provocative stuff on us.



Yes, definitely thought provoking stuff! Really fun to think about.





> And, yes.....he readily admits that he could be wrong, even as he says that much of this has been proven mathematically.



Right, he did say those things. If it's mathematically correct, how could it be wrong? I think it's because a theory can be mathematically self-consistent but still not be an accurate description of reality.

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## Zthread

Have been thinking more about that video interview with cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman.

One thing that doesn't make sense to me is that if consciousness, as opposed to matter, is the fundamental basis of reality, then why does the nature and even existence of consciousness appear to be so dependent on matter? For example, if we ingest certain material substances, such as alcohol or cannabis, it directly impacts our conscious experience in obvious ways. Other material substances, such as certain general anesthetics, can even cause our consciousness to completely disappear, at least temporarily. And physical measurements (EEGs, etc.) of our brain activity directly correlate strongly with the nature or even presence or absence of our consciousness. It seems far more plausible to assume that matter existing in space and time is the fundamental basis of reality and that consciousness is dependent on matter. That is, different configurations of matter produce different forms of consciousness, including the absence of consciousness. How do you think Hoffman would respond to this line of reasoning?

The other thing that doesn't make sense to me is his claim that we can't know anything at all about reality. That doesn't seem plausible, given the vast knowledge we've accumulated over the centuries regarding how reality behaves. Specifically, the laws of physics. It's true that we don't know everything about reality, but we know enough to have developed advanced technologies that work extremely well. If we didn't really know anything about reality, how could we possibly make working automobiles, aircraft, spacecraft, communication systems, computers, and so forth? It seems far more plausible and useful to assume that we really do know quite a bit about reality, to the point where we can describe how it behaves mathematically in minute detail, as well as to control how it behaves in sophisticated and useful ways.

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## lenscaper

Yeah....that piece really does leave one pondering. I actually watched it again today to try to wrap my head around his concepts. It really is a good mental exercise.





> How do you think Hoffman would respond to this line of reasoning?



As far as consciousness being dependent on matter.....is it really? Perhaps consciousness itself exists within us in a primordial state and we are merely changing our perception of it through these physical means.

I think we _can_  know reality, as he depicts it, but to do so we may need to transcend our graspings and aversions to somehow see everything in that fleeting first moment of pure perception that exists, once again, in that primordial state.

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## Zthread

> Yeah....that piece really does leave one pondering. I actually watched it again today to try to wrap my head around his concepts. It really is a good mental exercise.



Yes, it really is!





> As far as consciousness being dependent on matter.....is it really? Perhaps consciousness itself exists within us in a primordial state and we are merely changing our perception of it through these physical means.



Perhaps that's true, but what's the evidence for it? All the evidence I've ever seen indicates to me that matter trumps consciousness. That is matter can alter or even destroy consciousness, but consciousness can't alter matter in any way. At least I've never observed consciousness altering matter. If I have a bottle of whiskey on my desk, I can't use my consciousness to alter that bottle of whiskey in any way. I can leave the room so that I can no longer see the bottle, and I may even forget it's there, but it'll still be there when I get back into the room, assuming no physical (i.e., matter-based) incident has destroyed it or moved it somewhere else. If I drink some whiskey from the bottle, on the other hand, it will alter my consciousness. It may even cause my consciousness to temporarily stop existing, if I drink enough of it. That is, it could cause me to black out. And if I drink way too much of it, it may even permanently destroy my consciousness (i.e., kill me). So it seems most plausible that from a metaphysical standpoint matter is primary and consciousness is secondary.





> I think we _can_  know reality, as he depicts it, but to do so we may need to transcend our graspings and aversions to somehow see everything in that fleeting first moment of pure perception that exists, once again, in that primordial state.



So, through various consciousness-enhancing practices, such as meditation? And lucid dreaming!

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## lenscaper

> All the evidence I've ever seen indicates to me that matter trumps consciousness. That is matter can alter or even destroy consciousness, but consciousness can't alter matter in any way.



That whiskey bottle is just an empty vessel really....in its essence. It has no substantive nature (to me) until I ascribe that nature to it through my desire to drink from it. My consciousness makes the whiskey bottle real....to me. When I leave the room and stop thinking about it, that bottle ceases to exist...for me. In fact, if I direct all of my consciousness at that spot on the wall behind the bottle......it ceases to exist right there in front of me......for me. Now if you come into the room and pour yourself a drink while I am fully involved with that spot on the wall....the whiskey bottle takes on substance for you....but not for me.

All that sounds pretty good after writing it......I'll be pondering it all day and see if anything sticks.  :smiley: 

I think we have a great deal to still discover about human consciousness as we continue to evolve as a species.





> So, through various consciousness-enhancing practices, such as meditation? And lucid dreaming!



Definitely!!!! I see lucid dreaming as an incredibly powerful tool in the quest to become fully realized beings....our true selves.  :Nod yes:

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## lenscaper

So....I have been practicing dream yoga protocols for a month or more now and just letting my dreams come that way. I have felt a slow and very steady build-up of clarity and awareness along with a marked increase in the number of dreams I have and remember. These basic protocols as outlined in "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep" are performed throughout the night after each natural sleep cycle.

I have been finding myself with an extra hour or two toward my rise time and this weekend I decided to take advantage off that time by attempting some wake induction techniques. I have never been very successful at achieving a fully realized WILD but this time things were a bit different. What was amazing was how quickly I found myself in HI and how fully involved I became. I incorporated a few of the other techniques I have been working on at the beginning and after a short while I found myself drifting out of my sleeping body and into a dream body. 

I tried to go to a few places that I have been in dream but the results were hazy and incomplete. So at one point I consciously pulled everything back to the bed. My body was asleep.....possibly even in SP but I could still feel intense energy building within. I was definitely awake and in that sweet spot just before sleep. Suddenly I was out in the back yard.....I felt myself rush out through the bedroom wall, through the music studio and out that exterior wall. The moon was in the western sky. I woke up.

I am posting this experience to underscore the impact of concentrating on a steady program for an extended period of time to establish lucid intent and to relax into a personal protocol. After nine months of daily practice and training I am still blown away by what we can achieve. I know that more control will come.

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## lenscaper

Shoshin is beginner's mind. It is a reminder that even as we learn and progress we must always remember how much we have yet to discover. I have been reminded of this recently and that I should be looking more to those with more experience as I continue my journey into lucidity. I believe that I will take that advice to heart.  :Nod yes: 

This thread has been a very good vehicle for me as it has allowed me to chronicle this amazing journey. It has been like a dream journal.....on steroids.  ::lol::  But I suspect that I may have overstepped myself a bit in the process. I do hope, though, that this chronicle has helped a few others that may have been following along on their own journey toward the clear light of lucid awareness.

 :smiley:

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## lenscaper

When next you stand at the cliff.........will you finally learn to fly?

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## lenscaper

So.....It has been one year to the day since that massive hippo rose from the river, blocking my downstream path and sending me and my old red Old Towne Penobscot canoe flying to the shore.....and onto the path of Lucid Dreaming. 

Since that day last year I have practiced some form of lucid induction technique every night while at the same time working constantly on my daytime practices. In that time I have developed a somewhat personalized night time protocol that has resulted in regular lucidity that is, at times, flight-worthy and at other times deeply introspective. But this path has led me more toward Dream and Sleep Yoga than toward the flights of fancy of Lucid Dreaming. Lucid Dreaming has become for me a crucial tool that allows me access to the previously hidden depths of my consciousness. I am steadily establishing a pattern of unbroken continuity of intrinsic lucidity between the waking state and the dream state. 

These days I am aware in my dreams every night........I watch them arise and I take part in them from a conscious perspective that allows me to shape them and redirect them subtly into transformative experiences that carry over into my days. I have effectively added a couple of hours each day to the time that I have left in this body to become a more fully realized human.....to become my true self.

And every so often I find myself alone in a dream....standing at the cliff's edge. In those dreams now, even the sky is no limit.

Sleep well....and dream.

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## mobwicket

I had the same too!

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## lenscaper

As my daytime practices spill over more and more into my nights and my foundational lucidity gets stronger and stronger, I am finding myself going beyond the dream......to a deeper level of consciousness from where the dream state is illuminated. Actually, this deeper state of consciousness feels like it is lighting up both my waking state and my dream state at the same time and I can feel them starting to blend together into one inseparable awareness.

I think that this place beyond the dream itself...the illuminated dream state in particular.....is starting to give me access to seeds of understanding that have been lodged in my subconscious over all these years but have never quite made it to the light. Lucidity has become, for me, a powerful tool in my quest for answers to some simple questions......questions like....

Who are we?
Where did we come from?
Where are we going?

Of course, flying is way cool too........gotta have me some fun once in a while, right? :Nod yes:

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## zelcrow

I'm glad to see you're still working at this, lenscaper, and that you're having such profound results.  Over the past years I have developed a strong interest in these states it seems you're pointing towards - accessing and experiencing deeper levels of consciousness or awareness.  I have never experienced what you describe but I hope to in time.  I still have goals of meditating in a LD but haven't yet tried.  Also, I've read about the void to be experienced through LDing.

You seem to be consistent with working on all of this.  I would like to know what you feel keeps you motivated.

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## lenscaper

Hey Zelcrow!

Very early on I was motivated by any LD successes. Once I found that I could really dream like this I knew that there had to be more. I also realized that, like anything else, it was going to take persistent hard work to achieve any kind of consistency. I learned to find small successes almost every night....even if sometimes that success meant finding out what didn't work.

But what has really motivated me in this past year is how my outlook on life and my understanding of who I am at a very deep level began to evolve. When I began to regularly experience amazing clarity in dreams and then began to gain some control over them, I realized that I was tapping into an incredible connection to a deep and vast reservoir of experiences from my past, experiences that occurred at many different levels of consciousness. I knew right away that there was enlightenment and understanding in these dreams. Through this nocturnal osmosis I have begun to feel more relaxed and centered in my life.....I feel as though all the pieces are beginning to fit together much better.

Instead of looking for fun and adventure in my dreams I began to just let them come while I watched them unfold. I have had countless conversations and interactions with people from my past, some who were quite close to me and some who I did not even recognize. These dreams always leave me feeling at once lighter and more fulfilled. I look forward every night now to whatever amazing vignettes my subconscious gives me, knowing that I will be able to interact with them with some degree of lucid awareness.

I should also say that every week to ten days or so I get a very different kind of dream....one with no characters at all that instead is all about just letting go and experiencing the wonders of the dream. It is incredibly motivating to know that these dreams will always come now.

There is still so much for me to learn....and that is also very motivating. I know that as I continue to build my foundational lucidity I will no doubt gain more and more stability in those dreams where a more situational lucidity is appropriate.

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## zelcrow

That is wonderful and encouraging that your experience has taken that shape over the course of this past year.

What you write as "the place beyond the dream itself...the illuminated dream state in particular" and "one with no characters at all," it reminds me of what I've been reading about recently on nondualism and the experience of oneness, experiencing "no-thing" and no sense of separate self, headlessness as Douglas Harding puts it in _On Having no Head_.  I got started on this with David Carse's _Perfect Brilliant Stillness_, then Wei Wu Wei's (aka Terrance Gray) works, and a little Sri Nisargadatta.   Experientally I am not there yet, but I am quite fascinated and aim to move in this direction. 

It also led me back to Clare R. Johnsons' Llewellyn's Complete Book of Lucid Dreaming because she has a chapter on "The Void" and how to get there. It is described as what can feel like infinite space and you may feel like a point of awareness.  Also, it can be a "blank canvas" kind of dream state. She mentions techniques to get there such as going through a portal, a mirror, backflipping into that state, and even literally digging through the dream scene to get there.  

It seems that this plane of experience is or is closely linked to the experience of oneness that mystics have described for millennia. 

Would you say this state you are experiencing is a kind of lucid suspension?  When you're there is there any dream scenery of any kind? I am interested to hear any more you have to add on what this deeper and more profound dream state is like for you.

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## lenscaper

Hey Zelcrow.....that's a great list of reading and I have noted those authors for my own continuing research. I'm very interested in Dr. Johnson's perspective as I have been through that portal. My studies have taken me on a bit of a side trip into understanding of consciousness through a great deal of exposure to Donald Hoffman who has a very interesting theory on what he calls "conscious agents". 

I have also been greatly influenced of late by James Low. Here he riffs eloquently on Dzogchen and Non-duality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wfxx-1uiXk

I am also reading a book by Evan Thompson called "Waking, Dreaming, Being". Early on in the book Evan describes the classic Buddhist view of consciousness as consisting of three main states (Waking, Dreaming and Deep Dreamless Sleep) These are underpinned by The Fourth state (Turiya) which illuminates the three. This concept has really energized my dreaming of late as I have been working hard to access this Fourth state of conscious throughout my days and into my nights. 

I am using this underlying state of luminous emptiness in my late cycle free meditation period every night. I should explain that, by way of addressing your interest in the "place beyond the dreams". I'll be brief.  :smiley: 

Around five months ago I pretty much abandoned the classic LD techniques in favor of the protocols laid out in Tenzin Wangyal's "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep" (Part Three, Section 5). I have followed these protocols specifically every night since and my dreams have become amazingly clear and stable, with a great dealt of lucidity. But as I have become somewhat proficient at them I have often found myself with an hour or so of unstructured time at the end of the night.

During these free nocturnal meditation periods I am able to try different things out in a wake induction kind of scenario. I have developed some very powerful meditations that have brought me to some very cool places........beyond the dream. The most powerful times come after I have had two or three (or sometimes more) dreams with strong foundational lucidity (and occasional situational lucidity   :armflap:  ) and I have risen to record them and to sit in the dark to ponder them for a bit. Returning to bed I have a couple of different protocols that use to access that empty luminous place.

A typical sleep yoga type of result from just the other night is to let hypnagogic imagery surround me during the meditation. After a time, the HI slowly clears revealing a blackness that is filled with countless points of light. As sleep surrounds me I slip into a different blackness that is neither asleep nor awake. There are no dreams and no dream images. The other night I awoke fully from this state almost immediately but close to 30 minutes had gone by. 

There are other very interesting places that I have gone beyond the dream....but I did promise to be brief. :smiley:

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## michael79

> I have been through that portal???......."conscious agents"????



What portal, I'm genuinely interested in portals! Conscious agents in the dream or???





> Deep Dreamless Sleep



What it says about this state, because I'm into researching it and have various success so far.

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## michael79

> It also led me back to Clare R. Johnsons' Llewellyn's Complete Book of Lucid Dreaming because she has a chapter on "The Void" and how to get there. It is described as what can feel like infinite space and you may feel like a point of awareness.  Also, it can be a "blank canvas" kind of dream state. She mentions techniques to get there such as going through a portal, a mirror, backflipping into that state, and even literally digging through the dream scene to get there.  
> .



More portals please!!! What is backflipping? Digging through the dream scene, I'm already trying to do that, tearing down the fourth wall. Last time when I had a chance, I opened a blackhole like portal and fall through it, I was falling for at least fifteen minutes real time into total blackness, it was a bizarre experience, it is like the void was engulfing me.

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## lenscaper

> What portal, I'm genuinely interested in portals!



My only experience with portals came during an early WBTB that turned into a period of void (sleep yoga?) After 30 minutes or so of dreamless sleep that was not quite sleep I emerged from a silvery opaque portal into the waking state. The portal was oval shaped and very real. I was not dreaming at the time.....or more specifically, I did not recall a dream upon awakening. I did not enter a portal in a lucid dream. I have tried to get back to that portal consciously with no success.





> Conscious agents in the dream or???



Donald Hoffman's theory of conscious agents that I referred to is a proposed definition of consciousness that begins at a very basic level. He postulates that consciousness is....reality.....and that reality, as we perceive it, is false. He does not address this theory specifically to lucid dreaming. 

As a student of the more spiritual applications of lucid dreaming I have found a deeper understand of consciousness....and reality...... to be very helpful in blending the waking state with the dream state as we do when we dream lucidly. If you are interested in such this might be worth 40 minutes of your time:

https://aeon.co/videos/its-impossibl...neuroscientist

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## zelcrow

Cool, lenscaper.  If you do check into any of them, I hope some will resonate with you.  Oh, that's interesting you mention Donald Hoffman.  I haven't checked into him yet, but he was referred to in my reading and I put him on my list.  So this just gives me more reason to go ahead and look him up.  Also, thanks for the link.  I'll check it out soon, hopefully, anyway.

Oh, no kidding?  Coincidentally I read that very same book on dream yoga back in November (also about five months ago) and bookmarked the very section you mentioned!  I think I'll go back and have another look at it again and maybe try some of the practices.  I like some of the distinctions made within that book for meditation and it has helped in that regard in my experience.

It's very interesting to read about your experience with all of this.  Thank you for sharing.  And yes, you were brief, but you're welcome to expound more if you'd like. I'm glad to know you're breaking through barriers or layers.  I typically don't have high-level lucids, at least compared to other accounts of lucids I've read.  I'm planning to focus on tuning that up.  

And michael79,  what I read about backflips I can quote.  "Simply to do a back-flip when I realize I’m dreaming, with the intention of entering the void."
She also says it can be entered through meditating during a lucid dream with the intent of entering the void.  Say something like "When I open my eyes, I'll be in the void."  She also writes that doors, pools of water, holes in the ground, and windows.  Mirrors seem to be especially efficient portals.  Or you can use a finger to trace and create a portal and then go through it with an intention to end up in the void, or wherever you want for that matter.

P.S.  Thanks for the Donald Hoffman link, lenscaper.  I'm really looking forward to that one.

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## michael79

> My only experience with portals came during an early WBTB that turned into a period of void (sleep yoga?) After 30 minutes or so of dreamless sleep that was not quite sleep I emerged from a silvery opaque portal into the waking state. The portal was oval shaped and very real. I was not dreaming at the time.....or more specifically, I did not recall a dream upon awakening. I did not enter a portal in a lucid dream. I have tried to get back to that portal consciously with no success.



By the void do you mean blackness state? Are you saying that your consciousness emerged from HI(like a big silver circle that you went through and woke up) portal?

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## michael79

> "When I open my eyes, I'll be in the void." .



Are we talking about the same void, the infinity blackness space which you are floating bodiless. If is this then I experience that void all the time, especially when my lucid dream fall apart.

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## lenscaper

> By the void do you mean blackness state?



It was early in my training and I had been trying really hard to master WILD......spending very long periods of time in HI. These sessions were having mixed results. I remember this as a very strong session. By that I mean that I was able to put my body to sleep while staying very awake and aware. After a very long time the HI just stopped coming and I slipped into a blackness that was not quite sleep. This was the first time that happened.






> Are you saying that your consciousness emerged from HI(like a big silver circle that you went through and woke up) portal?



That's pretty much exactly what happened. Except it was not like emerging from HI......the HI had stopped before I drifted into this state. It was more like emerging from a deep peaceful void.

The portal was more oval shaped and very well defined. It was an opaque silvery color. I was laying on my back in the bed but the emergence was a physical thing.......I felt as if my body had passed through it.....or more like I had tumbled out of it. I could see the portal as I emerged and just after. It was in the air to the left of my head. I awoke feeling incredibly refreshed and exhilarated.

I have been in this void a number of times since but I have not experienced that kind of passage again.

Quite often these days the HI will stop....as if I have run out of imagery or run out of dreams. When that happens and I am able to stay awake a bit longer I generally end up in this void.

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## zelcrow

> Are we talking about the same void, the infinity blackness space which you are floating bodiless. If is this then I experience that void all the time, especially when my lucid dream fall apart.



Yes, that sounds very much like the void described.  Do you enjoy being in the void?  In Buddhism, it is called the "radiant womb of emptiness."  I have only experienced this for brief times before awakening from LDs.  It seems there's a lot within this state.  Clare Johnson wrote that when she first started experiencing this it was boring until she realized it was a thought-responsive environment, like an LD.  Her account of creating music starting with a violin and adding more and more instruments on top of it is pretty interesting.  But more than that, it seems as though you can use this state, the void, through intent to be able to have nondual experiences, or glimpse consciousness before conceptualizing occurs.  It's purported that your sense of self can be found here, but also easily let go and dissolved.

For how long do you find yourself in this state after your LDs fall apart, michael79?  Also, have you had any interesting experiences while in the void?

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## michael79

Thanks, your explanation totally makes everything clear, we are very similar in our approach, I'm also doing all kind of weird experiments all the time. My portals are also oval, but tend to differ in color, blue or red or yellow. Going through them and come out of them is a profound experience. If you ever run out of HI you can try only the long cycles of SSILD, repeating them several times, HI always appear for me. 

If you didn't try power naps yet, I highly recommend doing them, especially at evening they work the best. I found that when doing some visualizations, I must keep my focus very stable and my heart pulse low, only then I can go deeper. It's different than wild, I keep my focus one step away from the dream and I go in between states, half-asleep half-awake, in that state a lot of interesting stuff happens. You can also try expand/translate your consciousness into deep sleep first thing at night, it can be bad timing for lucid dreams, but it is very good timing for other kind of experiences.

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## lenscaper

> If you ever run out of HI you can try only the long cycles of SSILD, repeating them several times, HI always appear for me.



I agree about SSILD bringing HI every time. I have been working a lot with that liminal (bardo) space between the two states and SSILD is always a great place to start. I go through cycles until I get HI and then stay with the HI.

One interesting thing about that is that on nights where I have had many dreams with very strong recall HI is still sometimes hard to come by in that last cycle. Tenzin Wangyal speaks of karmic traces as the seeds of dreams and I wonder how that translates into HI as well. By extension, I wonder if after many clear dream images the well, as it is, can run dry for a while.

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## lenscaper

The dreams have come and gone in the night. I have captured them on paper and then I have let them go. For the last period of time I have sat on the couch in the dark studio draining all thoughts, all emotions.....everything. With my breath I have accessed Muladhara, the storehouse of dreams, or so I have heard, and now, as I sit in the dark, hypnagogic imagery is flooding my vision. Waves of yellow and purple light wash over me as I rise from the couch and move back to the bed.

It is still dark outside my bedroom and I am fully awake. Lying on my back I watch the lights coalesce into shapes as I let my body slowly drift into sleep. I reach out to the world around me and begin to draw in energy......it collapses in on me in a visceral rush, collecting at my center and causing my body to tremble uncontrollably. I ride those waves of energy until they subside and then I release that energy from within in an explosion of light that fills my body. The hypnagogia is gone now, replaced by a firmament of stars as I let the light within dissolve my body into emptiness.

I become a luminous being. The stars that had surrounded me fade. There are no dreams.....so hypnagogic dream images......no thoughts. There is nothing left to reflect my luminosity. The clear light of Turiya, that Fourth level of consciousness, has nothing left to illuminate. There is now only a deep, endless perfect blackness that is filled with clear light that now falls on nothing.

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## michael79

Good work lenscaper, when I was five that was my favourite exercise, lying on my back with closed eyes in a dark room, watching the tiny fireworks from phosphene's behind my closed eyelids, until only darkness remain. I can do that now even in very bright room and when I stop seeing the light of phosphenes and everything turns completely black with clear transition, then I know I no longer see with my physical eyes, the real show begin then.

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## michael79

> Yes, that sounds very much like the void described.  Do you enjoy being in the void?  In Buddhism, it is called the "radiant womb of emptiness."  I have only experienced this for brief times before awakening from LDs.  It seems there's a lot within this state.  Clare Johnson wrote that when she first started experiencing this it was boring until she realized it was a thought-responsive environment, like an LD.  Her account of creating music starting with a violin and adding more and more instruments on top of it is pretty interesting.  But more than that, it seems as though you can use this state, the void, through intent to be able to have nondual experiences, or glimpse consciousness before conceptualizing occurs.  It's purported that your sense of self can be found here, but also easily let go and dissolved.
> 
> For how long do you find yourself in this state after your LDs fall apart, michael79?  Also, have you had any interesting experiences while in the void?



I also finding it kind of boring to stay just in the void, but I also found it's thought related. The times not targeting lucid dreams purposely, I do Image Streaming and for direct line of communication with DC's and other supernatural activities that doesn't have a big ground around here. The Image streaming is thought based highly detailed series of images, I thought a word "volcano, green scenery, Past, Future, Space" and the void starting show me series of well crafted images in a slide show, frankly I wanted to be an artist and to be able to paint what I see, because I have a lot of materials so far, that are hard to be described in words. I also found that can show me parts of books with unknown origin, but requires a immersive focus to stay on a single page without changing, my line of thoughts must be steady as a water surface and my hearth pulse low as possible or everything just fall apart. Full conversations with DC's follow the same rules. Of course it can develope in full motion hallucination while still awake, like very deep meditation.

After LD fall apart and I found myself in the void, I always try DEILD. Conversations with death people which still remain on this level and full blown lucid hallucinations, are they count as interesting experiences.

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## fogelbise

Hi Lenscaper! How is your practice evolving? Miss seeing you around here.

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## lenscaper

Hey fogelbise....thanks for the shout out. I kind of got the message that perhaps I was saying too much and not listening enough for a newbie.....so I backed off to do more listening.  :smiley: 

I still practice diligently day and night and I have turned a few more corners.....multiple clear dreams every night with true lucidity once a week or so. I have developed a protocol that lets me get good restorative sleep early followed by strong dreams toward morning. My successes have come from a willingness to explore a few paths that are not in EWOLD and from being absolutely committed to the practice.

This path has changed my life for the better.

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## fogelbise

> Hey fogelbise....thanks for the shout out. I kind of got the message that perhaps I was saying too much and not listening enough for a newbie.....so I backed off to do more listening.



I hope no member here made you feel that way! It is only through the help of both new and older serious practitioners that a forum like this will continue to be a place to come and discuss things for many years. I have not been visiting enough, but I hope to change that and hope others will too.

That is great to hear that you are keeping up your practice and that the practice has had such a positive influence on you! This feedback helps all who look at it, with the right mindset.

I look forward to more updates  :smiley:

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## lenscaper

So...here is what I have been up to.....   :smiley: 

I have been working hard on my somewhat personalized approach to lucid dreaming that involves a luminous dream body. Here, briefly, is how that works:

While in a meditative state, perhaps after a WBTB, reach out to the environment and invite in the underlying essence of energy that is a part of everything. Feel it. Bring it in to your center and hold it there before releasing it into your body as an explosion of light. Let that light dissolve your body. Form becomes formless as you merge completely with that underlying essence. Flow through that which flows through you.

In time, let that primordial essence, which you are now one with, coalesce back into form. Feel the luminous body forming within your physical body.  For me that feels almost like a gentle reverberation. Let the luminous body separate gently from your physical body in a totally non-dual manner......and inseparable separation. Feel your luminous arms moving as your physical body drifts toward sleep. This is a good time for a little FILD practice.

Just before sleep takes you, transfer your consciousness into the luminous dream body. Let that body _become_  your dream. The luminous images of your dream are just a projection of your own dream body.

********

Last night I had seven clear dreams. The last three were strikingly lucid and the last of those three was very powerful:

_I am standing on a rocky mountain peak. It is dark but I can see other mountain peaks very close. Incredibly dark clouds are just above me with tendrils of black snaking down toward me. I am calm because I know I am dreaming. I look to the north and there between the peaks an even darker and lower cloud is rolling toward me. I watch it approach. Then I turn to the east where, far in the distance the bright and clear light of the rising sun is poking through just on the horizon. I get down on one knee and look to the light........and wake up._

Just sharing.

I hope all is well with all of you. I had my dance with COVID and came out the other side.  :Nod yes:

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## fogelbise

Wow, you got covid and probably have the antibodies and hopefully a level of protection. 

I wondered if I could have had a case with more mild symptoms around February when it wasn't on my radar but I really have no idea...no tests done. I was a little worried I had something else at the time.

Thanks for sharing more of your personalized approach to LDing.

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## lenscaper

> Wow, you got covid and probably have the antibodies and hopefully a level of protection. 
> 
> I wondered if I could have had a case with more mild symptoms around February when it wasn't on my radar but I really have no idea...no tests done. I was a little worried I had something else at the time.



Yes, but we'll see about the antibodies. You may well have had it, especially if you were around anybody who may have been exposed.

I was exposed to family members who traveled from Italy just before their lockdown and were not interested in self-quarantining. They are young and strong and never got sick. I knew I had to watch for it due to my long relationship with Lyme disease so I immediately took myself out of the workplace and set my office up here in my music studio.....where I remain.

A week later I was showing classic symptoms of mild COVID. The physical symptoms lasted less than three weeks. Testing was not easy to come by at that time so I just hunkered down and rode it out. The odd thing about this malaise is how it affected me psychologically. I felt as if I had been taken apart in some way and needed to reassemble myself. Being is isolation, I have used that time to strengthen myself spiritually...which has had a very strong ancillary effect on my lucid dreaming. I have taken up the practice of Shamatha/Vipashyana meditation and daily sunrise walks in the nearby nature center have steeped me in Shinrin-yoku (Forest Bathing). There has been a lot of time for study as well.

I feel as though I am building a strong lucid foundation one well-fitted block at a time.

Again....health and strength to all.

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## fogelbise

A happy ending for sure!

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## lenscaper

After 18 months of daily and nightly practice where I have immersed myself completely in the soup of conscious awareness and lucid dreaming, I have only now just had my first hour long fully lucid dream where I was able to do all of the things we read about here in these pages. 

I walked through walls and flew up through ceilings from one dream scene to another. I spun around to change scenes and remain lucid and stuck my finger through my palm. I dissolved unwanted dream characters and faced down angry ones with a smile before doing so. I finally woke up when I tried hard to close my eyes and meditate.....I could not do that.

In these 18 months I have tasted the chocolate many times through dozens of short but amazing lucid events but I have now had the entire bar of chocolate and it was delicious.

18 months of unflagging persistence. 

Those of you reading this who have been on this path for years may be chuckling a bit or cracking a knowing smile.......but for others of you who may be just starting out on this path I am here to say that this is not easy, but you absolutely can succeed at it if you never, ever give up.

Sleep well....and dream.

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## FryingMan

Brilliant, you are a real inspiration!   ::goodjob::   I have re-(re-re-re-) started my own practice and hope to achieve these results in my own practice (or sooner if possible!).

I've never had an hour-long high lucidity dream.   I estimate my longest LD was somewhere 20-40 minutes long but was fairly low awareness.      This is a really significant milestone, and am sure you will achieve ever better results.   And you know the recipe: never ever ever give up, keep the fire burning hot, practice every day and night!

Congrats again!    ::banana::

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## Goldenspark

Congrats Lenscaper! That is inspiration for us all!
I've been away from here for a while, but just getting back in.
However, your practice, as you describe in this thread from May, seems to be very esoteric :-) Not sure I quite understand it - sounds almost trippy.

I have reached a bit of an empasse with my LD practice, but that's probably my own fault. I seem to have at least two quite vivid, but usually ordinary dreams each night that I recall quite well, and have kept up with my DJ, but I have only had two short LDs this year. I'm looking to change something (not expecting a quick fix - I've been doing this 8+ years now!).

I do have numerous "that doesn't seem quite right" thoughts during my non-lucids, but just can't seem to break through.
I've had numerous WILD attempts with no real success (did have on several years ago, but too much loss of sleep!).

Maybe I'll try exploring the WBTB/WILD method again in a similar way that you have.

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## lenscaper

> your practice, as you describe in this thread from May, seems to be very esoteric :-) Not sure I quite understand it - sounds almost trippy.



Thanks for checking this out and for your support and comments, Goldenspark.

I admit that much of what I have done and posted above is quite esoteric. I have just been letting myself go in whatever direction the experiences open up for me, all the while keeping the tried and true LD protocols in sight. Sometimes this has led me into strange territory for sure but, as I mentioned, I have definitely been tasting the chocolate along the way.

Now I am somewhat stumbling down a more specific path as handed down for centuries for I have discovered the Six Yogas of Naropa. These Tibetan tantric yoga protocols use dream yoga as one part of a cohesive program for spiritual improvement. Within the Dream Yoga protocol, as I am seeing it, Lucid Dreaming becomes a prerequisite. Interestingly enough, I have found that much of the odd personalized stuff that I have been doing is mirrored in these Six Yogas, specifically, the first and foundational one called The Yoga of Inner Heat.

I think that is why the floodgates seem to have opened for me now.





> Maybe I'll try exploring the WBTB/WILD method again in a similar way that you have.



I have definitely found that I have my strongest lucidity in the dream when I can enter the dream bringing with me lucidity from the waking state. Specific nocturnal meditation during a WBTB has become a very powerful tool.

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## Goldenspark

Interesting Lenscaper. 
I guess what ever works is fine, but do you think maybe expectation has a lot to do with your success? Nothing wrong with that of course, but because the experience is very unique to you, it might not work for others, and probably not generally?
That's where I think the psychology is probably very important. With you it sounds like you have a self-fulfilling prophesy, i.e. it works because you believe it does, but the belief is reasonable because.... it really DOES work! I can see how negative schemas could do the opposite (I can't do this, so you won't be able to!).

Hopefully your success and that of others can help in that turn-around for me.

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## lenscaper

Those are very good points, Goldenspark. I truly think that intention to succeed paves a strong road to success.....and I did set a strong intention to succeed early on.

I'm not so sure how much of that was psychological in nature, however. I think, instead, that through persistent trial and error that began to yield very concrete results I found myself arriving at some time tested methodologies albeit from some not so time tested perspectives. I feel a bit as if I have been hacking my way through the dense forest and have suddenly come across a well paved road that's headed in the same direction.

For example......my very odd method of drawing in energies from outside to create an explosion of light within absolutely resulted in some spectacular lucidity. I stuck with that, even though I was never able to stabilize it. That odd method mirrors almost exactly what I am now learning about the centuries old Tibetan yoga protocol of using internal (and external) energy to ignite the heat in the central channel and energize the subtle energy body. That energy body becomes the dream body. Following their preparation protocols has resulted in a much more stable lucid experience.....and one that seems (so far) to be repeatable.

I appreciate this discussion and I hope to hear more of your perspectives on this.

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## michael79

Lenscaper, congratulation on reaching your first big milestone  ::goodjob::  Keep going with the good work, I'm sure that soon enough you gonna have 3-4 hour long lucid dreams  :smiley: 

And who knows maybe even an AP  :Peek:

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## lenscaper

> Lenscaper, congratulation on reaching your first big milestone  Keep going with the good work, I'm sure that soon enough you gonna have 3-4 hour long lucid dreams 
> 
> And who knows maybe even an AP



Hey michael79 ....chuckling at that. Actually the texts that I am working on all call for the mastery of clear light sleep _before_ Dream Yoga (LD). My routine these days is 5 or 6 hours of good sleep with passive dreaming. When I get that right it leaves with the last sleep cycle for noctural meditation and lucid dreaming.....that's just right for an old guy who needs his sleep. In fact, good restful sleep is crucial for strong lucid dreaming, imo.

As for AP.......I have been out of this old body three strong times in the last few months. It seems that the subtle energy body can be separated (inseparably} from the physical body.

You can't make this stuff up....at least I can't.

Thanks for your support!

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## michael79

> Actually the texts that I am working on all call for the mastery of clear light sleep _before_ Dream Yoga (LD). My routine these days is 5 or 6 hours of good sleep with passive dreaming. When I get that right it leaves with the last sleep cycle for noctural meditation and lucid dreaming.....that's just right for an old guy who needs his sleep. In fact, good restful sleep is crucial for strong lucid dreaming, imo.



I see that you follow Zen path, than pure lucid dreaming, of course meditation and yoga can be good for the health. Though even within the last sleep cycle you still can get an 2 to 4 hours of a lucid dream, after all lucid dreaming is still sleeping. You just need to increase your dream control and "forcefully" extend your Rem state beyond the normal boundary. Unless someone on other side is _ yelling_ at you to wake up ::D: , I know you can do it sooner or later.




> As for AP.......I have been out of this old body three strong times in the last few months. It seems that the subtle energy body can be separated (inseparably} from the physical body.
> 
> You can't make this stuff up....at least I can't.



I hope someday you put down some of your stories in your dream journal, I'm sure many will be interested in reading those.

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## lenscaper

> I see that you follow Zen path, than pure lucid dreaming



I'd say that I see lucid dreaming as an absolute prerequisite for the practice of dream yoga and I am using both for spiritual improvement rather than recreational purposes. There's a pertinent passage in one of the books I am reading. This is a translation from an 11th century text on the uses of Dream Yoga on the path toward spiritual enlightenment:  _"The dream yoga begins with cultivating the ability to retain dreams, which means the ability to recognize the dream as a dream while dreaming, without disturbing the flow of content of the experience."_

That said, when I find myself alone in a dream......I like to fly. 





> I hope someday you put down some of your stories in your dream journal, I'm sure many will be interested in reading those.



Hmmmm.....I journal every night. I have never given enough consideration to the journaling section here. Perhaps it would be a good exercise for me to put down a few of my most powerful nocturnal experiences from the last year or so....as I still recall them from memory. Thanks for that suggestion michael79

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## lenscaper

I have made some entries in my journal. These are the most vibrant nocturnal experiences from the last 18 months or so...all written from memory. They pretty much define my journey thus far.

Thanks again for the suggestion michael79.

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## michael79

> I'd say that I see lucid dreaming as an absolute prerequisite for the practice of dream yoga and I am using both for spiritual improvement rather than recreational purposes. There's a pertinent passage in one of the books I am reading. This is a translation from an 11th century text on the uses of Dream Yoga on the path toward spiritual enlightenment:



I may disappoint you, but I never read any book on lucidity nor spirituality, this way I remain open minded towards any experience I can have. 





> _"The dream yoga begins with cultivating the ability to retain dreams, which means the ability to recognize the dream as a dream while dreaming, without disturbing the flow of content of the experience."_



In most of my Lucid dreaming and Astral Projection I always tend to go with flow of what is happening and where that gonna lead me. I change stuff only when I have a particular goal to achieve.




> That said, when I find myself alone in a dream......I like to fly.



I wonder why everybody want to fly on their first experiences, I for example like to roam freely, opening doors and see where they are gonna send me. I found doors, windows, elevators, mirrors to have the most punchy effect. Once I opened my bathroom door ...on the other side I got myself on a train, that was quite a shock.
Though, in my first lucids thirty years ago, I always opened my window to fly above my city and when I was getting tired of flying I lay down on a rooftop to observe the stars.

One suggestion search for your spiritual guide, when you meet him you will get that special feeling that he is the One. This will boost your path towards spirituality tenfold.

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## lenscaper

> I may disappoint you, but I never read any book on lucidity nor spirituality, this way I remain open minded towards any experience I can have.



I actually like that perspective. Remember, though.....I got a late start in life at this. So I have read everything I can get online and, in some cases in books, on lucid dreaming to try to jump start the experience. It has worked. I'm not really much of a "spiritualist"....certainly not a Buddhist....but I have definitely co-opted many of the Buddhist perspectives in my "bottom up" (as opposed to "top down") approach to full time lucidity and spiritual development.





> I wonder why everybody want to fly on their first experiences.



I am just gaining the ability to remain stable for extended periods. Flying....or just even floating....is pretty easy and it is still pretty exhilarating. If your first LD was 30 years ago you have 28 years of experience on me. I like your approach to things.....mine is very similar.





> One suggestion search for your spiritual guide, when you meet him you will get that special feeling that he is the One. This will boost your path towards spirituality tenfold.



I actually met a guide a few months ago....but I was not ready. He looked at me so hard that he went right through me. He said nothing but his look told me that he had much to share. His face...especially his grey eyes....is burned into my memory. have not run into him since. Might have missed my chance.

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## Sageous

> I wonder why everybody want to fly on their first experiences,



Freedom.  

Flying is a near perfect expression of freedom; you can go anywhere you want, in a manner that just smacks waking-life physical restrictions right in the face.  

Empowerment.

Flying is an almost unconscious expression of power; an action that easily states the "I can do anything" rush that comes with LD's, especially early on.

Fun.

And, of course, flying can be a hoot!

So: Freedom, power, and great fun; those are some pretty good reasons for novices to fly, I think!

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## michael79

> Freedom.  
> 
> Flying is a near perfect expression of freedom; you can go anywhere you want, in a manner that just smacks waking-life physical restrictions right in the face.  
> 
> Empowerment.
> 
> Flying is an almost unconscious expression of power; an action that easily states the "I can do anything" rush that comes with LD's, especially early on.
> 
> Fun.
> ...



You make some good points there, I myself choose Freedom, Freedom is Fun  :tongue2: 
In my first lucids I not only choose to fly over the city, but also to jump from rooftop to rooftop, which nowadays is called parkour btw and some suicidal jumps from the top of 20 floor buildings :armflap:  ::fly::

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## michael79

> I am just gaining the ability to remain stable for extended periods. Flying....or just even floating....is pretty easy and it is still pretty exhilarating.



Sometimes try to jump from a skyscraper and flap with yours arms like duck :armflap: , free falling can be very good, it gives me adrenaline rush when wake up :Shades wink:  if you ever watched the Matrix, when Neo jump from the rooftop and falling.





> If your first LD was 30 years ago you have 28 years of experience on me. I like your approach to things.....mine is very similar.



Don't worry I was a natural, almost every dream I have when I was young were lucid, for a while I was thinking that is a standard for everyone, but later learned that most people don't ever dream. Then life gone faster for me and I started to loose the nonstop lucidity. Then some time later I found what I was doing is called Lucid Dreaming and started reading about techniques all over Internet on how to comeback to Lucidity. Along the way I met my Higher Self and my Spiritual guide (SG) and learned tons of stuff, found that SG always is talking in riddles, like a Master to a child. But there are still a lot of stuff I need to learn and discover.




> I actually met a guide a few months ago....but I was not ready. He looked at me so hard that he went right through me. He said nothing but his look told me that he had much to share. His face...especially his grey eyes....is burned into my memory. have not run into him since. Might have missed my chance.



Don't worry you will have more chances to meet him, you just need to have an Intension to meet him, he will find you when the time is right, ahh and don't go for the look alone, SG have the ability to shape shift, so he can be anything from a teddy bear to a flying Dragon, but when you meet him you always get a very special feeling which cannot be mistaken, I'm saying this because there can be some fakers which just pretend to be your SG and make fun of you, a low energy beings.

P.S. and remember I'm always very interested in AP and OBE experiences :smiley:

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## lenscaper

> Sometimes try to jump from a skyscraper and flap with yours arms like duck, free falling can be very good, it gives me adrenaline rush when wake up if you ever watched the Matrix, when Neo jump from the rooftop and falling.



I often find myself at a precipice. I think my subconscious is giving me the opportunity. In one dream like that I stood on a snow covered mountain top as lucidity bloomed.....but I hesitated too long and I found myself washing down in an avalanche of snow....fully lucid and laughing. The very next night I entered the dream lucid on that very same mountain top. This time I rushed to the precipice and soared off over the valley.





> remember I'm always very interested in AP and OBE experiences



Take a quick look at my newly updated DJ. These entries represent the nocturnal experiences that have pretty much shaped my journey over this past year and a half. There are two pretty anomalous experiences there....including one that was either OBE or AP.

https://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/lenscaper/

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## lenscaper

After two years of diligent day and night practice I have learned a few things:

1. Lucid days lead to lucid nights.

2. The images of the day are every bit as illusory as the images of the night.

3. There are varying degrees of lucidity in both the waking state and the dream state.

4. The really cool stuff sometimes happens in the liminal spaces between waking and dreaming.

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## Sivason

> Sometimes try to jump from a skyscraper and flap with yours arms like duck, free falling can be very good, it gives me adrenaline rush when wake up if you ever watched the Matrix, when Neo jump from the rooftop and falling.)



This makes me laugh because I can totally relate. I have the ability to fly however i want. That can be from Superman to Magneto to levitating upside down, but one of my best experiences was diving into the ocean from hundreds of feet up and just experiencing free fall. I also teleported way up in the sky and then again and again to drive the point of way up in the sky and then just went limp and let gravity take me. Total rush!!! I also some times flap like a duck for fun.

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## lenscaper

Ah yes.....nothing like an occasional flight of fancy.  :Nod yes: 

I have found of late, though, that I am looking less and less for flight time and more toward working with the dream. I guess I really am getting old.  :smiley: 

I think that when we recognize the dream state images as illusory and subtly blend with them, judiciously redirecting and managing the dream plot, we can become one with the complex and intricately patterned weave that is on the back side of the tapestry of our existence.

The transformative changes in our waking lives from this are subtle but they manifest at a very deep level.

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## michael79

> This makes me laugh because I can totally relate.



Right! I think that is possible because of our body response to certain stimulus, like dangerous situation. Our Flight or Fight system activating and release an unhealthy :wink2:  dose of adrenaline.




> I have the ability to fly however i want. That can be from Superman to Magneto to levitating upside down, but one of my best experiences was diving into the ocean from hundreds of feet up and just experiencing free fall. I also teleported way up in the sky and then again and again to drive the point of way up in the sky and then just went limp and let gravity take me. Total rush!!! I also some times flap like a duck for fun.



I had a similar experience with ocean diving, It was WILD and I was at marine bay, I was preparing to jump into water, but I hate not able to see through the water(had some troubles with sharks and crocodiles ::D: ), so I was in bit of dilemma, but then someone push on my back(maybe it was a DC) and I fall into the water, but I was sinking like a rock and I was about to hit the bottom, my logic gone upside down, I bursted from like a water bubble and I was in the sky, free falling and flapping like a duck, maybe I was screaming too XD aaaAAAa, only a hundreds meters later to fall again into the ocean, definitely someone was laughing from somewhere.

I posted before in a thread how to restart a dream, just try to fall backwards and let go to gravity, when your head hit the floor, dream restart in another location and I can say that sometimes those other locations can be mystical. ::alien::  But to further expand my example, sometimes I create a Lava pit, falling backwards, letting go of Fear and Ego, I feel a heat all over my body, melting until dream body completely dissolved, I always end up in the astral  :smiley:

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## Sivason

> I posted before in a thread how to restart a dream, just try to fall backwards and let go to gravity, when your head hit the floor, dream restart in another location and I can say that sometimes those other locations can be mystical. But to further expand my example, sometimes I create a Lava pit, falling backwards, letting go of Fear and Ego, I feel a heat all over my body, melting until dream body completely dissolved, I always end up in the astral



Wow! I have been at this long enough I rarely hear anything new. This is nothing I have heard or thought of. It makes sense. I will try it.

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## lenscaper

> sometimes I create a Lava pit, falling backwards, letting go of Fear and Ego, I feel a heat all over my body, melting until dream body completely dissolved, I always end up in the astral



The dissolution of the body is always a very good thing.

Coarse Body -----> Subtle Body -----> Very Subtle Body (Dream Body) ----->   ::flyaway::

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## michael79

> Wow! I have been at this long enough I rarely hear anything new. This is nothing I have heard or thought of. It makes sense. I will try it.



When you try it, maybe you can post it here.

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## lenscaper

> Flying is a near perfect expression of freedom



I soared gloriously through the void last night, twisting and turning, tumbling and free-falling through a blackness that felt like pure, un-reflected light. I ended up back in my bed where I put fingers through both palms....just for good measure. Then I proceeded through four different dream sequences, each of which left me back in my bed with an important image.

I only say all that because these nights happen almost naturally now. I have not used a classic induction technique in months. Last night, though, I got up after four hours and ran through an abbreviated Tsa Lung Trulkhor followed by a very strong thirteen breath Inner Fire (Tummo) meditation.

I have been building my lucid mansion from the bottom up....and it's getting pretty comfortable now.  :smiley:

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## FryingMan

So very well done!   And very inspiring that consistency and determination has lead to consistent, fabulous results, particularly for those of us farther along the age spectrum!

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## lenscaper

I have been away from the forum for quite a while on a bit of a personal deeper dive into the dream. 

I am approaching my 70th birthday in a couple of months and that will also be the third anniversary of the spontaneous lucid dream that started me on this path. Since then I have worked every single day and night at understanding the workings of the dream state...and how to use conscious awareness in the dream to better understand this universe in which we live. It been an exciting and transcendent journey.

In the process I have slowly awakened.  :smiley: 

These nights I have stopped flying about and such and I have contented myself with being equally conscious and aware in both states. That transition kind of snuck up on me over the last six months. I began to realize that I was waking in the night from clear and aware dreams and opening my eyes...into another dream. I also realized that I no longer needed LD techniques to be self-aware in the dream. My nighttime dreams had become an extension of my daytime self. 

This sense of reciprocity between the dream state and the waking state has allowed me to realize that both states are conventionally real while being ultimately illusory. That realization of the fundamental illusory nature of reality has allowed me to make substantive changes to who I am and how I live my life by controlling these dreams in a more subtle self-reflective and deterministic way.

I can't wait to see what else there is to learn........

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## mr walker

I am 70 but I've been lucid dreaming all my life  I've been controlling all my dreams since i was about 12 and imagining/ constructing my nightly dreamscapes since i was about 13   I started so early    that I cant  help much with techniques etc I just fal asleep, enter my dream worlds and go from  there 
I don't have dreams where i am not fully conscious that I am dreaming
BUT in my experience it's like all things.
The younger you begin the easier it is.
As a young person it was all new and exciting. As a child it was the one part of my life i had total control over, and freedom in. 
when I gained independence and adult responsibilities, it faded a little  because I had lots of interesting things happening in my waking life, but once i retired it came back strongly.  
I was a child in the fifties and a teenager in the 60s so had to teach myself everything
Not sure if it easier or more difficult now that there are sites al over the internet on the abilty 
id recommend 3 basic things 
Getting more sleep than you need. Its easier to remember dreams when you are lightly sleeping after a good  night's rest. Thus it's more common for children and   retired folk to lucid dream.
Working people parents etc are often too tired to remember their dreams  The y sleep deeply but for a shorter period 
Either keep a dream journal or  talk about your dreams a lot. This keeps them in your subconscious mind
Use reality checkers every day while awake You will begin using them in dreams and  this helps you realise it is a dream Then you just have to discip0line your mind to take control and not to wake up.
Good luck with it.

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## lenscaper

> I am 70 but I've been lucid dreaming all my life  I've been controlling all my dreams since i was about 12 and imagining/ constructing my nightly dreamscapes since i was about 13   I started so early



What a fantastic post....absolutely filled with excellent information to help folks achieve what came naturally for you....even at an older age.

I'll be 70 as well in a month or so and this came naturally to me as well.......starting three years ago.  ::chuckle:: 

I am no longer worrying about LD technique and I am conscious and aware in pretty much every dream now. I take what I can get from these dreams but I am finding the liminal spaced between dreams to be of particular interest. I will underline what you mentioned about sleep. I still work a 50 hour week but I am in bed early every night and I sleep very well.

Thanks for posting @mr walker !

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## lenscaper

I have come to the realization that the dream state is just as real as the waking state......and the waking state is just as illusory as the dream state.

I exist now in that unbroken continuity.

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## Voldmer

> I have come to the realization that the dream state is just as real as the waking state......and the waking state is just as illusory as the dream state.
> 
> I exist now in that unbroken continuity.



You say "unbroken", but you still experience non-continuous transition between dream and awake, don't you? Or do these states flow smoothly into one another?

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## lenscaper

> You say "unbroken", but you still experience non-continuous transition between dream and awake, don't you? Or do these states flow smoothly into one another?



I am the same person in both states these days. I have been practicing sleep yoga ....I fall asleep kind of bathed in a clear light. Dreams come and I enter them calmly, observing and taking part where it feels right. I always wake up smiling.

It is as if I have added hours to my life every night...although time and space are irrelavent.

I have realized that the goal is to achieve lucidity in the waking dream. The sleeping dream is just a means to that end.

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## lenscaper

As I approach the four year anniversary of that first accidental lucid dream that changed my life......I find myself to be a bit introspective of the journey. It seems as though I was shown this path back in early February of 2019 and since then I have followed it onto other even more powerful paths. Throughout this journey lucid dreaming has been the engine that has driven a transformation.

I no longer practice any LD techniques. I have drifted away from the Dream Yoga and Sleep Yoga protocols as well, as I find myself simply living in that unbroken continuity. All that said, I live a fully functional existence working a 50 hour week where I am in continual contact with folks across the country and I'm actually much better at it now. Through it all I know for certain that I am living in an illusory state. One might call that a dream state but I have, it seems, gone beyond the dream.

Beyond the dream there are amazing vistas of "reality". Don't be afraid to peek around those corners when you find them.

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