STAGE
1 - Priming the brain
Tell
me How!
- The good thing is you're already half way there. Just reading
about lucidity can make you lucid when you sleep. You're priming
your brain to take in the information that this "can" happen
and "will" be exciting. To increase your chances you need to
read as much as you can about the subject, so use the links
page and search the Internet. The following general advice
should get you having DILD's (Dream-Initiated Lucid Dreams)
basically lucids that occur whilst already dreaming.
Dream
journals -You might never have paid any real attention
to your dreams ever in your life. In fact, you may never really
remember any dreams you have, and think you never dream. Not
dreaming is impossible; We all move into a dreaming phase of
our sleep a few times in a night. You might not remember them
when you wake but you are having them.
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You need to train
your mind that dreaming is important to you. You need, in short,
to improve your dreaming recall. Keep pen and paper by the side
of your bed and make it your routine to record every scrap of
dream you can remember on waking. If you can't remember any of
your dreams at all, and you want to lucid dream, you'll have to
take more drastic measures. Set a loud alarm for a time in the
morning one hour before you normally get up. This should interrupt
a dream.
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Just
keeping a dream diary is one of the best ways of becoming lucid.
If you are lazy and don't do it, you can't moan about not having
lucid dreams. Your dream recall will improve, and putting the focus
on your dreams will help to make your regular dreams more vivid,
which can be pleasant in itself. Click here
to see online dream journal. |
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Become
aware all the time
-
not just of what goes on in your nighttime
adventures but every day. Don't passively walk around use every
moment in the day to observe the world. Many people walk around
eyes mid level or gaze dictated by modern advertising of shops
and billboards. Break this habit by looking above and below your
normal eye level, examine objects and scenes in more detail, eventually
this more questioning gaze will follow you into your dreams.
Look
what I found just walking today, perched on top of a building
above a hairdressers was a bronze stag? And hidden away at ground
level embedded in the side of a building was a cast iron foot
scraper with women's face in the design, objects I'd passed by
for years!
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Reality
checks are the starter motor
of lucid dreaming, if you can't question the reality of what's
happening around you in your dreams then you'll never get lucid.
But how do you remember to check reality when you're dreaming?
Well, most lucid dreamers use techniques like looking at their
hands during the day then asking the question (out loud or in
your head), "Am I dreaming?" The theory is, if you do this enough
during the day when you dream you'll glance at your hands and
then the phrase "am I dreaming?" will pop into your head! Bingo.
You get lucid.
Dream
signs
or dream themes will become noticeable after
you've done your dream diary for a while. Are you always dreaming
of being in the office working on the computer? That's a dream
theme and the computer is a dream sign. Once you've managed
to find your dream sign or dream theme, all you need to do is
perform a reality check everytime you see your dream sign in
the waking world. Everytime you sit down to work like you were
doing in your dreams ask yourself "Am I dreaming?"
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Resting
and Intent - Intent
is very important in lucid dreaming. Before you sleep the last
thing on your mind should be the repeated phase "I will have
a lucid dream tonight and when I become lucid I will visit the
Lucid Crossroads" or whatever you've decided you what to
do when lucid. The amount of times I've woken into lucidity in
a dream and just run around having fun then woken up and thought
"Oh no I forgot I to practice my karate in my LD (lucid dream)
etc.
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Resting
is also an essential part of becoming lucid each month. The quest
for lucidity takes a lot of focus and you need to rest the brain
for a while. This resting will happen naturally as lucid dreams
seem to have a cycle in their frequency. I'd go for 2 weeks focusing
on getting lucid, keeping a detailed dream diary, doing reality
checks and having intent before you sleep, and then 2 weeks of resting
by just keeping rough dream diary and that's all. |
STAGE
2 - Pushing through the barrier
Moving
into a Lucid - Ok, stage 1 was the basics, that should,
given time, give your mind the subconscious memory to enable
you to recognise when you are dreaming. Now here's a section
you'll not find much about on the internet, how do you move
into a lucid dream and how does it feel. Hopefully
this section is worth it cause I've been pulling back from entering
my lucids for a while now to observe and document this part.
In a DILD's
(Dream-Initiated Lucid Dreams) you tend to enter in a split
second, one moment you were dopey headed dreamer the next your
training has triggered your brain to ask the all important "Am
I dreaming?". Bam! Your there, its a shock, but a very
welcome one, it takes every ounce of self control not to just
go running off doing cartwheels screaming "I made it!"
DILD's
are not very predictable, however, but to achieve the more quick
fix methods like MILD and
WILD we
have to get a sense of the the fine balance between awake awareness
and our asleep body in order to leap into a lucid dream from
this point.
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1.
Above,
the place you're physically sat whilst day dreaming.
2.
Above, The view
from your physical eyes.
Right,
The view from your "minds eye".
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Hooking
into the LD - To hook into a DILD you have to programme
your brain, that is because your normally in deeper sleep where
as MILD and WILD happen near or from being aware and awake and
you can question and adapt easier.
What I need
to get you to be able to do is take dreamy headed daydream imagery
and bring it into focus. I mean this literally, when you daydream
your mind is split between the place you're physically in (1),
looking at (2), and the scene playing out in your mind's
eye (3). In fact your "mind's eye's" imaginings
might be become dominant and you have tuned out the world
around you although its very difficult to get realism like you
normally get looking out of your eye's. Mind's eye images are
flickering ghost images.
When you
try to get to a lucid state from awareness or sleepy morning wake
up you'll need to close your eye lids and gently allow this minds
eye imagery to form. The key for us is to get this flickering
ghost image (3) to become a full three dimensional bright
dynamic scene (4).
3.
4.
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This shift
has to happen without falling into unconscious sleep, after
much trial and error trying to notice what I'm doing I've found
that, I engage with the minds eye imagery to make this happen.
Engaging
means not having unfocused eyes behind your lids. We need to
use our real eyes and trick the brain in to believing
the mind images are actually input from those eyes! You need
two approaches to get this working, firstly look at image 3,
just like a TV picture this image has no depth for our real
eyes to key into.
We have to make our minds imagery like a 3-D diorama that you
get in a museum (5, 6).
If image
4 was my mind's eye imagery I'd try and focus with my
physical eyes (behind closed lids) over the shoulder of the
first knight and into the crowd.
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5.
6.
7.
8.
Stare at
the woman in a black cloak who faces away from us(7), in
your mind will her to turn round and engage us(8). This
always works for me as soon as the person turns round you get
a shock as there eyes meet yours, it very personal and you feel
like this person is a separate mind to your own.
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Eyes have
that real power to engage(A), I always try to catch the
eye of any person or creature in this type of imagery, the closer
I can get staring them in the face the better. When you get that
engagement the scene will brighten to be just like a normal visual
scene(B).
Unlike a
TV picture this won't be flat but like a 3D diorama (5,6)
a bright, living, breathing, moving scene that fills your vision
(C). Step in! I actually try to grab a person or part of
what I see and pull myself in.
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LD
Technique (MILD)
Mnemonic
Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD) "Yawn."
You come round in the morning with that last dream still in
your head. Good. Now you can try a MILD, a technique named by
Stephen LeBerge.
1.
Before you turn over and go back into your dream, try and recall
as much of the dream you were having as possible.
2.
Now as you return to sleep, concentrate on your intention to
remember to recognize you're dreaming. As you close your eyes
and imagine the dream you were having as you woke say to yourself,
"This is a dream and I will wake to lucidity,".
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3.
You can force the dream by imagining how the dream would continue
if you had not of woken up. Even though you are entering the dream
again do not let yourself stray and lose yourself too deeply,
look at the details in the dream like you would do if you were
walking down the street and looked around the scene.
4.
I focus on the people in the scene, I relax but I focus on them
and I try to make eye contact and engage them (use the
techniques in Pushing through the barrier above).
5.
I find MILD to be the fastest of all the techniques to achieve
lucidity because you have a very short period to recognise you
are dreaming before you fall back into the dream so it either
happens or it doesn't.
6.
When
you get that engagement the scene will brighten to be just like
a normal visual scene. I then try to reach out and grab part of
the scene, this seems to make me lunge into the vision and I'm
there!
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Wake
Initiated Lucid Dream (WILD) WILD
man! Don't let anyone tell you that WILDs aren't the holy grail
of lucid dreaming. In a nut shell you lay down on your bed or
in a comfy chair, close your eyes, relax, go through the WILD
process and you're there! Click the image left to see a full page
illustrated guide with animation on how to WILD.
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The
Gatekeeper technique is based on an combination of different
techniques that have worked for me over the years but it is most
firmly based on WILD and Buddhist clear light practices. Click
the image on the right to see a full page illustrated guide with
animation to teach you the gatekeeper technique.
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Mayan
Dreamspell WHITE Lunar WIND tshirt
Buy
at the Crossroads store served
by CafeExpres
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Stabilizing
lucidity
Get me
higher! So
now, hopefully you can become lucid. You might find it difficult
to remain focused and lucid. You could get a very low-level lucid.
Have no fear. Here are some tricks to help.
Movement - Movement
can really help focus lucidity. Try spinning on the spot, your
arms out to the side like Wonder Woman. Run around. Do some triple
somersaults. I don't care if you've not left your bed for 5 years,
you'll still be able to wipe the floor with any Olympic gymnast
you can think of.
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Don't speak, think
- I often wake up from a lucid dream because I'm speaking
or shouting in my dream. I don't know why but the lips seem to
be prone to getting un-paralyzed easily. Try telepathy (thinking
your speech) instead. In the dream world it's possible to communicate
without using your voice!
Ask for clarity
- This is your brain. You understand plain language. Ask for
better lucidity. Say something in your mind like, "Increase Lucidity
NOW!" Really shout it in your mind.
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Look at your hands
- Look at your hands and really focus on the details like
the lines on them etc (don't be shocked if they look funny, sometimes
your body image gets distorted in a lucid dream). You can also
do this to any object. Many people use the ground.
Get your butt over
to the Crossroads - You
can ask the receptionists to help you increase lucidity. Also,
the Crossroads is a calm place where you can deepen lucidity before
departing to your own particular lucid dream.
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The
Lucid Crossroads is another good way of doing reality checks. Print
out the images from this site (see downloads
page) and put them on your wall, read the textual description
and look at the images, I've tried to design them and write in an
evocative manner so your mind thinks "this would be a very
interesting place to visit and I can almost feel it now". When
you go to open a door, pause for a second think about what this
would mean if you where lucid when you opened that door the Crossroads
could lay beyond.
Hopefully the blue people, mad scenery and big sign asking you if
you're dreaming should also be hard to ignore and eventually filter
into your dreams! |
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CHECK
LIST
(how
to get lucid)
1.
Write your dream diary everyday and look for patterns in your
dreams like dream signs to help you get lucid.
2.
Observe everyday life closely, don't take everything at face value,
look beyond what others might miss or disregard.
3.
Give yourself a reality check a couple of times a day (the more
you do the easier it is).
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4.
Read all you can about lucid dreaming. Prime your brain for what
it needs to do. Check out movies or videos from youtube that might
relate to what you want to do in a lucid, like
this.
5.
Try to either use MILD, WILD or the Gatekeeper techniques at least
a few times a month.
6.
Give yourself a rest, get your lucid dreaming into a routine/cycle
that fits in with your lifestyle.
7.
Enjoy : )
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Dreamteams and
online dream journal websites
Dreamteams
are small units
of 6-7 dreamers who write their dream journals online in small
private forums, discuss dreams and dreaming projects as a group.
Dream groups can really help focus and encourage your dreaming
mind and thus improve your chances of having LD's.
Dreamjournal
- straight online journals no dreamteams
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Places to discuss
issues on this page
Ld4all
forum - largest lucid forum on the net, for all your lucid
needs and questions. |
Astralpulse
forum - again mainly for astral posting but you can talk about
lucidity in the Welcome to Dreams section. |
Other relevant
pages at the Crossroads
Pages
on the internet similar to this one
Other lucid
websites on the internet
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