Hi guys!

I've been hanging around in the chat and was asked to share this guide I made for lucid dreaming. For those who are interested, here's a brief discussion of what it is, how to do it, and why to do it!

I. What is Lucid Dreaming?
Lucid dreams are dreams in which the dreamer is aware that he/she is in a dream. Lucidity in a dream is not an on/off thing. There is a spectrum. You may be fully lucid, you may have a vague idea that you are dreaming. What would often happen to me when I started out is that as soon as I became lucid, the part of my psyche that is involved with sexuality would completely take over my actions in the dream. With practice, you will be able to increase your level of lucidity.

II. How to do it
There are many techniques out there, but I've found that the following steps are the easiest and quickest way of mastering this skill. Note that it will require some dedication and effort for most people to become good at it. Without further ado, here are the steps.

1. Improving dream recall-
To increase your levels of dream-awareness, you have to improve your ability to remember them. We all dream, every night, but if we don't pay enough attention To do this, there are two very effective tools you can use to steadily improve your ability to remember dreams.

- First thing is autosuggestions. Before you go to sleep, as you're laying in bed, make the firm decision in your mind (or out loud if you want) to remember your dreams. Repeat this a few times. It's important to do this with full awareness and intention, as it will lose its power if you do this habitually (the same goes for any of the other steps). You can do this by repeating the words "I will remember my dreams tonight" out loud or in your head.

- The second thing is to actually record your dreams. You may keep a dream-journal next to your bed, or keep some kind of device (like your phone) to record it after you wake up. Write down or record whatever you can remember, even if it's just a feeling you remember having, or if you vaguely remember some aspect of the dream. Whatever it is, write it down or record it.
Try to make it a habit to think of your dreams as soon as you wake up. In the beginning you may be starting out having 0 recall, but over time you will remember more and more. Your dream journal is a great way of interpreting patterns, symbols or other kinds of messages from your dreams. The simple act of paying more attention to your dreams can act as a kind of trigger for lucidity. You may already start to have spontaneous moments of dream-lucidity at this point.

2. Attaining lucidity
Once you have improved your ability to remember your dreams, and you are able to remember a few, you are ready to start working on becoming lucid. There are a few techniques that you can use here.
- The first is, once again, autosuggestions. You can add a phrase to your already existing autosuggestion from the previous step. So instead of just saying "I will remember my dreams tonight," you can add the words "and when I am dreaming, I will know I am dreaming." Keep it simple and avoid using negatives ("no," "not" in your autosuggestions (the subconscious mind ignores these words, or so I've been told).

- The second technique is using reality checks. When dreaming, you generally don't realise that you are dreaming, even if something bizarre is going on. You want to create the habit of checking what reality-state you are in outside of the dream-state, so that it carries over into the dream state and helps you become lucid.

Throughout the day, whenever you can remember it, ask yourself the question "am I dreaming?" Try to ask yourself this question sincerely, remembering that you never actually know for sure, unless you check! There's a few things you can do to actually check it. Common reality-checks are looking at the time and looking again to see if it changes. Digital clocks may look warped. The same kind of instability also occurs in printed text. My favourite reality-check is the nose-pinch. Close your nose with your fingers and try to breathe in through your nose. If you can't, you're probably not dreaming! Use whatever reality checks you want to use. I like the nose-pinch cause I can do it anywhere, any time, and I tend to have a lot of false-awakenings (where I wake up from a dream in my room, but am actually still dreaming) so it doesn't cost much effort when you're still half asleep, too comfy to move.

- A third technique that is extremely effective is the WILD (Wake-induced Lucid Dream) technique. This involves waking up after 4-6 hours of sleep, staying awake for 15-30 mins (or up to an hour) and going back to sleep with the intention of having a lucid dream. This causes a REM-sleep rebound effect that allows you to go straight into REM-sleep, thus making it easier to acquire and maintain lucidity. You might have experienced this REM-sleep rebound effect before, waking up and going straight back into a dream. During the time spent awake, avoid bright lights or screens. Light a candle, meditate, set intentions... get your mind awake and aware, but not distracted. I do this alot because I usually automatically wake up after 4-6 hours, but if you have trouble waking up for this, I suggest you do it once or twice a week or so. Don't lose any sleep for this!
- Another technique involves using herbs. Calea zacatechichi, silene capensis and mugwort are known oneirogens (dream-enhancers). I have heard of people using melatonin,especially in conjunction with the WILD technique as well. A friend of mine even told me that smoking a very small amount of bufo before going to sleep works too. I like mugwort especially, cause it grows absolutely abundantly here in Holland (and all over the Northern Hemisphere afaik)! Don't overuse mugwort though, no more than a week straight to avoid possible toxicity (not sure if the toxicity thing is legit though).

3. Deepening lucidity
Once you have attained lucidity, it probably won't be that easy to maintain it, most of the time. You may become overexcited and wake up, which used to happen to me alot. The key here is to keep at it! In time you will become more used to the state. Once you are lucid, the best thing to do when you are starting out is to deepen your awareness of the dream body.
- Rubbing your (dream) hands together, looking at your dream body, feeling it, meditating on it. These are all ways of increasing your awareness. The more aware you are of your dream-body, the more control you will have over it. In due time you will learn to fly, move through walls, etc. Sometimes you may be more easily able to move around in the dream world (especially if you attain lucidity deep inside a dream), but practicing this will help alot. Another thing that happens to alot of people is a kind of "astral blindness". Vision may become blurry, or disappear. I've found that I can kind of force my dream-eyelids open with my hands, but it's far better just to be patient and try to bring more awareness and focus to your vision. Just wait, patiently, and it will probably come back.

III. Why Practice Lucid Dreaming?
We spend about 1/3 of our time in this life asleep. Wouldn't it be awesome if we could use that time constructively? Lucid dreaming is great for deepening creativity, practicing a skill (this has PROVEN benefits for athletes, for example!), having tons of fun flying and fighting dragons and stuff (aww yeahhh), having sex, etc.
However, note that lucidity does not necessarily imply full control. You may have full control over your interactions with the dream-world, but there is some other aspect of your psyche, outside of your conscious mind, that is generating this dream-environment! You are literally interacting with your mind. If psyche-delic means mind-manifest, then this is no different. Rather than interacting with the entity of a mushroom or a plant though, you are fully immersed in nothing but your own mind. Call it your subconscious mind, your Higher Self, or whatever it may be.
I personally find that lucid dreaming is a profound tool for delving deep into personal issues and problem solving. I did a small qualitative study during my bachelor (which was in psychology) and gave my participants these same instructions. We would have regular sessions where we met up and shared our experiences. One of my participants had just gotten off antipsychotic medication and told me that he no longer needed it, having learned how to confront his demons in the dream-state.

Our dreams are there to teach, and lucid dreaming is the perfect opportunity to listen. Our dreams are the naturally induced psychedelic state that we enter into every night. Know that your dreams are there to help you, and you have the right to ask your dreams what they are trying to tell you (even though you might not always get a reply). Tibetan Buddhists use the lucid dream state as a means of receiving knowledge from beyond themselves, and as a gateway to states of Pure Light, infinite bliss, pure consciousness. The possibilities are endless!

I hope you find this useful. If you have any questions, need help or guidance with this practice. Please feel free to ask

Much love.

Jallen

Fantastic post!

I have just a couple things I can add here regarding the WILD technique.

One trick I learned long ago is that you can smoke a small puff of cannbis (without tolerance) immediately after waking up to clean the dreaming screen of your previous/residual dreams (cannabis is a notorious eater of dreams) then do your normal meditating on your dreams/reading your dream journal or whatever you choose to do in the time you are awake. Then right before going back to sleep smoke or eat your oneirogen plants (mugwort, calea, silene, etc.) to supercharge that last REM cycle. I've found this a very useful addition to the WILD technique.

The other bit is regarding melatonin. I've been told the reason that WILD is so effective is that in the time you are awake your body begins to switch from melatonin production (relaxed,sleepy) back to serotonin production (awake,aware) and this allows for moar awareness in the dream state when going back into that last REM cycle, making attaining lucidity moar likely. So it might actually be moar useful to take the melatonin when you first go to bed for the night and to take 5-HTP or eat protein (tryptophan) rich foods when you wake up early to attempt the WILD technique. I haven't personally experimented very much with this one due to contraindications between 5-HTP and harmalas, but it makes a lot of sense and seems worthy of further exploration.

A note on safety: If you take harmalas nightly as I and many others here do, do not take 5-HTP/tryptophan as this is risking serotonin syndrome. Allow at least 72 hours between use of RIMA's and serotonin precursors and vice versa.

Great guide Jallen! I'm definitely going to use this!

Bookmarked!

I have been recording my dreams every night for years using a small digital recorder..

I was a forum member years back with the ..[lucidity institute].. lucid dreaming chat forum...

I have been lucid in many dreams over the years.. but experiance far more pre lucid dreams than lucid ones..

I still have many vivid dreams every night.. and record them with undying intrest..

To be honest lucid dreaming takes some personal skill involving use of the brains prefrontal lobes where critical awareness can occure durring dreaming and naturaly durring waking hours...

But to keeping awareness alive naturally with no supliment help while going to sleep into the dream state to acheave a [WILD] wake initiated lucid dream takes some serious practice...!

Thats where supliments like ..galantamine...choline...Huperzene A...nutropics like vinpocetine.ginko ..DMAE ..and many others come in to make lucid dreaming posible for the western world.. this is a shortcut to lucid dreaming ..unlike the long years it takes tibetian monks to acheave the
[clear light dream state] by meditation...sleeping upright in wooden boxes...green tea..and more and more meditation...

Yes galantamine choline combo helps keep acetylcholine blood levels stsay high enough to acheave increased awareness into a dream by causing the dream to become super vivid ..increasing your chances to recognise that you are in a dream and become lucid as a result...

There are multable methods ...WIld ..wake initiatedlucid dream where the person asleep maintains a certain level of awareness all the way into the dream scape...

There is also another method called.. DILD...drream initiated lucid dreaming...where the dreamer sudenly durring a normal dream has a sudden shift of awareness durring the non lucid dream and becomes lucid and in control...

Repeating intent many times before going to sleep or at ..[WBTB] wake back to bed waking up after 4 or 5 hours of sleep repeating intent is even more effective...

Their are many other methods to lucid dreaming it takes determination and desire...

Visit ...deepdreaming.net..or other lucid dreaming sites to learn more..

Personally i think salvia or dmt experiance is similar to a dream state only your dreaming while awake! cheers

Nice idea to record dreams every day, and for years is a good effort achieved.

There is a lesson within indigenous Australian culture, to "go with the dream that wakes you up". That is it, the whole lesson. Just be attentive to the specific facts within a dream at the time of waking up and being unable to get back to sleep. Assuming relationship between that aspect of your dreams which wakes up the solid matter body into solid matter surroundings, and all solid matter facts to be encountered until next sleep, works out sweet with me. I began to be attentive to every interaction between the awakening dream, and all solid matter, in 2002, and rapidly found the process is totally addictive.

However, I have a lot more experience of how to manage years on end of no REM sleep at all, or at least so little, as that I have had to learn how to live with wielding tiny pockets of lucidity, as supercharged. The reason is complex, and related to having had PTSD, now in recovery. What happens without dreaming at all, is that the daily waking state of mind, starts to do the job of a dream like state, so life becomes a lot like always being in a weird trance. Having had seven or eight years like that straight, I know it can be unpleasant. And I also know that many folks who have used a little too much of many psychoactives, tend to get stuck between not enough REM, and too much REM, and therefore I want to add to this thread about lucid dreams, another piece of information about what can be done about no lucidity.

There is a lesson within indigenous Australian culture, . . .
. . . "go with the dream that wakes you up" . . .

. . . and you may well begin to notice, that it is not only what we do to engage lucidity, but our every action in every day of our lives, which sustains the interface we experience and call our dreaming. And when we realise that in our dreams everything is quite real, and as real as via psychedelics, we also realise why religions had lessons about how to behave well. Not everybody notices however.

Here is an example, since this thread is dated 9/11. After the 9/11 incident one September I can't even recall how long ago, I had the crazy dream of a group of acquaintances, gathering together in the home of one of, and celebrating, and I woke up in shock. All those I could see present, were members of a group named the "Gurdjieff Society", in the Canberra branch, and also their insiders friends. I was an outsider acquaintance of many of them. Because I thought a lot more than usual about that particular dream, it wove itself into many more moments of that day, and subsequent days, than most dreams, and within a short period of time, I found a rare book in a public library, which noted that George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff had converted to Islam, (after dropping out of Orthodox seminary to follow a Hindu pathway), and thereupon, I learned also about the organisational structure of Islam, and that the persons I had seen in a dream, oriented within Islamic contexts strangely, linking via the Gurdjieffian lessons with one school, and via their own desire for control, with another school, and were two timing their own learning. Thus showed themselves up somewhat incidentally, yet the evidence flow on from that particular dream, continues to inform me even now. Not because I assumed a literal meaning, of direct relationship between dreaming and solid matter facts, but because I simply felt concerned to find out why I saw my own inner reality in that way I saw.

Well I'm going to be going back into attempting lucid dreams... Haven't given it an honest effort in many years. I feel like my mind might be a better place and my dreams have been more vivid lately... if i get one go in I will post.

I've been able to control every aspect of my dreams since I was a child. For me, it gets very boring being in total control. Chaos and not knowing is much more exciting. I found that dreams have very few rules which you can not break as your own mind creates most of those rules in thinking that they are still relevant. Affirming that there are no rules and that you wish to be aware of that fact... that will speed your travels and then you will likely grow bored.

Bored of being able to do anything? Interesting. .

How old are you if you don't mind me asking and have you noticed any changes or developments in how you experience dreams over the years? Any correlation to your waking life?

I'm a grandpa if that correlates to anything of interest for you Spractral. However, age has no bearing one ones ability to control dreams or if it does I would argue that like learning a foreign language it is easier the younger one is, but what do I know?

And yes, it is completely boring being able to control each and every facet of your dreams from my perspective. It is the chaos, mystery, or unknown that excites me personally. When you can control every facet from the color of the sky or its thickness for instance... it does become incredibly boring. The exact opposite of interesting.

Your other questions, I will answer as well. Give me a bit though as I will need to give you a more thorough answer to them so there is no misunderstanding.

Spractral,

Let me begin with lucid dreaming and what interested me in it. Take it as a different perspective if you will. I was fascinated by stories of dreams from my grandfather who only dreamed in black and white. I thought how odd as I dreamed in color and had never had a dream in black and white. I was also an avid reader and read books such as those by Carlos Castenada and others that touched on dreaming. It really did fascinate me.

I started out my dream training by going to sleep each night and repeating, “I am aware that I am dreaming. A dream has no rules.” I would then follow that statement with what I wished to accomplish such as, “I will fly tonight” or “I will jump up and down till I launch into space.” I found this remarkably easy to learn, but it did not come without some practice and consistency. I found that for me, taking a power nap with those intentions made it easier to access a lucid state as one did not seem to go as deep and one could come out of it in an hour and remember the dreams much easier than one could after an all night sleep. Like anything else, I soon discovered you could improve with consistency.

At first, I found it easier to fly by using a pool or a trampoline. I would jump up and down or swim up and down going progressively higher and higher until I broke free of the limitations I set for myself. Once I reached an absurd height I could break free as it were and fly with no problem. Eventually, I would not need that crutch, but it definitely helped at first to develop a plan to do things in increments rather than all at once. Breaking free from gravity… when there is no gravity is the realization that the rules of waking reality do not apply to the dream world. And at first there is a lot of excitement. One learns to fly, but there are still unexpected things that happen. Eventually one progresses to the point where you decide you want a green sky and you make that happen. You want the air to be the consistency of water and you make that happen. You control every facet of your reality and when that happens then even dream sex or what might otherwise be a wet dream becomes boring as you cease to think it is real. It is when one gets lost in thinking that it is real that a dream for me is enticing. With that said, as one learns that one can control their dreams in every facet one essentially reprograms ones dreams and one may find that you are flying or defying the rules…. But one is doing so unconsciously as you have changed the rules of your dream world. The rules no longer apply to your dream world as they did before and your dreams become much more fluid and changing which brings some excitement back to your dreams if you are not fully aware that you are dreaming. If you are only semi-conscious as it were. The point where one is aware of oneself and the dream, but not of dreaming is what excites me about a dream. The moment I fully realize I am dreaming I now wish to get lost in the dream again. I may make an adjustment to the dream such as changing venue or such or perhaps visiting another planet or what have you, but it is now my intention to get lost in that new chapter and let it unfold naturally as much as it can given the new parameters I have set. If one can do that… let go and get lost again then dream sex can actually be enticing. However, if one is still fully aware that one is dreaming it often loses its excitement. Again, that is how it is for me. If it is different for you great.

Now, you ask how things changed over the years. Number one change… the rules of my dreams have changed. Flying is something that is completely natural and normal in my dreams and happens without any affirmation.

Number 2 change: I have found that one can will oneself to open ones eyes and wake up while dreaming. When one does this you sometimes trick yourself or are tricked by yourself depending on how you wish to look at it. What I often find in this situation is that either I indeed wake up or I wake up inside the dream which is or at least seems like reality. The huge difference here is that for me, the first time I did this I felt completely drunk as my body did not want to move as it normally did. It seemed to take a lot of effort to control movement.

A short story: I was in basic training at good old Fort Jackson, South Carolina. I remember standing at attention and listening to this fellow snoring in formation. My immediate thought… man, some guy is snoring in formation standing up. That is totally crazy. At the same time I was worried that we were all about to get smoked. Getting smoked in basic basically means doing physical training till someone pukes or no one can move. It often ends with the platoon doing the dying cockroach where one lays on ones back and imitates a dying cockroach. Suffice it to say I did not want that to happen. I kept listening to that fellow snoring when it dawned on me. That fellow snoring was me. That is when I started thinking. What is the one excuse for having your eyes closed that is okay in basic. The only excuse is if one is praying. So, I thought, I’m going to have to wake up and say Amen. I shit you not. In the middle of a snore I stopped and said Amen and then opened my eyes. The Drill Sgt’s had moved the entire platoon away and had the CO and a few other high ups there. They busted out laughing and told me to go to chow. Little did I know they had taken a picture of me snoring at the position of Attention. As luck would have it, my youngest son would later go to ROTC and his instructor was my Drill Sgt. He had my picture on his wall in formation. My son was like, you knew my dad? Small world.

After spending so much time learning to control dreams and every facet of them I became completely bored with it. I really craved for a time when I was not able to control my dreams or I was not aware of the fact that I was dreaming. With the exception of the occasional waking dream where it really felt as if I was awake I can not stress how boring that can be enough. In that particular dream state you can sometimes talk while your sleeping and you can sometimes hear what is going on around you. The problem here is that when you focus on the voices you are hearing that invariably brings you further out of the dream and that makes you fully wake up so that you are no longer sleeping.

Pretty good summary. I'm working on this topic again since a couple of weeks. Being more aware of ones dreambody to increase control is a good hint!