lucid dreaming

[sydlexic]

has any1 ever died in a dream, im sure its bollocks that if you die in a dream you die for real, but do you know any1 whos died in a dream, just currious?

that's what i would think.

[mechtild]

yeah, I have.
usually wake up afterwards.


m

I've died a few times. sometimes i wake up, sometimes i go into another dream. it basically feels like falling into some sort of delirium... so far i havent seen god or anything like that.. well from dying in a dream that is.

[psilly]

As far as staying lucid goes, I've found the common method of spinning around works well. Dizziness is a feeling your brain can create, so it can suck you back into the dream. I've also used this to change scenes.
i.e. Focus thoughts on Britney and a hotel room...spin around and around...stop and take a look where I am...and as Quagmyre would say...Alright.
I think how to stay lucid is one of those things you can't really put into words for someone else...you just have to practice until you innately understand. The only way I can say it is to stay lucid you must focus on the immediate moment, the right now, don't think about your daily life, or getting up in the morning, just focus your mind. Meditation helps to develop this clarity - which is why Buddhists have been practicing Tibetan Dream Yoga for thousands of years.

no spinning is a very powerful tool to be certain. i find it works very well for scene changing and staying asleep and dreaming however it actually creates a challenge as far as staying aware goes. there are a couple helpful forms of meditation. one of them actually involves walking around imagining that you're dreaming. (dream rehersal). and the other and more powerful yet alot harder to master is the kind that leads to wake initiated lucid dreams. truly amazing. ive been able to see through my eye lids with this technic. good stuff..

[psilly]

I'd like to learn more about this wake-initiated lucid dreaming you speak of. I've kind of had this experience the week after a mushroom excursion, but am very interested in other methods of promoting it.
The other night I was reading this thread and really wanted to have a long night of dreaming so I made a weak mushroom tea (0.4g) and smoked a few bowls of salvia leaf. It took a while to go to sleep, as I got a bit higher than expected and had the stereo cranked. But about 30 minutes after I fell asleep I woke from what I call a salvia dream. These are incredibly intense dreams that I never had before smoking salvia, it's like I can feel the malleability of my mind. The first dream of this type I had felt like I was faced with the common hallucinogenic choice between death/eternal knowledge and life/mental prison. I find these dreams amazing, especially since I've never smoked an extract, it's like I prime my mind with a bit of smoked leaf, and the effect becomes amplified in my dream time.

oh boy.. Here comes another long ass post from joe.

okay this shit is heavy.

This technic can be done ANYWHERE. thats the mindset you have to have. if you think "ive gotta be sitting as comfortably as possible" or "ive gotta be laying down with my head juuust right" or "i must be in the lotus position" get any meditational paradighms (spl im just rolling im not going to check spelling) out of your mind. hell sometimes this technique or rather a subtek of this tek (tek... why not) involves just completely going limp no matter where you are and just going with whatever position you find yourself in. I'll get into that later on.

I hope you guys feel privilaged because this is all in the manuscript for my book on consciousness.. and you're getting it first! i dont mind you sharing it with people but it is copyrighted.

Okay. forget breathing excersizes forget progressive muscle relaxation. I developed this tek because i have a hard time breathing in the first place. i found that the more i FOCUSED on breathing like everyone tells you, the more trouble i had breathing and the more trouble i had relaxing. so ignor your breathing!

first of all, you need to asses which of your fives senses is hardest for you to recreate in your mind. For me it happens to be sight. for some reason i can imagine everything else fairly well but i have the darndest time visualizing. okay so then you simply make a list of senses from easiest to hardest to recreate in your mind.

example: tactile easy
audible
taist
olfactory
vision hard

So make your list and then you can begin

Sit down, lay down, whatever. I found just sitting on the train to be a great way to do this. a little discomfort is okay. I'll get into that more later but sufieth to say you need something to ignore. if youre very comfortable you'l be focused on that sensation. you want your body to just be able to do its thing so your mind can go off somewhere else... also you dont want to fall asleep. so once you've got your body situated more or less look around you. get a good sense of whats around you. now just close your eyes and create a mental model of your surroudings using your imaginal sense. starting ofcourse with your easiest. all the while you are passivly ignoring your body. dont worry about it. it will be there when you get back.

example: (using my list)
begin to feel the texture of all the things around you. the textured plastic on the chair in front of you. the smoothness of the stainless steel bars. go ahead and reach out for whats on the ceiling you can touch anything at any distance. now that you have a textural model go back over things and listen to the way it sounds to run your fingers over the metal handles etc.. with senses like taist sometimes you have to improvise but this is good. it brings new elements into your mental model. so if you want imagine a strawberry. the way it feels the way it sounds etc.. then the way it taists. do this all the way to visualization. in some peoples case visualization could be the first thing. you may want to experiement with the order a bit.

so this is where it gets interesting. because now you just allow your mental imagery to take over. you have to get a feel for this but it doesnt take too long. just allow your brain to throw at you whatever it wants. dont mess with it. at first you may not be able to help it. thats okay. but this is the gate way. once you allow these images to take over they will literally take over. you will have entered the dilusionary state. you will know you're there when you no longer have any idea whats going on. granted you'l be in and out of this. that's totally okay too. but the goal is to get to the other side of this coudy non-sensical area. the only way to get there is to completely submerge yourself in it while maintaining a stream of consciousness so it kinda goes like this:

I'm me on the train................... its good to be a carrot.. what?? oh yea.... im on the train... IM AN INTERGALACTIC SPERM PARTICLE THAT IS MEANING ITSELF.. no.. no im just me on the train... etc..

eventually you will competely lose touch with whats going all together and then the next thing you'l see... and its going to be hard to take me seriously but this is how it works for me.... the next thing you'l see is exactly what you were seeing before you closed you eyes accept your eyes are closed... perhaps youre dreaming. some would call this an out of body experience. I just call it (for now until i can do more experimentation) a wake initiated lucid dream. or as stephan laberge would call it it a "WILD"

there are many many variations to this tek.. and honestly you can use whatever "relaxation techinc" works. but remember with this meditation the goal is not relaxation. its a shift of consciousness that we're seeking. we want to completely ignor the body for a time. most likley a bed of nails wouldnt be the worst thing to sit on for this.

There's all kinds of things i could add and all kinds of variations but the main idea is you need to get to that state of mind where the mind takes over competely without actually losing your stream of consciouness. in order to fit through that dark tunnel of dilusion you must narrow your consciousness a bit. sitting up for this helps because whenever you nod even slightly you'l remember that you exist, and you'l remember what you're doing.

so thats all for now. sorry about bad grammer and stuff. i just wanted to get you started. this works amazingly well for me. sometimes i add a 10 to 1 relaxation during the height of the conscious visualizations because with numbers you dont have to focus on any body parts. it helps if you've been hypnotized. and it helps if you occasionlly hypnotize people... okay now im just rambling but in either case im sure i didnt say some things clearly so if you have any questions feel free to post them. i just want to know how your adventures go.

[sydlexic]

first bit of success last nite, finally!!!
i know i met Al (Alchemist, he is my wisest person imaginable), i remember clearly all the surroundings (a field somewhere).
i realised i was lucid and called out Al, but it was weird, like i was talking with my brain, not my mouth.
anyway, i dont remember what we talked about (or what his face looked like, but i do remember he was very old), and i remember talking to him.
and then, as per f*****g usual i had to get up cos my alarm was going like crazy

[sydlexic]

oh yeah, please dont post the next part of the experiment just yet, i want 2 have a chance to get to know him better, and let other people try to as well. but i dont want to be influenced by knowing what to do next.

I am having a hell of a hard time
but I am coming along

First hint of lucidity was last night
after quite a few days of nothing

One of my friends in my dream said something really bizarre and I remember thinking that I wanted to remember it for when I woke up.

I didn't remember it
but hell
its the first time I've realized I was dreaming in a long time

I guess it can only get better from there

Strange going for me....every dream I've had since first trying this out, I've little moments of lucidity...or at least realizing I was dreaming. But not having a hell of a lot of control over much of anything at all. I take that back...when I realize I'm dreaming, I do something or other that kinda "pushes" the dream in a certain direction, and after that, all I can really do is watch what happens until the next moment presents itself. Haven't really been able to "seize the moment" so to speak and do cool stuff, you know?

And my wiseman, Ho Chi Zen...I definitely feel his presence, and have had very very brief encounters, but still not the breakthrough I was hoping for...no real face-to-face meetings....will keep trying.

Oh, here's something...the other night I dreamt I came across a patch of mushies, and instead of being a passive observer, I got right in there and started identifying some of them.

I only found two magic ones....they had the veil, dark spores developing in the exact same kind of gills I know to look for in real life! And I was able to discern the poisonous look-a-likes

So that was pretyy cool.

[sydlexic]

hey mycos, did u munch em?

wow.. thats great mycos. its possible you could return to that dreamspace and use that mushroom patch as a gateway. you never know. great image.

as far as not posting the next step. I have no problem with that. just let me know when you're ready, and feel free to ask any questions if you get stuck or anything. and getting to know the being better is very important.

Congratulations on your sucsess everybody! This is already going alot so much better than i could have imagined. I just want to thank you all for participating. It's only going to get more exciting.

"hey mycos, did u munch em?"

No...the alarm clock got me. Grrrr!

"its possible you could return to that dreamspace and use that mushroom patch as a gateway."

Wow! Something just clicked when I read that....maybe my wiseman left them for me?

Tonight, I'll concentrate on returning to the patch, and call his name....do you think a good way to test his trustworthiness would be to offer him one of the shrooms first, see if he takes them, then go and dose myself?

yea, sure. If he's a true teacher he'l go with you to the other spaces as a guide. So i think thats a great idea.

this is great stuff!

haha, i just had my first lucid dream i guess


somehow i don't remember wehre but like on a city street i was like "oh wait i'm dreaming" somehow and i felt myself waking up but i'm like nono so i used joe's tip and i was like holding onto a button on my shirt and then i was waking up but i was holding onto my head? but i was in my room so i was pretty positive i was still dreaming, so i'm like aah hotel room take me to a hotel and i'll be lucid again, but i guess i just lost faith and woke up or i think i went back to dreaming but didnt realize i was dreamin or something.

also, somewhere i remember in my dream a girl that i know, "r", and this morning my girlfriend left a message " do you know 'r' ? ", that kinda tripped me out and i remember my lucid dream.

how can i get more likle these? lol

also, would the fact that i went to sleep like 5 pm yesterday and woke up at 730 today?

[psilly]

Yes, the fact that you got lots of sleep certainly helped. I usually find after about 6-7 hours I dream constantly until I wake up in the morning.

I find spinning around works better for me than holding something. Your body can produce the sensation of your body in your mind, which makes it seem real again. Works better for me than holding on to something while I drift away. But, it's probably just because I think of it that way that it doesn't work for me!

You should also try to note anything from yesterday that may have affected your body's chemistry. For example, what and when you ate your last meal, the last time you smoked a bowl before bed, things like that. You'll start to see patterns. I find it's best for me not to eat a couple hours before bed and to smoke my last bowl around 6-7 o'clock (not that that always happens, though!).

And, if you're really interested in promoting dreaming, take a small amount of mushroom right before bed (or, alternately, smoke a small amount of salvia leaf). When I do this I take about 0.3g, smoke a big bowl so I go to sleep quickly, and read my dream journal 'til I'm too tired to concentrate.

Oh, and if you plan on getting in to this, get used to trippy dream-related shit during the day! Sometimes I think I'm having a flashback when it's really deja vu from a dream I had that I've never remembered!

Good luck, and if you haven't already, get a dream journal and write last night's dream on the first page!

People I know that have kept a book next to them in bed to write down thier dreams as they wake up swear by it. Sometimes you get down only a few words, sometimes the whole plot, but exercising your mind and using it to hold onto things like that makes it much stronger.

I'm always ranting about the importance of dream journals. If you diligently keep one You'l gain so much more than just lucidity. Nothing could be more worth while. accept maybe home mushroom cultivation. thats pretty damn awesome.

[~Hippie3]

i had too much to dream last night...

[mindovermycelia]

i like this thread, i'm gonna try to remember dreams now, and lucid dream later

i've only had one - i was naked in class at school (highschool i think - even though i was an adult when i had the dream) and teach was trippin
i then realized it was a dream and told her so - told her i could do what i want then walked in and sat down like it was nothin

[mindovermycelia]

logged my first two this morning, one was very weird with people dancing in the street and strange people being introduced to me and the other was about one of my friends bringing back some acid from europe

[~Hippie3]

i dreamt of ferrets

[mindovermycelia]

in color too, i see

[mindovermycelia]

btw . . .
if 6000 people die from some bird disease after eating chinese food in New Mexico, then I have had a premonition while sleeping

[viraljimmy]

I did this dream stuff for a long time.
Here is something that might work for you...

Lay down. It will work best if it is dark and quiet.
And you need to be relaxed, but not too tired.
You want to be sober too, not on drugs!

Close your eyes. Lay still, and start walking,
in your mind. Just imagine you are walking,
or you can imagine a place you have been
and you are walking around there, or to there.

Your body and environment fades away, as
you put all your attention on where you are
now. You can literally walk into a dream.


Another thing to try is going through
a mirror in your dream. I could never
make that work. It's supposed to be
prettry cool. I could find the mirrors,
but could'nt get through them.


The most important thing to lucid dreaming
is just training your mind to remember dreams.
The lucid part will come from that.
Write down your dreams as soon as you wake up.

[wovotom]

i normally smoke before bed just to help myself sleep as i have really fuk'd up sleep patterns e.g i got up at 2 today!!!i do have very vivid dreams but i dont about lucid

[SharkieJones]

I know it sound weird but I'll go to a certain bar for a drink in my dreams and I know everyone in the bar because I recognize them from other dreams. Like I've been to this bar a few dreams ago type of thing and I know that it's a dream.

[xenos]

Maybe we should have a seperate thread where we can collect data on how different substances affect dreams.
People can post their experiences and after more people post we'd have a resource for a wide array of substances.
What do you guys think??

[~Hippie3]

sure,
go ahead
start a new thread

[Hella_Dood]

Ok, I just wanted to suggest a few things to try in lucid dreams that have been INCREDIBLE for me. I have been having lucid dreams for nearly ten years about 6-10 times a year.

I think it is most important to set goals for things you would like to do in your lucid dreams, even if the goal is to simply observe something.

I highly recomend:

Falling.

I once decided in a lucid dream, rather than to fly, to simply fall through the ground. I passed right through into an immense void with massive colored objects shining in the distance. I was nearly overcome with euphoria.

Interviewing.

One of my long time goals in dreams was to ask my dream people questions. I have asked many of my dream people if they know I am dreaming them. Most of them deny and try to change the subject. One time, I dreamt of a friend of mine and I told him I was dreaming him, to which he replied "Yeah. Pretty much. So anyways.....".
I have also spent alot of time in half-lucid dreams passionately trying to let the other dream characters know that we are all in the dream world and can do whatever we want, including flying lessons and demonstrations of passing through walls.

Transcendance/God.

Ok, I'm not christian and I have a more universal idea of god rather than as a deity. That being said I have reached some of my most profoundly euphoric states while lucid dreaming and meditating on "God" or heaven. I had one that seemed simlar to a classic near death exp. where I flew straight up at high speeds till I hit "the light" at which point I woke up crying with joy. I have also had another similar lucid dream where I simply thought "I'd like to see god" and was treated to a MASSIVE euphoric rush that makes ecstacy seem like tylenol.

TV.

It may sound weird but watching TV during a lucid dream is REALLY COOL. I once turned on a TV during a very lucid dream where I was treated to a commercial for "disney casinos", a concept that I found to be very hillarious. I was close to the most lucid that I have been able to achieve and I found it truly entertaining to know that my own brain had just spontaneously created a weird concept that I found so entertaining.

Dream music.

Dream music is the best. Dream jamming can be near orgasmic.

That's about it. I have a tip for flying that is confirmed through some of my friends that also have lucid dreams. Control flying through the breath of your dream body. Breath in to ascend, breath out to descend. It also seems that nearly everyone I have talked to feels that they are suspended
by their solar plexus, right under the ribs.

Lucid dreams can be addictive and frustratingly elusive. I had one last night where I ended up at some sort of liberal college in northern california. Berkeley? It seemed so real that I kept telling the people I met in dream world that I was asleep out of state and that I was somehow astrally projecting myself into their houses! It was rediculously cool. Also, behaviors that would normally go unnoticed in my lucid dreams were getting reactions from dream people like "hey what the fuck man! You can't do that in my house!"

Sorry about the spelling and the run-on sentances!

[dr.gonzo]

Dreaming is some weird shit. I guess its a variation of a dmt trip. sometimes I actually dream whats going to happen to my car, and things to expect at work. I had a dream where I had an exhaust leak. the next day I break the flange where the header bolts to the mid pipe.
But I still cant get the powerball numbers, lol. maybe my dreams tell me Im balanced for my own good and I dont need that kind stuff right now.

The greatest question lies within not knowing and to me thats what makes everyday worth it, or else, what is the point? Go to school, make money, reproduce, quit your job and retire, die? Im on a rock thats flying through space and you talk about buy nike? you want coupon? Im sorry im drunk and full of animosity. No fuck that I aint sorry for nuttin. Im sorry babe I didnt mean it.

[Bobcat]

Dreams are truly strange. The other night I had a dream and an old friend of my father made a cameo in it. Hadn't seen or even thought of him for a year or two anyway.

The next day he visited my father to catch up. I was there too.

Coincidence?

[~Hippie3]

what is the point? Go to school, make money, reproduce, quit your job and retire, die? Im on a rock thats flying through space and you talk about buy nike? you want coupon?

point ?
enjoy the show.
no big thing, admittedly.
but just about all there is.
enjoy the ride.

[Boylobster]

Originally Posted by xenos

Maybe we should have a seperate thread where we can collect data on how different substances affect dreams.
People can post their experiences and after more people post we'd have a resource for a wide array of substances.
What do you guys think??

Well, this isn't related to altering dreamstate with substances, but it IS the only way (thus far) that I've been able to become lucid while dreaming.

While dreaming, look at your hands. Apparantly, for most people, your hands are difficult to visualize accurately in a dreamstate. On the occasions when I've "remembered" to look down at my hands while dreaming, they were deformed, with fused, misshapen fingers. When I can manage it, it's not disconcerting, but it *does* trigger some portion of my brain to become conscious, and I gain immediate and total control over the dream.

This Wikipedia article has a lot of interesting info on how to achieve a lucid state while dreaming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dreaming

And props to Joe for posting a cool dream Tek! Can we open this thread to accounts of how to induce lucid dreams, as well as the effect of substance treatment? Learning is fun.

[Deleena24]

Strangest trip of my life was definitely when I died in a dream. Some kind of horrific accident happened that my mind blocked out...pretty sure I got in a badddddd car accident. then I remember lots of white and feeling in the presence of something massive and powerful, but unseen. I began feeling very scared and remember thinking...I'm too young to die. I then "woke up" in my dream to an incredibly realistic surroundings, but I could sense it wasn't real. I "knew" this place was an artificial place here to trick my conscious into thinking it was real. I became so insanely scared knowing I was dead that I will never forget that feeling of intensity. I wanted so hard to live...then at the very edge of my insanity I woke in a pool of cold sweat...very very very very intense.

[Deleena24]

I'm pretty sure Dimethyltryptamine is realeased in the brain during deep REM sleep...

Should look into DMT for further dream research...maybe taken orally before bed?

[Paradox]

A handy herb that helps induce lucid dreaming is Calea Zacatechi. Smoke some before bed and enjoy. Also the 2 books by Dr Stephen La Berge are awesome for simple teks for inducing lucid dreams.

[blazin_boarder]

i used to have a perscription for Zoloft and i would have the craziest lucid dreams on nights when i didnt smoke or take anything besides the Zoloft. it got to the point where i would mentaly prepare myself to have some crazy dreams but i had trouble falling asleep because i would look foward to having the dreams. has anyone here been on Zoloft and had lucid dreams as well?

[Walls Have Teeth]

Originally Posted by psilly

I should have checked the General forum in the last couple days! I've talked before on topia about lucid dreaming but nobody really seemed to be interested.
I got into lucid dreaming last year after watching Waking Life after eating mushrooms.

Waking life is a very good movie to watch on mushrooms, I love the philosophy in that movie and the artwork in the images you see. The move is even great when you're not tripping also.