Just starting out in the course here. I have been trying a few techniques here and there, but doing the course more formally might be more beneficial.
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Just starting out in the course here. I have been trying a few techniques here and there, but doing the course more formally might be more beneficial.
Hi Cedwards, I’m interested in dream yoga as well so I’ll be definitely following your process. Good luck :)
I started doing the "noisy world" of basic skills lesson #1. It has been a bit difficult, because finding a quiet place isn't always easy. In my apartment, there is a furnace/ac fan that goes almost continually that blocks out most sounds. At the university, there is also what sounds like loud ventilation, and a droning refrigerator in the lounge where I was trying to do this. Today I sat down on a rock in the woods and did a little bit of level one. It was quite nice to sit there and listen to all the sounds of the woods around me. But I think I will switch to the "Intense World" version since I can do that here in my apartment or in the lounge at the University. I also tried the "mixing it up" thing once or twice. I don't know that I ever did lose the taste of the lemonhead in my mouth. I'm a bit of a foodie, so maybe I have already developed my taste awareness to some extent!
I have also been doing the intermediate skill #1 visualization training off and on for a while. More off than on, I fear. I need to be more consistent. When I close my eyes, I tend to see what looks like billows of colors in contracting circles, as though I were going backwards (I think) through a tunnel with rings of colored waves. A bit difficult to describe. I see a bunch of little specks too. It seems to be a lot of yellowish and reddish, along with black and white of course. I can kind of manifest basic geometry such as a line, and maybe a triangle. It also seems when I try to imagine looking at things of a certain color (i.e. a red wall or a blue swimming pool) those colors do become predominant. But it's difficult to tell at this point if that's just my imagination (or does that even matter?)
Sometimes I have difficulty doing this without feeling like I'm going cross-eyed or feeling like my eyes want to open. I wonder if anyone else has this difficulty?
It's interesting - when I was little, I used to close my eyes and watch the colors. It seems to me that I was able to do some visualization back then, like make a dog or a dinosaur appear or something. Once or twice though, I sat for a while with my eyes closed and I think the colors went away. Then I saw an eye, which creeped me out so much that for years I would try to sleep with at least one eye partially open. I have wondered if the eye was a visualization, or if it had something to do with the actual structure of the biological eye itself.
OK, I probably haven't been as consistent as I should be with this. I think I've been doing "intense world" at least a little bit each day on most days, and the visualization training fairly frequently. Consistency is important, they say, but for some reason I really struggle with it! Not just in this, but with a lot of things in life.
Anyway, it seems like starting last night, I have been seeing clearer imagery now and then when I close my eyes - hypnogogic-like, I think, although I had a clear-ish image today while having my eyes closed praying. I didn't dwell on it though because my mind was wandering and I wanted to concentrate on the prayer. I don't know if this imagery is related to the meditation or not. I still don't see the basic geometric shapes particularly clearly when I want to. It's more like HH, which might just be related to me being tired and drinking less caffeine.
Well, it's been about two weeks since I started this training, and it looks like the original layout of the class introduced lesson #2 about now. I have been doing "noisy world" and "intense world". They changed the furnace filter in my apartment, so now I can do the noisy world there. But either I'm not that great at noticing sounds, or it's a lot quieter where I am than I thought it would be. Of course, it tends to be night when I do this too. I generally notice:
(1) a quiet roar that is either wind or distant traffic
(2) ringing in my ears
(3) Closer traffic
(4) Sounds of the building settling, I think
I notice more with the intense world practice:
(1) the feel of my clothes on my skin
(2) the feel of air going in and out of my nose
(3) the feel of air at the top of my throat when I inhale
(4) my heartbeat
(5) various places where my body makes contact with furniture, etc.
(6) my teeth resting against each other
(7) my tongue in my mouth (I think)
(8) the waistband of my pants
(9) my abdomen rising and falling as I breathe
(10) My eyelids being shut
There have been a time or two when I have fallen asleep before completing the steps of "noisy world" though. I start concentrating on being aware of my limbs and am out before I get past my legs :D
I still seem to be in a dry spell as far as lucidity goes. I'm not sure why. I think possibly because I have let some of my daytime RCs drop while I have focused more on meditation. I also seem to be going through a motivation slump for some reason. Not sure why.
OK, I guess I better get back to this more regularly. My dry spell has demotivated me a little bit. It seems like I haven't had a lucid dream since I started meditations, which has taken the wind out of my sails a bit. Also, I have had an eye infection for the past couple of days which I think has played a role. Anyway, I was starting in on basic lesson #2 with diffuse vision and such, but then I stopped wanting to think about my eyes for a while :|
The conjunctivitis is getting better. I don't have unpleasant feelings associated with playing around with eye focus and I don't want to forget that I have eyes, so I have been starting to do some of the diffuse vision things.
I wonder if there would be any benefit to trying something like focusing on the surface of a mirror rather than on one's reflection. As I understand it the reflection itself is something of an illusion. What is on the surface is really two images, kind of like what you see when you look past an object. Our brain wants to focus on the image though, so we automatically adjust our eyes to see a single image of the reflection. It seems to me that that might be what makes the diffuse vision thing challenging - the brain makes me want to focus my eyes on what I'm aware of so that it's a single image. I don't know, just a thought.
I also need to work on wandering mind recall. Distraction has been a big issue in many aspects of my life lately and I think working on this will help in lots of ways. I combined this lesson with meditating on scripture the other night, and it seemed to be a very beneficial practice.
I think my "noisy world" practice might be improving. At first it seemed very difficult, if not impossible, to focus on more than one sound at a time. I seem to be able to focus on two, and maybe three now.
I still see all kinds of stuff when I close my eyes and try the visualization training. Not so easy to control, but I seem to be becoming more aware of fleeting images as I fall asleep. I think I'm also intentionally getting a triangle to show up a little bit in my visualization. Other than that, it tends to be pretty active in there - "TV static" type specks, waves of glowing colors, etc. But it's usually like that for me. The challenge is to visualize other things in the midst of the display, and to visualize what I want to visualize.
Still no lucids for a while. It seems like I'm falling asleep too suddenly, and somewhat unexpectedly, to keep awareness. It's like I'll be laying in bed not feeling very drowsy, and then suddenly I'm out. I have been depending more on melatonin recently to help me sleep, which might be part of it. I think I have also been drinking a lot more caffeine than usual in the past couple of weeks. These things combined might be what's leading to this sudden transition. I guess I should cut back on the caffeine. Easier said than done.
OK, another post to boost my motivation. I feel like I'm starting to "fall off the wagon" again.
I started working on cutting back the caffeine. I think I'm making a tad bit of progress, but I ended up using about 7-8 tea bags again today. Interesting, I dreamed about tea holding me back last night (it was falling out of my pants and making a mess when I was trying to go somewhere). I didn't see any significance until just now.
Anyway, back to work on meditation.
It's still not easy to visualize things whenever I want during the daytime, but it seems to be getting easier to be aware of hypnogogia and/or to bring about some nice visualizations for a few moments, when close to sleeping. Last night I was focusing on a visualization which was clear enough that I could see letters, and was trying to see if I could read them. They kept changing around on me though. I wonder if I had tried to move if I would have found myself in a dream. Anyway, if progress keeps up like this, I might be able to start to master WILDing. And then, oh, the places I'll go!
When doing the diffuse vision thing, it doesn't seem particularly difficult to relax my eyes and focus on things in my field of vision. My eye muscles don't seem to want to stay still though.
I haven't posted in a while, but I'm still practicing. I think I might need to work on some things with my life habits to get to where I want to be with this. Much like my prayer life, I want to become more diligent at putting aside time and not spending too much of my available time playing games, etc. I guess I would mostly say that I'm "dabbling" in dream yoga at this point, rather than seriously working at it. Hopefully I can change that.
Anyway, it seems like I may be getting better at the visualization. I forgot about the tactile part of it, which I guess I will work on as well. It also appears to be time to move on the the shock training. I used to do this some, for reasons other than lucid dreaming. I don't know if adrenaline is necessarily what it waking me up in my lucid dreams, but it's worth a try. Something seems to wake me up.
OK, back to work I suppose. After the Winter Competition I kind of relaxed, and got out of the habit of working on lucid dreaming a whole lot. I might go back and review some of the earlier lessons.
if questions arise, I hope I can help
Thanks!Quote:
Originally Posted by Sivason
Anyway, to update things:
I have not given up, but I thought I would focus on just the basics of meditation and mindfulness for a while. And admittedly, I got kind of busy with other things and lazy about practicing. Anyway, things seem to be picking up with my practicing as well as lucidity again. I seem to be getting better at daytime awareness, for one thing.
I hope that my practicing is related to my increased lucidity, since it would suggest some exciting things to come. However, the University semester ended a couple of weeks ago, I'm putting more effort into lucid dreaming altogether, and I have been trying to cut back on caffeine and computer gaming, so there are multiple things going on here at once.
Anyway, now that I've been working on basics for a little while, I think I'll start moving on with the lessons.