About the last part… You make a good point. I’ll correct myself. First, when I say ignorance, I mean the dictionary definition of the word, “lack of knowledge”.

So fear usually arises out of uncertainty. This is a form of ignorance: not knowing the future. But this isn’t really the problem, because as far as I know there’s nothing we can do about that anyway. :p Besides there are also situations in which you know exactly what’s going to happen and there’s fear anyway. Fear is not what I meant and I believe it’s not what’s meant in the quote either.

The problem is the anxiety and suffering that comes with the fear. This is triggered by another form of ignorance: not knowing how the mind works. The fear is, like I said earlier in the post, just a warning mechanism. It’s only when the mind makes it a problem, that it will become a problem. Otherwise there’s nothing stopping you.

For example, applied to LDing, someone who has never WILDed before, might be really afraid of what might happen. (S)he might trigger a bunch of scary thoughts now and (without realizing) become obsessed with these thoughts, which could make this person change his/her mind and tap out. An experienced lucid dreamer however, might still have some nerves when in sleep paralysis or when in a bad dream, but (s)he knows worrying about this will not help in the slightest.

Being aware of all this, i.e. dissolving the ignorance, is the solution (well… the first step anyway). In my humble opinion.

It’s a complicated subject actually. So many schools of thought. Personally I find a lot of truth in Buddhism. A Buddhist explanation might be that the suffering (duhkha) that comes with the experience of fear is caused by craving (trishna, “thirst”) for the feeling of fear to stop. It’s basically denying what’s right in front of you and desiring a different experience. If you study the concept of dependent origination, you’ll see that ignorance (avidya) is the original cause for this whole mess. In this sense, ignorance about suffering in particular is actually meant, but the idea is similar.

Hope that helped.

I watched the movie Waking Life and it was great, to be honest, I had some difficulties following the conversations. I think I will watch it again to grasp them even more. But anyway, great movie!

1.Reinvesioning/reimagining dreams where difficulties are present can help. To do this, re-write the script of the dream and turn your difficulties into a great success, achieving your goal instead of being hampered by difficulties.
2. Deal with issues of dreams. Look back to difficulties and deal with the problems that they’re reflecting from waking life. For instance, perhaps your dream distractions are a big problem. Eliminate distractions in your life to deal with them in the dream.
3. “Burn away” negativity in waking life through meditation. Envision the problem you had in your dream, the pain, frustration, confusion that you feel. Intentionally let go of these feelings in waking life, letting them burn away like smoke from a cleansing fire.
4. Plan ahead. Determine your dream goals, incubate them, focus your determination in waking life. Then they’ll come naturally in your dreams, giving you a clear path to success.

Seanchadith

On the other hand, sleep paralysis, caused by trying a WILD, can be terrifying for some people.

With the timer exercise my intention was to have a uninterrupted concentration the whole day long. But the concentration is based not on solely one thing, but a entire set of things, the happening around you, the car that you hear, and a lot more. So the exercise was to notice “The Happening”.

Our goal was to be mindfull. You said that concentration is active and being mindfull should be passive. I agree, but my intention was to merge those two things into a single thing. If you are able to notice “The Happening” the whole day long, on a certain moment you will passively notice it. And on this moment I think you reached the non-dual awareness. Passively noticing The Happening, the whole day long.

So my goal was to merge the two concepts into a single concept. I know it is a very idealistic and very hard to reach goal, but once there, you reached the moment that I think is the highest possible level of lucidity.

Thanks for your feedback, it really helps me shape my blogs into a more understandable way! :)

Another point to make is that you shouldn’t confuse mindfulness with concentration. Both can be exercises of meditation. Mindfulness is basically “letting go” and being “in the moment” (in a passive way) as much as possible, while concentration is focusing your awareness on an object (which can be a thought, an emotion, a sensation, perception, …).

Both practices are very useful to lucid dreamers: mindfulness for basic awareness of the present reality and concentration for setting intentions (WILDing, dream control, …).

So I don’t think it’s useful to set a timer and to “try being mindful” as long as possible. If you do that, you’re turning mindfulness in a “doing”, while it should be exactly the opposite (letting go). Of course, when meditating, you can always set a timer to remind yourself you still have other things to do :p Concentration however, when practiced, should be maintained as long and uninterrupted as possible, so I can see the point of doing timing exercises for this.

Anyway, that’s just my interpretation. It’s all just semantics. What’s important is the awareness and it seems like you got that figured out. :)