Lucid Dreaming - from scratch

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Lucid Dreaming - from scratch

Postby BrandonD » Sat Aug 09, 2014 6:20 am

About 3 years ago I taught myself how to lucid dream. This was after keeping a dream journal for many years and never having a single lucid dream. It was a subject I was very interested in, but I was never able to succeed.

There are some very awesome insights I have learned about perception and awareness which came directly from lucid dreaming. It is a genuine frontier of exploration that most people take for granted. After these things happened for me, I felt a desire for everyone else to know how to lucid dream as well.

So, the technique. Essentially, I followed the Carlos Castaneda method. I initially associated that book with hippies and so the first time I read it I didn't bother finishing it, but after coming back from Peru I re-read it and the book had a new meaning for me.

Part 1 of this technique is to continuously bring a question into your everyday thinking. This question is: Am I dreaming right now? One element of dreaming is that if you want to bring something from the waking into the dream state, the best method to achieve this is *repetition*.

In the past I had actually succeeded in this first part of the technique. But I was unable to verify that I was dreaming so I never became fully lucid. For example, once I dreamed that a huge ship was floating over a big downtown city, doing dips and tricks and stuff. Out over the water I saw red baron-style biplanes with nazi swastikas on their sides, flying towards the ship. It was all so bizarre that I asked myself, am I dreaming? I looked around at my friends, at the horizon, I touched the grass. It all seemed perfectly real and so I could not "break through".

This is where part 2 comes in, which is the hand technique.

After putting the question into your ordinary sequence of thoughts, inevitably at some point you will have the suspicion that you may be dreaming, and it is at that point that you must look at your hand. You must look directly at it for at least 5 seconds or so. Sustained attention is the key. If you sustain your attention for a few moments, then your hand will change in some bizarre unexpected way, it will not remain stable like your ordinary physical hand. When this occurs, you will have a total realization that you are in fact dreaming. If you can manage to remain in the dream and not immediately wake up, then you are in for something very incredible.

I've used this technique over and over since that first success, it is a solid technique that works. It took me an entire year of efforts to finally have my first lucid dream though. Since then I have done a lot of experiments in the lucid dream state and they have shown me a lot of interesting things about how our consciousness and perception operates.

So I wanted to share this technique with you guys, in case anyone is interested in lucid dreaming but doesn't know if one or another technique is worth trying.
"One measures a circle, beginning anywhere." -Charles Fort
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Re: Lucid Dreaming - from scratch

Postby Elvis » Sat Aug 09, 2014 3:31 pm

Thanks, fascinating. Have you read Robert Monroe's books about out-of-body experiences? -- and if so, do you find any correlation between your experiences and those of Monroe and his fellow experimenters? (And if not, I highly recommend the books, mainly "Far Journeys.")

In the one lucid dream I believe I had as an adult, once I became aware that I was dreaming, I thought, "now I can do anything" but I couldn't think of anything to "do" so I just woke up.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: Lucid Dreaming - from scratch

Postby coffin_dodger » Sat Aug 09, 2014 4:11 pm

BrandonD wrote:Since then I have done a lot of experiments in the lucid dream state and they have shown me a lot of interesting things about how our consciousness and perception operates.


Would you care to share some of these with us?
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Re: Lucid Dreaming - from scratch

Postby elfismiles » Sat Aug 09, 2014 6:41 pm

Congrats BrandonD!

Usually folks who hear about me from others describe me as ... "oh he's that UFO guy" or "he's that conspiracy guy" but occasionally I'll get somone saying "I heard yer the guy into dreams" and indeed I credit my interests in all things paranormal to an early age proclivity for remembering my dreams and considering the act of dreaming to be one of the most important things humans don't spend enough time working on. As I've aged I still come back to this simple nightly act as being of the utmost importance to our survival as a species.

One of the board member of one of the non-profits I serve did sleep / dream / lucid dreaming research here at UT many years ago. We've repeatedly talked about doing a new series of lucid dreaming experiments.

Some RI members attempted before to start a book club about a book dealing with "active dreaming" ... I got half-way through the book, just picked the book up again off my shelf

Book Club: Active Dreaming by R. Moss
by Occult Means Hidden » 02 Oct 2011 11:41 in Book Forum
viewtopic.php?f=40&t=33259

More past threads at RI dealing with Lucid Dreaming:
search.php?keywords=lucid+dreaming&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=all&sr=topics&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search

Oh hey, you've posted about this before...

Lucid Dreaming
by BrandonD » 08 Dec 2011 08:20 in General Discussion
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=33640
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Re: Lucid Dreaming - from scratch

Postby Elvis » Sat Aug 09, 2014 7:04 pm

elfismiles wrote:considering the act of dreaming to be one of the most important things humans don't spend enough time working on.


Thanks for saying that; I used to keep a pad & pencil at bedside for writing down dreams, and I guess I gave it up. So I just now put a blank notebook back on the bedtable.

The "old Gnosis" valued dreams for their visionary power, something that, to the blindered technocratic view, just doesn't exist. Excellent thread, about a mystery that, like a poem, doesn't need to be solved, just experienced.
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Re: Lucid Dreaming - from scratch

Postby BrandonD » Sun Aug 10, 2014 5:54 am

elfismiles » Sat Aug 09, 2014 5:41 pm wrote:Oh hey, you've posted about this before...

Lucid Dreaming
by BrandonD » 08 Dec 2011 08:20 in General Discussion
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... =8&t=33640


Oh man, that is not at all embarrassing haha. I couldn't remember if I'd posted about it previously, and I did a search and didn't find anything. But apparently I didn't dig quite enough.
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Re: Lucid Dreaming - from scratch

Postby BrandonD » Sun Aug 10, 2014 6:10 am

Elvis » Sat Aug 09, 2014 2:31 pm wrote:Thanks, fascinating. Have you read Robert Monroe's books about out-of-body experiences? -- and if so, do you find any correlation between your experiences and those of Monroe and his fellow experimenters? (And if not, I highly recommend the books, mainly "Far Journeys.")

In the one lucid dream I believe I had as an adult, once I became aware that I was dreaming, I thought, "now I can do anything" but I couldn't think of anything to "do" so I just woke up.


I've read "Journeys Out of the Body", I can't say that I've had parallels with that book because I haven't really explored what appears to be "the ordinary world" in my dream state. In a lucid dream I'm generally in some unusual setting. I'll definitely check out "Far Journeys".

However I have had a dream that was later verified to be true, so I know there is something going on in that state other than what some might call "subjective nonsense".
"One measures a circle, beginning anywhere." -Charles Fort
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Re: Lucid Dreaming - from scratch

Postby BrandonD » Sun Aug 10, 2014 6:26 am

coffin_dodger » Sat Aug 09, 2014 3:11 pm wrote:Would you care to share some of these with us?


Because the insights do not involve words it is difficult for me to formulate a sort of "aphorism" in words, with no context. If there is a specific question then I can formulate an answer as best I can.
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Re: Lucid Dreaming - from scratch

Postby BrandonD » Sun Aug 10, 2014 6:37 am

coffin_dodger » Sat Aug 09, 2014 3:11 pm wrote:
BrandonD wrote:Since then I have done a lot of experiments in the lucid dream state and they have shown me a lot of interesting things about how our consciousness and perception operates.


Would you care to share some of these with us?


Actually, a few of them were described in the earlier thread I started in 2011: http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... =8&t=33640
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Re: Lucid Dreaming - from scratch

Postby coffin_dodger » Sun Aug 10, 2014 8:57 am

I'm fully prepared to be called an idiot because I'm perhaps not understanding exactly what lucid dreaming is, but..

this sounds a slightly dangerous path to follow. For instance, if I were to become a master manipulator of lucid dreaming, would I be able to distinguish between reality and dreamstate? They could, to all intents and purposes, merge into one. And to have to keep checking which state I was in would be a chore that could become a nervous 'tick' or other mental process that could become overwhelming.
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Re: Lucid Dreaming - from scratch

Postby BrandonD » Sun Aug 10, 2014 3:24 pm

coffin_dodger » Sun Aug 10, 2014 7:57 am wrote:I'm fully prepared to be called an idiot because I'm perhaps not understanding exactly what lucid dreaming is, but..

this sounds a slightly dangerous path to follow. For instance, if I were to become a master manipulator of lucid dreaming, would I be able to distinguish between reality and dreamstate? They could, to all intents and purposes, merge into one. And to have to keep checking which state I was in would be a chore that could become a nervous 'tick' or other mental process that could become overwhelming.


Not an idiot at all. I guess maybe you have to feel a little bit "wreckless" to want to explore lucid dreaming, but honestly I'm not that brave. It's just that it is so damn interesting that the curiosity over-rides your fear (MOST of the time, that is).

I will give an example that fleshes this out. In one dream I was in the back seat of a car, my friends were driving. It was daylight and I was looking out the window, and 3 UFOs flew by. I thought to myself that I might be dreaming, and I looked at my hand. As I looked at my hand, I could see the back-seat window behind it, I could see the background racing by and little water droplets on the glass as though it had just rained. My hand moved and I became lucid. The feeling is a click like an a-ha moment where you know you are dreaming. But the crazy thing is, in most other ways it still feels EXACTLY like ordinary life.

I was in this car driving along and I thought to myself, "I want to get out of this car" - but even though I knew I was dreaming it felt so real that I was afraid to jump out of a moving car. So I decided to wait until the car stopped, and almost immediately after this thought the car came to a stop.

I stepped out of the car. I looked around and I was standing on a grassy median on a boulevard, there was a lot of traffic around me, like a traffic jam or a bunch of cars at a stop light. I had a very strong desire to fly, which for me is very common when I become lucid. I willed myself to fly and began rising up in the air. I looked down and could see everything receding below me in perfect clarity, I was astounded at how completely real it looked, the change of perspective and every detail.

But there is one particular difference in the dream-state, which is that you are most definitely in an altered state of mind. I think that part of the recognition that something is "off" is a recognition that something is altered in your own consciousness. This is why I've never had the suspicion that I'm dreaming in the waking state. A few months ago I had a very dramatic UFO sighting with my girlfriend and not once during this sighting did I think I was dreaming. In fact I never check this state in my ordinary life. I just did that in the beginning because I thought it would help. Maybe it did help but I'm not sure, so I'm including it just in case. There is a possibility that simply my intent to have a lucid dream, sustained for that year, eventually allowed my ordinary state to "come online" while dreaming.

In the Castaneda books they describe the two "minds" of a person, the waking mind and the dreaming mind. Though this may or may not be correct, it is a model that fits with my experience. There is a mental state that I normally occupy in dreaming, and if I remain in that state during the entire night then I will not become lucid.

What happens is that there is a shred of suspicion that something is "off", and this suspicion suddenly introduces what I'm calling my waking mind to the scenario - the waking mind is the mental state we are more familiar with here and now. It is normally not present in dreaming, but the suspicion occurs and then suddenly it pops online. Here in the waking state the waking mind is the boss, but in the dreaming state the dreaming mind is the boss. My impression is that the dreaming mind naturally wants to squash the waking mind back into "dormancy" and return to an ordinary dream state - so to keep your waking mind active, you have to look at your hand to "cement" that mind in the dream state, or else the dreaming mind will push it away and you will descend back into an ordinary dream. During my first lucid dream I had an intuitive feeling that I needed to keep looking at my hand, or else I would go back into an ordinary dream. I probably looked at my hand about 10 times before I finally felt like I could walk around and observe the surroundings in this new state.

You are never totally in an ordinary state of mind in the dream, the two minds I describe are simultaneously present. It is a weird sensation but very interesting, I describe this juggling act that one has to do with the waking and the dreaming mind in that other thread, if you are interested in this subject a little more.
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