Seven of today’s leading authors, teachers and researchers of lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences and consciousness exploration will present not only their ideas and personal experiences in these fields but then actively show the audience through in-depth practical’s how to achieve the same states.

Tim Post will be there too giving the introductory lecture on lucid dreaming and joins Robert Waggoner on the 4th of June to give a lucid dreaming workshop.

The scientifically validated state of lucid dreaming (a unique state of being consciously aware within the dream) is about to become mainstream knowledge. In the last few years more and more people have woken up to the possibilities of what can happen when they are asleep! Out of Body Experiences or OBE’s are a phenomena at the cutting edge of consciousness exploration. Known in Tibetan Buddhist highest yoga tantra practice as Illusory Body Yoga, the projection of consciousness to a location or focus outside of the physical body has been used for thousands of years to develop deep spiritual awareness and to understand the true nature of reality.

All attendees to this special event will come away with a range of new tools and techniques that they can immediately use to benefit their waking lives.The benefits to lucid dreaming and OBEs are only limited by our imagination. Personal issues can be resolved such as phobias and fears, we can literally be our own therapist by getting to know our subconscious, we can experience many things that are not possible in the waking state such as flying or walking through solid objects, plus we can visit any place in the universe with just a simple intention.

Lucid dreaming opens your mind to greater potential and it’s time to wake up!

To register, please visit the Gateways Of The Mind website.

Hoping to see you there!

My name is Tadas Stumbrys and I am a lucid dream researcher at Heidelberg University in Germany (if you want to know more about my research, please check my website www.stumbrys.com. I am starting a new study on dream characters in lucid dreams and looking for participants. The participation in the study is quite simple: once you will have a lucid dream, you need to talk to a dream character and ask some specific questions. Then awaken yourself, write down the conversation, fill the report sheet and send it back to me.

The aim of this study is to explore the variety and complexity of dream characters, their features and abilities within lucid dreams. As the topic is quite complex, this will be more of a qualitative study which could last several months, although you will be of course free to withdraw from the study at any time.

If you are willing to participate, please fill a brief registration form: http://lucid.lt/limesurvey/index.php?sid=38665

Further information about the study will be sent to your email address (as provided in the registration form).

Thank you very much for your help in advancing lucid dream research!

Tadas Stumbrys
Heidelberg University
Email: tadas.stumbrys@issw.uni-heidelberg.de

Clearly, Lucidipedia has been our most popular lucid dream project so far. It enabled us to reach out to countless lucid dreamers across the world and experiment with new ways to teach and support lucid dreaming online (like our online dream journal, video tutorials and online classes). We are incredibly proud of our supportive community who has kept on reminding us every day of why we need to continue our work and spread the word on lucid dreaming.

Dreaming the Future

About a year ago, we started to envision Lucidipedia’s future roadmap and concluded that in order for us to further embark on our mission to offer lucid dreamers great learning resources on the web, we needed to adopt and develop an entirely new teaching platform. There’s some really awesome stuff that we would love to build and offer you guys that requires a fundamentally different technological (and philosophical) framework for us to build upon. Implementing these big changes in Lucidipedia.com’s current state would largely distort the website and most likely confuse users. For us to be able to reinvent ourselves and break free of Lucidipedia.com’s current boundaries, we decided to change lanes and launch an independent startup on lucid dream teaching. We call our startup Snoozon and we are very excited about what’s to come.

The Snoozon team includes lucid dream practitioner and respected teacher Tim Post (Netherlands) as its founding director, Lucidipedia’s software developer and co-founder Benjamin Wohl (Germany), plus Laurens Van Keer (Belgium) as Snoozon’s newest software developer. Together we are hard at work building out what we believe to be the next step for lucid dreamers who seek to fully develop their skill of lucid dreaming and easily share dreams and experiences with others. Although we’re still in the process of developing Snoozon at this very moment, we could not be more proud and excited about what’s to come, and cannot wait to show you guys some previews. Launch date of Snoozon.com is set for late 2013.

What’s Snoozon Gonna Be About?

Opposed to how Dream Journal at Lucidipedia.com is just “one of our services”, we believe that we could host a much more promising lucid dream teaching platform by making our online dream journal take over center stage. We are working on big upgrades of Dream Journal that include much more advanced social interactivity and journaling features than our current version at Lucidipedia has to offer and allows for. Naturally, once we launch Snoozon, we will provide an easy export function at Lucidipedia for those who currently use Lucidipedia’s Dream Journal and would like to import all of their preciously journaled dream records into their new Snoozon accounts. We expect most of you will transfer and be very interested to enjoy Snoozon’s upgraded journaling features. Still, no matter whether you decide to use Lucidipedia or Snoozon, all of your dreams will remain fully accessible and safe with us.

Snoozon will also host all of our future online classes. We will upgrade the classroom with new and exciting features, and schedule regular introductory and in-depth (guest) video webinars on the topic of lucid dreaming (yeah we know there have not been any lately at Lucidipedia; that will definitely change at Snoozon). We’ll also launch a complete 30-day email course on lucid dreaming, providing a complete home study course on lucid dreaming, including brand new training videos of Tim and his personal feedback to help you go beyond your current lucid dream abilities. We will open registrations for our very own exclusive and gorgeous lucid dream retreats in Central Europe. We would love to meet many of you in person and offer you the option to immerse yourselves into a complete two-week lucid dreaming retreat program hosted by Tim Post to develop reliable skill in lucid dreaming and using the state for personal growth and enhanced well-being. Let alone, meet fellow lucid dreamers.

The Future of Lucidipedia

With today’s official announcement of Snoozon, however, there will be two changes made concerning the future of Lucidipedia.com. Firstly, our developers will officially discontinue any further development concerning Lucidipedia.com and shift focus to Snoozon. Secondly, once we launch Snoozon in the beginning of 2013, we will close off new user registrations to Lucidipedia.com and direct newcomers to Snoozon.com. Existing users will be able to continue accessing their dream journals at Lucidipedia.com and make use of all features as usual (adding dreams, etc.). The same goes for the forums. Basically, existing users will not notice any difference.

For us to build amazing new content and more upgraded applications, we need to reshape our (technological) foundations and necessarily create something original. We think it’s time to take the next step forward and are hoping you are with us to continue this exciting journey together.

In the next few months we’ll release sneak previews and reveal more neat features of Snoozon through Snoozon’s Facebook and Twitter channel. If you’re interested in getting notified of exclusive backstage developments in preparation of the upcoming launch, please subscribe to Snoozon’s newsletter.

Thank you so much!

Lucidly,
Snoozon team

#1      Fear

Many awful stories about sleep paralysis are circulating on the Internet, so it’s no surprise beginners often have fears about trying a WILD. Truth is, being in sleep paralysis CAN be a frightening experience indeed, especially if you are afraid already, but it doesn’t have to be.

Knowledge is the best antidote to fear. If you prepare yourself by studying what will most likely happen to your mind and body, chances are it will be a breeze. The best way to overcome this problem is to realize it’s not a problem at all. Some of the most typical hypnagogic hallucinations experienced during the transition are:

• Seeing flashes, color blobs and visual patterns.
• Hearing random sounds and voices.
• Feeling paralyzed, not able to move.
• Feeling as if the body is floating, falling, spinning, or flying in a specific direction.
• Feeling (sometimes very intense) vibrations that suddenly stop after a while.
• Seeing short dream scenes that gradually become longer and more realistic.

Check out Tim’s video tutorial on the WILD technique and the accompanying video “demo” of a typical WILD experience for a quick and clearer understanding.

At every stage, you have the power to stop the experience. Don’t convince yourself otherwise. Don’t panic. During sleep paralysis, you can always hold your breath to wake yourself up if intention alone doesn’t cut it.

Rest assured, you are safe. Whatever happens, it’s in your mind and with practice you’ll overcome all obstacles. Read more about how to face fear with lucidity in my previous blogpost.

Recent forum topics addressing this problem:

• Afraid of trying WILD / Paralysis
• Need help with WILD
• Scary images and WILD

#2      How to sleep?

Sleeping on the back is often touted as the best sleep posture for having a WILD, probably due to Robert Monroe’s books on OBE’s. Lying on your back does make it easier to do some final relaxation exercises before going to sleep. However, if you’re not used to this position, it’s probably best to just go for your natural sleep position. Personally, I have not noticed much of a difference between sleep positions in terms of effectiveness.

The Lucidity institute is currently (2012) running an experiment on sleep postures and lucid dreaming. I quote from their website:

Some Tibetan lore suggests that men and women should sleep on opposite sides, “because their energy channels are reversed.” We would like to find out to what extent this is so. Previous Lucidity Institute studies on sleep posture, nasal laterality, and lucid dreaming have in fact yielded certain unexpected differences for men and women, but we need more participants to know whether those results were random variations or reproducible.

Click here to participate.

Make sure you’re fully relaxed. Don’t forget to relax your jaw and facial muscles. Breathing through your mouth might make this easier and because it keeps your mouth try, it’ll fix problem #4 too.

Learn how you breathe while you’re sleeping, by recording yourself. Then simply emulate that way of breathing to make your mind and body fall asleep faster.

Last, but definitely not least, DO NOT MOVE. Don’t even move your eyes, if possible.

#3      Not able to fall asleep or falling asleep too fast

The key to successfully enter a WILD is being totally mentally awake, while physically asleep. Finding the perfect balance between these two opposites is what makes the feat so difficult. The way to approach this highly depends on what type of sleeper you are, so we’re limited to giving only general advice.

Don’t bother trying to enter a WILD at the beginning of the night. It’s possible, but not recommended. Even if you succeed, you’d have messed up your natural circadian rhythm and, unless you’d force yourself to wake up, you’d probably not even remember the lucid dream by the time you wake up naturally.

Preferably, a WILD should always be done in combination with WBTB, wake back to bed. First sleep for 3, 4.5 or 6 hours. This is because of the way most people’s sleep stages are structured. Usually, longer REM stages are occurring after more sleep, which makes lucid dreaming ideal. Sleep less if you can’t fall asleep during the WILD attempt; sleep more if you fall asleep too fast.

After the first period of sleep, stay awake for about 30 to 45 minutes before attempting the WILD. This has been proven by Dr. Stephen LaBerge to be the best amount of time to stay awake when applying the WBTB technique. Make sure you prepare yourself in semi-darkness. Looking at a monitor is a big no-no. Reading lucid dreaming related material, meditation and doing relaxation exercises are all recommended activities.

Finally, go back to sleep while staying aware. Simple, right? ;)

Recent forum topics addressing this problem:

• Hard to sleep again
• WILD technique without heading back to bed?

#4      The “swallowing” problem

While waiting for your body to go completely in the paralyzed state, you might experience saliva building up in your mouth. Just swallow it. :)

Some people believe doing this will reset your progress. As with many issues, it will only become a problem if you make it one. Your body does this while you’re unconscious anyway. So don’t be so focused on it.

If really necessary, you can even prevent this from happening by making sure your head is slightly higher than the rest of your body. This will make the saliva trickle down your throat. Lastly, try breathing through your mouth.

Recent forum topics addressing this problem:

• Urge to swallow
• Gulps a lot

#5      The itchies

Lying completely still for a while will inevitably cause your body to itch. If it happens early on in the WILD attempt, don’t worry about it and just scratch. Otherwise, either try to observe and note the feeling from a dissociated perspective, or just try to ignore it.

If it really frustrates you, note the feeling of frustration. Scratch if you have to, but don’t make it a problem.

#6      When to open your eyes

Another question that surfaces regularly is when to open your “dream eyes”? How do you know whether or not your “waking life” eyes will open? When is the body fully paralyzed?

The answer is quite simple. You should never open your eyes during a WILD attempt. Well, you could of course, just to see what happens, but most likely you’d ruin your progress. The dream environment will form by itself while your eyes are still closed.

We’ll talk more about how to interact with the dream in the next problem.

Note that the following is just purely based on my personal experience and ideas.

For some people the dream won’t create itself visually. Those people will need to open their eyes once the WILD is successful and the dream is already formed. To understand how this is possible, let’s use an NLP model called “sensory modalities”. This model states that information is processed through the senses – generally one of the three dominant senses: visual, auditory or kinesthetic. Depending on the context, a particular sensory system may take dominance.

The idea is that this happens while dreaming. If you notice you can more easily dream sounds or touch, you might want to focus on those senses instead. Only once you find you’re fully within a dream, through hearing or feeling, you can safely open up your “dream eyes” and activate your visual sense too. For example, I noticed I can easily remember kinesthetic elements. So when I start a WILD, I try to feel the ground in the dream first. I touch and feel around like a lost blind man. Once I’m confident that I’m in a dream, I open my eyes. This technique has proven to be effective again and again.

Recent forum topics addressing this problem:

• Am I supposed to open my eyes?

#7      How to work with the hallucinations? How to enter the dream?

During the transition to a WILD, you’ll probably experience several hypnagogic hallucinations, as mentioned before. These can range from short visual, auditory and/or kinesthetic impressions to complicated, multisensory dream scenes. So now the million dollar question is: what’s the best way to interact with these phenomena, if at all?

Over the years, many approaches have been suggested and usually result in some kind of variation of the WILD technique. As far as I know, there is still no silver bullet for this problem and there will probably never be one. The best approach largely depends on the situation.

Generally, a balance between passive observation and light interaction is recommended. Don’t ignore the hallucinations, but don’t overly focus on them either. Imagine you’re already in the dream, but keep some “distance” as a watchful observer at the same time. Allow the dream to form by itself. Visualization and imagination can stimulate this process, but forcing it is very difficult and often counter-productive. Be patient.

I know this answer might be vague and unsatisfying, so I’ll give an example based on my last WILD, which happened to be unintentional:

I was drifting off to sleep, when suddenly I realized my feet and legs started floating upwards. At the same time, I thought a dark, shadowy “entity” was standing at the end of my bed – even though I couldn’t see anything. Fear crept up to me, but then I remembered my personal “oneironaut training”. In a matter of seconds, my mind went from freaking out to shifting its focus on the feeling of floating instead and being passive towards everything else. The entity was still there, so I mentally said “hi”, but that was about all the attention I was willing to give it. Gradually, my whole body started floating, which freed me from sleep paralysis. Now I could move in my dream bedroom, but I still couldn’t see anything. In this case, instead of risking opening up my eyes, I imagined the lights were off, so I maneuvered myself to the window and opened it. My efforts were rewarded with the sight of a magnificent tropical jungle paradise (which normally isn’t there by the way).

Recent forum topics addressing this problem:

• Couldn’t enter the dream
• Sleep paralysis I suppose – now what?

I’m wondering if the fantasy truly is endless. It the same question as: Is the universe endless? In theory it isn’t but it is unimaginable big, so big there will be no possibility to search every single place, at least not soon. And the quest of  searching the edge of the universe may even be easier then searching the edge of your fantasy may even be more difficult. Just imagine something very strange/weird/rare. It may even be difficult to do something relatively easy as this. And imagine the countless other possibilities. That’s hard, I can’t do it.

I think training your fantasy might be a possibility. Imagining something like a new story or a song is such training. It is a lot of fun to do actually. But training your fantasy like this is only a tiny training. But you only go forward with tiny steps right? I have something  to do in the countless hours wasted in boring classes, I can just take a walk in my mind, and it is fun.

Good luck!

I am in a process of finding a personal technique. This is difficult. There are some things that I found some interesting things even though I knew them already, even though it seems strange, it makes some sense.  I made a kind of motto for myself. I will explain it.

Discipline, Persistence, Commitment

This is a simple rule I found for myself that I didn’t even find through lucid dreaming, when I first thought of it I was in a totally different scenario. I was in France on vacation with my family (note that I’m a fanatic skateboarder). I was skateboarding and trying out some new tricks and different mindsets. Different mindsets? What I mean with that is the way I try a trick. When I was skateboarding this day I found two things, one thing is skateboarding related and one thing is quite general. It’s a kind of success formula, as you might have guessed, it’s: Discipline, persistence, commitment.

Discipline

Discipline is a difficult concept. What I mean with discipline is the consistency of doing something with regularity. A simple example is following a planning you made for school. If you are well disciplined you will be able to keep this planning. Now for example if you made a lucid dreaming planning/schedule, you must have a certain amount of discipline to follow this planning. If you like a certain subject it  is easier. You have to be motivated. So being motivated is a key ingredient for being disciplined. This really makes a difference. What makes another huge difference is a  goal. These two things make the key ingredients for being disciplined. Motivation and a  goal. This goal can be ambitious, it’s great if it is. Now what I think is the most important of these: Your mindset. This is extremely important! I can maybe give a personal example on this case: I was skateboarding and learning a trick I was working on for weeks. I found the key element. Now when I found this I wasn’t finished yet. The most important part was yet to come. Integrating this key element in your trick. Telling yourself to do a thing slightly different is nothing compared to really doing it. When you tell yourself to do something differently you have to feel it, let it flow through your mind, truly doing it. Now this different mindset worked out well and resulted in me learning this trick.

This new mindset works and should be tried, it isn’t even too easy to truly do this. When you go to sleep and say to yourself a 100 times: I’m going to become lucid tonight or  I’m going to do a reality check tonight you are doing it wrong. You can tell yourself once but with the correct mindset, truly feeling the words and imagining everything happening. So my words of wisdom: Telling yourself to do something is something entirely different than truly doing it.

Persistence

Now to my second point. Persistence. This might look the same as discipline but it is different. Discipline is based on regularity while persistence in my eyes is more bound to personal experience on a certain subject, in this case of course lucid dreaming. Discipline covers the dream journal, waking up in the middle of the night and doing a technique part while persistence covers the personal motor for difficult situation such as stress and tiredness. It basically says: Never give up. That sounds cliche but it is the truth, you should never give up in no situation. For this persistence you need some strong motivation. That is most important here. You have to be motivated enough to battle through these stressful situations.With a nice metaphor: Seeing the sunshine after a rainy cloud.

Commitment

Now for the last part: Commitment. This is a important part. I already summarized it in the part about your mindset. I am going to say it again. It is very important. Trying and truly trying is something entirely different. I think everybody should really take the time to understand this. I think it can help you in multiple ways and not only in lucid dreaming but in a lot of different situations. I found it extremely helpful. I tried this new mindset mostly in skateboarding since I was busy with skateboarding a lot in this vacation and it really worked out. It isn’t easy to commit every single time you try something but it is worth it.

I think that these three things are a very important subject in your lucid dreaming training. And when you feel you achieved this discipline, persistence and commitment thing, I think you will have more ease with inducing lucid dreams.

Be enthusiastic about your lucid dreaming progress and even your fall backs! Enjoy the progress that you make, even if it are small steps. It’s important that you have fun in lucid dreaming. You aren’t supposed to be stressed and frustrated about your lucid dream frequencies!

Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect, it means that you’ve decided to look beyond imperfections.

- Unknown

Be happy,

Rox

Ground yourself

The last couple of months I had to take a break from lucid dreaming. Not because it requires too much effort. Not because I had too much work. Not because it bored me. None of that. The reason was simple: fear.

One night, I woke up breathing heavily, feeling as if I was about to die. My thoughts were racing. Anxiety. Paranoia. Chaos. Fear. I was thrown from a literally indescribable lucid dream to waking life because of a random phone call and something about the rapid transition between the two states triggered a massive panic attack. Immediately, the logical part of my mind took over, assessed the situation and managed to calm me down.

The months preceding this night I had increasingly weirder dreams and waking life experiences. I honestly feared I had gone too far with exploring the nature of reality, dreams and the unconscious. I felt like a young conquistador who underestimated his journey from the physical to the non-physical and ventured too far into the terra incognita of the mind. Too far to make it back sane. That night solidified my decision to take a break from lucid dreaming to ground myself in what we would call the “real world”.

I was Cipher. I chose the red pill too soon in my development. “Buckle up your seatbelt, Dorothy, ’cause Kansas is going bye bye.” The veil was lifted and the illusions of the Ego revealed. I saw the inherent uncertainty of the human condition at a deeper level and I did NOT like it. I knew what was happening intellectually; I was very familiar with the idea of “Ego death” and like most students, I have some experience with several entheogens, but knowing and remembering the concept is different from experiencing it.

Who knows what values I would have betrayed to go back to “blissful” ignorance if I hadn’t decided to take a break from it all? Or maybe this is just a normal phase in the “Awakening” of an individual (I dislike using that word, but what I mean with “Awakening” in this sense, is becoming Self-aware and mindful at a much deeper level). After all, Robert Waggoner wrote about a similar account in his book “Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self”, except his was triggered by a row of false awakenings:

After seven [false awakenings], I told myself that whatever reality I might encounter in the hallway, I would accept – that’s how shaken I was – any reality was fine, as long as it stayed put. As I’ve said before, venturing into lucid dreaming takes a certain amount of fearlessness. Encountering the lucid dream reality in all of its complexity and creative splendor can seem almost overwhelming at times.

Maybe that’s what happened to me. Maybe like some inner Icarus of the dream world, I had ventured too close to the enormity of the unconscious, only to realize my humanness and fall back. Or maybe my waking ego preferred to be seen as the one in control and felt uncomfortable with the mind-blowing creativity of the unconscious. Whatever the case, something happened, something changed, and I needed a break from lucid dreaming.

- Robert Waggoner

He also mentions in his book how important it is to “ground yourself” with reality when such experiences become too intense. I couldn’t agree more. If this is you, take a break for a while. Spend some time with your family, your friends, pick up old or new hobbies, sleep like a “normal person” for a while… ;)

However, just like Robert did, I will venture onwards. This is my comeback.

We must go deeper.

Surrender to the fear

Beginning lucid dreamers often have doubts about trying the wake-initiated lucid dream (WILD) technique. Part of the transition from awake to asleep but conscious, often involves being in sleep paralysis. This means you can’t move and you start hallucinating. Being in such a vulnerable position can easily trigger a reaction of fear. This emotion can overwhelm you and bring about intrusive, fearful thoughts, which in turn trigger the mind to manifest all kinds of scary hallucinations. If this happens, it can snowball into even more fear and more scary stuff until the dreamer wakes up.

So let’s look at what’s happening here:

uncertainty & vulnerability -> fear -> fearful thoughts -> hallucinations -> more fear -> …

How can we break this downward spiral from happening? We obviously can’t eliminate the uncertainty. That’s an inherent part of dreams, as well as of life itself. We can’t stop fear from arising, but its hold on the mind will weaken with experience. We can’t stop a stream of thought either, since the mind cannot think in negation. What we can do is to try to redirect the thoughts towards pleasant subjects. However, this will require increasingly more concentration, focus and strain as thoughts become more intrusive. It’s easy to stop a little streamlet, but you can’t simply stop the Niagara Falls.

So is there nothing else we can do? There is and there isn’t, because it can’t exactly be labeled as a “doing”. Let’s ask ourselves what might seem like a bizarre question: why is “fear” a problem? Even more bizarre: why is “pain” a problem? There is nothing inherently “wrong” with these sensations. They are simply messages from the mind; a warning system that helps us survive and with most people, this system just happens to be calibrated a little too sensitive (which is better than not sensitive enough). Fear is a problem because we MAKE it a problem.

This is even reflected in the way we use language. You might say “I am afraid”. No you’re not. You FEEL afraid. Big difference. To be clear, I’m not advocating for using language differently (although that might help; as you might know if you’re familiar with NLP), but the point is that we identify with objects. We don’t know who we are. We get tricked by Mr. Gold. This is what makes us focus on fear and therefore prolong it.

So the solution to this mess is actually really, really simple, yet it’s the most difficult thing to do, because it’s not a “doing” per se: let the fear happen. Notice it, be aware of it and don’t make it a problem. If possible, try to see it as excitement instead. The physiological reactions are similar anyway. Surrender to the fear, because resistance is futile. It’s no coincidence my last blogpost was about letting go.

Don’t believe a word I write though, find out for yourself!

Just jump

So now that we got the mind figured out (on an intellectual level), it doesn’t have to hold us back any longer. Is there something you want to do, but the only thing that’s holding you back and generating false excuses is fear? Well give in to the fear, but just do it anyway! Fear will keep you focused, so embrace it.

Of course this is all easier written than done. But as you learn the basics of lucid dreaming (and as you overcome any initial fear you might have), you’ll gain an incredibly helpful tool: the means to simulate almost any real life scenario possible.

For example, last month I went on a US West Coast road trip with some friends and I decided to go skydiving. That’s been an item on my bucket list for a long while now. I’ve never really had a strong fear of heights, but I’ve never really been terribly excited about them either… So before the actual jump I initiated a lucid dream using the MILD technique. As I got lucid, I found myself in my old studio apartment on the 4th floor and I remembered my intention to practice the jump. Without hesitation I ran towards the window, jumped through and imagined I was jumping from really high up. After dreaming the free fall for a couple of seconds, I woke up. The feeling was amazing. I was even more excited about the actual jump than before.

Looking back, the dream free fall was actually very similar to the real one, but different still. What’s important is that in this particular example, I managed to use the lucid dream simulation to transmute that fear and doubt into more excitement instead. Imagine the possibilities!

What’s preventing you? Fear or laziness?

There are two kinds of sufferers in this world: those who suffer from a lack of life and those who suffer from an overabundance of life. I’ve always found myself in the second category. When you come to think of it, almost all human behavior and activity is not essentially any different from animal behavior. The most advanced technologies and craftsmanship bring us, at best, up to the super-chimpanzee level. Actually, the gap between, say, Plato or Nietzsche and the average human is greater than the gap between that chimpanzee and the average human. The realm of the real spirit, the true artist, the saint, the philosopher, is rarely achieved.

Why so few? Why is world history and evolution not stories of progress but rather this endless and futile addition of zeroes. No greater values have developed. Hell, the Greeks 3,000 years ago were just as advanced as we are. So what are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential? The answer to that can be found in another question, and that’s this: Which is the most universal human characteristic – fear or laziness?

- From the movie you should watch (again), “Waking Life”

It’s a tricky question, but my personal answer is simple: neither. It’s ignorance that triggers both fear and laziness. Not knowing how to figure out the mind leads to not understanding the mind, which makes one habitually turn fear into a gigantic problem. Laziness is the default state if there is a lack of direction and purpose. This lack is simply caused by ignorance of the Self. Before knowing what you really want to do, you need to know who you are. Before knowing who you are, you need to know how you’re going to find out.

Super perfundo,

Lence

I can start with giving an example. WILD is often experienced the hardest technique of all the techniques. I think that the difficulty is created (for a piece) by the mind. If you read about WILD on the internet or books, you often see a little side note: “This technique is very difficult.” I was wondering, what makes this technique so difficult? I think it’s a part true difficulty and a part mind-produced difficulty.

Mind difficulties

The mind has the power to change your view on something, this comes in the form of prejudgments. You always have a prejudice in your pocket, for everything. When you see a new vegetable on your dinner plate you might think it tastes disgusting, and it probably will. Except if it’s really different than you expected. So the expectation-effect kicks in. In a lucid dream it is a really common thing, you expect something, it happens. In reality the same happens, but not on such a high level.

If you read a lot about how lucid dreaming is difficult, you are surely going to expect lucid dreaming to be difficult. Or you have to be really headstrong, or you are doomed. Now I think a lot of new lucid dreamers are doomed already, but I think that can change and give hope to easier lucid dreams. I’m not going to give you a secret technique, or a kind of magic potion, no you want to get rid of these prejudgments. To be honest, I don’t really have an idea on how to do this. I think you first have to open your mind to new options, once these prejudices set their teeth in your mind they are very hard to get rid off.

I am still thinking and imagining a way that could get these problems away, and I will need some help. You could say they leave by facts, but it isn’t true to say: Lucid dreaming is easy. Maybe if I say: “Lucid dreaming isn’t as hard as you think so, give it a try with a neutral idea of the difficulty and see what happens for yourself, success is not guaranteed but I think your prejudgments and false information have mislead you. Beware of false information and try to believe something as soon as you experienced it yourself.” I think this is the best I can give you and I hope lucid dreaming will come easier after reading this.

There is another thing I noticed, when reading things I often read without truly reading, I just read and don’t think about it. This is wrong, you have to truly understand it, give it more time to truly integrate in your mind. This might happen to you while reading this text. Really think about it when you are going to sleep, try to get those prejudices away.

Good luck!

‘The last period before the big vacation is a period of tests on my school, so I had to learn a lot throughout the day. I went to bed early every day and woke up early to go to school.  Now this period ended and we had a party with school to celebrate the ending of the year. The interesting thing occurred when I went to bed. I fell asleep quickly and had some interesting dream experiences.

False awakenings

In the early REM-stages I dreamed that I was back on the party, it was exactly the same, and then I woke up. Or at least, I thought I did. I woke up again, but this time on the party again, so false awakening number one passed.
Once back on the party it felt like I resumed the last dream that I was on the party, so like a continuous story. So a had some more fun and I fell on the ground, closed my eyes and I was in my bed again. Or at least, I thought so. I wanted to stand up when I noticed something odd. But before I could reality check, I was on the party again. So much for false awakening number two. And again the story went on.
I was partying again and there were some odd things around, but I didn’t notice them. I was having more fun and BAM, in my bed again. I didn’t notice this series of false awakenings so I wanted to stand up and eat something. That was the last false awakening of this night but it was really strange because I never encountered false awakenings before and it was a kind of hop between the party and my bed.

Lucid again!

What makes this night even more interesting is that I encountered two lucid dreams that chained. I had one extremely vivid lucid dream that lasted really long, it was without doubt my #1 lucid dream. I recently had a setback in lucid dreams and in this time I did a lot of research and read a lot of things about dream control, stabilizing and the dream itself. Sadly enough I could never test it because I had very infrequent lucid dreams. But this was a great dream. I had full dream control, it lasted long and I had some interesting encounters with dream characters. I truly felt the fury of a dream character that attacked me with all his might.

When I woke up from this dream I wasn’t too aware, I went to sleep again and I fell into another lucid dream immediately. I didn’t even have to do a reality check, I knew for sure that I was lucid. This was a less vivid lucid dream, I just flew around a little bit and had some fun on the boulevard.

This is what made my night so interesting. There was one difference, I didn’t follow my sleep rhythm, so I think I can blame that single difference. I had the feeling that I slept with a lot of unrest, but I didn’t I just dreamed I did. The continuous false awakenings were tiring.

I think I can officially say I passed my lucid roadblock that I encountered a while ago, last night I had another lucid dream. I found my confidence again and I got motivated my this very vivid lucid dream. This is also the reason of the picture. I’m seeing some sunshine after a time of darkness in my lucid dreaming world.

Good luck!

Importance

It is essential that you become more aware in your waking life in order to become lucid in the night. People often say you can’t really do anything in your waking life to prepare for lucid dreams (except for reality checks), but one of the most important parts of lucid dreaming is in the waking life. Your dreams always feel very real. Even the most odd things can pass without us dreamers noticing. This is strange isn’t it? It’s because you aren’t being aware, or paying attention to your surroundings. If we are awake, we would immediately notice a flying pink elephant and we would know that is strange. In a dream we don’t because we lack the awareness. Now because even in the strange dream world we don’t see extremely odd things continuously, we have to notice the smaller things. They are still pretty obvious but not obvious enough to make us lucid. We have to get aware of the dream signs.

Becoming aware

It’s easier said than done. Now before we begin, you have to understand the gaps that you want to fill with awareness. I can recall a lot of times that I’ve been daydreaming in class about random things and not being aware. This are the target areas.  In the time that you were reading this blog, you might have lost your awareness for a short while. We want to be as aware as possible for the longest time that’s possible. In the beginning this is short, it also depends on the situation your in. But now lets take a general scene, not interested, not bored.

You are going to try to stay aware for a minute. You can do this with your timer. A minute seems short but it isn’t very easy. Try it and if you noticed that you lost awareness, do it again.
When you succeeded, do it for 1,5 or 2 minutes, depends on how hard the 1 minute was. You are going to try this, and slowly you will go on and on, until you can reach 10 minutes of full awareness. After this you will go on and on until you reach your limit. This is going to take a lot of time. This could take weeks. But it will pay off. When you reach the point of continuous awareness throughout the day, you have reached the point of non-dual awareness or some people call it mindfulness. This is a great technique to enlarge your awareness, it costs time but it will certainly pay off. When you reached the point of non-dual awareness, you will lucid dream with ease.

This non-dual awareness is the goal you will be reaching for. This can be done with different techniques. I read a part of a book and it has 40+ tasks in it that you have to get accustomed with, examples are: using your non-dominant hand, noticing the filling words like uh, hmm etc. and a lot more. The book is called: How to Train a Wild Elephant and Other Adventures in Mindfulness by Jan Chozen Bays. It has some very funny tasks.

Advantage

It has great advantages, you will most probably be lucid continuous because you are aware the entire time. WILD will also come easier to you, meditating and a lot of others. You will also get some non-lucid dreaming advantages. If you are in class and you are aware the whole time, you will most probably learn more and you will get smarter and catch better grades. You learn quicker and work more efficient.
Of course, the lucid dreaming advantages are the greatest.

While I am writing this blog, I am trying to stay aware the whole time, I have a timer on my telephone and it’s quite hard. When you are trying this, don’t give in and keep trying. Show persistence and discipline, this are essential pieces of your lucid dreaming program.

Good luck!