Hooray, had my first WILD today!

It was morning and I had woken up real early so I was still tired. I was lying face down on my bed with my arm underneath my stomach which was actually really uncomfortable but it gave me something to concentrate on and remain 'concious' I guess since I quickly found myself looking down at a reflection of the sky! I immediately thought "Great! Im lucid already and the dream hasn't even started yet!" then I was floating backwards down the street between cars but felt no danger. The only memory I carried through from waking was the intention to fly so I flew all along the streets and through my house and through my entire estate. It was such a bright and sunny day, it was wonderful but after a short whil I realised I could only fly at a very low level and couldnt go up. After a while of trying I thought of using a more indirect approach - I went to a generic computer terminal I had created and selected a higher 'height limit' (gotta love these dreams, eh ) and sure enough I could now fly over cars at about a height of ten foot but could go no higher (should've obviously set the computer better ) Then for some bizarre reason I wanted to amaze some girl on the street by flying around her and pulling her into the sky (I was rapidly losing lucidity by this point) and I did but then woke up (I guess going higher than the 'limit' was too much for me

It wasn't much but I was very glad to finally have a WILD even though I have done virtually no training for it.

Poor Olie

No training and then you go WILD...

Just kidding...

Congrats, of course. :-) Terminal? Why don't take satellite notebook, so you can re - program everytime!

Your bio: One credit only. Don't know that game is, but I think you must have done well.

Keep on good NOT training, shouldn't you?

Ralf

Hi Olie,

I love the image of you "floating backwards down the street between cars", I can almost imagine a wooshing the feeling myself. I thought it was really cool how you fell asleep on your arm and how it help you WILD - maybe not so cool if you woke up with a "dead arm/pins and needles" though.

I had a WILD this morning, it was very bright, lots of light, but I had trouble making it sharp. I tried rubing my hands which helped, I could see my hands OK. Then I tried talking to myself out-loud, to see if that helped. My voice seemed all distored, sort of like a recording slowed down. I wish I had remembered to call out my name to see if anything happened. I found it difficult to move, but tried to spin. As soon as I attempted the spin I instantly woke up. I did a reality check and found I was really awake. Not sure what I should do next time this happens, anyone got any ideas. It felt as though I could have continued in the dream by remaining still and just looking all around me. I was finding this a bit dull though and wanted to explore.

Geoff

Hi Geoff,

Excellent plan for now to ask what you should do next time. Your acknowledged curiosity might even be the answer. ;)

You say you wanted to explore --good idea! Not sure where to begin? With WILDs, sometimes action and detail may be slow to appear, but as long as you perceive your dream body, you've got plenty to work with. For example, what were you standing on? Get down and roll around on that dream grass or start skating on that dream ice. What were you wearing? Something odd or nothing at all? Either way, exploring in a tactile fashion, so to speak, can help get the dream going. Sometimes too much cognition can hamper ignition.

Spinning is a fine dreamstate extender, but you'll want to keep more than one technique up your dream sleeve.

A wealth of WILDs to all, Keelin

Dream 20030908, 10:35 AM: The Black Elephant

This was a particularly cool little WILD. I had drifted off using the 61 points meditation, but in a specific variation that I had thought about from Robert Bruce's "Astral Dynamics" - instead of trying to just focus awareness on these points in sequence, I was imagining touching these points using my fingertips in a circular motion - like a physical version of visualizing something - focusing on the sensation until the spot would tingle. It worked really well.

I become aware of my dream body, sitting at a desk; I am feeling the tingle in the tips of my fingers, just like in the exercise. As often happens in lucid dreams, I feel the need to jump up and down and shake my limbs, as if to get the circulation moving through my body; so I did this, hopping around the desk a little with a two-footed hop while chanting to myself, "Lucid dreaming, lucid dreaming." It helps me focus. When I'm done, my whole body tingles gently.

Then, I look at a small mirror mounted on the wall. I notice that I look much like my regular self, except that my eyebrows have been almost completely removed. There are a few individual hairs, looking kind of twisted and forlorn, sticking straight out of my brows, maybe six or seven on each side. I remark to myself that this looks very odd, so I reach over to the desk and pick up a black marker that is in a cup with pens and other stuff, and draw my eyebrows in at approximately the right location and shape. I don't get them quite right, but it seems OK to me.

I walk over to a closet that has sliding doors, and decide that I want to put my hand through it, to gain control over working with the dream environment. This dream seems particularly cogent, and I'm not distracted by urges to run off, so I'm enjoying the chance to experiment. I try a couple of different methods, but my right hand resolutely refuses to pass through the wooden closet door. I open it a little, and slip my left hand behind it; I can see the hand in back, as if the closet door is translucent glass instead of wood, but it's still thick like the real wood door. This time, I try putting my right hand through, and I wonder to myself if it will pass through my left hand as well, and what kind of sensation my dreaming mind will come up with if it does. Instead of passing my hand through the door, though, the door crumples; it feels like a softer version of styrofoam. I look down at the door, which is crumpled between my hands, and laugh.

I walk through the house, which is now decidedly the Kingwood house. There is nobody else here. Walking through the living room, I think to myself, what should I do? I begin to talk out loud, half to myself, half to the dream - "This seems to be a fairly strong, stable dream environment - should I go flying? Find some fun boy and try some dream sex?" Then, I remember a recent lucid dream where I ran from a bunch of thugs who were beating up a young man. I had tried to go back and intervene, knowing that the thugs probably represented some kind of problematic issue in my mind, and remembering the exercise of seeking out problems in your dreams in order to understand and overcome them. So, I decide that's what I ought to do - try and find out something about my mind through the dream.

I announce to the dream environment in general, in a loud, clear voice, "Okay... any issues that have been hanging out in my subconscious, and want to come out in the open where I can deal with you, please present yourselves, preferably in a clear and sensible way, and I'll do my best to understand." As I'm saying this, I walk through the dining room and out through the back door.

When I get outside, I see a couple of huge piles of dirt in the back yard. I laugh, and say, "OK, I guess this is fair... I do have problems with piling things up." [note: for all my Virgo perfectionism in some aspects of my life, I'm an organizational nightmare. Many things get lost in piles of crap, and I have issues with things seeming to become immovable "heaps" - where I can't raise the emotional energy to tackle a task, because it has glommed together with other tasks until they seem insurmountable.]

I walk over to the piles, which are as clean and crisp as if they have been poured from a dump truck. The pile in the front is blond sand, and behind it is a pile of dark topsoil, which is partly covered in grass. I climb up the sand pile, and from the top I can see that there is a shape like a keyboard on the edge of the taller topsoil pile. I laugh, and admit that this is probably fair as well - I definitely spend too much time on the computer, which can sometimes lead to things getting put off and not dealt with (and thus, piled up). There is also a deep, straight-sided hole between the two piles, and I look down into it, then jump nimbly over to the top of the taller pile.

I decide that the best way to deal with this, will be a shovel. I pick one up, and begin to shift soil from the top of the pile, throwing it down to the adjacent yard. I have experienced similar dirt-leveling in real life, where the objective was to turn the pile of soil into an overall even layer. I keep digging it down, bit by bit. I think to myself, I might benefit from a bigger tool, like a backhoe, but I realized that this would not be as realistic; I need to handle the dirt one shovel-full at a time. The dirt is heavy, but also soft, like potting soil. It has roots sticking out of it, like there were trees in it before it was dug up.

As I'm digging, some of the dirt shifts, and I can see a black shape underneath. I move some more of the dirt, and I can see that it's a black wrinkled shiny surface, like vinyl or varnished leather. It looks large. There is a little shape in the center, like an opening. Looking at it, my mind picks out the pattern, and I realize that I'm looking at the side of the head of a black elephant. Its skin is shiny but wrinkled, and hard like old leather. It startles me, and I wake up, wondering what it represents.

[note: my black cat Buio, whom I've had since 1992, died last Wednesday, and we buried him in the back yard. The soil is similar to the dream, including the texture and the tree roots. I don't know if this explains the image of the elephant, or if it represents something else.]

Hey, Michael!

I was very impressed by "your" 61 points variation. But only read first part of your dream. Just now, as I have read it more carefully, the parallels with the first part of your dream make me chuckle!

Dream: Turn the lights on; September 10, 2003

I have slept in on the couch by the TV. I get up 430 and go to sleep in my bed. I decide to try Michael Cook's (TLI forum) version of 61 points exercise. On each of the points I feel a finger touching and circling, even in part sinking into my body, until a state of sweet relaxation occurs in that region. It works very fine, feels very intense and helps to focus, too. Nonetheless I drift off many times into non lucid scenes, but wake up time and again. Until I find myself sitting with two other men in my sleeping room. One of them sits on the computer, one stands in the dark. (After awaking I found the one in the dark resembles Michael in a way). The standing man says: "Every time I suspect I'm dreaming, I try to turn the lights on." I listen and think over his words. "Turn lights on... that is one of the exercises in lucid states... hm. Can it be? Yes! Of course, I'm dreaming!" I get up and jump up and down full of joy and excitement, singing loud:"Lucid, lucid, luuucid." Scene begins to fade. Oops, must have been too excited, I think. Try spinning, but it doesn't work, I awake physically. Satisfied nonetheless with this second try of Michael's 61 points version.

Comment in my dream diary:

Michael, thanks for sharing your version of the exercise. It felt so tender and sweet, I simply had to try it.

And comment here:

It is Robert Bruce's technique, ok. Good example of how to use lucid states for working on psychological issues. Well done, Michael. Superbe, I must say! Elephants are said to have a good memory...

I love cats (but have none) Pets can be like family members, so I hope you meet her alive and kicking in lucid dreams...

This is a rare happening among lucid dreams for me - it got to be so long, that I don't remember a lot of the first part. At several points in the dream, I remark to myself that it's going particularly strong.

I'm pretty sure this started out as a WILD. I remember being in a void, and then starting to feel tingly sensation in my skin, and light and color begin to flood in and I find myself in the living room of my parents' house. It seems exceptionally real. There is some conversation there, I think with Mom and Dad and my brother R., but I don't recall what we said or did. It seems so real that I am momentarily unsure if I'm dreaming - I go into the dining room and look at the calendar, and when I catch words changing as I look at them and look away, I'm sure. I go back into the living room and decide that in order to get out of the house, I'm going to have to employ some kind of dream-changing strategy. I think about ways that I could change things, and decide that rather than spin or something like that, I'll try stepping through something. I look around, and see a carpet-bag like overnight bag with handles. I open it, and put both my feet in the bottom, and pull it upward until the handles are over my head, and close them. It does seem to change the dream scene, but I find I'm still in the house.

I tell R. something, I think explaining that I'm trying to alter the dream fabric. I go outside, and begin to run toward the back corner of the yard. Nowadays, it's mostly developed, but when I was a child it was a huge woods. I close my eyes as I'm hurtling forward, and find myself beneath the cover of giant spreading trees.

The trees are much more like something out of a fantasy movie, than anything that ever really grew in those woods. There is no underbrush, and the trees are beautiful and very old-looking oaks. I walk along, remarking that this is more like what I was wanting to see. I reach out and brush a couple of the trees with my hand in passing. I touch one for a longer moment, and close my eyes to feel its energies. A hand covers mine, and I open my eyes, momentarily startled, but when I see that the tree has a face in it, and the hand belongs to the tree, I feel comforted and reassured. The tree-man looks something like an Ent from the LOTR movies, but a little less craggy and slightly more human-scale.

We walk along together through the woods. The path twists and turns, and we walk along companionably talking. I don't remember what we talk about. We get to a place where the path curves up into a small cave, and it seems pink, like the inside of a mouth. I look, and there is only a small hole at the back leading downward; I'm not sure if I want to go through that, because it looks grungy, and seems like it's something's mouth.

We turn a little different way, and I find that I'm walking through a mall. I still have my dream companion, but now he is a young-looking blond man with short hair. We walk along, still talking. I remark that I wish the people in the mall were more festively dressed. As we round each corner, the costume on the surrounding people changes some, but while I was aiming for something like RenFaire, they keep ending up more like a low-key Mardi Gras. One man in a sequined and beaded red top is dancing with a very fast shimmy that makes all the beads shake, and I grab one red bugle bead as I walk by, pinching it between my finger and thumbnail. It feels more like plastic than glass.

I remark that I can change things, and I kind of want to feel my long hair again. It's been several years since I cut it. I take off my hat, and shake my head, and it falls down onto my shoulders. My companion seems a little startled by it. I am momentarily annoyed that it's only shoulder-length, and shake my head again, and it unfolds all the way down my back to my waist. He remarks that it's amazing how differently people react just based on this one physical thing.

We keep walking. Now, the mall seems more like one of those big antique malls; the part we're walking through is kind of boxy and warehouse-like. There is a blue sign high up on the wall that says "Sex!" and has an arrow pointing one direction. I remark that I'm actually not quite in the mood for sex, I'm enjoying this dream too much, and sex tends to make them end. I see another sign, also says "Sex!" and has an arrow pointing in the only other available direction. I laugh, and tell my companion, "Well, then I guess it's time for sex after all!"

We keep walking, and I'm talking about how long and sturdy the dream has been. I look in through a doorway, and there is a huge shop with all kinds of different stuff; it's kind of like Elliott's Hardware, but with food too. The perspective I've got is slightly above the stock floor, like looking into the back door of Asel Art. My companion says something about a mechanism to change the dream scene, and reaches in and pushes one of many light switches on the wall beside the door. A light goes off in the store. I push it again, and the same light switches. I decide that the entire store should be going dark, but as I push the switch it just turns off one or another small light. I hold the switch down, and repeat, "All." I watch as one light after another goes dark. The last thing that I remember is all the way across the store, there is a bakery, and I'm watching the people inside working on bread. There are ceiling fans there as well as lights. The switch eventually turns them all off, and once it is all dark, I wake up.

Hey, Michael I'm sorry I don't have the time to answer detailed on your report. But I'm always pleased to see your lines and really enjoy your reports.

Somewhere I said I'll continue working on my WILD skills. That is what I'm doing. But due to many daytime tasks I mostly only do the 61 points exercise before sleeping and affirmations for lucidity and try to stay conscious while body goes to sleep. Until now I rarely entered a dream in the evening / onset of sleep. But my dreamrecall got better and frequency of LD, too.

Tomorrow we have an online reunion of a lucid dream project elsewhere. So it was high time to incubate lucids, I finally succeeded this morning.

I hope you enjoy my writings and please remember:

I don't want to discuss reality of psi dreaming here (one more time). Posting these dreams here is only meant to further our lucid dreaming skills.

Yours Ralf

First Try for WILD 08.01.2004, 0700

My spouse gets up 0700. I stay in bed and try for WILD. No counting, just relaxing and waiting for the images to come up. Indeed I enter a dreamscene. But everything fades, as my lucidity grows. I do keep moving to stabilise the dreambody, it seems to work. I kind of rub hands and feet, it nearly feels like moving physical, but I continue doing it for some seconds. Now, I'm really awake. I turn and have another try.

Exercise

Yesterday I one more time, like in many nights since November set intention to have a dream for MLD reunion on upcoming Saturday (tomorrow). I wanted to go through a door somewhere and enter our mutual dreamcity. I wanted to somehow establish this door there, so me and others could use it in the future.

I feel this was a WILD, at least only a short gap from waking to dreaming lucid.

Door to MLD city 08.01.2004, 0800

I'm in a small room with two other men (ca 60 years old, grayish hair). Around a table. We are looking on a sheet of paper. A list of names. I look harder, but can decipher one of the names. I turn my head and look again. The writing stays the same. I turn my head and look another time. Now the text is totally different. It seems to be an email, printed in outlook memo format. I turn my head and look away another time. As I look back, everything looks like that list again. Now I complain loudly: "But in a dream it is supposed to change after looking away!!!" Now it really dawns on me, that this is a dream. I keep singing:"I have an email! I have an email!" all the way as I leave the two men at the table, unintended walking crabwise, so I can see them and the exit of the house simultaneously. The wall of the exit is transparent, all glass. Outside I can see it is bright day, a rural landscape. As I open the door and step outside I'm nearly blinded with daylight. This is a total surprise. I think, I don't remember such a powerful, bright light ever in dreams. I feel filled with this light, I feel ecstatic. But soon the (dream) eyes seem to adjust and I see, I'm on a kind of dock or channel. Pavement is made of cobblestone. Just a few steps away the water. On the other side of the ca. 100 feet wide waterway I see a line of trees, seemingly conifers. A forest, I suppose. But I can't look too hard or sharp. There is a tendency of the environment to get blurry. As I turn my head, it is like dreamscape is cut, divided in different curtains, some of them fail to follow my field of view, as I turn my head. There are kind of holes between the curtains and sometimes overlapping. So the realism of landscape is not too high, but the colours are like bursting, overly intense. The sky more than blue. It is an ecstatic perception. I think, I have to beware of physical awaking, because the dream doesn't seem to be very stable. I just intend to move and explore the landscape, when I recall the task for MLD group: Find a door and go to the dream city. Somewhat unwilling I leave the ecstatic plot and turn around. I feel now, the dream gets unstable. There is another building, it has a door. The door is open, but the room behind is dark. As I close in, I find it hard to enter at all, as if the door is now a narrow window. I force my way in, but all I see is a huge brown dark mass, I feel it is a rock, which blocks the way. In the dark I rapidly loose my dreambody and awake physically. No chance of prolonging.

General impressions

Indeed one of my longer LDs in the last months. It is time and again surprising to see the humor of my dream - maker. Especially in the way the dream self makes up the reading - reality test, without dream ego being lucid. The experience of light and colour is ecstatic, indeed. I don't know anything more to say to that. I still don't understand, why dream seems to fade, seems to get unstable, every time I will follow / create my own plot. What can I do? Any advice?

Current concerns

Maybe this morning was perfect for incubation, because I wasn't so diverted, like yesterday, when my mind immediately wandered to what I have to do for our financial "survival"... Everything turned out fine!

Exercise

The exercise is to find a way to the MLD dreamcity and to establish a door there, which me and others could use. (Dear folks at TLI forum, please don't start discussing the psi (or not psi) side of this exercise. I feel it won't lead us anywhere. I just want to share my experience here and maybe discuss the lucid dreaming implications, if you like. )

Conclusion

Again I think it is good for me to have definite tasks / exercises for inducing LD.

Psychologically it seems to be clear, that something blocks my way. Maybe it is my materialist (the rock) breeding and education, which is - in all its weight - still not clear (in the dark) for me.

Just for the fun of it: A non lucid (excuse me) follow up

dream conference 08.01.2004, 0900

I arrive at a house, in the yard. A ca 60 years old man with grey hair and beard welcomes me. He says, just for formal reasons he has to type my data into computer and pretend, I'm giving a presentation here. Now I'm in and sitting with some people in a small room. After a pause in discussion I pose the question, I feel very important: "Why are lucid dreams so delicious, so beautiful?" Responds J.L., a colleague from my osteopathy school: "It is because you give an example for other people." I'm surprised by this answer, rather expected some neuro - physiological reasoning. I awake physically.

General impressions

Seems to associate with upcoming ASD Copenhagen 2004 conference. But also links to the incubation for MLD reunion and my Heilpraktiker side. I have set the intention to integrate dreamwork in my Heilpraxis. And dreaming mind now seems to look for links and ideas, seems to give impulses. Very fine. I will mail my osteopathy colleague, too. We sometimes exchange dreams.

Ralf:

Excellent posts as usual; thanks for sharing! I look forward to the day after you roll the boulder out of your way and clear a path to the dreamcity, should you choose to share that adventure with us.

In one post you asked: "..why dream seems to fade, seems to get unstable, every time I will follow / create my own plot. What can I do?"

I have a thought:

Perhaps the reason that they fade is that you are allowing your mind to associate too closely with the dream character, the "dream you," who is moving you through the current plot as supplied by your unconscious mind. Even as you make the mighty conscious leap necessary to fabricate a new dream, you attempt to drag along an avatar created for the previous dream, and thus confuse the crap out of the dream-making machinery in your sleeping brain. This confusion leads to doubt, and things start to crumble around you, followed by wakefulness.

How to avoid the confusion? Remember, as you are weaving a new dream, that the entire fabric is "You," and the character from which you are currently gaining perspective is but a single thread in your work. This will help prevent the dream character "you" from unraveling the new patterns by clinging to its role from the old dream. And it will also allow you far more creativity in creating your dream world (or visiting your dreamcity) because you don't have to wrap the new dream around the rules of a dream character who was confined to the previous dream's parameters.

Of course it could also be that you always have your most powerful moments of lucidity in the few seconds before fully waking up, so you were physically bound to have the dream fade anyway. But that isn't nearly as philosophical, or fun, so I won't go there!

Best of dreams!

Peter

This is one of those dreams where so many things happened, and I was so focused on just enjoying sensations and exploring Dreamland, that there wasn't really much plot or any personal inner-work going on. The hatching baby lizards were just the most striking and bizarre image that popped out.

This dream was a WILD; I just sort of fade from lying in bed, to being in the dream. There wasn't any sense of pause, it just went from visualized imaginings to dream. I find myself in a room that is sort of like our kitchen/dining area, but it's definitely a different house. It has a bar that separates the kitchen from a living room; I can't remember whose house it reminds me of, but it does remind me of a place I've been before. I look around the room, which is fairly dim and kind of grayed out. I can see, but things just don't seem sharp-edged or clear. I dance around a little bit, and rub my hands together and up my arms, which seems to intensify the dream scenery a little bit. I walk around the room and into the living room. I see a bunch of different things with digital readouts, and I look at one after another and notice that they are not telling correct time, and some of them don't look like time readings at all. I laugh, remembering that (in real life) my boss's car has a messed-up dashboard, and I rode with her yesterday and reality-checked because the displays didn't look right. The displays are all different, like one is a digital clock, another a digital thermostat, another the clock on the microwave. I look at one mounted on the wall, and there is a piece of paper kind of hanging over it; I lift the paper up, and read the display, then put the paper down, and pull it back up and read again, noting that it changes - I do this a couple of times just for fun. The display has different kinds of information on it each time, and different symbols - not all of them are even letters or numbers. It amuses me, and I laugh.

I walk back into the kitchen. Chris is here, dressed in lounge pants and a sweatshirt, doing something at a counter. The dream turns distinctly sexual. [sexual dream stuff, posted to my personal journal but trimmed out for the forum...] then, the dream fades and I find myself lying in bed again.

I try to fade back into Dreamland. After a while, I find myself driving a car along a road through gentle hills. I think Chris is with me. It seems like we're near the sea, like some place in California or Greece. The hills rise up to my left, and where it seems like the water would be, my view is blocked by a wall of rock where the road was cut through. It reminds me somewhat of the train tracks leading to Machu Picchu. We pass under a bridge or a rock overhang. I realize that since I'm dreaming (which I seem to know without really testing it) I ought to be able to do something more interesting than just drive along. I pull back on my steering wheel and press the accelerator pedal firmly to the floor, and the car zooms forward and becomes airborne. We fly along, swinging up to fly along and over the hillside, which is almost like a cliff overlooking the sea. There are houses built on the cliffside, and terraces. It's very Mediterranean colored, with lots of white buildings with red tile roofs as well as some brightly painted. I look into a couple of the buildings, which seem mysterious and interesting. More than one of them has a wide open window-like face, with an earthen or grassy interior; they look kind of like sky boxes at a horse track, but they're cave-like inside. I keep on flying. I see some buildings where men are lounging on sun decks; there are some very muscular and attractive guys, and I think that it might be fun to find one of them and have some sex play. I drive close to a few of them, but none catches my eye. It seems almost like they aren't real enough, once I get up close; it's like they're scale models that don't have enough detail to hold up to a close-up view. I fly around a right-ward curve, and without any memory of getting out of the car, the next place I remember being is inside a building, kind of like the back storage of an antique store, and looking at a poinsettia leaf up close. I feel it, and brush my cheek against it, and it has a velvety but slightly stiff sensation to it. I wake up again.

I manage to fade back to Dreamland one more time. I am sitting up in bed in the Dream Room (where I am sleeping in real life) and hear a tapping sound at the window, like how it sounds when a bird is pecking at its reflection on the glass. Chris is here with me. We look at the window, and I can see a shadow cast on the white muslin curtain by the sunshine; it's a big lizard. I pull aside the curtain, and we see that between the glass and the screen is a large brown lizard; I wonder how it managed to make the tapping noise. Then, we see that there are eggs in the same space with it, and they are hatching into more lizards. They are very big, and much larger in the head than they would really be; the mother is probably a foot long or so, but the babies are all at least four or five inches. They don't hatch out like real lizards; I watch as one of them eats the shell which was stuck over its head. I remark to Chris that they are strange dream-lizards, and that's why they don't have to behave like real ones. As the lizard eats the egg shell, it displays a red mouth full of lots of teeth. I think to myself that it seems odd for the mother to stay with them, and perhaps they are a species that cares for its young. Then, I wake up.

Thanks for comments, Peter!

I'll think that over. Maybe I should speak it out in the dream, using some affirmation like: "I am lucid in my dream" or something. Any suggestions?

Your close - to - waking hypothesis isn't all too bad. I had a long sleep, so I have been close to there. Raising overall consciousness could result in earlier LDs, which could be more stable.

CU later, have to hurry now

Ralf

Hey, Micheal!

Thanks for sharing dreams. Your fading in and out sounds very smooth. Hope to learn that, too. It seems to be easier in the second half of night or early morning. And it is easier, since I am doing the 61 points exercise more often, that means at least once per day. Another imression is, that I can relax better and lie still without moving, when I do some gymnastics regularily, like in the last two weeks. Only some minutes per day.

I wish I could navigate in my dreams like you. From your report I have the impression, you are mostly calm. But this must not be the case all the time, at least not for the sexual scenes.

I just wonder what else can I do to stabilise the dream. It seems to me when I'm willing too much, I get closer to waking. I'm not sure.

Ralf

Peter

I don't have the feeling I weave a new dream. Not at least in the longer lucid I just posted here. It is only that I feel that certain kinds of decisions seem to "spoil" the dream, make it unstable.

For me it sounds natural in a way, to go through a door and intend to enter another dreamscape / another room in this way, maybe a special one. But I know, too, that experienced LDers, too, have a hard time navigating that way.

I think maybe it is the way I do intend or control (myself). I remember Stephen once said something like there is a difference in powerful affirmation and passive(?) intention.

Ralf

Ralf:

First, I think it is definitely time you include yourself among the ranks of experienced lucid dreamers!

Now, your last post gave me another thought: perhaps your problem comes from the fact that you chose during this dream not to "create" what was behind that door...

Yes, it is a wonderful experience to open new doors to see what's behind them (or just turning around to see what's behind you). And, if your current dream, sleep condition, and passive intent are up to it, you might be presented with great surprises! But they will always be surprises; surprises which may threaten to reduce your lucidity by their novelty, because you are still allowing the dream to run the show.

By allowing your dream to fill in its own blanks, you are dismissing your awareness that the entire dream is "You." This permits the importance of your current dream character 'you,' and the current dream environment surrounding it, to obscure your waking intent (like visiting the dreamcity).

Far be it for me to interpret anyone's dream, but could that large rock you describe be a clue? Could your dreaming mind, "You," be telling you that it needs some input to show you what you want to see behind that door? And could that input be nothing more than an acceptance of the dreaming "You" as the real force behind the dreams rather than the circumstances of the current dreamscape or condition of the current dreaming 'you?' After all, it would take but a thought to simply walk through the rock, and the door, when you are fully aware the dream is yours.

Experienced LD'ers could certainly run into this same problem, because stepping away from the dream character 'you' and its unconsciously supplied environment to create a new tableau of your own design is one of the more difficult aspects of advanced lucid dreaming.

Best of dreams, Peter

P.S. Just a quick note - "your own design" can absolutely include input from your unconscious -- indeed, it should, or else your design will be missing many exciting details! But it should be a design with the help of your unconscious, while you are fully aware that the entire dreamscape is yours to adjust.

Hey, Peter Thanks for input, again. You are right, I'm no newbe anymore ;)

I'm open to surprises. And I'm not sure, whether I desire total control of dream (scape). The same counts for self - control.

I think every thought or believe, conscious or unconscious, can manifest in my dream. So, if part of me believes, it isn't possible to do what I consciously intend, it may influence the dream, and even the lucid dream - ego. And my conscious intention might be hindered in that way to function and rule the outcome.

Dreams I think are not merely constructs of a totally cut off brain. Won't go into psi, like I promised. But there is, as we know, influence from outer world through all senses and through metabolism. So what apears in a dream is, seen from this point of view, maybe not necessarily subject to the conscious intention of the dreamer. It is, from this point of view, maybe questionable, whether the whole dream is "me", in the same way, as it is the question, whether all my physical waking perception is "me."

I feel every dream, also lucid dreams as having their own life, in a way. I am sure, I can change a lot. I'm sure I haven't even scratched the surface of dreamcontrol. So there is still a lot to explore.

It is good to discuss all this to free my mind, so I can act more flexible in the next LD.

I'll keep you updated

Ralf

Ralf, I agree with you. I am 100% sure that the dreams are not merely constructs of our brain. I have heard of a book called "13th dimension", or something like that, where the writer tells us that our world is shared with 12 dimensions, 13th being the dream dimension. He thinks the dream dimension is intercrossing our physical plane. Maybe you should go to my new thread called DCCs.

Ralf:

Your last post left me with yet another question:

Would the act of making your awareness the (creative) center of your dream truly cut off the influences of the "outside world" and your unconscious mind, or might your conscious experience of creating a dream form a conduit, a lightning rod, for consciously experiencing the things that make your dreams dreams? I've always leaned toward the latter possibility myself.

Creating your own dreams does not mean blanking a slate in your sleeping mind and forcing in only images of your own waking agenda. That would be a woefully uneventful experience at best for most sane people. No, lucidly creating dreams to me means becoming one with the center of your dreaming (my references to the "You" in previous posts) and witness to the source and manifestation of dream imagery. Once you are there, a little creativity might just open a few doors to those metaphysical places that you seek.

On the other hand, continuing to allow your consciousness only ancillary access to the mechanisms of your dreams could lock you in a frustrating loop of always seeing that door, but never quite being able to pass through it (or, you do pass through it, but find nothing more than an empty room or a different dream beyond it). Maintaining a grip on your dream character "you,' and the world in which it currently roves, might prevent you from touching the bases of creativity, emotion, and perhaps communication that form your dreams.

Sure, lucidly tagging along on a dream is great fun, and conscious awareness of the dream world is simply awesome, but I truly believe that if you wish to explore the roots of dreaming you must become the dream, and not remain a pawn to your own (or other's, perhaps?) unconscious machinations.

Best of Dreams,

Peter

Peter

"Would the act of making your awareness the (creative) center of your dream truly cut off the influences of the "outside world" and your unconscious mind, or might your conscious experience of creating a dream form a conduit, a lightning rod, for consciously experiencing the things that make your dreams dreams? I've always leaned toward the latter possibility myself."

Ideally I would subscribe to the latter possibility, too. In praxis it seems, I do disturb the dream, I mean, I seem to end the dreamstate at all by ... I don't know for sure.

"Once you are there, a little creativity might just open a few doors to those metaphysical places that you seek."

Peter, you are quite right, especially looking at my dream, we are talking about here. Looking sharply at what happened: Before I remembered my task, there was no second building, at least I wasn't aware of another house. Only as I turned around after deciding to do the experiment, the house was there, and the door, and the dark. No, now I think harder, I must have seen the second house, as I scanned the dreamscape after getting lucid. So I can with some reliability say: That house and door was created AFTER my intention. And maybe BY my intention. Because I wanted to have a door. And there it was.

During the dream, I wasn't aware of that mechanism. But I can well imagine being aware of the role of my intention in a lucid dream. I think, that is somehow what you mean with "making your awareness the center of your dream."

And another point: I wasn't really pleased to turn away from ecstatic perception, from all the light and colours. Maybe this emotional reaction caused the room behind the door to be dark. And maybe that was part of reason why the blocking rock was there. But that has to remain speculation. Only for the next time it might supply a helpful hint: To ENJOY whatever I do. Very exaggerated, now, my feeling was: This task is a heavy burden, compared to the light lucid living (dreaming) I just experienced. =(

But also, remember the many times in former LDs of mine everything faded grey and dark and got blurry, once I got lucid. I sometimes guess, I'm too earnest in my efforts, so when I get lucid, this mood might carry over into the dreamstate. The freshness of the first lucid adventures somehow gave way to a focussed working - attitude in lucid dreaming. Actually dream - work.

I have to relearn to enjoy the thing, I guess. OK, I do enjoy, of course. But I should enjoy doing and fulfilling my tasks, too.

Now! Enjoy!! Would you!!! ;)

Ralf

Ralf:

Remember though, that sometimes the heaviest of short term burdens can yield the most enduring long term joy (just ask any new mother!).

However, I must admit that I tend forget to embark on potentially gray dismal struggles for control when the fun of lucidly enjoying a dream is right there in front of me.

Thanks for your thoughts,

Peter

WILD: Shape Shifting, 16.1.2004 0715

In WPR I awake shortly, maybe because Astrid gets up (She did get up 630). Look at the red digits of our clock saying something like 07:15. Even on a second look... I rub my eyes and decide to do, what I planned: Going WILD. I lay on my left side and start relaxation. On some point soon I'm snoring. I turn head. Soon pictures come easily and I fall asleep, intending to remember I'm dreaming until I find myself in an unsure state, a dreamscene?

I'm not sure but begin rubbing hands and legs, soon find myself in my body in bed (which body?) and keep on rubbing, although it feels perfectly realistic and I even hear the sheets hissing... Then I'm in my practice room. Awake. So it didn't work, I think. There is a second aquarium standing before the familiar one. It isn't small, maybe 1,50 m wide, must weight a lot, but only stands on a normal table. Very risky, Astrid, I think (standard explanation: It must be her fault ;> ). But then it dawns on me, I'm still dreaming.

I examine the tank, put my hand in the water and palm one of the fish, which looks strange and doesn't move much (in fact looked like a small version of a giant fish I saw the evening before in a BBC film about the most dangerous oceans in evolutionary history) (I seem to fade in an out lucidity, as well as the dreamscape somehow fades in and out, but I stay in this room, which very closely resembles my practice room)

Then I turn and enter the floor, look around. There is a little child, seemingly a girl, with brown, plain hair. Looking at me, standing before the stairs leading into our cellar. I pass her by, thinking to go back into my practice, but then decide to do, what I planned from my last lucid dream: Turn to the people, I see, do not avoid them. And I think: At least she is part of myself.

So I get down on my knees and hug her. (I'm shifting to a mother, I'm now feeling female, but that isn't very clear to me during the dream). She lets it happen, but isn't very responsive. So I let her go. She says: I'm afraid. (She shifts shape to my 10 years old son, and back. This happens so quickly, I don't realise it at all in the dream, only as I recall the dream. Never had similar experience) I look at her inquiring. She says: "I'm afraid of ghosts."

I say" ok. I'll help you and play ghost" thinking of all the fun it is going to be. I quickly go around the corner and then reappear under a sheet howling: "I'm Huuuiii Buuuuh, the castle spooooook!" (We had some radio plays on LP with Hui Buh, when we were kids) And wave arms, as if flying. I then feel the cloth before my face and mouth, I can't see and now say to her, whispering: "You are not allowed to breath in the presence of ghosts." Then it dawns on me, I'm talking nonsense. The girl is gone, as I open my eyes and I'm in the practice.

I jump up and down like a bouncing ball, because I feel the dream is going to fade and chant (like being told to, not deliberately) : "Dream awake, recall clearly"(in German) I turn around my axis while bouncing and see all around me the room stays the same, only it gets lighter outside, like a fast sunrise. I feel quite lucid now, and the dream is stable.

So I stop bouncing and enter the floor again (there is one detail missing - a wooden wall, we built some year after construction of the house) Now that the little girl is gone and I feel like running out of tasks. Experiments, I think, yes, we have a new mirror in the floor in WPR. But I did the mirror thing.

I enter our kitchen and look through the glass door, opening to our hintergarten. It is dark outside... "Meeting in the City, of course!!! " the insight rushes through me like a shot of adrenaline. With the realisation I could do it NOW comes an electrifying feeling, rising from lower abdomen to the chest. I hardly have the time to think of calming down before the dream abruptly fades and I find myself back in physical body. No chance of re - entering dreamstate. =(

Comment:

What a dream! So, these days of More Lucid Dreams group with all of you, I did also take the time and discuss questions of lucid dreaming in the Lucidity Institute Forum. Different dream details belong to threads in different groups, and I like to share with both.

In the MLD group we had the subject of shape shifting, especially shifting of gender. This happened in my dream, too. I guess major emotional shifts in dreams can easily lead to shape shifting/ shifting of dream ego. Mostly these shifts may happen unrecognised, because brain/ mind likes to have a continuous model of self. This lucid dream is special. I can't remember such abrupt shifts of gender ore role in LDs.

In the LI forum we discussed dream - characters, and special experience with the girl/son character belongs there, I guess, as well as questions of stable dream - environment. At least in this dream the architecture of our house was very closely met and very stable, I must say. Rarely my dreamscape is so stable, and especially rarely that "resistant" to turning point of view time and again like I did. Another disturbing factor should be the frequent in and out of rooms, which in this case did no harm the integrity of dream - architecture.

Of course we still have the challenge of meeting in our dream city. Dunno what happened with others of MLD so far. Yesterday I have been too busy to participate. Had to care for helping in organising ASD Copenhagen 2004 and posted to LI Forum.

This dream happened ofter six hours of continuous night sleep. I had the intention to wake up in the night and do the WILD thing. And did it! It again turns out, that after 5-6 hours of sleep is the best time for lucid dream induction. I try different ways time and again, but always come back to this point of time. An hour later I wasn't able to get back into dreamstate. Too wide awake already.

Although my mind wasn't too clear most of the time, I successfully worked through two false awakenings. I acted compassionate and found out new things about dream - characters and dream - ego. I had a lot of fun on top of that, especially a I played ghost.

Sorry, the MLD - city task didn't work. I guess we should have another week of reunion to continue work on that. I feel I need more frequent LDs to get calmer about this experimental situation, to get more routine - or more easiness (I love the word "airiness", too. Does it have negative connotation?).

Looking forward to discussion in both groups. CU there.

Ralf

I think your dream was pretty long assuming it was a WILD. I say that beacuse from my experience DILDs have been much longer then WILDs.

Try that mirror test, I would like to know if you can end up and walk in the reflection of your mirror as I did...

Nenad

Hi everybody,

Before I post a lucid dream here, I want to figure out if it really was a WILD. I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, and I kept shifting positions because I couldn't get comfortable. After doing this for a while, I was lying on my back and just knew I was dreaming. I did nothing to induce it, but nothing happened to alert me that I was dreaming either. DILD and MILD are ruled out, so would that be a WILD?

Jamison

Jamison,

It certainly sounds like one. The defining aspect of a WILD is the maintained awareness from waking to lucid dreaming. That is to say, that you didnt experience a break in awareness (which woould make it a DILD.)

Hello Everyone,

I have had three lucid dreams that were much more vivid than any of my other lucid dreams. I was wondering if anyone else has experienced similar dreams and are these dreams WILDs or not? Here is what happened. I am either sleeping in a stage of sleep without dreams or I am just about to fall asleep, I'm not sure which. Suddenly, as if someone flipped a switch inside me, I am totally aware that I am sleeping and that a dream is forming. Everything is black for about twenty or thirty seconds. I feel really excited and I try to imagine movement in the hope that this will help to form a dream scene. I am not totally sure but I think I have felt my REM movement during this stage. When the dream starts I am always in motion. One time, I was jumping through a window and running down a street. Another time I was floating on my back and moving forward and backward. One time I felt as if I was flying through outerspace going down really fast. Has anyone else experienced this lucid period before a dream scene forms? I suspect that maybe this is a WILD where I wake up for just a split second and then REM kicks in.

Yep, I've had this lots of times. Sometimes I'm in a gray void, and the dream forms as if an aperture is opening, other times I feel blind, can't make out anything visually for a while. This has only happened with WILD LDs. I guess it takes a little time sometimes for the brain to spin a scene, yet we know it's coming.

Funny, the variety of experiences we have in lucid dreaming.

Paul

Hi, dreamers!

This morning I wasn't feeling well, so I decided to stay in bed. I had several ordinary dreams, and in between dreams also prolonged periods of what I call "lucid drifting", which is a state I often find myself in of late when napping: there's no dream scene per se, but I'm definitely asleep with awareness, and I have that heavy, dreamy feeling like I could enter a dream from there and go flying off any moment, only instead of entering a dream, I wake up!

Does anyone else experience this phenomenon of "lucid drifting", and do you have any technique to move from this state into an LD with consistency?

I had a wonderful WILD during a late sleep this morning. I had just awakened from an ordinary but vivid dream, and again had the experience of drifting back to sleep lucidly. I even had the vibratory sensations that I recognized at the time as my entering REM sleep. At first all was gray, no images. I felt the desire to move my dream body and get up out of bed. After a short struggle to do so, I just relaxed, and popped into a dream scene. I won't bore anyone with the details, but it was transcendent in nature in which I sought to experience the unmanifested, pure being. I used spinning and hand rubbing to prolong and clarify. It was quite long, or seemed so. And truly amazing!

Paul

Paul:

If you'd like to share your dream of transcendence, then please feel free to do so on the Dreams of Transcendence thread, which is also in the Post Your Lucid Dreams forum.

Thanks again for sharing!

Peter

Hello,

Ben, that has happened to me a lot of times. Usually when WILD starts, I am in a complete darkness, there is no sound. Usually I rub my hands and spin. That forms a vivid dreamscape.

If you want to prolongue your WILD, you should always stay in motion. Before your dreamscape has formed itself, while you are in the darkness devoid of all sound and color, try to spin and run. That will form a stable dreamscape.

Jamison,

that was a WILD you experienced.

Peter, I am not so much intrigued by the content these days, transcendent or not, as I am by the induction experiences. In my latest LD's I have been going from wakefulness into the dream with full awareness, which is new for me. It seems so much easier to remain lucid this way, plus it feels really cool! I never have been very good at having DILD's, I suppose because I'm too lazy to practice the induction techniques necessary to recognize oddness. I find WILDs don't require much effort, just attention as one drifts off to sleep. These periods of dreamy drifting are like hypnogogic states, although I'm more lucid during them than during HS, and see few dreamlets, if any.

Paul

Paul:

Fair enough. Nice to hear of your success with the WILD's, though. I've always preferred them myself, for pretty much the same reasons.

Best of Dreams,

Peter

I had a WILD!!!!!!!! I was in a nonlucid dream. The location was an institutional building, supposedly my workplace but not really like it ' and I was in a big lecture room on a basement level. I had just spent time with a woman in the raised rows of seats who was selling things, and had been neglecting my lifelong friend whom I really wanted to spend time with. I was only in the room and dealing with the woman in the first place because of what I would call codependent reasons ' it was not about me at all. Meanwhile my friend had vanished and I didn't blame her. As I was walking out of the room to the door, I thought to myself: "Anything is possible.' I think it came to me because I had been thinking in waking life about how it would facilitate LD'ing if I looked at things that way. If I let go of my confining concepts of how things are. As I thought this I was opening the door, and I realized that I was lucid dreaming. As always, it felt wonderful. I entered a fairly fancy hallway, with wood walls and doors and very colorful, patterned carpeting. The sort of thing you might see in upscale hotels, only the carpeting was distractingly vivid. (REDRUM') I was moving along fast, enjoying myself, but there did not seem to be anything interesting to explore. The rooms behind the doors did not seem intriguing ' it didn't even occur to me to check them out. I decided to transform things. There was some decorative object along the wall ' it might have been an antique shield ' and I wanted to turn it blue. It started to turn blue in one portion, and I was looking back at it, and realized I must pause by it. So I did, and made the whole thing turn blue. (I always seem to choose blue. My favorite color is actually green.) I kept on moving along the hallways, and then I heard a door start to open and I thought, "Oh-oh, this will of course be a person from real life and if we meet each other the dream will end.' Even though I couldn't see the person yet, I was picturing a man in a business suit. So I turned around and ran merrily off in the direction I had just come. I thought, "Multiply lucidity 1,000 times!' and then something even more extravagant, but nothing seemed to change. Possibly because I could not imagine exactly what that would feel like. I just know it works for some people. Anyway, as I ran along I came to a tree ' the halls started having big live trees near stairway to the upstairs. I decided to sit on a bench before the tree and change it into a fir tree ' it was some kind of non-coniferous evergreen. I also wanted it to have various fruits and nuts on it. It changed, but I did not stay to see too much of it. I watched it become a fir tree, and then I saw the nuts appear, and I only vaguely looked at the fruit before moving on again. I may have been trying to avoid meeting the man from waking life. I came upon another big tree and changed that into a fruit and nut fir also, then kept moving along the hallways, which never changed. I sat down before a third big tree, and decided to try and turn it into a tree from a sci-fi short story I wrote years ago - in waking life - which had crystalline leaves. But I did not believe enough that I could manage this. There was a kind of crystalline fizzling activity in one portion of the tree, but that's all. But I thought ' inside the dream - that was pretty interesting. I think I started down the hallway again and shortly after the dream ended. I am calling the LD a WILD because I woke in the am and then went back to sleep, and then had the LD. Wishing everyone "lucidity X 1,000,' Kate

Kate, great LD. However, I don't think it really was a WILD as you described it, since you became lucid during a nonlucid dream, which is really a DILD. To be a WILD, one enters the dream, that is enters REM sleep directly from the waking state without loss of lucidity, becoming unconscious, or dreaming non-lucidly first. You go from awake right into a lucid dream, do not pass go, do not collect $200, so to speak, or so I understand it--not that it matters a whole lot, since it sounds like the dream was fantastic! I envy you, I just have not had much success yet with having DILDs. I'm pretty much a WILD man.

Paul

"Wake induced lucid dreaming means entering the dreamstate consciously. It means preserving awareness, while the body falls asleep and then to dream lucid right from the start of the dream."

Ralf Penderak

Just wanted to add this since I just read Ralf Penderak's article, cited below, on WILDs and overcoming the fear of death. It's very interesting reading.

Hey, Paul!

Glad, you enjoyed it.

Ralf

PS

As far as I remember Stephen LaBerge allows for a gap of up to one minute for a dream to qualify as WILD. But this definition is of course useful for lab settings, when you monitor all the sleep physiology. For home use it is just the way I experience (and recall) the dream, letting me discern between WILD and DILD. Often I experience no gaps of awareness, but I must be true and say I can't be 100 percent sure. Because experience says also, we often forget or have gaps in awareness, which are later bridged, made smooth by brain/ mind, seemingly because it likes / we like to have a consistent story of what is going on.

Paul and Ralf - Oh. I think I knew that about WILDS at one time and must have forgotten. I guess I got the idea that "wake induced" referred to the practice of waking oneself and then going back to sleep and becoming lucid, which is my best method. Thanks for straightening me out as I don't want to continue on with wrong info. Paul - Thanks for your comment on my LD. I certainly enjoyed it to no end but did not realize it would be so interesting. But of course, almost all dreams are fascinating... When you say you envy me having DILD's and that you are a WILD man, what do you mean? Are WILD's more work, less satisfying, etc., than DILD's? I'm very curious... Good luck with lucidity, Kate

No, Kate, I mean that I have had a lot more lucid dreams going from waking into the dream, than I have had success becoming lucid in a dream by recognizing dreamsigns. I think it's because I came to lucid dreaming work by the back door, so to speak, of OBEs. I worked on having OBE's with some success, and they turn out to be wake-induced lucid dreams, at least in my experience.

In fact, I had one yesterday. I woke up at 7 am feeling still very sleepy and heavy in the body, too heavy to get up. This is a kind of sleep paralysis. These are good conditions for having WILDs, I have discovered. So, I just let myself drift back into sleep, having hypnogogic images, and suddenly I had the sensation of floating right up to the ceiling. I knew I was in a dream already, so I moved through the ceiling and found myself flying over a beach. I thought, "I should go down and walk, since that's where the people are," and so I did. I talked to a few people, then I asked the dream if, please, could I experience the unmanifested, the one life beyond all forms (I am studying Zen). I found myself flying out over the ocean, and suddenly diving into the depths. I went down and down until it was absolutely pitch black and still--no content whatsoever! I hung out there for a while, feeling the stillness, then I awoke.

Anyway, that was my WILD.

Dream on, PAul

Hi, Paul. Wow. That was some dream. Thanks for documenting it. How did the experience affect your waking day? I don't have transcendent type dreams like that so I would be curious to know. Whenever I have an LD it makes me feel particularly good the next day - I've always noticed that. Sorry to be dumb, but I guess I still don't understand what comparison you were making between DILD's and WILD's in terms of enying those who have DILD's more frequently? Thanks, Kate

P.S. to Paul. I see there is more above re WILD's vs DILD's which I will probably go through and check out archives the next time I wake myself up in the night. In the meantime, could you write the link to Ralf's article? There is one somewhere already but I can't find it. Thanks, Kate

Ralf, I have had brief loss of consciousness also in some of my early WILDs, and in some of those cases when the dream began I found myself standing by my dream bed or elsewhere in my dream bedroom wondering if I was really awake or dreaming, and did a reality test to make sure. Those were something like what Kate describes, except that I did enter the dream already with that sneaking suspicion that I was dreaming, having known that I was just awake lying in bed. It's a fine point, I think, but I still call those WILDs. Anyway, it rarely happens that way anymore.

The coolest part of WILDs for me is you get to see the dream scene evolve from nothing quite often, and it's usually quite a fascinating experience. Sometimes I see a circular aperture opening on the scene out of a gray background, sometimes it has OBE qualities like I describe above. Sometimes I pass through a rectangular door-like object floating in space where I can see the dream scene in the distance as through a window.

Nice to talk with you fellow dreamers.

Paul

Kate, to be honest, I find my non-lucid dreams often to be far more memorable and fascinating than my lucid dreams seem to be. I recalled about four full nonlucid dreams after my LD Saturday that were so wierd and wonderful that I'm still thinking about them. I no longer seem to experience the really exciting adventurous LDs I used to have, especially when I thought they were OBEs, probably because I'm focusing on seeking answers to specific questions more than looking for sensory experiences. So, my LDs are brief and to the point these days, hardly worth describing.

The way I differentiate the two kinds of LDs is based simply on whether one becomes lucid by noting the oddness of things in an ordinary dream, that is by dreamsign recognition (DILD), as opposed to carrying into a dream from the waking state the memory and awareness that one is falling asleep, therefore must be dreaming. So, if while sleeping you're dreaming of someone with two heads, and you say "I must be dreaming this" and become lucid that way, it's a DILD. If your body is falling asleep and a scene appears, with or without those wierd bodily sensations like vibrations or floating, that's a WILD.

I seem to have a certain success in having the WILD of lucid dream without really working hard at it anymore. I don't know why, really. Lots of practice, I guess. The DILD type of LD requires genuine work to become good at, and these days I'm just too lazy to do it, especially as I can have WILDs. I really hate doing reality checks during the day, nor do I really have the time. I've had a few DILDs, but no more than five, I'm sure.

The reason for the envy is that if you master the DILD techniques you can have a lot more LDs. Theoretically every dream you have at night could be an LD, whereas my WILDs seem to require certain conditions. I have to awaken, AND be aware that I'm awake (You can fall right back to sleep without awareness of awakening), AND feel like going back to sleep, AND doing so while maintaining awareness, AND be able to let the dream develop without suddenly awakening fully, which happens sometimes.

I have used an alarm clock to awaken me in the middle of the night, but usually I turn it off and go back to sleep without entering a dream. Becoming sleep deprived by staying up extra late seems to help in having WILDs the next morning. I have never, however, had a WILD first thing upon going to bed at night, presumably because normally we go through nonREM stages of sleep before our first REM period.

That's a lot of words. Are you sleeping yet?

Paul

Kate:

My article: http://home.t-online.de/home/Ralf.Penderak/wild.htm Paul:

"when the dream began I found myself standing by my dream bed or elsewhere in my dream bedroom wondering if I was really awake or dreaming, and did a reality test to make sure."

Hey, that sounds pretty advanced.

"The coolest part of WILDs for me is you get to see the dream scene evolve from nothing quite often"

For me, too, that is certainly one of the most intriguing parts of experience. I wrote on that in my article. But one thing goes even further in my experinece it is the shifting form of myself / my dreambody.

"That's a lot of words. Are you sleeping yet? "

Yes, but I know I'm dreaming right now.

It is good to have fellow dreamers, that is for true.

Ralf

Paul - "The reason for the envy is that if you master the DILD techniques you can have a lot more LDs. Theoretically every dream you have at night could be an LD, whereas my WILDs seem to require certain conditions." Thanks, now I understand. I can see how, feeling that way, you would envy those who have frequent DILD's. Personally, I have not mastered much in terms of being able to cause LD's, and at present I don't have them frequently. I envy those people too but I hope to get there myself. I have a good chance of having an LD if I wake myself and then go back to sleep. (That is why I'm on the computer at this ungodly hour.) That practice seems to induce in me a state of sleep that borders waking consciousness just enough to allow the kind of logical observation that would question something that cannot take place in the complete waking state. Or to simply notice that I am dreaming. Yet I'm deeply enough asleep for the dream to maintain itself. And I guess that is the key to the conditions I presently require to LD. I have never been able to WILD as far as I recall. And the reason is that I am too easily awakened from unconsciousness if I am not already immersed in it. Conditions of inducing WILD's is just too close to waking consciousness for me. I know what you mean about the difficulty of doing what needs to be done in the waking state and yet still having the time or ability to practice LD'ing techniques. I don't do reality checks so much as attempt to be in the mindset that accepts I may or may not be dreaming, and to look for something out of place. (When I can manage to do that.) When at work I often recall dreams where I have been at work to kind of set the scene for the fact that I might currently actually be in such a dream. As to NLD's being more fascinating than LD's, I know in my case, my waking life consciousness within the dream tends to limit what my full unconscious would do by itself. But that's just for now. Once my abilities improve I imagine I will be able to do much more with the dreamstate if I want to. I think it's great that use your LD abilities to seek answers. Maybe you are trying to hard right now? Maybe the answers would come more easily if you took a temporary dream vacation, so to speak. I of course wouldn't know, but it is a thought, anyway. Ralf, at last you acknowledged me! I have missed you. Thanks for the link. A very thoughtful article. The example of the midges was a very good illustration of your point about death being a transition, and that sometimes, it's okay that death could not be averted - that it was the natural transition to the next state. And I liked the use of your personal experiences and dreams to illustrate your point about how going to sleep consciously may be like dying. Interesting to me that you sought only to fly and meet someone in a dream, and yet you aparently "met" a highly significant concept for yourself. Paul, no I am not asleep, but I should be. Sweet dreams, Kate

Kate, sounds like you are very close to having WILDs, actually. As to dream vacations, until 1 month ago I hadn't had an LD for over 9 months, This was because of socioeconomic problems, physical illness, and depression. Anyway, that's enough of a vacation for me. And yes, I am pushing a bit because I have not much more time. Bad heart.

Sweet dreams, Paul

Paul

Be well in all worlds!

Kate

Thanks for your comments.

Acknowledged: Please excuse me, in case you waited for some sign or answer or something like that from my side. I still receive all the LI forum posts, but I can't read them diligently. This is the case for many other posts in different online groups, too. Please don't take that personally, not you or anyone else. In my more active times here, this was my only online group. Now I receive post from many groups and have some additional organisation work for the IASD. My alternative healing practice is starting up (slowly, but it is getting more), I'm still doing my nursing work in hospital. I don't have so much time, as in former years. I am glad, if I have time to journal dreams at all...

I still like to hang around here sometimes. And when I wrote the paper on my WILDs I knew, I thank the largest part of my LD skills to the work of LI, of Stephen and Keelin and all participants and moderators here in the forum over the years, I've been here, in fact since 1999.

I miss the time here, too. I miss my Maui dreamcamp fellows from 2001, hey, I met Hermine in Copenhagen. But I must say, that much of what I'm doing today is not so much about learning lucid dreaming, which is the focus of our forum here, but about application of (lucid, intentional) dreaming, especially in the realms of peace work and paranormal dreams.

You are still in my heart and mind

Ralf

Paul- I'm very glad, then, that your search for knowledge through consciousness in dreams is getting results. At least, it sounds as if it is. You are apparently convinced that OBE's are actually LD's. I will read up on them now - I know there is a controversy. Ralf - How nice to hear that. I'm glad you are heavily involved in so many things that are important to you, and glad you are able to still drop in here. Hope I didn't make you feel bad - that wasn't my intention at all. If you get a chance, any links to reports about LD's in peace and paranormal issues would be great. Sweet dreams to all, Kate

Dear Kate

Links are for dream and peacework: http://worlddreamspeacebridge.org/about.htm

for lucid and psi dreams http://asdreams.org/telepathy/

From these points you can work your way to the examples, you are looking for.

I guess I posted one or two peace - related LDs here.

Ralf

Hello Fellow Dreamers,

I have only had a handful of WILDs so far. I had a strange hallucination last week while trying to induce a WILD. I was lying in bed and I heard a spooky creaking sound like a wooden rocking chair makes coming from behind me. I rolled over and heard it again and convinced myself that this was my neck cracking. Then I heard my dad say something. The sound quality of his voice was convincingly clear and realistic. I didn't realize that I was dreaming, instead I became irritated at these distractions because I was trying to induce a WILD. If only I would have known... Hopefully I will make progress on this.

Best, Ben