Last night I experienced a lucid dream joining the list of many I've experienced over the years. It was the kind where you are fully aware of the fact and are able to think as your typical ego with all of your every day memories available. As I normally do, at this point I like to push my mental limits and see what I can alter. I tried to think about how my body was resting, where I was physically at and then proceeded to make objects levitate. When I believe I may be dreaming, that is the first action I take to confirm. Make a small object levitate by thinking about it.
To my dismay, my ability to modify my surroundings were somewhat more limited than is typical. Some objects simply refused to change although I did have a great deal of control over many existing objects and of course my own self being able to fly, teleport, etc.
I woke up thinking about the similarity and differences alike that I've noticed between my lucid dreams and hyperspace. Notably, that ego recovery is possible even in the deepest of trips after some experience through pattern recognition and developing a "trip memory" of sorts. However, even as a conscious bystander amidst a deep journey into your own mind I have yet to be able to consciously affect aspects of different trips. For instance, attempts to actively modify visuals tends to diminish their form and it's more like having a daydream when you "focus your mind" on what you're trying to envision which can be snapped right back to the seemingly autonomous visuals that form themselves.
I wonder though if this is a hard and fast rule or if this is somehow possible but it's such an understudied area we simply haven't come up with a way, yet. Like trying to use a method of thought very few if any have currently done. I have tried to find if anyone has done this and came up empty handed but if there are writings or video out there I am extremely interested in seeing them! It would seem to me as of this writing though that however our minds generate content in a dream whether they be in a dream or hyperspace, there are "two of us" working at once. Our conscious, ego thought process and another that always runs simultaneously and isn't easily influenced by said ego.
While the passive flow through hyperspace is a fascinating journey into your deepest thoughts and means of interpretation, I myself am somewhat obsessed with the idea of learning to control as much of yourself as possible while at anything less than sheer black out levels. For those wondering, I find myself able to recover my ego by identifying certain thought processes that inevitably come up as I'm reaching or in the middle of a breakthrough. I recognize these thoughts and can remember them from previous trips and from there the feeling is very similar to recognizing a dream as being such, bringing about a lucidity.
However, from there everything is different. I suspect some new means of "envisioning change" will be necessary since my usual lucid dream methods don't work. My best success for now comes from breaking through inside of virtual reality where I can most easily maintain both a sense of self while seemingly having the best memory I've ever had and communicate with the outside world from inside without having to break that thought pattern that would otherwise accompany opening my eyes and trying to speak.
If this is a welcome concept, I plan to update this topic as I learn more about how this all works and as I learn to actively do more while inside of hyperspace beyond being a passenger. Not that there is anything wrong at all with that latter approach, it remains as profound as ever.
All the best to everyone, take care.
[Edit 01]
(As most forums discourage double posting I assume the same holds true here)
I woke up this morning from a series of vivid dreams though lacking in lucidity. My house had chilled a bit and I found myself fairly cold as a result, having fell asleep with only a light blanket over me.
This got me thinking about my personal correlation I seem to have between being chilly and having strong dreams. In addition, I'm susceptible to chills on psychedelics and found early on that it was best to use them in a warm, comfortable setting. However, it got me thinking about this interrelationship and how there might be something useful to figure out.
As far as current science seems to be aware, the hypothalamus and more broadly the limbic system in general helps control functions such as sleep, body temperature, and dreams. This area is also rich in receptors for tryptamine class items to bind to. It is also known that body temperature tends to drop during a state of sleep, during which time the brain shrinks in side due to slight swelling going down.
The wrench in this is fever dreams which reportedly increase the likelihood of the dream being negative in content while the mind is kept in a somewhat anxious state, or so I read in studies online. I myself almost never have either fevers or negative dreams so I can't weigh in much on this.
As for the hypothalamus, I find myself wondering more about its role in generating the "stage" upon which our dream is set for our ego to wander and the differences between sleep and psychedelic usage when it comes to the scenery of this stage. While dream settings tend to nearly almost always be at least somewhat realistic in the sense it's comprised of real world things we are familiar with and have memorized, trip states of course appear to defy this logic. In addition, I have noticed that minute details are impossible to focus on. Any attempt to study a visual aspect of my own hyperspace results in it shifting, moving... attempting to forever become more and more complex. Writing, lines on a shape, whatever the case may be. Only vague, unfocused attention seems able to draw conclusions as to the nature of the visuals.
This is all fairly obvious stuff I suppose, but I hope to try to learn more as to the differences in receptor uptake, pathway openings, and aside from the differences between natural sleep and psychedelics perhaps also learn why each tryptamine class item appears to have slightly different effects on this content as well.
Currently my efforts are in this learning phase before bothering to blast off again in the hopes of new breakthroughs (of the "aha!" variety) in the future.