memorable

Today I had my first lucid dream/out of body projection into a desired location - my home in Bangalore.

Wall of text coming up. Keeping it succint, and the info useful and mainly discuss how I get into it, dream stabilisation techniques I used, and how I moved from one environment into another for those of you who want to get into what I feel is one of the most thrilling experiences of my life - being completely 'awake' and aware in dream world.

It was a mixture of feelings of joy, accomplishment, elation, amazement, wonder to move from one completely 'real' and solid dream environment to another one in my Bangalore home (on a side note, I realise that I don't call it my parent's place, but Home).

I started reading Jurgen Ziewe's Multidimensional Man yesterday. So that got me hankering for lucid dreaming again. I've also been a bit cut up about the fact that a lot of people count lucid dreaming, and OBE as separate, but Jurgen was clear that he felt they were both the same. This ties into the zeitgeist on the dream views forums where they class all lucidity in the dream world as lucid dreams, and not OBE's. As I felt that OBE's are out of body projections into consensus realities i.e. 'real' worlds, as opposed to dream worlds. Good to know someone Jurgen confirm they were the same. Then again, he can see his body in his dream in OBE, but probably wouldn't in a lucid dream - ahh, who knows. But we ramble, and somebody promised they wouldn't do that .

My usual habit is to get back into lucid dreaming is to start dream journaling, but I hit upon a quicker more effective solution - I voice recorded my dream journal yesterday.

It takes a few days of dream journaling to get into dream awareness to recall more than a few chunks of it. And that dream awareness making me recall more than a few chunks of it, also helps me more aware that I am dreaming in a dream, and allows me to get lucid.

I had about an hour of pretty much continuous back to back lucid dreams, and whilst this was my longest stretch of lucids, it's also my usual pattern that I do get back to back lucids, around 3-4 of them at a time. Mainly because once I'm lucid in one dream world, I can retain that lucidity into the next 3-4 dream environments.

I won't bore you with individual details of my dreams, but share what's relevant to those of you who want to try it. Mainly how I get lucid in a dream, and dream stabilisation techniques I was using and how I 'projected' to a different environment.

Journaling makes me retain slightly more awareness in a dream world. I thought of making a song that says if I'm flying, in a strange place, outside my home, traveling, meeting friends, or FLYING, that I'm in a dream world. So it's basically flying that gets me to realise I'm in a dream world, or strange situations that I'm not supposed to be in, like Minnesota the last time around.

So last night, I was flying in a dream, and showing off my flying skills, to people and realised, hey, I can only do this in a dream, and got lucid in the dream, but it dissolved.

The next dream, ditto - realise I'm flying, so must be in a dream, but it dissolved.

In my next dream, I find some tapestry before me and start feeling the intricacies in the tapestry, looking at them in fine detail, and I go in and out of lucidity though the dream stays relatively stable in that environment.

I then do a cross brain (Psych-K) belief change posture in my dream, and change the belief that I can't stabilise a dream world, into a belief that I can stabilise a dream world.

I'm then in a bed, where I wake up and step out of my bed, and it's a half formed, dark dream world, and I just keep my hands on the walls, and walk from room to room, up and down stairs, never taking my hands off the walls. And I'm able to extend lucidity for a fair bit.

Then come a whole series of back to back fully lucid dreams for about the next 30-45 minutes.

At the end of them, I think, okay, lets project to a different dream environment, and I think about my Bangalore home. I imagine the door, and how it would look like. I look down, and I see a part of the gate, and think it's part of the home, and then see the house and stumble into it. I'm so excited by this, instead of waiting to stand and look around, or see if I can meet my folks, I just try and 'project' into the next place I can think of, and the dream dissolves and I finally wake up.

Points to ponder:
1. Audio recording more effective, and easier than typing it out. I record it on a whatsapp message to a 'dead' contact.
2. Dream stabilisation techniques as a priority in the dream. Use all senses, touch, sight, smell, temperature, to get immersed in the dream environment. If the dream starts to dissolve, I bend down, feel the dirt, or the walls as I walk.
3. No sudden moves in the dream or it destabilises. Slow and steady work the stabilisation in.
4. Once stabilisation settled in, then attempt to project to a different dream environment by imagining parts of it. The brain fills the rest in, and I'm immediately transported there.

Spontaneous lucid dream. First one in years (had two others people where I just flew around).

When I'm in my dreams, I completely surprise the people around me by being able to levitate, and glide along the ground. Sometimes raise my body up to 10-20 feet as I almost fly. Angling my body around to change direction, and being able to increase speed by leaning forwards and decrease speed, or come to a stall by leaning backwards.

I've often told myself that I can only do this in dreams, and if I find myself doing it in one of my dreams to realise that it is a dream.

Well, that happened.

I'm flying around in my old medschool campus, and realise hey, I'm flying, this must be a dream. I keep flying, gliding around and come to rest in a garden where people are listening to a talk.

I see a beautiful lady being pestered by this guy who's hitting on her. I know now I've seen her in other dreams. I go up to her and kiss her, and she smiles and I lift her up off her seat, carry her a couple of steps and walk with her. She's happy I've saved her from the sex pest.

I'm walking with her, and tell her this is a dream and I'm completely lucid. I know that she's a theta healer, I've seen her in other dreams, and can also recall that there was a time she slept with someone else at another conference.

She think's it's cool, and helps me down a staircase and lets me into a room where I meet a group of my old friends.

Everything seems absolutely real. Solid, obeying laws of physics. I tell him I've realised I'm in the middle of a dream, and so are they. And they don't believe me. I say, I can prove it. And they don't believe I can. One of them says Hey Ryan wants to prove to us that this is a dream, and asks a couple of guys chatting to be silent.

I say, 'Okay. Count your fingers!'. (you can't count your fingers, and or use light switches in dreams).

And they absolutely shit when they find out. Lots of shouts of whoa! WTF! as they all realise that it really is a dream. I pick something up, a tiny bottle filled with a yellow liquid and I say okay, lets test things out a bit and think about throwing it on the floor. I wonder about pieces of glass, and spilt liquid, that other people have to avoid after I do this. And just as I start to hesitate.... that's when the dream completely dissolves and I'm awake again.

Maybe my mind just couldn't handle keeping so many lucid consciousnesses alive in the dream. Heck, it's a surprise I was able to keep the lucidity going for as long as I did.

The last lucid dream I had was around 5 years ago, when I counted my fingers, realised I was dreaming and instantly took a couple of steps, took a jump and started flying.

I think now this realise I'm dreaming when I'm flying thought has been firmly embedded, I might just have a lot more lucid dreams. Unless that thought makes me stop flying now. But I don't think so. I fly pretty often in my dreams, and in an earlier dream tonight I realised I spooked an elephant when I was flying, and it started to attack me, and I had to drop down to the ground and dodge it standing on the other side of a pillar and.. okay, that's another dream and another story.