Before I forget and the next night passes...

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
Seriously, the first step is looking at your hands while dreaming. Then you have to log your dreams and after a couple of weeks of continued exercising of your power, you will lucid dream.

I have never done any of that, either. I read somewhere the easiest way to know that you are dreaming is to write some stuff on your hands before you go to sleep. When you look at your hands in your dreams and you don't see that stuff, you'd know you are dreaming.

[Nubclear]

That's a really bad reality check. For me, anything thats on my body will usually be in my dreams whether it be a scratch, bruise, or marker writings

[Zero]

I mentioned lucid dreams quite often in OT. And the one time there was thread dedicated to it I missed it.

Looking at your hand IS a great way to lucidate. No, not seeing your hand is false IMO, you do see your body parts, but you feel something is wrong when you're staring at your hands. Almost as if theyre not there.

Most of success in lucid dream is in your ability to do reality check IMO. In dreams it is so easy to accept everything as is. Personally I have lots of elements that have dual properties in my dreams. They can be colored white and black at the same time and it wont look grey! and no its not alternating between black and white (its like schrodingers cat for ex, there are both true.) This is impossible in real world and impossible to comprehend. yet it is comprehendable in my dream. If I can usually spot those, I can lucidate ( i dont need pink elephant to help me lucidate).

Also, I got ALOT of "waking up from a dream" dream, and "falling asleep" dream. Its basically me dreaming im on the bed and beleiving im in a real world when im not (ive already fallen asleep or i havent awaken yet). Keeping a digital clock is very helpful to remedy those situations, cause its hard to read while your dreaming. (or better yet, clock could be in a dual state I mentioned and might tell me its 7:00 and 12:00 at the same time!)

Anyways this is too much for beginners. Beginners should start with learning to recall dreams (which can be best done by just writing down your dreams so you can practice recalling them later) then start trying to lucidate with simple signs. Eventually when you can lucidate 2-3 times a week, you should eventually get that "sensation" that something isnt unreal everytime you're dreaming.


If you DO lucidate for the first time:

- Dont get to excited (you can wake up.. calm urself down)
- Dont try to control everything too soon (try to accept ur scenario and slowly work on the controls)
- Dont accept the scenario too much though. You can slip back into being unaware if you dont exercise some sort of awareness.
- If you feel yourself waking up, try spinning like a tazmanian devil. Also if you do wake up, you could still be dreaming. So check.
- If you want to wake up (for some odd reason) keep telling yourself "its only a dream I wanna get out of here!"
- Try to adapt and slowly fight off extreme gravity (I never read this anywhere else.. its a personal experience, but my first few lucid experience, I could not stand cause gravity was so strong. It's probably because of realization that my body was lying down in real life. So maybe mind was trying to reject the idea that I was standing? anyways it would be interesting to know if anyone else experienced this.)

[Zero]

Few more things:

About flying: Flying is better than sex. So true so true! Besides flying is the best noobie friendly thing to do. Its easier to fly (or actually glide or low grav jump) in the beginning, but your concious mind forces you to accept consequence of gravity for most part. Then you can learn to fly by flapping your arm and etc, but real effortless flying (and ultimately zero-G) takes some practice. I still have hard time simulating zero-G. perhaps if I had real life experience in zero-G it might be easier for mind to imagine one.

Sex seems hard, but if you can control your calmness, you can literally do it all night and have fun living the perfect fantasy. But meh its one of those newbie things you get obsessed with and bore yourself out of eventually(do improbable stuff not probable! ... unless sex IS improbable for ya!).

About OBE: It seems at the end phase of my lucid dream, I am both awake and dreaming at the same time. Theres a blur between when I exactly wake up. I CAN hear conversations people have and remember real world events while still low grav jumping and etc, so perhaps people who claim to have OBE experience have it at this critical moment. I've had 3rd person dreams before so its probably mix of those 2 and little bit more of surreal whacky thign that contributes to OBE experience.

Increasing success rate: Things that personally works for me. Blinking light, cannabis (hit or miss, cause it suppresses REM sleep, but when REM is suppressed it is multiplied on next cycle... meaning i have to sober up while sleeping.... or maybe its just a big placebo for me), chicken, TV or some kind of pleasant white noise, Sleeping pills (sometimes VERY effective). Chance of me having lucid dreams on the night I attempt these? on average these items give me about 8/10 dreams that become lucid. I lucid about 3-4 times a week without it (if im not living a ****ed up sleep schedule, if so then once every other week..)

What I usually do when lucid: Mostly I do some creative work. I try to visualize incredibly good hallucination or imagine an incredibly pleasant melody. Having drug effect without taking one is my favorite at the moment. (I stopped doing drugs). Philosophizing is incredibly fun cause you can say "It is imperviously impossible and frivulously tragic to be called a doo doo head" and it would sound deep and makes perfect sense. Then theres flying every so often (that never gets bored) and lifting buildings out of the ground doing some omnipotent ****.

[Nubclear]

See, for me I tried for months with the "Make up your own reality check" thing, and it didnt work. At all.
What worked for me was just thinking about it all the time. Eventually I thought about it so much it just began to translate into my dreams. I would just spontaneously think "This is a dream" and...well...

But a dream journal is very important. Very. No point in having a lucid dream if you can't remember it.

[Zero]

about what i said: yeah you have to do those IN REAL LIFE too. Otherwise you wont develop habit of doing in dreams either. You'll just cruise along accepting the dream in your beginner's phase. So you're right tass. Even if it makes you develop some kinf of O.C.D kind of behavior, randomly doing ritualistic things does have huge effect on achieving lucidity.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Zero
About flying: Flying is better than sex. So true so true! Besides flying is the best noobie friendly thing to do. Its easier to fly (or actually glide or low grav jump) in the beginning, but your concious mind forces you to accept consequence of gravity for most part. Then you can learn to fly by flapping your arm and etc, but real effortless flying (and ultimately zero-G) takes some practice. I still have hard time simulating zero-G. perhaps if I had real life experience in zero-G it might be easier for mind to imagine one.

0g is not really flying though.

Anyway, I never had any 0g dreams though I had a number of dreams of effortless flying. I actually shapechanged into aeroplanes into some of them.

Originally posted by Zero
Sex seems hard, but if you can control your calmness, you can literally do it all night and have fun living the perfect fantasy. But meh its one of those newbie things you get obsessed with and bore yourself out of eventually(do improbable stuff not probable! ... unless sex IS improbable for ya!).

Oh those I haven't had a sexual dream with my SO though, just random hot babes whom I don't know.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Wittlich
With sexual dreams, it's harder to control since your subconscious sexual drive kicks in and this is harder (pardon the pun) for the truely "restfull" sleep to set in - like you experienced the first time.

This is probably why I tend to remember "make out" dreams lasting longer than "screwing" dreams.

I don't normally remember dreams unless I'm woken up during them, or at least rise to a higher state of consciousness. I have lucid dreamed a lot, especially when I was a kid. For some reason I don't really care too much about it now, perhaps because I don't have much of a chance to use it.

[Nubclear]

One would think you'd get a chance to use it every night

[Zevico]

Tass, the thing is all of these multiple entities were made up by you. Ultimately you control them...if you just think "these guys are boring...I want something different, like...a tank!" it will happen, unless you doubt it. You have to "believe" it for it to happen.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar
One would think you'd get a chance to use it every night

I normally don't rise to a high enough level of consciousness to lucid dream. Even if I do, I don't rise to a high enough level of consciousness to remember it.

[Nubclear]

Tass, the thing is all of these multiple entities were made up by you.

No they weren't. In fact they are demons.

I don't rise to a high enough level of consciousness to remember it.

Keep a dream journal It'll improve your memory recall abilities.

[Sikander]

Alright, here's a question for you all. Do you believe that the unconscious is a seperate entity for each of us, or like our conscious world is made up of numerous interactions between ourselves and other people or other things? In other words is your dream world completely self contained, or do you meet other dreamers, or beings there?

The reason I ask is that I find my interactions with people in dreams to be much more difficult to manipulate than my interactions with even the most fundamental physical properties. It is thus much easier to teleport away from a demon than make him behave against his own nature.

[Zero]

I can liquify that demon and morph him like im playing with playdough.

Theres one character in my dream I cant seem to control easily though. It probably represents me or my subconcious. I was afraid of this man as a child, but now i know he doesnt pose a threat when i dream. (he doesnt do much in my dream, other than being extra memorable dream when he's in it) When lucid, I can remove him away from me though.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar
No they weren't. In fact they are demons.

I believe you. Fortunately you can treat demons pretty much the same way you can treat other denizens of the dream world, which is you can ignore them. They can't hurt you in the physical realm. They are attracted to your fear, it's what feeds them and it's why they get much realer and meaner when you panic. This goes for when you run across demons when you are conscious as well btw. Hold steady and they seek out easier meat.